A lot of good games are made under the shadow of capitalism and it's weird to think about sometimes.
Like the whole concept of coin-operated arcade games. The extra life and continue mechanics seen in console games came from a cash incentive to make the player lose.
Or the fact that RPGs almost always charge the player for items. I'm not saying that it doesn't make sense as a mechanic, but I always wondered why people weren't given more healing potions.
The way IP laws work, I'm really curious how games would change once those are gone.
One way I see games changing with the destruction of capitalism:
I think online multiplayer games would be a lot more bearable. There wouldn't be the stratification between people who could afford putting more time or resources into a game and those who can't. Microtransactions and addictive gameplay mechanics wouldn't exist.
we'll finally get medieval fantasy economies depicted as something other than capitalism
Hard to say because the form in which revolution occurs will be... likely traumatic. Video games will probably be the last thing anyone tries to build after a revolution, unless some market economic emerges immediately or you shoot for a foreign market.
If and when things stabilize, a post-capitalist society will probably look a lot like a capitalist one, at first, just with certain things abolished. The direction in which this creative endeavor goes will depend on the forms production can take. The current shovelware sequels and yearly iterations are fairly clearly capitalist money printers and they won't totally go away in any socialist society that still allows profit margins (example: 100% employee-owned coops in a socialist party-run state will still see the value in updating their cash cow). Societies that approach communism would likely see much more creative and careful and lovingly-produced creative works as the time spent on those works becomes more of a function of interest and commitment than necessity to survive. But that's something to approach, and the speed with which it can be approached is unknown and will require its own struggles.
The short answer is that it would look a lot like what we have now at first, but diverge as capitalist structures were further dismantled and scarcity decreased.
Though we should also consider the reality in which a post-capitalist society places lower value on video games and more on removing heavy metals from all cities and residences and farms, for example. Maybe we have "enough" video games for a post-capitalist society already.
I'm not sure that's entirely correct, revolutionary periods have often resulted in great art, mostly visual and literary, but also more complex forms like theatre. There will be game developers and they will have things to say about the revolution.
Games tend to require very large capital investments and are 80% computer programming, which is a form of engineering. There will be much greater need for that engineering elsewhere. They also require intact supply chains for very specialized parts on an international market: you're not getting those new consoles or computers during the revolution.
It's not that art will die, just that this is not the kind of thing you can organically scrap together as part of a social club with costumes and wood and paint. And will the revolution, or post-revolutionary period really organize around the restoration of gaming?
I don't think it will deliberately organise around it, I just think people doing a type of art will continue to do that art, even if they have to do it between shooting a rifle or tilling a field and using jury-rigged vintage hardware. And I think any revolutionary state trying to build a cultural superstructure from near-scratch will be very glad to make use of it.
I think you underestimate what it takes to make pre-modern art forms. It's far from a community theatre production (And one of my local community theatre groups puts on a $500,000 production twice a year) To make professional quality art, even visual arts, requires a shockingly long supply chain (Where do you get the bronze? the horsehair? the marble? What about musical instruments? Remember you need to train your dance corps full-time from age 11? Do not ask about the sound and lighting...). Yet outside of full collapses like the Bronze Age Collapse we don't see a reduction in art during revolutionary periods but the opposite as it goes into a fever pitch of creation.
The French Revolution gave us a flurry of actually quite good revolutionary operas (And I'd argue running a AAA quality public opera house with a brand new from scratch production every 6 weeks is even more expensive than a AAA game. Opera has never, ever turned a profit.)
The Soviets had the revolutionary trains, entire art academies founded, and that's before we get to the fact they maintained and actually expanded the principle theatrical, musical, and dance companies of the time. All during the Civil War, when they could barely keep basic infrastructure running and people and materials needed to feed and supply such works surely could have been used elsewhere. The average Soviet citizen was probably far more familiar with "High Art" than the average Western citizen, despite it being arguably a Feudal remnant.
The one exception I can think of is the English Civil War, but that was primarily for religious reasons.
You really can't compare sourcing horsehair and bronze to sourcing highly specialized microchips. There's a reason TSMC is getting pulled around as a poker chip. And why cars remain very expensive and difficult to acquire with only a relatively minor kick to the supply chain 2-3 years ago. Setting up and running these fabs takes forever, requires inputs from all around the world, and the expense is nearly unfathomable. The game developer is downstream of that.
