Hi, everybody! Sorry for the rant! I’m Cross-Posting this from my other account on Beehaw, because I’d love to hear others’ thoughts on this. I don’t see much discussion about this and I’m really curious if maybe I’m viewing this all wrong.
I’m just posting this as a combination of question and vent. Does anyone else here feel frustrated by the current ethical dilemmas of purchasing games from certain companies? My partner is very tuned into the various ethical mishaps happening in the world and keeps me apprised of which companies are doing shitty stuff and which people/companies I should stop supporting. This is important to remember, but it is also frustrating to see how many companies out there are doing bad things.
This is a very “first world problem,” but it’s frustrating just how many games out there look cool, but I can’t play them because it’d be giving those companies/people money. The biggest examples are Activision Blizzard, J.K. Rowling, and Wizards of the Coast. I think Baldurs Gate 3, for example, looks so awesome, but I don’t feel comfortable playing it because my partner has alerted me that some of that money would go to Wizards. I feel somewhat frustrated that the discussion around these issues has evaporated when the games are released; it’s as though people stopped caring about the bad things these companies/people did. To be entirely honest, I’m not sure if I myself would be able to keep myself accountable if my partner doesn’t remind me of it; I think I may have bought the games like everyone else because of how fun they look, and how much they remind me of games I grew up on.
On a similar note, as my partner is working on becoming a game developer, he follows the state of game development and tells me about it, which seems bleak. I mourn the old studios that I used to have a lot of enjoyment for, like BioWare and the others that EA ate up.
Thanks for reading all of this. :) I wish things were more hopeful, I suppose. My partner urges me to support indie developers, so I’m trying to move in that direction. Does anyone have any recommendations on staying hopeful, given the current state of entertainment?
TL;DR: I’m frustrated by the current largely-unethical state of the games industry and want to know how I can regain some hope about it.
I am not from america but our youth imported your moral/ethical/politics discussion shit on games. And it is so anoying. As if any company would care about moral integrity. Have you noticed that most companies which supported pride month with a little rainbow icon did not in all the countries where this is suppressed and forbidden?
The whole purpose of most companies is to gain money. And they will do whatever is necessary and legal in countries they operate in. And it is a own “discipline” called localization to exactly knowing about their possiblities 🤷🏻♂️ And like others said: most companies are up to no good. Energy, gas, food, clothes, cars… Pharma…
My advice #1: play the games, pay as less as possible. My advice #2: The field of indie games is great. I rarely play AAA. But I also just care about gameplay and don’t like stories in games anymore.
Some cool games: dead cells, children of mortar, ember knights, mario kaizo hacks, path of exile (is not indie anymore but great anyways), brotato, cassette beasts, cosmoteer, rimworld, elite dangerous, hades, rogue legacy 2, noita, stardew valley, subnautica, super meat boy and so far and so on 😉