It remains so incredibly alarming to me the number of “business leaders” who looked at consumer spending in 2020/2021, looked at the global context of 2020/2021, and then went “things will now be like this forevermore,” even as other “business leaders”, and even, very often, themselves, were doing everything possible to force everyone back into a pre-COVID context.
My own employer was one of these businesses, and every time I’ve brought it up, I’ve been firmly told “everyone else thought the same thing we did, too”.
I didn’t have a whole lot of respect for business people before that, but I at least – naively, it turned out – believed they knew how to operate businesses. I now have no respect for such people whatsoever, as they’ve demonstrated completely and thoroughly, even to the point where my dumb ass can notice, that the only thing that ever “qualified” them to “run a business” was having money.
The fact that tens of thousands of people have lost their jobs because the ownership class chose to believe that they’d stumbled into an infinite growth hack is shameful, and these “leaders” deserve to be stripped of all that they own and tossed into the street.
Intelligence? Talent? No, the ultra-rich got to where they are through luck and brutality.
https://www.monbiot.com/2011/11/07/the-self-attribution-fallacy/
I now have no respect for such people whatsoever, as they’ve demonstrated completely and thoroughly, even to the point where my dumb ass can notice, that the only thing that ever “qualified” them to “run a business” was having money.
It’s always heartwarming when people wake up and realize it’s capital ism and not merit ism
And you realize a lot of the books and media you’ve consumed that explicitly stated that weren’t just making a comment on a goofy side effect of that system but the entire enchilada.
I agree completely. Over the past 5 years, I’ve noticed so many people have been able to fail upward with their businesses all because they have income that allows them to do so. It’s incredibly frustrating knowing that with the right backing, most people could likely be as successful or better.
Just to lob a controversial thought in there: There may be some challenges the game industry faces that aren’t solely “capitalism bad”. The most compelling one I’ve heard is that, as games as a medium they have to increasingly compete with a growing back catalogue of classics.
Between that and the rise of indie games, it gets increasingly risky to invest in large projects.
(To try and preempt some comments: I am not saying that investors are “right” to pull out of the games industry. I just want people to consider whether the problem, and hence the solution, is more complicated than they first thought)
Both are valid considerations, but I find the large shift to time spent on social media apps a much more compelling argument.
Indie games are part of the industry too, so I don’t think they’d be losses in accumulated industry revenue. The small and niche indies probably don’t have much of an impact on the market as a whole.
I also think the big titles largely marketed towards the general people and casual gamer. And I have to assume that still works the same way. They buy the popular marketed title, or on their console digital store. They don’t care as much about classics or indies [outside of the store’s popular titles].
I don’t entirely disagree with you but, does every medium not have to compete with a growing backlog of classics?
To be fair, for most of those other mediums don’t need as much time to consume. An old song takes a few minutes to listen to and a movie can be watched in a couple hours, but I have played thousands of hours of Minecraft (and will continue playing it for the foreseeable future).
No, books written before April 2025 are already trash and who’s gonna rewatch an old movie or listen to 80’s music nostalgically?
Hard to argue with that. Garçon, I am ready for my next short form video!
The thing that is incredibly frustrating for me is the rising cost of games. Nintendo of all companies is starting the big push for raised game prices. Frankly, I can’t afford that. It was a stretch for games prior to this. But now I can’t justify it.
Games are currently $80 CAD. In some rare cases $90CAD. If they were bumped up by inflation from 2019 to today. Games would roughly be $96.Still hurts, but alright, sure, I get it.
But Nintendo wants to jack up games to $115 CAD. That’s a massive jump of $35 or 43% if my math is correct. And somehow, people seem to be able to afford this? It feels like I’m trapped in some kind of bubble where I’m just working poor while everyone else is making their money somehow go much further than I can.
I’m working full time, but I am supporting my family. I don’t have kids. I make well above minimum wage. I just don’t get how people are making this work unless they’re all just taking on extreme levels of debt
The top 10% of the population now accounts for over 50% of all economic activity. They have a level of income and reserved cash that is hard to comprehend and that just starts at $250,000 US salary and goes up from there.
Those people are spending so freely and so completely it’s practically the entire economy and we are forced to compare ourselves to them.
The extra annoying part is that in a population of 350million people in the US, 10% is still about 35 million people. So there is more than enough of them to compare to and for companies to aim at.
The 90% of us are the working poor and it’s not that others are stretching their money more they either just don’t notice or care to look or have decided they have enough to spend freely without any consideration of whether they can afford it.
Resist the FOMO, don’t buy a game just because it’s brand new and they paid for enough marketing that everyone’s talking about it. Go through your backlog, replay your favourites, find some cheap indies or second hand classic or free giveaways. Nobody can force you to pay through the nose for games and there’s more choice than ever before!
Oh for sure. I usually wait 1-3 years before buying games so that I can grab em on sale. It’s really quite rare that Nintendo games go on sale, though. So it’s kinda tough when you want to eventually play them.
I’ll sometimes buy games new, but as it is, most of my purchases are during sales. I’ve been mostly playing old titles. It just surprises me when I see statistics of Nintendo running out of pre-orders etc.
The game prices I’m ok with. When I was a kid, video games cost $70 CAD, and that’s almost $200 now. I’m perfectly OK with going back to buying fewer games. I have too many of them I shouldn’t have bought in the first place.
I’m wildly upset with the console price, in no small part because Nintendo and other electronics manufacturers seem to be trying to smooth over the shock of Dorito Don’s tariffs by increasing prices globally.
The Americans made their own bed. I’m not willing to lie in it with them.
Hmm when I look it up with this bank of Canada website it claims a game from 2011 that cost 60CAD would be $83 today. I’m wondering if there’s other tools I can use to cross reference? Just curious how you got to the $200 number. Maybe I’m wrong.
https://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/related/inflation-calculator/
Oh man, 2011… I’m a millennial, and even I was already out of college in 2011. My ‘kid’ games were $80 USD in the 90s. Here’s an article from 2014 that someone made about how insane N64 game prices were.
Star Fox 64 – $79.95 (Source: GamePro #106) - 1997
GoldenEye 007 – $69.95 (Source: GamePro #108) - 1997
Super Mario 64 – $66.99 (Source: GamePro #97) - 1996
According to the CPI Inflation Calculator, $80 USD in 1997 is $160 today.
“Wait, you mean to tell me that growth is finite?”
Dinosaur shareholders probably.
“Infinite growth” is like still believing in the Tooth Fairy, yet these people basically run the world.
Alanah is great - and this isn’t totally surprising. The enshittification will continue until profits improve.
But but why are the studios who are focusing on making quality games doing okay?! - asks the profit focused studios
