Horizon Suffers "The Journal Of The Two Sisters" · 8:35am Jun 16th, 2014
I'm not normally one for official Hasbro fiction — who has time for it, with all the awesome stuff you can read here? — but since functionally-immortal magical princess ponies are best ponies, I figured I would make an exception for "The Journal Of The Two Sisters", and preordered it like a good mindless consumer drone fan. Shipping took a while, what with Amazon's recent corporate warfare on with publishers and me having to order it from Barnes & Noble's warehouse in Abu Dhabi, but this weekend I finally got my grubby little claws on this:
First Impressions
"As seen on the show!" the book jacket proclaims. This is generally not a good sign — especially since it's a merch tie-in to the lackluster S4 episode "Castle Mane-ia" — but what the heck. 1) It's Amy Keating Rogers, so I should give it a chance; and 2) I'm already out the fifteen bucks.
Fortunately, my first impression upon opening it up (overly curious cats aside) was a great deal more promising:
> And I'm especially excited to talk to that Star Swirl the Bearded guy again! – Luna
Eakin, you magnificent bastard. HOW DID YOU DO THAT? Only ten pages in and they're shipteasing straight out of A Stitch In Time.
Presentation
Clip art. So much clip art.
Like, identical clip art, reused between pages. 
Also, Celestia's font is Filmotype Candy, which is like if someone tried to handwrite Comic Sans.
Moving on before I break out into hysterical designer sobs.
Writing
It's … errh. Let's get this out of the way, straight up front: We are not the target audience.
Hasbro has also released GM Berrow's books, which are, by all accounts, some fairly readable YA/children's novels. This isn't that. This doesn't even have pretensions of novel. This is a children's book, to the point where you have to turn your brain off or it starts to hurt. Here's an excerpt chosen totally at random, from page 89:
"Gregor was visibly shaking as Celie then presented him with his favorite chocolate éclair. I'm not sure if this was because he was hungry or because he was really happy to see that éclair or because my Royal Canterlot Voice in rhyme scared the feathers off him, but upon eating it, Gregor's demeanor suddenly changed."
We should spot the book a certain amount of grammatical and structural laxity, because it's written from the point of view of Luna and Celestia when they were the age of the Mane Six — but even so, this is material designed for children to appreciate in a way that leaves us adults in the dust. Yes, that excerpt does in fact describe an encounter with a hostile griffon; he is defeated through a Rube Goldberg-esque sequence of events (I don't dare label it a "plan") involving a manticore telling them about the griffons' secret weaknesses, Star Swirl being an expert pastry chef, and Luna shouting bad poetry really loud.
I am not making this up.
Repeated application of book to face did not help it make any more sense.
Characters
In this category, the book at least tries. I have to give it points for sneaking in some interesting little tidbits around the edges. Here's a section, for example, from Celestia's first entry:
But I guess I shouldn't assume [our adventures] will be amazing because I've never been the princess of Pegasi, Unicorns, and Earth ponies. Maybe they won't be amazing. Maybe I won't be amazing. Maybe I'll be really rotten. What if I'm known as Celestia, the really rotten princess of Equestria?
Okay, calm down, Celestia. You're freaking yourself out again. Take a breath. You're going to work hard like you always do. And as long as you work hard, you're going to be just fine. Okay. That's better.
There's a rich amount of parallelism to the Mane Six — you can see the Celestia/Twilight here, and later it's more explicit as Celestia helps Starswirl research and perfect his time travel spells (dammit Eakin!). Luna is so obviously Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie (in unrelated sections) that it hurts. I'm sure if I reread it more closely, I'll find sections where one of the two picks up Loyalty, Honesty, and Generosity; it never explicitly discusses the Elements of Harmony, but the groundwork is obviously there.
But the problem here is that their characterization is just bizarre. Luna as the Element of Laughter? Laughter?
"Fun? What is this 'fun' thou speakest of?" – Season 2
Bizarre, I should say, during the times when it's consistent. For instance, Luna leaps straight from being all crushing on Starswirl "we could really learn a lot from each other" into rolling her eyes as Celestia and Starswirl geek out over the library, so the book can't even keep straight which of the sisters is excited about magic.
Between those problems, I had a hard time drawing any links to the characters we know and love. Basically, without the cues of the different fonts, it's so difficult to tell the two characters apart that they were effectively interchangeable. I wanted to give it a chance to make something out of the little details I appreciated, but it simply fell short.
