This Week In The Business: Sex, Violence, And Business Conflicts

“According to the email, Kindred Spirits will be re-reviewed and we will be equipped with specific feedback if there are concerns about the game’s content.” — The Twitter account of MangaGamer, announcing that Valve seemingly backtracked on its demand that the studio (and other risque visual novel developers) censor their games or see them removed from Steam.

Image: EA

QUOTE | “We’re appalled that the game is being marketed.” — British anti-gun violence group Infer Trust has called on Valve to pull an upcoming game which lets players simulate school shootings as the shooter. Valve has not addressed the issue and the game is still being offered for preorder on Steam.

QUOTE | “The team here spent many hours on this project and the approval process, so we’re clearly disappointed. But we hope Apple will reconsider in the future.” — A statement from Valve about having its Steam Link app rejected by Apple for “business conflicts” two days after Apple had approved it for release.

QUOTE | “Player choice and female playable characters are here to stay. We want Battlefield V to represent all those who were a part of the greatest drama in human history, and give players choice to choose and customise the characters they play with.” — DICE GM Oskar Gabrielson responds to complaints about the studio’s decision to feature women in Battlefield V, both on the game’s cover art and in its reveal trailer.

QUOTE | “There’s a bunch of work to do to make things more diverse, and you can’t put that on the shoulder of the group that’s been marginalised and not represented. It’s exactly the people who have been privileged and fortunate that have to do the work of saying, ‘Hey, we need to do better’. Because it’s wrong not to.” — Double Fine founder Tim Schafer explains why white men need to be pushing to have more than just white men represented in games.

QUOTE | “It’s not that developers don’t want to try different things and experiment. It’s that players have come to expect that there will be cutscenes, or there won’t be cutscenes, or whatever the convention is for that particular genre. And they have not only gotten accustomed to it, but they’re angry if it doesn’t appear.” — What Remains of Edith Finch creative director says players have shaped the evolution of game narrative, for better and for worse.

QUOTE | “Making work that comes from somewhere personal is that ‘special sauce,’ and we know hits need that, especially as our audience grows. But it has a cost… We all know that it has a cost.” — Media Molecule co-founder Siobhan Reddy discusses the “soul tax” developers pay to make games.

QUOTE | “In my opinion, rather than separating portable gaming from consoles, it’s necessary to continue thinking of it (portable gaming) as one method to deliver more gaming experiences and exploring what our customers want from portable. We want to think about many options.” — Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO John Kodera suggests the company is still interested in the portable gaming market (all evidence of the Vita’s lifespan to the contrary).

QUOTE | “PS4 is entering [the] final phase of its life cycle…” — Kodera again, this time forecasting that Sony will soon see declining hardware sales, with a return to growth happening after March of 2021.

QUOTE | “So going to the one or two isolated over-reactions, seeing how those over-reactions play to one or two governments, and then making that the standard and doing that industry-wide? That’s not going to be productive for the industry, or for gamers.” — ESA president Michael Gallagher explains to an audience at the Nordic Game Conference why the industry shouldn’t feel pressure to accelerate the self-regulation of loot boxes just because some governments have already determined the industry is actively violating gambling regulations.

QUOTE | “I think early on we knew our marketing was just literally going to be yelling ‘FTL‘ a bunch.” — Subset Games’ Justin Ma explains the two-person studio’s nuanced strategy for promoting its second game, Into the Breach.