Weebhunter3000
The Bee W Sea
The following words words words is something I read on a different forum I was lurking on. I'm reposting it here for archival purposes and to see what everyone else's two cents on this might be.
Video games are a relatively new entertainment media. An amalgamation of multiple different arts like music, story, visuals and uniquely to video games is engaging gameplay. Despite its fresh introduction to becoming industrialized, it has already become exploited by CEOs and other leaders of industry. The usual culprit is publishers of a video game. Publishers give game developers financial aid and seek to profit from their developers, but they also want certain expectations to be met. Nowadays, big publishers always have a quota to be met and they will employ predatory techniques on gamers to achieve them. From gambling “loot boxes” to pay-to-win microtransactions, just paying for the game isn’t enough for them anymore. A financial barrier that bars players from experiencing all the art a game may have to offer and diverts developers from working on what matters. It wasn’t always like this, there was a time when a game would be released as a completed product with little to no greedy money grabbing practices, but as the industry and technology grows, publishers see new possibilities to maximize profits. Not even video games are free from the influence of culture industry.
In culture industry, art is made easily consumable. Anything that may be offensive is removed, anything too strange is made familiar, all for the sake of maximizing reach to the public. Source material is bastardized, and we are left with a product that could have been more.
Adorno makes the argument that, in the culture industry, art is commodified and made to mass produce rather than the sake of producing art in its purest form. Art is stripped of its soul for the sake of distribution which leads to a generation of consumers who believe that this mass-produced art is the peak of content. “The cultural commodities of the industry are governed, as Brecht and Suhrkamp expressed it thirty years ago, by the principle of their realization as value, and not by their own specific content and harmonious formation. The entire practice of the culture industry transfers the profit motive naked onto cultural forms” (Adorno 99). Adorno explains that the potential of profit is the only worthwhile value placed on an intellectual property. Any past intellectual properties that don’t square up to the modern standards of being inclusive or inoffensive. In the past, an innovative game would mean it changed how videogames were played. The jump from arcade style games like PAC-MAN to story-driven, action-packed, thought-provoking games like Metal Gear Solid was innovative. Nowadays, when studios say their game is innovative it refers to accessibility options and inclusive cast members. “These interests have become objectified in its ideology and have even made themselves independent of the compulsion to sell the cultural commodities which must be swallowed anyway.
The culture industry turns into public relations, the manufacturing of ‘goodwill’ per se, without regard for particular firms or saleable objects” (Adorno 100). Companies will use their products to boost their public relations, adding people of color or nonbinary genders, sometimes even breaking the immersion of the game just to appear socially righteous. A trailer for the game “Battlefield V” includes a cinematic battle of World War 2 with a handicapped female soldier. It sparked arguments online as to whether they are trying to be authentic or just appeal or pander to an audience that isn’t even interested in playing the game. Whether or not it is justified, it did not feel authentic and it is true for most instances in the industry. It always feels like pandering and is mostly prominent in western gaming. Games that do not come from the United States never seem to have this problem. There are people in the west that influence the gaming industry to be inclusive and LGBTQ friendly.
Triple A games (AAA) are games with a large budget and huge studios. Publishers like PlayStation spend a lot of money to make sure that their games look good. Whether they are good is a different argument. Games with good presentation and advertisement catch the eye of casual gamers; they tend to believe that such games are the cream of the crop. They are led to believe that AAA games are the industry standard for good games, but it is all that they are shown after being bombarded with influencers and advertising. Much like the shadow puppets in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, it is all meant to distract you from what could be. Visions of something greater are stifled by one standard that is reinforced through bought out influencers and gaming articles. People do not question the price tag of the game with the content it holds. Big name publishers and franchises are all that is needed to make a sale because some gamers even feel an allegiance to a company and even excuse their anti-consumer practices. Plato mentioned that if one who has become enlightened were to try and liberate others from living in the dark, they would hate and kill the blasphemer. It is no different when dealing with those who follow corporations blindly and raise no questions about the quality of their products. But who cares, right? It is just an opinion that is not hurting anybody. No one would have to pay a fee to play with friends online until the Xbox 360 announced that users would have to pay a membership fee to play online with friends.
Users of the PlayStation 3, however, could play online for free. This anti-consumer act led PlayStation to acknowledge the lengths gamers are willing to go just to play online, even if it meant a few extra dollars. Since then, the norm for console players is to pay for online capabilities as Nintendo and PlayStation would follow Xbox’s lead. Xbox tested the patience and willingness of gamers like a child testing the limits of their parents. Some people even defended this act, mentioning that people should have to pay for such a service and that gamers are getting more bang for their buck. An argument that is obviously false since the PlayStation offered better network for free. Nevertheless, some people choose to be left in the dark and taken advantage of, which leads to companies overstepping their bounds and trying to fabricate new standards that create more profit. Some gamers are lulled by a company’s nonsense in gaming expos where they have a chance to speak and reveal their projects. “We care about our gamers. We love diversity. We do this for you, the player.” They care about profit and acquiring more fans to squeeze money out of. Microtransactions were once frowned upon by gamers, and now there is a whole genre of games based on spending money. These games are called Gacha games, and they involve gambling money for in game rewards.