Plot
Thought experiment: You are being paid by Hasbro to write a book. They allow you to pull your plot elements from two buckets: "Because Season 4" and "Because it sounds awesome." You are contractually forbidden from adding any sense of tension that would frighten a five-year-old, or any depth which would lose a five-year-old. What would you write? Most likely, the same thing that AKR did.
So Star Swirl the Bearded gets all the tribes together after that first Hearth's Warming Eve, and marches up to the Sisters, who are two young alicorns without Cutie Marks. He tells them that as alicorns they represent everything Equestria was founded upon (because Season 4) and should be princesses (because it sounds awesome). They accept (because otherwise the book ends on page 6) and wander into the Everfree Forest.
(Here, I should note, we get one of the few crumbs of actual worldbuilding: the Everfree was always like that. Unfortunately, most of the book's worldbuilding follows that "history is the present with different names" pattern: Cadence (here a unicorn called "Princess Amore," but her Cutie Mark is identical) was always the ruler of the Crystal Empire, the zebras always spoke in rhyme, etc. The major exception is that Star Swirl the Bearded travelled forward in time AND MET TWILIGHT. I AM NOT KIDDING. DAMMIT, EAKIN.)
Anyway, they find the Tree of Harmony (because Season 4) and build a castle over it (because Season 4). Luna builds a metric buckton of traps in their palace (because Season 4) and causes shenanigans with them (because it sounds awesome). Star Swirl has a hidden library in the place (because Season 4) and TIME TRAVELS ALL OVER THE FUTURE (because it sounds awesome, also, dammit Eakin).
Then disaster strikes! A manticore attacks some ponies travelling through the forest!
In any normal story, this would be an opportunity for some actual drama and/or character growth. Hell, in My Little Pony under the old Faustian days, this was both an opportunity to show everyone (including Rarity) kick some plot, and also a crucial establishing moment for Fluttershy. But here? Luna and the manticore fire stormtrooper lasers at each other until everyone else shows up, and then she punches him in the friendship.
Just pretend this was the fight scene in the book. It will hurt your brain less.
The manticore — who Luna can inexplicably understand because otherwise they'd have to pay me to use my OC for the historical Element of Kindness — immediately gains 50,000 XP for surviving an encounter with two demigoddesses, dumps all of his new skill points into Knowledge: Equestria, and says, "Hey, I can't help but notice you picked the Leadership feat but you don't have any followers yet." His name is Melvin, and I think by word count he actually gets more dialogue than Starswirl.
This pattern repeats. The sisters fight Princess Platinum (because Season 4), then a griffon (because it sounds awesome), then a dragon who stole the Crystal Empire's crystal heart (2x combo: because it sounds awesome in a Season 4-compatible fashion). Luna punches them all in the friendship. Sometimes Celestia helps.
I just wanted an excuse to insert this GIF again.
Finally, time-traveling Starswirl says that they need to raise the sun and the moon. In a climactic scene that has abso-bucking-lutely nothing to do with the rest of the book, they accept — and all of those establishing moments that tie them to their elements, and all the foreshadowing about the Tree of Harmony, and all the lessons they learned from their adventures, go completely to waste.
Conclusion
So, is this book worth reading?
It teases a few cool ideas. Well … "a few" might be overselling it. It does essentially canonize A Stitch In Time, though, which might be worth the price of admission to a few of you. Dammit, Eakin.
Also, it's got like three pages that talk about Cadence, so even though they don't tell us anything new about the character, if your name is Skywriter you're contractually obligated to buy a copy.
Other than that, though, I'm having a hard time coming up with reasons to recommend this. If you're a parent with young children who like the show, this would probably make good bedtime reading (especially the included "Journal of Friendship", which is all the collected journal entries shown or implied in Season 4, and is written a lot better than the main book).
It does, however, have a page that consists simply of the text:
My sister and I were meant to rule together.
Celestia
… which, if you pretend the other 170 pages don't exist, is exactly the right combination of bittersweet and poignant.
Verdict:
Stick with fanfiction.
Heh, I've been wondering about this book myself. My sister can't stop raving about how amazing the book is, and told me to order a copy, but I was skeptical - She's never read a book for fun that wasn't official MLP merchandise. Like, EVER. <_<;
I see my doubts were well-founded.
I've been telling her to read Naked Singularity every week for the past six months.
Put that eyebrow down, good sir, she got me into MLP with the same technique. Perhaps the journal will finally get her to read fanfiction?
... probably not... but one can dream...
In fairness, she was probably confused by the fact that word probably didn't exist a thousand years ago.
This treads dangerous ground...
As for Amore, it's not like we haven't seen identical cutie marks before...
