I'm trying to work out the demographics of the top sellers list and one thing that really sticks out for me is EA sports. I'm sure that the battle royale crap is inevitably being astroturfed due to the fact that it's 'free' but it's baffling how that 'game' which really isn't a game let's be honest has consistently stuck in the top 20. As near as I can work out from youtube and the types of people that seem to be playing it, it seems to be football nerds that are giving it the main bump and normies on top of that.
I supposed I should be grateful that there are some somewhat gamer games popping up on the top seller list lately. I'm bringing it up because I'm deeply suspicious of a lot of these bland corporate titles given how much everybody even the people who used to like playing them is fed up now yet they still keep churning away making money which is very curious. If I had half their marketing skills and marketing team I'd be a billionaire already but I wouldn't be surprised if there was something more going on here because of how often Valve deliberately looks the other way when it comes to fake reviews especially.
I'm just amazed there are people out there who will spend $60+ on a game they don't even like and admit has gotten shit then clearly keep buying micro-transactions for that very same game.
It's combining tribal sports mentality with gambling. It's even more insidious than the Asian stuff where they combine sexy women and gambling.
Remember how there have been full on riots and street wars over teams? (Hell I now from my UK mates you don't where blue or green on certain days in certain areas of Scotland) Combine that with gambling and it's why EA sports games are so high on the sellers list.
I don't play them but I imagine they keep them away from the leftists as much as possible as if those lose popularity then I bet EA goes a year later...
Seems likely it's gambling, I'm just baffled by it, even though I'm British I never got the sports obsession and it's one of the reasons I don't gel with normies very much. I just think it's odd that EA sports of all things is what you'd pick, at least Rocket League is a real game even if it's turned to micro-transaction trash as well. I'm trying to poke more at the psychology of it all.
Don't you have a lot of betting shops in the UK?
It's basically that plus you don't need to go outside to do it and kids can play it as 'it's just a game'. It's actually worse as its using REAL life teams and players and using the already existing tribal attitudes to get people to gamble more and support their team.
As much as some people want to ignore them "dudebros" are still a huge demographic, they didn't go away with the 360 generation. They are actually much more of a "casual gamer" than people playing mobile games.
That does make sense, I guess I've been underestimating how many people would buy a sports game just because it has FIFA on the package.
They buy FIFA because it's the only mainstream soccer game. They buy Madden because they have the exclusive liscence to use NFL teams. Any other game is A) relegated to PC and B) is janky as shit.
I think there are a lot of guys who will buy the NFA or NBA game because it's the NFL or NBA game, even if they hate what EA has done.
They'll pay full price for the "new" game every year so that they can have the up-to-date roster even though that's the only significant change. This has been going on since the PS1 days, though there were more releases that genuinely added features. People hated it then too, but they clearly kept buying.
But more importantly, they'll upgrade so that they can play with their friends who also have the latest year/version.
All of this would end if there were competition for games with the official leagues, teams, and players. But it won't because the parties involved make money hand over fist while spending as little as possible.
You also have to understand that they only buy the latest sports title and CoD, very little else. Serious gamers look at it as "I could buy so much more game for the $70 this costs" they look at as "this is half of my gaming purchases, who cares"
Its all fake and gay, so it's impossible to say.
Traditional book publishing is absolutely pozzed, and it's a means of funnelling money to politicians. They get 50m advances for books that sell 500 copies, or are paid advances for books they never actually have to write. And then they self-purchase a few hundred copies from a few specific bookstores and get to the top of the new-york times bestseller list, while books selling millions written by the wrong people can't get on the list.
Book publishing is at 130B per year. Video games are 3x that. at 360B or so. And they are immersed in gambling and trying to get people psychologically addicted down to the reward schedule and sound design. If you think they're not 20x as corrupt you're kidding yourself.
If it didn't sell all that well one year, would you be able to tell? Or could they fudge it a bit for stock manipulation and with the goal of maintaining perception as popular, which becomes a self fufilling prophesy and so ensuring the next game does better. How do they measure sales, is it an estimate like the new york times list relies on a few specific stores and then extrapolates. Do games-pass users count as sales....
