Discussing Trump's unhinged comments

 So....our manbaby of a president is tired. He wants to go home. He doesn't wanna play any more. The game isn't going his way, and now he's starting to throw a temper tantrum. Yep. That's how I see those comments. It's literally that energy. You gotta treat him like a toddler at this point, and yeah, does that make more sense?

Ironically, he's also very old. So old people have been saying for years he's been showing signs of dementia. One symptom is behavioral disinhibition. It means they cant mask or filter their behavior any more so they just fricking start saying all the things that people normally shouldn't say but because Trump's filter is damaged, well, he's just coming out and sounding increasingly unhinged. 

Yeah. Someone take his phone, and his nuclear codes away from him. Him threatening people on twitter like this is insane for one. And the fact that this guy has access to nukes and people have been saying all day that maybe he's planning to nuke Iran is making this situation scary. I mean, it's bad this guy started the war in the first place, but as it continues to not go his way, since he thought it was gonna be an easy victory and now Iran is digging in for the long term and planning to inflict as much pain as he can on people, he's losing his crap. And who knows what he's capable of. Remember how I said in his first time his advisors were able to control him and reduce his worst impulses and that the presidency was basically a giant daycare for this guy? Yeah. Well, he fired his babysitters and is now surrounded by yes people and sycophants who are scared to stand up to him. Yeah. This is scary.

Anyway, some have been saying they need to invoke the 25th amendment on the guy. I agree. However, his cabinet IS full of yes people who lack the balls to do it.  Democrats in congress introduced articles of impeachment charging him with thirteen different serious crimes and abuses of power. But once again with the house controlled by Mike Johnson and the senate also being run by republicans, yeah, again, not likely to happen. Even if we had the house, we all saw how well the articles of impeachment went the the last few times we tried it. It's why he was able to take power again. We should've impeached this guy over January 6th and been done with it, but NOOO the republicans had to sit there playing candy crush and zoning out, only to basically let the guy go. 

So seriously, how much are the republicans gonna let this guy get away with before they recall this guy somehow? Is he gonna have to literally launch a nuclear war in Iran? I guess we're all gonna see. Either way, this ride isn't fun any more, and I wanna get off. Yeah, I too am just gonna put it in kid terms because it's all I can do at this point.  

Why I don't care about jobs reports

 So...I wrote an article like this under Biden, but it deserves a discussion under Trump as well. I'm so sick of hearing about what the jobs reports say. Libs love to rub it in and use it to attack Trump as if they're really owning him by pointing out that there isn't much job growth any more. The reality? While yes, Trump's terrible policies are largely responsible like that, and his tariffs and war with Iran definitely aren't helping the economy positively, the fact is, our economy is still at "full employment" and functionally has been since Trump took office. Seriously, "job creation" stops mattering when you're under 5% or so. In the macro, you can't really do much better than 4.something percent. And it doesn't make sense to celebrate creating more jobs when you're at that level. Because, again, capitalism is a giant game of musical chairs. It's designed to never have enough. We celebrate them creating more, but after that point it doesn't matter and can actively be harmful to the economy. If we have too many jobs, we end up getting inflation instead, which is bad in another way. Then you got like, the "worker shortages" of 2021. You don't want that either. 

Honestly, we should stop celebrating jobs, and the left should stop trying to lean so hard in the direction of job creation that the right leans into. Rather, we should lean into doing more to reduce poverty and create economic stability for people. Jobs are one solution to that, but the end all be all. 

I get it when dems try to say they do a better job than republicans at it, given the past 40 years, but to be fair, we just got lucky. The republicans ended up with all of the recessions while we havent. It doesnt mean we did much to "earn" having stronger economies though. I mean, if your idea is to sit on your luarels while the private sector creates jobs, that's...the private sector doing it. Government policy has a little to do with it, but not much. And it's gonna happen under either party. 

The only real reason to attack Trump for his weak economy is because he's the first president we can honestly say is kinda suiciding the economy. Because he is screwing everything up with his tariffs, wars, etc. But all things considered? If you really care about jobs, we're still at full employment, despite Trump's weak numbers. That's just how the economy works. if you have a problem with there not being enough jobs, you should also be critical of Biden. But also not, given he started out with, ya know, WAY TOO MANY at the same time. 

Again, I just wish we'd think beyond job creation. We can talk jobs jobs jobs all day but it's not gonna meaningfully make a huge difference. The problem is the economy itself. It's the fact that we rely on a bunch of self interested people who dont care about us to be responsible for providing for the well being of everyone else in the first place. Ya know? Jobs arent made to give people paychecks. I mean, they do, but businesses want to pay people the least amount of money for the most labor. And that's fundamentally, why the economy sucks as much as it does. And it's always been this way, but it seems like we'd rather than talk about anything else, but that fact. 

