Video Game Execs Are Ruining Video Games
Video Game Execs Are Ruining Video Games
The cycle of mass layoffs in game development isn’t a problem of the industry’s inherent “instability.” It’s a problem of exploitation.
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It's the unchecked capitalism.
Better labor protection and antitrust laws would help, but the fundamental push is towards maximum exploitation of worker and customer. Power consolidates and then abuse for profit becomes easy.
It’s unchecked because customers don’t really care. When is the last time there was a boycott of a game due to how the developers are treated?
Capitalism doesn't get checked by consumers, there are a billion things too much to properly pay attention to and no viable alternatives.
It gets checked by either regulations and laws or replacing it with something else.
There are so many viable alternatives. I've got an increasingly long list of things I won't tolerate in games anymore, and I'm nowhere near running out of games to play. The big problem is being able to identify which of those checkboxes are checked or not; PC Gaming Wiki is working for this purpose lately, though it shouldn't be necessary.
Boycotts work when people care enough: https://www.workandmoney.com/s/boycotts-shocked-world-439e32fbe0a9487f
Boycotts are only one tool in the box. Legislation should be addressing things like consolidation of power and anti consumer practices.
Unfortunately, the US has one far right party that has many lunatics that don't believe in government (along with other insanities), and one center-at-best party that does that wield power effectively.
Boycott is a strong word, but I know that I and many, many others decided not to purchase Disco Elysium based on how all that drama went down. And I know I'll never buy HiFi Rush after the way Microsoft closed that studio while simultaneously lamenting how they wish they had more games like that, because I don't want to reward bad behaviour.
Same reason I haven't bought anything from EA in a decade, and I'm really on the fence about supporting Ubisoft at this point too.
Whereas in a communist economy where people didn't have to struggle to survive, game developers could focus on improving their craft and telling whatever the funnest story they can think of is. We can already see this on a small scale with the difference between indie passion projects like Hades, and AAAA cash grabs like suicide squad. Imagine if everyone could afford to chase their passion instead of money.
You could also probably get there with universal basic income
Don't understand why you're being downvoted. The only thing there I disagree with is the use of the word "economy" 😂
Probably because leftists use "communism" like it's an immediate and obvious goal, but dismiss any criticism of past efforts to actually get there. It effectively becomes an unquestionable fantasy.