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harboneger · 11 months ago

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i just wanna say i really appreciate your marinersposting because every evening when most of my other mutuals are probably going to sleep you keep my dashboard active by posting baseball anguish. the mariners are my new favorite second-hand interest. i haven't watched a single baseball game since i was a child and ive never been to seattle but im obsessed with that fucking picture of the guy trying to slide to the base(?) and looking up at his teammate with crushing despair in his eyes. i understand why people like sports now. thank you beloved mutual

I am so inordinately pleased to fill your dash with this stuff, the mariners have managed to entirely consume my brain these last few months and I think bringing it to tumblr has been my best online choice in ages. I worry a little bit that my Hivemind mutuals will get annoyed at my baseball heel turn here, so this does make me feel a lot better. (I do still keep up with hivemind, I am just not as silly about it as I used to be) (And I still keep up w their videos, and watch most of your compliations, theyre so well done)

Despite being a born Washingtonian, I'm only a recent Mariners die-hard. I used to go to some Rainiers games growing up (the Mariners' AAA minor league affiliate) but I was too young and from too little of a sports-caring family for it to imprint on me. BUT NOW? fully into it. I went to some cheap college night games this last spring, then realized that I could listen to games on the radio and then it was over for me, every night they play I'm listening. Its been really wonderful, and insufferable to my current roommate, who hates baseball.

(And not to try and recruit, esp. now that our season is going to hell, but tonights game is free to watch on the MLB website, starts at 640 PST)

AND that lovely beautiful despairing fellow sliding into base is JOSH ROJAS, third baseman, incredible defensemen, and mariners average hitter (which is bad, but idc). His secret to beautiful luscious hair is water. Neither of the people he's looking up at are his teammates, the one in white and red is from the Anaheim Angels, and the one in grey is the ump, who is calling him out after a slide to base. I dont remember the exact context, but this is either a failed steal attempt, or a fielders choice that he got caught up in.

I post it every time we lose because I too feel betrayed by our manager for making the worst lineup/bullpen decisions imaginable. And because I love Josh Rojas, and he's hot enough to be on my blog 5 times a week

Thank YOU beloved mutual, happy to talk about baseball in the wee hours of any time of the day. You will see more of it lol

#saturn-scribbles #asks

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captainexplody · 3 months ago

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Here's my take on the Trump tariffs

In 1995, Sega pulled what they thought was a smooth business move. The Sega Saturn was due for release in the United States in September, and they were gearing up for a big presentation at the E3 show in May. The Sega Saturn was already out in Japan at the time, having been released in November 1994. Sega were currently without a Sonic the Hedgehog game, which made little difference to fans in Japan but would have a big impact on their sales in the United States, and their fingers were crossed that the game would be finished by Christmas, just in time for their September release date. Now, the story of that Sonic game is very long and I'm not going to tell it here, but it's really interesting. Maybe I'll tell it some other time if you are interested. This story is long enough as it is, and it might not immediately make sense, but trust me.

The point is that Sega really needed a win. They had fumbled the ball with the later half of the Sega Mega Drive (Genesis if you're a yank)'s release, by trying to prolong it unnecessarily. Sega released both a CD add on (the Sega CD) and a 32-bit add on (the 32X) to the Mega Drive (Genesis) to keep people buying it. The problem with these two add ons was that they cost money, and they weren't strictly necessary.

The first reason why they weren't necessary is because people didn't see the benefit of it. The people would have to rely on Sega being able to capably pump out quality games for both new add-ons in order to justify the purchase of them, and there just weren't enough killer games for either add-on to justify their purchase. How can Sega logically focus on reliably creating games for three different machines? If you were a third party developer, which system do you develop your game for? So as a result, people just didn't really buy either, because they couldn't justify their purchase. Unless you really liked low-res full motion video games, or if you really liked Sonic CD. To be fair, Sonic CD fucking rips.

