This Week’s Topics:

• Political wafting and revolution promotion
• The legal battle for the future of gaming
• The impending death of Twitter (and the internet)
• A genre terminology diatribe
• Yuji Naka in… Prison Escape
• Getting into some TRUTHS about the Pokémon series

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Rundown Preamble Ramble:
I Have Negative Faith In The United States of America

Note: This is an intentionally hyperbolic segment not meant to be taken seriously, or meant to encourage any sort of political action.

This past week was American Independence Day, which is usually a time where American citizens are encouraged to think about the things this country does well. But it was just the opposite for me. I spent the past two weeks just stewing in anger over how this country operates, but mostly, how its systems of power are structured, and how I despise just about every outdated ‘feature’ it boasts.

The broken binary two-party system. The needless complexities introduced by having both a House of Representatives and a Senate. The broken maps that are used to determine districts and calculate elections. The illogical way it breaks down provinces, rather than redrawing them based on proper landmarks or population centers. And the fact that the Supreme Court is a thing in the first place.

At its best, the Supreme Court is a way to prevent things from getting worse, and at its worst, it is a tool to make them worse. The fact that people are appointed for life and get to serve until they are into their 80s. The fact that they aren’t just cleaned out with every new presidency. The fact that the members of this supposed democracy don’t get to VOTE on these judges, when they get to vote on so many judges every election. It’s all a bunch of bullshit. Which is before getting into the fact that… these people will always interpret the law to suit their interests, to suit their allegiances. So all that matters is how many Republicans or Democrats are appointed, and who was in office when the last one died.

It all really makes me wish we could go back to the halcyon days of the 1960s. Back when being a politician meant you had a target on your head at all times. Because if America could achieve a state— a culture— where 1% of all politicians, of all levels, were randomly executed by civilians every year… the country would be incomprehensibly better. Because then, the only people who got into politics would be motherfuckers willing to die for their cause and to pursue their idea of justice. 

Or, if that idea will result in too much death and instability… people know where the Supreme Court justices live. Guns are readily accessible in this country. SUVs are readily accessible in this country. Buildings are weak to cars. And people are weak to bullets. Add that shit up, jump, back, glock, cock, aim, shoot, and bam! You got some dead motherfuckers! 

But noooooo! Society has pacified the revolutionary spirit burning in its populace and the rich-controlled media has suppressed all forms of this revolutionary discussion. Instead, the only people who try to get things done… are the sort of people who would storm the Capitol and not walk out with a body count in the hundreds. 

You know what human beings are really good at, like, so fucking good at it that if you think about it hard enough, you can probably cum from thought alone? Murder! So, yeah, where are those people? Where is the next generation of smarter, better, and cooler John Warnock Hinckley Jr.’s? The sunlight is in your hand, dude, so grab your gun, pull the trigger, and murk them Reds, just like yer grandpappy done did!

Why don’t I do it? Because I could barely even hold a gun, let alone drive a car, dude. I’m a semi-disabled and angry queer who talks big shit about how she wants to see (bad) people die, but doesn’t have the balls (figuratively or literally) to kill. Instead, I’m just getting frustrated at shit that happens. Like the death of affirmative action, continuing the destructive cycle of student loans, and the okay for businesses to discriminate against LGBT people.

So what am I gonna do with all this anger? Well, bitch about it in Rundowns, but I’m also accumulating hatred points for Psycho Shatter 1988. A highly politically charged novel where I will get to vent out all of my political frustrations. Such as having the fictionalized 1988 Supreme Court get brain fucked to death by giant rats, who eat their bodies and then choke on them, because they are poison, and no exceptions should be granted. Because all politicians are tainted. Just like all White people. Even the queers. And especially me.

Psycho Shatter 1988: SUBTITLE PENDING is currently scheduled to be released on November 5, 2024.

But before I can start on that, I’ve got loads of stuff to do. Like finishing my Enrolled Agent exams. Writing 3 TSF Series stories, finishing (at least) half of Verde’s Doohickey 2.0: Sensational Summer Romp. Doing some reviews. And also buying a condo.

Yeah, long story short, but my parents are getting divorced, I’m gonna live with my mother, and I just got pre-approved on a $300,000 30 year mortgage. Though, I should try to make it a 15 year one if I can. Because America probably won’t exist in 30 years…

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The FTC PlayStation & Xbox Showcase
(Some Highlights From The FTC v. Microsoft Courtroom)

Something that I have been slow to report on is the ongoing litigation between Microsoft and the FTC regarding their acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Since the acquisition was announced 65 years ago, I accepted it as a done deal, but a lot of details have been coming out. To the point where I’ve seen people refer to it as part of ‘Not-E3 2023.’

