Sacrifices to the Church of Nintendo

in my last video i talked about the wizard of oz a work of art so beloved that it overshadowed the horrifying gauntlet of trauma endured by its cast and crew the studio behind the film was mgm a company that for generations single-handedly carried the film industry on its back decades later you could have said the same thing about nintendo and the video game industry in 1983 the u.s video game market crashed in just two years industry revenue had plummeted by more than 95 percent atari the leading american games manufacturer was forced to bury more than 700 000 unsold cartridges in a new mexico landfill the state of the video game industry was in shambles providing ample opportunity for one japanese company to pick up the pieces in 1985 nintendo released the nes in the united states a console that rejuvenated consumer confidence in gaming in its darkest hour the video game industry was rescued by a mystical company from a faraway land many fans of gaming have come to see it as a miracle by 1988 the nes accounted for a 70 share of the video game market and the industry was poised for its most prosperous period yet nintendo inherited the exalted title the savior of video games now nearly 40 years and six consoles later the warship is far from over [Music] come on where are we going the neverland you'll never grow up there modern day disciples of nintendo span a variety of denominations together they form one of the most loyal followings for any brand in the world however despite the daily outpouring of reverence and adoration nintendo receives from its fans the sentiment is far from mutual recently it's been quite the opposite in fact the past 20 years have shown us that nintendo's most passionate supporters often wind up becoming their most forsaken last year i posted a video about hungrybox and competitive melee it's a video that features many layers of conflict one of which was nintendo's antagonistic relationship with competitive smash super smash bros was never designed to be anything other than a party game but developer intentions wouldn't stop some players from reinventing the game in their own vision the rush development of melee led to a series of engine exploits which pushed the skill ceiling of the game to the limits of human ability but it was so frame perfect i felt like literally an explosion in my hand these unique mechanics transformed the game into a competitive spectacle and one of the first video games in america showcased in sanctioned esports tournaments mlg hosted melee tournaments as far back as 2004 predating even the earliest call of duty championships at the time the esports industry was still in its infancy and super smash bros was in prime position to lead competitive gaming into a new era unfortunately nintendo wasn't on board with the idea of their game being played competitively at all lead developer masahiro sakurai made it his mission to all but erase competitive play in the next installment of the series no contest melee's defining mechanics were neutered if not outright removed in its sequel a deliberate design decision by the developers who feared that melee's competitiveness was intimidating new players considering that melee was the best-selling game on its system it's tough to justify that wave dashing had any effect on casual players reception towards the franchise across all of gaming it's very unusual for the skill ceiling of a game to actually affect the enjoyment of new players even games as simple as tetris and chess see highly competitive top players utilizing extremely advanced strategy yet they remain two of the most played games in history in melee the competitive community at the time only represented a minuscule fraction of the total players and it's very likely that the vast majority of nintendo's customers didn't even know they existed the company's insistence on specifically punishing competitive play is truly bizarre and possibly unprecedented among the entire industry in the end though dynamic and nuanced play was sacrificed to appease the casual player base who in all likelihood would have still enjoyed the game regardless removing competitive techniques from future titles is one thing but deliberately sabotaging competitors from enjoying an existing game is a whole other level of petty mlg's original run with melee ended after 2006 but it was originally supposed to continue into 2007 and beyond the organization was allegedly pressured by nintendo to drop melee from its pro circuit so as to not interfere with the release of brawl while other esports at the time were beginning to prosper competitive melee was subject to a dark age that would persist until 2013 when the community raised enough money to earn a spotted evo of course nintendo infamously tried to revoke evo's rights to stream the event a decision so unpopular that they were forced to back down less than 24 hours later this incident has been heavily publicized but it wasn't the first time nintendo tried to black out a smash tournament in 2010 mlg hosted their one and only tournament for brawl a tournament that was never seen by anyone outside of the venue nintendo refused to allow mlg to stream the event and unlike the case with melee a few years later brawl's stream was never reinstated nintendo's contempt for competitive play is something not seen by practically any other big name game developer it's common practice in the industry today for developers to bankroll big tournament pots because it's fairly well understood that a healthy competitive scene contributes to a more engaging product for all players while competitors in