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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.'"
Raise your hand if you've ever bought a PC game from WalMart.
Me neither.
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
That's the circle of life with Wal-Mart. You'll get a huge boost at first, but Wal-Mart always gets the last laugh. Always.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
That's called the free market. Game design studios could choose other retail outlets if they chose to do so. Wal*Mart doesn't have to carry anything that they don't like.
There are probably lots better reasons to hate Wal*Mart than for having buyers and communicating their intentions to vendors.
Raise your hand if you've ever bought a PC game from WalMart.
Me neither.
Raise your hand if you're NOT a geek minority.
Ah-hah, I supposed.
And you know what? If you could predict whether a game would be hugely successful or not, you might be right. But firstly, the fact is that it's an art, not a science, and nobody knows FOR SURE which titles are going to be hits and which are going to suck.
"We're not going to carry any game with nudity."
Gee, because before Wal-Mart became big, there was a HUGE market for computer-porn games?
Are some games modified because of the tremendous buying power of Wal Mart? Sure, that's logical. But that's a big step from claiming that "every AAA game is managed start to finish, top to bottom" with WalMart in mind.
Yes, for crapware like Deer Hunter and Barbie Fashion designer, I'm sure WalMart's giant demographic is part of their calculus "Say 0.001% of the WalMart electronics browsers buy our game? That's like....a gajillion dollars!".
But AAA titles? I doubt it. How much did WalMart come into the design of World of Warcraft? Oblivion? GalCiv2? Peripherally, if at all.
As usual, reality is somewhere beneath The Escapist's flashy hyperbolic copy.
-Styopa
Wal-Mart isn't strong because of it's buying power - it is strong because of it's selling power.
Anyway, please feel free to resume your Wal-Mart hating now and label me flamebait/troll/whatever.
"Unfortunately, companies don't make the rules here. Consumers do."
You mispelled "fortunately" by putting an "un" in front of it. I sure don't want anyone else telling me where to shop or what to buy. If Wal-Mart has what I want at a good price, then I'll buy it there. If not, I'll get it somewhere else. Wal-Mart is on top of this game for a reason. The only thing they are dictating is what their customers will buy.
By focusing only on the price, you are ignoring the total cost , and that can be a very short-sighted thing to do when considering Wal-Mart's overall impact.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
They save $2500 a year by shopping at Wal-Mart, and by shopping at Wal-Mart they lose $10000 a year in their own salary levels, local community services, and lost quality of goods. But they think they're richer.
Meanwhile, the megainvestors and fund billionaires actually are richer, having skimmed all of that wealth right off the family's coffers. The family's own mutual fund invests in the megaretailers too, of coure, but their investment is so small and working-family-sized it doesn't even come close to making up the loss. It does, however, convince them that they out to support Wal-Mart, which they continue to do, losing thousands a year alongside all of their neighbords until the community's a ghost town, the remaining people are all working at Wal-Mart (there are no other jobs in the community) until Wal-Mart leaves next year (their sales have dried up in the area as surrounding communities have become impoverished, they've sucked the area dry and it's time to go), and in the meantime everyone left is on welfare and still having trouble making ends meet.
And once Wal-Mart does leave, there will be nothing left to hold the town together, since the entire downtown area was decimated to make space for one more multi-hundred-thousand-square-food building that once empty no-one will be able to justify renting in a small town, and there's no interest or capital anywhere to reconstruct the area as it once was before they gave Wal-Mart the incentives to come an build and destroy all of the sanely-sized space and properties that might sustain small, local businesses.
In short, saved a few dollars on groceries, lost a lot of wealth in income and savings, plus an entire community and its neighbords. And at the end of the story, everyone is jobless, no-one has savings left, the area is abandoned, a massive warehouse-sized space stands empty in the middle of nowhere for the rest of time, and megaivestors smile all the way to the bank.