Idk, if you wanna blame trump for screwing up a perfectly "good" economy, have at it. I just think that the left should offer more than just "better private sector job creation than republicans." I think it's fine, given THEIR fixation on jobs as central to their ideology, all dems need to really do is prove they're just as competent at it (and they are), and then offer more beyond that. I dont want the job creation to be the central goal of the left, rather, it should be the cherry on top. Like "oh yeah, we can manage economies too, and we're actually a little better than you, but we also offer far more than just that." That way we outflank the republicans on literally everything. Instead of catering to their stated priorities. Like, when the democrats run on just creating more jobs than conservatives, they're basically saying they can govern like conservatives better than conservatives can. Which is great if you're a member of the third way and fundamentally conservative, but I'm not, and want something different. 

Dear conservatives joining the democratic party: adapt or go back where you came from!

 Yeah, I'm gonna sound like you guys often do with immigrants. So...I was watching Vaush and he was discussing the Hasan controversy and how these former republican consultant types are joining third way and pushing anti hasan talking points. 

And....as someone who is, myself, a former conservative who joined the democratic party, I got a message for those who joined. ADAPT OR GTFO! Seriously. I WAS a "moderate conservative." I know what they're about. I left the GOP in 2011-2012 over a fundamental shift in worldview. Yes, the GOP got too extreme for me even then, HOWEVER, I also realized, because of those extremists that it wasn't just the implementation of those conservative values that was problematic, it was those conservative values in general.  The Tea party was just a logical progression of the GOP's political ideas for decades by that point. It was just the final culmination of what those ideas look like in practice. I left because I didn't like what I saw and realized that yeah, conservatism was bad. And as a result, I rebuild my own political ideology from the ground up. I cant say I fully agree with liberals, especially 6th party system third way liberals, or even 5th party system new deal ones. But I'm DEFINITELY in that liberal camp. It's just a different camp.

If anything, I find the third way types to be TOO conservative, and reflecting the article on centrism I recently did, too lacking of their own values. The democratic party's core problem is that it stands for nothing, and is too focused on trying to win moderate conservatives over, even though they're NOT reliable voters. And trust me, I can say that because I was one. I typically still preferred republicans, its just that if the GOP got extreme enough and democrats moderate enough, I MIGHT, MAYBE, vote democrat in some situations. I considered going for Clinton over McCain, for example, but Obama? Nah man, he was a "radical socialist", I wasnt gonna vote for him. But then they didn't need me and they won because they had a massive base of progressive college students and the like who came out en masse to vote for him. Again, during the obama era, democrats didn't NEED me. So why did they start appealing to people like where i WAS in 2016? Because they wanted to, and because thats the direction they wanted to take the party. But I shifted the other way, toward not just liberalism but a form of anti conservative progressivism. I wanted the opposite of the GOP. Not some weird centrist party trying to win over 2008 me, only to fail. 

And it incenses me when these 2008 mes come over into the democrats and then tone police us and tell us we should be moderate to appeal to them. No, screw off. Either adapt to the party to some degree and its actual constituents and ideals, or go back to the GOP and clean up the mess you made.

I fully understand that given the fascist takeover of the GOP, why some would wanna flee from that and join democrats. And okay, we can form a temporary alliance to get trump out and keep the country stable for democracy. It's a tactical necessity to stop us from falling into fascism. But when this is over, I want you guys to go back and take back your own party. I dont want you to come in and ruin ours. The prospect of the democrats becomming this bastion of Bush era conservatives who still hold those ideas scares the crap out of me. That's the realignment from hell. That's the one where we lost the ideological high ground to fascists and were stuck in this pattern until the 2050s or 2060s. No. That's a nightmare. 

I dont always agree with Hasan. I mean, yeah he said cringey things? Yeah, he said cringey things. I mean I bet if someone scoured this blog for oppo research or my reddit account people would find cringey things i said here/there too. Maybe not as bad as some of the hasan stuff, but still, you'd never hear the end of my worst takes ever. The point is, at the end of the day, am I closer to the progressive lane or the third way one? Definitely progressive, sorry, not sorry. And I dont care WHAT hasan said, it's likely not gonna change that trajectory overall. I aint gonna vote for a fricking republican adjcent moderate because hasan said crappy things, sorry I'm not. 

Donald Trump is making Battlefield 3 great again, and that's why I'm voting for him in 2028

 I'm gonna be honest, I'm a huge fan of this Iran war. The men long for the front lines. it's why we play video games. As you guys know, I'm a huge battlefield fan. And my favorite map in Battlefield 3 was Kharg Island. Idk why. it's huge, it's empty, it has breathing room. It's when battlefield was truly great. Battlefield 6 is slop. The maps are too small, there's too little breathing room, we're fighting in New York for some reason. Maybe Zohran Mamdani will turn NYC into a literal hellhole where we have an outright battle there, but right now, the focus is on Battlefield 3. Donald Trump is making my dream come true. I can actually enlist in my late 30s to fight in Kharg Island. And after that, we're gonna do Damavand Peak, Caspian Border, and ultimately, Tehran highway. WE'RE MAKING BATTLEFIELD GREAT AGAIN BOYS! SIGN THE F UP!