So, what were these findings? Well, here’s a list I assembled:

• Microsoft attempted to buy Sega, Square Enix, and 100 other game studios
• Microsoft lied about ZeniMax exclusives being approved on a case-by-case basis, when they made all ZeniMax titles Xbox console exclusives in 2021
• Microsoft purchased ZeniMax because they believed Sony would pay to make Starfield a PlayStation exclusive
• A PlayStation 5 Slim is set to be released this year
• The Last of Us Part II had a budget of 220 million and Horizon: Forbidden West had a budget of 212 million

Now, these are neat little facts that I’m glad we were able to learn, especially considering how aggressively secretive the games industry is compared to more mature industries. I mean, the fact that every major film has a reported budget but games don’t is still disgusting to me. However, none of this is really surprising either.

I assumed that Microsoft would have done a systematic analysis of every possible developer/publisher they could buy. It’s weighing their options and considering all alternatives. Not necessarily saying that they got to the contract drafting stage for all studios. As for everything involving ZeniMax… I’m also not surprised. Microsoft obviously knew that ZeniMax and Sony were discussing exclusives long before they were announced. So they decided not only to buy them to prevent that from happening, but they aren’t going to put any more of the games they’re funding on a competitor’s platform.

Now, the big question from all of this is if this deal will go through and if Microsoft will be able to acquire Activision Blizzard. Or rather, Activision Blizzard King, because most of what they are paying for is the Candy Crush guys. 

Point one, this acquisition should be stopped, because the last thing the world needs is giant corporations getting even bigger. However, I also view Activision Blizzard as a cesspit led by a genuinely deplorable person who should not have any meaningful power, and the only way he’ll leave is if the buyout closes. As such, I’m conflicted on this whole acquisition overall… and I also would determine its success to a coin flip at this point. Either the deal closes, or it doesn’t.

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Twitter Hit The Shitter and The Internet Is Collapsing!
(Natalie Rambles About The Future Of The Internet)

This past holiday weekend, Twitter was made virtually unusable for a lot of people. One, they required people to sign in to view non-embedded tweets, and two, they imposed ‘hash rate limits’ on users, preventing them from using Twitter as it was originally intended. This is because Twitter needed to pay to renew its subscription with Google Cloud, but Twitter is owned by a failed businessman who failed his way into being one of the richest people on Earth. So of course this multi-billion-dollar company isn’t paying its damn bills. 

This caused a mass migration from the platform, as people saw this as the beginning of the end. Me though? I’ve used TweetDeck for a decade, but then they changed it to a worse and less visually appealing design. So I’m currently trying to leave the site behind, but it’s hard when your brain is addicted to dopamine micro-doses. I’m trying to use StayFocusd to help get over this, but who knows if my brain can be un-boned at this point.

I’ve been anticipating something like this ever since October of last year, and it sucks that everybody was right about this collapse. Say what you will, I know I did, but Twitter was an excellent way to share content to other people, for people to network and communicate, and for word of mouth to be spread via retweets. I found so many great creators via Twitter that it is insane, and thousands of pieces of amazing artwork. It was a resource that, shitty people being shitty aside, provided a societal purpose and succeeded at being a truly global platform. Twitter helped unify the world, and achieve one of the core ideas that were used to promote the internet. It was a global forum, a global commons, and anybody could say just about anything and share it. …For better or for worse.

However, Twitter is not the only platform to undergo some major… shifts as of late. The past month, there has been a lot of hubbub about Reddit’s ‘API war’ that has caused many popular subreddits to go private, making them inaccessible to anyone who was not part of the community. This, combined with other shifts, has made Google search far less robust than it used to be, and while alternatives do exist, they aren’t much better in my experience. 

The premiere image hosting site for much of the past decade, Imgur, went on a mass exodus of content uploaded by users without an account and NSFW content. Major gif platform Gifycat is shutting down in two months. And people have been shouting about how ‘the internet is dying.’ Which… is kind of true. Major platforms are going under. It is highly likely that a LOT of information and history will be lost due to negligence. But that is something that has been happening for years, and now… now it is happening to major websites that hundreds of millions of people use every month. 

Why is this happening? Well, the most obvious reason is that interest rates were extremely low from 2009 to 2022 or so— marking the decade plus of free money. But over the past year, they’ve spiked up rapidly in order to stave off another recession. This makes it harder for companies to get funding unless they are immediately profitable, and those who aren’t… are gonna die, plain and simple. This is what happens when you let for-profit companies own what are effectively public resources that benefit the lives of billions. And what happens when you build a society around perpetual growth and consolidation rather than sustainability.

