Look into your heart, you know this to be true
Remember that period where all the popular online games were halflife mods? You would just spend five bucks on a used CD and you could paly Natural selection, counterstrike, Team Fortress, the professionals, and like half a dozen others that were rad as hell. the engine and the elements were all recycled and the only thing that kept it going was love? Shit, there was one super rad cyberpunk game I can't remember the name off as well.
That's the future of gaming under communisms.
The analogy is even more perfect. Think about how all that got absorbed into the capitalist machine and turned into money laundering fronts for the mafia and alienated labor.
What gets me sometimes is that the only thing that's at all close to the Doom wad modding scene after 27 years is the Doom wad modding scene. The amount of sheer love and creativity involved is unrivaled.
That is probably around the limit of how much work can be under under capital without any hope of recompense. For a critical mass of people at least.
Development on GoldSRC and source even more so was always hindered by too many weird, similar functions that inherited from earlier versions. It only became big because of how accessible it was.
Today game dev is much more accessible via Unity and Unreal with free licenses and assets. Only difference in a communist society is that all assets would be freely available and people would actually have time to develop their vision.
Using Hammer or any of the goldsrc/source toolchain is an exercise in Stockholm Syndrome.
Expropriating the unity/unreal asset stores for the good of communist gaming
Shit, there was one super rad cyberpunk game I can’t remember the name off as well.
Dystopia!!!!!
Oh shit, that game still exists they put out a new patch in November
Man, E.Y.E was a dogshit game. I think I played like 200 hours and I Still only kind of understand it. It's fucking great.
Feel like pure shit, just want him back
Also were you thinking of NeoTokyo? It was off of Half-Life 2 but still
Shit, that is it. That one was real good. I think, did we ever get a good spiritual successor to it? I feel like blackligbt revolution was close for a while, bur didnt end up in the same direction.
Don't think so. I was never into multiplayer games anyway, but I did try the Ghost in the Shell game for a while and it was rather fun, never got into for very long to see if it was actually good
I made a comment a couple days ago talking about something akin to that being the communist future of games, i likened it to roblox but serious and not a moneygrab, but your example is probably better, i didnt game back then tho so i didnt experience that.
I mean, both are valid as analysis. A game engine with tools for user generated content is the perfect form. I think it is just generational which game is the touchstone for it. Since, Garry's mod is an equally good example. I think Dreams also, but that hasn't seen the full bloom of it's power.
Under capitalism, all games will be the same shade of photorealistic brown, and the AI will secretly be child slaves from the global south.
We wouldn't get the same brown battle military shooter every year, that's for sure.
Imagine itch.io but if all the devs on there got cost of living stipends and bonuses for their released work
You can play any game you want as long as it’s dream daddy
actually probably bc we couldnt produce AAA as it consumes too much resources so it will be garage made shit from hobbyists. sorry i will give up my 9th COD for all indie games if it means people dont starve and have housing
I mean shit, tons of good indie games already exist, too. Plus imagine if people who actually worked at AAA game studios were freed from the confines of corporations and could work on whatever they wanted
Think of how good things like fallout new vegas could have been, if the team could have realised their vision.
wasn’t trying to say they are bad... just that i would give up AAA stuff for those things. but ye totally agreed
oh sorry, i wasn't trying to say you were saying they were bad either! I got what you were saying, and i agree.
the likes of factorio, kerbal space program, rimworld, minecraft, and dwarf fortress are all indie. Its not even a downgrade to lose AAA games.
you probably wouldn't play that much, because engaging with your community in the real world would be more rewarding, and you wouldn't be seeking escape from a massively alienating social regime
We'd go from repetitive, escapist skinner boxes towards artistic experiences
I like repetitive shit, I like busy work. That shit works for me, I think because I'm autistic. The idea that post-capitalism every single game is going to be a deep artistic experience is actually kind of depressing to me. I don't tend to enjoy those games, unless they are also, yaknow, fun.
