#but. why in the public perception are these counter culture movements so visually similar. its like the acceptable version of appearing alt

[a-a-a-anon]

the fact that the original fashion scenes of punk, metal, grunge, and emo look so different to post-mainstream commercialization, which is now like 90% black clothes for all of these counter culture aesthetics (at least in the public perception), makes me want to wear black less bc i feel like I'm buying into a manufactured image. lol.

[segafunk]

The intention of putting out a video about “The Future of Sega” is immediately clear. They are going to put the viewer at game conventions and on Internet video sites on notice that the company is trying to make a comeback, and to watch out for them.

A certain way of looking at Sega after they dropped out of making video game consoles is that they’ve had a steady drop in quality, and have become a virtual Nintendo subsidiary at the point children’s games and the nostalgic retro market converge. In short, the old days of punk rock provocation to appeal to counter-cultural sensibilities are over. This view tends to look most tenable in North America, as many of the high-quality games with this kind of cool appeal since the end of the Dreamcast in 2001 were made with a Japanese market in mind, and have had limited or nonexistent releases in America. To play anything from Jet Set Radio Future to Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Future Tone to Persona 5, it becomes clear a lot of what was cool about Sega is still being made. Assuming we’re able to play it too.

Still, Blake J. Harris’ Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation makes the argument that one of the major reasons for the precipitous decline in fortunes for the company after gaining majority shares in the American console market was the jealousy of Sega of Japan for Sega of America. Japanese employees were often reprimanded for why they couldn’t match the successes of their American subsidiary. So in the development and launch of the Sega Saturn, Sega of Japan was ill-inclined to take input from Sega of America, particularly in terms of a proposed collaboration with Sony. And then they made sufficiently many bad decisions on their own that they couldn’t compete with the Sony Playstation.

The subtext of American exceptionalism in Harris’ writing isn’t terribly subtle. But the fact remains that the Saturn didn’t have enough of the kinds of games that appealed to wider sections of the American public. This was compounded in terms of games like Tomb Raider being developed for the Sega Saturn, but becoming a major hit on the more widely owned Sony Playstation. A similar argument can be made of the reversal of the Sega Dreamcast from an extraordinarily successful launch to an abrupt crash. As much as I love bonding over discussion of the gonzo experiences afforded by the eccentric games on the Dreamcast, the uninitiated tend to regard it like that decade-old meme:

In terms of these quandaries, Sega has spent much effort in 2017 in a rebranding to attract the attention of anyone with fond nostalgia for their output back to the company. So far, this has met both successes and failures. The release of Sonic Mania and Sonic Forces for the 25th anniversary of the release of Sonic the Hedgehog has seen the former game borne of the international collaboration between the Japanese Sonic Team and the American fangame developers Headcannon become a renowned success. It has also seen the humiliation of the latter game, intended to be main showing with far more production value, being upstaged by a clever remixing of 16-bit sprites and receiving mixed reviews instead.

Sega has launched the “Sega Forever” project porting what is to be classic games on all their consoles to mobile devices, but has received criticism for a greater number of glitches than those whom have played ports on other consoles. Which is to say, quality control wasn’t up to par. At this point in time, Sega has adopted the rebranding of “Amazing Sega” in Japan, which amounts to a declaration of what reaction they want their games to elicit. A declaration of commitment to awe-inspiring quality. These things contexualize the public relations video “The Future of Sega”.

The opening shot is of an eye whose movements are biometrically measured by a computer. Fans of sci-fi cinema might recall that Ridley Scott’s 1982 cyberpunk film Blade Runner features an extreme close-up of an eye in its opening as a reference to George Orwell’s 1984 with its surveillance society of two-way media sending messages and receiving information. The same film features the “Voight-Kampff Test” tracking pupil dilation and eye movements as subjects are interrogated with a series of questions testing their capacity for empathy, and thus whether they are to be understood by American society as humans or android “Replicants”. This visual in Sega’s ad, combined with the technological white-out effect on the eye, appears disconcerting, a kind of technological “brave new world” of the viewer might wonder how they will get on in.

