By Michael Lowell
January 7, 2011
Why Your Internet Boycotts Don’t Work
Fuck your internet boycotts.
Boycotts used to have meaning. A part of human history wrote its damn legend with boycotts. You ruined them. That is, the internet ruined them. The internet now empowers anyone with a cause to write that crappy mission statement and post it on the internet. You don’t even have to fight for your own cause. That’s what those millions of anonymous faces are for! You just declare your intentions and let others fight for them. So today, society boycotts biodegradable potato chip bags. Huh, why? Because they’re too loud.* The internet boycott has gone so unchecked that boycotters now have the gall to criticize other people and products for being annoying.
What, you thought video games wouldn’t earn the boycott rancor? Hah! Gamers will swear vengeance on reviewers who low-ball a review score and destroy a MetaCritic-driven narrative of “THTA AWSUM GAME THAT JUST CAEM OUT!!1″ You expect gamers to conduct a responsible and rational boycott? To understand that you pick and choose your battles? That modern boycotts are a megaphone for word-of-mouth in today’s twenty-four-hour news cycle? Yeah, they didn’t think about it. They won’t. Thus, the “I’m boycotting Call of Duty 9″ audience has left a very pathetic paper trail; a paper trail worth examining. Let’s use that paper trail to explain why video game boycotts suck, the ones that “succeeded” have sucked, and how you “boycott” a video game.
To explain that, we’ll start in 1992. But why? The public hasn’t caught a glimpse of broadband internet. Hell, America Online hasn’t even made its rise to power. What, you think people needed the internet to swear vitriol upon a video game?
See, Digital Pictures Inc. (and it’s okay if you’ve never heard of them) released a game by the name of Night Trap for the Sega CD. What the hell is a Night Trap? That depends on who you ask. If you asked anyone who played the game, you’d know it is one of the worst video games ever produced, the crown jewel in the industry’s pathetic attempt to embrace the full-motion-video game genre. Everyone else? Well, they had their own idea.
According to a 1993 Associated Press news article, the goal of Night Trap was “to prevent a gang of black-hooded killers from capturing scantily clad sorority sisters [aged from teen to tween] and using a neck drill device to drain their blood.” Sound scary? Not if you played the game, filmed on a budget that didn’t include actual money. In the documentary Dangerous Games, Digital Pictures Inc. C.E.O. Tim Zito asserted that Night Trap was an example of deliberate camp. In other words, the final product was so intolerable that the company had to market the game as camp, in the way 2006′s god-awful Japanese horror game Necronesia was localized in the United States as the “so bad it’s good” Escape From Bug Island.
So what does Night Trap tell us about boycotts? In that year of 1993, Night Trap earned the ire of the most powerful and visible force in human history: The United States government. Apparently, select members of the Democratic Party needed to distance themselves from a sagging economy that would wreak havoc on the blue team during the 1994 mid-term elections. So what became the smoke screen? Video games!
In a hearing before the Governmental Affairs subcommittee on regulation and government information, Sens. Joe Lieberman, Herb Kohl and Byron Dorgan took turns respectively characterizing [Night Trap] as “junk,” “trash” and even “child abuse.”
These comments came after the senators had screened a 30-second snippet in which, to quote John Burgess’s report in The Washington Post, “three black-suited assailants enter a bathroom, grab a young woman wearing a flimsy nightgown, then attach a long, hooked device to her neck to suck out blood.” The clip led many of the evening’s TV news reports, replete with anti-video-game-violence commentary spawned by Sen. Lieberman’s earlier observations on the product: that it was set in a sorority house, where the object was to hang women on meat hooks. “These games teach a child to enjoy inflicting torture,” said Lieberman.
Opinion Piece from Tom Zito, CEO of Digital Pictures, Inc., published in The Cedar Rapids Gazette, December 22, 1993
If you think the modern perception of gamers and their Cheeto-crusted clothing is unfair, wait until you get a load of 1993. One half of the American console gaming market was dominated by Nintendo, a company still maligned by a perception that their games are for “kiddies”. The other half was dominated by Sega, who stole a swath of the Nintendo market share by convincing an older audience their product was edgy. In other words, “kiddie games for teens and nerds”. In other words, “Don’t defend this vile filth, kids. I’m the adult in the room and I know what I’m talking about. You’re violent miscreants and the world needs to know it.” And without a global communications device (oh say, the internet) to tell Joe Lieberman that he needs to shut the hell up, politicians became the message and the authority on the topic. Thus, Night Trap had it all! From pedophilia to rape! The message was as unopposed as one could dream for: “This game is violent, inhumane, and shouldn’t be on any retail shelf in this country.”
Night Trap wasn’t Mortal Kombat, the other product that drew the wrath of the government that year. Mortal Kombat was what it was: An average fighter that used excessive violence to draw attention its way. It became a cultural statement by doing so. Night Trap was a game that nobody had played. Leading into the 1993-1994 hearings that would admonish the entire video game industry and lead to the formation of the Electronic Software Rating Board, Night Trap had moved 100,000 copies in the fourteen months since its release. Even by 1993 standards, that wasn’t much to gawk about. The week after Night Trap became national news, it sold 50,000 units. It would eventually and comfortably sell out its initial print run of 250,000 copies.*
So think about it: A political circus declared that a video game was child pornography. This message was completely unopposed. As a result, sales of the video game doubled. So I ask boycotters: What the hell do you think “YOU’RE PERVIOUS GAEM’S KICKED ASS BUT IM LETTIGN EVERYONE NO IM GONA BOYCOTT THA NEXT ONE” is going to accomplish!? In a game journalism news cycle that thrives on volume, boycotts are a godsend. It’s true! Never shutting up about a video game is a pretty good way to boost sales! It doesn’t matter how negative the publicity is. That’s why Electronic Arts organized a fake religious-themed protest against their own Dante’s Inferno video game.* That’s why Acclaim infamously offered to pay for the funerals of those willing to place a Shadowman 2 ad on the tombstone of their newly-deceased!* Why? Because trolling the internet works in real life, too!
