Gaming And The Bottom Line
I often use this space to express my extreme dissatisfaction with the ongoing commercialization of our lifes. Being a good citizen is almost the same as being a good consumer, as everything is left to the whims of profit seeking market forces.
source: Max Pixel
Do you want to help poor farmers in the third world? Then buy product X with an "official" badge which states it's been produced with farmers from project Y. Do you want to help save the environment? Then buy our product; as you can se, experts all over the world agree that our product is manufactured according to the latest environmental guidelines, as established by research this or that. You all recognize this type of advertisement, but do you get the underlying message? This message is that by consuming the right way can ease your consciousness. It's the ultimate form of consumerism that says: do good by consuming, help the world by pledging allegiance to brand X.
When schools aren't funded by taxpayer's money anymore, but instead have to generate their own funds, the school canteen, where kids were able to buy some wholesome food, drinks and even fruit, will be replaced by a Coca Cola vending machine standing next to the one that spits out snickers bars and other edibles of a similar nutritional value. Same goes for hospitals; in my local hospital everything a consumer needs is present. Forbid that if you need to recover for a while in the hospital, you wouldn't be able to book your vacation in time! I'm serious; next to a supermarket, two banks, a hair studio and a luxury restaurant, my hospital even has a travel agency...
We're heading toward a world where every human interaction is replaced by a financial transaction. But for now I'd like to concentrate on a passion of mine; the video game industry has become infected by over-commercialization and suffers from it a lot, just like the film industry. I love single player games, but it seems that game publishers are increasingly giving up on them in favor of putting more and more effort into online gaming experiences...
Image by steamXO - source: Flickr
The reason they give for this is that this is what gamers want. But that's not true; if we look up what the best selling games on popular consoles are, it's titles like Spider Man, God of War, Assassin's Creed and a lot of other single player games. But for a profit based company, like all big games publishers are, this type of game just doesn't make them enough money. They can sell these games only once, because players play them for their immersive and storytelling qualities. There is no subscription to an online server to sell, or season-passes, or loot-boxes, or...
It's all in the same vein of selling a product as often as possible, of making as much profit as possible, squeezing every last drop of profitability out of everything and everyone. Even my favorite game, Diablo 3, needs players to log on to an online server, even if you want to play solo. If it stays like that, everything is fine because it's only natural and efficient to stop using discs to distribute games, but these companies will eventually turn this into some sort of payed subscription, so that you can play the game as long as you're subscribed, and they'll have reached their goal of selling you the same game every month...
The video below really digs in to this subject, and especially the demise and resurrection of the single player, story driven games. In th eend though, this is just one small facet of our lifes that's being polluted by capitalism's ever present profit objective, and far less important than capitalism's influence on education, healthcare and the environment...
The Hopeless Fight to Kill Single Player Games
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