Hi, everybody! Sorry for the rant!
I'm just posting this as a combination of question and vent. Does anyone else here feel frustrated by the current ethical dilemmas of purchasing games from certain companies? My partner is very tuned into the various ethical mishaps happening in the world and keeps me apprised of which companies are doing shitty stuff and which people/companies I should stop supporting. This is important to remember, but it is also frustrating to see how many companies out there are doing bad things.
This is a very "first world problem," but it's frustrating just how many games out there look cool, but I can't play them because it'd be giving those companies/people money. The biggest examples are Activision Blizzard, J.K. Rowling, and Wizards of the Coast. I think Baldurs Gate 3, for example, looks so awesome, but I don't feel comfortable playing it because my partner has alerted me that some of that money would go to Wizards. I feel somewhat frustrated that the discussion around these issues has evaporated when the games are released; it's as though people stopped caring about the bad things these companies/people did. To be entirely honest, I'm not sure if I myself would be able to keep myself accountable if my partner doesn't remind me of it; I think I may have bought the games like everyone else because of how fun they look, and how much they remind me of games I grew up on.
On a similar note, as my partner is working on becoming a game developer, he follows the state of game development and tells me about it, which seems bleak. I mourn the old studios that I used to have a lot of enjoyment for, like BioWare and the others that EA ate up.
Thanks for reading all of this. :) I wish things were more hopeful, I suppose. My partner urges me to support indie developers, so I'm trying to move in that direction. Does anyone have any recommendations on staying hopeful, given the current state of entertainment?
TL;DR: I'm frustrated by the current largely-unethical state of the games industry and want to know how I can regain some hope about it.
Have you tried growing up?
No, seriously.
You support more unethical bullshit buying avocados and meat than you do video games. To even give the issues you’ve mentioned as much attention as you have, while ignoring the much less ethical things you purchase far more often, shows how disingenuous and shallow your objection to those products really is, and it leads to more problems than it solves.
For example, Balders Gate 3 is a pretty fantastic game, with no micro transactions or as far as I can see any other form of end user manipulation.
They’re also one of the few studios I’ve seen recently that the devs dont seem burnt out on, which says a lot about how they were managed.
And they just license the content from wizards, to go “oh they’re tangentially related so it’s evil!” (Which you also did with hogwarts legacy) denies all the hundreds and thousands of passionate developers of a chance.
Indie games are a great alternative, true, but as others have said indies can be as toxic as the big companies when they want to be. Not to mention the long term consequences of that direction being developers can’t work together to make AAA games anymore, because according to your rules if a shithead makes it to the top everyone else’s work should be thrown away.
OP did not indicate anywhere what kind of food they buy. You are judging them without knowing their habits.
You’re right I am, but I do stand by it.
Mine is simply a more specific example of the “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism” argument that has been repeated here many times.
It was a reasonable to assume OP frequently purchases food
You mean the argument saying we cannot fix the system without abolishing the system? You're using it to instead justify the inequities of the system and henceforth ignoring them because you completely missed the point of the phrase?
You specifically mentioned avocados and meat. I know some people who only buy local food and do not buy meat. Your reasoning would not apply to them.
You know what an example is? Regardless of whether I agree with him or not, those were examples. They good list a whole bunch of other foods or shampoos or drinks or whatever the hell you can imagine. The poster was trying to make a point. Fixating on the examples and giving personal examples of people you specifically don't do the two things the poster mentioned doesn't make the argument lose its merit.
My personal opinion on the subject is very different than the poster's, which can be summarized to that I don't oppose art because I don't like the artist, I won't stop reading Lovecraft or listening to Vivaldi because they were trash people, because their art is great. So I don't in fact agree with what the poster said, but clinging to personal examples to refute an argument while ignoring the global average which is what the argument was using is disingenuous.
With the same logic, since the people you know don't eat meat, that'd mean there's no problem with the meat eating in the world, which I'm sure you'd rush to point out the absurdity of logic there.
OP did not say they did not want to play the games. They said they could not play their games because that would be giving money to the studios; that which is a form of support. The relevant sentence is here:
I am fairly sure that OP would love to play the games they cite. And that they love the art. But that is not the point. The point is whether or not they are willing to support the bad practices from the studio. Because if they did buy the game, indirectly it would be supporting those bad practices.
Your initial point (the "global average" of it) was that there are more serious things to care in the world - you were assuming that OP had to be doing something else such as buying non-local food which is bad for the planet, and you were more or less saying that it is stupid for them to care about what happens in the game industry when they most probably do not care about the food they eat.
My point was that you were doing moral assumptions about OP - I pointed your specific avocado example, but even more generally than that, you were assuming that OP had to be doing something wrong somewhere in the context of ecology.
Well, now, my last and final point is that OP may be someone who is careful about what they buy generally speaking (not just avocados), whether it be shampoo or whatever. Again, I do know people who are very careful about what they buy. They will try their best to never buy something new for instance ; buying from second-hand places for example. And they will try their best to almost never waste something. If OP were to be someone like that, then your whole point would not apply to them. Hence my initial point.
I did not get your meta-logical reasoning on your last paragraph. But I will leave it at that because I am not sure continuing this discussion is fruitful.
You're right it's not, since neither did I comment on the original poster's message, but the one's you were responding to, nor did I assume anything about the original poster. And I'm certain I was not the person you originally replied to either.
Maybe pay more attention next time? If you're interested in my answer to the OP, I have that below in another comment that answers to the OP, not you answering to someone else that commented on the OP.
Apologies - I am not good with names and the "Show context" feature only shows one message. I did not even realize I was talking to a different person. Thanks for clarifying