The Winners and Losers of December 8th, 2013

Hi.

What a week! Hanukkah came to a close, which means that retailers don’t have to feel as guilty about completely excluding a major holiday in their marketing anymore, and wallets around the world continue to flounder in the face of raw capitalism. 

In the video game world, this week has been more calm than the past few weeks of next-gen madness. That doesn’t mean we can’t find some winners and losers in the bunch, though.

Oh boy, is it not hard to find a loser in the bunch.

Atlus

Man, I love declaring Atlus a winner. One of the last remnants of JRPG greatness had two solid reports this week: Persona 4 Golden, the Vita port/remix of an already brilliant mystery/date-sim/dungeon-crawler/life-simulator/playable anime, shipped 700,000 copies; no easy feat for a handheld console that has faced some struggles. Meanwhile, Dragon’s Crown (with which they assisted Vanillaware and published), the vaguely misogynistic 2D hack-and-slash adventure for the Playstation 3 and Vita, has shipped 800,000.

Considering that this is a company small enough to have baked a cake in celebration when Catherine sold 200,000 copies in a week, these shipping numbers over time indicate very strong sales. As always, I wish the very best for one of the industry’s oddest development houses.

CCP

The team behind the sci-fi MMO EVE Online held a charity drive for victims of the typhoon which recently hit the Philippines. Players were invited to donate in-game wealth, which will be matched in real-life money, to the charity as the developers stream for players’ entertainment. Thanks to some particularly wealthy factions in-game, the number soared up to over $125,000 (!). Always nice to see some good come out of video game communities, considering the feeling we all have sometimes of a prevalence of judgment and vitriol.

Ubisoft

Consider this one subjective as it may be a loser in the eyes of some, but I find the idea of Ubisoft quizzing players to see if they would enjoy a spinoff pirate-based IP quite exciting. Though the company has been accused of churning out sequels, it must be said that Ubisoft has a strong lineup of multiple IPs, and a new one following themes people have already positively responded to could be a win for all.

This divergence would remove what was a fresh twist for the Assassin’s Creed franchise, and that absence might be felt- but really, how many naval-based Assassin’s Creed games were to come down the pipeline anyway? Might as well have the mechanic live on as its own in another franchise entirely.

EA

Commenters have held EA’s feet to the fire about prioritizing profits over game quality, but with DICE's bold move to bring development of other projects to a halt in the name of fixing Battlefield 4, they have shown that game quality does matter at least a little bit. It sucks that DICE will have to pause other projects for now, but it says something positive that EA is willing to make the call and give buyers the game they paid for instead of throwing out a patch eventually and telling everyone to deal with it.

Their pretty awesome Humble Bundle also raked in $10.5 million with most of it going to charity, so this has been a solid week for a company regarded by many on the internet as a haven of soulless corporate demons.

Spike’s VGX

There have been some real losers this week. Lab Zero, the Skullgirls team, are continuing to get screwed over by the publisher who threw them to the dogs some time ago. The Fallout 4 rumors were an elaborate hoax. A band of indie developers spent a year working on a game which sold 127 copies on PC. The Penny Arcade Report is over. My heart truly does go out to those affected, and for most of them, I don't want to risk beating them while they're down. But Spike's VGX deserves to be beaten while it's down.

Oh wait, hold on, this one deserves its own section:

Square Enix

Akihiko Yoshida, the incredibly talented artist who brought to life the worlds of Final Fantasy Tactics, Vagrant Story, Bravely Default and more, is leaving Square Enix. Important people have been stepping down from or simply leaving the company in waves for a long time now: Nobuo Uematsu and Hironobu Sakaguchi continued working in the industry but decided that what they didn’t want to be involved with anymore was Square Enix, and Yoichi Wada stepped down from his position as President of the company after a solid few years of running it into the ground (though he has since taken a position as chairman of the board). This departure is a major loss, though we can hope this won’t be the end of Yoshida’s work in the industry.

Okay, where was I?

Spike’s VGX

Wow. So that was a nightmare huh?

What was your favorite part? Joel McHale opening the show with an uncomfortable joke about female orgasms? Joel McHale snidely questioning why he decided to host a “nerd award show”? Joel McHale tiredly remarking on his reading from the prompter in-between proclamations of his own presumed drunkenness? Or just Joel McHale?

Maybe your favorite part was the uncomfortable cuts to Loiter Squad, whose appearances ranged from boring to puzzling to the approximate vibe of what would happen if your thirteen-year-old cousin took a blow to the head and was then put on national television (who else would declare “you can buy cheese” repeatedly, incorrectly assuming people were laughing, in reference to Grand Theft Auto V?)

Or could it have been the “world premieres” Geoff Keighley attempted to hype up which were not one iota comparable to the Skyrim, Phantom Pain, Metal Gear Rising, or The Last of Us reveals of years past?

Ah, none of those? Then perhaps it was the set, which was a confusing mess of props which had no relation to one another or video games in general filling either an emptied-out Bed Bath & Beyond or the alleyway from The Room?

If not that, then it had to be the simple fact that however many issues we had with the VGAs, they were at least an enjoyable enough spectacle with the explosive pageantry this industry does deserve. The production values of Spike’s VGX were so hilariously weak, from the inability to use a tripod for close-ups of hosts speaking on the couch to the visible stage marks during an interview with Reggie Fils-Aime of Nintendo to the fake laughter provided by a desperate crew with no audience to speak of, that it all felt sad when it wasn’t inducing cringes.

I don’t know where this should be taken from here. God knows it can’t be this next year or there might be a riot. Maybe it really should just be canceled- Spike certainly doesn’t care anymore, as evidenced by such haphazard planning that twitter being asked to organize the awards for them was considered a good idea and the game of the year was announced halfway through the proceedings.

It’s not my job to figure out what the next move is, and boy am I glad for that. Right now, I’m just hoping that was a fever dream so I can pretend it didn’t happen.