That aside, Cadance is more or less explicitly shown in the show itself as a teenager when Twi was still a blank flank, and if you take the other books as canon, she was a pegasus before getting a horn. She also didn't seem to know about the Crystal Heart. While there ARE potential explanations for that, It's really just likely this was just an ancestor.
Also, didn't Luna bear laughter in the show, when she and Celestia blast Discord?
Just looked, it's hard to tell, but blue is on Luna's side, and blue was laughter. Laughter, honesty, and loyalty.
Dat gif tho.
I'm thinking Amore is Cady's grand-to-the-nth-mother, or possibly just plain mother, if you assume Princess Heartbutt spent centuries as a perpetual baby princess-goddess of Reduit.
Overall, I've been seeing mixed reactions from people. It definitely seems to be the case that we're nowhere near the target audience, though!
Yes, it's always good to stay informed about all the things I'm forced to disregard completely because they break my internal chronology into little tiny pieces. Hey, remember when I thought that working in the nebulous near-past with a non-main character would mean that the canon would leave me alone? Ah, good times. Good, stupid times.
This is, of course, speaking as a dude who bought his own copy ages ago on Amazon because it was just the right amount to push past a free-shipping threshold for some other stuff. This was before all this Hatchette Group drama went down. They promise me it will be in my hands soon, but yes, I have fulfilled my contractual obligation.
2210605
If nothing else, I am very relieved that the book is implying an actual lineage connecting Cady to the Empire due to their similar first names (Amore to Mi Amore). Though the show is silent on this front, it rankles me when the implication is made that Celestia threw Cady at the Empire because she had a spare princess lying around in the broom closet and the Crystal Ponies couldn't be trusted to select their own leaders.
EDIT: If Amore actually is Cadance then that causes a boatload of trouble by crashing straight up against ...Crystal Heart Spell and rendering Cadance's ignorance of the Crystal Ponies (not knowing about the Crystal Heart, e.g.) totally inexplicable.
This would have been a better review without all the cynicism. Every "because season 4" comment made me eyeroll hard.
But anyway, I was really amused by how much Star Swirl used time travel. Totally explains the bits of prophecy they have without actually having to give someone some sort of prophetic ability.
I don't know why, but that idea of a story's main character's being coached by a wizened old wizard/eccentric/librarian/etc. who is actually a time traveller and just guiding the character towards the 'destiny' they've seen in the future rubs me the wrong way. It seems so... cheap, from a literary point of view.
I think they only piece of work I've seen that does it that I liked was the animated movie Sword in the Stone, and that's mostly because there, it was played purely for comedic effect.
This line amuses me far more than it has any logical right to. I may or may not blatantly steal it at some point in the future.
2210649
Twitchy Tail
I'm torn between mostly disregarding the book or else considering it a book Celestia wrote just to troll Twilight
Heck, each entry ends with the alicorn's cutie mark. Before they got their cutie marks. If it's supposed to be a realistic representation of the book Twilight found in the library, this either guarantees that the book was a fake, or else make it clear that the sisters edited their entries afterwards, at least to add their cutie marks
My main issue is that the book is highly illogical. A way to the Zebra homeland through the Everfree forest? The sun and moon raising rituals permanently draining Unicorn magic? A whole Alicorn society heavily hinted at, that lived in the Canterlot of old and is never mentioned anywhere else? Apart from the childish plot, there are quite a few things that don't pass a basic reality check, not even a fantasy reality check.
I'm still likely to incorporate a few things from the book into my headcanon; Star Swirl having lived more than a regular unicorn and having invented, and used, time manipulation spells (the last part was already heavily hinted at in It's About Time, after all), Luna being a good magic user but of an intuitive (rather than bookworm) kind, Commander Hurricane being male, the actual ruler of the Unicorns during the time of the Hearth's Warming Eve being Princess Platinum's father (which suggests she might be younger than the ponies that kindled the Fire of Friendship), etc.
There's also an interesting tidbit in that Star Swirl already knew spells to move the sun and moon, but was researching a spell to move the stars, which does not appear again in the book. I wonder if that will be a hook to something that will happen during season 5, now that we have an alicorn with a star for a cutie mark
(And I'm still grumpy that the digital edition does not include the Journal of Friendship. I already went through the trouble of changing my Amazon account's address to some McDonald's in Canada in order to purchase it, given that the digital version appears to only be available in Canada, and they keep from me what might be the best part of the book? And to add insult to injury, the page count for the digital version at the Amazon product page is the same as for the physical book, which wrongly suggests that it might be the full book.)
2210692 ...
