This Dean Takahashi interview with Chris Cocks is a wild ride. The thing about Hasbro that is so confusing is that they're obviously doing what they're supposed to do according to the strange laws that exist at their scale. I don't mean to say that these laws comport with anything we would recognize aesthetically or ethically. I mean that we can see the springs and gears move and understand precisely why they're doing the things they are. Waist deep in muck, it can be hard to remember. But we aren't the audience for this article, and the clientele for kaiju-tier megafauna aren't "people" in the traditional sense, but capital markets.
D&D and Magic virtually define "user generated content," and have for decades - there's no real way to play them without contributing something yourself. They don't generally produce Wealth Events outside of core purchases, which is a problem apparently. Anyway, it's not really about that now. We've entered an era where many large companies tout the fact that their creative legacy is ready to be stripmined as part of a rich buffet for AI models; it's an obeisance they pay to their dark pantheon. It's the newest Gold Rush, and part of what makes it a Gold Rush is that nobody in any position of power has any interest - at all - in trying to regulate it. It stands to touch virtually every industry, it literally cannot exist without other people's work to train it, for which these victims receive no consideration or compensation of any kind. What our government is doing instead is banning TikTok.
The interview I mentioned in GamesBeat is a conversation with a person so hyperrational I don't know where people can fit in. Just a couple months ago we were talking about a company in the throes of crisis, we all sorta saw that right? It was so bad that they had to gut departments. Now, here, he's talking about how the grisly nature of business today means that there are many developers who are suffering - and this might be a great time to secure some budget acquisitions.
We used to get mad when we were looking for information about the gaming industry, and Kotaku would post pictures of Mario Cakes or Gaming-Themed Belt Buckles. But, man. I could really go for a belt buckle right about now.
(CW)TB out.
