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Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

democracyjournal.org

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Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#121

Post by bambataa »

mrguyorama wrote: post #67
bambataa wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Atari aimed for a playtime per quarter of 2-3 minutes back in the day

Wow, maybe not that different then when you account for inflation (though I might be way off). Who were these kids then who had rolls of quarters to throw into machines?

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#122

Post by walshemj »

cirgue wrote: post #39

> passive consumption over leisure This is the money quote for me. We somehow managed to convince an entire generation of people who were skeptical of the passive consumption of television that 'Hey wait, this other form of manufactured entertainment is entirely different and not at all bad for you because we're the tech industry and we aren't the people in suits."

Oh so you mean the snobbery of the "hyacinth bucket" type those have always existed hardline puritans though that chess playing was a sin as you where not spending time thinking about the bible.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#123

Post by walshemj »

CM30 wrote: post #100
cirgue wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it not a commonly held opinion with your friends/family in high school and college that television was a pretty rotten form of media? I don't think that this is a universal phenomenon, but it definitely exists.

No, not really. Most people in my high school liked watching TV and what not. They may not have liked aspects of the format (like ads or being stuck finding repeats into the times when a show wasn't on video yet), but they certainly liked watching TV. Where the heck did you go to school/college anyway? Never seen that sort of attitude before.

And when did they goto school :-)

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#124

Post by walshemj »

wolf550e wrote: post #47
gowld wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We somehow managed to convince We did? I though people just switched from TV to Internet because Internet is more fun or more faddy or just cheaper.

Yeah, people switched from cable TV to on-demand niche content, but it's the same kind of passive entertainment.

Is it? people get involved with both film and tv - when BAB5 was firing on all cylinders you'd end watching some episodes pysced up.

And a defy anyone not to watch Theodreds funerial scene in Two Towers and not be moved.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#125

Post by cromwellian »

Dirlewanger wrote: post #116
cromwellian wrote: post #88

This article definitely isn't written by a gamer. Most gamers HATE pay-for-powerup. There was a huge rebellion against EA's ingame purchase model for Starwars Battlefront for example. Many games allow in game purchases, but only for cosmetic changes (e.g. "skins") like Counter Strike, TF2, Overwatch, etc, not to allow you to buy skills no one else can acquire. And while it's a concern that there are games that are go…

>Most gamers Most gamers that voice their opinion online, but not in the actual market. Otherwise we wouldn't have as many microtransaction-laden games as we currently have. The Battlefront 2 debacle was something that was quickly forgotten after a couple weeks. EA even said they weren't worried about it to shareholders. I'm sure if you look at earnings reports, the "boycott" did almost nothing to them.

Enough voiced their opinion that EA changed the Battlefront system. But Battlefront also failed as a francise game, hardly anyone plays it.

League of Legends is probably the most long lasting multiplayer game that has skill based micro purchases, but it's not as egregious, because the game has been around for a long time, and the amount of pure avarice isn't anywhere need the obvious money grab that EA tried to pull off.

Take Fortnite, the game which is printing cash faster than Epic can spent it. Their entire loot system, like Counter Strike and Team Fortress, is cosmetic only and grants no extra ability.

It remains to be seen, but I bet Fortnite has longevity far in excess of the pay-for-skill titles.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#126

Post by jakelazaroff »

jandrese wrote: post #66
piker wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and how does one practice to "beat" Pac-Man with a perfect score?

Getting to the kill screen seems like it should count as a victory. Getting your initials on the top of the high score screen counts too, if perhaps only briefly. The idea that you can't say you've won unless you've played a completely perfect game is a mindset for insane people who will never be happy.

I think GP's point was, if every practice run costs a quarter, there's likely a correlation between wealth/resources and practice/skill.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#127

Post by annywhey »

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.

In fact, the difficulty tuning was usually harder within the first release of the game(regardless of location). So games that saw a US release first were hard there, while games released in Japan first were hard in that version. And since the majority of the NES library derives from Japan-first releases you get the "Japan version is harder" effect.

There are some exceptions to the rule of course, but it usually holds that the later localizations get the more polished product.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#128

Post by FooHentai »

rconti wrote: post #99

"As a result, gaming has come to privilege haves over have-nots, work and passive consumption over leisure, and the economic over the social." I can't parse this. And my eyes glazed over once I kept trying to get past it and keep reading.

It is horribly written.

>gaming has come to privilege haves over the have-nots

Extrapolated, I take it to mean: People with money to spend now have an advantage over poor people when it comes to video gaming

Even then, it's unclear what this means. An advantage acquiring games to play because it's more expensive to get into? In success within the games themselves? Something only rich people have the time to engage in?

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#129

Post by FooHentai »

I'm currently going through a phase of setting up a games room, and acquiring a bunch of slightly older video game consoles and games to populate it. I've settled on PS2 and PS3, and Xbox/360 as the sweet spot for this. Partly due to price (they're not old enough to be worth much, but not new enough to be hawked at retail prices).

But a factor just as big as price is how, from about mid-360 and PS3 onwards, gaming stopped being a case of 'buy a disc and play the game' and became 'register online, tie to a service which will be withdrawn at some point, and pay extra for bits of the game that would previously have been free'. All of that stuff transformed gaming media from about 2007 onwards from something that you could put on a shelf and return to at your leisure, into this ephemeral thing that you must buy into at the peak of the hype cycle, or it won't exist in proper form (if at all) when you do get around to it.

That said, this phenomenon is mostly limited to commercial games. There's an incredible grassroots movement of indie, modding, and retro gaming that everyone is free to immerse and engage in, where this issue just doesn't exist. My reaction to cutting-edge gaming for the past decade or so has been largely to turn away from commercial games and find entertainment via other gaming channels.

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