Live data from Hacker News

Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

democracyjournal.org

51–60 of 163 posts

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#51
post #44
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't get to enter your initials into the machine based on how far you get. Only your score matters, and your score resets when you continue. You don't "beat" Pac-Man when you get to the kill screen, you beat Pac-Man when you get a perfect score.

High score resets whenever the machine is unplugged. Score isn't the only measure of success in Pac-man or other arcade games.

It’s like a metaphor saying only literal outcomes and shape of the world mean much. Whereas our ephemeral emotions which require us to stay “plugged into” an increasingly demanding cultural tradition despite the diminishing ROI most people are seeing (cause they’re ignoring the literal outcomes and shape for emotional feitishism)

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#52
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why, is it immune from criticism? Instead of this worthless comment, why didn't you read the piece yourself? Then you could make your own judgement.

Reading it myself would require wasting precious time, when I can instead offload that responsibility to someone who has already read it and can comment on whether or not it is a shitpiece.

So you'll happily accept some random commenter's opinion of the piece? That seems rather arbitrary. Why not accept the original article just as readily? Or was the title enough to prejudice you completely, so that all you're looking for is someone to confirm your preconceptions?

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#53
There's something I never understand about bits like this. The main point of this article basically entails greatly expanding the role of government in our economic system. But how happy are you with our government? It's a rhetorical question as the statistics make the answer abundantly clear. Congress' approval rating is currently resting at a whopping 18%, with a 78% disapproval rate. And our president certainly inspires a wide array of emotions across the population.

The reason for this displeasure varies, but among the reasons would be corruption, ineptitude, graft, greed, pandering to special interests, and so on. In a world where government was some post-humanistic benevolent and impartial entity, I think this article would have some reasonable points. However, people tend to be self absorbed, ignorant of whatever lays outside their own interests, and driven by bias. And government is little more than a collection of us, biased to those who share mostly the same skill set as con men.

I'm certainly not anarchistic, but I think we need to consider the fact that government is us. And so where is the logic that massively expanding the role and power of our government would solve more problems than create? My favorite example of good intentions gone awry is passports. Many wish we had a more open and free world, and at one time we did. Mandatory usage of passports was little more than a "temporary war measure" during WW1. But once we'd granted governments such tremendous power and control, it was predictably never relinquished.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#54

> how can the market exploitation of civic, social, and leisure spaces possibly be averted What? The ominous "market" isn't forcing its way into any of these spaces. You let it in . You bought that game with micro-transactions, you signed up for that "free" social media app that was "secretly stealing your data". What shall we do? Our economic system isn't doing what we think it should! Could it be that we don't unde…

Are you not concerned that while some of these costs may not be entirely hidden - they are very often intentionally obfuscated? It's not exactly analogous to "people should know to avoid credit cards with 20% interest rates" as that interest rate must be openly communicated to the consumer while the collection and sale of my personal data has no such requirement.

I would argue that with the prevalence of reviews on steam /youtube/etc that it is far easier than ever to avoid undesirable games. In fact, it's stupidly easy to avoid even bad games, I don't think I've bought a game I didn't enjoy in several years. Sure, not everyone will read & comprehend a credit card agreement, but surely it's fairly easy to Google a game review before purchase.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#55
post #9

This is a good read, but I question this line: > Video games, at their best, offer everyone an equal chance to overcome the same challenges on an equal playing field. “Pac-Man,” after all, didn’t let you add extra quarters to purchase immunity from the ghosts. I mean, in a way they did. If you had more quarters to spare in Pac-Man, you'd be more likely to make it further than your cash-strapped compatriot. But then a…

This is slightly off topic, but are modern arcade games more extortionate than they used to be? If you play e.g. Mario Kart you have to keep putting in coins after each race. Maybe if you come first it lets you continue but it seems a total rip off.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#56

The argument essentially seems to be this: Some people are making substantial amounts of money from activities that we traditionally associate with leisure, in the example given, videogames. This devalues gaming as a leisure activity for the rest of society. This is a bad thing. This is an indicator of a broader trend of the monetization of all forms of leisure. This is bad. Consequently we should find ways to redist…

The article is weak from clickbaity title to eventual conclusion that only UBI will save us from a dark dystopian future of a huge slave class of gamers forced to allocate their meager incomes to buy in-game powerups by a shadowy cabal of Silicon Valley overlords.

It always sounds cool to derive these kinds of arguments when there is a new delivery model that is Paradigm Shifting Everything. In fact, as pointed out by a bunch of other commenters, this model isn't intrinsically much different from the console arcade game model of whenever it was the first pinball machine came out.

As for the "monetization of leisure" this is basically as old as leisure time itself, as is the idea of restricting access to this leisure activity to those with the wherewithal. The classic model here is - golf. To play a "better course" you need to pay large fees, and in many clubs need to pass some kind of vetting. Golf nonetheless created a class of professional players, who are paid based on how well their play (and possibly antics) entertain a population of passive fans.

I don't see how "monetized gaming" and "e-sports" is at all different from the vast class of professional gaming or sporting activities from poker to football. Civilization has not collapsed because there are millions of lowly duffers who feel compelled to spend money to knock little white balls around a field. I feel confident we will survive "Clash of Clans" as well.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No but the poster you are replying to is correct. The article is indeed a "shitpiece" against capitalism, it seeks to paint shitty video games that bilk their users of money as some sort of phenomenon that unique to capitalism. Therefore we need to enact "Big Government" to solve the problem. The author nor the readers generally could not care less about those affected, their only concern are the delicious condemnati…

Even if you abhor the remedies suggested in the article, it is still true that marketers in general are trying very hard to run ahead of the average person's cognitive defences against exploitation. Given that, much of the discussion in the article is interesting and useful (and by that I don't mean "correct".)

The problems cited by the article are real, and the game makers are shitty people with bad motives. Unfortunately neither government (nor anyone) can make the world idiot proof, sometimes people have to learn from their own mistakes.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#59
post #9

This is a good read, but I question this line: > Video games, at their best, offer everyone an equal chance to overcome the same challenges on an equal playing field. “Pac-Man,” after all, didn’t let you add extra quarters to purchase immunity from the ghosts. I mean, in a way they did. If you had more quarters to spare in Pac-Man, you'd be more likely to make it further than your cash-strapped compatriot. But then a…

But it also allowed skill with the game to shine by getting further on a single quarter.

Yea, I recall fondly playing Mortal Kombat in the arcade for literally hours with one quarter vs. a line of people each putting their own quarters in. As long as you won the match it let the winner continue playing without adding more money. An afternoon of entertainment could be had for <$1.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#60
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NES-era games juiced the difficulty so you couldn't beat them on rental. Not quite the same but if I were going to pick a "golden age" of relatively not-exploitative gaming it might go from SNES-PS2 or so.

Isn't the golden age now , where difficulty is customizable?

Absolutely not. Difficulty is customisable, but we still live in a world where massive AAA titles lock things which in previous generations were relatively easily attainable behind grinding measured in weeks, not days, with no regard for any difficulty setting you might have, while constantly suggesting both explicitly and by implication that you could skip the grind by just giving them more money.

I think a lot of the indie and AA space is still very good, though.

Post reply on HN