Slashdot Mirror
Wal-Mart Controls Modern Game Design?
An anonymous reader writes "That Wal-Mart smiley face is looking pretty evil now that Allen Varney has explained how much influence they have on virtually every modern game: 'Publisher sales reps inform Wal-Mart buyers of games in development; the games' subjects, titles, artwork and packaging are vetted and sometimes vetoed by Wal-Mart. If Wal-Mart tells a top-end publisher it won't carry a certain game, the publisher kills that game. In short, every triple-A game sold at retail in North America is managed start to finish, top to bottom, with the publisher's gaze fixed squarely on Wal-Mart, and no other.'"
"I like your game but we have to change the rules."
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit
New title:
Slashdot shocked to learn Wal-Mart does to gaming industry, what it does to every other industry
Nothing to see here, please move along.
This is nothing new, at least in the music industry. Look what happened to Spinal Tap's "Smell The Glove" cover.
anything i tell you will cloud your opinion.
...where the player has to dodge falling prices?
Ooh, ooh, pick me, pick me!
Looks around. Oh, wait, you mean we're not the majority? But, everybody I know is a geek!
You just don't buy the right games. Grand Theft Auto: New Jersey (Q4/08) is rumored to come with a used condom, a hypodermic needle and a dead hooker in the packaging.
Gee, I'll have to stop by Walmart on my way home!!
To believe that your opinion does not matter and that you can not control your life is the first realization one makes on the path to self destruction because you believe you lack control in a general sense. First you believe you hold no control over politics, then you believe you hold no control over whether you are hired or fired, then you believe you have no control over what choices you make, then you believe you have no control over your anything, and finally you cease to be, either literally or you exist as walking death unable to muster the courage to get rid of the walking. You have exactly as much control over the world as your resources (money, talent, and intelligence) will buy you.
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Blah blah blah... boy, somebody's spent a lot of time in the self-help section.
Posting to Slashdot is the first action one takes on the course to self destruction. First you post to slashdot, then you post to digg, then maybe you take time out to read Google News. Then you post to gameFAQs. Soon you're posting huge binaries to USENET, you're in the midst of an illicit, semi-consentual (and oftimes homosexual) love affair with CowboyNeal, you're addicted to the internet and heroin, and then you start calling yourself Al Gore, lead strategic innovator of that there inter-web unit. After that you destroy yourself!!!, like the first sentence of this paragraph subtly implies. It sounds nuts, I know, but I'm sure you'll see that the logic is pretty much the same as your own. So it must be right. It takes an island of dozens to change a nation of millions
My bolding, of course, denotes HEARTFELT TRUTH and DEEP ROOTED, unnerving sincerity (and certainly not my tongue desperately scouring the inside of my cheek as my eyes attempt to roll at 700RPM).
Fact is, I'd like you (or any of you silly airheaded "you've got the power!!" morons) to name a single national policy that was decided by a single vote.
your parents have never killed a hooker or stolen a car
You obviously haven't met my parents.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
I think their long term goal is to make everyone so poor they're the only place you can afford to shop.