However, let’s ditch my pinko bullshit for a moment and instead talk about what I think is going to happen. Well, I think the internet is going to start shrinking, and you will start seeing a return of enthusiast communities and forums. That the era of a centralized internet is on the decline and the decentralizing that crypto bros talked about two years ago will come to pass. Just not in the way they wanted.

I am not saying this because I love forms or niche communities, but because I think they are simply a more cost-effective solution to displaying information. When you don’t need to deal with image or video hosting, the costs go way down. That being said, plenty of forums have just straight up died (especially corporate owned ones) after the main site died, so this is not really a sustainable alternative. Because somebody’s gotta pay for server costs, and those people are gonna die.

Some might point at Discord as being a prime example of things becoming more niche, and that is indeed true. Discord’s business model of charging users $10 a month for certain features works, and is basically what Twitter Blue should have been… But it is also the worst platform I have ever seen when it comes to preservation, and I gosh darn hate it. Discord does not want people to backup their data, does not value preservation, and everything stuck on Discord should be seen as being ‘as good as dead.’

Despite this, I still use Discord every day, but I only use it for three things. Chatting with my friends and a few other people who prefer the platform for basic communication. To receive progress updates on some Dragalia Lost, re:Dreamer, Student Transfer, and Press-Switch stuff. And to check for various information on things related to those four games. None of which really needs to be saved, because it’s just chatting and updates for things that are hosted on file sharing sites.

Also, I want to highlight how Discord does not allow people to search through a server unless they join one, and even knowing that a server exists can take some real digging. If something is posted in a public Discord, there is no search engine that will direct you to that message. I think that is a terrible approach, and will lead to the death of so much information. Which is before getting into how Discord users typically dump information into a few buckets, instead of forum-like threads, and going through a channel after being away for a week is a Sisyphean experience.

Now, I will say that I am just some schmuck when it comes to this stuff, and truly do not keep up on social media platforms and the like. It’s possible that BlueSky or Threads will become the Twitter replacement by the end of the year, but I just see that as kicking the can down the road. I do want things to change… because I think they need to, that the internet cannot go on like this. So, what would I advise people to do right now? Well… take what you can while you can and don’t put any stake in things that are on the internet.

Seeing this supposed collapse really does make me want to get my preservation drum out, but not for archivists and historians, for regular people. If you regularly use the internet and find things you like on it, save it. Download it. And never trust platforms to keep track of your stuff… unless you give them money. Because it always comes back to money.

The internet is a public good that has been run as a business, because that’s how the free market runs things in a capitalist society. Websites and services cost money to power and need depreciable hardware to maintain. And there are really only four options to keep these services running: 

Get by on ad money. This is a classic method, but it has become less sustainable as time went on, due to a vicious cycle of advertisement. Ads were annoying, but relegated fairly clearly on the old internet. Then they evolved into video and audio ads, grew more aggressive, and inspired people to start using ad blockers. This caused sites to incorporate more ads, led more people to use ad blockers, and so forth and so on, until we get to shit where half the screen is ads and ads break up every other paragraph. 

Implement a subscription model. This seems like the best approach, having users pay a company to access their services… but people only have so much money they can spend on things. They can only spend so much on entertainment, news, general memberships, and so forth, a month, and that becomes really hard to balance when, say, every newspaper asks for your money to read an article. But not just ‘your money.’ No, no. They want future revenue. Which means that people need to subscribe for a month, unsubscribe, or pay more just because they want to watch a show or read a few articles. Subscription services are the barrier to some of the valuable information out there, and nobody likes to be promoted to pay $3 a month just to read a single article.

Adopt a donation model/Patreon. Now, this one is tricky, as I think it is actually the best way to fund creators of all varieties. …But it’s not how you typically run a business. This model relies on the kindness of enthusiasts and the creator’s ability to endear themself to the audience. It also does not generate much revenue unless projects are wildly successful. And, well, after you take into account taxes, Patreon fees, and so forth, total revenue of $10,000 is about enough to fully support two people. At least in the good parts of America. Some people seem to think Patreon creators make a lot of money, but… there’s a reason why people keep plugging their Patreon.

Have the owner pay for everything out of pocket. This is what people like me do, who have zero aspirations of turning their work into an additional revenue stream and do things they like out of passion. Nothing more, nothing less. People like me will always be out there… but people like me also cannot become platforms that way. Because you can only grow something so much without someone throwing money your way.

