TBT-TheBigToe
Gemcutter
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Stop trying to derail the fucking thread, fucking homo.
Anyone listen to any good gaming related podcasts?
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General Gaming News and Discussion
- Thread starter Wintermute
- Start date
Anyone listen to any good gaming related podcasts?
DickTrickle
Definitely NOT Furor Planedefiler
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A little bit of logic, or a lot of feelings? Your little sphere of personal relationships is insignificant especially against millions of people. That's literally all your argument hinges on, as if you alone could judge what the general public desires.
Tell me, what is the motivation for the studio to dump enough digital tickets buying to make the film appear to vastly out gross its numbers?
Book publishers have done book buying to pump up a release, but that's both limited to the release and of a much smaller scope than a film, and the point is to snowball word of mouth. They don't keep buying week after week. Mass market fiction usually wouldn't be affected by book buying either, but smaller niches.
Assuming the studio did something similar, let's say they buy 50-60 million worth of tickets out of the opening 132 million weekend. At what point do they stop buying? You think no one is interested in the film so surely it's on the order of 100-200 million or more, no? And if they have no faith in the film they'll have to do similar buys overseas to pump it up. Half billion to a billion of ticket buying? And if you think it's much smaller scale than that than your whole argument is impotent. If Avatar 2 "really" made 600 instead of 680 million, it doesn't much change its relative success.
This for a film that already has a massive budget. This seems like a giant stretch that "a little bit of logic" doesn't bridge. Yes, it's the post COVID world. The world where Barbie made 636 million and Maverick 718. COVID and streaming hurt middle tier films a lot but the public will still turn out for events.
Plus, there's other ways that are used to calculate interest that roughly align with box office outcomes. 148 million trailer views in the first 24 hours, dwarfing the last two Star Wars films, for example. Social media engagement metrics were also very high. If things like this weren't, there would have been a lot of talk about how the film massively outperformed expectations, but largely met expectations. But I guess "logic" would dictate these were faked, too? It's really shaping up to be quite a laborious task, all so they could just lose a ton of money.
Here's the best part, though... Avatar 2 *is* most likely not as popular as the box office would indicate to you! While actual ticket accounts aren't really reported anymore, they can be estimated through various means (though imperfect, they're reasonable ballpark estimates). The estimated amount of tickets sold for Avatar 2 is roughly on par with the top LOTR and Harry Potter films, even though their stated box office is nearly half as much. Inflation and premium screens make a huge difference.
I'm sure this essay won't change your mind, but don't dress up your gut feeling in a realm you know little about and tell me it's logic.
Mizake
Trakanon Raider
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I’m pretty impressed you pulled your mask down long enough to type all that.
As for why a studio would want to inflate the numbers…..Avatar is being produced by Disney, 20th century fox, and they are going all in. I forget how many avatar movies are being planned, but I think at least 2 or 3 more.
If Avatar tanks, then it becomes their Heavens Gate, literally the movie that sinks and bankrupts the studios like what happened to UA. Remember also that New Line Cinema went all in on LOTR, and if the first movie had flopped they would have gone bankrupt. Not to mention all the additional things riding on the success of the Avatar franchise, like merchandise, Disney rides, etc. Imagine what would happen to Disney stock if Avatar 2 didn’t meet expectations, especially when you’ve promised Avatar 3-5 are in the pipeline.
Again, not saying it’s not a successful movie…but to be the 3rd highest grossing of all time, in a post-Covid world where people don’t really go to movies anymore….we can just agree to disagree then.
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Ambiturner
Ssraeszha Raider
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So they spent an extra couple billion buying tickets so they could release more movies that would lose them billions more? Where is this money coming from that somehow won't affect their stock price? Or are they snowballing a bunch of fraud on top of all this? And why didn't they do it for any of the other massive bombs they had over the last couple of years?
How does this make any sense?
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DickTrickle
Definitely NOT Furor Planedefiler
- 12,944
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Yeah, why didn't they pump up The Marvels? A film that's part of their marquee film universe and one all about female power; of all the times they would artificially pump up a film that would have to be one of the most obvious. And yet it was a catastrophic failure that made The Flash seem successful by comparison.
