Official Off-Topic Thread

[huZba]

And it worked perfectly. The most powerful items are the real Megaman X parts. It gets all dead rising players talking about megaman, increasing public awareness of the megaman series. Cheers for inafune for such a cunning stunt.

Onto other news, i just got Cooking Mama for DS. It's about uh... cooking things... with cooking mama.. basically a collection of minigames, kinda like wario ware, except all cookiing related. Really fast fun when you don't feel like engaging in a game with full power, but rather just feel like playing for a minute.

[bengo]

Dude, theres no megaman game for the 360, so their advertising wasn't so damn great was it?(Just being serious here, not trying to be mean Huzba )

[Panda]

Well, capcom isn't trying to advertise the 360, but their own games, so it works.

[bengo]

But I mean, the game is for the 360, so... ugh, nevermind, let's talk about something completely different now.

[huZba]

I'm also pretty sure that a very great number of 360 owners also have a DS, duh.

This just in: Ninja Gaiden sigma for PS3 has already sold almost half a million copies. (if i understood the german site correctly, my german is a bit rusty)

I bought it as well. Seems like there is A LOT of gamehungry PS3 owners that rip ps3 titles off the shelves as soon as they're released. So that'll bring some carrot for gamedevs to reach for when they make games for the PS3 platform. So there are roughly 3 million people who have very few games for their expensive console. Happy days for PS3 devs.

[Rox]

I'm annoyed by Ninja Gaiden Sigma. It must be THE most perfect game ever, since I thought the original NG Xbox was.. the best action game ever. And then they refined it into Black. And then they refined Black into Sigma. The only flaw I can think of is that it's for the PS3. OH BURN.

I hear they're making a real sequel for the 360, though. And until then, there's Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword which looks incredible. I might pick up the Transformers DS game, too. And MegaMan ZX Advent. I need games for my DS. The more games you have for a system, the less you feel like the system itself was a waste of money.

Not that I'd think so of my DS Lite anyway, because Animal Crossing kept me playing for exactly every day for ALMOST a full year. I was just, like, a month short or something, when my attention started failing. That's getting your money's worth from a game!

[.TakaM]

the first instance if product placement I can remember is KFC in crazy taxi, and I thought that was alright, some customers wanted to go to KFC, that's not really out of place, same with the batteries and bottle caps you can find in pikmin or the dole bananas in monkey ball, stuff like that I don't mind.

In the transformers movie, the only advertising I noticed was the fat nerd exclaiming to his camera how this is "way cooler than armageddon", and the 360, mountain dew transformers, I thought the armageddon mention was the worst, all were completely unnecessary but atleast the 360 and mountain dew cameos weren't just a simple flash of the logos

...might pick up the Transformers DS game...

I checked the game out... average at best

[Helm]

As for what determines what games have in them? Well that's the people who buy games. If you don't like the ingame advertising, don't buy the game, simple as that. Don't want more sequels? Don't buy sequels

Oh wow, your idea of consumer causality seems really ass-backwards. So buyers should excercise their god-given FREE WILL FOREVER and completely disregard years of force-fed social conditioning and downright mental programming (buy buy more things you recognize spend more money look remember logo brand buy consume cognate desire with consumption buy buy take more you need more you can never have enough entertainment is an injection send more money) and just break out of their imposed rote and start making responsible choices with how they spend their money. That's how the world changes.

No, those of us that have the cultural background and mental fortitude to see the advertising trends should publically and vocally dissent, we have to apply political force to counter the rampant advertisement encroachment of communication space and help the average joe have a chance to defend their brain from the constant attack. We are in a constant war of attrition with memetic bombardment and people don't just 'snap out of it and start behaving responsibly'. This is a relatively new concept and people don't know in how much danger they are yet, and boy, are people selling us stuff taking advantage of this preliminary innocence.

This is a grander issue than the quote that made me tackle it, but still, I just wanted to tell you that you're looking for the onset of consumer responsibility in the wrong place.

[huZba]

Yeah i know it isn't THAT simple. A sequel has already loads of advertising and image under it and yada yada yada and consumers work in the games world similar to how they work with every other brand or product that are sold for us. It's a good thing that the most vocal people aren't the average joes, but the Joe Behaving responsibly. But then again, the average joe has more force and more spontaneous actions and behave like drones attacking everything defined evil in their programming.

Anway, if having in-game advertising for example in a game has negative effect for sales and mr reviewer says that this is the one thing that really sucks about this game, they will reduce it. If NHL 200X drops sales compared to the previous one and mr reviewer says it's not new enough, they will work to make something new next time. That's what i mean and now that i look at i'd change the "more sequels" to "bad sequels". Small things affect sales...ridicilously small, it's all in the numbers. If feature XY makes people like the game 1% less, that will show in sales. If some feature is big and bad enough to have people start spreading the bad buzz about it, that feature will be less likely used by others. Some series have had a constant decline in sales just due to the fact that you can't constantly sell sequels in the same series for same people, they will get tired and stop buying the games, they don't have to snap out of it. When this happens they refurbish the series(like Megaman / Megaman X / Megaman ZX / Megaman Legends /Megaman EXE / Megaman Starforce, which are standalone series, but way different from each other luckily still gaining momentum from the megaman brand) or start making another one.

But why should the joe be helped? People like having strong image for their products and enjoy it. I like the associations coming with the transformers toys on my table. The marketing totally droned me, but i don't mind. They're cool on their own, but even better with moar mental images.. i really feel like going to buy a yellow camaro with black racing stripes and putting the autobot logo on the steering wheel. If i see a transforming robot toy in the store and it's not Transformers, i'll instantly go "That's totally shit, it's not transformers"

I didn't mean to say that people need to make more responsible choices, since whatever rocks their boat is just fine with me, but that their choices determine things regardless.

[Jad]

And it worked perfectly. The most powerful items are the real Megaman X parts. It gets all dead rising players talking about megaman, increasing public awareness of the megaman series. Cheers for inafune for such a cunning stunt.

WHAT THE BLOODY HELL IS WRONG WITH MY BRAINS?

It subconsciously replaced the 'c' and 'st' in 'c'unning 'stunt' and I was so confused I had to read it over for like three times before I realize what really was written there.

Failure D;