Episode 583: #MeToo in Videogames

The latest sexual harassment scandal rocks, and things are not steady with the developer. Bad puns aside, the industry continues to have to grow up from dude-bro heaven to actual places of business.

All that, as well as the following news items:

  • Batman: Arkham studio accused of failing to prevent sexual harassment
  • Spelunky 2 is now on Steam with an updated release window
  • Nintendo’s next Switch indie presentation tomorrow
  • 7.5 million players claimed a free copy of Total War Saga: Troy

Let us know what you think.

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This weeks question of the week, what world environment would you like to see your favorite game sequel take place in?

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Believe this, Nintendo and their Wii console takes another month as top seller. The only product that moves more hardware than the Wii is the DS. As a gamer, it’s hard to understand how the Wii product continues to sell like this with the least supported game library on the planet.

The DS is completely understandable as it has a huge library of games, is more cost effective, comes in pretty colors and can save you tons of arguments and fighting from your kids on a long trip. In many ways the DS is synonymous with peace and quiet. What does the Wii offer us? Wii Sports and a new control scheme along with a few hit titles from Nintendo but little else for now.

I’ll be the first to admit, I thought this would be Nintendo’s chance to turn it all around and get the third parties involved. They have everything going for them in terms of sales, third party developers should be pushing out games each month considering the craze factor of the hardware. This just isn’t true.

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PlayStation 2 fans may recall a little title called Okami, it’s an action adventure game developed by Clover Studios and published by Capcom. The original Okami title received fairly high reviews by many popular game sites, although there were a few flaws, the receiption seemed well received.

Clover Studios was closed after the release and all the intellectual properties went back to Capcom, the company that funded the studio, leaving Capcom responsible for future sequels.

Christian “Sven” Svensson said “I think we need a lot more people buying the current version before we seriously consider a sequel”. A harsh statement on the game’s combined sales figures, perhaps, but also probably an accurate one. (Kotaku)

This is the sound of a developer not so happy with prior performance and finding it too risky to try for a second title. Although many sequels outshine their parents there is some truth to the fact that slow selling parents will create slow selling sequels, there is something to be said about learning form past experiences.

The game had good reviews, isn’t it worth trying to make a second game based on that? Maybe people just aren’t jazzed about Japaense folklore, myths and legends as the basis for a game.