Wal-Mart is a giant purple community eater whose bait is to make unsophisticated people like yourself think that they are saving money. And yes, it does make capitalism look bad.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Wal-Mart doesn't get "their" power from some magical source, it gets it from us, the consumers, exercising our choice of where to shop. If you don't like how much Wal-Mart influences what producers produce, DON'T SHOP THERE. If you're willing to trade their influence over certain products for lower prices on them, then do. The world's victim mentality really pisses me off. If you don't like the values that Wal-Mart promotes, stop giving them the ability to advance them by not giving them your money. Capitalism only works if you vote with your dollars/pesos/euros/yuan (okay, I'm not going to list currencies of all the countries where Wal-Mart operates).
That is a good idea unless you live in a rural or low density suburb where the local Wal-Mart has created a monopoly on retail access. If you don't shop there where do you go? Drive 20 miles for everything? And don't say "Buy everything online". Capitalism has an Archilles heel.
"Anyone remember how Wing Commander included Blueprints, a manual, offers, etc? Good luck finding that stuff in a modern game."
I remember those extras. Sure it didn't always help play the game, but it helped to set the mood and give the universe a little bit of depth. The last games I saw that had extras like that were Warcraft III and Tachyon: The Fringe.
END OF LINE
Ethical license? WTF?
If anything, WalMart is doing game companies a favor by working with them during the development stage to let them know what titles they may or may not be interested in carrying. Far better to hear early on that your "Sim Crack Whore" idea isn't going to fly, than to have blown zillion$ producing something that isn't going to get onto WalMart shelves.
By and large, when people bitch about WalMart, they are really complaining about WalMart consumers - who demonstrate time and time again what they prefer. From there, if you want to create a big-selling game, then take those preferences into consideration. If you want to create your own piece of work for your own reasons, and commercial success is a secondary concern, then fine, go right ahead - but don't expect anyone to champion it for you.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
I like that you make the comparison with voting. You probably subscribe to the "your vote matters" fallacy. Nothing is more silly. Only votes in mass matter. Single votes do not. (Interestingly though, for popular figures, saying that peoples votes matter, does matter. Because that moves the masses.)
That may be the only good Wal-Mart has ever accomplished.
They've dirven their competitors out of business with unfair practices. They've reamed North American manufacuring as they insisted on cheaper products until they had to go off shore, causing a replacement of manufacturing jobs with low-end retail jobs. They've made something greater than 50% of supply-chain for retail in North America become beholden to them.
I'm not at all surprised to hear that Wal-Mart has the gaming industry by the short-hairs.
Wal-Mart is EVIL, aggressive, and far too powerful for anyone's good.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Instead you have change the habits of the entire buying public
I can not control you, I can not control the masses. I do not wish to control you, I do not wish to control the "buying public". They should be free to do as they wish, just as I am. I have no desire to waste my resources on the uneducated or illogical. Saying that I need to change the habits of the buying public somehow implies that I must make people act against their will. I have no desire to do this. I may think that they are stupid and lack the ability to think, but that does not give me the right, ability, or desire to compel or trick them into acting against their will. Exactly that section of the public that believes what Wal-Mart believes should shop there, and give Wal-Mart their buying power.
You probably subscribe to the "your vote matters" fallacy. Nothing is more silly. Only votes in mass matter. Single votes do not.
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.
Does anyone know of a list of companies that don't supply Wal-Mart (like Snapper)? I would like to give such companies more of my business.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
If you've ever lived, or at least spent enough time in a small town, you'd know that Wal-Mart comes in like a monster (Super Wal-Marts) and disrupts the local economy to such a degree that they manage to wipe out all other businesses, including most mom and pop shops, grocery stores, mechanics, furniture stores, florists, gardening shops, day care facilities, etc. The problem is this: small-town economies, such as they are, rarely generate income beyond a level of sustenance for small businesses. These businesses goods and services are priced so that they sell to the local consumers at a profit enough to keep the shop open, and provide their owners with some income. Wal-Mart comes in, and undercuts these businesses with greater inventory, larger selection and considerably lower prices, taking the local shop's customers and their owner's income with them. These shop owners sometimes leave town, or sometimes they look for work, finding it at the Super Wal-Mart. In fact, a large percentage of the town becomes employees of the Super Wal-Mart, who are generally low paid. Their low pay is usually spent at the Super Wal-Mart since it's all they can afford (plus they get a discount) much like the company stores of the mining and industrial era. Soon, the whole town is in some way dependent on Super Wal-Mart for everything from employment and benefits, to groceries, clothing, medicine (pharmacies are driven out of business), eyeglasses, you name it. Wal-Mart understands how this works, and essentially exploits these small-town economies.
