I have a feeling that at least a locked thread is going to result from all of this back-and-forth we've seen thus far. But before it (likely) happens, I'd like to just make a few statements.

  • Bastion's stated "total copies sold" are not just numbers from the U.S.A., but worldwide numbers including all three versions of the game. Thus Bastion's massive success cannot be attributed to only Americans buying the game.
  • The three versions of Bastion (Xbox LIVE Arcade; Windows including Steam, GamersGate, Origin, Green Man Gaming, Direct2Drive, Impulse, and OnLive; and the Chrome Browser's Chrome Web Store) ensure that a wide variety of people have purchased the game from a plethora of backgrounds and financial abilities, not only the wealthy prodigals.
  • Bastion is an independently developed and published game. Its achievements are all the more impressive due to its small-time developer not having the financial fortitude of giants like EA, Ubisoft, or Square Enix.
  • Bastion has won over sixty video game industry awards including numerous "Game of the Year" titles. That's an awful lot of publications to bribe.
  • People's opinions are just personal preferences and not fact. Thus what some people like others will not. Thus all media, video games included, cannot be called good nor bad as fact; the closest we can get is general consensus, and the general consensus of players and the media is that Bastion is a good game.
  • I personally don't like Bastion's gameplay, but I appreciate the other aspects of the game.
  • Those who are proud of their nationality or ethnicity should list it in their forum profiles.
  • People should be worldly before considering laying blanket statements as rule-of-thumb guidelines whether about people, places, or things.
  • "Americans" consist of a wide variety of people of all ethnicities from around the world with different distributions and concentrations dependent upon the differing regions of the nation - it is not a homogenous people nor country.
  • Digital Press's readership includes many Americans, but according to our statistics, Canada, the UK, Germany, Russia, Australia, Brazil, France, Mexico, and China make up over a quarter of our viewership, with most of that concentrated in the first four countries listed.