Now, these models are not mutually exclusive, and plenty of companies mix and match things. Most often with a premium tier and an ad supported tier. However, the more I think about how the internet can use these monetization models to make money… I just ask myself how cable channels made money. The answer is that they ran ads and access to their channels were sold by cable providers— middle men— who bundled services together as ‘value packs.’

This approach had made cable profitable for decades and… I think the internet might take that approach. Much like with TV, there will always be some free (ad-based) access to information , government funded stuff with no ads, ad-free content that requests donations, and random people willing to broadcast their thoughts. Like me! But a lot of the ‘good stuff’ will be locked behind a pricey tier-based package-based subscription.

…In going on that tangent, I forgot about my second point. If you have stuff you like on the internet… consider investing in physical storage. Or a network-attached storage unit. If you have media you love, start saving it, preserving it for yourself, and accessing it from your server. And how do you fill up this server with stuff? …Just download a digital copy of it in whatever way possible. Because digital files were made to be copied, and I don’t care what anybody has to say about that.

Also, I need to emphasize just how DIRT CHEAP storage is nowadays. You can get an external 4 TB hard drive for $90— which is wild when you remember that a 4 GB hard drive cost $900 25 years ago! That’s a thousand times better for a tenth of the price! And while a decent NAS is still a pretty penny— about $200 for the case and components— that’s cheap when you remember it’s a computer.

As for my third point, do not expect platforms to stay around, to exist, or to preserve what you did on them. Don’t expect files uploaded to Mega and MediaFire to stay there, because if MegaUpload and ZippyShare both died, none are safe. Don’t expect anything on art sites like DeviantArt or Pixiv to be saved, hell, not even Danbooru or the like. Don’t expect SoundCloud or Bandcamp to store your music, because media hosting is super pricey, and Tencent’s Epic Games owns Bandcamp. Hell, don’t even expect stuff on YouTube to remain there. If you like those video essays or game reviews, you better start downloading ’em!

You CANNOT trust a corporation when they are offering a free service. You can only trust something to remain active… if it is too big and too important to an industry, or to a large group of people, to fail, and is making too much money. Twitter was not making any money. Stuff like GSuite and Microsoft 365? They make a lot of money, and if they went away, that would be a cataclysm to the global economy or a high value industry.

This is why I keep over a decade of written works stored within Google Drive. Because Google Drive is not going away, no matter how notorious Google is about killing projects. (Also, Google Drive is free because of Google’s plan to integrate themselves as the default company for web-based activities. Search, browser, video, email, office productivity, etc. That makes it WAY easier for them to sell ad space, storage, and subscriptions.)

This is why I still buy games on Steam and have for a decade. Because if Steam was ever shut down— and Valve could do that at any moment— they would be sued into oblivion, and hunted down by a legion of international gamer terrorists.

This is why I use WordPress, because if WordPress were to die, the internet would be unusable, period, as over 40% of all websites use WordPress.

This is why I only ever spend money on music if I can own the files, because music streaming services are inherently unprofitable. Also, Spotify will probably be dead within 5 years.

This is also why I treat YouTube as my main streaming service, and pay $120 a year to watch it without ads. Because if YouTube were to die… then you may as well just launch all the nukes, all the bombs, and try to kill 6 billion people in a day. Because life ain’t worth living without history or culture.

Anyway, if you need me, I’m going to be looking into optimal storage solutions. A NAS does not really make sense for me, but an 8 TB external HDD is also a lovely thing. As is a 2/4 TB NVMe. …And if I contact a retro game store, and sell my games, then I can buy both of those guilt-free! WOAH!

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It’s Time To Show My Ass As A Casual VN Fan
(Natalie Wafts About the Tsukihime Remake)

So, one of the biggest reveals from Anime Expo this past week was the localization announcement for Tsukihime: A Piece of Blue Glass Moon. The first part of the remake of the legendary-status visual novel Tsukihime (2000) that I know precious little about beyond its reputation. That, and the fact that it was the debut title for Type-Moon, who would grow into a niche juggernaut thanks to the incredibly popular (relative to the realm of anime) Fate series.

A series that I have never engaged with because I was never the sort to play fan translations of visual novels. Meaning I only really know Fate for being this massively convoluted and interconnected thing that also has a lot of well-designed characters, who are in a lot of well-drawn porn. And with where I am now… I’m just kind of apathetic toward Fate as a series, Fate/Stay Night, and the very idea of Fate.

The concept of the Holy Grail war. The use of historical/mythological figures. The fact that so much of the fandom is based around a gacha game. The way certain characters look or are designed. And the fact that characters are servants, i.e. slaves. It all just puts me off. …And no, I don’t want to hear about how they are ‘actually partners.’

