The Purpose of a Forum (Opinion Piece)

Perhaps saying that "nobody gives a toss about sales figures" is unfair - after reading beemoh's post I'll alter that to "nobody gives a toss about dull sales figures". If someone posts a weekly sales charts or says "sales for PS4 are up this month", I will not care. But, as beemoh rightly points out, hearing that something has performed extraordinarily well is interesting.

beemoh wrote:

Like Mas pointed out, it's Mr. Sales-Figures-Are-Boring-Always-And-Without-Exception-And-We-Should-Never-Mention-That-So-Much-As-The-Concept-Thereof-Exists himself, Balla, who posted the news that Wii U sales jumped 666% when they did.

Oh come on.  What's not interesting about sales jumping 666%?  If it had been 672%, it wouldn't be as impressive.

That's not the entire story, natch.  Sales figures can occasionally be interesting, but as a rule of thumb they're not.  And of course, half of it depends on how you tell 'em: very few finance stories require more than a couple of lines and a .gif to relate the interesting bits.

What Beemoh wrote up, really. Something I couldn't add to if I tried.

Though I'm really not going to argue my case anymore. The majority here don't care about sales figures, so I'm not going to discuss them here. After all, I could be posting something else instead. Though I'm open to the idea of a thread for this sort of discussion, as Balladeer suggested, but again there's probably no point in having one if it's just going to be the usual suspects checking in (I'm also sure calling it something finance-related will just turn people away XD)

Balladeer wrote:

Sales figures can occasionally be interesting, but as a rule of thumb they're not.  And of course, half of it depends on how you tell 'em: very few finance stories require more than a couple of lines and a .gif to relate the interesting bits.

Most sources that tell it as it is don't offer the sort of analysis and opinion that we have been brought up reading from the lineage of N64 Mag. Heck, outside of videogames (you did mention "finance stories" even current affairs journals like the Economist won't write two lines for anything related to sales, again revealing their importance when necessary.

The Financial Times still sells week on week, whereas Nintendo Gamer failed to sell. I think that tells us what we need to know.

I think that post proves what a good idea of mine it was.

I knew someone was going to post that. Drat.

I'm all for just going with what Jimbob and Beemoh said, in addition to whatever I outlined on the first page: it all depends on context.

Not sure where to put this but two posts happened yesterday which sort of got me thinking, if you read back at some of these old posts it sorts of fits here.

This from Jas We'll never know for certain so it's probably better just to focus on what's cool/interesting about these games & discuss that instead.

Then this one from Balla Is it time to address this? Or is it too sordid a subject for this lovely cheery forum?

Now they are talking about different things but have a lot in common as well, both came from sort of news. One was how I feel about a situation with two Switch games and how the studios have addressed them.

The other being Jay on Jim Sterling where I guess he now sees him as Jim "I'm in the clickbait business now" Sterling, which lead to these replies from Jas and Balla.

I'm not saying nothing is wrong with these replies but why does everything have to be cheery, I know the actual real world is shit at the moment and we can use gaming as an escapism but these are still things that may or may have not been happening in gaming.

Does Balla really need to ask can we talk about Jim Sterling, why can't we? Can I not bring up a opinion / possible news on games that are being talked about or even the Kojima thing to reply to a post made by Balla (sorry not trying to single you out) made about Shigsy as to me that was relevant to what Balla posted?

Drunka has put the post Jas made in his sig, now I'm not sure but knowing Drunka he wants us to be positive and focus on the cool/interesting thing about games which is great but if I've not enjoyed a game can I not say so as I'm being negative or I don't know you say you like whatever and I bring up some sort of news on it which is a tad negative be it I don't know the frame-rate in Yooka-Laylee and I'm shoot-down for bringing up such things as I'm not focusing on the cool game.

To me that is something to talk about, sure it’s not for everyone but is relevant to the subject matter and again why can't we talk about it along with possible things happening in gaming like Jim Sterling.

