Boycotts don't work in gaming.
Says the man in the faux-USSR ushanka?
His argument was that boycotting Activision wouldn't work because it continues to market "cash cow" FPS and casual games, which will still be bought by audiences unaware of or uninterested in the boycott, and that the only people who would get hurt are the smaller developers it funds. But that's neither applicable in this case nor really true, for reasons he himself gets into.
What are Nexon and NCSoft's mass-market games in North America and Europe? Maple Story? Not for
years. MMOs are really their
only market; we
do form the core audience for these products and we
can influence the entire market, especially in the still-simmering wake of the bad will generated by TR. Of course we can't hurt them in Asia, but shutting down the audience for everything but Guild Wars 2 (too late for that for us) in an extremely wealthy region of the world would actually get them to notice.
Now for the argument that some smaller developers would get hurt... again, with their existing products, and the short duration I've proposed, I really don't see that as likely. But let's say it were; what would that accomplish? Smaller developers being less likely to work with NCSoft/Nexon in the region, the company taking ever fewer risks in the market, and eventually getting eclipsed by another publisher that still can productively work with new companies with novel ideas.
believe me, everyone here is as hurt, frustrated and angry as yourself. We just have to make sure that we don't burn bridges too soon ...
Wait, what?
How on earth would this burn a bridge? I'm not proposing we mail bombs to NCSoft HQ, or even a series of clever insults. I'm saying that we should stop buying their stuff, temporarily, to demonstrate what kind of market share they're losing.
You mentioned Tony's dialogue with NCSoft. This isn't two equals, working out a business arrangement. This is a supplier meeting with a client. If the client says, "Well, I wasn't very happy with what you were doing, and I thought you should know, but I'm going to keep buying your stuff anyway," what kind of message are they sending?
Not organizing behind a reasonable boycott would do us more harm.
I was sort of toying with the idea of an anti-boycott -- as in, "I wasn't interested in Guild Wars 2 or Wildstar before, but if we can work things out with City of Heroes I'll give them a shot."
Absolutely. I wasn't going to try Wildstar, but I definitely will if things work out with CoH. I'll even load back up Vindictus and Mabinogi, which I stopped playing about a year ago and years ago, respectively. It's exactly the same kind of market incentive; work with us and we'll do lots of business with you (NCSoft/Nexon).