Topic: The Chit Chat Thread

Allow me to indulge on random thought which recently occurred to me —

My main hobby and interests are video gaming and what people would call “nerd culture”, but I also maintain a moderate interest in sports. As I was recently following some of the latest sports news, my mind drew an analogy that I’d never quite considered — at least not specifically — and that is that the commerce of Sports and Video game production are similar and analogous in many ways in regards to talent acquisition.

It’s off-season right now for the NFL and NBA, the two biggest sports markets in the US. What’s happening now during off-season is similar to what’s happening in the video game industry. Teams are trying to build their roster in preparation for the upcoming season in an effort to build a competitor to win a championship. They also are trying to build their team to something marketable that will sell tickets and merchandise.

Some teams are spending big money on free agent star players who have had a history of success. Sometimes they overpay for a player, give them a huge multi-year contract, even if the players best years are behind them. They bank on the player being able to produce for another season or two, sell a lot of tickets from the buzz they’ll bring, and grow their brand recognition. An example is an accomplished, but past his prime (at 40 years old before the year ends), Aaron Rogers signing with the lowly NY Jets and set to make $107 million this year.

Other teams are trying to not overspend, and yet find cheaper unknown talent that will produce later. They have a scouting team that tries to discover good players that haven’t peaked yet, and usually will take a chance on a random guy to fill a roster spot that they feel is a good value. Ofttimes teams will actually cut or refuse to overpay really good players because they simply can’t afford them, like currently what the NY Giants have going on with Saquon Barkley.

Every team would love to fill their roster with All-Stars, but honestly sometimes that doesn’t work out either. There’s a lot of teams that have learned the hard way that you can’t always buy a championship by overpaying star players. The team still has to make sense together and have good coaching and teamwork.

Is this all that different from what Microsoft and Sony are doing in the video game space? Microsoft has just signed two huge star players, Bethesda and Activision-Blizzard. They are All-Star, Hall-of-Fame performers with a past history of success which will sell tickets and put up big numbers. Meanwhile, Sony has spent strategically on lesser known player like Firewalk, Haven, and Housemarque. These are more akin to rookies and players from small D-league teams that they held private work-outs with and were impressed with what they saw and decided to sign while the price was still low. Many of the best championship teams were built this way. Find talent early, pay them less, and develop them within your own system. The San Antonio Spurs and the Golden State Warriors each won a lot of championships using this strategy.

I’m not saying there’s a right or wrong to either approach, but as a fan it’s sometimes frustrating to watch while your favorite team never gets the big splash with signing a big-time star player, but it’s important to realize sometimes there’s a method to their low key approach. Of course, sometimes a team is just being mismanaged and cheap and will end up as a bottom feeder the upcoming season 😅

@Th3solution Well what’s happening with the Saudi leagues buying up football players is incredibly similar to the way that Tencent and Embracer were buying up devs the last few years. A seemingly endless money supply while having a much smaller reputation for actually delivering a good product.

@nessisonett Ah yes, that’s another interesting parallel.
I’d heard about a similar occurrence with the Pro Golfers being financially coaxed into the Saudi tournaments but haven’t followed the international football/soccer scene.

On that subject too, I’ve been of the opinion that although I’m not necessarily a fan of big companies getting bigger or of consolidation of the gaming market, I much prefer Microsoft acquiring ABK/COD to Tencent or the Saudi fund. And if the MS acquisition were to be blocked, there’s no doubt that one of those entities would come knocking at ABK’s door. Better to keep that star player in the main league, rather than shipped out where they might be lost entirely, to continue the analogy.

@Th3solution I think the fans are comparable in many ways. So many people have such an encyclopaedic knowledge of football, footballers, teams, managers, years, matches and stuff. They are football geeks. And I probably look at them when they reel off this font of knowledge in the same way they would look at me if I was telling them about every single mainline and spin off of different game series like MGS, Zelda or GTA. Or on the movie/TV side of my interests, if I go on a tangential six degrees of separation linking Tobey Maguire to James Mason.

We are not so different!

Edit: Tobey Maguire cameo in Tropic Thunder with Ben Stiller. David Soul had a cameo in the Starsky and Hutch movie with Ben Stiller. David Soul and James Mason were both in Salem's Lot

Kinder Bueno's are elite. No other chocolate bar comes close.

Of all the takes I’ve seen on the internet over the years, this is possibly the worst

I'll raise you all White Chocolate dairy milk with Oreo filling.

Normally I think Oreo and milk choc dairy milk is too much of a clash of iconic flavours. But they've switched out milk for white and now it is a match made in heaven

Also marvelous creations jelly popping candy. Ridiculous bar and one of my favourites

@RogerRoger Not sure what you're thinking by suggesting a Bounty! Atrocious behaviour! 😉

@lolwhatno It's so good though! Can't ever get enough. Could live off of them!

