zifnab25

shrug

This is where every leftist/liberal conversation tends to break down. At some point, you're going to say "Yeah, but what about..." or dismiss a source as nakedly embellished/untrue. And then the real argument devolves into "Who do you trust to do the leg work on primary sources?"

That's where the real divide emerges.

Yes, but only once back in 2006 and then we're never going to do elections again because you did them wrong 17 years ago.

Y'all

I think part of it is the industry got itself into a mini-bubble over the promises of the Games as Services model.

Its the same bubble they got into with MMOs. This isn't a new approach to selling software (particularly gaming software). But we're at the point where hardware isn't improving fast enough to demand radical new changes in the platform/engine. And there's an expanded workforce abroad who will do the grunt-work of game production far cheaper, particularly now that all the hard work of engine design is done and you're just rolling out new shapes and colors for the hogs.

It isn't as though EA or Activism/Blizzard can't bring in tons of new revenue every year (particularly with the glut of sales post-COVID). Its just that they need less labor and from less-skilled professionals, while they are far more invested in sales and marketing in order to move units after go-live.

Not every game needs to sell like Fortnite to turn a profit. And even Fortnite doesn't need to work too hard to keep the wheel spinning, now that the underlying mechanics of the game are in place. So all that excess labor can be dumped, while investors vacuum up the profits.

There is a legitimate point of contradiction in the minds of the professional class, as they assume that they are adding value to their firms and are therefore entitled to a share of that value in wages.

They don't see the value of investment dollars or the cult-psychology of the C-levels who consider labor purely a liability. They see their work as productive and meaningful, at least to the company's bottom line. And so when they generate a bunch of new value only to have their jobs terminated before they can reap a payout, they're confused and frustrated by the seemingly illogical nature of the decision.

But then they all go back out and seek other jobs at lower salaries, with fewer benefits, and under harsher labor conditions. They end up working for another set of businesses who all got credit from the same folks that rewarded their last set of employers with new investment for layoffs. And they go through the same cycle of productive labor -> constrained payout -> early dismissal, never really putting the pieces together because its all obscured at the highest levels of financialization.

A lot of this is the result of Econ 101 level propaganda. A lot of this is the fetishization of commodities and the magical realism of financialization. A lot of this is people simply not having the brain-space to draw conclusions from individual life-experiences ten years removed from one another. I don't begrudge folks for missing how the three-card monte of wage labor works, because its a difficult trick to follow. But, at some point, you can't argue with the results. They're getting more revenue and you're getting less pay over time. You don't need to follow the card to know the game is rigged.

A friend of mine who works in DC suggested that if I wanted to really learn about the conflict in Korea, I should pick up a copy of Andrei Lankov's The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia. I'm leafing through the first couple of chapters, and I mention "Hey, it looks like he just breezes over the Bodo League massacre as the inciting incident of the war, what gives?" My DC friend had never heard of the Bodo League, the slaughter of around 200,000 Korean dissidents, or the response from the North.

As I pick further into the book, I note similar historical skips and stumbles. As I'm raising these points, I get more and more push back, because I'm supposed to be learning about the conflict not teaching it. That ends up being the end of our discussion on the topic.

"Objectivism" and its consequences.

Just a bunch of bow-tie nerds running around waging their fingers at you, because you did the right thing for the wrong reasons.

The trick is to be nakedly cynical towards everyone so that nobody can ever accuse you of having hope for a brighter future.

They hit him with the brain-pudding gun and its been straight downhill ever since.

The fundamental cancer at the heart of the project is the glorification of war and conquest itself. If you're trying to make a game that Nazis aren't going to piss all over, you're going to end up with Undertale. Which is, of course, fine. Everyone loves Undertale. But its a game in which the conflict isn't always resolved by the guy who can push out bomber jets the fastest.

Venezuela

• Broke

• Failed

• Everyone is dead

Also Venezuela

• Imperialist conqueror

• Military juggernaut

• Troops spilling over the border in droves, armed to the teeth

God damn, if only there had been some guy who could have explained these contradictory propaganda concerns.

Would make for a sick Punk Rock album cover, ngl