most esports bask in hundred thousand dollar prize pools smash players have to act graciously for simply being allowed to play at all nintendo is not just indifferent to competitive smash often times they are actively malicious 2013 saw the release of project m a modded version of brawl which combined its existing roster with melee's mechanics over the next couple years project m tournaments grew in popularity to be on par with melee in viewership and attendance then at the end of 2015 the mod was suddenly and mysteriously abandoned by both developers and tournament organizers years later it was revealed that at the time nintendo was toying around with sponsoring an official competitive circuit but mandated that project m be discarded before moving forward despite support from major entities like twitch and red bull nintendo strung the community along for three years before dumping their prospect all together upon the release of smash ultimate smash would never end up getting an official pro circuit and project m was sacrificed for nothing by the beginning of 2020 the smash community had finally secured enough funds to arrange their own competitive circuit independent of nintendo but well some things are just never meant to work out even amidst the depths of the pandemic the passion for competitive smash still persisted through online tournaments but even then nintendo had to rear its head and punish a community who had everything else taken from them the big house 2020 was cancelled because online play necessitated the use of a modded version of melee run on an emulator and so the players of melee were stripped of their last solitary means of competition what more can you take away from me the smash community is generally not well liked by the majority of observers last year's firestorm of allegations and controversy among top community figures certainly didn't help the public's perception of the esport has likely been tarnished beyond repair and many people remain adamantly unsympathetic over the plight of competitive smash however understanding nintendo's treatment of its esports competitors provides us with insight into how they tend to respond to any conflict of interest with their fans even back in the days of mlg what nintendo did to the smash community set the tone for how they would treat their most die-hard supporters moving forward as time marches on video game hardware gradually degrades and stops functioning among would-be players hardware deterioration creates an issue of accessibility for many the solution to this issue lies in emulation and no company despises emulation more than nintendo this is illegal you know there's a prevailing misconception among the general public that emulating games in and of itself is illegal however a series of court decisions during the 90s and early 2000s ruled that the act of emulation is totally permissible by law upholding that video game companies are not entitled to a monopoly where the legal issues arise is the distribution of digital game files which does fall into the realm of copyright infringement the youtuber nero made a trilogy of videos discussing everything you need to know about emulation which i highly recommend watching in order to gain a full understanding of the situation but to summarize a substantial portion of rom sharing is done so out of necessity by people who have no other means of obtaining games through legitimate methods obscurity rights issues and region locking makes some titles remarkably difficult to acquire when consumers are willing and able to pay for a product it's up to existing services to fulfill those needs when services fail to offer desired products consumers have no choice but to obtain them through piracy or other black market means most game companies understand this and offer ample opportunity for consumers to easily experience retro titles nintendo on the other hand despite being the most adamantly outspoken about emulation as theft is noticeably lacking in providing any legal alternative to many of their titles nintendo's online retro libraries release games at a snail's pace and by the time a console reaches the end of its lifespan its existing library becomes unavailable forcing consumers to restart their digital collection on the following system this process creates sizable lapse periods where would-be customers are unable to access their favorite retro games even nintendo's dedicated retro hardware like the nes classic suffered notorious supply shortages many have inferred that restricting their supply of classic games is a deliberate strategy by nintendo to artificially drive up demand to make matters worse nintendo's official retro experience tends to lack many of the basic features that were available on emulators as far back as the 90s perhaps if the company spend as much effort improving their own retro offerings as they do litigating the passionate fans who make better alternatives there wouldn't be as much of an underground market to litigate market is not even an accurate term considering how practically all roms and emulators are distributed with no intention of earning revenue but that doesn't stop nintendo from suing many of these people for millions of dollars that they never made it's widely understood among copyright experts that rom libraries such as console classics are perfectly legal since they lend out a limited supply of roms that each correspond to a physical copy that they own however despite taking every precaution they could console classics still had to deal with nintendo's bullying and intimidation the ammularity games library notably excludes nintendo games