Crap, good point, I forgot about the Pinkie Sense. Still, what we've seen Pinkie do is a bit of a distance from someone knowing enough to write down lines like "the stars shall aid in her escape" and so on.
Though that just gives me the mental image of Pinkie as an oracle with some appropriate straight man (Twilight? Applejack?) as the interpreter that translates her twitches.
wat
why ?
2210760
Depends on whether you think EQG as canon or not.
I don't see it as so big a jump from knowing detailed accounts about events she could never have seen, plus having fairly precise (if limited) hunches about the future, to writing cryptic predictions that come true.
2210785 Crap x2, you are completely correct. Leave it to Pinkie to so completely undermine my original idea of having a scientifically sensible source for the prophecy. There's something... right about that.
"Luna as the Element of Laughter? Laughter?"
Of course Luna had the element of Laughter. Laughter is the only Element of Harmony that embodies Joy, Excitement, and Passion, which, of course, is exemplified in the Night. (There's also a three-letter word in there that can't be used in children's stories, but without it, there would be no children, so...)
"My sister and I were meant to rule together." Well, it depends on the meaning of the word Rule. I'm still waiting to see either of the celestial princesses with a guitar...
2210746 "A way to the Zebra homeland through the Everfree forest?"
Yep, did it in 'Monster.' What, did you think Zecora walked here?
2210639 I wouldn't sweat it one drop. Presuming that the cartoon/comic/book canon is as accurate as most others, you could have Transformers in there and it would be fine.
(Which of course brings to mind, which Transformer would have which Element....)
2210857
I have yet to read your "Monster" fic (it's in my read later list though), but while it would be possible to add some magical passage to the Zebra lands through the Everfree forest in a reasonable way — similar to how there is a magical passage to the Breezies' lands somewhere in Equestria — I don't think the book managed to do it properly. Heck, I don't think it even tried (though, to the book's credit, there is at least a hint, in that flying creatures like Alicorns and Manticores took a foot path to it; they could have made it actually work as a magic gateway with a couple extra lines either in the related Luna or the related Celestia segments).
2210857
Yeah, I don't sweat this stuff nowadays. Anymore, I just use elements that bolster the stories I was already going to write and ditch the rest. (The "Neigh Anything" arc of the comics has to be almost totally disregarded, for instance.)
2210639
With her cutie mark, and being the Princess of Lurve, I think the show's come as close to saying "Yes, Cady is the true heir to the lost Crystal Empire" as they can without outright spelling it out.
Can't believe they'd make Amore == Cadence, unless there are some extreme shenanigans with age spells and time travel involved... Hey, that would actually make for a wonky sort of fun, doesn't it?
Sounds to me like Celestia is the one excited about magic.
2210940 unless... Some evil being passed a powerful amnesia spell on Cadance, and celestia doesn't have the Ovaries/heart to let Cadace know that, so she just sends her to high school again to "make some friends"
Horizon suffers the Journal of the Royal Sisters
>Not John Perry
>Not the feature box
0/10
Just kidding. Too bad this one doesn't live up to the hype, unlikeHow to Train Your Dragon 2, which is amazing.
Man, if they were going to rip off something, they should have, at least, ripped off something that was good.
Though hey, at least it riffed a bit on Castle-Maneia, which was a reasonable if not amazing episode.
Though man, it makes even more of a hash of history, because Starswirl the Bearded was Clover the Clever's mentor. How the hell old was he?
Incidentally, re: Amazon:
The publishers have been forced to admit that they conspired against Amazon and broke the law in order to fix prices for consumers in a clearly illegal agreement.
My ability to feel sorry for them is about zero, and my ability to really believe them about anything is pretty much zero.
Apparently what is actually going on is Hachette is charging more for their books, and Amazon is refusing to buy them at the higher prices. Given that Hachette has been charged in the past with, you know, conspiring to raise prices for consumers via illegal market manipulation, and, you know, actually admitted to doing it...
Well, it is kind of hard to take them at their word that this is all Amazon's fault.
2211042
If you know what I mean.
It isn't TLT canon unless they threw in a mention of a weather vane.
Seriously though, The Trilogy has made a total hash of canon at this point. It was mostly written pre-S4, so things like Luna being the ones who made the Elements of Harmony obviously don't mesh with what we know now. I do like the idea that AKR is secretly reading my fan fiction, though. If we ever see an appearance of The Grassy Knoll then we'll know for sure.
2210857
That and I am almost certain she possessed Laughter in the show...
2211064
There's withholding information for the sake of teaching moments and then there's outright cruelty...