I have to wonder: have you ever designed or ordered a board before?
Games tend to require very large capital investments and are 80% computer programming
Many famous and genre defining games were made by small teams using off the shelf and open source software. Tetris was made by one guy. Stardew Valley was made by one guy. DOOM's team was eight people. OG Minecraft was pretty much just Notch and is arguably one of the most successful games ever. Mount and Blade was originally a husband and wife team; Armagan did most of the programming and Ipek did most of the art . The Spring engine is a community developed 3D RTS engine. Katawa Shoujo is a pretty much unique entry in the Visual Novel genre made by a small team.
Massive AAA games with hundreds of hours of uncompressed audio and photorealistic textures and mocap and all the other trimmings of COD require huge teams with huge budgets and the latest graphics cards and CPUs. But that doesn't necessarily make a good game.
There are games like Angband, Nethack, and the og Rogue that use ASCII for graphics and can run on almost any programmable computer currently existing, no matter how low-powered it is. And they remain fun and engaging decades after their initial release.
A huge number of famous games and mods were created by small groups of people working in their free time while maintaining full-time jobs.
Regarding computing; The cat is out of the bag. Even in a de-growth environment I don't see the personal computer disappearing. I see computers built for long-term durability and resilience, intended to be used for decades with repairs and part replacements as needed, but I don't see them just disappearing. Your smart-phone may weigh five lbs, have a frame made of steel, have a low-resolution screen, and have all user-serviceable parts, but I think the sheer utility of personal computing is as transformative and powerful as the development of metal tools or steam power.
As an example in the contemporary world; Cuba's famous 1950s cars that have been carefully maintained down through the years due to the severe economic restrictions that Cuba operates under are an example of keeping a functional technology running for a long time. We're used to a world where appliances and equipment are built to be disposable and thrown out and replaced every few years but there's no intrinsic reason to design things that way. We could (and should) build robust computers designed to last decades. look at old iMacs, or even 30 year old still functioning Apple iies, Atari's, Commodore 64s! A computer engineered for a long, long service life in 2022 could drastically reduce the overall material and labor inputs necessary to provide most people with a robust personal computer device.
Another example of the potential of durable technology to subvert the current paradigm of disposability that wastes massive amounts of labor and resources would be the old Nokia brick phones. They were, and are, notorious for their robust durability and rugged functionality. There's no reason that a smart phone needs to be a fragile, expensive toy like an iPhone. We could build every phone like a ruggedized field use phone and expect them to last a long, long time.
In the context of a revolution in the United States, we would likely see world war-like conditions, with widespread destruction and a sanctions regime. Focus will be on ensuring everyone can eat, not freeze to death or die of heat stroke, get medicine, etc.
Following that would be a rebuilding phase in which the former United States would be subjected to foreign imperialists or shielded in not-exactly-altruistic solidarity by, e.g., China.
Defending the revolution in the former case would mean continued cold/hot wars and a state of siege as we've seen elsewhere. Or maybe we got lucky and destabilized the entire core and there are no established imperialists, more or less - at least for a few years. If there's a need to defend the revolution from imperialists, there will be major mobilizations, materials will be scarce, and the number of people available to do things like code computer games will be small.
If the imperialists are temporarily subdued, we will be starting from a position of largely destroyed infrastructure. We will be traumatized and looking for separated family members. We'll be trying to hold down jobs to ensure our survival and will feel the fear of precarity every day for a decade. Sure, some people will try to make games because it's art and entertainment and we want to create and receive those things. But they'll do it in the context of there being 95% fewer complete and working computers and consoles, no supply chain bringing in new ones outside of what was needed for the military. Maybe a repair and refurbishing market will arise where people can bring the things they find (in bombed out or abandoned buildings, in dumps, on the side of the road) and get these devices to enjoy this form of entertainment. It will be relatively expensive, as an entire human will need to do that rather than make food or provide essential services. Maybe it's a part-time volunteer gig for a club rather than a shop. But still, it's not looking good for making or playing a lot of games.
In an area protected by, e.g., China (this assumes China is not also more or less destroyed in these events), maybe things could look different. Maybe infrastructure comes back faster, maybe supply chains are kept going from at least that part of the world and are capable of supplying people during the rebuilding of basic sanitation and agriculture and school and medicine. Maybe those things happen faster and we start to really see an approach of socialism.