Now, I’m glad that Type-Moon is finally bringing their titles over with official English localizations, as previously seen with the 2022 release of Witch on the Holy Night on Switch and PS4. But the more I know about their work… the less appealing I find it. 

If you like it, that’s cool, more power to you, but I honestly couldn’t care less about the series, and don’t ever plan on touching it.

Tsukihime: A Piece of Blue Glass Moon will be released in the west in 2024 for PlayStation 4 and Switch.

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Grab a Gun And Make The Baddies Go BOOM!
(Natalie Rambles About The Name Boomer Shooters)

First-person shooters have never really been my thing. I was a Nintendo kid, notorious Call of Duty hating teen, and I didn’t own a PC until I was 18. …Dang, that was 10 years ago last month. I’ve played a few FPS, but so few that I think I can assemble a list with minimal fuss or difficulty: Bioshock, Bioshock 2 (and Minerva’s Den), Bioshock Infinite, Borderlands, Borderlands 2, Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, Gemini: Heroes Reborn, Half-Life 2, Metro 2033, Metro: Last Light, Moon, Singularity, and Wolfenstein: The New Order.

…As such, I really don’t have much to say about the genre as a whole. However, I was perusing around some discourse about the name of a recently dubbed sub-genre of FPS. Boomer Shooter. A term that refers to first-person shooters released during the 1990s— basically before 2001’s Halo: Combat Evolved revolutionized the genre— and modern games in a similar style. A more descriptive term would probably be ‘fast-paced first-person shooters with an emphasis on speed, mobility, and shooting large quantities of enemies, rather than anything realistic.’ So no limited weapon slots, a greater emphasis on environmental set pieces and scripting, over narrative set pieces, and an emphasis on making the player feel like a destructive menace. 

I would say that it is a distinction great enough that it warrants its own genre— similar to how ‘hack and slash’ is a world different from ‘character action.’ However, that’s not really the contentious element here. The contentious points are, one, how do you define this term (a problem common with internet-era terminology). And two, the name. 

Over the past decade or so, the term ‘boomer’ has taken on a new life. It was originally just shorthand for ‘baby boomers,’ a generation born after WWII, where the population saw a dramatic boom of new children. A generation that originally wanted to change the world, but was put back into its place by its parents, lost its rebellious spirit, and conformed to the system invented by the Greatest Generation. So much so that, even to this day, the baby boomers still hold an ironclad rule over this world, and just despise change. To the point where they denied their children the ability to take control and— No, bad Natalie, you need to FOCUS!

Anyway, baby boomer was shortened to just boomer, used as a sort of short-hand comeback against the aging baby boomer population, and given a simplified alternate definition. Which I would define as ‘something old, antiquated, or stuck in the past.’ If someone has old-fashioned ideas, does something emblematic of an old person, or has a fondness for old things, then they are a boomer. Also, the term old here can mean someone is 25 instead of 17, because that is a bigger number. 

Around the time this new definition was introduced, a series of new independently produced, or generally lower budget, FPS titles were hitting the market. Titles that followed through on the 20 year nostalgia cycle for Doom (1993), Duke Nukem 3D (1996), Quake (1996), Unreal (1998), and many others. Also, Doom (2016) reminded people that FPS was a fairly broad genre. There was initially some confusion about what to call these games, with terms like old-school and retro-styled being prefixed onto the genre name, but boomer shooter proved to be the most popular.

Why? Because it rhymes. People love it when things rhyme, they love alliteration, and they love it when things sound, quite simply, catchy. 

That being said, the term does not sound very… sophisticated. It sounds more like a fan-made term than something officially sanctioned by the council of interactive entertainment software. A council who only exists if you have the will to bend reality. Just like my Dannies. However… that is also true for many other more contemporary genre names. Roguelike, Metroidvania, Soulslike, looter shooter, extraction shooter, hero shooter— wow, a lot of these are just shooters.

However, I am personally okay with the name boomer shooter, and for a reason that I don’t think I’ve seen anybody point out, when… it’s pretty darn obvious. Boomer shooters tend to be more outlandish, extreme, and… silly than a lot of other shooters. They tend to feature a lot more things that go, well, BOOM! Seeing bodies explode into giblets. Hearing big explosive weapon noises. And just watching things burst into bright colors. Boom is the operative word in many examples of the genre, so they are effectively ‘boom shooters.’ Or just boomer shooters.