I don't trust them at all. Nor should you.
This is what's really getting my weaponised autism going, I would not be shocked if shady people have seen the potential for profit with the games industry and that's why they've locked down an industry so hard that should frankly be irrelevant to those boomers who have never played a game in their lives.
It stands to reason then they're going to wokify it, make sure it's filled with their loyalists so they can consistently make money not just of ESG but other shady shit as well. Yeah of course I don't fucking trust these people, it just gets more and more interesting the more I do maths on it and start noticing things on the top sellers list. I would not be shocked if Valve themselves were involved to some degree as well.
There is supposed to be some connection to the underground (Yakuza) within the Japanese gaming industry at least historically u/AlfredicEnglishRules I think might have some sources for details on it. He also might have some on the American market, but to a large extent one could argue the industry was already within the criminal element.
The Japanese Yakuza part isn't even subtle. They were the only organization the US military was willing to work with on certain projects. Nintendo was a gambling card company before they discovered toys and then videogames. Sega was originally Service Games or SG. Japanese initials include the next vowel. Sony was a parts manufacturer. They all got funding from the Yakuza and US military to start new ideas in Japan as part of rebuilding it.
Videogames in the US got their start in Chicago arcade businesses. There's a reason why LaGuardia destroyed and banned pinball. When he was mayor, they didn't even have flippers for the machines, so it was pure luck.
Atari was started by an investor and two engineers. We openly talk about the engineers like Nolan Bushnell, but not the investor. His name is in books like the Ultimate History of Videogames, but you can't find it if you looked at the book on Google docs.
In the same book, you find out Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak worked at Atari. Jobs wanted help in starting Apple and went to Bushnell for investors. Guess who was introduced?
That was the same time Hollywood investors started going outside for new ventures. Places like Las Vegas or Silicon Valley, or even Theme Parks for that description. You can find the investors by looking at books or mob movies. There's a great museum in Vegas that is about how Vegas got started.
You can tell sales numbers when you see possible sales vs actual sales. The Genesis sold 30-40 million consoles, but it's top selling game sold 10 Million. The PS1 sold 100 million consoles, and it's top game sold 12 million. PS2 sold 160 Million consoles, and GTA San Andreas was 19 Million. The reason why the Wii had manufacturing problems was because Nintendo based everything off of Sony official numbers. No one knew what an actual 100 Million sales looked like.
Then you look for a popular niche. Videogames are huge to gamers, and non existent to everyone else. D&D is for nerds, but the company is doing well. Bookstores are everywhere, but none of the companies seem to be doing the same. That weird state of popular bankruptcy is common. With digital books, games and more you see it happening a lot. I doubt Valve is directly involved, but sales themselves are. DEI is a great way to make sure the company stays hidden but public. You get a company that always seems to be going bankrupt, and yet is well known enough no one would care if they saw a truck hauling their stuff.
They fix their books for investors vs IRS anyway, why not one more? This shows up in history books about the companies all the time. The guy who founded Universal never kept any paperwork on deals, because that could be used as evidence. We have way too many stories about two engineers who start a company and then become billionaires without any mention of how they got the funding or sold anything. We owe the mob a ton for everything, but it's hard to get out of that mess. We still need the idiot engineers starting businesses, but who will fund them? Why would anyone fund them unless they intended to use it for something else?
The only real company that has, and been successful afterwards, is Nintendo. They have no qualms with publicly working with Yakuza or military based companies. Pilotwings 64 did so well, the military simulation company made a branch that made games. Konami, Capcom, and every arcade company you can think of are in the mob somehow, and they all have games on Nintendo Consoles. Making good games, and being ahead of the curve on marketing has kept them ahead of the popular niche market for decades. There should be a book on this, but no one is willing to write it.
Something that has really stuck in my mind lately is that consooomers will consooom. Propaganda won't stop them. Declining quality won't stop them. Hell, lack of money won't even stop them.
So chances are EA games are just popular, sad as that is.
...Just a bunch of random words, loosely held together.
HAS to be AI generated.