“But mikey lowelz WE NEW THAT!!1 ITS DUM TOO BOYCOTT GAME’S!” It’s very possible you knew that. But we needed to clear up why the video game boycott can never work. Now we can discuss the internet-driven video game boycotts that have already occurred. And we can now explain where boycotters screwed up on a game-by-game basis.
In September of 2008, Electronic Arts released Spore. If you gave a passing shit about video games that year, you heard about it. It was the work of Sim City creator Will Wright, a ten-year-development cycle promising the ultimate god game. Famous game designer? Check. Long development cycle that often leads to “polished” products? Check. Game with mass appeal akin to The Sims? Check.
To that point, computer games had been getting their ass kicked for roughly half-a-decade. There was sentiment that Spore could be the beginning of a renaissance for the platform. There was one problem: People whine about 2011′s Activision-Blizzard. They had nothing on circa-mid-aughts Electronic Arts. Medal of Honor was a dime-store, tactical-shooting prostitute before Call of Duty made it trendy and the Madden franchise was exploiting the benefits of an exclusive Electronic Arts licensing agreement with the National Football League. That is, the franchise stagnated after Madden 2004 became a legitimate Game of the Year candidate. The Electronic Arts catalog of lousy products was about to feature a weapon in the war against software piracy: Digital rights management.
It was the newest crazy from an industry that believed and believes it can stop unauthorized copies of their software. The digital rights management issues with Spore had a special catch: For many years prior, the complaints about digital rights management was the isolated realm of hardcore gamers. The best-selling games in the history of the platform (Myst, Starcraft, The sims) featured few restrictions on how the product could be used. Spore was the first major, hyped-to-hell release that inflicted digital rights management on a large casual audience. A whole lotta people who had no idea “what a DRM was” would have to call up Electronic Arts and ask why this “cracked version of Spore” was a better product than the one they purchased.
“Cracked version” is the key to understanding where consumers got their video game boycotts wrong. Without understanding the ramifications, “cracked version” became the way that opponents of Electronic Arts measured their success in harming Spore’s sales.
Since September 2nd when Spore first appeared on BitTorrent, it has been downloaded a little over 500,000 times across various BitTorrent sites according to our most recent statistics. This download rate exceeds that of any other pirated game in history, and in a week or two from now it will be the most pirated game ever on BitTorrent.
As a comparison, Crysis, one of the best-selling PC games of this year has only been downloaded 420,000 times since it was released in November 2007. The Sims 2 currently holds the record for the most pirate downloads. There are no accurate stats for this game, since it was released long before we started tracking downloads, but we estimate that approximately 1 million copies have been downloaded.
TorrentFreak.com, “Spore: Most Pirated Game Ever Thanks to DRM”; September 13, 2008*
That mistake set the precedent for every following video game boycott. The purpose of a boycott is to state that you have a moral or ethical objection to one or more factors involved in the creation, distribution, or consumption of a product. These objections are so significant that you can live without this product. In doing so, you generate sympathy to your position and force a change in business practices by creating an economic backlash to the boycotted product. Got it? Gamers didn’t. Video game boycotts wouldn’t be measured by profit margins or sales tallies. They would be measured by downloads. Forget that pro-piracy advocates have long argued downloads don’t necessarily constitute a lost sale. In the twisted world of video game boycotts, the consumer decided that creating millions of unauthorized copies of the product would generate sympathy to their position. Riiiiight.
The moment gamers decided it was okay to boycott products by “downloading them”, they lost. When you’re dealing with video games, you don’t get margin for error. “Video games are for children and nerds. Why waste your time getting worked up about them?” That’s how non-gamers think. If you’re going to be passionate about the product, you have to pick the right battles. You have to make sure your message is a good one. Well, the internet is a funny thing. Watched the most recent American protest rally? It’s ten-thousand people with a hundred-thousand agendas. Anti-war protests will become one man’s epic staging ground for the legalization of pot. There’s no organization and no way to control the message. The internet is the same way. Nobody can centralize the message and explain that “boycotting by downloading” is a terrible idea.
So you know what happens? The majority of human beings can’t comprehend the nuances of software piracy. They can’t understand that software piracy rates in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia and Russia and China are being used to argue for stricter software laws in Western Europe and the United States and Japan, the parts of this planet with the lowest software piracy rates. These people just know that software piracy is evil. So what do you think happens when you download a video game because “the company is a bunch of assholes”? The outsider audience says, “Well…you just didn’t want to pay for the game. Period.”
That does not sound crazy to most people. After all, computer gamers have developed an impressive reputation for being spoiled and elitist. For boycotts involving computer games, it would be incumbent on boycotters to prove they were not elitist. That their actions may seem misguided but their intentions were honest; that people could relate to their message. I mean, the fervor against Spore at least looked good on paper. “Corporate behemoth” meets “game-crippling security restrictions”. Nine months after the release of Spore, the people who believed in the video game boycott as an arbiter for change were going to piss any and all sympathy away.
Valve’s co-op-oriented first-person shooter Left 4 Dead was released in November of 2008, and while it wasn’t the first shooter to play the “me versus the endless horde” motif, it was a welcome change from a genre in cahoots with a tactical shooter fetish. Left 4 Dead’s roster of straight-forward weapons, straight-forward monsters, and emphasis on level design invoked a lot of similarities to Quake and Doom. A large swath of idiots overlooked these strengths and took offense to the meager cast of weapons and items. For a first-person shooter audience that had become increasingly accustomed to weapon rosters with all brands of uselessness (Halo) and weapon rosters featuring five of the same weapon (Call of Duty), the lack of filler in Left 4 Dead was interpreted as “half a game”. That is, “not a finished product”.