So, the TL;DR is that the term boomer shooter is a term with two meanings. They are boomer shooters, because they are old, and they are boomer shooters because you make things go BOOM! It’s dumb, but so is life, so shut up or I’ll make your face go BOOM! 
…When my mother dies, I’m gonna get a gun.

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Yuji Naka’s Prison Escape!
(Yuji Naka Avoids Jail Time And Gets $1.2 Million Fine)

A few months ago, I talked about how Yuji Naka was on trial for insider training regarding various Square Enix mobile games, and alluded to, like many other people, that this meant Naka was going to jail. However, the wheels of justice move too damn slowly for this hyperspeed digiverse we call The Real World (to to be confused with The Analog World), so the case was just processed the past week. In short, Naka got slammed with a $1.2 million fine and was put on suspension for four years. Meaning if he breaks a series of conditions within that time period, he will be sent to jail for 2.5 years. 

Sonic the Hedgehog co-creator Yuji Naka has received a $1.2 million fine and a suspended prison sentence for insider tradinghttps://t.co/l1v81qWbur pic.twitter.com/VJr4p5T2Wg

— VGC (@VGC_News) July 7, 2023

…Yes, I am still using embedded tweets, because I’m not going to pull visual assets for every subject on a Rundown, and this is an easy workaround.

Why are these conditions so light? Well, it basically boils down to a problem with the justice system across most countries, where the penalty for white collar crime is a fine and suspension. While other crimes are punished with straight jail time or deliberately impossible to pay fines. Why is that? Because white collar individuals tend to have more money and sway, and the wealthy who control governments and write laws tend to want to protect their own. And the wealthy do not want a democracy, they want a society where one’s social worth is based on their net worth.

…I am not even trying with these comments. They just appear like mental weeds. And I don’t have the gun I need to wack ’em yet!

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When Pokéfans Are Stuck, They Should Try Logic
(Natalie Rambles About Voice Acting in Pokémon )

So, continuing my process of watching outrage peddlers while eating meals or as background noise when doing non-writing work, I was reminded of a persistent argument. That Pokémon not only should have voice acting, the fact that it does not have voice acting makes the games actively worse. This is a debate that has been ongoing since the series moved to Nintendo Switch, and it has become incredibly cyclical. So, let’s examine this from two angles.

Why do people think that the mainline Pokémon series needs voice acting? Well, the answer can be gathered from looking at demographics and by recognizing that most of the people angry over this are people in their early 20s. There is an entire generation of people who grew up with ‘console’ video games having voice acting, period, and games without voice acting being seen as exceptions to the rule, or low budget affairs. 

I mostly play niche visual novels, so I think where I stand on this matter goes without saying. I appreciate voice acting when it is there, and agree that it can add a lot to a story and its characters. When it is done well, it can make a good character great. When done poorly, it can be hilarious. And when the acting is mediocre… it’s better than no voice acting.

Would I like voice acting in Pokémon games? Yes. Do I think it needs it? Eh, not really. When a game is designed to be cinematic in a way that implies voice acting should be there, its omission is odd, but I don’t obsess over five minutes of bad in a 30 hour experience.

Next up, let’s answer the big question. Why don’t games in the mainline Pokémon series include voice acting? 

…Buddy, have you seen Game Freak’s output over the Switch generation? By the end of this year, Game Freak would have released 4 packaged games and 2 meaty expansion packs within a period of 6 years. They are churning these games out on what is basically an annualized schedule. The fact that only one of them was filled with major technical problems is, quite frankly, a miracle of management, planning, and regular old labor. Especially when factoring in COVID. But do people ever appreciate this? Nooooo. Because they don’t actually care about how things are made and, why should they? Capitalism is all about alienating people from labor, and profits off of their ignorance and disinterest in the means of production!

In other words, the obvious reason why the games don’t have voice acting is that it would take up development resources. When your game is already on a tight schedule, you simply do not have time for a feature like this, especially if the studio has never done a game with voice acting before. It seems simple, but find me one developer who said it was ‘easy’ shipping a game with several different languages of voice acting.

However, I do think there are two other minor possible factors at play here that I have never seen anyone bring up. 

When people say that Pokémon should have voice acting, what they really mean is that it should have English and Japanese voice acting. Why? Because those are the only languages they care about. Because those are typically the languages that Japan-developed RPGs are dubbed into. Well, that’s true, and it’s also true for a lot of games. But I have always been of the impression that Pokémon is an international gaming series, and Game Freak wants people to play games that are entirely in their native language. The games are released in Japanese, English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Korean, and Simplified and Traditional Chinese. So, if they want to add voice acting, they would want to have Japanese, English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Korean, and Mandarin dubs, right? …Right?