I suppose they pumped 150 million into it but it made negative money, I guess. It's the only logical explanation. It's even more retarded since people tried to claim the first film had artificially inflated numbers without any good reason and yet they're not going to do that for the sequel when it's more important for their business?
It's the same old shit. Disliked movie fares poorly? Get woke, go broke. Disliked movie does well? There's no way that's possible, something is fishy. Like, sometimes, shit is going to happen that just doesn't confirm to one's worldview.
Caeden
Silver Baronet of the Realm
- 7,370
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Frankly I don’t think I’ve talked to a single person that went to any movies besides Spider-man No Way Home and the Super Mario movie. Except my stupid ass wife that went with her rich girlfriend and all the kids to spend $60 to see a motherfucking paw patrol movie that sucked ass one fucking goddamn day before it premiered on a the stupid ass streaming service we were subbed to at that fucking time because she can’t fucking read a calendar right and the kids were begging to see it. Goddamn I’m probably too tight but movies as a group are fucking expensive. Godspeed to that fucking purple mayor and all. I gave my stupid bucks for the fucking year to keep that toddler money printer going. Whirrrrrrr.
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Ambiturner
Ssraeszha Raider
- 16,040
- 19,500
If you factor in ticket prices being almost double what they were when the first Harry Potter came out, and 3d tickets being roughly 4x what a Harry Potter ticket would be, more people probably did see Harry Potter domestically.
Also, most of us are a lot closer to the target demo of Harry Potter, so knowing a lot of people that saw it isn't surprising at all
Also, most of us are a lot closer to the target demo of Harry Potter, so knowing a lot of people that saw it isn't surprising at all
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Ukerric
Bearded Ape
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She's right. When you're watching a blockbuster, you stop thinking of the world, because your brain disengages. That's the ultimate immersion.
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Burns
Golden Baronet of the Realm
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Maybe your brain disengages, but throughout the first Avatar movie my brain was thinking about how the simple natives, ignorant of the great imperial power on their doorstep, needed a white man to fall in love with their culture and lead them to victory using his intimate knowledge of the military practices of the evil empire!
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Ukerric
Bearded Ape
- 7,934
- 9,583
Burns
Golden Baronet of the Realm
- 6,142
- 12,364
That's where I messed up then; I didn't watch it in the theater, so I had the white man's burden on the brain.
Burns
Golden Baronet of the Realm
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I promise that I watched the Avatar blu-ray using my roommates PS3!
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Daidraco
Golden Baronet of the Realm
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Im paying attention to what streamers are playing less and less lately. At one point, they were spot on with a lot of their reviews. But now its just so over the top obvious that they are paid schills for a game that its annoying to see. Looking at someone like Asmongold, he'll play while on stream, but as soon as he's off his main stream - he's playing something else. If thats not the most telling review of a game in itself, then I dont know what is. I think a lot of companies saw the success that he gave Vampire Survivors and they went full retard into using them for marketing.
I bring this up, because I saw plenty of stuff for the Avatar Game from streamers, but it was a here today, gone tomorrow type of show and that never bodes well.
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popsicledeath
Potato del Grande
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I think streamers are still super useful because you can see the game being played "normally" by a real person and see if you're gonna like it or not. This is a big difference than video game reviews which are often using official footage only and will only talk about how they felt about playing without you being able to really get a good idea of the frequency of the annoying/good stuff for example.
You absolutely shouldn't take what a streamer is playing as a benchmark of a game being good though and never should have, since it's well known for years that streamers get paid to play games for x hours, and that if they trash the game on stream they're likely to lose the ability to get more bounties(the name twitch uses for the system, unless it has changed) later on. Unless the game is a steaming pile of shit then it's ok to trash it, but that's really the bottom of the barrel unfinished garbage stuff, even a very below average game you won't see many people openly criticizing it or putting their criticisms in a lot of context(could get better, there's a lot of time before release, this probably will get fixed etc).
Streamers will also follow fads so even if they're not actively getting paid by the company making the game, they might be playing a game they don't like that much just cause it's the in thing. Like currently playing Palworld or playing Lethal Company(which admitedly both look pretty good anyway) is almost a must unless they're established in another game(LoL/WoW streamers especially).
Like everything it's just a tool and you have to use it smartly.
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