justOnePersistentKbinPlease
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Very well put.
To touch on the point of “where do video games fit in media”; I am reminded of an old video that sticks with me, roughly shortly after the release of Elder Scrolls Oblivion, with Sir Patrick Stewart on the topic of covering games and whether they are art.
He put forward the framing of “who is telling the story” to classify where video games fall closest as art. You have four possible personas in storytelling/art:
• the author
• the director
• the actors
• the audience
He then broke down who is telling the story:
• in paintings and carvings, it is the artist telling all of the story directly through the media.
• in books, it is a combination of the author and the reader, it is the author’s words that create the story through the filter and imagination of the readers mind.
• on stage, it is the actors that tell the story to the audience.
• in film, it is the director telling the story through the performances of the actors who all filter the words of the writer.
He stated how he marveled at video games because they represent a new media where the storyteller is the audience directly. Yes the writer lays out the possible elements, the actors, if present, influence how the characters are percieved, and the director pulls all of that together.
But it is the audience that creates the story in every run through every action they take in the game, and as such they are closest to books.
Insofar as romance and based on the above, I think that once the planned beats are played out it is up to the audience as the storyteller to create the rest of the romance.
Because the share price jumped up so much last year to give them that cash on hand.
Also the $34 million loss is their best result since feb 2018, most of their losses have been 10x higher. Although it does look like a long term trend into the positive cash flow. Also the CEO is mentioning a stock dividend now, so that takes care of the cash on hand.
That would be a valid assessment if the stock price had jumped after the quarterly earnings.
Their stock price jumped before the quarterly earnings was announced. It has nothing to do with it, nor any of their fundamentals
Also notice:
Cash flow is neutral or negative and has been for a while now.
Revenue peaked in 2018 is now less than 62% of that peak. Revenue per quarter is also down 11% year over year.
Company lost 34 million dollars last quarter, and has not had a positive operating income since feb 2018. https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/watchlist?tab=Related&id=a1tyxm&duration=1Y&src=b_fingraph&relatedQuoteId=a1tyxm&relatedSource=MlAl&l3=L3_Financials
Recall that the first quarter after the whole WSB thing, they had something like 2 billion in cash from that whole thing.
A year later, they had 1 billion.
Half a year later, 500 million.
All of a sudden this quarter, after shutting down stores all over the place and gutting their staff, they’re claiming 4 billion cash on hand, helped out by unproven social media claims growing their stock price 30%.
doubt. Their business model relies on physical games being sold multiple times, once when new, and then multiple times as used copies. This is why they’re focusing on retro consoles. New consoles have passable online marketplaces, so Gamestop cannot compete, and are completely inferior to PC gaming, which hasn’t needed Gamestop in 20 years.
Well, no.
Deep Rock Galactic has fully optional skin packs to make money and they’re doing great.
Warframe has been chugging along for over a decade now and they’re doing great. Beating the pants off of Destiny 2 for average player count.
The live service trick is that live service only works if the company actually cares about the product. Those two companies stand out because they legitimately care and have great communication with their communities.
Given how they front-loaded the launch schedule and ended up wiping out some of their own game communities(the corpse of Arms say hi from under the former juggernaut that was the Splatoon 2 launch).
The silence on their front WRT games suggests that they might be ramping up for a similar blitz for a switch 2.
You can dislike them and Tencent because they had to be investigated, were caught breaking the law, but suffer no penalties at all for breaking the law.
It would be the same as a guy with back pain killing an insurance CEO, admitting it when caught, give the police the murder weapon, then being allowed to go on their way.
Obligatory shoutout to Digital Extremes for their Tennogen program.
Decades.
Team Fortress started as a mod for Quake 1(30 years ago)
Red Orchestra was the winner of the Make Something Unreal contest that Epic Games held over 20 years ago.
Famously, League of Legends and DOTA started as a custom map for Warcraft 3(Defense of the Ancients) and apparently Activision/Blizzard missed that window so much that they are a footnote in the genre they fucking started.