I don't want this being another newsgate and I might be making a mountain out of a molehill but do me it feels like the old sales posts above.

I don't think anyone shouldn't be allowed to talk about anything, for any reason. To quickly address some of the specific examples you mention:

• Not sure what Balla was getting at, as we'd discussed the same subjects in that very thread.
  
• With Jas' quote, I just feel like there are some subjects where none of us are any closer to the truth than anyone else and we sometimes have discussions that go round and round in circles. Not worth worrying about.
  
• With the Shigsy thing, I'm not opposed to discussing it at all but that was a thread I'd gone out of my way to make a place for positivity and celebration when people are sad.

There's nothing off limits, but at the same time if you're bringing people down for no reason, maybe don't? I dunno.

...so the car ran over the puppy and then doubled back.

Er, whoops, wrong thread.

Nyarg. Had a lovely reply to this written out and the Internet swallowed it. In short, it agreed with Drunka, whilst also making sure to mention that it wasn't an official line from the top.

Something that wasn't in the reply previously is this: whilst you can talk about whatever you'd like (within reason, morality, etc.), people may not want to discuss that with you. We have a number of threads with zero replies (and Zero replies ) as evidence...

I get why Balla brought up Shigsy thing in the Shigsy thread and I guess as it was linked to him, he felt it was best to go there instead of general gaming news. Either way, I would have still brought up to me a relevant reply which due to it possibly hinting at Kojima, and I shouldn't keep posting him.

Sure if it was the movie thread and we're talking Ghost in the Shell, and I bring up Kojimas thoughts on it. Yeah sure that is over the top and not really directly related, where what I was saying I thought was.

Same goes for the online stuff with the Switch games, you Drunka bring up about online and I wish it was there or something like that. Which I reply, well I think this why it isn't at the moment and it seems from the reply from Zero, he hadn't seen it before.

Jas bringing up his thoughts not problem either, maybe I should of replied back to him something like well I think the devs are right but just lets hope when fixed, we all have a bash at Fast RMX or he could have put similar in his to me.

He may have meant that with is post and I may have took the wrong way but similar to what Jim Sterling has been talking about, it felt like that because I'm being negative about Nintendo and were not allowed to do that, we've got to talk about the cool/interesting things instead.

Which again might have meant lets move and talk about the games, even if negative like I didn't like the controls in Snake Pass.

On your last point Drunka even this might sound weird but it did bring me down and why I posted here instead of having a outburst, as I really felt like I was being censored along with maybe the forum with the can't talk negative about Nintendo, can't talk about negative news, can't talk about something relevant to something else as it brings up someone.

It might be odd that I'm feeling down about what is negative stuff but not being able to talk about it made me even more sad.

Hey man, you do you, you can post what you want. Just remember that most of us here aren't that into speculation about behind the scenes stuff and none of us are that bothered about frame rates and purely statistical stuff. You're allowed to post whatever you want and nobody's gonna censor you, but by the same token everyone else is allowed to say if they're not too fussed about the issues you are.

And to reiterate: the thread called Shigeru Miyamoto is just brilliant is not the place for negative posts. There are other threads those discussions can (and do) go in, but when I see a reply in that thread I get excited that I'm going to see some small point of light in this otherwise dreary, miserable existence. There's only so many times a man can have his heart broken before it just doesn't mend.

Thanks Drunka

You are welcome my child. All are welcome in Drunka's Kingdom of Boozing and Being Chill.

Drunkalilly wrote:

And to reiterate: the thread called Shigeru Miyamoto is just brilliant is not the place for negative posts. There are other threads those discussions can (and do) go in, but when I see a reply in that thread I get excited that I'm going to see some small point of light in this otherwise dreary, miserable existence. There's only so many times a man can have his heart broken before it just doesn't mend.

If the mods. would like to move that bit somewhere else - I dunno, into news or summat - they have my blessing.

I'll see what I can do.