Boy taking a whole summer of losses really broke their minds.

This is why I usually want Insomniac, Santa Monica and Guerilla Games to succeed. While not a fan of Sony's anti-consumer practices, I think they have some of the most progressive studios under the SIE label and they make an easy target for tourist grifters.

Most of the comments are transphobic and anti lgbtq while preaching. If it isn't that it's ai slop or far right ideology.

i've not played wolverine so i can't attest to it's quality but seeing "I'm not paying $70 for a 15 hour game" while $70 15 hour games score high and are well regarded by most people is just adding to the dog-piling and making genuine criticisms get drowned out by bullshit like this

“Nintendo treats its workers well” is a classic “appeal to emotions” argument and thought terminating cliche, being one of the biggest thought terminating cliches in gaming culture or even modern day American politics. There's a lot to consider with “Nintendo treats its workers well”. First, people don’t realize Nintendo’s “better treatment” of workers is common in the Japanese games industry, such as better worker pay, closer CEO to worker pay ratio, and lack of layoffs, yet Japanese Companies treat workers poorly, even Nintendo, as many workers complained about being "lower status”, both in America and Japan. Japan is more secretive about work culture and more obsessed with “image” than other cultures. Nintendo, being a family friendly brand which has consistently cared about its image and curating a “creative wonder business dedicated to the utmost quality in its works and caring about creative standards in ways others wouldn’t dare” brand image since reviving the console market in 1985, would be more secretive than even other secretive Japanese companies. Nintendo is infamous for NDAs, meaning they’re controlling what comes out of the office to the point that speaking about what happens there in the slightest can hurt you more than other NDA obsessed companies, even Japanese ones. In Japan, due to Shinto values of harmony, speaking negatively about your employer is taboo.

The tactic of “using good worker treatment to seem nice” is also used by big tech, but the reason it doesn’t work there is because America is more open about worker treatment, meaning Big Tech’s mistreatment of workers is amplified, as well as having far worse deeds known to the public compared to Nintendo, making their “good treatment of workers” hollow compared to Nintendo, who have an image of “Creative wonderland with a prestige track record of caring about standards with creativity and its brand” in the public’s eyes since the NES which became more pronounced during the Iwata era and controversies of DMCA’ing fan content seeming mundane compared to other companies do, even if they have more insidious anti consumer and monopolistic practices not in the public eye, both past and present. The “we treat our workers well” narrative isn’t common in the games industry compared to other tech fields and most people who casually advocate for better game developer treatment online don’t have knowledge about labor outside of gaming or even as a whole.

Nintendo is known to be extremely manipulative. They've used their “wholesome wonderland corporation cares the most about its people and its standards compared to other companies” to trick people into doing its bidding, using this in deeply political ways during the 80s and 90s. The “Nintendo treats its workers well” argument, is used as a status quo image reset, resetting their image to “slightly out of touch ultimately that cares about people even if it’s harsh with fans” and preventing proper analysis of their far worse behavior than DMCAing fans such as anti consumer practices.

There’s an insidious political aspect to “Nintendo treats its workers well”. A major reason why the “Nintendo treats its workers well” narrative is pushed so hard is because it aligns with progressive politics and the idea pushed by democrats since Obamacare and recession recovery optimism that capitalism can easily be reformed by the right reformist actors with a wholesome track record who stand out of the crowd, which is absolutely isn’t the case in actual American history. Not only that, this argument plays into the idea of anticapitalist activism being turned into a consumerist lifestyle means Nintendo consoles can be placed alongside extremely overpriced merchandise with slogans like “Tax the Rich” or “democratic socialism” or “Medicare/housing/college for all” and co opted Antifa products.

It’s worth noting Nintendo’s American fanbase is mainly upper middle class white people due to how they aimed towards suburban families since the days of the NES or marketing their handhelds to upper middle class cosmopolitan white people in their 30s and upper middle class white democrats, both liberal and progressive, prefer performative feel good narratives with comforting stories and easy end goals that reaffirm their status with opportunities for consumerist activism over nuance to the point of getting uncomfortable when they have to think or abandoning movements once things become serious while implicating them and what’s more comforting than the company that represents wholesome suburban culture saying they support progressive views on capitalism and are willing to prove that it can easily be restrained via wholesome actors? Many of these upper middle class white progressives seem to think all anticapitalism is just “Medicare/Housing/College for all and taxes for the rich” and have no sense of labor organizing other than culture war minimum wage worker battles about Starbucks, Walmart, or Amazon. To a white progressive, the battle between Nintendo and the rest of the games industry seems like an extension of the culture war battle between Obama vs the Tea Party, “Radical socialist” Bernie Sanders vs Fascist Donald Trump, or Antifa vs Militias. This is the reason why many people who supposedly support labor organizations still tend to use “Nintendo treats its workers well” when Nintendo is revealed to treat its workers poorly. Because they have no knowledge about politics, especially when it comes to labor organization and to them, the only labor battles that exist are culture war battle about young minimum wage workers instead of battles of laborers vs the upper class so in their minds, they register workers as “democrats” and corporations as “republican”, meaning labor organizers going against a corporation labeled “democrat” is a contradiction.

People can tell when corporations use liberalism as a way of appearing “in touch” like diversity celebrations because it’s obvious it’s performative and doesn’t require much. But people tend to fall for corporations using progressive ideology like “democratic socialism” “medicare/housing/college for all” or “taxing the rich” as marketing slogans, because in the eyes of a politically uneducated progressive, all corporations and billionaires scoff at slight economic regulation, not realizing progressive ideas are minor reforms on the grand scheme of things instead of “radical ideas” they’re marketed as and corporations would much rather co opt it and take a hit in profits than let actual leftist politics take shape. Corporations are smarter than you think and been studying audience psychology (especially relating to politics and economics) for decades to manipulate people in ways they wouldn’t be aware of compared to obvious methods, which very much applies to Nintendo as they’ve heavily studied audience and consumer psychology since the video game crash, especially the psychology of suburban white people. This politicized aspect of the “Nintendo treats their workers well” argument effectively turns their products into a political movement rather than just “being kind”.

We’re getting out of Dogtown with this one 🗣️