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.
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.