This Week’s Topics:
- An admission of defeat
- The Embracer Group’s $2 Billion Problem
- The reanimated remnants of Kurayami
- A tepid terminological tirade
Rundown Preamble Ramble:
Welp, Nothing Much Happened!
The news cycle in the aftermath of E3 has always been a bit strange. You had this glutton of information with the press conferences, followed by a few little tendrils from interviews, and maybe hands-on previews of games played behind closed doors. But in regards to typical PR sanctioned news? It was typically one of the biggest dead zones of the year, as everybody already made their announcements!
And despite the E3 name being dead and gone, the same was true for this past week. Where the biggest story involved a financial press release, and the only announcement was an announcement that added precious little. Meaning that this week’s Rundown is awfully light, and I did not have the drive or inspiration to try to pad it out with bonus rambles. I tried, but after writing 500 words, I realized that my point was going nowhere. And after another 300 words in another topic, I realized that wasn’t working either. So I’m just going to peace out early this week and get back to writing my elaborate document detailing the backstory, personality, and appearance of the 25 central characters for Verde’s Doohickey 2.0. It’s currently 25,000 words, and I’m not even CLOSE to being done!
The Embracer Group REALLY Screwed Up!
(Embracer Group to Announce Restructuring, Layoffs, Closures, and Cancellations)
Uh-oh! So, three weeks ago there was a story about how Embracer lost a contract that would have brought in roughly $2 billion of revenue. At the time, I was more concerned and interested in what could have been canceled, but I really should have been concerned about how this would affect the bottom line. Because while Embracer has oodles of money, few companies on Earth can take a $2 billion hit and just shrug it off.
Due to this massive loss in future revenue, Embrace is going to need to undergo a large-scale restructuring program, including layoffs, studio closures, and project cancellations. The details of this restructuring have not been announced, and will not be finalized until March 2024, but needless to say… things aren’t gonna be pretty. Embracer has a lot of companies under its wings, and the company that once positioned itself as something of a bastion for AA developers now needs to start shutting them down.
In glancing over the discourse of this, there are a lot of people highlighting how this is why consolidated groups, acquisitions, and capitalistic growth are all bad things. Which is somewhat true, but strikes me as something of a less… nuanced look at things. If you examine the history of the games industry, you will see a litany of studio closures due to a game not performing as well as expected, a contract falling through, or the studio getting shitcanned by a publisher. And if this results in a few studios closing shop due to a failed contract, then it is feasible that such a contract could have been drafted without Embracer, and canceled without Embracer.
Now, that is not to say that Embracer is not at fault here. It is their job to make sure they give people jobs, that their projects don’t get canceled, and that the studios underneath them can continue to operate. They did not sufficiently plan for this contingency, so now the people who depended on them are paying the price. That is a crappy way things play out, but it’s also something more emblematic of business rather than capitalism. Businesses come in all shapes and sizes, and they make about as many mistakes as any person because businesses aren’t real, they’re just fancy hats people wear.
I will have more detailed thoughts once the details are fully mapped out. But needless to say, this has really soured me on the whole concept of Embracer, and makes me regret not being as vocally against acquisitions as I currently am. I blame the fact that I was a business major back in 2017 to 2019, where my head was filled with lies that I later corrected with regurgitated socialist doctrine.
To Hell With Our 800+ IPs! We Just Need Lord of the Rings!
(Embracer Plans to Exploit the Lord of the Rings License)
Hours after announcing the restructuring initiative, Embracer executives got on an investor call and discussed how they “need to be exploiting Lord of the Rings.” Because they bought the IP back in August 2022, and believe it is a source of bottomless wealth, thanks mostly to the Peter Jackson films.
The term ‘exploit’ is something of a bad look here, and the decision to pivot to this IP has struck some as an… odd choice. The series is not in the best spot at the moment after Amazon’s lukewarmly received and ludicrously expensive Rings of Power series. And the less said about the modern Eruojank kusoge The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, the better.
However, from a business standpoint… what they are doing makes sense. It is a valuable IP that a lot of people want to get their hands on, and even if they have a success rate comparable to, say, Warhammer, then I think that’s a worthy venture. I am naturally a bit upset that such a thoroughly explored IP like LotR is getting explored more than any of the 800+ others they have under their belt, but again, Embracer is a business. And when you play money-making game, you gotta do things in a boring, repetitive, and safe way. Thaaaat’s Capitalism!
A Brief Recollection of Shadows of the Damned
(Shadows of the Damned Remastered Announced)
I feel like Shadows of the Damned: Remastered has been talked about in certain circles ever since the title was delisted from the PS3 and Xbox 360 storefronts in 2020. But it was re-announced via a ‘Grasshopper Direct’ by the NetEase subsidiary Grasshopper Manufacturer for ‘probably all current platforms’ with no release window. Which is a lot more vague than what I was hoping for after the announcement, a week earlier.
