That's why we need to think of the children! And their young, transplantable elbows...
Transformers: Age of the Primes Thread: ll First Post All Listings II Update : April 12th, 2027 Bonus Wave: Repaint fun, Beast Wars, G2, Machine Wars
- Thread starter TriBlurr
- Start date
I feel like that is an attack on ALL of us…
To step aside from our BS for a moment…
And not just Transformers! GI Joe, Thundercats, He-Man, My Little Pony, Power Rangers, Ninja Turtles, Avatar TLA, Marvel Heroes, DC Heroes, Super Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog…
I think there is a valid argument that there is just TOO MUCH CONTENT out there too easily accessible to kids. Kids don’t create the attachments we did because there’s just an onslaught of different flavors of the SAME content across ALL the major brands. Heck, outside of Earthspark, the last couple Transformers kids series were shortform (Cyberworld and Cyberverse). The latest offerings from Ben 10, Justice League, Teen Titans, even He-Man with their newly launched series…are high energy, short form (<12 minutes per ”episode”) content meant to be consumed by kids conditioned to be focused on something for only a few minutes at a time.
I think it’s worth exploring if kids aren’t “burning out” on some franchises too quickly because they can “feed the need” with hundreds of hours of content at their fingertips.
And Tubi. And Amazon Prime. And Pluto TV. And Plex. Sometimes on Netflix.
And not just Transformers! GI Joe, Thundercats, He-Man, My Little Pony, Power Rangers, Ninja Turtles, Avatar TLA, Marvel Heroes, DC Heroes, Super Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog…
I think there is a valid argument that there is just TOO MUCH CONTENT out there too easily accessible to kids. Kids don’t create the attachments we did because there’s just an onslaught of different flavors of the SAME content across ALL the major brands. Heck, outside of Earthspark, the last couple Transformers kids series were shortform (Cyberworld and Cyberverse). The latest offerings from Ben 10, Justice League, Teen Titans, even He-Man with their newly launched series…are high energy, short form (<12 minutes per ”episode”) content meant to be consumed by kids conditioned to be focused on something for only a few minutes at a time.
I think it’s worth exploring if kids aren’t “burning out” on some franchises too quickly because they can “feed the need” with hundreds of hours of content at their fingertips.
I suddenly feel very blessed for growing up in a generation that was blessed by programs like Beast Wars, Babylon 5 and the collective DCAU. They rewarded people who paid attention.
I had whichever channel wasn't 100% static that day.
There's a very real phenomenon where a kid surrounded by toys plays with any of them less because the super-saturation to the senses precludes focusing enough to do it. I imagine the same thing applies to video content, with so many choices, nothing gets watched at all.
That sounds like me at work.
That sound slike me everywhere.
me, having subscriptions to multiple streaming services
"I don't know what to watch."
"I don't know what to watch."
Ah, the Home Shopping Network, then.
To be fair, that's precisely the reason I don't own one.
The expensive part, not the overpacked one.
Decision paralysis is a very real problem these days
This is from 7 years ago, but feels even more relevant now that most of us have multiple streaming services PLUS AVOD providers like Tubi or Prime Live TV
I don’t think it’s the programs themselves, a lot of times. It’s the cultural shift (not just among kids) that favor an almost “ADHD” mindset of frequent hits of dopamine with “bursts” of content, rather than committing a focus of 30 minutes (or more) to a full narrative piece of media like a tv episode or movie.
We’ve seen a LOT of good to great “kids cartoons” the past 5 years or so. Few of them had any lasting impact due to mix of availability and inability garner a hook into enough of an audience to last more than a season. Earthspark was a “return to form” for a Transformers series, going back to longer form episodes. It was practically DOA, where as Cyberverse (and seemingly, Cyberworld) have managed to more solid positioning. And I’m not sure the Paramount+ pay wall was the entire issue, either (the show DID pop up on Nickelodeon several times, IIRC)
My steam library is quite large and through other means I have access to to essentially the sum total of 8-bit and 16-bit console games.
I barely play games these days.
As Steevy says, media in general is just consumed differently now, and the patterns and shifts seem to make sense. It's less the quality of the writing, and more the mode it's presented in and how that's consumed.
Since video supplanted text in the 2010s (spurred on by sketchy data, thanks Meta) as the de facto way of spreading things -- RIP to the old status quo of detailed, wordy text reviews and rich galleries -- and became ubiquitous, people adapted to it in a similar way to how they'd adapt to a text they felt was long. Where one might skim a text, viewers would advance through the video, and Most Watched parts became a new metric. Beyond that, viewers would watch the whole thing but at 2x speed. This heavily undermines the ability of a narrative (which could use time to set viewers into specific emotional states as needed for the impact).
This and the "let's copy each other yay" of contemporary social media has led to optimizing things to cater to this. TikTok clips, Shorts, Reels, and so on, all serve bite-size things that keep one on the hook just long enough and then immediately offer more, so the meta now is to make "full-size" content that can be clipped into a couple dozen of these things. That affects arcing and pacing and internal structure, and one way to make it work is to just make the "full-size" content shorter to begin with, so that it can be the upper limit of these short things. In Transformers, I think, we first saw this with Cyberverse, and now Cyberworld is upping the ante by shortening the full episodes even further, while simultaneously demonstrating the clipping approach by releasing clips of these already-clip-length episodes.
The matter of "impact" and certainly "lasting" impact is, I feel, less due to even this and more due to the fragmentation of pop culture. There's no real monoculture anymore, and so no monoculture-with-subversive-subcultures; it's all flattened. When everything became tailored-to-you-by-the-algorithm, on demand, and widely available (er, YMMV on that), that decentralization meant the impact of everything would be diluted. What's the defining anything, anymore? Is it K-Pop Demon Hunters? The MCU? Hot Ones? Sequels to 2000s properties because studios can't gamble on waiting for fans to come around to reboots? I have to wonder if GTA VI, when it finally comes out, will likewise be as enduring a topic as GTA V (even leaving aside the meme it became for being milked even longer than Capcom did with SF2).
The widening gulf between surefire hits (or what studios think will be this) and shovelware slop -- studios don't risk nearly as much money on in-between projects anymore, whether on streaming or in video games -- also makes the stakes higher for the expected hits, which end up being curated as hell and feeling as such rather than really clicking as much on a personal level.
I'm definitely waiting for if and when they make a redeco in colors I prefer, because due to money things I will likely only be able to afford one of these, maybe two (if they make Nemesis Prime and Blue Big Convoy/Ultra Mammoth), and that rules out original recipe.