More Iniquities of the Video Games Industry
People often say that one of the reasons they play video games is to escape from the harsh realities of life. It’s a perfectly understandable aspiration; seeking to find a brief respite from the rigours, injustices and trauma of the real world in a potentially more tranquil environment. Yet it is ironic that the very industry that provides these virtual havens is steeped in all the failings and iniquities that stem from big business. Adding to the general shittiness of day to day life that so many wish to avoid. Which presents many gamers with an ethical dilemma, as they may well be supporting a company that indulges in morally abhorrent business practises. This isn’t the first time I’ve written about the iniquities of the video game industry and it certainly won’t be the last. Here are just some further examples of the sort of shenanigans that regularly occur among “Triple A” publishers
Further Iniquities of the Video Games Industry
If you are naïve enough to think that the video games industry is an equal partnership between those a pursuing an artistic vision and their benevolent financial benefactors, then todays news that Activision Blizzard is laying off approximately 800 staff despite a enjoying a “record year”, must have comes as a surprise. For the rest of us who are fully conversant with the iniquities of the business, this sad news has an air of tedious inevitability to it. If you want a coherent distillation of the unsustainability of the triple A games industry, then Jim Sterling’s latest episode of The Jimquisition pretty much nails it. Simply put the current levels of revenue growth seen of late by a lot of the major publishers cannot be maintained and will eventually end in a hard crash, further job losses and a migration of venture capitalists looking to make a killing somewhere else. For those who work in games development it means job insecurity, stress and financial worries. For gamers it could lead to popular titles being shutdown because they don’t make “sufficient” revenue.
The Iniquities of the Video Game Industry and Gamer Culture
Although I wrote several blog posts summing up my experiences with movies, blogging and social media in 2018, I didn’t get around to writing “a year in gaming”. There are several reasons for this. First off, it was a year in which I bought several games that just didn’t chime with me. No Man’s Sky and Monster Hunter: World were both white elephants. Also, I have yet to find a single player games that has had the impact of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, so overall my gaming experience was somewhat lacklustre in 2018. I did however rediscover my love of the MMO genre and therefore spent most my gaming time in The Lord of the Rings online and Star Trek Online. But secondly and possibly more importantly, as a fifty-one-year-old man, I find a lot of the shenanigans associated with the video game industry and so called “gamer culture” to be embarrassing and crass. We live in a time where fandom and openly expressing your interests is quite common place, mainly due to commercial. Having said that, why do I want to openly identify with an industry that has its mindset firmly stuck in the 1950s and with a fan community that is often insular and hostile to anyone who doesn’t “fit the bill”?
The Iniquities of Mobile Gaming
The original title for this post was to be “the unfathomable iniquities of mobile gaming”, but when you pause to think about it, it’s hardly unfathomable from the publisher’s point of view. Mobile games are primarily designed to be money syphons, swathed in a superficial veneer of interactive entertainment. If you want a contemporary example, then look no further to the newly released Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery. The game capitalises on a popular franchise and quickly introduces a pay wall which hobbles those players who elect not to spend money. What I find “unfathomable” are those who do not consider this an egregious business model and are happy to sink substantial amounts of cash into this pitiful caricature of a game. Sadly, the core demographic for this and many other mobile titles, are the youth market, who therefore may not even be picking up the tab for the game. As a result, irrespective of my and other gamers disdain and subsequent boycott of mobile gaming, these sorts of products continue to be financially lucrative.