AAA games have seen a loss of originality over the years. There is a trend reinforced by the competition brought by capitalism. A developer will create a game that gains popularity. Then, AAA publishers take note of their popularity and eventually make a high budget game of the same style. Other AAA publishers will try to copy the AAA title rather than the original game and end up with a soulless replica. The market becomes oversaturated with this genre of game and publishers add microtransactions and other money grabbing tactics to their games. In an almost Darwinian way, gamers pick the better of the dozens of games and are sometimes willing to pay the microtransactions, further reinforcing the publisher's ideology. As mentioned, casual gamers will treat these games as if they were a high-quality product and create new standards for art. These standards and games get worse as time goes and companies make note of the slop people enjoy, trying to gauge whether people will rebel over their next anti-consumer tactic. It is rumored that the next Grand Theft Auto game will have a pay-per-hour system instead of a single price tag. If they end up implementing this, it will pave the way for every other developer to do the same because they will know that people are willing to be taken advantage of. Boycotting the game simply is not realistic. There will always be people who buy bad games. Some do it ironically, some genuinely believe that it is fun, others may be a fan of the franchise and feel obligated to try it out. Whatever the reason, popular games will always get sales.
That is why causing commotion is a better solution to stopping these anti-consumer practices. Spreading awareness will make people, even casual players, at least know what to expect from a product. People on the fence of buying the game will lean against it after hearing buzzwords relating to the title of the game and whatever injustice it has done. Sometimes all it takes is one person to start a hate train which opens discussion on the content of the game. The game “Star Wars Battlefront 2” had microtransactions in the form of loot boxes. Gamers made it loud and clear that they were upset and were practically bullied to remove this predatory, pay-to-win model within 24 hours of release. “Overwatch” was even taken to court for their loot boxes with the argument that their system is online gambling which ended with Australia adding a new law against gambling in video games. If people had not addressed these issues, there is no doubt that it would continue to shape the gaming industry in the favor of greedy CEOs. This corporate greed needs to be shamed, otherwise they will do as they please. Losing investors hurts these companies and a controversial game will cause them to lose stocks.
These ideas of loss of quality and being taken advantage of are not exclusive to video games. It goes for all media and art being distributed as a commodity, governed by wealthy companies. People only need to understand that they are being exploited and that the current system is malleable. We must think critically to know when you are being influenced to a predisposed lifestyle. We cannot allow ourselves to stare at shadow puppets and be pleased with our way of life. By using our curiosity, we must ask if things could be better instead of subjecting ourselves to being governed by others.
Video games are a relatively new entertainment media. An amalgamation of multiple different arts like music, story, visuals and uniquely to video games is engaging gameplay. Despite its fresh introduction to becoming industrialized, it has already become exploited by CEOs and other leaders of industry. The usual culprit is publishers of a video game. Publishers give game developers financial aid and seek to profit from their developers, but they also want certain expectations to be met. Nowadays, big publishers always have a quota to be met and they will employ predatory techniques on gamers to achieve them. From gambling “loot boxes” to pay-to-win microtransactions, just paying for the game isn’t enough for them anymore. A financial barrier that bars players from experiencing all the art a game may have to offer and diverts developers from working on what matters. It wasn’t always like this, there was a time when a game would be released as a completed product with little to no greedy money grabbing practices, but as the industry and technology grows, publishers see new possibilities to maximize profits. Not even video games are free from the influence of culture industry.
In culture industry, art is made easily consumable. Anything that may be offensive is removed, anything too strange is made familiar, all for the sake of maximizing reach to the public. Source material is bastardized, and we are left with a product that could have been more.
Adorno makes the argument that, in the culture industry, art is commodified and made to mass produce rather than the sake of producing art in its purest form. Art is stripped of its soul for the sake of distribution which leads to a generation of consumers who believe that this mass-produced art is the peak of content. “The cultural commodities of the industry are governed, as Brecht and Suhrkamp expressed it thirty years ago, by the principle of their realization as value, and not by their own specific content and harmonious formation. The entire practice of the culture industry transfers the profit motive naked onto cultural forms” (Adorno 99). Adorno explains that the potential of profit is the only worthwhile value placed on an intellectual property. Any past intellectual properties that don’t square up to the modern standards of being inclusive or inoffensive. In the past, an innovative game would mean it changed how videogames were played. The jump from arcade style games like PAC-MAN to story-driven, action-packed, thought-provoking games like Metal Gear Solid was innovative. Nowadays, when studios say their game is innovative it refers to accessibility options and inclusive cast members. “These interests have become objectified in its ideology and have even made themselves independent of the compulsion to sell the cultural commodities which must be swallowed anyway.
