it does feel like complaining MAN theres way too many stars, what the hell are you gonna do with all these, instead of just enjoying seeing all the stars there
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stars are not products >:(
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Yeah, thank capitalism, the thing the guy in the article loves so much, for requiring hobbies to make money.
i think if you looked at the stars and thought âwhat the hell are you gonna do with all theseâ its a similar attitude
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Gotta get through my star backlog some day
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well, what i do like about this article is that jeff, while to all appearances a capitalist, correctly identifies the perverse push to selfemploy (i.e. selfexploit) and monetise every shred of your being as a crutch for an unsustainable economy and dwindling financing of jobs that need doing.
i mean i donât know. products unlike stars emerge in a particular socioeconomic environment. iâm on the side of the exploited and thus have no particular sympathy for small businesses.
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Oh naturally, I hate small buisness owners. They love writing articles about how there are too many pieces of media and young people should be greatful.
I do think it sucks people are destroying their lives to make stuff that will languish and drive them into debt, that is a separate problem from âoh no more people are making art and not going to churchâ.
i actually wrote something about this back in 2018 because the rhetoric around it had become so annoying back then:
i think i have a pretty safe time saying that the market has created a deluge of uninteresting/uninspired stuff thatâs made mostly to hit a checklist and thatâs become an increasingly dire problem in the past few years but thatâs a different problem than âtoo many gamesâ
yeah, itâs this. people can identify that itâs a problem but donât understand that the markets they love and believe in much are literally made to reproduce dynamics like this.
thereâs so much that is worthwhile that gets categorized as disposable crap by many people in the moment anyway, so itâs not like i trust most people to be the arbiters of this stuff. itâs just funny to see libertarian capitalists suddenly act shocked when the free market they love creates these sorts of dynamics. thatâs the inevitable result, so i donât know why you would act like the rules somehow donât apply here.
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i think jeff vogel is cute
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geneforge is well good
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So, I was going to keep griping but actually, now that Iâm thinking about it, itâs worth noting I think that that blog post is clearly written to infuriate people and piss them off and stuff to garner clicks and so on, which is pretty low IMO and not something we should get too trapped in I think (if the author is really so serious about trying to do something good for the world why are they trying to make a bunch of people angry 
but okay I digress). Instead I think maybe it would be nice to take a moment to remember some reasons why itâs good to make a game (or any other form of art) no matter what anyone else might be doing.
Youâre a unique individual. No one else like you has ever existed or will ever exist again. People sometimes hide the unique parts of themselves, or even do their best to look away from them, but still.
If you make a work of art, especially one that expresses your unique qualities somehow, it too will be unlike any work of art that has ever been made before or ever will be made again. Because you change over time, no two works of art you make will be the same, either.
Likewise, what you need from art is not quite what anyone else has ever needed, or ever will need, or even what you used to need. The set of art that suits you is just as unique as the set of art that you might create.
If everyone sticks to a narrow, mainstream art style, or only a small number of people make art at all, the best we can do is that a few people get all their needs met, some get them met halfway, and plenty donât get them met at all. Thatâs assuming everyone has lots of access to the art thatâs out there, which wonât be true if itâs all really expensive and the distribution of it is tightly controlled. Then weâll do even worse.
If everyone tries to make art that is uniquely theirs, and especially if lots and lots of people do this, we can maximize our chances that no matter how out-of-the-way your needs might be, there will be some artists out there who are there for you. To really have the best chance of achieving this, we also have to make sure that the art is easy to acesss, especially for the poor and excluded who are especially likely to have unusual or overlooked needs.
Therefore, instead of trying to discourage people from making more art, or pushing a marketing perspective on art which will make people afraid to produce unique work that will have an unpredictable life in the world, we should be encouraging and enabling everyone as much as we can to make the art that only we can make. Art is too precious for us to neglect it. I owe my life to artâŚI would not have made it through my teens without it and it remains the pivot my life spins around. It can be a reason to keep going all by itself. In other words, those people I talked about before who might not get their artistic needs metâthey could die! Itâs just too central to human life to consider it as a cheap commodity or something which could have âbubbles.â Itâs like saying thereâs a cameraderie bubble, a fulfillment bubble, a meaning bubble.
