was resisting the temptation to talk about the tlou remaster shit but the fact that jim ryan's name is trending because people are sick of his shit is extremely funny

i can kinda understand how that dude might think tlou needs a remaster. tlou's biggest strong point was the fact that it looked like a PS4 game on the PS3. play TLOU on the PS4 and suddenly the graphics are nothing special.

we're reaching a point where sony is selling games on graphical fidelity like "look, zoom in on those leaves! the leaves look good!!! they don't turn in to blurry jpegs up close!" so i can see why Big Graphics Man might think "we GOTTA remake the citizen kane of gaming!!!"

i never understood the praise heaped on tlou when it came out. it was good, don't get me wrong. the graphics were very big and it was a fun to play survival horror game. i guess it invented the "manpain dad protagonist and ai child companion" video game storytelling format.

i came away from tlou thinking "wow! the uncharted people made a pretty solid resident evil game!" and then spent the rest of my life after that feeling like some kind of extraterrestrial watching people be like "THIS IS THE MOST INNOVATIVE STORY IN GAMING..."

i guess i am just not impressed with a game "looking like a movie" if the story in the game is no more remarkable than any actual movie in the same genre I've seen. i want video games to look like shit i'd never see in reality.

let me put it like this, right: I'd probably like The Last of Us more if it was an actual movie and if the zombies were practical effects and makeup on human actors. tlou being a video game actively harms my enjoyment of it specifically because it's a video game.

i don't buy in to the idea that video games have to pretend to be movies in order to be considered "legitimate art." like. make extremely cinematic games. sure. shit's fun. but "looking like a movie" doesnt immediately elevate a game to high art in my mind.

if tlou was a movie it would be a good movie and the fact that it's a good video game with cutscenes that are also a good movie is very impressive in its own right, but there's this reverence for it that feels kinda undeserved.

in the interest of fairness i will say that TLOU is at least better than the last "Citizen Kane of Gaming" that made me feel like an alien, that being Bioshock Infinite. the game that said "Is racism bad? Heh... you decide!" and everyone was like "WOAAAAHHHHH"

bioshock infinite couldnt even commit to saying racism was bad. it was legitimately like "i guess its impossible to say if its good or bad....... sure, racism SEEMS bad, but if we got rid of it there would be riots in sky disney world..... so who can say......"

anyway to try to circle back to the point i think sony would be shooting themselves in the foot by trying to remaster tlou because they'd basically be putting the story of that game back under the eye of public scrutiny years after the shine has worn off.

you can pretty up the graphics to be bigger than ever, but realistic video game graphics kinda hit a plateau. sure, you can zoom in on a leaf and it won't pixel out, but the people will still look like PS4 people. PS3 people, even.

remastering last of us feels like sony is setting themselves up for a scenario where they just won't be able to use the IP anymore because it represents everything people dislike about the way sony is doing business these days.

all this goes without mentioning the fact that naughty dog is just not a good place to work. this is a well documented matter of public knowledge. it is fact. they're setting themselves up to reopen that wound at a time where people are prepared to just rip them apart.

"you know that studio that crunches people until they lose their minds? they re-remastered the last of us! you know, the game that turned "sad dad and quippy AI-controlled invincible child" in to a genre? the ps3 classic back! right after we just killed the ps3 for no reason!"

you see what i mean? theres like no good angle for them here. best case scenario this game comes out and everyone forget about it in a week. worst case scenario, the IP becomes unusable and the studio's name becomes poison.

People are calling for Jim Ryan to leave the company in big numbers because TLOU Re-Remastered got incidentally leaked in a big article of Playstation first-party devs talking shit about Sony's current business strategy. TLOU Re-Remasted is poisoned at the conceptual level.

People aren't even reading the big article. They're seeing TLOU Re-Remastered and saying "Man, fuck Jim Ryan." People are learning that guy's name from this incidental leak. That's how much of a bad idea it is.

This is like the fourth PR Bomb Sony has accidentally detonated in the past couple of months and it's getting to the point where people are learning Jim Ryan's name as "the boogeyman at Sony responsible for all of these messes." That's not a good place for a dude to be in.

I think a lot of the dumb shit Sony has been doing lately would have happened no matter whose butt was in the CEO chair. This is just where the momentum was gonna carry the company anyway. But Ryan is an extremely convenient person for angry fans to point at.

Ryan said "old game bad graphics who would want this lol" back in 2017 and you can just slap that quote on literally any bad business move Sony makes. It's like a lightening rod.

https://twitter.com/rainbowfission/status/1380654637016096772 oh absolutely. exact same energy.

i have no doubt in my mind that microsoft is waiting for the perfect opportunity to start lording their backwards compatibility features over sony. like. as soon as the XSX actually has some games worth owning on it.