Valve informed its audience that they shouldn’t be worried. And Valve was worth believing. The company continues to sport the best post-release support of any video game developer outside of Irvine, California. Left 4 Dead would continue to get support from the developer, whatever that support may be. Valve also has an erratic history of getting their products to the public in a timely manner. One only needs to look at Half-Life 2 and its always-delayed single-player content. So yeah, the sequel to Left 4 Dead came as a surprise. You know, the one that would be released in November of 2009, twelve months after the original title. Console gamers had long conceded their favorite games were prone to a one-game-a-year production model. This wasn’t news to them. But the computer gaming audience used to getting years (and even decades) of replay value from the best that the personal computer had to offer? Oh boy. Time for computer gamers to act irrational and stupid. The video game boycott was pointless to begin with, but the boycott of Left 4 Dead 2 marked the moment that no rational gamer could ever take a boycott seriously. Fittingly using Valve’s beloved Steam digital distribution service as its staging ground,* the Left 4 Dead 2 Boycott became so.
When I heard that Microsoft and Valve had announced Left 4 Dead 2 I said to myself, “Hey, that’s cool. A follow-up to a hit videogame is about as surprising as a sunrise but I’m always up for a little more zombie-shootin’.” Good news, right?
Not necessarily. It seems lot of people were unhappy about the announcement, which they see as a betrayal of Valve’s “promise” to support Left 4 Dead with new content, and over 3000 of them have joined a new Steam Group called L4D2 Boycott (NO-L4D2), complaining about everything from Valve’s lack of commitment to Left 4 Dead to the new game’s overly colorful “visual aesthetic” and crappy fiddle music.
- Andy Chalk of The Escapist, “Valve Fans Form Left 4 Dead 2 Boycott Group”; June 3, 2009*
The Left 4 Dead 2 Boycott was built on the premise that they were not purchasing another Left 4 Dead game until Valve gave the players additional content and support. That itself exists on the premise that the boycott leaders and supporters bought the game with the expectation of additional content. That the boycotters had become passionate enough about Left 4 Dead in the absence of this content would indicate elsewise. How do you think console gamers viewed that? The major console online gaming service is the pay-to-use Xbox Live. “Wait. Are computer gamers complaining that they did not get free content to play on their free multiplayer?” In 2007, gamers were boycotting products because of concerns with corporate strategy. In 2009, gamers were boycotting products because “the game is too colorful” and “we didn’t get our free popsicle”. Computer gamers had upgraded their status from “spoiled and elitist” to “are you nutcases out of your fucking minds?”
Public perception kicked the shit out of the boycotters. Game journalists™ kicked the shit out of the boycotters. And then Valve kicked the shit out of the boycotters with one of the most brilliant public relations plays in modern video game development history. In September of 2009, Valve paid out-of-pocket to fly the boycott leaders to the Valve studio.* You know, to explain that human beings existed behind that evil Valve facade. And forty-five guilt-ridden days later, the boycott leaders pussied out.
We have accomplished everything we can on our manifesto. We’ve been dealing with Valve ever since our group started, then we met them in-person and now we’re at the point of concluding our discussions. Our goal wasn’t to steer people away from L4D2, it was to get Valve’s attention and have them support original L4D. We succeeded and that’s where our mission ends; nothing more or less.
Boycott co-leader “Agent of Chaos”, announcement on the Steam L4D2 Boycott page, October 13, 2009*
The Left 4 Dead 2 Boycott screwed a lot of people. Namely, “anyone who ever wanted to raise concerns about a game development decision”. This would prove quite ruinous to the computer gaming community in the following twelve months. Electronic Arts’ status as “Most Evil Game Publisher” was being usurped by Bobby Kotick’s Activision-Blizzard.
The personal computer releases of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in November of 2009 and Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty in July of 2010 were cause for alarm. Modern Warfare 2 lacked support for “dedicated servers”, the term given to the user-hosted servers long preferred for playing first-person shooters on the personal computer. All games would be played through a new service called IWNet, literally a port of X-Box Live to the personal computer. Starcraft II lacked the ability to play the game over a Local Area Network, the preferred method for playing real-time strategy games in any competitive or tournament setting.
Advertised as a deterrent to software piracy (and in the case of both products, it did little to stymie it**), the removal of these features were a consolidation of control over how the consumer could use his product. It would force all traffic through the company’s exclusive online service. The online service would discourage modmaking (a proven way to extend the shelf life of a video game) by requiring that online service to “sign off” on any modified code. Unless the modmaking can be accomplished with a developer-created editor, it’s not getting to a multiplayer mode. The online service could be used as leverage against sanctioning bodies who wanted to use competitively-played video games as a business venture. The online service could be as a means of planned obsolescence, where companies can pull the plug on classic multiplayer titles even when demand is still hot. (At the time that Microsoft pulled the plug on Xbox Live support for Halo 2, several thousand players were playing the game.) And if any zealous gamers chose to emulate the online gaming service, the publisher could inflict legal action as necessary.
The outrage over Modern Warfare 2 and Starcraft II were valid. Not because Bobby Kotick adopts animals from the shelter so he can run them over in the parking lot. Not because they wouldn’t be able to play the game at the internet cafe. The pissing match over Left 4 Dead 2 was a product quality issue; the fight over Activision’s products was a consumer rights issue. On the expert opinion of business majors who never conducted an intelligent thought in their lives, Activision-Blizzard was deciding they could increase their profits by creating an inferior product; creating a product that gave the publisher more control over the computer code; creating a product that allowed the publisher to “protect their intellectual property”.
