Topic: The Chit Chat Thread

@Kidfried Was the person a middle-aged woman with bifocals, a large purse, her wallpaper on her phone being pictures of her cat, and wearing conservative business attire on her way to work as a receptionist? That’s what I’m envisioning. The grandmas of the world feeding the mobile microtransaction epidemic. And of course 14 years old boys with their parents credit card playing Fortnite. 😜

@RogerRoger Nice one, I even read it with Attenborough's voice

@Kidfried Was there a small whaling fleet following him?

I was surprised to find someone I work with had dropped some actual coin on a Star Trek mobile game. Not massive amounts but still quite shocked.

@Rudy_Manchego I did spend a bit of money on the first Trexels game, only a couple of quid but I quite enjoyed that.

@KALofKRYPTON I think he spent something like £15-20 all told. I am not sure which game but it seemed to be one of those builder type games.

@RogerRoger Great comment, haha. We humans are a weird species.

@Rudy_Manchego Sounds like it could be Trexels.

£15-£20 I suppose isn't all that bad for something you might spend 100s of hours on.

I didn't spend that long on Trexels (or that much) - but my philosophy with FTP+MTX games is that anything up to a reasonable retail price is fine by me for something that will add to my enjoyment of an otherwise free game. If I felt that I 'had' to make the purchase for the game to be any good, then I'd most likely abandon it.

I spent money on STO and Warframe, don't play either anymore but I don't begrudge the spend.

@RogerRoger Did you ever see the Steve Irwin 'Jedi Hunter' video?

Used to be hosted on TheForce.net back in the day.

EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ffeLRuKCI0

@jdv95 TLOU Online and Killzone Online day one sounds off. Remember that this system comes out at a time when there are plenty of online games releasing. I don't think they're that stupid, sending of the two out to fail like that. On top of that, two Guerilla games on the same day? Nah.

@Octane yeah you are right .

was a bit to exited for a moment.

@KALofKRYPTON I had never seen that before! Thanks!

I work a couple of minutes from the new Pokemon store in London. Opened at 10am, me and a colleague went to take a look thinking there might be a bit of a crowd. People were lining up through Westfield since the crack of dawn - no chance of getting in!

Going to give it another go in a few hours. I want a plushy!!

@kyleforrester87 Yikes! Sounds like it'd trigger one too many MCM flashbacks for me.

Gotta buy 'em all.

@RogerRoger I wouldn't make a special effort to go to anything like this to be honest, but people had come from all over the place!

@kyleforrester87 The other day, a random Wikipedia Walk led me to the list of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time. I'll be honest, the order (and content) of the top five surprised me.

1. Pokémon - $95 billion
2. Hello Kitty - $80 billion
3. Winnie the Pooh - $75 billion
4. Mickey Mouse & Friends - $70 billion
5. Star Wars - $65 billion

And yet, if it were a dedicated Star Wars shop, I think we'd all expect such a queue, right?

@RogerRoger Yeah that's kind of surprising. But, then I suppose Star Wars fans are more vocal than Hello Kitty fans - I guess I'm not really surprised Pokemon takes number 1 though.

There isn't a huge amount of difference between 2 > 5 either really. Just a casual 15 billion.

@kyleforrester87 Yep, just a casual $15 billion... which is the total estimated value of The Simpsons, putting them at #30 on the list (beneath ten other Japanese manga / anime / game franchises, too).

I shouldn't be surprised by Pokémon taking the top spot, thanks to those aforementioned MCM memories, but to see by how much (and to see the value of those middle three, too) did widen my eyes somewhat. Never underestimate the power of cute, I guess!

@LN78 Probably because they don't make a wallet big enough. I mean, there's "set for life" and then there's "GDP of a mid-sized country" (although being serious for a moment, since he wanted to donate all the money to children's schools and educational charities, how much could be too much?).

@RogerRoger That is super interesting. 3 of the top 5 being Disney properties is also just plain crazy. Nothing stopping Disney from taking over the world except for Pokémon and Hello Kitty. Go figure.
Hello Kitty and Winnie the Pooh have sold a whole lot of small trinkets and plushies to outpace all the Star Wars action figures, lunch boxes, and LEGO sets out in the wild.

@LN78 Who knew mice were so good at haggling?

@Th3solution Indeed. Seventh place is Disney Princess, too, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe (of which I know you're a fan) just makes the top ten with $34 billion. Filling in the gaps between all these Disney properties are two more manga titles and good ol' Mario... so basically, between them, Disney and Japan own the world.

Another franchise you like, Wizarding World (a.k.a. Harry Potter) is eleventh. There were a couple other surprises, too, like Spider-Man being bigger than Batman by three billion bucks.

Your use of "go figure" made me chuckle, given what we're discussing here.