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Luke Smith vs. Square/Enix
Luke Smith, news editor over at 1up, recently posted a protesting blog entry which openly defied a draconian edict laid down by Square/Enix. The company required news organs to refrain from discussing many aspects of the Valkyrie Profile title, coming out in the U.S. later this year but already available in Japan. Gamers With Jobs has a good synopsis of the situation. From that article: "Is he being a bit overly dramatic on this issue? Perhaps. But it is an interesting illumination of a larger issue, to do with the quality of communication between the industry and games journalists. Smith is certainly not the first to express dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs."
Can a private corporation legally dictate what a news agency can and cannot say?
Luke Smith is the angriest man in games journalism.
... all three of them got in a room and beat each other ... Luke Smith was the last man standing.
Yeah
What the hell can Square-Enix be thinking?
"Hey guys we know the internet is already full of all of this information but PLEASE don't say anything about these specific topics until these days okay. ^_^"
As a result of this bullshit, I won't be buying a copy of Valkyrie Profile 2.
It's only an insult if it's not true.
How about simultaneous releases?
I, for one, am tired of waiting six to twelve months for games to be localized, and all the while running into little spoilers that diminish my enjoyment of the game when it finally arrives. Though it may be a bit harder to pull off, it would be nice if non-Japanese gamers weren't treated like second-class citizens when it comes to release dates.
the Japanese already speak English.
Ergo, release one version.
The majority of this boils down to "don't spoil it for the gamers". Of course, this just a polite request and, given that the Japanese version has already been released, Luke Smith doesn't have to follow any of this as he points out. However, Square Enix doesn't have to do any favors for him either. I wouldn't be surprised if 1Up gets cut out of the loop when it comes to any prerelease events.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Reading the blog, it looks like their "embargo" didn't really bar talking about it all, merely talking about certain things; in short, no spoilers (including character descriptions and CG movies) and no sampling/uploading of music from the game. The later seems somewhat obvious, as its most likely copyrighted (I've seen few news sites post just the music.)
However, they can't talk about spoilers? I can understand this demand if 1up got a scoop on a game that's still in production. I can understand this if 1up got a scoop about some utlra super secret sidequest and were to only do teasers until a certain date (or it became public some other way.)
But telling them to keep quiet about a game taht has been out in Japan for months, widely available to anyone with the money for an import? What, is Squeenix hoping that someone with a Geocities account can get details out earlier than a gaming site?
It doesn't look like they're threatening anything, either- it's just a "hey, if you would, could you not do this stuff please? kthx" letter.
the Japanese already speak English. Ergo, release one version.
Ummm... No. Relatively few would comprehend english to the point where they can buy an english language RPG. That's not counting the fact that those few have finished their education or travelled/lived abroad for that knowledge. I've lived there for several years and know a lot japanese nationals that live in my state, so I have to say your answer is overly simplistic. Sorry.
Now then, if it were a fighting game I could see it...
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
The "draconian" edict they passed down was a politely-worded suggestion that the news media doesn't post directly-ripped music, directly-ripped CG samples, and gross plot spoilers. There is one part of the letter where it "embargos" certain areas of the game for discussion until certain dates, I'm guessing to try to drum up interest for the game so that they don't blow everything immediately and have attention die down.
Is this a marketing ploy? Ya, I'm sure it is. But it's tit-for-tat. Square lets out information and demos to game media, Square asks for a little something back. The media can choose whether they want it or not. If not, fine, then their relationship with Square sours a little. Whoopdeeshit. If yes, then a couple salivating fans have to wait a month or turn to fansites to get their information.
Luke did a good job of drawing his line in the sand to rally the ill-informed reactionaries and the 15-year-old fanatics to the aid of his page impressions, but he needs a reality check.
Unless I missed something big, all that's happening is that S/E released an email asking reviewers not to talk about some features. I'm surprised anyone actually cared enough to spend the 20 minutes that typing that thing took. Who cares? It's a simple request from S/E, grant their request or don't.
How is this dreck even worth posting in the first place, much less being an item on slashdot?
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
Haven't you ever heard of "advertisers?" Where do you think that these publications get preview copies from? While a company like Square-Enix has no ownership of the publications and no direct control over them, they are perfectly free to make continued ad-revenue and cooperation with the magazines contingent on them toeing the party line.
This is how businesses control the media. It's really that simple.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
That's about as briliant as saying that all of europe speaks english so we should just release an english version to them, secondly a release is a huge investment many times for smaller developers they cant just release to the whole world at once. They run into problems with paying for all those presses at once, so they press it once for Japan, then they use those profits to pay for the amrican release, then those to pay for European releases
So Smith isn't really angry at S/E, he's mad at being part of a media outlet that lets themselves be pushed around by advertisers. Gotcha.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
I was actually going to do something like that for my games as well. I don't mind if the reviewer says how good or bad they are at any point (while I'd of course prefer if they liked everything), but there are certain cut-off points from which point on we're not going to release official promotional material. Some of the nicest experiences in a game is discovering new stuff, so knowing everything would spoil it, wouldn't it?
That's about as briliant as saying that all of europe speaks english so we should just release an english version to them
Which, ironically, appears to be Square-Enix's plan for releasing to Europe most of the time anyway. The European release of FFXI was a year after the US release, and contained only the US English translation.
Square-Enix doesn't give two shits about any market outside of Japan already, it's not that surprising that they're bullying US journalists. But at least they're paying attention to them, if they were European, they'd just ignore them.
Yeah. You're not going to buy it because of this bullshit. Right.
Similarly, I won't be buying an Xbox 360 because of the bullshit MS likes to pull in every industry they enter. What, the lack of interesting games? No, that has nothing to do with it, I promise. No sir.
As far as Squeenix's requests, what kind of asshole amateur journalist takes personal offense at publisher recommendations? He's taking a stand against _suggested guidelines_? He wasn't threatened, he wasn't coerced, and he wasn't legally obligated to do a damn thing. He could have just scoffed and gotten over himself. But instead he goes on his little off-topic rant about dissemination of public information. Oh, what a freedom fighter. Perhaps his goal of never being asked to do anything again (at least as a journalist) will come true.
IAAJHSET (I am a Japanese High School English Teacher)
The average Japanese person fails to get the pronounciation of "Hello" correct after 6 years of English lessons, and reading ability is often worse than speaking ability...
Yet despite this, computer games often have English in the menus. Take Sonic Rush for the DS as an example. The menu is in English, all the zone names are written in English, all the cutscene subtitles are in English, but the characters speak only Japanese (ganbatte ne Sonikku!)
I've never seen an RPG here that uses English at all, and I don't expect to see that changing in the near future.
Gameplay: Does it play well? Or is the gameplay effed up the wazoo?
Graphics: Does it look good? Or does watching it make you barf?
Plot: What is the basic premise of the game?
Those are the main things we really need. Now lets look at the requests.
Well thanks asshole. For posting this, you also killed the secrets inside the game. Some of us like to play the game and find everything ourselves. We DON'T need major spoilers handed to us in your previews, and we certainly didn't need secrets revealed about the game. Thanks.
Think dude, think. They wanted to give you the promotional stuff from the English version, so the average US gamer could listen to the vid and know what the hell they're saying.
A no brainer. No discussion.
Jesus. Thanks man.
How many of you have even heard about this game before this flap? A game that wouldn't normally even be a blip on the radar has made /.