Forum - View topicThis Week in Games - What Is Even Going On
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TranceLimit174
 Posts: 962 |
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Thanks for the shout out! Babysitter Benimaru going for Title IX! Can I keep up the streak with 3 Sacred Treasures (Kyo, Iori, Chizuru) being next? You hit all the points of the GameStop stock story very nicely. But whatever the financial machinations are, what it boils down to is the "free" market people have proven they are anything but. Their definition is manipulating the market for "free" money. For once, they got beat at their own game, & now they are salty and want to unplug the game system. That StrIVe Game Modes trailer is hilarious. Just hearing the hardcore pitch for "Training Mode!" cracks me up. Doubly so since StrIVe & KOF XV share the same announcer! Guy is putting in his FGC hype work. My condolences to Jeanette Maus & her family. Really tragic to lose her life on the eve of such a big release that she was a major part of. But I am sure we will all be entertained by & celebrate her performance. |
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Gundam0084
Posts: 61 |
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I think it would be a mistake for SEGA to give the role of Sonic to Ben. In my opinion, the film universe should be kept separate from the game universe. I could see SEGA moving in this direction, though.
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Pidgeot18
 Posts: 101 |
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Oh dear, Gamestop. A story with a lot more narrative riding on it than facts. I've been fighting fires on this front on social media for the past few days, so I'll inject the facts I'm aware of here:
The early story is simple: Gamestop, troubled company, some short sellers felt the company was ill-placed to handle the future and that its share price was high and they shorted it. /r/wallstreetbets memed it in a short squeeze. And facts at this point start becoming overtaken by narrative. Continuing the known facts, Gamestop's share price shot up this week and then entered a wild roller coaster (3× intraday changes on >100% volume!). Robinhood suspended buying on Thursday, as did some other sites. One of the short-sellers was bailed out by a large hedge fund earlier this week. Note that why these events happened is not in the list of known facts: we don't know why they happened for sure, and a lot of people imputing this information are doing so for narrative. A brief interlude: the guts of financial workings are actually extremely complicated, and most people's exposure to the financial system relies very heavily on an oversimplified façade. For example, a $100 that you hold in $20 bills is not the same as holding $100 in a bank account, but we pretend that they are. These façades work well when everything is normal, but when things get complicated (remember the 2008 financial crisis?), the distinction suddenly matters in very big ways. So the last important fact to remark on is this (and I have to be careful because this is well outside my comfortable knowledge range): when you buy a stock on your favorite stock broker, you don't actually buy a stock like you would buy groceries. Instead, you set in motion a series of transactions that will eventually end up with you having effective ownership of the stock. These transactions will take some time to complete, and after the 2008 financial crisis, regulators added in requirements that the entities involved stump up some collateral (of their own money, cannot be of you the investor's) for the eventual transaction to complete. On Thursday morning, given the craziness that Gamestop's stock was going through, the necessary collateral for buying the stock increased dramatically. On to the narratives. That last paragraph is probably why Gamestop was hard to buy yesterday: it suddenly became much more risky to Robinhood's (and others') direct financial situation to allow their customers to buy Gamestop, When the market's insane, backing out of it is neither an insane nor nefarious position. The loudest narrative is the sentiment that this is the "general public" fighting back against Big Bad Financial Industry and winning. This narrative has every beat interpreted in favor of it: the stock rise was caused by wallstreetbets; retail investors are refusing to sell back to the short sellers, causing them pain as they have to desperately unwind their position with no one willing to sell to them; all of the issues this week are caused by nefarious hedge fund managers calling up several businesses saying "You know what to do" and those businesses in reply going "Yes, my master." [1] As you might guess, I don't place much stock in that narrative. The narrative I subscribe to instead is that the stock was mostly be driven by what most would consider Wall St. types. Certainly, a lot of the activity does seem to be driven by other financial institutions like hedge funds (it's not one monolithic entity!), and I suspect that to the extent that individuals are involved, we're talking about the kind of individual who can piss away $100,000 without too much concern, i.e., someone who is already a millionaire and would be lumped in with Wall St. in the eyes of the median person. [1] Actually, I don't think anyone specifically believes the latter. But the way the accusations of conspiracies and competing interests are thrown around really tends to cast it in that light. |
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AiddonValentine
 Posts: 2341 |
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-Gamestop: Eh, it's making predatory hedge fund managers (redundancy!) cry so it's funny as hell.