2210981
Fun fact: Cadance's Cutie Mark is sometimes the Crystal Heart (i.e. literally the Crystal Heart, the one that sits in the piazza beneath her castle) and sometimes is a totally different Crystal Heart altogether. The first has a single flat heart-shaped facet at its face and the other has a diamond-shaped facet at its face. She varies between them freely, sometimes changing over mid-scene (watch Cadance's butt throughout the whole of "You'll Play Your Part" to see what I mean). So maybe it's less cut-and-dried than it would seem at first.
2212396 Extra twin empress? They did it in starwars!
Oh hey, I'm entering the conversation!
Ummm yeah, this sounded like the book I wanted, I even had run into the writer of the story at BABScon and chatted a bit. Very little bit, but still, she said I should read it if I wanted to know more about Celestia and Luna.
I'm glad you gave this an honest review, and I gotta say I almost wish that the writers from the show could write on here anonymously to see what they would surprise us with as "canon" stories on fimfic.
2212687
See, now I want to write THAT story.
I'll get to reading the body of the post after I read my copy myself, but I had to chime in about your Amazon comment. My pre-order got to me fine, one day before they estimated even. Why did you cancel your pre-order? Are you in the camp that Amazon is being unfair by negotiating with a supplier like businesses do every day?
2213328
> Are you in the camp that Amazon is being unfair by negotiating with a supplier like businesses do every day?
Are you in the camp that Amazon, which controls 50% of all book sales, negotiates in the same way that the bookstore down your street does?
If we're done with snarky rhetorical questions … I think there's a relevant Swahili proverb here: "When elephants fight, it's the grass that gets hurt." We're here not just as consumers, but as authors, and if you don't think this is about two big guys fighting over who gets the right to screw the creators, you're not cynical enough about capitalism.
I like the way one commenter here (which is a pro-Amazon article worth reading for balance) put it: "Big publishers are sharky businesses, everybody knows that, but the best scenario for customers and, I'd wager, for small suppliers is to have several sharks keeping one another in check." Smashwords' take is also good.
I'm also not sure where you got the impression that I cancelled my preorder. Amazon stopped offering preorders of that book in late May. I couldn't have bought it through Amazon if I'd wanted to.
2211287
I feel the same way about book publishers as I do about big game studios like Activision and EA. They're just after the money, they're fighting a losing war over a shitty business model, and all the great stuff is at the margins anyway.
That having been said, who game publishers are losing out to isn't indies, it's addiction engines like Zynga's Farmville and 99-cent shovelware iPhone games. The big game studios' loss isn't indies' gain, it's just a step in the downward spiral.
I'm seeing signs that the book market is going through the same death throes that games are suffering and music has already suffered, with power passing from the gatekeepers to the distributors. But I'm not sure where Amazon is going to get the same sort of challengers in the distribution arena that, say, Apple did when the iPod dominated the music market. Amazon's pretty much been it for books since the start of the Internet. They're larger than their nearest 12 competitors put together. Picking up their flag just because publishers are creeps seems like a losing move to me.
Edited to add: Viking ZX just posted an anti-Hachette take if you're looking for further reading. I'm just saying there ain't no angels in this fight.
2215457
Thing is, the publishers are already conspiring together to fix ebook prices and screw authors over. We know this; they've actually been caught doing it. So we already know they're slimeballs. And the fact that they're already conspiring with each other means that there AREN'T multiple sharks. They are price fixing.
I'd rather deal directly with Amazon - the publishers are worthless middlemen at this point who are trying to take their pound of flesh for no added value. Amazon is huge, but it is USEFUL, and I know people who do business directly with Amazon as sellers and they're quite happy with it.
And here's the thing - while physical book distribution may well be in the bag, ebook distribution is not. Anyone can in principle undercut Apple, Amazon, ect. with their own thing, and the infrastructure for ebook distribution is nowhere near as expensive to set up - you can do it yourself and in your own way, and because the capital costs are lower, it is a more dangerous market for them to try and screw people over on.
The essential question we have to ask ourselves, as authors, is this:
How much is an ebook book worth?
We've established pretty well by this point that music is worth 99 cents. How much games, movies, and other things are worth is much more up in the air. Books are a form of entertainment, in the end (books which aren't a form of entertainment, such as textbooks, are a somewhat different animal due to the much more inelastic laws of supply and demand with them).
I'd rather be dealing with Amazon than the publishers, becasue we know what the publishers are like. People say better the devil you know, but frankly, I'm happier with the person who may or may not be bad over the ones I KNOW are bad, and, let's face it, publishers are all about getting their cuts. If Amazon did it directly, you're still probably better off than getting cut by both Amazon (who is going to be shipping and selling your books as a storefront) AND the publisher.
