Gephyrophillia #237

Originally Posted on 04/02/2011 by Jeff Harris

In life, you'll quickly learn that you can'r rely on games to get through it. Alright, it's not that quickly for a lot of people. Some folks bet on professional sports as well as amateur sports and tournaments. Some bet on animals being violent to each other or people exerting animals to their physical limits. Some risk it all on games of chance or lotteries, where dreams of instant fortune often cloud the realities of spending more than you actually have. In the end, probably when it's too late, probably in a moment when you put all the cards on the table, you will lose and finally realize one fatal truth:

Games are just for kids.

When you expose yourself as a one-trick pony, you lose a lot of power, a lot of control, and anyone that could easily knock you down will do just that. The situation that's happening with 4Kids and the Yu-Gi-Oh shows that you shouldn't depend on one product alone. Yu-Gi-Oh made up more than half of 4Kids' bottom line, especially given the amount of merchandising dollars the company gets. People still play the card games, still read the manga, and still watch the series. However, 4Kids forgot whose pot they were gambling with. Nihon Ad and TV Tokyo owns the property outright and wanted was was due them. 4Kids, it would seem, thought that just because they borrowed the pot from those guys, they wouldn't have to pay them back.

They kept making money with Yu-Gi-Oh and didn't give YGO's owners their due. Eventually, they got caught and gotten the property taken away from them. Now, they're busted, can't pay the money back, and drifting about like a vagrant after a Vegas bender. 4Kids has lost so much. Pokemon. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Winx Club. One Piece. Shaman King. Chaotic. Now, Yu-Gi-Oh. Their network contract is about to expire, and with all its post YGO hopes on yet another untested property means the end of 4Kids is near.

All because they put all their cards on the table. They could have developed more homegrown properties instead of relying on foreign properties all the time. Instead of comparing every remaining property to Yu-Gi-Oh, perhaps Chaotic would still be around. Then again, the audience has grown rather tired of card-based shows. The market has become stagnant and people want to evolve beyond game-based programming. People want entertainment, not exaggerated tutorials on board games. But what do I know?

Games are just for kids.

Keep creating.

Jeff Harris,
Creator/Webmaster, The X Bridge.