already seeing the start of the inevitable industry revisionism by which the embracer, microsoft etc layoffs become the fault of too many grappling hook games on steam. we are encouraged to grow up and resemble the financial adults in the room, never mind that those adults are currently giggling and trying to stick their fingers in the wall sockets; market logic can never fail, it can only be failed, because people are not making things that are (gestures vaguely) you know, more commercial, and unique but still have a built-in audience, and have enough budget but not too much budget, or something. they are not making money because they are not things that make money. please pay me $50,000 in consultancy fees.
a funny thing abt life in Widening Income Inequality is that this kind of straight shooting market realism bears no relation to reality itself. what does "market reality" mean when a handful of guys own more than half the planet and when there's simply more money in playing to their delusions than doing anything else? what does it mean when the economy now resembles a guy endlessly betting $100 bills in hope of bilking his opponent of their last $5? the mass market is a vanity mirror by which the owners seek to find their own image reflected in the financial tastes of a public that increasingly has no fucking money - when they don't like what they see, they break their toys and return to their mansions, and their court officials scold us all for not being sufficiently "realistic" in acting out a postwar consumer power larp for their benefit.
as this stuff becomes conventional wisdom among the stakeholder-whisperers that make up the official custodians of our format's history be sure to keep an eye out for The New ET - some "bad object" which exists as sad exemplar of all the deviant tendencies which the invisible hand was sadly forced to swoop down and correct (killing thousands). who will get to be it? who will get to kill videogames again. i believe in us. i think we can do it, this time.