"You know that game you bought on your 360 in high school? It's still yours... and it will be forever. Because Microsoft values your purchases. :)" - xbox commercial that will absolutely come out just a little bit after halo infinite actually comes out

rumors have been circulating about an imminent "playstation's answer to xbox game pass" announcement. i imagine that announcement was intended to soften the blow of the ps3 store shutdown. it'll have to be pulling like quadruple duty damage control now.

shutting down Japan Studio, shutting down the PS3 store, TLOU Re-Remastered leaking to overwhelmingly negative reception, and a big article of first-party devs being like "Oh god they're turning this place in to a The Last of Us Prestige Crunch Factory, Please Help..."

seems like sony is making a lot of hasty mistakes in the process of ramping up for their Biggest Console Generation Ever and i can't help but wonder if we'll see them in the "humbled and apologizing constantly" position Microsoft was in with the xbone

microsoft is in a very good position to get sony back for this absolutely fucking devastating burn sony got on them when ms was trying to kill used games and game sharing

no lies that youtube video fucked xbox up the whole generation. the WHOLE generation. and sony is giving microsoft a golden opportunity to get them with a youtube video just as cutthroat.

seems like the strat for buying game consoles now is "go for whoever spent the entirety of the previous generation apologizing." cuz like. the new xbox consoles are the culmination of all of the apologizing MS did for the Xbone launch fiasco and it's actually a killer device

like. i bought my ps5. i like my ps5. i think sony is fucking up right now but I also think they could easily course-correct before things get too fucked up for them. I think they know how early-gen bad press can fuck up the whole console.

i don't think tlou remastered is some kind of death knell for the company or the worst thing they've ever done or whatever, but clearly the way people are talking about it inside and outside of the company shows that the course needs corrected sooner rather than later

i think a project like tlou re-remastered is definitely indicative of screwed up priorities at the company and if sony doesn't wise up they're gonna find themselves on the receiving end of an extremely passive aggressive marketing campaign from microsoft

"We value your purchases and recognize them as valid forever. :) Past, Present.... AND Future. :) No need to buy a remaster because our Automatic Smart Scaling Framerate Enhancer Technology remasters them for you for free. :) We promise. :)" - unbelievably free slam dunk for MS

I've said this a couple of times before but I do legitimately think Sony has some kind of PS3 backwards compatibility in the works. Just a hunch. Functional PS3 emulators for PC exist now, Sony could make an official one.

The PS5 has a "hey this game might not work right on a PS5, just FYI" notification built in to the system, currently only used in a handful of PS4 games. That notification could cover a kinda-wonky emulator.

Like I said this is all just a big hunch, but if Sony suddenly announced "backwards compatibility is coming!!!" with nothing to show for it for several months... it'd make sense.

anyway I think it's very naive to try to identify a "boogeyman" within a company as being The Definitive Reason Your Video Games Are Bad. I don't think it's a good thing that people are doing that. But it is a legitimate problem for Sony that people ARE doing that.

people who have never heard his name before are learning about Jim Ryan under the label "the dude that's ruining playstation" and you don't want people learning your CEO's name under those circumstances.

i don't think jim ryan is evilly wiggling his fingers and personally tossing all your ps3 games in to a fire because he thinks all old games should be deleted forever. but... people are spreading his name around like he does that. and that's a PR problem Sony needs to solve.

sony is a whole-ass company with several layers of people making decisions top to bottom, so being like "fuck This One Guy" isn't really addressing the problem even if that guy is the CEO. but man. dude is totally set up for people to be like "fuck this very specific guy."

not to like indirectly defend the dude personally either. he's the ceo. it is perfectly logical to attribute bad business decisions to him. i'm just saying picking him as a boogyman isn't really critically thinking about the problem.

it is extremely funny to be like "fuck this one guy in particular" and big companies do take Bad PR Trends kinda seriously but I just feel like we're touching on issues with the company that are deeper than just one guy.

you know how people were talking mad shit on miyamoto for a little bit? and then he disappeared to work on the theme park? and now nintendo just has no public faces to point at for the bad decisions that just kept happening? i'm kinda reminded of that and i don't like it.

feels like we could be moving towards a future where companies just stop letting the public have Guys to point at, instead of actually fixing the problems that are causing people to point at Guys. There is no Guy. Only Company.

it is funny to imagine rich people at sony freaking out over the fact that their ceo's name is trending because a dumb thing he said in an interview in 2017 lines up with a string of bad decisions they made. but their solution might be "stop letting employees talk about things"

its very likely that someone inside sony might look at this and think "well obviously the problem isn't that people are upset with our business practices. the problem is that this one guy ran his mouth and gave people a name to get mad at. no more opinions from company reps."

i don't think i'm going to convince anybody to be more constructive with their video game business criticism. i just think people need to be more specific than "fuck this guy" so we don't see a "guy disappears but nothing changes" situation. i dunno.

just running my mouth cuz i'm bored at this point. typing my sentences on my computer.

it's kinda a no-win situation for what i want, i guess. nuanced and detailed criticism has no way of trending on twitter, the website that is designed for Companies to gather Data. but you know what can trend? a dude's name. it's the most sure-fire way to get their attention.