Well, that is how I view the situation, but there are some problems with this theory in the form of Pokémon games with voice acting. Namely Pokémon Masters and Detective Pikachu. A pair of games came out in a bunch of different languages, but only feature English and Japanese voice acting. Based on these examples, wouldn’t Pokémon only be interested in doing dubs for these two languages? …I don’t think so. For Pokémon Masters, that is a mobile live service, so I would imagine the developers lacked the time and budget to dub every character in more than two languages. While Detective Pikachu was developed by people whose graphical capabilities peaked with the Wii. So the fact they gave the game any voice acting was impressive enough…

It is possible that I am wrong here and that The Pokémon Company and Game Freak only care about appeasing the Anglosphere and Japan. But considering how much localization work is done with these games… I kind of think they would want to do it right.

However, assuming that this theory is true, do you know what takes up a LOT of storage space? Textures! …And also voice acting. So, it’s possible that Game Freak is just trying to keep the file sizes of these games down for manufacturing purposes. An 8GB Switch Game Card is cheaper than a 16GB one, and if you are manufacturing 20 million units, even a $1 in savings warrants a major development shift. …Wait, is that partially why Scarlet and Violet were only 5.5 GB while Sword and Shield were 9.5 GB? To save an extra $20 million or whatever the delta is between an 8 GB card or a 16 GB card?

Anyway, the point is that voice over files take up a lot of space, so adding it to the game only boosts manufacturing costs… then why even bother?

I would also say that Game Freak wants Pokémon games to be fully playable using only the content on the game card, but… then Scarred and Violated came out. 

Akumako: “I wish Pokémon were real so they could violate me and I could scar them up somethin’ fierce!”

…I should delete that, but I’m not going to.

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Read, Think, and the Solution Will Come To You
(Natalie Analyzes The Broad Financials of The Pokémon Company)

Okay, so one of the arguments that I just get so deeply frustrated by with regards to the aforementioned frustration profiteers of the Pokémon series is how it is the ‘highest grossing media franchise of all time.’ Both because it is a cliche argument at this point, and because… it just displays a lack of literacy.

This infographic by TitleMax from December 2019 is the go-to for evidence showing that Pokémon is the highest grossing media franchise— which really probably should be intellectual property— of all time. However, the operative word here is “grossing.” This refers to gross revenue, which just means the total of all regular income streams. It does not factor into returns, allowances, or any expenses.

Now, revenue is an important tool to measure the financial state of something, but it does not tell you how well a company is doing in isolation. If a company goes from 30 million to 50 million in revenue year-over-year, that’s a major increase, yes. But does that sound as good when I explain that its expenses went from 25 million to 60 million? No, it does not. Because the most important part of any company is profitability.

Still, knowing that the Pokémon IP managed to make $92 billion (circa 2019) is not a bad factor to consider, it speaks volumes to the explosive popularity of the series. However, it is also important to break down where that comes from. Because only $17 billion came from the games, or 18.6%. While 66.3%— basically two thirds— came from merchandise sales. Plushies, tchotchkes, shirts, toys, board games, snacks, whatever. But not the card game, which made $10.25 billion dollars. 

So while, yes, Pokémon as an IP does make a lot of money, the games are only a small fraction of that. In fact, its earnings from games are less than the Fist of the North Star IP ($18 billion)… but that’s mostly due to pachinko. Also, if you only want to judge the series based on the ‘mainline’ games, you’ll need a smaller number. Pokémon Go made $3.1 billion from Pokémon Go circa December 2019 (and $6 billion circa June 2022), so you can easily shave that down to $14 billion.

Yes, yes, $14 billion is enough money to fund a militarized revolution, and one could say that a game series bringing in this much dochy should have pristine production values. However… to fund better production values, you would need profits, and these people never seem to ask how profitable the IP owner, The Pokémon Company, is. I did some digging, found the blog of a Japanese consulting firm known as Kantan Games, and was able to get the net profits for TPC for the past… 15 years. So, let’s look over them.

For those who want hard numbers over a graph, here’s the summary: 

• 2009: $10.1 million
• 2010: -$1.3 million (Loss)
• 2011: $12.3 million
• 2012: $3.6 million
• 2013: $16.6 million
• 2014: $10.6 million
• 2015: $18.4 million
• 2016: $5.6 million
• 2017: $143.3 million
• 2018: $80.8 million
• 2019: $124 million
• 2020: $140 million
• 2021: $170 million
• 2022: $320 million
• 2023: $350 million

…So, I’m sure you noticed a trend here. Starting in the 2017 fiscal year (ended February 2017), TPC started bringing in WILDLY higher profits, and the reason why is pretty clear. 2016 was a big year for Pokémon, as that was the launch of Pokémon Go, where the game made about $832 million. A lot of which went back to TPC, because they are the IP owner, and… honestly, that explains a lot. From 2017 to 2021, the revenue roughly aligns with the year-over-year revenue for Pokémon Go, including the dip in fiscal year 2018.