Is this the narrative the Call of Duty and Starcraft fans played? Pfft. What did they go with? “OMGS WAT R U DOIGN BLIZZERD I PLAYDE STARKAFT WHEN I WAS 12 YEAR’S OLD ON LAN AN I ZERG RUSHT MY FRIEND’S A$$HOLE WIT MY PENISLISK AN NOW U RUIN LAN PLAY.” And if Facebook and Twitter haven’t already taught us, no one really gives a damn about your “cool story” moment. Gamers completely missed the point. They would continue to miss the point when Electronic Arts proudly announced that the personal computer iteration of Bad Company 2 would include the dedicated server support that was missing from Modern Warfare 2. That’s good? The dedicated servers would have to be rented by an Electronic Arts-approved third-party vendor. That’s bad.
You can bet games journalism™ had a field day with this. They were able to paint together four facts: The online petition of a quarter-million-strong demanding the return of LAN play in Starcraft II,* the 100,000-strong petition demanding the return of dedicated server play in Modern Warfare 2,* the screenshot of a Steam-based Modern Warfare 2 boycott group and their insatiable first-day fetish for the game,* and the incredible sales of Modern Warfare 2,* which turned the Call of Duty franchise into the biggest yearly video game event in the history of the medium. Game over, guys. Game over.
The fight against Spore was the moment the video game boycott failed on an ethical level. The retribution against Left 4 Dead 2 was the moment the video game boycott failed on a hearts-and-minds level. The backlash to Modern Warfare 2 and Starcraft II was the moment boycotts failed on an intellectual level. The boycotts didn’t work and they damn-well won’t work now. So you probably want to ask: “Can you show me an example of consumer leverage that altered a major business decision? One that will work in the future?” I can.
Santa Monica, Calif.-based Activision Blizzard just put that question to many of its customers. In a post earlier this week on its Battle.net forums, the game developer informed players of its popular Starcraft and World of Warcraft games, among others, that they would soon have to use their legal monikers when chatting about their in-game exploits on its forums.
…
As of this morning, 74 pages of comments follow that post. The ones I’ve read don’t seem too positive about Blizzard’s move. Typical reply, from “Marine71″: “What an awful idea. Who comes up with this trash? Seriously. What happened to you, Blizzard?”
Other Battle.net threads debating the move dwarf that: On the World of Warcraft “General Discussion” forum, the argument now runs nearly 2,000 pages long–and that’s only for North American users.
Even think tanks have gotten into the debate: The Center for Democracy and Technology’s Sean Brooks decried Blizzard’s move in a post titled “Blizzard Looks To Chill Forum Speech with Real ID” on the Washington nonprofit’s blog.
Rob Pegoraro of The Washington Post, World of Warcraft users blast Blizzard’s ‘Real ID’ rule; July 8, 2010*
Guess what happened? After several days of on-and-off pissing matches, company president Michael Morhaime called off the plans. Why? Let’s understand something about pre-orders: The video game industry uses pre-orders a very good indication of how much inventory retailers will need. In the case of Blizzard titles, which don’t require word of mouth to sell and attract substantial first-day buys, it’s very important. Video game sales tracking website VGChartz followed the carnage. In the week during or following the RealID fiasco declined by nearly a quarter.
Data acquired from Americas VGChartz’ pre-order sales charts.*
Because of a boycott? Because of your impassioned Battle.net forum post where you outline that Blizzard used to make awesome games but they suck now? Nope. People cancelled their accounts and pre-orders. They didn’t threaten. They did. They didn’t make Steam groups, they didn’t write miles and miles of “cool stories”. They acted as shareholders and pulled out money from their investment. Spontaneously and without organization.
And that’s what you do. You’re always welcome to say “I’m not buying this game because of X”. You can make those intentions clear and then you ignore the game. You shut up about it, you don’t give the game any attention, and you ignore it. And then when the game comes out, you go find another game to play. And then you gush about that new game.
And guess what? If you don’t like this article, boycott it. I won’t mind the free publicity.
Special Thanks To:
IGN’s Screenshot Gallery for the Pretty Pictars
Additional Viewing:
The Digital Pictures Inc. documentary “Dangerous Games“, a multi-minute retrospective on the government backlash to Night Trap. (Yes, the company made a documentary to defend their game. That doesn’t diminish the educational value. It’s worth watching.)
I am totally boycotting this article. I sent it to four of my friends and told them to boycott it too. Enjoy your higher bandwidth bill.
Comment by Truhan on January 22, 2011 at 11:30 pm
I don’t pay for this site. It’s hosted by somebody else. Owned.
<3
Comment by Mike Lowell on January 22, 2011 at 11:37 pm
These articles are fantastic! Keep up the hard work!!9
Comment by Anonymous on January 23, 2011 at 4:12 am
*gasp* Who watches the Watchmen then! And also, doesn’t that mean there’s risk of the site lapsing payment and us losing you forever, and by forever I mean six hours?
Comment by Truhan on January 23, 2011 at 4:28 am
@Anonymous: The love is always appreciated. I alluded earlier in the week in a headline on the main page that I was a bit burned out from the long-form writing. Makes it a hell of a lot easier to do if somebody is getting enjoyment out of it.
@Truhan: Nah, my operation is reliable. No worries. No domain expiration of monthly billing fail on the horizon. So I hope. o.o
Comment by Mike Lowell on January 23, 2011 at 4:39 am
I pirate PSP games because I’m boycotting UMD as a proprietary format!
Comment by Q-veta on January 23, 2011 at 9:25 am
Hey, I remember all that buzz over Night Trap. My mom used to get caught up in things like that. I remember her talking about a video game where the objective was to break into a home and “rape women.” I never believed such a game existed. Now I know the truth. I might have to tell her about that sometime.
I didn’t read much further than that. Your articles are too long.
Just kidding… Good read. I like reading your stuff.
Comment by Kelly on January 23, 2011 at 8:18 pm
The key thing to note here is that passive-aggressiveness just doesn’t work. PA is a method for getting your girlfriend to blow you or your parents to let you go out and drink. Video game sales is the “real world”, and gamers who join dumb ‘boycott groups’ are trying to tell the developers: “I’m going to play your game, but I WON’T BE HAPPY doing it”.