Now, I don't really know where you live, but if you've ever had the distinct displeasure of driving across the United States, you'd discover that most of the middle of the country consists of a lot of small towns. What do you suggest all those people do, stop shopping at Wal-Mart? You might as well tell them to pack up, leave town and head for the coast, or at least a large metropolitan area like Dallas, or something. If you're not living in a small town, then you might have the good fortune of having a choice of where you shop, but for lots of people across the U.S., there isn't many options.
Lastly, don't underestimate the buying power of the low-end of the market. The Median household income for 2004 was around $44,000 with the poverty rate ringing in around 13% [source: ESRB-Income] You can bet those people aren't spending their money at Sak's and Banana Republic. Wal-Mart's huge margins are created by buying product at dirt prices, and selling them at rock prices to the lowest end of the market, which also happens to be a very LARGE market base in the United States. And for that market, Wal-Mart is about all they've got.
Hades, PoD: Official Advocate
If you replace "Wal-Mart" with "people that shop at Wal-Mart" I'd mod you up for insightful.
Is buying a Harley Davidson as your first motorcycle since you were 16 at age 49 a midlife crisis issue?
Wal-Mart is EVIL, aggressive, and far too powerful for anyone's good.
I would agree, but unfortunatly people's solution to the problem... i.e. get the government involved... is worse than the problem.
If Wal-Mart is EVIL, agressive, and far too powerful for anyone's good, because it lowers prices on Rubbermaid trash cans, then what does that make the government?
Surely the only reason they have a monopoly is because people were going to Walmart rather than smaller shops? In that case, the PEOPLE have decided they want Walmart to have a monopoly. This is a great example of democracy and freedom.
Maybe you'd prefer the government to mandate that people shop at locally-owned shops to stop them going out of business?
When has the government had a positive effect on competition? And I am not talking about the government breaking up the monopoly it helped create in the first place ("Bell"), or doing something like deregulate the airline industry (which is government getting rid of its intervention into the market).
Perhaps you can argue the whole Standard Oil thing, but by the time the government got to breaking up Standard Oil, Standard Oil was already losing market share. There is speculation that the breakup of Standard Oil was masterminded by J.D. Rockefeller.
The government is elected by the people, for the people. Remember?
And a sucker is born every minute!
Of course for all this added convenience and direct profit to the developer I get the chance to pay the exact same price as I would at retail.
Simply not true. You can buy Half Life 2 for $29.99, and most of their upgrade packages are $10 to $20 (completely different games are the same price).
You also don't have to authenticate to play, except multiplayer. What about with 360 and other consoles that support multiplayer? You have to authenticate, just the same. Its no different.
I bought HL back in 1998, and when I activated my steam account, I just punched in the code off the cd, and havent used the cd since. I bought HL2, and now they just GAVE me all the extra games that I would have paid for for HL1, including Opposing Force and Blue Shift, neither of which I paid for with the original. Of course, counter strike and tfc are also included free.
So I hear a lot of people complaint about Steam, but I'm as rabid about privacy and DRM as anyone, but as an actual USER of the system, I can say it has been 10x more pleasant than anything else. I installed everything at work, at home and on my laptop from the same account, no problems. If I am offline, I play any single player game without authentication. I can NOT play from two machines in multiplayer at the same time, but you couldn't with CD keys before (the whole idea behind authentication). There is nothing to prevent me from playing single player on two machines at once.
Steam isn't perfect, but it is an extremely affordable ($10 to $30 per game) system that offers reasonable authentication for multiple player games, fast updates. NO more going to freaking fileplanet and "waiting in line for 40 minutes, or pay $5 per month" crap either. Hell, I will pay twice the price to avoid that mess.
Everytime I do log on (I have is so I only do that manually, a simple toggle in setup) it automatically starts downloading any patches, shows their "news" (ad for games, can be disabled but I don't mind since I want to know) and has a built in program for finding game servers that is better than Gamespy.
And since 1998, all this has cost me about $100, and has many games I play, and they have never sent me spam. What a freaking bargain!