Under socialism, people will generally be able to make whatever game they want to make - profit is no longer a necessity because people won't starve if they don't get paid and therefore people will no longer have to water down or otherwise compromise their vision. So while yes, most people will try to make the next what remains of edith finch, or journey, or what have you, there will be plenty of people making old school FF-style games, disgaea, monster hunter, etc
Basically, everyone gets what they want (except capitalists, fuck 'em)
While I agree that there will be more Journey and Edith Finch, I dont know that I agree that it'd be a majority? I think we'd see a lot of projects along the lines of Cave Story and Undertale though. Ie, games that have artistic vision but also work as just fun games to play (jury may be out on whether Undertale is fun, but Cave Story definitely is). Not saying that Edith Finch and (especially) Journey aren't fun, but they are definitely moreso experiences than they are fun games. And I think quiet a few game designers are going to be more focused on making fun games than artistic experiences. Like keep in mind, most devs are going to be people who enjoy playing games. If they're making the games they want to make, many of them are going to be more focused on being fun than being artistic. All in all though, I think things like Cave Story are probably going to be the backbone of video games post-capitalism. Stuff thats both fun and artistically deep.
The only thing I think might entirely or at least mostly go away is massive open world games. At the very least, we wouldn't be getting them all the time, as without worker abuse they'd take many years to make baring technology developments start going the way of making game development more accessible. There would still be a demand for them, because there are people that enjoy them (myself included), but I'm not sure how many people would be willing to make them.
Actually, another thing I just thought of is sports games. We definitely (thank god) wouldn't be getting yearly releases on every sports franchise. The thing I'm wondering though is like, are sports games actually interesting to work on? Would there be devs who want to work on them around? Again, I'm quiet certain there would still be people that want them, NBA 2K and Madden remain extremely popular. But unless those people all decided "well noones making the new Madden so I guess I'm going to learn the necessary skills to work on them" I don't know who's going to be making them.
Military shooters wouldn't go away, but there'd be less of them for sure and there would be much less of a focus on graphical fidelity and more focus on fun. We'd also probably see a return to a focus on narratively deep campaigns. Not saying every military shooter would be Spec Ops the Line though, that would be grim lmao.
I've thought about the open-world question a lot, and I think we might see a lot of cases of teams of artists making the open world, and then making it freely available for other teams to put their stories and things in. I know a lot of my artist friends like working on big singular projects like that, so it's something that will still be made, definitely, but won't be made in the same way. Open world games that are at a fnv/fo3 level of fidelity would see a resurgence, I believe. Mainly because fnv/fo3's open worlds are considerably less time consuming to create.
Yeah I can't imagine we'd get many if any games along the lines of Ubisoft stuff where there's a big open world filled with lots of busy work. Thing is, those types of games work for me because im an aspie who loves busy work and completionism, but I totally get/agree that they're kinda artistically vapid and I can't imagine devs given artistic freedom wanting to make games like that. Like I imagine Assassins' Creed and Farcry would continue as franchises, because I think most franchises would continue (and many would be revived) in a world without IP laws restricting fans from making games in the franchise, but they'd probably be fundamentally different. Like less busywork and the worlds wouldn't be as huge as Odyssey's and Valhalla's, like smaller worlds and the stuff to do would be way less repetitive.
I'd have to imagine that much of the busy work in many modern open-world games is somewhat procedurally generated, so it'd be pretty likely, with those tools being freely available, that creating games just about simpler busy work and stuff wouldn't be too hard, especially if full environments are freely available. I think something like Destiny 2 would get a lot of benefit from freely available assets, cause so much of the production time and cost of Destiny 2 is tied up in creating its environments. Of course, you get issues with visual continuity and such, but that's all fixable, especially as procedural generation tech gets more and more mainstream in 3d art.
Yeah I've thought a LOOOOOOOT about how developing technology will make game development a lot more accessible over time and especially so without IP laws preventing the sharing of assets and code.