BTW mike, I remember reading a half dozen times that you won’t be buying Starcraft 2 on your old site ;)
cheers
Comment by Abraxas on January 23, 2011 at 8:57 pm
@Q-Veta: Those little things are quite wretched. They really should have sacrificed the “Playstation Gaming Experience™” (or whatever ridiculous term you could come up with) and fought the Nintendo DS format with a proper one.
@Kelly: Yup, that’s probably the game she was referring to. Night Trap really was a dreadful little game, but at least you can understand why it was published. The game was originally part of some ridiculous Hasbro scheme to make a VCR-based video game console and considering it was developed on a budget of five million dollars (something I clearly dispute in the article), I guess they HAD to try and make some money off of the game somewhere. I believe Sewer Shark and Ground Zero Texas were two other FMV games with similar stories.
The long-form writing is a little bit difficult to get into, but from my point of view (trying to improve the quality of my writing), it’s preferable.
@Abraxas: Yup. Now let’s keep something in mind about that passive-aggressive relation to Starcraft II: I never once said to boycott the game. I said that Activision-Blizzard is going to fail its own agenda (consolidate control of the game under its Battle.net banner) by releasing such a crappy service side-by-side with a niche title supported by very passionate fans. And if you look through Starcraft II sales predictions and what sales totals actually transpired (and I will be doing this when I write a follow-up article on the topic), I turned out to be very right on that. The fact that people thought I was making a call to boycott the game by writing that article pissed me off.
The only actual “boycott” I did of Starcraft II asked Bobby Kotick to pay restitution for war crimes. It was clearly tongue in cheek.
Comment by Mike Lowell on January 23, 2011 at 11:32 pm
I will never understand how people rationalize the feeling of “I’m not buying this game b/c of X, I’m boycotting it” and then they go out and torrent it. Clearly they still wanted to play the game.
Comment by RPN on January 24, 2011 at 1:31 am
Another excellently told and researched article. I change/make up my mind every time I read your stuff! This one reminds me of the ol’ Gladwell article in the New Yorker, where he talks about the impotence of social media to real change. Check it, unless you are part of a New Yorker boycott.
Comment by spyfoxguy on January 24, 2011 at 1:50 am
Mike I didn’t mean to suggest you were calling for a boycot.. but you did joke about not buying the game personally.
Anyway I’m looking forward to your post-release analysis of SC2. It would be really cool if you could summarize all the tournament action since it’s release compared to BW in the past few years, Here’s a question to answer: Did SC2 succeed financially in the year since it’s release?
Comment by Abraxas on January 24, 2011 at 3:22 am
@RPN: They want to play the game but they don’t want to exhaust the effort of owing up to their “boycott”.
@spyfoxguy: I’m off to go ahead and read that article. Thanks for pointing me to it. Edit: Good stuff. Funny how it came to a lot of the conclusions that I did, though it made them in a much more precise manner. Wish I had read that article before writing this.
@Abraxas: I don’t think there was ever a point where I actually said it with any conviction. If I did, I encourage someone to call me out for it and lead me to where I said it. But yeah, I did that ridiculous mock boycott site. I’m actually torn on purchasing the expansion right now. It depends on whether or not the game gets more interesting to play over the coming months.
And to answer your question about Starcraft’s financial success, that all depends on what you look at. Multi-million-seller? Yeah, that’s successful. Compared to what nearly every industry analyst predicted? Compared to the gross revenue that Blizzard Entertainment makes from a single month of operating World of Warcraft? Not so much.
Comment by Mike Lowell on January 24, 2011 at 5:17 am
@Ghetto: I rather have the “Playstation Gaming Experience™” compared to what the DS has to offer. If I actually bought my DS it’s probably the only thing I would ever feel buyer’s remorse from. Good thing it was a gift.
But yeah, the UMDs are shitty but I guess you couldn’t fit God of War on a 64MB DS card.
Comment by Q-veta on January 24, 2011 at 9:07 am
Ghetto just throwing out there that i read every article on your old site and i enjoy reading every article you post on this new(er) one. Thank you for the content, it is always very well written and makes lots of sense.
Comment by Chaz on January 24, 2011 at 3:06 pm
@Ghetto, I’m definitely not getting Heart of the Swarm. If you’ll recall, shortly after Starcraft II was released, Bashiok made a post that said that they “knew the system was terrible,” but come Blizzcon, we got a face full of the same “fuck you” attitude they had before no chat channels and forum Real ID backlash.
Another thing, I perfectly understand that whining about boycotts, even in large numbers, won’t do much; however, I do recall that the Real ID thread on the US WoW forums exceeded two or three thousands pages of posts before they recalled the decision. Moreover, I think your real point is “the facelesss masses of the Interbutt aren’t as big (and don’t give a shit as much) as you think.”
It took tens of thousands of posts to get real names removed from forums with a statement from the president of Blizzard. It took thousands of posts to get chat channels with no real confirmation from the developers. In this respect, I suppose the undeniable truth is that hundreds will not be able to do what only tens of thousands can accomplish, no matter how much shit they talk.
Comment by Truhan on January 24, 2011 at 7:46 pm
@Q-Veta: Eh. The DS is more varied. When it comes to a portable gaming device, that seems key. Definitely a topic to think about for a future update.
@Chaz: Good deal. I just try to make complicated topics seem a bit more simple. It drives me insane when people claim that my writing isn’t clear.
Truhan: The RealID spat was completely spontaneous. That’s the point I was trying to make. People didn’t voice their anger because they thought it would coordinate with the anger of others; they did it because they were individually upset with the service. That individual anger ended up CREATING a coherent, on-message voice. That’s why it succeeded. That, and it convinced people to pull money out of purchasing Activision-Blizzard products.