After the Sega logo appears signaling a major point of continuity between Sega games, we are introduced to the silhouette of “Toshiro Nagoshi/SEGA Games CO., Ltd./Corporate Director/Chief Product Officer/Entertainment Content Group” typing at his computer in a domestic high-rise setting, probably in Tokyo. When the camera moves in to a close-up, we are certainly not greeted with the image of a conventional Japanese salaryman. This guy is more edgy, more like a character in an East Asian gangster movie surrounding the Yakuza. In photographs, he often wears punk stylings like leather and leopard jackets, but here he’s going by the image of a way of doing business on the margins. Respectability in a conventional sense doesn’t necessarily get what people want, so Sega’s going to pursue a kind of maverick outlaw gaming approach. Nagoshi is in fact creative director on Sega’s Yakuza series; extraordinarily successful in Asia, and virtually unknown in North America.

An immediate encounter with this macho fellow might provoke fears of the kind of ass-kicking dispensed in his flagship series. But in his voice-over, he queries “When is a person moved? When they’re filled with joy? When their heart skips a beat?” The recurring problems of the finer points in English grammar when translated from Japanese are visible here. But the point remains that he’s motivated not in terms of leaving us bruised and sobbing by the side of the road, but by the means of understanding human happiness.

Nagoshi’s travels around the city where children and adults alike experience interaction design on their mobile devices have convinced him that these things have to do with “Experiencing the unprecedented.” The use of montage reassures viewers that Japanese favorites like Sonic the Hedgehog, Yakuza, and Puyo Puyo will still be kept in mind and made more accessible on these devices. Young women will still delight at capturing Sonic the Hedgehog plushies at a local Sega Game Center. But they’re going to be the kind of company that innovates and produces games that immerse the player into the protagonist. Perhaps more edgy games too, not just playing it safe with the once inconceivable alliance with Nintendo and their “family values” mentality.

Returning to the motif of the eyes at the beginning, Nagoshi says that compared to other animals, humans rely on their eyes more than other sense organs. Consequently, the eyes register a greater range of expression of emotion regarding an experience, including the telltale signs of amazement. On this principle, Sega has taken to the application of biometric technologies on test players to register their emotional responses at each moment, and take that data into consideration in the development process. Indeed, a viable argument for how they can create more fun and engaging games.

But stated another way, this means that video game companies, and tech companies that apply principles of “gamification” to interaction design, have greater insight into how to manipulate our emotions than ever before. Perhaps one major difference between the conception of dystopia in the 20th century and that of the 21st century is that it is now readily conceivable that such a state need not make the people who live in it miserable, indeed can make them highly engaged in a state that’s terrible underneath the perception of the media environment. Timothy Snyder’s book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century reminds us of the “interactive television” in Fahrenheit 451 and “two-way” TV in 1984 while books are banned in both cases, proving too fixed compared to the plastic memories of New Media and the revisionist needs of propaganda machines (p. 84). The technologies of video games systems connected to the Internet and picking up a greater or lesser amount of data from users have a great deal to do with that state of affairs. But for now, Sega sets out to create better video games in a world often resembling that of the antagonists in their past narratives, sending out certain messages with greater or lesser degrees of courage in this context. Ultimately, the Sega logo is shown imprinted upon the human eye in the extreme close-up of the final shot.

One important thing to take note is the Japanocentric nature of this vision for the company as presented in this advertisement. The ads Sega has shown these days in America have a great deal to do with nostalgia for the past made accessible on current technologies. But in terms of the vision for Sega’s future, they largely opt to show titles extraordinarily popular in Japan and virtually unknown in America. The focus is on the ways Sega has embedded themselves successfully as a brand and a presence in Japanese society, with little to say about an international orientation. While Americans are also shown this video translated into English, there’s a definite subtext that we’re an afterthought in Sega’s plans who may or may not receive localizations of their games, as has often been the case hitherto.