Trans rights are human rights. BLM. Bodily autonomy is a human right.

I stream occasionally. It'll probably be Monster Hunter.


kuraine
@kuraine

it's so cool that the games industry is consolidating & closing studios & laying off everyone & all of games media is consolidating & laying off everyone who does the most important work & actual reporting

BUT WATCH OUT GEOFF KEIGHLEY IS STILL RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER TO BANG OUT THE TRAILERS

IT'S GAMING'S BIGGEST NIGHT

LIVE


kuraine
@kuraine

following this up with a little anecdote but

i've seen a lot of sentiment, on here, twitter, elsewhere, that the state of the industry is making people want to not bother with games or making them anymore... and i can totally understand that from a sentimental perspective.

but i also don't think the dire state of the industry has given me cause to give up on games as a medium. the issues we're dealing with here are not because of games. it's because of a capitalist-centric world & the way that money and advertising and the constant desire for number to go up every single quarter means that it stifles EVERYTHING.

looking beyond just the game industry, there's so much shit that's absolutely fucked right now & seeing how it's all connected is extremely important. it's easy to connect 'games' to capitalism from some not-insignificant origins in gambling (i remember when i couldn't even tell the government i worked in the games industry without them thinking i worked for the 'gaming industry' aka casinos) .... but also games come from fun, socializing, sharing experiences through mechanics design, writing, etc... there is SO MUCH to gaming that isn't rooted in making a number go higher, selling big numbers, making stockholders happy.

just like there is so much to life that is enjoyable without being drowned in advertisements, suffering with software that will never be good again due to an unreasonable attraction towards hostile updates, surveillance, and chasing tech buzzwords.

if you're feeling hopeless because of how the games industry is hurting, it's a good opportunity to look at everything else and realize how much needs to change on a much greater scale than simply video games.


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in reply to @kuraine's post:

" I took everybodys feedback on board about this not feeling like a gaming showcase or celerbation so now it is a 2 hour long run time of just mobile game ads and the like!"

Thank god for all the indie game showcases, the indie game articles from online sites and the indie game content creators that all do help out with coverage on games some on popular but also on niche or lesser known indie games.

Ngl I think this best summed up why i feel like I vibe much less with video games these days than I used to.
It's telling that it took Helldivers 2 for me to play (a) game on PC again and i'm feeling like i'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop with that one. Paper Mario's probably gonna be my last purchase for a while too I suspect.

Honestly a lot of the previous year saw me instead return to tabletop rpgs*.
Like playing them but also preparing for games during where i'd have once played video games. As GM, planning scenes, reviewing modules(as work didn't leave much time to plan anything custom), setting up the campaign in the VTT we use but also doing art for NPCs both in and out of battles scenes.

And I feel the whole videogame industry BS honestly contributed to this... me just drifting from video games and back to tabletop stuff/etc even if I use a virtual tabletop to play with long distance friends.

Honestly that could explain why I feel the different campaigns I run having ruined aground a SNAFU of scheduling costing me that outlet for a while has felt so hard this year when on the video games front shit has just gone worst.

*(and even then exclusively indie ttrpgs so far because I just got disgusted from the corporate bullshit from WOTC and even Paizo is something I hear there's apparently shitty stories on how artists have been treated in the past?).

in reply to @kuraine's post:

I'm sure I'm oversimplifying it but the idea of someone saying "man, capitalism has ruined games, I'm gonna go to a medium not corrupted by it: film/music/books/etc" is so funny

For that matter, theres games out there thats been made under fairer conditions and by companies that pays their employees. The AAA is just like movie blockbusters or all the super big publishing companies. Try to find something else in those mediums

i think this is also the issue behind the whole idea of games now being made as a product instead as a product of art. nowadays, it's waaay common for me to finish a big release AAA game thinking it was alright, but something i've definitely saw before, while when i play an indie game or from a smaller studio, you can feel the passion on the crafted final product, that was intended to be a piece of art beforehand. so yeah, capitalism of slowly taking away every ounce of originality and risk taking from this, so it isn't just ai we got to worry about, u know

to maybe echo some of what you're saying, the industry != the medium: https://cohost.org/vectorpoem/post/973702-the-market-is-not-th - affirming this felt and continues to feel pretty important to me. indie entrepreneurship is just a smaller rat maze run by the same platform-masters with even more extreme power differentials. i would love for there to always be growing coherent diverse counter-movements of people negotiating what this creative medium means to them outside of markets... and yeah, that probably doesn't pay the bills, but most of us are already doing everything we can to pay the bills anyway; our souls still need food - art, culture, stories of struggle and hope.

Thank you for your follow up/words on this Lena!! I've felt hopeless about going back to games but you're right about it being career wide impact of job less. Plenty of people outside of games losing them too.

I know I want to stick around because it's great making things that resonate with people and at heart I'm a creator.

Sigh, too easy to agree while I still have my job while also feeling the axe hovering off-screen with the state of things this year. I decided to spend this year on game design education stuff and I've gotten engaged in at least one community in that regard, and I just don't even know what to say to young people who want to make games. Also, we're seeing more successful and outstanding indie games than ever before, which makes me excited, but when I think of ever doing that myself, it's horrifying as a financial prospect in the USA, and that just makes me want to keep burning myself out on AAA as long as I'm lucky enough to do so.

Everything you're writing here is my default feelings about all of it, but it's also just a lot to hold in one's mind at a time. I would not be surprised if even people who have the opportunity to ship games for the next couple of years experience more emotional burnout just from the collective psychic damage the industry is undergoing on TOP of the standard psychic damage of working on games. But, of course, having a job is better than not.