As far as Activision and EA are concerned - people yell and scream and moan and groan about them, but honestly, they're fine. I don't care. Honestly, I think some of their employees (particularly QA) should probably unionize, or at least that was the case in the past (I've heard they're less awful now) but frankly a lot of it is blown out of proportion or complained about for very poor reasons.
People complain about Origin... but it is just Steam, more or less. And I am glad it exists - sure, having one platform is CONVENIENT, but having people actually try to compete is nice. Though I suppose there's always Blizzard and Battle.net, if Blizzard ever gets themselves together and actually tries to push out (though maybe they're just not interested, as they and EA are big enough that they don't HAVE to side with Valve).
Honestly, the idea that the big studios are even losing out at all is wrong; that isn't what is actually happening. Game revenue has been INCREASING, and that includes that of the big studios. Indeed, the entire idea that they are being undercut by shovelware is simply false, because that isn't a substitution. The DS has more to worry about from that than EA does; Angry Birds is no substitute for Mass Effect or Civilization V. People who buy those, aren't buying them in the place of the big games.
Some might argue that the whole F2P MMO thing is screwing up the market for MMOs, but frankly, at this point, I think the MMO model has some real problems already - the value proposition has always been a bit questionable, and with Valve regularly selling many top-tier quality titles for $5-15 dollars on a weekly if not daily basis, it is hard to really justify your MMO having a subscription fee.
Games aren't dying at all - they're booming. Indeed, they've been growing at an incredibly high rate - global sales were at $76 BILLION in 2013. The games industry DID suffer a bit in the great recession (it went from $67 billion to $60 billion) but it has since rebounded and surpassed where it was at previously. The industry grew from $63 billion in 2012 to $76 billion in 2013.
Amazon being unwilling to help Hachette fix prices (and make no mistake - that's precisely what Hachette is trying to do) is entirely legitimate. If they don't feel Hachette's books are worth carrying at the prices Hachette is offering them at, then why should they? They aren't a charity, and Hachette is free to sell their books via other avenues if they don't consider Amazon to be worthwhile anymore. Heck, if their books really are so awesome, they could do their own thing.
2215457
First, I was trying to keep the snark down, but sorry if it came off as too strong.
Considering that the bookstore down the street is B&N, yeah, they kind of do. My favorite independent bookstore closed about 15 years ago and since then I've only been able to shop at the big stores.
I had read the first article already and the second was also good, as long as you understood the filter of a competing online indie publisher was there. They led me to this site where you can find some very interesting words from a solely self-published author who's dealt with both sides of the business.
Now, it is possible that Amazon could screw the authors down the road, but there are two important things to keep in mind: one, they aren't doing so right now and publishers are by paying them a shit percentage; and two, alternative retailers exist as illustrated by your Smashwords article, which helps to keep prices and author payments in line.
That gives the impression that you pre-ordered from Amazon first, but I can see how it could also mean from B&N.
To cover your bit on gaming, your example of EA losing money to Zynga is flawed. People who buy Zynga products are not usually the same people who buy EA products. They are largely a new market consisting of people who's first video game experience was likely Solitaire on their PC and children too young to play the majority of EA's games. That's not to say there's no crossover (oh lord the Sims), but even then, cheap time-wasters are not appreciably detrimental to the budget of someone who regularly plays Battlefield.
2215853
of a cartel.
Textbooks, the textbook example
Blizzard has Battle.net for themselves, as do many of the larger MMO publishers, not as a competing gaming platform, but a place where all their products are easily accessed and maintained. Now Activision could try to make their own Steam/ Origin, but at the moment they don't give two shits about the PC market. They know where their bread is buttered.
On the subject of sub MMOs, certain sub games have and continue to do well (WoW, EVE), but a lot of it is due to value and loyalty. The recent sub to hybrid F2P conversions of such mammoth projects as SW: The Old Republic has been more based on the overspending on production with the expectation of crazy sales, which can plague any industry. Luckily, an MMO can drop the sub and add some restrictions and a cash shop and suddenly become profitable due to not only new blood checking out the game, but also their hardcore fans keeping their sub AND spending money in the cash shop. The really interesting cases are ESO and Wildstar, both recent box and sub launches. They may well be the last born of their kind, but in their place, new models have risen.
This is what I've been trying to explain to people, but somehow it doesn't play well. If my local B&N decided that Hachette books weren't worth the shelf space and stopped stocking them entirely (which Amazon hasn't done, they are just ordering the bare minimum), I doubt people would be screaming bloody murder about it.