from their collection because of the company's cutthroat reputation the exclusion serves as a stark reminder of how in the present day nintendo is the only major game company belligerent enough to continue punishing emulation and yes nintendo has the legal right to do so just like how music companies have the legal right to ruin someone's life for downloading some songs off the internet long time viewers of the channel know exactly what i think about the other nonsense that is modern copyright legislation so if you want to convince me of nintendo's righteous virtue in this situation you're going to have to justify with something a bit more compelling than that's how the law works where nintendo starts to enter truly egregious territories through its treatment of mods and fan games i've already talked about the tragic downfall of project m but that was simply a drop in the bucket compared to the immense scale of nintendo's warpath against fan-made projects in 2016 nintendo issued cease and desist on over 500 fan games two of which included the highly anticipated pokemon uranium and am2r both of these projects represented a labor of love that took developers thousands of hours of their own free time to complete and nintendo's response to all of that effort and talent was to stomp it into the dust it may be tough to understand why nintendo is so ruthless about guarding their intellectual property but the answer can be found in the company's history back in the 80s nintendo made it their mission to undo the industry mistakes which led to the crash consumers had lost faith in video games because the market had become flooded with low quality cash grabs and bootlegs nintendo implemented their seal of quality as a necessary measure for consumers to distinguish their quality products from cheap knockoffs today the industry has vastly changed but nintendo's primal fear of rogue imitators has never left them it's a fear that can now be described as irrational and detrimental to the industry as a whole video games have long since surpassed film and music has the biggest entertainment industry in the world suffice to say the gaming industry is no longer teetering on the brink of outright collapse from some teenager making a rom hack since nintendo's heyday modding and fan made adaptations have actually contributed to some of the most celebrated games of all time valve built their entire game library off a modded version of the quake engine developer john karmic released the source code for anyone to use the fruits of which resulted in some of the most influential games of their era today valve has repaid the favor to the next generation of programmers who are allowed to buy and sell modded valve games on their own platform these days it's safe to say that modding is not just an accepted part of the industry but a necessity in innovating the genre as a whole if john karmick acted like nintendo the gaming industry would have been set back by years it's relatively rare for modern game companies to police fans creating mods of their games but it's nearly unthinkable for companies to police fans creating videos of their games so have you ever noticed how most nintendo youtubers only seem to start popping into existence about four years ago well there's a very important reason for that because in the early 2010s being a nintendo youtuber was completely infeasible last year google stadia creative director alex hutchinson posted a tweet suggesting that streamers and content creators pay a fee to game publishers for the privilege of having others watch them play this post got absolutely ratioed out of the ballpark i mean really what a totally asinine statement can you actually imagine how dystopian it would be if companies actually did this except one company has done this nintendo at one point it was actually worse than even what this guy suggested in 2013 nintendo content id claimed all footage of their games on youtube if you used even a fraction of nintendo gameplay that video wouldn't earn you a dime it turns out that punishing everyone who makes videos about your games is a good way to ensure that no one makes videos about your games as youtube let's plays exploded in popularity at around the same time nintendo began to realize that their decision was costing them millions in potential free advertising so in 2015 they sheepishly restored content creators ability to earn revenue this time taking a 30 cut however in order to get your 70 share you were forced to manually apply to their partner program so they can micromanage your channel and make sure that you didn't step out of line from their standards this policy persisted for more than three years before nintendo finally scrapped it and allowed content creators to do what literally every other game publisher was fine with the whole time nintendo is such an utterly baffling company to me because the hard part of running a game studio come so easy to them they can pump out masterpiece after masterpiece without breaking a sweat as far as i can tell they treat their employees quite well it's just the simple no-brainer public relations tasks that seem to utterly escape them if ea or blizzard or sony or epic games did just some of the things nintendo do on a regular basis you'd never hear the end of it what makes nintendo any different how do they keep getting away with it well the main difference between nintendo and all of these other companies comes down to one factor the fans go back and grow up but i'm warning you once you're grown up you can never come back i understand that for some people nintendo is more than just some company that makes good