The second reason why they weren't necessary is that everyone was pretty sure Sega were gearing up to release a CD based 32-bit machine soon anyway, so why pay what would probably add up to be a similar price buying these two new add-ons when you could just wait until the next machine comes out? If Sony made a new machine called the Playstation 5.5 as a stop gap between the 5 and the 6, would you buy it? Why not just wait for the Playstation 6? Some of those 5.5 games will probably be re-released or backwards compatible with the 6 anyway, so why waste your money. Sega were losing faith with the video game audience, and developers were also starting to lose patience.

Sega were in a spin. Nintendo were still nipping at their heels with their next generation console that was in development (the Nintendo 64) although they too were making blunders with the Virtual Boy (which was featured a lot on this very E3 event, what a show this would have been to attend!) and by turning down a company that wanted to develop a disc drive for their Super Nintendo system. That company was Sony, and once they were jilted by Nintendo they went to Sega. 'Hey man, we both hate Nintendo, lets work together and screw them! We make the CD discs, you make the actual games, we'll split the profits and kill Nintendo!' Sega thought they would be fully capable of killing Nintendo without anyones help, and so they too turned Sony down, which led to Sony just deciding to enter the console market anyway. Bear with me, this'll all make sense eventually. Remember all of this. Sega were burning bridges with their audience, their developers, and other console companies.

Cue E3 1995. The Sega Saturn's United States release at least four months away, so those who attended were eagerly awaiting news on the new system. Nowadays, consoles are released across the globe at the same time, but back in my day releases were staggered in order to get the games prepared for each region. Japan first, then games were localised for the United States, and then those games were converted to PAL for Europe. That was the system.

Tom Kalinske was Sega of America's big CEO, and he was to speak at E3. He announced that the price of the Sega Saturn in the United States was to be $399 (which according to inflation would be around $831 today?! Numbers are crazy, man. Who comes up with this shit?) but he also announced that starting TODAY, May 11th, the Sega Saturn would be available in the United States! From select retailers, of course, not everyone had a Sega Saturn, but forget that bit! You can buy a Sega Saturn TODAY, no waiting until September! Y'know, so long as stocks hold up that long.

The gaming world freaked out at such an announcement. That was a high price for a console, but a surprise launch caught everyone unawares. Sega did this launch to get the Saturn into as many US homes as possible, to get the jump on the soon to be released Sony Playstation, which was due to be available in the United States on September 9th, a week after the Sega Saturn was supposed to be released there (September 2nd).

In a now incredibly famous piece of video game history, during Sony's presentation where they showed off some games for the Playstation, the President of Sony Computer Entertainment of America (SCEA) Steve Race walked up on stage. He looked out to the audience, simply said 'two ninety nine', and walked off stage again. Everybody freaked out, again. Sega could do whatever they wanted with their early launch and their no Sonic games, but Sony effortlessly showed their clout by telling the world their machine was $100 cheaper than the Sega Saturn.

Because the Sega Saturn was not really supposed to launch in May 1995, a lot of people were unprepared. Sega themselves were unprepared because they did not have the hardware numbers to send to the United States, and as a result the shops and retailers were unprepared. Sega only cut a deal with a handful of retailers to stock the Sega Saturn, so the ones without the deal felt burned by Sega and refused to stock the Saturn by the time consoles were being made available. The retailers who did receive their Sega Saturns in May felt as if they had been ripped off, as once those machines sold out they were unable to replace them, because of Sega's inability to make the machines quickly enough, and so these retailers also got angry at Sega.

Consumers got angry at Sega because they couldn't buy the machine. It sold out quickly and because restock numbers were very patchy, it became very difficult to get hold of it in the West. Game developers were angry at Sega because they were told they had until September to finish localising their games, and as a result very few games were actually available to purchase at launch.

Sega tried to get the jump on their competition, they tried to pull out a few moves that nobody would see coming to get people talking and to get ahead of Nintendo and Sony. Nintendo didn't notice, as they just continued doing whatever they wanted (as they still do) and Sony responded by undercutting Sega completely, completely undoing any good work Sega were trying to do. Sega, by this point, had lost a LOT of good faith with pretty much everyone. All the other mistakes they had made leading up to this point, everybody remembered them, and this time they weren't going to let Sega off the hook.

