YoVG # 76 Atlus & the New Age

On the day of this recording, Atlus Games released a very thinly veiled threat against Streamers and Youtubers about their new game Persona 5. It prompted us to have a long conversation about their PR suicide and the new age of game journalism. The reality is, Atlus is perfectly within its legal rights to make these demands really. However, the reality also is, this threat does nothing but hurt them. See streaming is, in many ways, a free way for companies to advertise their games and get word of mouth to spread for free. Both Twitch and Youtube offers a very real and easy avenue to build a games hype and community. So by attacking the very people your customers are most likely to listen to about your game, you're strangling those avenues of free marketing. Doesn't seem complex but unfortunately much of Japanese business is based on old world (20+ years ago) thinking and mentality. It must be hell on the younger creatives at those companies. Lord knows western branches of these companies are fighting an uphill battle when it comes to explaining this thought process to stubborn, often downright backwards, executives in Japan.  In other news, Jim Sterling pisses a few people off, and Yookalaylee gets crapped on by the reviewers it was sent to. Granted, none of those reviewers were particularly interested in the first place which is why Playtonic went crowd funded in the first place isn't it? Backers haven't gotten the game yet of course (which in my opinion is a bit of a dick move) so we don't know how the audience the game was intended for will react. Shine on, and as always thank you to our Patrons for helping improve the show, and keep us ad-free.   If you're interested in being a patron or finding out what it is, check out The YoVideogames Podcast Patreon!