Console Exclusive Games Have Given Way To Console Exclusive Game Characters
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Editor's Note: Originally, this article was set to run before the article of Crystal Dynamics defending this decision... but somehow that didn't happen. You can read that article here if you like, or if you haven't already, you can read this one first, and recognize that time has no meaning any more, so the linear publishing of articles is no longer necessary... or maybe Mike just screwed things up. One of those.For anything that isn't first-party content, I will never understand why games sell as console exclusives. Maybe there is math out there that makes having a game publisher limit itself to one sliver of the potential market make sense, but somehow I have a hard time believing it. That's all the more the case given that the recent trend has been less exclusivity, rather than more. While the PC market is now seeing platform exclusivity emerge, something which makes even less sense than with consoles, game franchises that were once jealously guarded exclusives, such as MLB The Show, are announcing opening up to more systems, including PCs.But it seems the instinct to carve out something exclusive for your system is hard to shake. Or, that's at least the case for Sony, which has managed to retain exclusive rights for the character Spider-Man in the upcoming Marvel's Avengers game.In a move already being roundly criticized on social media, Crystal Dynamics’ Jeff Adams revealed today that Spider-Man will be available as a free update for PlayStation players of this September’s Marvel’s Avengers game in “early 2021.” PC and Xbox One players, apparently, won’t get to play as him.Adams announced the move in a PlayStation blog post, offering no insight as to why PC and Xbox players would miss out and outlining no exclusive content for those games. It doesn’t appear to be a timed exclusive. When Kotaku reached out to Square Enix, the game’s publisher, for comment, about that and the rest of the deal, we were directed to Adams’ blog post—which didn’t answer any of our questions. Now, there is some complicated licensing potentially at issue here. While Disney owns the rights to The Avengers generally, Sony has retained many of the publishing rights for the Spider-Man character. In 2018, the excellent Spider-Man video game came out as a PlayStation and many assumed that Sony had the sole game publishing rights to the character. But that doesn't seem to be true, no matter what noises Sony's made in the past. Instead, these rights still seem to reside with Marvel, which has tended to lean towards the PlayStation. But, as the Kotaku article points out, it's not as though Spider-Man has never made an appearance on other systems. He's been in Nintendo games, along with other games, such as Marvel's Lego series of games.The idea behind these exclusive deals, be it for entire game franchises or for characters like Spider-Man, is to try to engender some kind of loyalty among the fan-base by having this exclusive content. And perhaps at one point that worked. But these days, the only thing Sony seems to be getting for its trouble is backlash. And when Forbes is out here saying that this character exclusive isn't just bad for the other platforms the game will appear on, but bad for PlayStation players as well, then maybe it's time to rethink this whole thing.The problem with exclusives is that they not only hurt the obvious suspects, the platforms that are not getting X or Y exclusive, which in this case is Xbox and PC players, but they even hurt the platform that’s supposed to benefit from them.With Avengers, it’s easy to see how this could play out in a similar fashion. While the main storyline of Avengers seems to be playing out around six launch heroes, Black Widow, Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Iron Man and Ms. Marvel, the entire point of the game is that it will be an ongoing story that unfolds in time. It’s easy to see how a character like Spider-Man, a prominent Avenger in both the MCU and the comics, could have been integrated into a major storyline at some point in the future as the game expands. But the fact that he’s exclusive to PlayStation essentially insures that he cannot be a major player in the story, relegated to some sort of introductory side mission, and that’s it, or as a tag-along to other missions without a major active role. So why do this at all? Because old habits are hard to shake, probably. And, frankly, Sony's gonna Sony. But that doesn't make any of this less dumb, less bad for the gaming community, or less bad for even those who will get this exclusive character.
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posted at: 12:00am on 08-Aug-2020
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Content Moderation Case Study: Social Media Services Respond When Recordings Of Shooting Are Uploaded By The Person Committing The Crimes (August 2015)
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Summary: The ability to instantly upload recordings and stream live video has made content moderation much more difficult. Uploads to YouTube have surpassed 500 hours of content every minute (as of May 2019), making any form of moderation inadequate.The same goes for Twitter and Facebook. Facebook's user base exceeds two billion worldwide. Over 500 million tweets are posted to Twitter every day (as of May 2020). Algorithms and human moderators are incapable of catching everything that violates terms of service.When the unthinkable happens -- as it did on August 26, 2015 -- these two social media services swiftly responded. But even their swift efforts weren't enough. The videos posted by Vester Lee Flanagan, a disgruntled former employee of CBS affiliate WDBJ in Virginia, showed him tracking down a WDBJ journalist and cameraman and shooting them both.Both platforms removed the videos and deactivated Flanagan's accounts. Twitter's response took only minutes. But the spread of the videos had already begun, leaving moderators to try to track down duplicates before they could be seen and duplicated yet again. Many of these ended up on YouTube, where moderation efforts to contain the spread still left several reuploads intact. This was enough to instigate an FTC complaint against Google, filed by the father of the journalist killed by Flanagan. Google responded by stating it was still removing every copy of the videos it could locate, using a combination of AI and human moderation.Users of Facebook and Twitter raised a novel complaint in the wake of the shooting, demanding "autoplay" be opt in -- rather than the default setting -- to prevent them from inadvertently viewing disturbing content.Moderating content as it is created continues to pose challenges for Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube -- all of which allow live-streaming.Decisions to be made by social media platforms:- What efforts are being put in place to better handle moderation of streaming content?
- What efforts -- AI or otherwise -- are being deployed to potentially prevent the streaming of criminal acts? Which ones should we adopt?
- Once notified of objectionable content, how quickly should we respond?
- Are there different types of content that require different procedures for responding rapidly?
- What is the internal process for making moderation decisions on breaking news over streaming?
- While the benefits of auto-playing content are clear for social media platforms, is making this the default option a responsible decision -- not just for potentially-objectionable content but for users who may be using limited mobile data?
Questions and policy implications to consider:- Given increasing Congressional pressure to moderate content (and similar pressure from other governments around the world), are platforms willing to "over-block" content to demonstrate their compliance with these competing demands? If so, will users seek out other services if their content is mistakenly blocked or deleted?
- If objectionable content is the source for additional news reporting or is of public interest (like depictions of violence against protesters, etc.), do these concerns override moderation decisions based on terms of service agreements?
- Does the immediate removal of criminal evidence from public view hamper criminal investigations?
- Are all criminal acts of violence considered violations of content guidelines? What if the crime is being committed by government agents or law enforcement officers? What if the video is of a criminal act being performed by someone other than the person filming it?
Resolution: All three platforms have made efforts to engage in faster, more accurate moderation of content. Live-streaming presents new challenges for all three platforms, which are being met with varying degrees of success. These three platforms are dealing with millions of uploads every day, ensuring objectionable content will still slip through and be seen by hundreds, if not thousands, of users before it can be targeted and taken down.Content like this is a clear violation of terms of service agreements, making removal -- once notified and located -- straightforward. But being able to "see" it before dozens of users do remains a challenge.
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posted at: 12:00am on 08-Aug-2020
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