Culture Clash

(July 2007)

Stupid People Tricks

Leftovers: responses to last month's column far exceeded the previous recordholder, and with gratifyingly fewer death threats (if you call Final Fantasy “pap,” I guess you should expect some emails). Turns out the publisher rep with whom I locked horns is infamous for bribe attempts and bullying; I recently learned that some months ago he tried the same thing on- well, let's just say you're probably a subscriber.

Not long ago, Xbox Mugwump Peter Moore famously said “I can't comment on failure rates, because it's something- it's a moving target…y'know, things break.”

Things certainly do. In fact, some outlets are calculating 360 failure rates in excess of 30%, and many consumers (me, hello) got back a “repaired” machine with exactly the same problem. But we're not here to discuss the 360's catastrophic reliability problems, or Peter's arrogant head/sand cohabitation, or Microsoft's boneheaded refusal to confront a disastrous situation right when a minor change in corporate behavior could give the firm a needed advantage in a war they're about to lose by their own idiotic choices. No, this month we're going to talk about grander scale folly, of which the above is but an example.

An astonishing number of videogame executives have made entire careers out of saying patently absurd things in public. Peter's quote above is practically sane compared to, say, everything that every Sony executive has uttered since 2004. But though many of these phrasebombs cannot be construed as anything other than slapstick comedy, it is nonetheless hard to take seriously an industry whose executives are apparently gabbling buffoons.

Admittedly, not many nongamers – possibly not many gamers, either – pay much attention to the peculiar day-to-day declamations emitted by these people. So it would be melodramatic to claim that strange comments (such as those made by StarForce employees) are “damaging” to the industry. The things they say are moronic; however, they're not immediately harmful. But though it may not be directly injurious, one does expect a certain level of tact and diplomacy from the representatives of any global, multi-billion dollar business, a level that's not apparent here. And it's gotten worse, particularly on the console side, in this latest generation.

Bill Harris is the go-to guy for tracking this sort of thing, along with shrewd analysis of various industry happenings. His blog Dubious Quality is anything but, and if Penny Arcade is the Doonesbury of the videogame industry, Bill is certainly its Dave Barry, offering witty observations whose hilarity belies their wisdom and depth of perception into a convoluted world that seems to make a business of obfuscation and denial. He created the Executive Interview Rule (“Don't be a dickhead in interviews”) in hopes of steering some of these individuals toward the light. The distressing thing about the Rule is that it has to be stated at all; one would assume it'd go without saying. Long history, though, tells us that it's not the case – at least not in this business. And yet casual, frequent violations of the EIR mean that scarcely a day goes by without some outlandish one-liner from an industry mouthpiece.

The oddball stuff people say must come from some misguided belief that it's effective communication, as if being a jackass is a better way to get attention than being honest or frank. Microsoft's John Rodman employed this strategy when arguing that the 360 and Wii weren't in competition. The approach he chose – calling everyone who owns a Wii juvenile – was louder, but the claim is petty and subjective, and therefore less meaningful, less accurate and less relevant than a much more valid postulation: specifically, that the 360 and Wii aren't in competition because of the price difference and the types of games and gamers each system is targeting. Or, to take it a step further into the realm of sanity, that they're not in competition since many gamers will own both. Rodman's and other statements are geared to generate attention through offense rather than validity. In this way videogame executives are essentially entertainers, more like Ann Coulter than serious businesspeople. Similarly, zombielike repetition of irrelevant talking points to dodge an uncomfortable or embarrassing line of questioning, as Todd Holmdahl did in his recent interview with Dean Takahashi, suggests that these executives are so out of touch with reality and so unskilled in the art of quotification that they simply cannot speak to their public without insulting its collective intelligence.

Would 360 sales have plummeted if Peter or Todd had said “Yeah, we're obviously aware of the issues and we're working hard to address them in future hardware revs; but more importantly, we're doing everything we can to make sure our existing customers' support experience is the best it can be” instead of “y'know, things break?” We'll never know, any more than we'll know what might have occurred if Ken Kutaragi had said “It is really expensive, right now, because of the Blu-Ray. But of course we're working hard to bring that price down as fast as possible. And in the meantime, you really get a lot for your money.” Whether or not honesty is the best corporate policy is open to debate, but misdirection should be limited to the bounds of this universe.