I've been casually following some of the leaks and whatnot. I've probably ranted in this community about how I used to want to be a game dev then I got older and learned about the working conditions in AAA and went into a different career. Now I'm old and the only way I'm likely to get to dev a game in my lifetime is to make one myself.
All of that is sort of besides the point.
I've also been away from gaming for a few years. I started to get this fucked up cPTSD response when I'd play games. I know where it comes from, but it boils down to this gnawing sensation that I'm fucking up when I'm gaming and I'm neglecting important shit.
Thing is I already neglect important shit, I'm a not-really-always-recovering repeat drug addict, my life is often a mess. The only thing I'm consistent on is making sure my pet is healthy and happy and exercised (saving my life, he's the hard carry fr) and that my partner, who is even worse than me in many respects, is also as healthy and happy and comfortable as she can be given her unique set of circumstances.
But I want to start gaming again. Not just gaming, but like I'm pretty sure I'm going back 2 crack - ie I'm gonna end up back playing CS:GO and the occasional interesting indie game and all the best 2D adventure games that come out. That's my shit.
But DAMNIT, I feel like I've just slept through the last years of AAA gaming before it turns into something unrecognisable and grotesque. The AI slop reveals and highlights I'm seeing, the job layoffs, the new job descriptions etc. It's very hellworld-coded from my perspective. Real dystopia vibes. Ugly inhuman creations keeping players hooked through tribalistic brand/franchise loyalty and psychological manipulation.
Like, I know that backlog of games is all there for me to enjoy if and when I return to gaming. I know indies are still gonna do the damn thing. I know it's not the end of the world if the AAA industry collapses completely. In fact it would be a good thing. Well, for competitive shooters maybe not so much, as servers shutter, often games are gone gone, in that genre.
But shiiiiiit. It just feels bad. If I wanted to pick a new main competitive shooter, maybe something a little less sweaty than CS:GO(2, I guess huh.) then it's starting to look like most of the big popular ones are going to be coming out of the anus-funnel of basically AI powered sweatshops.
Creative people, and I include programmers in that because I am one and I'm creative in other ways and I get the creative itch scratched when I'm gnawing on good coding problems or building new shit. People like that are driven by passion, not money- the money's been shit for years for engineers, compared to what we were expecting back in the daze before I went and studied and got degree'd up and stuff.
There's no creative soul on earth who's going to be happy polishing an AI generated turd every fucking day for 8+ hours just to afford to barely survive.
So it's going to be even more outsourced, offshored, automated, de-humanise, soulless. It's going to get worse and worse.
That's how I feel. I'm sad that the window for me to return to competitive gaming while human passion and creativity is still a prime motivator for the real workers putting the things together, that the window is closing fast.
I hate this shit. We need to EMP the proverbial Steel Mountain and the backups and the backups of the backups ad infinitum until we reach the core and unplug Bezos from the foul machines that keep fluids pumping through his withered husk.
Sorry for the semi-schizopost I'm aight. I'm just sad and angry. Mainly I'm possibly doing the stages of grief thing.
I'm thinking about the future, about an internet with no anonymity, where young people, like me when I was their age, won't get to explore their identities like I did, without leaving an indelible record of their experimentations with presentation and community and their mistakes and misplaced triumphs. It's already a lot harder right now than it was in my teenage years before the internet really got bigger, and then smaller with huge populations squeezed into a handful of platforms.
And I'm sad that the kids are going to grow up in slop world, drawn into franchise loyalty (as I was, as most of us are CS1.4 lanparty OG, OLD. 21 year steam veteran badge.) but without even a reference point for how soulless and shallow the skinnerboxes they're being sold have become.
Anyone else feeling the fear and loathing lately, around this stuff in particular? Especially people who aren't directly threatened by it like artists and writers and such?
Or are we mostly bloomers here, ready to embrace a new wave of authentic small creators making an honest living serving hand made art and digital creations to a smaller but sustainable and loyal group of supporters, like we already do have, as a bulwark against the rising power of the techno-oligarchical cultural hegemony?
I see like, three likely outcomes, for the next 5-10 years, not exhaustive:
- AI slop and continued belt-tightening ends up with AAA eating itself alive and the "industry" collapses. But the artform will survive in post-AAA indie bazaar of niche creations.
- AAA achieving insane domination of platforms, DRM + eFuses + walled garden devices making indie dev increasingly difficult further down the line, such that indie gaming becomes difficult to access and limits audience reach. Like trying to do unsanctioned homebrew indie on an uncracked console, but for every accessible and affordable platform. Those creators barely scrape by on their creative efforts.
- The new wave of indie games hits a rising tide of interest and effectively flips the chessboard, beautiful art and flourishing anarchy for a little while, before 20 years of industry re-consolidation in the repeating predictable patterns of capital, per Marx n them.
Whatchu think?
Share some rants of your own. Lets get mad and/or sad. Or, lets be hopeful. I really can't decide where I'm at on this grief spectrum right now lmao. I just want to promote thought and discussion around this shit.
I guess generative AI just makes capitalist exploitation way more streamlined and perhaps nothing has changed beyond the rate of change and perhaps my puny human meat-mind can't conceptualise it effectively