But yeah. Tens of thousands of people claiming they’re going to boycott a game has far, far less power than anyone is giving it credit for. Get into the millions (and show me evidence that “millions” is harming the company) and then we can talk.
Comment by Mike Lowell on January 25, 2011 at 12:59 am
@Abraxas:
The current GSL tournament (the largest and most organized SC2 tournament) is not doing so well. I believe tournament organizers rented a 10,000 seat arena and less than 100 people are showing up to watch the games live. I heard 10 people showed up for one of Tester’s game and 50 showed up for Boxer’s in a recent Code-S match (not sure of the credibility of this statement but it was from one of the more known reporters on Team Liquid).
In case you didn’t know, Boxer is pretty much THE god father of SC1 BW professional scene. It’s quite depressing how little people show up.
On the other hand, SC1 is still going very, very strong. Arenas are packed for every major tournament and leagues (OSL/MSL/SPL).
@Mike:
I’m debating purchase on the expansion for SC2 as well. I used to play and commentate for local SC2 tournaments in the first few months after launch, but the more I delved into the scene, the more I became distant to it. Nowadays I find myself watching OSL/MSL/SPL everyday and forgetting that I even owned SC2. I’m absolutely ecstatic about the Stork v. Fantasy Bacchus 2010 OSL finals but have no idea how Nada or Boxer is doing in the Code-S tournament.
I feel the same about many other games. SF4, SSBB (what a travesty of a sequel), BB:CT, etc. The more I play the newer games with a competitive mindset, the less interested I become. I hate the “getting old” or “nostalgia” generalization because I’m definitely too young to be looking back and I’m pretty sure games nowadays are lacking much depth compared to the prequels. Why else would games such as SF2T, SSBM and SC:BW have such a large following after decade+ of play? Evolution is key for any competitive activity. International past times such as football (soccer), baseball and basketball are still rapidly changing in terms of strategy and techniques. I think that’s what keeps the audience gripped and the players striving to be the best.
I’m actually very curious of your take on this subject because it feels like you have a similar opinion. I’d love to see an article about this (*hint hint*).
Comment by Ineno on January 25, 2011 at 7:02 pm
Basically. Great competitive games can hold up to the rigors of player bases who constantly and mercilessly update and recycle strategies in order to get an edge. The problem is that (at least in the case of Blizzard strategy games) it takes years for players to find out whether the game will hold up to that scrutiny. It takes years for players to develop strategies and learn the nuances of the product. As a result, it’s become just about impossible for the sequel to a top-notch competitive video game to live up to its predecessor…even if it turns out to be a better game. Why? The initial impression. This is a huge problem for games like Brawl and Street Fighter IV and Starcraft II. No matter how good these games eventually play, they will never be “as good” because the initial impressions of those games (the months after their release) can never hold up to a legendary competitive title with over ten-plus years of player knowledge backing it.
I’ll be writing an article on this some time. Hopefully I can have it done soon.
Comment by Mike Lowell on January 26, 2011 at 6:27 pm
@Mike:
You make a very valid point regarding initial impression. I assume many fans have complained and given up on a sequel soon after their initial experience. However as a gamer that constantly checks how a metagame for a sequel is developing, I would like to make the following points:
1. It is in fact unfair to compare depth between brand new games with its prequel(s) that have been developing in a competitive environment for a very long time. However you do also have to keep in mind that competitive level strategy will be developed and sought after at a much, much higher rate. This is due to players learning from past experiences in developing new strategies/techniques and development of tools such as training mode/replay/hacks that are much more detailed and available nowadays. As a prime example, SC:BW did not have a replay mode until patch 1.08, which was few years after the BW Koreans scene started. Strategies that were previously concealed by the players who developed them were now divulged to the rest of the world. This vastly hastened the development cycle of, “new strategy -> counter,” as players could not rely on one strategy for too long. And to push the point even further, SC2’s replay system further improved on information gathering (such as unit composition, clock and resource intake/consumption rate) that lead to faster development of the metagame where new Korean strategies and styles were being copied and/or improved by western gamers within days of its usage. I would not be surprised if a sequel’s metagame develops multiple times faster than its predecessors.
2. Another point I’d like to make is that strategies can and will develop through experience, but ultimately, it is the game mechanics that decides the limit in how much it can develop. If a game’s mechanic is oversimplified, that game will never develop as much as a game with deeper mechanics. This is exactly the case with SSBB where the game removed far too many options from its predecessor and barely added anything new. The metagame development has become quite stagnant and till this day, I have a very difficult time differentiating play styles from various time periods of the metagame development cycle. Fortunately, the other sequels that I mentioned (SF4, SC2, etc.), while removing some, added many things (whether they are favorable or not is up to debate) to its mechanics. Therefore we can expect some more development from them in the future.
In looking at these things, I do think that some arguments pertaining to the depth in gameplay of current generation sequels hold some validity despite the short period they have been in the market.
—————–
On a different note, I think the real problem with SC2 is not its game mechanics but the people who organize the tournaments and the way Blizzard is setting up its matching system. Blizzard created a seemingly great map editor and making absolutely no use of it in terms of actual ladder play. Horribly imbalanced and terribly uninspired maps plague online and major tournaments (they finally decided to get rid of Steppes of War after 4 SEASONS of GSL… simply amazing). Let’s not forget the lack of LAN as well. I’d imagine input delay in the milliseconds to be unbearable for professionals. To think 10years of BW professional league development would be a good example…
Comment by Ineno on January 27, 2011 at 2:03 am
That’s exactly the argument that I would be making: That it IS unfair to assume a new release will be as competition-ready as a ten-year-old competitive video game. It’s very possible that the Starcraft II metagame develops faster, and it probably will, since the talent pool isn’t going to have to grasp the mechanical side of the game before they get down to the business of discovering strategies. And it’s also very possible that Starcraft II can’t be salvaged (though I would also put a hold on deciding whether that’s the case, because nobody has seen what goodies the expansion packs will yield, if Blizzard introduces sendoffs to units like Lurkers and Tanks that require very deft positioning on the part of the player). But if anything wrecks competitive Starcraft II, I’ll agree with you: The company will be the one to do it. If Blizzard continues to dick the community around, there’s always the possibility that ICCUP or another arbiter will get their emulated Battle.net going and TeamLiquid will decide to go underground. And if Activision-Blizzard was insane enough to inflict legal action on their biggest Starcraft fan site for “supporting and abetting that private server?”
