Jim Sterling (The Jimquisition)

Lets never forget that Nintendo is also a pioneer in the realm of physical DLC, which adds the regular inconveniences of DLC, alongside Nintendo's manufactured scarcity and desire to fuel resellers and scabs. Thanks Amiibos.

Also the whole "Nintendo are scarred coz of the CD-I" is dumb coz A) The CD-I Zelda games were 28 years ago, and B) Nintendo's shared its I Ps plenty of times since then (Metroid Prime / Other M, countless Mario spin offs).

"Nintendo is stringy with their IP coz someone made bad 2 games that were mostly forgotten and unknown till the advent of Net 2.0 and video sharing allowed them to be rediscovered that scars them till now" kinda makes Nintendo's general ineptness sadder.

Also the whole "Nintendo behaves like a toy company"

No they don't. I collect toys. No toy company behaves like Nintendo, or has for over 30 years. Toy companies don't make weirdly narrow runs well below what they know they can sell. And toy companies aren't shy about selling things that aren't super well thought out. Toy companies absolutely make a ton of product and actually make more than they can sell coz shelf space is at a premium and if part of your shelf space is empty, it'll be taken over by another brand and you're never getting it back.

Heck nowadays toy companies behave more like video game publishers. With events to promote their shit and channels to get as much of their stuff in peoples' hands as they can.

Edited by Ghilz on Mar 2nd 2021 at 11:49:39 AM

Though Metroid Prime and Other M had their own baggage as well, which likely didn't help.

It boils down to Nintendo being slow to change to follow the rest of the industry.

And as Jim has pointed out in the past, this isn't entirely a bad thing given what the AAA industry has become.

Edited by M84 on Mar 3rd 2021 at 1:57:48 AM

What baggage does Metroid Prime have? The trilogy is well received

There's a reason Metroid Prime has a Troubled Production entry on its Trivia page.

I could tell that by the 3rd Prime game, it didn't quite have the same feel as the first two games. You could see the burnout based on how much more linear Corruption was and that it came not too long after the Echoes, which also came not too long after the first Prime. It makes me glad Retro Studios stopped by the 3rd game.

Constantly making the same IP in quick succession is how you get creative burnout. I point to the classic Tomb Raiders as an example.

Edited by Steven on Mar 2nd 2021 at 1:28:54 PM

Certainly explains what happened to Skylanders.

Well partly that.

“Also the whole "Nintendo behaves like a toy company"

No they don't. I collect toys. No toy company behaves like Nintendo, or has for over 30 years. Toy companies don't make weirdly narrow runs well below what they know they can sell. And toy companies aren't shy about selling things that aren't super well thought out. Toy companies absolutely make a ton of product and actually make more than they can sell coz shelf space is at a premium and if part of your shelf space is empty, it'll be taken over by another brand and you're never getting it back.”

They don’t act like Hasbro or Mattel, that’s true. They act more like the premium Japanese companies that pick random products that can only be bought via preorder or that do really limited runs because they know a given anime they’re doing a tie-in for only really has a six month shelf life or that fund concerts you can only go to if you buy tickets after winning a lottery that you also have to pay to enter.

So more like Good Smile Company than Bandai then?

Sort of, yeah. They aren't quite to the level of the ridiculous antics Good Smile can get up to but you can see a lot of the same mindset. Especially since companies like Good Smile will be like "hey, so this property has been popular for years now and every time we release a figure of this specific character, it sells out within minutes. Should we increase the print run?" "No, we should reduce it!"

Completely pointless scarcity tactics that put a hard cap on the amount of money that can be made from a product and that don't actually do anything but rile up the really hardcore fans. It's not quite as bad with Nintendo (if you didn't manage to get a physical copy of Mario 3D All-Stars, you can still buy a digital copy) but they keep treating things like premium limited print run collectibles and then telling everyone that there's discernable benefits from buying these things. Like, Amiibos actually do something, but a lot of them are a huge pain to actually find. And that's before their ridiculous and consistent understocking of their consoles and console adjacent products. IIRC, they even understocked the Wii U and that one actually sold way slower than the Wii.

In which case I think an argument could me made that Nintendo wasn't a toy company per se, but a collectable company.

