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Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

democracyjournal.org

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Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#101

Post by pwg »

GunwaleHamilton wrote: post #13
Andrex wrote: 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…

Remind me, I don't remember if you could continue or if you had to Start again from the beginning when you died in Pac-Man. I know later Arcade Games allowed you to continue but I'm not sure about Pac-Man

I believe the arcade Pac-Man fell into the camp of "when you die, your current game is over".

I believe the "you have 30 seconds to add more money to continue your game from where you just died" came about much later in the arcades than the date of Pac-Man's reign.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#102

Post by CM30 »

everyone wrote: post #78

This reads like it was written by someone who doesnt play or appreciate games, or even know much about the artform. The point that is brought up several times, that they are classist due to their cost.. If you cant afford a game, or dont want to support its publisher or business model, but still want to play it. Just pirate it. Most games are readily available to pirate. Games have simply become as film, and novels a…

To be fair, like with any art form, there are good and bad works at all levels of commercial activity. There are fantastic indie projects no one has heard of, fantastic triple A/blockbuster titles that make millions and great games from every level of obscurity in between. Same with the terrible stuff.

But as you mentioned, if you're interested in a particular medium, you'll soon realise what's good and what isn't. And there's always enough to fit pretty much anyone's tastes too.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#103

Post by Noos »

Andrex wrote: 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…

That's not pay per win. Yes, you could spend more quarters and put more time in front of the screen, but in the end it was your own personal skill that determined how far you went in many games. Just putting in money and time alone wasn't enough. The harder games you'd hit the wall anyways; Sinistar or Robotron 2084 are good examples of how you really needed skill in games.

Pay to win means putting more money in to the game will give you a direct advantage no matter your skill level. It might be possible to compensate for it, many times its not. Reddit had a thread where they talked about that, and an example was one person in Black Desert or Archeage killing an entire guild of players.

Edit: the main pay to win aspect in arcade games were continuing and energy or timer systems. Continuing is, but the player's goal always was to reduce the amount of continues by skillful play. Very few games i feel were impossible to do so with.

Timers are hit points counting down to eventually end the game. Gauntlet was the first big game to use it, as was Rampage.Nintendo's playchoice 10 used a literal timer, where once it counted down, the game stopped letting you play. Usually though these weren't considered pay to win...the term we used was "quarter munchers" and many of those games were co-operative so pay to win aspects didn't harm other players.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#104

Post by ManFromUranus »

UncleSlacky wrote: post #94
ManFromUranus wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no thieves or bad actors in socialist utopias? Of course there are. Socialism doesn't work now and never will work given human nature. Face it: bad people exist and they will do bad things in whatever context they find themselves in. You are just complaining about the ones you see in this context. However they would just be a different kind of bad actor in a socialist context.

"To look at people in capitalist society and conclude that human nature is egoism, is like looking at people in a factory where pollution is destroying their lungs and saying that it is human nature to cough." - Andrew Collier In any case, why should society encourage qualities like greed and selfishness?

"Society" does not encourage greed or selfishness, nor does capitalism. I'll wager that you don't actually care about those things, that you only care about other people having more than you. You are simply wrapping your "concerns" in moral language to make it seem like some sort of altruistic concern. However, you already have more than most people on earth I would imagine, you can already give your money away to the poor. I'll eat my socks if that's actually what you do though. Are you greedy are you selfish? No, just a normal person.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#105

Post by IanDrake »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #96
IanDrake wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure why you’re doing mental gymnastics on this one. There is a simple answer. 300,000,000 - US population $12,000 - Your UBI amount Total cost: 3.6 trillion dollars. Projected US tax collection for 2019: 3.4 trillion. That’s not the US budget, just the amount not borrowed to pay for the budget. Cost of social programs that UBI would replace (in theory): 2.3 trillion. (SS, Medicare, other). I don’t think UBI…

> There is a simple answer. Only if you want to count the dollar you pay but not the dollar you get back in order to claim that it's too expensive. It ignores all of the misleading accounting that occurs in the existing system and wouldn't be there anymore. Suppose we used to provide $1000/year value in assistance with a 10% phase out rate and then we had a 15% tax rate up to $10,000 and 25% thereafter. We switch tha…

I suppose we’re starting with two different assumptions.

My assumption is UBI is tax free OR UBI is taxable income but the first $12,000 of income is tax free. Same difference, different language.

Your assumption would be that UBI is taxible...like SS is now. That’s a garbage policy.

If I recall, Rand Paul’s tax plan was that a person filing singly would not be taxed on their first 40K of income. Just about double that for filing jointly. Then there’s a 16% flat tax, no deductions. I personally liked that plan.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#106

Post by derblitzmann »

panzagl wrote: post #79

This article unravels at this line- " In industrial and post-industrial societies, work tends to be necessarily hierarchical. But leisure has always held out the promise of equality. " I don't think this has ever really been true.

Yeah, you need only look at traditional sports to see that. A leisurely game of amateurs/hobbyists will still have a hierarchy in terms of individuals and what aspect of the game they are proficient in.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#107

Post by jandrese »

emodendroket wrote: post #81
jandrese wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NES era developers knew that many of their customers could only afford a few games a year but also didn't have enough memory on the carts for extremely large games. The only way to prevent kids from blowing through the content in a weekend was to crank the difficulty up or figure out some way to offer endless replayability (ala Tetris). It's really incredible when you see printed out maps of old NES games just how sm…

It was at least in some cases explicitly about rentals. That's why the difficulty was jacked up for US releases -- Nintendo was successful at getting game rentals legally banned in Japan, but not the US.

Weird that the internet opinion is that the Japanese release is the harder one because Americans don't have the patience for super hard games. Examples include Final Fantasy (that simplified the item system) or the "Lost Levels" of Super Mario Brothers.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#108

Post by emodendroket »

jandrese wrote: post #107
emodendroket wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was at least in some cases explicitly about rentals. That's why the difficulty was jacked up for US releases -- Nintendo was successful at getting game rentals legally banned in Japan, but not the US.

Weird that the internet opinion is that the Japanese release is the harder one because Americans don't have the patience for super hard games. Examples include Final Fantasy (that simplified the item system) or the "Lost Levels" of Super Mario Brothers.

You're not in any danger of finishing Final Fantasy in a few hours. The Lost Levels is not really a very good game.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#109

Post by abiox »

dcosson wrote: post #29
germinalphrase wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What? If I sign up for a new credit card I won't come across the interest rate at all until I get to the fine-print legal contract. Sure, maybe it's in bold or something there, but it's still not upfront and obvious in the signup flow like the perks are. Similarly, the ways in which a site will use your data is hidden within the thousands of words of fine print in their privacy policy. Seems exactly the same to me.

> If I sign up for a new credit card I won't come across the interest rate at all until I get to the fine-print legal contract.

my experience has been different (in TX, USA).

having modestly improved my credit score (at least, i assume this is the reason), as well as registering a LLC, i've been getting a deluge of offers for personal and business cards.

every distinct one i've looked at was pretty clear about the apr and fees. i mean, i suppose you could miss these things if you really don't care too look, but i haven't seen anything be obfuscated at all (at least wrt to apr). doesn't really seem fine-printy.

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