As such, I cannot really comment on the title as a remaster, and more as a concept. Shadows of the Damned was a very bizarre title that feels like it should have been an all-star slam dunk. With big names like Suda51, Shinji Mikami, Akira Yamaoka, and Tim Rogers, along with a AAA budget, it seemed like a game destined for great things. However… Electronic Arts basically wanted the game to be another Dead Space, kept nudging the direction of the project, and it drifted away from what it was originally supposed to be. Because of this, and partially due to the climate of the time, Shadows of the Damned was seen as a bit of a disappointment at launch. Where it was a sales bomb and received a more mixed, but mostly positive, reception.
Naturally, it went through a reappraisal cycle a few years later, where people were able to better appreciate and understand what it was trying to be. But not as widely as it could have been, due to a lack of an evergreen (PC) release. At the very least, this remaster should make the game more accessible to people who don’t hoard aging electronics, and will hopefully nudge a few things to make for a better experience. But no details, or even specific platforms, were listed, so…
…Yeah, I think that’s enough. If I was a Grasshopper mark, I could probably add something more, but I’m really not, I hate to say.
You Cringe, But I Don’t
(Natalie Explains Why She Dislikes A Contemporary Term Part VI)
One of the few terms that makes me roll my eyes almost every time I hear it is ‘cringe.’ A great word that was used to convey the physical manifestation of shame, regret, and discomfort, and something that everyone has inevitably done at least some point in their life. But over the past decade or so an alternate spin-off definition was coined. One that generalizes the term to basically mean ‘socially unacceptable’ but has different permutations and versions that expand upon the idea based on… whatever the speaker wants the word to mean, basically.
It always irks me when a word goes through the wringer like this, and for two reasons. One, I feel that the word has been tainted and corrupted by alternate definitions, so it needs to go in my ‘do not use bucket.’ Which is just a mental categorical system, as I am not obsessive to maintain or reference a list of ‘no-no words.’ Two, I find the fixation on using one word to describe something, and inflating meaning into it, to be a poor practice. There are so many great descriptive words out there in English that I get upset when certain terms are used far more often than others. A lot of times where the word ‘cringe’ is used, terms like thoughtless, careless, dated, or tone deaf could be used to convey someone’s actual thoughts on the subject at hand. And in a far more accurate and specific way.
However, the part that actually bothers me about the word ‘cringe’ is not how it repurposes an existing word, but rather what it represents and says about the culture that surrounds it. ‘Cringe’ is meant to be derogatory, it is meant to be an insult, and it is meant to shame people for doing something socially unacceptable. It is important that people hold others accountable, that they call out bad behavior when it first crops up, and that communities keep themselves clean. Otherwise weeds start cropping up, supporters of the White Empire schmooze their way into circles, and ceaseless outrage becomes the due course.
But that is not how cringe is actually used. It is not used to better things or keep bad actors out of communities, it is meant to shame people for being… uncool? For making bad jokes, missing the point of comments of jokes, or doing something that elicits second-hand embarrassment by committing a social faux pas. It represents a culture that does not wish to understand, accept, and help people who make these mistakes, but rather one that wants to highlight these follies and laugh at them.
There are definitely times where it is funny to laugh at the mistakes of both oneself and others, but there is also a matter of taste and tact to be considered with that variety of humor. A matter that I don’t believe that a lot of people properly understand or recognize, and the results tend to be more of a mean-spirited and potentially harmful form of social ostracization. It all… wait.
Is the point I’m blindly fumbling my way through that I think the term cringe is mostly used for bullying, rather than anything remotely righteous? That it discourages understanding and negatively affects one’s ability to communicate? …Yeah, I think so.
Huh. I guess that’s my conclusion then, since otherwise the only way I could think to end this is highlighting how I’m 28, old, out of touch, and should probably start looking into retirement communities I can live in. Which would then end with a disparaging comment about how I personally find the notion of prolonging one’s life after reaching the age of seniority to be a foolish waste. After all, one’s resources could be used to dramatically improve the life of a single young person. I mean, retirees are just NEETs at the end of the day, who don’t do shit but eat, sleep, and shit, just like they’s daddy.
…And I just lost the entire point I was trying to make as I spiraled off into an unrelated tangent fueled by personal mutations of left-leaning ideologies and rap music. Geez, it’s almost like I’ve done this for so long that I’m detecting patterns in my thought process…
(Actually, upon doing some digging, that line I’m paraphrasing comes from a clip from Boyz n the Hood that I heard track 10 (Freddie Gibbs – Born 2 Roll) of Team Teamwork’s Dude Whatever It’s Summer 2011 mixtape. So, it’s kinda rap music.)
Header image is from Happy Live, Show Up! by Favorite.
Paraphrasing slightly…
“Is the term cringe mostly used for bullying, rather than anything remotely righteous? Does it discourage understanding and negatively affect one’s ability to communicate?”
Unfortunately, it often feels to me like the answer is yes. And even more unfortunately, this seems to be a trend with _many_ terms. Bullying in the guise of righteousness is nothing new of course, not by a long shot, but it seems to be especially commonplace these days. Or, perhaps, it’s just easier to observe.
Bullying is definitely easier to spot than it was before, because of how many social interactions one is exposed to and how easy it is to preserve interactions when they are done in text. I would also argue that it is easier to see patterns in text, and that in the current dopamine farming ad-revenue-driven state of the internet, people like to stir up controversies and shine more attention on bad behavior.