2216186
I wouldn't call textbooks a cartel; it is more an example of why extremely small markets can be weird. A lot of books don't need to be replaced very often, and in college, you're only looking at a relatively small population of people who even buy your books in the first place in many cases - and you aren't even necessarily the only choice for a textbook about X.
As far as MMOs go, I think that F2P is kind of a false god. The problem with F2P MMOs is that they're heavily dependent on whales, which is problematic as it means only a very small fraction of your playerbase actually matters as far as your income goes. That is problematic on two fronts - first off, it means that if you have a problem with that small portion of your playerbase, you're doomed. The second problem lies in the fact that because of the nature of their buying habits, it means that you have to constantly pump out new content for the whales to buy, rather than having your content be enjoyed by a much wider swath of your player base.
Added to that, F2P MMOs suffer from the fact that, in the end, it isn't actually very healthy for most games - only a small fraction of games do well with F2P systems, as most systems either end up making you buy power (which is bad because it drives a lot of players away from your game as "pay to win" sits wrong with them) or it doesn't do anything but improve aesthetics (which interests fewer players, though it CAN work out pretty well). League of Legends does well not only by producing skins, but by also selling what amounts to time - you do gain some minor edge by spending money because you have to spend less time playing to buy champions, but in truth, you only need a small fraction of all the available champions so it isn't actually a very big deal.
Most MMOs can't strike this balance, though, because they aren't much like League of Legends. I've played some F2P MMOs, and most of them were pretty bad; the best ones were the ones which had started out as subscription-type MMOs then been converted over, but the problem there was that it felt... really awkward. City of Heroes converted to F2P, then went belly-up because the ROI was too low to justify continuing to spend money on the game.
People don't remember the failures, they just see the successes and get dollar signs in their eyes. There have been a lot of MMOs which have lost companies money.
Developing a proper MMO is pretty tough, and building something of the quality of Wildstar is very expensive and risky. I wouldn't make an MMO unless I had a very good plan.
Guild Wars 2 went with Buy to Play, while TSW did something similar, buy to play plus DLC. Sadly, I basically beat TSW back in the day, and I'm unwilling to ever go back - it isn't a bad game, but even though they finally added Tokyo, I've quit the game for so long I just don't care enough to go back to it, even though it was fun. And that's pretty rough - I was really excited for Tokyo when the game came out, but a year and a half later, I can't even be bothered to reinstall the game and pay for it. Guild Wars 2 was kind of bad, so I gave up on that, too.
From what I've heard about ESO, it failed to actually be an Elder Scrolls game, and isn't really anything special. The remake of Final Fantasy 14 is supposedly somewhat interesting, but nothing new. I've heard some good things about Wildstar, but from what I've seen of it, it isn't enough to get ME to buy it - my brother is playing it, though, and he is enjoying himself. I might pick it up at some point... but honestly, I'm cynical enough to think that if I wait, it will either go B2P or F2P.
And given the history of such games, I'm probably right.
2210639
Inexplicable? Not at all! A kiloton-grade forgetfulness spell went off there, right?
2218229
Yes, I suppose, but since Celestia was apparently also intimately involved with questing for the Heart once upon a time, she was either mind-wiped as well or she's trolling her protegees pretty hardcore.
The timeline is a little wonky, too, but despite that I'd be willing to believe that Amore=Cadance was what they were going for, were it not for ...Crystal Heart Spell and Cady's apparent pegasus lineage. This is assuming that there is some kind of consistency being striven for and the franchise is not just spasmodically ejecting random books into the world, which is admittedly a pretty big assumption.
2216218
You should read Kazerad's review, then. (All the way through.)
2218835
I was like "Man, this doesn't sound anything like everything else I've read about this game."
And then I was right.
The game detailed in that review actually sounds like a really cool idea. Someone needs to make that game - playing as extraplanar summons is actually a really cool idea for a MMO. Or heck, just a RPG in general.
Hm... Not that I KNOW any game designers... bah, I have something else I have to get done. But maybe later.
I actually liked The Secret World, for the record, but the actual game wasn't that great - it had some good ideas as far as gameplay went (everyone can be any role, but you have to pick and choose what role you are at any given time - it made partying up vastly better) and the atmosphere was quite good, and the investigation quests and many of the NPCs were wonderful... but it really was pretty terrible at being a MMO.
2216218
My thought on textbooks is that we have a product that is regularly reprinted primarily to justify new, required purchases without much in the way of substance and costs WAY more than any sane person could justify on costs. High prices on a forced product that is only made by a small group... isn't that a cartel?