Like especially interesting to me is how complex of a game you can make as a one person job. Cave Story is probably the most complex one person job game I'm aware of so far, though its possible one missed my notice. And that is very impressive mind you. But will we reach a point in technology where a game on the scale of say, GTA5 could possibly be a one person job if the person felt like doing so? Some things you still need people with special skills to do, like soundtracks and voice acting, but I'm guessing tech can develop even on those fronts. Can you imagine how much it would open things up creatively if you could have synthetic digital voices that actually sound like real people? [Mind you, I don't think professional, flesh and blood voice actors would ever be fully replaced, or at least not in our lifetime, but it would be really cool to have it as an OPTION. Especially to like, create the perfect voice for a character that no living voice actor can reproduce, or even digitally resurrect the voice of a deceased actor wow]. And how about entirely digital orchestral soundtracks (hell actually for all I know thats already possible lmao).
Also I'm not saying that just because it becomes POSSIBLE to do a huge game as a single person means that the majority of games would be, because collaborative projects are fun and sometimes there are things you aren't very good at that you could use someone who is good at it to help you. But it would be cool because some person with an extremely niche idea for a game who can't find anyone to collab with could one-person their passion project and make it real.
Very true and very good points! One of the more recent interesting things I've seen is the JALI face tech. It creates some create looking facial animations, which are traditionally one of the more time consuming and difficult parts of animating a character. Superb synthetic voice would be incredible too because you'd simply have to write emotions and dialogue and a huge part of production would be simplified. Add the facial animation tech and blam, most of a cutscene made. Some kind of "character" driven procedural animation system would be really neat. Something where you could select tags about a character (old, young, muscular, hard life, tired, ect) and the system could create custom animations for that character. At that point you'd basically be writing and having the computer visualize what you're writing.
Another thing that I think has been undervalued that will come with the ending of IP laws is much superior accessibility features. Right now accessibility is pretty much entirely limited to AAA studios, and it would be great for some of the features from the last of us pt 2 and other new big-budget games were as normalized as camera and movement controls.
The other thing that will really make a difference is better curriculum and freely available education for game dev shit. Right now its pretty normal to see simple and basic things overlooked just because someone is unaware, by no fault of their own, of certain best practices or methodologies.
I've not much more to say, but I love the idea of TLOU2's accessibility features becoming more commonplace. High contrast mode was an absolute genius addition.
Why do videogames have to be a form of escapism?
wouldn't say they have to be as escapist as the the forces acting on culture in this capitalist moment make them, but from the perspective of Becker's The Denial of Death and terror management theory they're part of a larger cultural attempt to distract ourselves from our own mortality that will remain even if we achieve socialism. the initial reaction might be "well then escapism is a meaningless term" but what would be a narrower definition of escapism that excludes say, reading fiction books but still includes video games.
it's all a matter of degrees, I suppose. they'd likely become less escapist and more artistic, connective experiences like jabrd and kristina said
I really disagree with you and all these other replies. They're kinda utopian and sort of shit on me as an individual.
Socialism isn't going to stop me from being a consoomor aspie introvert home body who prefers single player experiences and doesn't have the critical lens to really enjoy artistically deep media without having someone else explain it to me. And it isn't going to stop people from wanting to make those types of games either.
I find the idea that socialism is going to end the existence of introverts and people who's taste isn't for deep artistic experiences kind of silly. Obviously some resocialization will occur but it won't be instantaneous and it won't prevent people from being individuals.
every game is a virtual interface designed to make you more intimate with your comrades and forge everlasting bonds based on mutual respect and love easier
Death Stranding but without the depressing, dystopic environment.
was gonna build global communism, but then I realized my identity might be rooted in material conditions
yes there will always be a range of people's preferences for interaction. just saying the range would shift because of the reduced negative pressure. living under FALGSC would remove a lot of the stress and negative outcomes around interaction
EDIT: looking back at it now I wish I had said "as much" instead of "that much" which would have made it clearer. people seem to have wanted to interpret it as "never", presumably because they define their identity around their introversion and the idea of it being partly a product of material conditions is threatening for some reason, as if they won't have as many identity-mates or something. folks, we're probably gonna get barbarism instead anyway
imagining living on an orbital in The Culture, everyone has thousands of hectares of personal space, leisure to relax and recharge, advanced medicine, arbitrary control of their own gender... it's helping the hangover
Or maybe video games would be a more social activity, like arcades of old
fighting game communities still resemble this, my local guilty gear is doing weekly netplays due to covid but they would meet in person weekly which i found rad
I can gladly do with Ocarina of Time graphics if the options/AI/etc is good. Btw, why the fuck I need an i7 and 16GB to run a game fuck you.