games whole generations of people grew up with them many saw nintendo as a defining part of their childhood and have absorbed the company and its characters as an integral piece of their identity for some nintendo evokes profound nostalgia for simpler happier days for others it represents a refuge from the abuse and torment of their reality you'd be hard-pressed to find any other brand that can summon such powerful feelings of vulnerable youthful innocence i'm not here to disparage people for being passionate about something they truly and unabashedly love but recognizing the zealous loyalty of the nintendo fan base is a necessary step in diagnosing the problem ha ha here's the problem after 40 years of making such beloved games nintendo has spawned a following of apostles who worshipped the company with religious dedication it's not enough for them to simply engage with the products the most devout nintendo fans have an obligation to make their faith known to all who encounter them such ardent loyalty to some far away corporation is highly abnormal and it leads to highly abnormal outcomes nintendo is certainly aware of the immense goodwill which their customers share and rather than reciprocated they have harnessed it and are currently riding it all the way to the bank they're confident that they can get away with almost anything because a substantial portion of their audience have adopted the dogmatic belief that the company is incapable of sin recently there have been prevailing discussions online about the toxicity of fandoms in stan culture and while the same few notorious subcultures get brought up over and over again i rarely see anyone mention the nintendo fandom in these conversations in my experience the most extreme nintendo fans are as psychotic and mal-adjusted as any other fandom and i'm tired of pretending that they're not i always imagine that nintendo doesn't have to pay a pr team to run damage control because their fans will do it for them it seems that no matter how low the company stoops it will always have a human shield of fanboys lining up to make excuses for them the most die-hard fans are so quick to forget about the company's misdeeds that you'd think they have amnesia at the end of last year nintendo got into some hot water in the span of a few weeks they shut down melee's biggest online event shut down a splatoon tournament when those players stood in solidarity with the melee players and shut down the charitable sale of joy-cons honoring the late edica three days later they unveiled sephiroth in ultimate and all the backlash magically disappeared when i pointed this out on twitter i spent the next week getting bombarded with apopletic responses of how much of an idiot i was for thinking that nintendo fans would actually express displeasure to the company wow what an awful take how foolish of me when if people ever protested the company's recent actions by pressing dislike on their totally unrelated youtube videos well actually october 2019 blizzard bans hearthstone player blitz chung for making pro hong kong comments their subsequent unrelated youtube videos are heavily disliked november 2018 fallout 76 launches as a buggy unplayable disaster bethesda gets ratioed on unrelated videos november 2017 ea reveals much-hated loot crates will be a part of battlefront 2 ratio august 2016 no man's sky grossly under delivers upon release ratio hmm now where did i get this absolutely bonkers idea again this baby is off the charts i was never trying to argue that spamming dislikes on developer videos is an effective means of instigating change i'm not even arguing that it's justifiable my point with all of this was that ratioing videos is a simple and direct way for consumers to publicly express their disapproval towards a company and recent history shows us that this is the natural response to controversy in the gaming industry the notable absence of dislikes on nintendo's video after the controversy says to me that the backlash never really existed all that hemming and hong in the moment was superficial and couldn't have reflected anyone's true convictions because the second nintendo jangled a shiny set of keys in front of the fans everyone seemed to forgive and forget the nintendo brigade was quick to jump down my throat to lecture me about how a video posted to nintendo's youtube channel featuring a best-selling nintendo franchise somehow exists irrespective to nintendo as a business many try to make the complete non-sequitur argument that disliking a youtube video is somehow equivalent to taking food off of sakura's dinner plate with one person comparing sakurai to a hapless walmart employee okay so that's how it's gonna be y'all wanna play ignoring the fact that this post isn't even directed at sakurai trying to frame him as an independent bystander to the big bad legal team above him is painfully naive and factually wrong so many people try to compartmentalize all of nintendo's nasty practices as the work of just a few dastardly lawyers in a desperate attempt to salvage the company's spotless image in their minds this may come off as a news flash to some of you but every corporation has a legal department every corporation is confronted with threats to their intellectual property very few corporations choose to respond to these problems as viciously as nintendo very few companies use mafioso tactics to harass and intimidate people who wound up on the wrong side of their terms of service very few companies rigged their country's legal system to threaten video game modders with jail time nintendo is starting to resemble a tyrant that's gone mad with power and