The anger was
there. You'd think pieces on these developments would be highly resonant and
popular and attract traffic for the media site, but I was told we had to be
"sensitive" for the advertisers and the companies we had to contact
for the scoops. Such is the corrupting logic of money: when the larger
attractors that money flows in and out of are corrupt entities, the surrounding
activity (which must be powered by monetary infusion) must take on the
qualities of the entities that provide the resources. This is exactly what has
happened to corporate media. It is not that these media outlets generate
propagandistic news consciously (well maybe some of it is) but that in order
for the news to be refined to a state in which the corporate media organ can
accept it (advertisers are ok with it and it doesn't anger the entities the
news is covering) the news media itself has to be reduced down to a specific,
stylized message pleasing to power. Which happens to be a useless source of
information to anyone without power. Which is a lot of people now.
But then the
question arises: What about the developers? For example, what if I fought my
way to an influential writing/directing position where I had the power to
produce video games with these messages? Of course, some do get through. But
the low probability of reaching such a point...is it worth trying? Forget
undertaking an ambitious, creative project in some large risk-averse corporate
studio. Given the nature of centralized, organized video game development, all
of the means of production have been consolidated and owned within a single
central entity, causing the costs to skyrocket (along with the increased demands
in technology and expertise due to the increasing complexity of video games of
course). And these risk-averse businessmen won't have anything to do with
something that isn't guaranteed to turn massive profits. Of course
there's the growing indie games sector (which is wonderful) which was probably
partially produced because of the climate I've described, but then there is
always the chance that those projects themselves are co-opted. You always hear
about studio owners selling their studios to larger companies, which end
up appropriating the development team to simply keep pumping out the
material that was so successful, ignoring any further creative innovation. Or
the franchise itself is bought and now some corporation earns all the rights to
it.
And what are the
chances that one can make it in such an environment? We of course need some
sort of income, and many of these endeavors require great financial sacrifice.
And given the chances of actually making it out there, who wants to play the
lottery with their life? Employment is tenuous and the US state provides the
most pathetic economic safety net in the developed world. Good luck finishing
that game if you get sick and don't have health care. But now I'm starting to
ramble on past my original aim of this post, which inspired the screed in the
first place. What about the developers? The workers so to speak?
We can sit around
all day complaining about the abusiveness and greed and coarse taste of the
large companies, but what is happening to the workers beyond their iron
curtains? At least above and beyond what we can infer? Well there's a good
article on Gamespot (that really surprised me) that discusses this.
And also to my surprise, the comments are encouraging (sites like these are
notoriously full of petty, deluded, spoiled child-like people that are repulsed
by earnest talks like this).
This article is
why I'm writing in the first place. Of course the article doesn't go far enough
with a solution. But then why should it? Unions are no longer a serious answer
to these problems. Our economy - across every sector of production - is dominated
by corporate entities whose very nature is to accumulate profits and grow and conquer. We are left with a multitude of growing private imperial powers. And
to gain control of one of these powers, one has to virtually be a sociopath. These
power structures inevitably corrupt the individuals that seek to operate
them.
We are left with
people like Activision CEO Bobby Kotick telling investors: "I think we definitely have been able to instill the culture, the
skepticism and pessimism and fear that you should have in an economy like we
are in today. And so, while generally people talk about the recession, we are
pretty good at keeping people focused on the deep depression."
Now I'm not exaggerating when I say this is the
language of a Machiavellian dictator. This is an autocratic power telling
investors (people who know nothing of and care nothing about video games other
than their profit-generating attributes) not to worry because their employees
are scared and motivated out of fear to produce quickly games that will make a
lot of money. Translate this economic language into the political and you have
a serious problem, a dangerous attitude that is actually quite pervasive among
the powerful in this country and really the rest of the Capitalist world at
this point. This is the language of the tyrant. And this attitude is everywhere.
Every work of
culture and material product is reduced to an artifact to be produced that must
be produced in such a way to generate great wealth for a small group of
disinterested people. To hell with the workers. To hell with the fans. As long
as we get ours. And unions! As if unions can counteract this vast economic
power. A power that when left to itself, further consolidates and displaces those opposed to it. It has always been an uphill battle and it always will be, so long as we
think like this. We are not a society of individuals whose dangerous selfish
desires must be counteracted with opposing forces. We are not in eternal
competition. We are not to fight each other over every aspect of our culture
production. No, that is because we are all vastly interconnected far beyond
anything we can understand logically at this point. We are essentially one.
We've seen this theme come up again and again and when will we learn? Why treat
ourselves this way?
Well, at this point I have to throw up my hands.
It is easy to grow angry anew over every fresh insult, but really this system
is so fundamentally corrupted, not even indignation will put it back together.
This is why thinkers around the country are more and more interested in not a
revolution or dramatic reform, but the slow deliberate construction of a
parallel, alternate society.