This thread kinda gives me the sense that a lot of folks here are a bit too optimistic about what conditions will be like within a decade of what would be necessary for imperial core revolution. It would be a fight to the death with international capital. The whole thing. And it wouldn't happen until conditions had already degraded massively, to conditions where infrastructure was already shit for human needs, where services had been hollowed out to squeeze profits out of existing programs, not to mention pay vs cost of living. With huge numbers of desperate people, people who had to turn to drugs to cope with these scenarios, people who are traumatized. Surely there would be a fight with fascists. Fascists that could easily outnumber us at the beginning. Fascists targeting marginalized groups. Fascists with political power. There can be no assumption that life will look like it does now. Visit a recent war zone to get a sense for the stark and bleak realities and priorities humans face.
We know that revolution is necessary and inevitable, but we also have to know that it's a terrible thing that will be thrust upon us, assuming we are not bloodthirsty (I'm not, that's for sure!). And that recovery is in no way guaranteed to be easy or fast, even though we want to imagine the more distant, slightly utopian future where everything is like it is now, but with socialism added on top.
That's a good point about our priorities, but I really like thinking about where our art will go once we get our needs met. I definitely think we have enough games and it's looking like we're getting diminishing returns on the visual design (graphics) portion.
No doubt. And I should mention that I don't think it's all-or-nothing. I can imagine that we have "enough" games for most people just like we have enough movies and shows for most people: there's a huge backlog that people could watch and enjoy and 95% of movies and shows that get made are garbage that nobody cares about and could slowly die out in a socialist society
But that 5% could still be creating cool and updated stuff. The medium doesn't have to halt. Just take on a minor role compared to, say, the massive and ridiculous FIFA franchise that wastes everyone's time: all it needs is roster updates and graphical updates and occasional gameplay tweaks. Instead, there's a bunch of gimmicky crap and it's always buggy, representing millions of person-hours just to build up the bank accounts of like 17 people.
Thanks for getting away from lathe socialism and back to materialism. The conditions that gave us so much computing power to the common person are so unprecedented that they are incredibly fragile. We're seeing the cracks start to form with the trade wars. The global north don't appreciate wwhat a massive cheap and skilled workforce in China is needed to mass produce these things let alone all the mining and energy use involved.
It's really hard to say what form post-capitialism will realistic take but in the timeframe that matters us to but it likely going to involve supply chain breakdowns and as you said changing priorities. Especially if any revolutionary movement embraces degrowth and opposes most resource extraction like I am hearing in some demsoc, trot and anarchist circles. There would be a window with existing hardware and maybe with what spare time and energy something interesting might happen. The vision is really the Ikea smart bulb being able to run Doom. Games will have to be simple with portable open source code that can be made fit in the most spartan of environments. Text games and MUDs may make a major comeback with alot of interesting examples in the games bundled with BSD systems.
Yes something like that is not unlikely for a while. People making new games would be targeting the widest possible install base or going niche since there would be less support from console makers or platforms generally speaking. Big titles and exclusives only really work when you can guarantee all of the infrastructure and supply chains to support it.
I think there would be, proportionally, a lot more homebrew and community stuff. Games like Omori or that one made by a hexbear user would still be possible, for example. Fewer big-investment, specialized system games, more smaller-scale labors or love.
And there will also be people who end up making the game for their own system only. Emulation will be more important then ever especially for salvaging the old games even though I have my doubts if that should be done either. Maybe there is alot from this neoliberal era we should bury and only let those trained in history and philosophy understand.
It seems a little grim but we're in a world where alot of young people are clocking up thousands of hours on leagues of legend and developing gambling habits or something adjacent to that. All between posting about how depressed/dissociated they are. A new youth culture is required that is actually rewarding. Literature, maths, geography, history, astronomy, wood shop, machine shop etc. as passions and not just school subjects. Games not as their own commodified spectacle but an extension of maths and culture that reinforces understanding of topics like risk and game theory that develop the majority of people as potential leaders in a socialist democracy.