So, if you want to make art, games or otherwise, please go for it. Donât let anyone tell you off. I for one am behind you all the way. The world needs more art, not less.
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the two sentences in here about âdonât blame capitalismâ are such a pointless self-own that he must know would delegitimize the article for like 80% of his potential audience, because, like, even if you are trying to make the argument that [non-rentier-driven] market forces are real and occasionally productive, and the drive to create work for an audience is not as divorced from them as people would like to think (which I agree with!), reducing that to âcapitalism isnât so bad actually!â is an extremely dumb and disagreeable way to do it
itâs like trying to listen to elizabeth warren lol
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Ok but to the extent that the piece has an argument (it doesnât really, itâs basically incoherent) itâs that these two phenomena exist in a causal relationship which just isnât true. Theyâre two mostly unrelated facts that both stem from the same source i.e. capitalism. Itâs not like potholes are not getting filled because all the potential pothole-fillers are making games no one will ever play instead. In fact the US has a large pool of unemployed people that neither make games nor fill potholes, the existence of which belies the underlying assumption of the whole article.
The piece doesnât even operate as personal advice (âlook none of us can change the system but you, personally, should learn how to fill potholes instead of make games no one will ever playâ) because as he ackowledges (in a parenthetical, lol) pothole-filling does not pay a living wage, so. So. So? galaxy-sized shrug
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i believe taking the next paragraph into account that bit is reasonably interpretable as him saying that the video game making lifestyle is enabled by western exploitation of the global south
looking beyond making games, unemployed people are definitely encouraged to selfemploy.
everything is enabled by western exploitation of the global south. scope creep.
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also, trying to absolve capitalism rather than talk about market forces more generally is very stupid in an article thatâs primarily about accelerationism and surplus. like, I get annoyed when âcapitalismâ is invoked to end discussions because itâs usually dissatisfying, but this argument really, genuinely is about capitalism
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just to add to all of this: there is nothing more pointless and uninspired to me than the usual tough love âindustry realistâ advice that invariably just serves as a way to reinforce existing ecosystems and power structures. at the end of âdonât try because the deck is stacked against youâ is a âdonât challenge the way things are done, because you canâtâ. all it does is reinforce more conformity - itâs a way for a system to further justify doing things the way theyâve always been done and the people in power who benefit off of it to stay in power. âwell, iâm so sorry that happened to you but thatâs what you get for hoping for anything betterâ sort of mindset just ensures endless conformity and mediocrity. and maybe thatâs fine for people who donât want anything to change, but then they actively stand in the way of anyone trying to make things better and should be treated accordingly.
i sincerely hope that anything i have done, and can do in the space is helping to throw a wrench in that whole idea. these people donât know what the fuck theyâre talking about whatsoever and they take up so much airspace saying nothing. they have no greater perspective on the world outside their own little bubbles and never have a broader view, in spite of them constantly purporting to offer cold hard irrefutable facts. itâs a testament to a withered imagination and a lack of ability to confront their own failures and complicity.
anyway, i have nothing but contempt for that kind of stuff.
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To be clear I only posted the article because I think itâs cute and the topic was âdonât finish your gameâ. Iâm not that interested in defending it. But I think itâs neat when a well meaning capitalist comes so close to understanding that capitalism is doomed by nature and itâs socialism or barbarism even if they canât quite take the final step.
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oh no worries for posting it, itâs just a genre of piece that is consistently obnoxious and toxically clouding up things. and way too many people listen to this sort of stuff and take it seriously esp when it comes from bitter industry âvetsâ who like, are perhaps justified in their bitterness in many ways but can never reconcile it into anything else. and invariably theyâre just reinforcing everything thatâs bad.
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tbqh the most surprising thing about that article is that itâs different from the one he posted on his blogspot years ago â same basic thesis, new set of deliberately inflammatory talking points
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