cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/7643915
As always in capitalism, video games have largely deformed from an art form into just another means to generate profit for large corporations
“The love of money is the root of all kinds of enshitification.” --Jesus Christ (Probably)
Pretty much.
"No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money” (Matthew 6:24).
God I’d love some money.
Republicans: I’m gonna serve money to god
Everything is inherently political when you really boil it down.
Politics is a branch of philosophy about how societies should be governed. If you want to make a social commentary that is non political, you would have to avoid mentioning how society is or should be run. Also, how people should organise together.
Unfortunately it’s not really a step by step guide
Step 1: Don’t purchase or play games with micro-transactions
Alright coo- ah fuck they just updated it and now it has micro transactions.
Step 2: Don’t purchase micro-transactions (see step 1)
I was gonna come in with the obvious “see step 1” joke. But what if they added it to a game you paid for? That’d be some bullshit.
That was the meaning I was going for. It has happened.
Where I would love to see micro-transactions be a thing is news articles, videos, and other creative works. I’m happy to pay for someone’s work, especially if I’m not paying a bunch of overhead to some shitting credit card company. At the same time, I have no wish to pay for a $20 monthly subscription for the local newspaper in Middleofnowhere, Montana just so I can read one article.
Whoa whoa whoa, are you posting a meme that’s tangentially political to the Marxist Leninist meme community?
I’m a capitalist shill and this offends me because it challenges my worldview and I don’t like that.
Clearly this should go on some other community with no subscribers. That way your message is neatly filed away somewhere nobody else will see it, especially me. I’m just in favor of proper sorting, that’s all! /s
This is outrageous.
It’s not like there’s a perfectly functional meme community at Lemmy.world that is suitable for properly sucking off the “job creators”
I think a lot of Eastern European socialist states had ton of bribes (or sometimes “gifts”) to get anything done, including in some places “gifts” to your doctor.
Unfortunately Marx didn’t eliminate all the micro transactions
Or you had a friend who worked at the store or the factory and could get you stuff because they liked you. A hundred friends could get you further than a hundred roubles.
I’ve heard that too. Connections being everything. I think those “you help me I help you” is sorta like micro transactions too.
Is it like that in Cuba?
I don’t know what’s their situation with corruption/bribery.
Are you asking rhetorically meaning they don’t or seriously asking? Because if you are asking I could try to look it up but don’t know offhand.
I don’t tend to trust anything I hear about Cuba tbh, one way or the other.
End the embargo and let’s see how things stack up.
We don’t have an embargo afaik
Of Cuba?
They are famously embargoed by America, except for food and medicine. Which is a pretty big deal, considering how important the US market is for any state in the American continents.
I’m not from America
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What about it?
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It’s great! But seriously, meant to reply to another comment…
I really tried to like it for years. Bought it on suggestion from a friend. Couldn’t enjoy a game that has a timer constantly dictating what I do and how I do it, had the same problem with Bully. Great game, if I was given free reign of my own actions instead of a time-limited version.
Also, I’m getting a bit tired of pixel graphics, been looking at them for the better part of 30 years. Time to move on.
If you bought it on PC, you can mod it to change the length of day settings. Made cave exploring much more enjoyable for me.
Can I mod better graphics in?
💀
The thing is: If everyone hated it, it would not work. But sadly it DOES work.
Lootboxes are legalized gambling for minors. So yeah, no shit it works. Just because a thing is profitable doesn’t make it good. The opioid epidemic proved very profitable, but just like gambling for kids, doesn’t make it a thing we should accept or want for our society.
I did not say or try to imply that it’s good. I said sadly it works. With emphasis on SADLY.
Fair enough, I’m certainly not about to disagree on the profitability of gambling (for the house specifically).
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Well, theres “working” and theres “working well”. Capitalism is not working so well anymore and its likely going to work worse as time goes on. more things will become automated, wealth inequality (and therefore a gap in political power) will grow, and companies will keep expecting increased growth in a world of limited(and in some cases, decreasing) resources. Capitalism currently “works” in the sense that its making resources move around, but thats about all its doing for regular, non rich, non well off people(and often is not doing even that much for them). It’s simply not sustainable when unregulated, thats why we need a well regulated economy.
Everyone gets a lootbox.
The lootbox contains one poor quality item.
You get it two years after launch.
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Bollocks, any decent game needs a fuck ton of capital to develop
Please share all the greatest communist games
Agree that loot boxes suck, they are gambling, not gaming
Edit. Yes, Tetris. One game made in 1985. Brilliant example Tankards.
So the score so far for games made:
Communism - 1
Capitalism - 831,000
No, games require labor to develop.
The capital pays for the labour, unless you have people who can work for free.
Within the confines of capitalism I would probably agree. But under socialism, production happens independently of capital accumulation.
Yeah right. Capital accumulation just comes via bribes instead. Corruption was rife in communist countries
corruption is rife in countries
FTFY
But moreso where there’s no opportunity to make money
That’s a pretty drastic statement to make without evidence
Lol, there’s plenty of opportunity to make money under socialism. You just have to do the labor. Under capitalism, however, there exists opportunity to derive money from other people’s surplus labor value, for example, I can pay a worker $4 to make a thing that requires $1 in supplies and sell that for $10. That difference of $5 is stolen surplus value from the laborer. Socialists seek to abolish this parasitic relationship.
Even if we suppose that’s true, you’re still failing to illustrate how capital is necessary for production under socialism.
Maybe we should start with what you mean by capital
Given the context of the meme being a picture of Karl Marx, I was using the Marxist definition of capital. Marxists.org provides a pretty digestible definition: https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/c/a.htm
Tetris enters the chat
Which was only successful because it got licensed to Western software companies.