This might sound boring. It seems boring to me if I try to imagine living in it. Some of us have to live with ADHD, but alot of us -to some extent- are brain damaged from stress, lack of sleep, advertising, dark design patterns, sugar, corn fructure syrup, saturated fats, trans-fats, omega-6 fats, PCBs and other contaminants. Our gift to future generations as socialists doesn't have to be fully automated luxury communism but patient and steadfast minds that find incredible joy in exploring subjects using nothing more then library books, microfilm and in some cases computers programs.
It's definitely a weird feeling shifting to and from an indie game that wants you to have fun and a AAA game that wants your complete attention and money.
There probably will be all lot of experimentation and failures but there's plenty of indie games, stories, and features already out today that can be copied without copyright law.
I think, at least for some genres and games, you'd see an explosion of modding and distributed development, but qualitatively changed to the point where it blurred the line between discrete titles modded into different forms and highly customizable engines with rich libraries.
Yeah I'd look to the STALKER modding community to this, as the devs did eventually just open source the engine and even helped modders with some problems. I know STALKER 2 is slated to come out, but that whole Franchise has been running on community support for 13 years now.
You get your conversion mods of the main game, i.e. some tweaks and changes, into full blown stand-alone games built on the framework of Call of Pripyat, sandboxes, storylines, dynamic storys and such.
I want a world of Dwarf Fortresses. Someone's passion project that's crowdfunded, full mod support, no expected deadlines which necessitate crunch, and a co-op model if they hire more developers.
I like to think back to games before the onset of monetization (early Quake multiplayer games for instance). Even OG Halo 2 and Halo 3 were great in how players in regular matches started on level equipment load outs and then had to compete in always predetermined areas for weapons (meaning once you knew where the sniper spawned you could go and fight for it). Player customization was also nice in that one could color their armor and unlocks were connected more to playing the game or doing interesting challenges.
Xonotic is great for this, provided you can supply a full server of players, otherwise you'll be up against the 100 odd people who frequently play it and are insanely adept.
Gonna have to add it to my list of games to check out, the screenshots look pretty sweet
The movement and the weapons are actually perfect, and there is great variety. Some weps share ammo types. Sometimes I just hang out in the rocket jump race servers to relax. Also everyone is really nice.
The best LAN parties you can imagine. Code/assets and whatnot wouldn't need be constantly reinvented after being thrown out. The fucking dream.
God, can you imagine what would be possible if everything was open source and people didn't have to constantly re-invent the wheel or work around some company's patents?
The indie, fan game and mod scene are actually a great example of how gaming thrives without a profit motive.
Also, you can easily make games that don't revolve around capitalist mechinics. Even AAA studios do this sometimes. One of the core mechanics of Pokemon games is free healthcare ffs.
There are lots of games like Valheim, Minecraft, Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing, etc. that are entirely escapism from the late-capitalist hellscape of daily life. I think regardless of where we end up the primal human urge to build and decorate fancy buildings will persist.
"I think online multiplayer games would be a lot more bearable"
I think a lot more games would probably looking similar to guild wars 2. One thing I always noticed about GW2 is the powerful spirit of cooperation and the mechanics that foster it. For one thing you don't 'tag' what you fight, meaning others can help and be equally rewarded. Additionally when a boss is killed, everyone gains loot, meaning no conflict between players regarding who gets what and who needs it more; and the 'who needs it more' argument is one I'll be happy to see put to rest as it creates a lot of conflict. Also resources that can be gathered exist for all players; if you mine/log a resource, it'll disappear for you but still be in the world for other players to gather. Also the game rewards helping other players; when you resuscitate a downed player you begin to fill up an 'achievement' bar that grants a reward once filled, and then it can be refilled again and again.
One thing I've always said about GW2 is that in its mastering of the spirit of cooperation it's the spiritual opposite of WoW, with WoW (at least by wrath of the lich king, as mechanics have changed a lot since then) having mastered the spirit of competition.
I think history disagrees with this. There are a vast number of mod projects and community made games whose goal was to make a game based on another popular media piece.
As a non-videogame example, D&D was built to take the mechanics of a table-top war game and create narrative adventures inspired by a mash-up of old Swords and Sorcery novels like Conan and Faffrd and the Grey Mouser with LotR.
Another example would be Star Wars. There are a huge variety of mods for various games based on Star Wars. Pretty much any game that can be modded has a Star Wars mod of one kind or another.
Having an interactive narrative experience where you can be part of a fictional setting you enjoy has long been part of the appeal of gaming, way back to the days of MUDs.
