Thread by @S40295

@GiveMeBanHammer There's a push for re-writing history right now to say "it's just that everything is going digital now bro." While giving a Taylor Lorenz hand waive gloss over denying the multiple factors that led up to this point.
youtube.com/watch?v=bnGrFo…
alt link: inv.nadeko.net/watch?__goaway…

@GiveMeBanHammer In this video, Schaffer is just saying "oh E3 died because B2B conventions to sell to retail because retail was king to logistically deliver software to customers and so retailers were the go-between back in the day."

@GiveMeBanHammer That's is true but it also downplays the other factors that were seen that overlap and were also done by other, allegedly less "reputable" publishers and developers.

@GiveMeBanHammer Example: you had Gathering of Developers (a company that @devolverdigital loves to infer/imply as spiritual successor of but is a socialist imitation) in E3 2000 and 2001 have their lot outside for BBQ and pole dancers.
gamespot.com/articles/gods-…

@GiveMeBanHammer @devolverdigital As Schaffer pointed out himself, Xbox (Microsoft) was not going to want to deal with the ESA's event and instead always opted to have their own events and venues to which they still do to this day.

@GiveMeBanHammer @devolverdigital Nintendo was experimenting with Nintendo Direct since October 21, 2011 and then in two years in 2013, stop doing live in-person conferences for announcements at E3 which many took as a sign that Nintendo was disengaging from E3 eventually.

@GiveMeBanHammer @devolverdigital But Schaffer only, in vague Kotaku style, says "Playstation pulled out first from E3" (2019, he never says when) to then reduce the point via minor, rhetorical mention of in a listing of no ROI incentive for further participation of E3 which was suspected in Nintendo's case.

@GiveMeBanHammer @devolverdigital So the attempt to conflate that increasing digital sales is **the** cause direct to why E3 didn't matter is a reductive explanation from what exists as a multi-sectoral set or compounds of factors that led to E3's obsolescence over the years at the start of the 2010s.

@GiveMeBanHammer @devolverdigital So there's a lot of holes in Schaffer's reporting, as is usually the case as he's a terrible reporter and only does an "okay" job because Bloomberg has a proverbial gun to his head (I don't think the man can fail sideways or upward at this point).

@GiveMeBanHammer @devolverdigital The other thing is that his endorsement/prescription (implicit) that @thegameawards (who remember tried to trademark the words "The Game Awards" not long ago)
tmsearch.uspto.gov/search/search-…

@GiveMeBanHammer @devolverdigital @thegameawards ...comes off as part of this conjunction of three factors that have been in the making like a forced meme in the mid 2000s till now:
1. Hollywood wanting to cash in on video games once it was found that venture capital was funding video game project budgets nearing Hollywood's...

@GiveMeBanHammer @devolverdigital @thegameawards 2. The so-called "video game journalist" class where the business model was going in the late 2000s from scrappy website journalism to access journalism. (Schaffer belongs here).
3. Publishers (first) and Developer studios (second) that would work with groups 1 and 2 for sales.

@GiveMeBanHammer @devolverdigital @thegameawards So Schaffer is not explaining that what is happening is a consolidation of an entire industry, that is getting more funding by movie studios (Amazon-MGM, Paramount, Universal, Walt Disney [duh], Warner Bros, Annapurna [*shudder😵‍💫], et al)...

@GiveMeBanHammer @devolverdigital @thegameawards ...along with getting more promotion by Hollywood studios that in turn invest in marketing similar making an entire awards event, or similar web-based, video presentations, but nothing but akin to a glorified Pay-Per-View "Viewer's Choice" trailer channel.

@GiveMeBanHammer @devolverdigital @thegameawards So if the video game industry is going to be an elaborate recreation of the cable industry model with panopticon (digital ID, account-based subscriptions), then the entire industry should be careful to deal with as a customer and be distrusting of it going forward.

@GiveMeBanHammer @devolverdigital @thegameawards @threadreaderapp unroll