Yeah it being an incredibly addictive universally approachable game has nothing to do with it being widely played for over 40 years… 🙄
Psst. Almost 40 years. Tetris was released in 1985 not 1983
This comment brought to you by an old fuck that doesn’t need to be artificially aged to be even older
You know that copyright export was illegal under the Soviets though yeah? So it only got released because a UK software sales guy faxed them a contract and they didn’t realise it was binding
Robert Stein, an international software salesman for the London-based firm Andromeda Software, saw the game’s commercial potential during a visit to Hungary in June 1986.[18]: 302 [25]: 11 min After an indifferent response from the Academy,[25]: 12 min Stein contacted Pajitnov and Brjabrin by fax to obtain the license rights.[25]: 11 min The researchers expressed interest in forming an agreement with Stein via fax, but they were unaware that this fax communication could be considered a legal contract in the Western world;[26] Stein began to approach other companies to produce the game.[17]: 89–90
Stein approached publishers at the 1987 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Gary Carlston, co-founder of Broderbund, retrieved a copy and brought it to California. Despite enthusiasm amongst its employees, Broderbund remained skeptical because of the game’s Soviet origins. Likewise, Mastertronic co-founder Martin Alper declared that “no Soviet product will ever work in the Western world”.[17]: 90
Stein ultimately signed two agreements: he sold the European rights to the publisher Mirrorsoft,[17]: 90 [27] and the American rights to sister company Spectrum HoloByte.[28] The latter obtained the rights after a visit to Mirrorsoft by Spectrum HoloByte president Phil Adam in which he played Tetris for two hours.[17]: 90 [25]: 15 min At that time, Stein had not yet signed a contract with the Soviet Union.[27] Nevertheless, he sold the rights to the two companies for £3,000 and a royalty of 7.5 to 15% on sales
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris
Would be kind of hard to play a game that didn’t get published by the evil capitalist lol
Would be kind of hard to play a game that didn’t get published by the evil capitalist lol
I’ve played about a dozen versions of Tetris over the last 30 years, a lot of which were written by just one dude and released to the world without the expectation of compensation. There are literally hundreds of ports/clones that run on everything from a Nokia phone to a Unix/Linux text mode interface.
Were it not for western publishers, I’m pretty sure it would have spread anyway just due to its addictive nature and it being an excellent time sink. Just like chess and checkers didn’t need a capitalist to spread around the globe.
I’m literally using an entire operating system right now that not one capitalist controls. It runs most of the internet’s infrastructure. Sure, the capitalists can use it and even contribute, but they don’t get to dictate how you run your system.
How about your hardware? And the fibre that enables us to communicate? And the electricity?
Oh, funny you mention that, because in my country, my government paid to have fiber laid but the useless bloodsucking capitalist ISPs didn’t do absolutely jack shit with the money and pocketed it. That’s why were having to do stupid shit like Starlink now to connect the people out in the sticks.
My electricity is also provided by a co-op.
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You moved the goalposts
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How did the soviets make Tetris if technology only exists under capitalism?
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No it wouldn’t. Tetris was going to get played by millions whether someone licensed it or not. That’s why there was such a mad scramble to land a deal.
Please explain copyright export licensing under Soviet Union rules
You don’t need licensing to copy that floppy. That’s what your mind can’t grasp.
That’s only because in the West there was no way for the game to reach customers at the time. The game was popular in the “Soviet Block” just fine, because distribution model was different.
Today, it would spread through internet like fire.
Sure, I’m always playing Vietnamese and Cuban games. They’re grrrreat!
And Tetris was only successful because of licencing, let’s not create an alternative history here
Because capitalism was the first time money existed lol
What? Are you saying the video game industry predates capitalism? Lol
Minecraft
Terraria
Astrox Imperium (this is a single player version of EvE Online, so definitely not for everyone)
Dyson Sphere Program
Factorio
UFO:AI (admittedly this is a FOSS XCOM game that started as a clone of XCOM Apocalypse, and morphed into something bigger)
All developed by either a single person, or tiny teams with basically no start up capital. I’m sure I can find more, since the FOSS list of games is enormous.
Labor develops society. Capital enshittifies society.
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Capital doesn’t cease to exist under communism, guy. It just stops being controlled by one person.
Yes, it gets mismanaged by central government
👏…👏…👏
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Using everything that happened in the 20th century as evidence, no mystery. There’s good governance and bad management. Just one is more effective overall.
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A few (good and one time buy) games off the top of my head (is that how you use the expression/idiom?):
Obviously commie games:
- Disco Elysium
- Cruelty Squad
Might or might not be commie, but definitely progressive:
- Bioshock series
honourable mentions:
- Vitoria 3 (who would have thought that a democratically controlled and publicly owned economy would be meta? does have a nasty dlc policy tho)
- Partisans 1941 (you play the story of soviet partisans on the eastern front, what more is there to say?)
- everything from the studio “Kremlingames” (they make political sims about eastern block countries, without glorifying them)
- Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic (eastern block “City: Skylines”)
- VA-11 Hall-A (good vn in a cyberpunk dystopia, does not rly have a political theme tho iirc)
Missing Tetris!
That’s like saying only Disney can make movies. Cause they have capital.
not rly, you don’t have studio level funding if you don’t optimize (the content) for revenue. same with large/aaa level games
edit: according to George Lucas, filmmakers in the USSR had more artistic freedom than he had when making Star Wars https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWqvaMEFIdI
Anyone can make a movie, but you can’t make a big budget movie without a big budget.
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Disco Elysium
Cave Story
If you’re not trolling you’re stupid af
Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks
Stardew Valley
Wolfenstein?
Edit because I thought of a real one. Tetris.
You can get that money back by making a good game and charge for it, no need for dark pattern and lootboxes.
Sure but does it need that money when it’s released or is it simply there because of publisher greed?
