Simple facts reveal simple truths:
- Amazon, AGS, and Twitch often know who streams exploits.
- When pressed beyond plausible deniability, they give a 24 hour suspension to “attractions” (both protag and sploitag).
- Conversely, small or non-revenue streams get 1 week or greater.
- Just like “Facebook/Meta”, Twitter, Reddit, any other “social” media, and life over-all, there are double-standards for those who have history, handshakes, or revenues between them.
- We continue trudging forward a la zombie, mumbling amongst ourselves as we frantically slap the lever begging for our brains to MAKE THE DAMN THING WOULDJA?
- No offering “makes the thing” anymore because the definition of “what will make the thing” is decimated by an observable, market, industry, and societal implosion, regardless where you call home on this spinning soap bubble in a straw.
The only valid question left, as a customer, an (anti)fan, a gamer, a player, and a user is: Why do we keep supporting slip-shod, under-funded attempts when they so often wind up… here?
Ironically, the echo across contexts over time is a bit like the nebulous overlap of film… maybe you feel/see it too?
The elephant in the room and the indictment of the industry and the inglorious truth, simultaneously:
Humans actually want you to succeed and are now so despairingly lacking in confidence that they can no longer justify backing indie or industry efforts.
Humans asked to be able to contribute to funding – thinking it would augment the proper funding and staffing for true R&D and elevation of the genre both as art form and architecture for the rise of multiverse/metaverse.
Also because we really like to spend our time and money experiencing “other” worlds. Can’t imagine why THAT would be.
(We who were here first chuckle at the media fluttering over ‘metaverse’. If you think ‘Ready Player One’ was original, haaaaaaave you met ‘SnowCrash’? If you think ‘SnowCrash’ was original, haaaaaaave you met a Library? Truly original thought is depressingly rare in humans. It’s a real problem. Self-solving, as it turns out.)
I think Koster recognized the market pattern repeating. Which is probably the best sign you could hope for that the opportunity is real. (AGS Funding Committee – you paying attention? You’re starving your Golden Goose to death.)
While everyone from Meta to Forbes is hawking what “the metaverse” is or should or could be, Raph is calling in the tech boiz and handing them enough money to make them giddy like they were before corporatism and bonuses for the executives sucked the life from our eyes (and COVID, from our souls).
Because that is what it will take to reinvent the concept of pathways in time space between semi-sentient apes, Talking Meat™, and L.T.U.A.E(42) using tools we’re making as we run into a self-inflicted event horizon.
At this point, all rational humans know we’re slapping track on the ground just ahead of the runaway engine a la Wallace and Gromit.
It seems we’re all willing to be plugged in before the last gasp… maybe this is how it happens? I dunno, feels like there’s a real story in here somewhere… then again, I’m mad faded.
I will say this, other industries would kill to have the genre loyalty that the MMORPG holds without effort (indeed, in the face of ongoing, ritualistic torment thanks to auteur hubris that makes recent presidents look positively humble).
Anyway… time to chop some trees and enjoy mad herbs.