Do you actually need that? I had a Ryzen 1600, RX570 & 8gb of ram 2 years ago and never had issues emulating n64 (didn't try OoT though)
Well less no issues and more ran fine enough to play what I was trying to emulate
hahah, no I mean, why I need a fucking monster to run nowadays games that aren't that much better in essence to, for example, ocarina
Ah okay. Yeah PC requirements are stupid high. I blame it on companies not spending time on optimizing and rather placing the burden on consumers having to brute force the games to run well. Like c'mon if R* can make RDR2 still look amazing on a 7 year old console why can't PC thats only 4 years old play the game better than that console
Yeah controls are kinda meh nowadays but still playable albeit hard for me now. Don't know how 11yr old me beat it without cheatcodes
The last mission is a real pain in the ass for how that game handles mission failure. For people who haven't played it, you don't get an opportunity to immediately retry, you have to drive back to wherever the mission marker is (it can be a good ways away from you) and restart the whole damn thing.
And a bit of a technical marvel
Bigger than Vice City and no loading screens between regions
The only downside was YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO FOLLOW THE DAMN TRAIN CJ
Yeah, I'm one of those video game savants who managed to beat all the "impossible" levels for my brother, my friend and my brother's friends.
This was one of those things that I must have beaten at least ten times for multiple people
That and the RC plane mission
Theres been a recent trend of retro PS1 era/early xbox graphics in indie games, I really dig it too. It's better than just another pixel art game if only because it's different.
I love that lowpoly aesthetic and for a long ass time I thought I was the only one who did.
Cool, what do they call this style or what are some games like this?
I don't know if it has, like, an official name yet near as I can tell it's called "low-poly" or some variation. Theres a youtube let's play no commentary guy Alpha Beta Gamer that has quite a backlog if you want to just check out the aesthetic, they're mostly micro indie games.
Games like Dwarf Fortress and Ultima Ratio Regum made me realise how much graphics are a bottleneck in game design, and how much stuff a game can do if we ditch them. IMHO I wouldn't mind if every game looked like shit if that meant having more interesting experiences, but i can see why some would disagree.
The best game of the past 5 years has been an isometric point and click rpg about being a communist cop with memory loss. Graphics are cool, but really only matter for shit like film and archviz.
A consistent look is really all that matters for games.
I believe that the reason why Total War went to shit is because of their focus on giving their game AAA quality graphics, despite the fact that their game is firmly in the niche genre that cannot financially support a AAA game. As the result in each every game they continuously simplifies the game in an effort to make their game more accessible to a wider market.
There are artists that like making pretty pictures; you're wrong!
Yea but they wouldn't be attempting photo realistic bullshit like modern games, they'd be stylized to the creator's artistic vision like Journey or Hollow Knight
Eh I think people would still want to push the technology, 3D artists would still want to see how close they could get. And technology will continue to make it easier and more accessible for smaller teams (like quixel)
But I definitely think it wouldn’t be like it is now where every game has to be some over the top, shades of brown blockbusters.
This reminds me of a weird interaction I had with a former lib friend while gaming. I made some comment about capitalism ruining everything and they went on this long rant about how we wouldn't have video games under communism because something something planned economy something something no art under communism. I was taken aback that this was their huge gotcha, as I couldn't care less if we had video games under communism, all I want is for people not to be poor and exploited.
did you know that you are a wonderful person and I hope you have a nice day
Some of my all time favorite games are on the PS2/Gamecube. I still emulate a lot of them to play every now and then rather than dusting off my consoles. They still are lots of fun even with their dated graphics (although upscaling to 4k definitely makes them look much sharper)
That be cool. As long as I can map out the area in my head I won't mind. Love pixel games but feel like the 3d space is more fun to explore.
I would take smarter AI for the price of no longer playing in the decorated hallway