their draconian disregard for the public good runs a hell of a lot deeper than a couple of bad apples on their legal team every decision any company makes comes straight from the top and as hard as it may be for some of you to believe sakurai is a hell of a lot closer to the top than the alternative lots of people try to obfuscate his role in the company by stipulating that he is not technically a nintendo employee this point is completely irrelevant when you consider how sakurai's actions directly influenced the bottom line of the company and how his entire career trajectory was dictated by nintendo's success he is the spokesperson for super smash bros by definition he represents the views of the company hello just like those oh so nefarious lawyers it is his job to toe the company line he oversaw two of nintendo's flagship franchises for decades he had the opportunity to make smash better for competitive players and he didn't he had the opportunity to speak out against nintendo's increasingly slimy business decisions and he didn't to claim in any way that sakurai somehow exists in a vacuum completely free of nintendo's influence demonstrates a complete ignorance towards the nature of business but hey who am i to dare commit sacrilege against one of nintendo's prodigal sons if nintendo is god sakura and all their other spokespeople are jesus christ and have been idolized as such you're not allowed to criticize them and you're especially not allowed to undermine their supreme authority when nintendo does all that anti-consumer stuff they're just operating within their fair and justifiable legal right but pressing dislike on a sakurai video now that's just cruel who would even consider doing such a thing eleven months before this the nintendo fandom actually decided to make use of the dislike button to protest the addition of bilith to smash ultimate and they didn't seem to be too concerned over sakurai's feelings here blatant doubles standards aside it's somewhat enlightening to realize where the nintendo fandom's priorities actually lie complaining about an optional dlc sword fighter in a game with 80 other characters i can't help but think that some of these people exist in neverland tangible problems in our world don't concern them only when their whimsical wonderland is disrupted do they show the slightest signs of resistance fortunately for nintendo pacifying the mob is as simple as unveiling the next shiny new toy and therein lies the ultimate problem there was once a time where enough people would object to nintendo's decisions and the company could actually be convinced to listen now we've reached a point where the militant worship of the companies drowning out dissenting voices in practically all cases of controversy all of us are left to reap the consequences of a company who knows their audience will tolerate anything they do as long as the product on screen is good enough they can charge 20 bucks a year for a barely functional online service that was free on prior systems they can charge 80 bucks for controllers with such significant defects that they make many games borderline unplayable they can release reskins of games that cost more than the originals they can arbitrarily limit the release window of games for no other reason than to jack up the price they can force customers to purchase an additional console if they want to create a second island in animal crossing at what point will nintendo cross the line to where the customer is no longer willing to get ripped off fortunately nintendo has the most loyal fans in the world and that line is nowhere in sight eh i will still buy [ __ ] from them i couldn't give less of a crap to the free melee thing that's the problem you don't give a damn and my problem is i care too much also what the hell you are calling nintendo consumers pathetic am i pathetic for having a switch yes in the church of nintendo the most adoring followers make the best sacrifices and as time goes on the untouchable deity only grows more hungry the sad reality is that the solution to nintendo's problems rests on the shoulders of the people least likely to do anything about them i get the impression that many of nintendo's followers somehow feel indebted to the company as if spending their hard-earned cash on the games consoles and collectible figurines isn't payment enough they coerced themselves to give more and more to a company who is only intent on taking the cycle of exploitation will perpetuate itself until the fans wake up and recognize that they don't owe nintendo anything and that a corporation 6 000 miles across the ocean doesn't actually care about them if you're looking towards nintendo for salvation you'd be better off placing that faith anywhere else before nintendo will change the way they treat their fans the fans must change the way they treat nintendo 40 years ago nintendo saved the video game industry now it's up to nintendo's fans to save themselves i'm not asking for people to hate nintendo i'm not asking for people to hate the fans all i'm asking is for everyone to step out of neverland and to treat nintendo as just another company which it is [Music] come on now do we people trying to say that the the ps3 copy the wii with the motion center don't give a [ __ ] [ __ ] [ __ ] the wii you know what they should copy they should copy how to get good games oh what are you doing to me oh nintendo

Channel: EmpLemon

Views: 1,819,351

Keywords: EmpLemon, Nintendo, Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, Super Smash Bros

Id: xgKY9hmbfgo

Length: 28min 47sec (1727 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 30 2021