Recently, many issues involving the sheer nature of capitalism (crunch, speculation, slave labor) have creeped into gaming discourse. They have always been there in material terms, with things like CD and console manufacturing outsourced to countries with less humane labor legislation, but thanks to a crescent economic and climate crisis, we are able to talk about it in terms that are closer to our understanding.
And more recently, we have witnessed even more of the greed that fuels capitalism, with Sony and Apple both trying to make more money off the competition in a very transparent way. For a long time, the corporations have openly screwed over the workers, through surplus value and neoliberal working conditions, but now they are also screwing over the consumers in an obvious way. There are not a lot of venues for them to make more money, so they need to charge more for the games, or (god forbid) diminish the scale of the AAA games.
And heck, even with indie games, I have to worry about the working conditions because nowadays indie is just an accolade for "smaller company". Look at Aeon Must Die and how development went. And when smaller studios aren't shamelessly exploring their workers in an obvious, they are doing so by turning value into profit for the higher-ups. And even when it is an ethical team, you still have to worry about distribution. Devolver is apparently pretty cool, but what if the game is published by Steam, or Epic? It's very hard to escape from the act of giving money to billionaires, unfortunately.
Would you be OK if all these big companies had to be downscaled and turned into cooperatives? Without the fetishism of giant gaming conventions designed to make money, would you still be able to enjoy smaller indie games with not a lot of hype or crunch behind them? Would you enjoy a clean, ethical supply chain as the norm?
Of course, I'm saying that in a very small scale, since it would be really hard to abolish the current system in a global scale. But there's always a first step.
And more recently, we have witnessed even more of the greed that fuels capitalism, with Sony and Apple both trying to make more money off the competition in a very transparent way. For a long time, the corporations have openly screwed over the workers, through surplus value and neoliberal working conditions, but now they are also screwing over the consumers in an obvious way. There are not a lot of venues for them to make more money, so they need to charge more for the games, or (god forbid) diminish the scale of the AAA games.
And heck, even with indie games, I have to worry about the working conditions because nowadays indie is just an accolade for "smaller company". Look at Aeon Must Die and how development went. And when smaller studios aren't shamelessly exploring their workers in an obvious, they are doing so by turning value into profit for the higher-ups. And even when it is an ethical team, you still have to worry about distribution. Devolver is apparently pretty cool, but what if the game is published by Steam, or Epic? It's very hard to escape from the act of giving money to billionaires, unfortunately.
Would you be OK if all these big companies had to be downscaled and turned into cooperatives? Without the fetishism of giant gaming conventions designed to make money, would you still be able to enjoy smaller indie games with not a lot of hype or crunch behind them? Would you enjoy a clean, ethical supply chain as the norm?
Of course, I'm saying that in a very small scale, since it would be really hard to abolish the current system in a global scale. But there's always a first step.