The only guys I see bitch about Steam, are the ones who have never TRIED it because of (fill in lame excuse here) reasons.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
I'm amazed that there seems to be a generation that seem to think that capitalism is equivalent, or even in some way superior to democracy.
Here's the difference: a company is *bound by law* to maximise it's profit for the benefit of it's shareholders. It 'cares' about it's customers and doesn't giving a flying crap for society in any wider sense. tis true. This is why Walmart screws its employees and the communities it works in without blinking.
Democracy is a system by which you have 1/230millionth of a say in which your country is run. I hate to break this to you, but that's all you're entitled to, unless you wish to stand for election and other people happen to agree with you.
Your government doesn't have a *vested interest* in screwing you. For a moment imagine you didn't live in the world's most dysfunctional democracy, and take a look around the world for other examples: say Sweden, Canada, Switzerland.
Democracy and capitalism are compatible and, arguably, complimentary. But quit talking about 'government' being a worse problem. Save me your fashionable contempt for the Democrats/Republicans. Government is fine, necessary and totally desirable.
If you disagree, give me one vaguely plausible alternate and *an example of it working well*.
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
The regular people don't have a say in government. Government regulation is the last thing that is going to address the concerns of "working stiffs" or "small buisness". Government "regulation" just means that the government is selling "protection", like the mafia, to the big corporations. The corporations will have to work with the people in power to make the deal suitable to the political elite, but the little guy will never have any real say in the deal.
Once the people who are in power decide who is elegible for election, once they decide how funds for campaigning are going to be distributed, once they decide how groups are going to be gerimandered together to give certain parties advantage, and once the laws become so complicated they have almost endless regulatory power to punish non-supporters, and vast resources to give to reward their supporters, then there is no real Democracy. Democracy works on the small scale, but once you get to the size and power of the modern state, it becomes a meaningless abstraction.
More often then not, the regulation is designed to help the big corporations (in fact, the modern day mega-corporation couldn't exist without the government)... the regulation is used to make the cost of doing buisness too high for the little guy to afford the initial investment, or the liability too high that the little guy can't afford the insurance, or the fixed regulatory cost that doesn't scale for company size. The government takes land with eminent domain in order to give to the chain store.
If you look at markets that aren't regulated by the government (such as the drug trade), or under regulated by the government (computer software), you will see that the small guy has a huge advantage over the big guy. In the software industry, Microsofts biggest competitor is a product that doesn't cost anything and began as a hobby. Microsoft has such institutional entrophy that it is hard for them to compete on the merits of their product (and so now they compete using the government to enforce "intellectual property"). In the drug trade, no-one ever dominates for long before someone smaller comes along and starts shaking things up. It is not natural for large monopoly style corporations to exist, unless the government creates the regulatory infrastructure for it.
My alternative? Don't shop at Walmart. I have never walked into a Walmart, EVER, in my life... let alone purchased anything at a Walmart. I wouldn't be able to find the closest Walmart without looking it up online. And that is entirely accidental, without me trying to not shop at a Walmart. The vast majority of Walmart shoppers are suburbanites or urbanites who have plenty of other choices to shop besides Walmart. The overwelming vast majority of Americans live in urban or suburban areas and have access to plenty of other places to shop. Even if the people living in rural areas who are "forced" to shop at Walmart really mean that they would have to drive an extra 20 miles to a larger town - or would have to spend a little more money somewhere else - they are not forced, so much as can't be bothered.
Walmart has to be the easiest company in the world to boycott! They have a razor thin profit margin, so that it only takes a boycott of a small group of people in order to cut into their bottom line. (that is why religious groups, who actually take the time to boycott once in a while, are always getting Walmart to do whatever they want). Walmarts are only profitable if built where land values are low, and where there is lots of wide open space, which means for most American consumers, it is actually a bit of a drive to get to Walmart. And they have a reputation for being "low-class", which means that any affluent Americans, or middle-class Americans pretending to be affluent, are not going to be caught dead in anything as declasse as a Walmart.
In the Revolutionary War, a bunch of poorly armed and untrained American farmers managed to defeat the elite armies of the most powerful empire in history. And now American