Sega attempted their final bounce back with the Sega Dreamcast in 1998. This time they had a dedicated Sonic the Hedgehog game (which was a lot of fun) in Sonic Adventure, they had a very modern and (some would argue to this day) very ahead of its time machine, and they had some good marketing and branding to go along with it.

However, by this point the damage was done. People think that the Dreamcast was a failure and that was the reason that Sega got out of the console making business, but this isn't strictly true. The reason Sega got out is because there was absolutely no way they could continue being a viable contender in the console wars, and that's because they lost so much good faith with everyone. The Dreamcast could have been a crazy success, but unless it sold as well as the Playstation 2, to this date the best selling console of all time, then there was no way Sega would be able to get back the financial losses or the good faith losses that they had suffered throughout the 90s. Unfortunately for Sega, their Dreamcast was going up against the Sony Playstation 2, the best selling console of all time. Sega were a distant third place, very far behind everyone else.

Now. The point of Trumps tariffs was to stick it to people he didn't like, because he's a bitter old fool, but he also made these tariffs in order to bring more jobs back to the United States, to not rely on other countries as much for things that the United States should be manufacturing themselves. He's not wrong in that a lot of business happens elsewhere, and it makes sense to make a lot of those goods and services more homegrown.

However. If you start the war before the tanks are ready, the war won't last very long. If you want to focus more on manufacturing vehicles, for example, in the United States, then that's a great idea. Maybe give the car manufacturers a heads up about that first though, yeah? The reason that so many people are upset about these tariffs is because of how Trump has handled them, ie badly. The rest of the world feels pretty screwed over that they have to just blindly accept this, and the people will not forget.

Stock markets have plunged significantly because people lost faith in the brand. People now feel screwed over by this company ONCE AGAIN because they have acted incredibly selfishly and not thought about the people they are supposed to be marketing to, forgetting that if you piss off those people, you probably won't be in business for long. Now, this was a problem for Sega, who wanted to remain in business. If your business is putting yourself out of business as quickly as possible just to write off the expenses, however, then something like this is par for the course.

Somebody during Donald Trump's first term said that he was running the United States the way he runs his businesses, and this second term seems like the most accurate depiction of that. He's doing a lot to get people talking about him.

Some industries depend heavily on importing materials from China and other countries, because of the way the infrastructure is in the United States it's actually cheaper to import those materials than it is to manufacture them in the country. So, are these materials being accounted for with the tariffs? Are small businesses being thought of with these tariffs? Is the bigger picture being thought of? Short term it's another way to get people talking, but in the long term those people are going to feel VERY burned by the United States, and there's only so much people can take. People don't forget these kinds of things, man.

So to circle back to everything, I can see why Sega did what they did at E3 1995, but in hindsight it was a massive mistake that they were never able to recover from, and they tried. They made the Sega Dreamcast, for God's sake, and everybody loves the Dreamcast. They could never get that trust back, and they became a shadow of their former selves. I believe the same thing will happen with the Trump Presidency. He has made a series of unpopular moves already so far this year, gaining some bad faith with the people he is supposed to be looking after, and this one will end up costing those people a LOT of money. Maybe this will be the straw that breaks the camels back. In the future, maybe he does something incredible and releases a good Sonic the Hedgehog game alongside it, but I think by that point it'll be too late. The damage has been done, the faith has already been lost.

I mean, obviously this is a bullshit analogy because while Sega were fucking up the Saturn, Donald Trump was fucking up 4 (?) different businesses, and then he went on to become President of the United States the first time and he fucked that up too, and people remembered all of that and voted him in a second time anyway, so y'know. Maybe times change, and by that I mean, people lose the ability to remember how stuff used to really piss them off. Nobody gets pissed off about important stuff anymore, like how there wasn't a good Sonic the Hedgehog game for the Sega Saturn. Important stuff. You all need to get a fucking grip, man.

#scribbles #scribble writing #donald trump #tariffs #sega #sega saturn #sonic the hedgehog #this is really long and boring and nobody will read it

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