Good Smile, which I mentioned in my last post is primary known for their Super-Deformed Nendoroid figures, one of several figure lines in Japan that seem to be targeting the Otaku community, the kind of people with enough disposable income and dedication to a given franchise or character to shell out the money to buy such gentrified and expensive merchandise. Which in turn enables them to continue profiting off of this despite and because of the fact that they are selling exclusive merchandise. One of the myriad intersections between capitalism and waifu culture.

Bringing this back to Nintendo, they seem to have a simialr mindset, but are unaware of a few caveats, such as that as a console maker and household name, they have a larger reach than just the fans of "Waifu from niche #42069", that some of their short-printed products are Physical DLC rather than purely mere collectables, and that said fame would ensure that the spotlight might be shone on these practices.

However on that last one, I think that it might not be a big issue for them or for Good Smile and their fellows, as Nintendo is aconsole maker first and a collectibles maker second, meaning that coverage of their limited run stuff would likely miss the detail that they are influenced by the collectibles market, even though said products were clearly designed for that market.

To Good Smile's defense,

A lot of their figures involve a fair amount of manual labor to assemble (As is not uncommon for higher end collectible) and the large amounts of parts and accessories means more molds (And molds are the most expensive part of a toy). So the shorter runs can be justified because the overhead on figures you don't sell is pretty high. Add the aforementioned stuff about often doing tie ins for shows that have a 6 months shelf line, you can understand playing it cautiously.

Nintendo doesn't have that excuse on Amiibos who for the most part have very low part counts and show all the sign of bulk assembly.

Edited by Ghilz on Mar 3rd 2021 at 3:13:55 PM

Hey, Nintendo is plenty capable of making enough amiibo to make demand. *he said, standing next to the shelf of Animal Crossing amiibo festival amiibo"

Just read this quote on Jim's Wikipedia page from them

Jesus, I know they had a rough past, but I didn't know it was THAT bad and that they were actually diagnosed with this. And yet they keep on going. Truly a strong individual.

Yeah. Heck, even the name "Jim Sterling" came from their childhood abuse. Their birth name is James Stanton; like many abuse survivors, they fashioned a secondary persona, Jim Sterling, to disassociate themselves from the beatings received from their father.

Well that and if you're gonna be a public persona, you don't go by your legal name. See Todd in the Shadows who is in fact not called Todd. Doubly so in the world of Video Games where people get butthurt if you give a game an 8 and everyone's death threat happy.

Ain't that the fuckin truth.

Not like it's hard to figure out someone's real identity, but it is frequently the case that media personalities adopt public personas.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 4th 2021 at 9:49:16 AM

There's also branding to consider. Whether you're an actor, writer, or You Tube content creator, you're trying to sell yourself as a brand. An important aspect of any brand is having a killer name that grabs people and makes them want to say it.

Jim Motherfucking Sterling, Son. Yahtzee. Nicolas Cage. Tobias Drake. People don't typically have the luxury of being born to cool names like these, but adopting one can help sell your image. Channel Awesome probably wouldn't have gotten half as far as it did off of "Hello, I'm Doug Walker, and I remember it so you don't have to."

Edited by TobiasDrake on Mar 4th 2021 at 8:47:56 AM

I'm of the opinion that everyone should be choosing their own name, anyways. Maybe I lurk in trans circles too much, but it seems odd that something as personal as a name is just chosen for you by someone else.

Dunno, kinda glad my parents picked a name for me to refer to me as a kid instead of "thing 1"

There are some cultures where you're allowed to pick a new name when you reach adulthood. You're allowed to keep your child name, but are also encouraged to pick one that you think better reflects you once you're considered an adult. That could be a more common practice.

Just because it's so awesome, here is Jim's Cyberpunk song again (not the whole video, just the song)

Edited by Forenperser on Mar 4th 2021 at 9:26:11 PM

Activision-Blizzard has hired former President Bush counterterrorism advisor Frances Townsend as Executive Vice President for Corporate Affairs/Secretary

Bobby Kotick doing his best to stop being the worst person in Acti-Blizz.

For a second, I thought it said Bush was the one who got hired. That would be hilarious.

How in the fuck