But then we get to 2022 and 2023 and I need to ask what the hell happened. For 2022, this makes some sense when you realize that Brilliant Diamond, Shining Pearl, and Legends: Arceus all launched within that fiscal year. I don’t have month-by-month sales figures, but using the data in this GameInformer article for figures, they sold 27.29 million units of those three games from November 2021 to March 31, 2022. Which is all the more impressive considering how neither title received a full ‘new generation’ marketing campaign.

So, for 2022, the boost in profit can be attributed to how they sold a lot of games. …But for fiscal 2023, Pokémon Go revenue actually dropped considerably, and TPC had its best year ever . …How did it do that if Pokémon Scarlet and Violet was a ‘disaster,’ as some like to believe it to be? Well, I’m sure there are other factors, but comparing the software sales figures, they went from over 440 million units in March 2022 to 480 million units in March 2023. Which is extra wild when you consider that SV only sold 22.1 million units by March 2023. That means that they sold roughly 18 million units of other games in the past year… and I need to honestly ask what games? I would understand a few million more sales for PLA, but 18 million is just crazy.

However, I’m getting distracted. The actual takeaway is that TPC has made… $1.328 billion in net profit since March 2016, and I really want to know what they’re using that money on. Even if the profits are just cleanly distributed to Game Freak, Creatures Inc, and Nintendo (the owners of TPC) in clean thirds, that is still a LOT of money to be handing out.

So… where is it going? Why does Detective Pikachu Returns still look like a Wii game if Creatures has received hundreds of millions? Why hasn’t Game Freak contracted and outsourced a more experienced AAA developer to help with their open world games? Why isn’t Nintendo just helping Game Freak out, because their Tokyo staff and Game Freak work in the same building nowadays, and they make good money off of Pokémon, both directly and indirectly?

To answer the first question… I have no idea what is going on at Creatures Inc. I know their CEO stepped down back in April, but there has to be something strange happening at that studio. And if someone could figure that out, they would deserve an award. I like to imagine that the president is a Lickitung who just eats the money, because that would make sense. Everything about this would make sense if one Lickitung was real. …Or maybe just a gold-eating gnome. 

For everyone else though… From a financial perspective, things are going great, and there aren’t any significant problems to solve here. As a company, it is not Game Freak or TPC’s job, role, or duty to make quality products. The only thing they are supposed to care about is generating profit. And you know what has been happening with the Pokémon series the past few years? BIG STINKING PROFITS! So, I think they’re gonna keep doing whatever they’re doing, keep putting out something new for every holiday season, and keep making new marketable critters, no matter what!

Because here’s the cold hard truth about every ‘artistic’ industry. Industry comes first, art comes second, and the passion of those steering the ship is always in profit. You might think that a better product would make more money, right? That Capitalism is supposed to reward quality above all else? Nu-uh honey. That hasn’t been true in over a century, and it sure as shit isn’t true today. Pokémon is a victim of its own success, and it will only get better by people within the system trying and forcing their taskmasters to let them do what they want.

In other words, don’t be mad at the workers at Game Freak. Be bad at the people who run it and TPC. Be mad at the people who force them to go down the same trite paths, limit their creativity, and push out titles again and again and again. 

Be mad at them… but also remember that, if you bought these games— like me— you are part of the problem. You are contributing to the success that is stifling the innovation of one of the most beloved game series in the world. I’d say you should stop, but one in a million isn’t going to do anything. 

…Maybe that’s the actual reason why these people are spreading such anger and outrage. Because they want the games to stop being able to coax on their name recognition. And if they convince others to see their way, then one in a million can grow into millions.

Sadly, it doesn’t work that way. In the mass market, if you talk about how bad a new Pokémon game is, you will inevitably be spreading its name around, and people will want to play it themselves. Once your success is so great, once you have an immense name value, and after you accumulate generations of fans… you can get away with just about anything.

And that, my friends, is the real reason why Pokémon is the way it is. Because, in this capitalist world of ours, it does not need to be anything more. That could always change in the future. But for now, it’s the simple truth.

*DROPS MIC*

*ROLLS CREDITS*

DAS ENDE