Anyone here feel like capitalism in the virtual space should have a different name or at least have a prefix?
I understand why Activision Blizzard is so fixated on money and profit before product improvement. This is because by law, they need to make their investors money to the best of their ability. The way they do it allows them to generate huge amounts of profit without much effort. Few skins there, a 20 min story here, another bundle there.
All digital, nothing owned by the buyer. This could maybe at most take 1-2 weeks for an artist to make the skins and implementing to the game could take a few days including testing for 1 team - and they have multiple teams… The seasonal missions may be a few months of development, but for 20mins of playtime for the consumer??? …
They sell each of these for around $15, which is about as expensive as a full indie game which took indie developers months, if not years to develop. And these indie games you could play for dozens, if not hundreds of hours playing. And the reason you play the games for that long is that they are actually good.
It feels like virtual capitalism is devolving the space further than making strides in innovation. Focusing on how to make the easy bucks. Good on them, because that is the epitome of efficiency.
In the real world, however, design and innovation is - for the large part - the main driving force of capitalism. Companies develop and create better and better products so that they can sell more than their competitors. We probably would still be in the middle ages if there were no wars or capitalism and competition.
But if the state of this space is dictated by companies like Activision Blizzard, I feel like gaming and video games as a whole will become what Overwatch “2” is right now in the future.
Feel free to move to N. Korea, Russia, China, Iran, Iraq, etc and enjoy their oppressive system… but hey at least you’ll get your battle pass of pixels for .10, you just won’t be able to eat or do anything else.
Innovation and design are certainly one aspect of capitalism; but so are gouging customers, copying the creativity of others, planned obsolescence, and corporate corruption. In America specifically, corporates are legally required to prioritize making a profit for their shareholders over everything else.
Overwatch 2 isn’t an example of capitalism failing, it’s an example of capitalism working as intended.
OP was not even criticizing capitalism, but his post was probably too long for this guy to read without taking a few naps in between. He also immediately mutes the responses because his worldview is so fragile it can’t stand up to the tiniest bit of scrutiny.
In the words of one of our greatest modern capitalists, “Sad!”
1 - The main driving force of capitalism is not design or innovation, it is the free market, where supposedly (because in reality that doesnt happen), the better product on the quality/price ratio should win and not get punished for being better/cheaper.
2 - Competition is essential to capitalism but also exists outside of that and the problem is, when the actual real competition is low or close to none, that “giant” using capitalism and “free” market would destroy any actual real chance of actual competition if left unregulated.
So yeah, you or anyone can complain about ABK and call them greedy etc and they will be 100% right but the real question is … as opposed to what?
Any triple A company out there that offers the same quality games for way way way lower price? Nah.
And if there was, they would be bought in T minus 5 … 4 … 3 … 2
You get the drill
This is an interesting dilemma, definitionally. As a libertarian market socialist, I believe that a genuine free market requires restrictions on the ability of predator multinationals to create monopolies, while others believe that a truly free market must have no restrictions or government interference at all.
Both arguments are intended to increase freedom, but are at the same time, completely contradict to one another.
Yeah the issue always comes from what works well in paper and then its realistic implementation. Semantically freedom with “restrictions” go against the very meaning of the word, sure, but I think pretty much every person that grows up should know the difference between a concept and the implementation of said concept.
Just like you are free in US, but you are not “free” to break the law and steal someone else’s property etc.
I find funny that everyone against Communism for example throw the same (true) claim to debunk it : It works well in paper, in an utopian scenario, but every time its implemented, it doesnt work because power/corruption/human nature etc … like it doesn’t apply to Capitalism:
The moment you start skewing and unbalancing a bit its factors ; Free market, Competition, Resources available … it just doesn’t work
So I would rather deal with a semantic contradiction, than with actual idealistic vision of freedom that translates directly to the opposite when implemented : Small Fish gets oppressed / bought by the Big Fish.
It’s always the same excuse when you point out the inherent failings of capitalism: “That’s not real capitalism! That’s just corporatism/corporatocracy!”
And it’s like…okay sure, but if this corporatism/corporatocracy is the result every time capitalism is implemented, then maybe there are a few things fundamentally wrong with the idea at its core.