@ralphdibny That does sound rather tasty. I'll have to keep an eye out for one of those during my next trip to the shop.

@Kidfried Oh we have a suger free bounty bar here in Sweden which I like to enjoy sometimes.

Peanut Butter KitKat Chunky FTW.

@JohnnyShoulder Quite simply: Elite.

@KAIRU I wish they do the giant size ones like I've seen of Tolberone or Dairy Milk.

I've been known to wolf down a whole share (yeah, right) pack of Dairy Milk Oreo bites.

And I always go for an Oreo milkshake.

But am not even fussed on Oreo biscuits. 😂

@JohnnyShoulder I'd take a big 1KG bar of it, to be honest. Same with a Kinder Bueno. Forget the packs of four — give me one GIANT one.

Musk is rebranding Twitter. Of course he is. It'll now be called 'X'.

What a cool name for an app. Good lord...

@StripedTomato I've been seeing the old 'Xvideos' joke floating about a fair bit today. Quite amusing. 😂

Regardless, it's still better than Threads. 😂

And then it's not like that brand isn't trademarked by a million other companies already. X is Def original. Gonna give it to ya. Marks the spot.
This is all just another "Elonism"; hes doing dumb crap for attention because everyone worships him for failing upwards. He Needs the media attention or he'll starve.

@Cordyceps I read that he tried to rename Paypal to 'X' years ago but the board or shareholders or whoever stopped him. Unsure if that's factual or not but it's a shame that's not the case here though. 😅

He tried to change PayPal to X back in the late 90s and it was hated so much that he was ousted. The man’s a genuine, bona-fide idiot. All it shows is that if you have enough money inherited from your apartheid emerald mine then you can buy up companies that you had no hand in creating while fooling people into thinking you have a creative bone in your body.

@Kidfried thank you for checking in with me! I erm, don't know to be honest!

Specifically with regards to the game club, i've done it for a few years and I've really enjoyed it and I'm extremely proud of it but I have come to think of it more as an unpaid job now rather than a fun hobby, particularly since it's been promoted in articles on the main website.

I know that's probably quite a lame thing to think because a lot of us do fun stuff for the community without even a thought for that kind of thing but for some reason, maybe because I don't have much else going on in my life and because I've been doing it for so long, I've just come to think about it that way and I guess the power balance has just made me feel a bit uncomfortable.

I am also just having a bit of a hard time balancing what I get out of the internet as a whole and I was seriously considering disabling the browser on my phone so I can just get away from some of the more insidious advertising and deliberately polarising news articles that are so common these days. I guess I just feel particularly vulnerable at the moment. I'd still use certain online connected apps like eBay and LinkedIn, I just wanted to get away from social media and I guess just like news websites that I have a morbid curiosity in scrolling through.

I think that built up to the point where I was considering deleting my Hookshot account as well. But I don't feel like I can because it would nuke the game club thread. @RogerRoger actually calmed me down a bit and convinced me to take a less scorched earth approach to my online presence so I just decided to step away from the bulk of the admin of the Game Club thread and see how I get on with it. I might still go off grid in a couple of months if I feel it all building up again or I can't get a grip.

That said, I am actually really sad about relinquishing control of the Game Club. It does kind of feel like the only good thing I do with my life these days so I feel a bit stupid for giving it up but maybe I just need to step back for an indefinite period and see how I feel down the line.

I'd also be really sad if I decided to leave Hookshot entirely because the community is so bloody brilliant, on both Push Square and Pure Xbox. To think about cutting out such a positive influence and source of support, just to get away from the rest of the internet, it just seems barmy and is making me well up just thinking about it. I suppose the fact I even considered it and perhaps am even still considering it, probably goes to show where I'm at in my own head currently though.

This isn't amazingly relevant but I suppose it has contributed to my disillusionment. I am a bit miffed by the NL side of Hookshot too. Both PS and PX are really good with not putting spoilers in the headlines and NL used to be too so you can normally just scroll past articles about games that you want to go in blind for. But on release of TotK, NL just kept posting headlines that detailed all the nice little details of the game that you'd want to discover for yourself, especially when that was the best aspect of BotW to me, the sense of discovery. They did the same for the Mario movie too which thankfully I saw on opening night. I know this is my fault in many respects but I let that ruin the game for me. I don't get that excited for new games normally but TotK was the rare one that I was excited for. When I did play it, I just couldn't shake this overwhelming sense of sadness I had throughout its entire run time and i just let it ruin it for me and I couldn't enjoy it. I just became too cynical. I know that's my problem and I should just be a bit less sensitive but unfortunately I guess that's just where i've been at this year. Playing TotK should have been a positive experience for me, I definitely needed it but I didn't get it and I will never get another chance to have it.

So yeah in general, I suppose I'm just too invested here and I care too much and things are bothering me that probably shouldn't bother me. Maybe a step back from some things will give me some space to get some clarity of mind.

Sorry for the long reply! How are you doing at the moment?