Um, I have to point out that the majority of any type of product is shit, so I don't see how it becomes the cornerstone for an argument against F2P. Wildstar has been crap for me so far, so many frustratingly and poorly designed elements (like every damned menu in the game). GW2 is just boring once you hit 80, all appreciable character improvement stops. TSW has such an amazing aesthetic and story, but the second M in MMO is sorely lacking
2218835
Incidentally, I noticed he had something about game design on his blog. Game design is kind of a big thing for me.
You made me read a tumblr. You evil, evil man.
And now I'm going to see if I can run that Earthquake game with some friends, and see if we get the similar results.
2218316
I'd buy that she got hit with the mind-wipe at a lower dosage, or that the memory spell affected things mainly to do with a particular topic (there's no canyon across the middle of Xanth, what are you talking about?).
Alternately, Celestia wasn't affected and didn't know it had happened to Cadence because Cadence had spent the intervening 1k years stone-cold dead, and Celestia figured everything relevant would return to her once she was in a familiar environment (as usual for recovering alicorns).
2218995
Also possible. As usual, it leaves us with more questions than it answers.
2218835
Aw, man. That review makes me want to play an MMO where my character is a Daedric Bound Helmet, because nothing would beat the sheer excitement of taking the role of some dude's magical hat.
2218955
Kazerad's a pretty amazing person. There's the MLP RPG you've already discovered, the game design stuff, and even some remarkable writing advice I keep meaning to write a blogpost to link.
Totally unrepentant.
2219105
Daedric Bound Helmet: The Game: The Novelization
Chapter 1. Crisis of Faith
The thrill of anticipation. The whirlwind of summoning. The bliss of purpose —
— and then the humiliation and disappointment of returning home without ever having blocked a blow.
Then the ever-lingering question. Were you not good enough?
Sure, there was the time that that jerk apprentice in the Chorrol Mages Guild summoned and dismissed you over and over again just to train up his Conjuration skill — that wasn't a reflection on you so much as it was of his callous disregard for the intricate interplay of Daedra and Mundus; and if a few of your Atronach friends happened to "accidentally" catch their summoner in their area-of-effect spells later on, well, he just brought it upon himself by working with powers he didn't respect.
But the function of a helmet is to ward off blows to the head. A mage wouldn't summon you unless he expected some, and unless the protection you afforded was superior to his equipment at hand. So why would he spend the magicka and then not put you to your intended use? Maybe … maybe he was disappointed. Maybe you didn't gleam in the starlight quite as brightly as the last helmet he summoned (gleaming was never your strong suit), or crowded his vision a touch too much (you knew that weekend of drinking with the boys instead of working out would catch up to you), or your protection-to-cost ratio was too poor (Amkaos had told you to cut your magicka surcharge back, but no, you told him, I've got a doublet and two greaves at home to feed).
And every time you're summoned and unused, the doubt grows.
2219644
You see? Gripping.
2211273
> Now where's my royalty check, you freeloader?
Oh man, totally missed that the first time. Sorry for the late payment!
The royalty:
tomorrowlands.org/images/pony/celestia-scroll.jpg tomorrowlands.org/images/pony/luna-scrolls.jpg
And Twilight, for the highest possible quality of checkmark:
tomorrowlands.org/images/pony/twilight-checklist.jpg
Plot twist:
Eakin works for Hasbro (/DHX/whoever would be appropriate for handling the plots.) Therefore, they are allowed to use whatever plot elements they like from what we see as his fics. Said fics exist because if only Hasbro (/whoever) used them, the result would be... well, lame; like what you described. And Eakin cares too much to let that be the only version, so he's been writing ahead with something far far more awesome then he'd ever be allowed to get away from sneaking into canon.
Conclusion: Hard Reset is canon.
Actually, that could probably make for an interesting fic. Now the part of me that wants to write everything wants to write that. Picture Twilight and Cadence, instead of merely the bit we see in the episode, going off on Hard Reset -style shenanigans. And that's probably why Cadence knows so much about changelings, too. Damit horizon.
2233161
Ha ha! That is very amusing because of the magnitude of its improbability! Like you, I laugh in disbelief!
2211442
They're on to the plan. Send in the cleaners.
2211442 I'd rather see Degrassi Knoll. But that's more because I think kids these days would actually get the joke.
2218835
You utter bastard. I got so excited reading that review that the last sentence actually made me cry. If someone had told me I would have that strong a reaction, I never would have believed them. The game it described was so pitch-perfect that discovering the review was bullshit was like the first time I saw the scene in PS4 where Alys died.