In other words, I don’t think anyone has any idea what the state of competitive Starcraft will be twelve and eighteen months from now. The only way to find out is to wait.
Comment by Mike Lowell on January 27, 2011 at 2:47 am
Brilliant finish mike.
Comment by Song7 on January 28, 2011 at 4:34 am
@ Ineno
Starcraft was absolute shit competitively when it first came out. It took at least until after broodwars for the game to have serious merit (and I’m not even talking about all the bugs and hacks).
I foresee many community made maps in the next few years/expansions that will completely change the state of the game, not to mention the new units that will add to the metagame.
Besides, since Terran now has to build a depot before barracks, I think the game is much more QQ proof.
Comment by Abraxas on January 28, 2011 at 6:43 pm
internet boycotts don’t work because they don’t stem from casual players. the reason the realid shit worked is because it affected casual players enough for MASSES to care. since most complaints originating from gaming communities don’t really bother casuals, they’re going to fall on deaf ears (read: wallets). so basically once a company has gotten enough attention and is big enough (actiblizzard), you can kiss quality games goodbye. case in point starcrap 2 and crapple.net 2.0
welcome to the real world, where once you turn big enough your primary focus becomes PREVENTING innovation and quality products to maintain your position while selling the crappiest things you can possibly come up with (preferably through microtransactions lololol).
free market capitalism = lawl.
Comment by lolsauce on February 10, 2011 at 3:15 pm
and teamliquid won’t go anywhere underground because their staff is too busy trying to force perception that the game is actually balanced (lolterran, lolzerg) by banning whoever doesn’t think so, save for big names like idra. problem with their stance is, the game being blatantly terran-favored really doesn’t serve to increase long term interest or success for it. do I really wanna watch GSL when ro8 is like 7 terrans? yeah, I think I’d rather buy a ticket to that crappy blockbuster that just came out, it might be more original.
in any case, TL staff are the epitome of politically correct when it comes to pretty much anything. be it gaming or random discussion on unrelated subjects.
yes their site works and attracts a lot of people, but the way it promotes the status quo no matter how bullshit is pretty much stupid. between them representing the community and blizzard’s complete disregard at this point for making an actually good game, I think the earliest we can expect a somewhat balanced game is in 2015 after we buy both xpacks. and even then, blizzard’s track record of balacing games is pretty much lol.
Comment by lolsauce on February 10, 2011 at 3:40 pm
In light of the recent spat with exalted titles in World of Warcraft (that it now takes more effort to get an exalted title and stripped a number of players of their status in order to make them earn that), it’s totally amusing that World of Warcraft and its casual audience is currently the most volatile consumer base.
That aside, I’m going to presume you don’t like Blizzard Entertainment.
(And I presume your other post was for the “Ask Me Anything” section? If so, I’ll move it over and respond to it there.)
Comment by Mike Lowell on February 10, 2011 at 5:23 pm
It’s not that I don’t like Blizzard, it’s just that they went from little company trying to prove itself and get its name out there and therefore committing to quality products to corporate giant selling an established brand name whose main concern is control of IP and getting as close as they can to monopoly on whatever they do (RTS, MMO).
Once a business gets big, its main concern is squishing competition and living off shitty products and abusive business models. From healthy competition to parasitism. It’s nothing personal against anyone really, it’s just how the goddamn world works. Especially when run by the likes of Bobby Kotick. And by likes I mean k….
Comment by lolsauce on February 10, 2011 at 5:51 pm
RE: ME2 piracy, the lack of dedicated servers motivated hackers to just make their own IWnet version (alterIWnet), which supports them. It has 6k players online during peak times and doesn’t require a CD key. It made piracy even easier lol.
Comment by taub on March 8, 2011 at 12:21 pm
@lolsauce: Sorry for the late reply. But yeah, the cycle of big, evil business is quite interesting. Company gets successful and then spends all its time trying not to fail. All that matters is how long it can hold on from there.
@taub: 6,000 users probably isn’t that impressive compared to the tallies that XBox Live does, but it’s a firm demonstration of how hard audiences are willing to work in order to get around the company’s fist. I would imagine that number would be higher if Modern Warfare 2 didn’t flame out on the personal computer.
Comment by Mike Lowell on March 8, 2011 at 2:50 pm
Unfortunately, boycotting with your money is difficult for some methods which are instant-payment->product in the form of game currency (e.g. free-to-play/microtransaction/DLC) like Microsoft Points, WiiPoints, BioWare Points, etc. Once you’ve ‘paid’ for your points the gamer companies don’t give a shit of how you spend it or don’t; they have your money.
They also don’t care if you spend another dime after that initial hook. Their margins of profit are expected to be low for F2P games, knowing full well if 10 people don’t spend any cash, at least 1 will spend $5 at least, and there will be the odd nut spending 20, 50, 100, 500+ dollars on free-to-play titles.
Comment by Stupidus on March 8, 2011 at 7:49 pm
That probably explains why they’re so obsessed with getting free-to-play into the market. Much harder to rage on a developer when no initial investment has to be made in a product.
Comment by Mike Lowell on March 9, 2011 at 12:35 am
Nice article. I enjoyed reading it.
Comment by Delta Operator on March 11, 2011 at 2:33 pm
Your opinion seems quite different in this article compared to that one about Battlenet 2.0.