-KOFXV: Interesting that Benimaru is now on Shun'ei's team (though it's not the first time he's switched affiliations) |
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zrnzle500
 Posts: 3768 |
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It’s funny as hell until the bubble pops, and someone is left holding the bag, and experience tells us that probably won’t be Wall Street (at least not most of it). I have little sympathy for Wall Street firms, but these stock prices, and the implied valuation, are divorced from the reality of what’s happening with the company (and other companies favored by WallStreetBets), and that’s not sustainable. It is out of my area of expertise as to whether that bubble popping just takes out those involved in the skirmish, or if it sets off a larger chain of events that brings down more than that, but even in the smaller case, that still probably ends in at least some desperate people who were drawn in by the promise of quick money losing their livelihoods because they didn’t leave before the meme stopped being funny, though perhaps people could lose interest quickly enough so that doesn’t come to that. I don’t think it is a particularly effective way to stick it to Wall Street either. They may have stolen a march on those hedge funds that were shorting those companies, but they’ll adapt and learn to exploit it for themselves, if other Wall Street firms aren’t doing that already. I do wonder if this leaves GameStop worse off after this situation plays out, with investors keeping a wide berth from them to avoid the roller coaster if the memes start up again, especially those institutional investors responsible for making sure their customers’ 401(k)s or endowments don’t evaporate. |
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Yttrbio
 Posts: 3670 |
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I find that this Gamestop story really confirms all my prior beliefs about America, capitalism, markets, the finance industry, etc. It's good to be proven totally right again.
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maximilianjenus
Posts: 2902 |
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Yeah, some pension funs are going to be hit pretty hard, a few acquaitances (teachers in the usa) told me they are going to lose at least one year of their pension funds over this. |
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OtherSideofSky
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The whole Gamestop thing just reconfirms how much I hate the way our financial institutions work and everything involved in them.
In terms of actual video games, that collection of all the Umineko games came out on Switch and PS4, so I guess I'll finally find out what those are about once I get some time off work. It came with the fighting game too, so it'll be nice to have a portable copy of that. |
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Covnam
 Posts: 3818 |
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Well, I just picked up the Aleste collection collector's edition for switch from Amazon Japan, so I'll be skipping that R-Type CE as well
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Northlander
 Posts: 911 |
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The R-Type games has usually always been pretty solid, at least the ones I've played. Although I found Delta to be a bit better than Final, I'm stlll gonna look into Final 2 with optimism.
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ranran-001
Posts: 544 |
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It sounds like shorting a stock, is this cycle where you have stock(either already owned, or acquired through another owner), sell it at current price, and then through a contractual obligation you have to buy the same amount of stock back at a later time period.
I think there was a scene in the movie Trading Places that bet on this as well, except in that one, insider trading knowledge allowed the heroes of that film to cheat the cheaters. Is it bad? Well, its bad for the guys who were shorting the stock, if the stock price doesn't drop, they'll be forced into buying Gamestop stock at market value, or be sued for millions of dollars. Should we care? I dunno, maybe these short sellers can cry next to the guy that put all his money on the horse with a gimpy leg and is facing a debt from the mob. |
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El Hermano
 Posts: 450 Location: Texas |
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I'm seeing tons of people who bought stock posting their losings. Although the general mindset is its all about 'sending a message' than making money. General rule of thumb is never gamble what you're not willing to lose. I don't really touch stocks much myself outside some shares my dad gave me for my birthday one year. |
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Minos_Kurumada
Posts: 1182 |
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The annoing part about the GameSpot situation it's that, as a minarquist, my left winged friends have come one after the other hoping to see me decilucined on capitalism and what not.
Just for me to explain them how this is capitalism 101 at work and the real danger comes from Biden saving Wall street like Obama before him. Having to explain something so basic at least 6 times to 10 different people it's quite tiresome. |
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TranceLimit174
Posts: 962 |
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And this illustrates the main problem that this whole GameStop stock fiasco highlights. Everyone is cool with free market Captialism until you're the one left holding & having to pay for the risk. Then all of a sudden, Socialist intervention is fine. So whether you're a "Capitalist" or a "Socialist" isn't defined by any economic principle. It's defined by which team you're on. |
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Minos_Kurumada
Posts: 1182 |
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This is because USA it's capitalist in name only, USA stopped being capitalist when politicians rejected Hayek's ideas for Keynes' after WWII. USA is a corporativist society, with politicians and corporations working together to keep power. As a side note, there is very cool video in YT of Keynes vs Hayek debate reimagined as a rap video and a boxing match, I love how at the end spoiler[Hayek wins but the "Power" represented by the referee gives Keynes the win]. |
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