The culture industry turns into public relations, the manufacturing of ‘goodwill’ per se, without regard for particular firms or saleable objects” (Adorno 100). Companies will use their products to boost their public relations, adding people of color or nonbinary genders, sometimes even breaking the immersion of the game just to appear socially righteous. A trailer for the game “Battlefield V” includes a cinematic battle of World War 2 with a handicapped female soldier. It sparked arguments online as to whether they are trying to be authentic or just appeal or pander to an audience that isn’t even interested in playing the game. Whether or not it is justified, it did not feel authentic and it is true for most instances in the industry. It always feels like pandering and is mostly prominent in western gaming. Games that do not come from the United States never seem to have this problem. There are people in the west that influence the gaming industry to be inclusive and LGBTQ friendly.
Triple A games (AAA) are games with a large budget and huge studios. Publishers like PlayStation spend a lot of money to make sure that their games look good. Whether they are good is a different argument. Games with good presentation and advertisement catch the eye of casual gamers; they tend to believe that such games are the cream of the crop. They are led to believe that AAA games are the industry standard for good games, but it is all that they are shown after being bombarded with influencers and advertising. Much like the shadow puppets in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, it is all meant to distract you from what could be. Visions of something greater are stifled by one standard that is reinforced through bought out influencers and gaming articles. People do not question the price tag of the game with the content it holds. Big name publishers and franchises are all that is needed to make a sale because some gamers even feel an allegiance to a company and even excuse their anti-consumer practices. Plato mentioned that if one who has become enlightened were to try and liberate others from living in the dark, they would hate and kill the blasphemer. It is no different when dealing with those who follow corporations blindly and raise no questions about the quality of their products. But who cares, right? It is just an opinion that is not hurting anybody. No one would have to pay a fee to play with friends online until the Xbox 360 announced that users would have to pay a membership fee to play online with friends.
Users of the PlayStation 3, however, could play online for free. This anti-consumer act led PlayStation to acknowledge the lengths gamers are willing to go just to play online, even if it meant a few extra dollars. Since then, the norm for console players is to pay for online capabilities as Nintendo and PlayStation would follow Xbox’s lead. Xbox tested the patience and willingness of gamers like a child testing the limits of their parents. Some people even defended this act, mentioning that people should have to pay for such a service and that gamers are getting more bang for their buck. An argument that is obviously false since the PlayStation offered better network for free. Nevertheless, some people choose to be left in the dark and taken advantage of, which leads to companies overstepping their bounds and trying to fabricate new standards that create more profit. Some gamers are lulled by a company’s nonsense in gaming expos where they have a chance to speak and reveal their projects. “We care about our gamers. We love diversity. We do this for you, the player.” They care about profit and acquiring more fans to squeeze money out of. Microtransactions were once frowned upon by gamers, and now there is a whole genre of games based on spending money. These games are called Gacha games, and they involve gambling money for in game rewards.
AAA games have seen a loss of originality over the years. There is a trend reinforced by the competition brought by capitalism. A developer will create a game that gains popularity. Then, AAA publishers take note of their popularity and eventually make a high budget game of the same style. Other AAA publishers will try to copy the AAA title rather than the original game and end up with a soulless replica. The market becomes oversaturated with this genre of game and publishers add microtransactions and other money grabbing tactics to their games. In an almost Darwinian way, gamers pick the better of the dozens of games and are sometimes willing to pay the microtransactions, further reinforcing the publisher's ideology. As mentioned, casual gamers will treat these games as if they were a high-quality product and create new standards for art. These standards and games get worse as time goes and companies make note of the slop people enjoy, trying to gauge whether people will rebel over their next anti-consumer tactic. It is rumored that the next Grand Theft Auto game will have a pay-per-hour system instead of a single price tag. If they end up implementing this, it will pave the way for every other developer to do the same because they will know that people are willing to be taken advantage of. Boycotting the game simply is not realistic. There will always be people who buy bad games. Some do it ironically, some genuinely believe that it is fun, others may be a fan of the franchise and feel obligated to try it out. Whatever the reason, popular games will always get sales.
That is why causing commotion is a better solution to stopping these anti-consumer practices. Spreading awareness will make people, even casual players, at least know what to expect from a product. People on the fence of buying the game will lean against it after hearing buzzwords relating to the title of the game and whatever injustice it has done. Sometimes all it takes is one person to start a hate train which opens discussion on the content of the game. The game “Star Wars Battlefront 2” had microtransactions in the form of loot boxes. Gamers made it loud and clear that they were upset and were practically bullied to remove this predatory, pay-to-win model within 24 hours of release. “Overwatch” was even taken to court for their loot boxes with the argument that their system is online gambling which ended with Australia adding a new law against gambling in video games. If people had not addressed these issues, there is no doubt that it would continue to shape the gaming industry in the favor of greedy CEOs. This corporate greed needs to be shamed, otherwise they will do as they please. Losing investors hurts these companies and a controversial game will cause them to lose stocks.
These ideas of loss of quality and being taken advantage of are not exclusive to video games. It goes for all media and art being distributed as a commodity, governed by wealthy companies. People only need to understand that they are being exploited and that the current system is malleable. We must think critically to know when you are being influenced to a predisposed lifestyle. We cannot allow ourselves to stare at shadow puppets and be pleased with our way of life. By using our curiosity, we must ask if things could be better instead of subjecting ourselves to being governed by others.