I wonder, why the huge change?
Comment by name on September 15, 2011 at 4:18 pm
I never asked anybody to boycott the game. I just pointed out that Battle.net 2.0 was and still is a flying piece of shit. The second article I wrote on the Battle.net service was designed to explain why it’s so harmful to the future of consumer rights in the industry. I’ll go ahead and publish something I wrote for the original iteration of the “Creation of Battle.net 2.0″ article (originally intended to be a retrospection for “The Antithesis of Consumer Confidence”) to explain.
- First things first: I did not instruct anybody to boycott StarCraft II. Nobody. I don’t do video game boycotts.
When I published the previous article, there was a very blunt rallying cry: “Fuck Blizzard, boycott the game.” It was rather funny, because I also made mention that Blizzard Entertainment had done a horrible job of explaining their positions on various services and functions for Battle.net 2.0, where the decision to endorse a monthly subscription model in traditionally-retail-free markets (Russia, China, South Korea) could backfire on the company and convince Americans and Europeans that they would be getting the World of Warcraft treatment. So “Listen everybody, I am here to tell you that Battle.net 2.0 is a horrible service” became a call to boycott and boycott some more. I was a little bit surprised by that. It became so loud that I was actually concerned I would be labeled a hypocrite for purchasing Wings of Liberty, a decision that was never really in doubt. (Even if I killed my own interest in the product, I was going to be expected to review it. And unfortunately, Blizzard Entertainment won’t send me review copies. They also explained that any further requests for review copies would be labeled as harassment.) In the original article, the word “boycott” was only used once. It was used to describe the way that computer video game players had destroyed their leverage in the court of public opinion by “organizing boycotts on the grounds of crappy box art”. I’d like to make that clear: I did not instruct anybody to boycott StarCraft II. Nobody. I wrote about Battle.net 2.0. I said that I didn’t like the service. That was it. If somebody made “boycott” their prerogative, then that was their decision and not mine. I am not in the business of boycotts because your boycotts are fucking stupid and will continue to be fucking stupid until you realize “downloading the game you refused to pay for” impugns any and all sympathy for your stance. So don’t associate me with them.
Comment by Mike Lowell on September 15, 2011 at 6:23 pm
I don’t think that anyone else has posted about this, but I think it is a good point.
You talked about pre-orders as being good indications of consumer demand and loyalty, and that the pseudo-boycott on the Real ID worked because of the canceled pre-orders. That to me seems highly related to the sheer amount of pre-order bonuses floating around every game today. Every game on steam comes with a TF2 hat (which people need to stop being fucking ridiculously, its an item that doesn’t change your game-play, and you can’t see it), and every game sold by Gamestop (which I no longer buy from since the Deus Ex On-live coupon debacle) comes with either over-powered weapons at the beginning of the game, or skins online. Skins, cosmetics, thats all.
If people are stupid enough to even pre-order from multiple retailers to get all the pre-order bonuses, what this tells me is that the resistance against Real ID will never happen again. People are too ignorantly happy of the “golden lancer” to cancel their pre-order even after a company has been unethical.
TL&DR: Pre-order bonuses for every game prevent the same effective resistance against Real ID from happening (likely) ever again.
Comment by Drumulum on October 12, 2011 at 6:01 pm
Keep in mind that the reason people are compelled to pre-order these games is that it’s the only way the big publishers can continue to be profitable; they need as many people as possible paying full price for the game. There’s always the chance that those pre-order bonuses become so exuberant (where mere hats and weapon upgrades don’t sell pre-orders) that they have to start doing crazy things like adding entire essential level packs to the pre-orders. For example, a pre-order of Halo 4 will come packaged with a mission pack and the new boxed game will not. But to play online, you need that mission pack for several game modes. Right now, we’re fighting over the divide between new and used games. Will they get so desperate that new games are treated like used games, where “because you didn’t pre-order the game and support us and love us”, you get treated like a second-hand customer?
I’m normally one to say that the consumers will just go on their merry way, but the Netflix subscription pricing debacle and the report that Ubisoft’s computer video game sales declined ninety percent (after instituting that always-connected DRM) renews my faith in the consumer a little bit. This is the worst time to be pissing off people. Apparently, people don’t want to take crap from the companies they support at a time when a fifth of the Western World can’t find work. It’ll be curious to see whether or not the pre-orders that currently reward early adopters become pre-orders that punish anyone who doesn’t purchase the game immediately.
Comment by Mike Lowell on October 12, 2011 at 6:17 pm
I think that the transition of reasons for “boycotting” between 2007 and 2009 (I’m thinking it started earlier, but just took time to reach critical mass) was partly due to the influx of newer gamers with the popularization of games like the Call of Duty/Battlefield series and World of Warcraft, as well as Microsoft coming out with the XBox and XBox 360. Gaming became “cool” to a point, whereas in the past it was left to the geeks and nerds. I had co-workers who started playing WoW shortly after release that refused to even ADMIT they played when they were at work because they didn’t want any sort of stigma. It just snowballed from there, kind of a Streisand effect, bringing us the gamers of today which are made up of just as many self-entitled brats as there are geeks… It’s like comparing MySpace to LinkedIn.
Which leads us to this: http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20070209/ And that, I think, is what we should be blaming.
Comment by Farstrider on October 13, 2011 at 4:52 pm
That would depend entirely on whether the long-time computer gamer thinks they’re doing anything wrong by boycotting a game through a download or boycotting a game for merely cosmetic reasons? Most of my experience in seeing how people have reacted to a lot of these games suggested that’s not the case. Most of the new gamers play these games on consoles, and you never hear anything about console video game boycotts. I don’t think “new audience” is entirely to blame for it. Computer video game players can be very picky and they’re not always the best at expressing their dissatisfaction.
Comment by Mike Lowell on October 13, 2011 at 11:03 pm