And maybe, if we're lucky, Trump will make Battlefield 4 great again too. Maybe China will try to take Taiwan, thinking that we're weak. But we're not weak. We're AMERICA, we have the best military in the world! And who wouldn't wanna kick their commie butts in the battle for the Paracel Islands as well? Maybe we can have a real world Siege of Shanghai next? Mmm....taste that asbestos from the building on C collapsing. I get to play battlefield 3 and 4 in real life, and then die of cancer! Yay!

Donald Trump is making America great again. Who needs healthcare spending when you can die in a foreign war before you get sick? And if you do get sick, you get sick from the asbestos and petro chemicals! Yay gulf war and 9/11 syndromes! This is making me wanna vote for Trump in 2028. Screw the constitution! All Hail King Trump!

....and April fools, motherfrickers....

Discussing Hasan derangement syndrome

 So...this has been weird for me. I was on a sub for political predictions and some guy started going on this deranged rant about how Abdul El Sayed (MIchigan primary candidate, has like 0% chance of winning, but a M4A supporting progressive) did a campaign event with Hasan Piker and how he was APPALLED, APPALLED I TELL YOU and it just seemed over the top. Anyway, given that sub regularly moderates me for so called "partisan slop" and, well, this was sloppy AF, I called him out for it, only to be confronted with the guy's most extreme foreign policy stances that are admittedly cringey, but again, I'm not gonna consider this guy so toxic he should be EXCOMMUNICATED! EXCOMMUNICATED FROM THE LEFT I TELL YOU! He's just one of those cringe leftists who lose the plot who become so extreme with their "America bad" mentality that he starts simping for our opponents instead. I try to be more nuanced, recognizing that the criticism of US foreign policy is sometimes valid (especially in the age of trump and his rank disregard for our international reputation), but also condemn bad people bad. But...a lot of people dont do that. If Hasan goes way too far into America bad, we gotta be super pro America good and suddenly give the US and Israel a pass on everything while demonizing Iran, Venezuela, and China. It's a common thing the more mainstream centrist liberals and conservatives try to pull, ya know, the "uniparty" types who are all rah rah america good, everyone else bad, and if you admit we suck too you're helping our enemies types. Again, I'm in between. 

But yeah, it's come out from multiple media channels that I follow that apparently this is all a smear campaign by the "Third Way" think tanks to try to attack progressive candidates. And again, it is astroturfed, it is pushed by moderates in bad faith to try to set the terms of debate and put anyone too far left outside of their overton window. And it's cringe. Honestly, I'll be blunt. On Israel, since that's part of this too, Israel deserves almost all of the criticism they get. No, it's not antisemitic unless you go full idiot mode and start ranting and raving about "da j00z" in an obviously anti semitic manner. But no, criticizing the state of israel, or zionism, or their genocide of palestinians, their influence over US politics (of which this is an example of), or the fact that they just got us into a war with Iran, is fair game, and no, it's not antisemitic. That's bad faith idpol bullcrap.

And to be frank, I can't say im the biggest fan of hasan. In part because he IS too far left for me, and I obviously am this like very left leaning liberal who borders on leftism but isn't quite there, but you know what? I think sometimes he has good points. Remember him and Cenk covering housing and me writing an article on it? Yeah, Hasan had the better position on that debate because his leftism gave him a clear problem definition and solution to the problem while all Cenk had was vibes with nothing to back it up. Leftists do deserve a seat at the table. Their opinions deserve to be heard. That's not to say they're always correct, and quite frankly, if one really follows my blog and listens to what I have to say, that much should be obvious. I have a lot of criticism for hasan style leftists on foreign policy. I really do. I've discussed them on here before. I just think this attempt to draw outrage over them by centrists is in bad faith because let's face it, their opinions are garbage too. And I certainly dont endorse or support many centrists in dem primaries. I want progressives. 

So no, I dont care of Abdul El Sayed or whatever other progressive candidate running for office DARED APPEAR WITH HASAN. I mean, should we really vote for centrists who we hate instead? And that's what they're trying to do, do this obnoxious red scare crap. F those guys. And F their foreign policy views too. We can argue that Hasan is too far left, but we need to get past this weird establishment centrist liberal faction that coddles the zionists too and have foreign policy positions that unenlightened 2008 me would endorse. Because seriously, centrist libs are just 2008 me, and I called myself a conservative back then. I was just "moderate" about it. Honestly, the moderates within conservatism and liberalism end up being the same people all things considered. Seriously, they're closer to each other than the extremes in either party these days. And let's face it, if the dems had their way, they'd be the a moderate uniparty facing off both against trumpers and "the left", which doesnt even include just people as far left as hasan. It probably includes you and me too. So keep that in mind. These people are out to screw us over too. And we shouldnt cave to their bad faith BS. 

Explaining the meaning of life from a secular point of view

 So...I noticed Andrew Yang has a podcast scheduled for tomorrow with Arthur C. Brooks, a conservative who wants to offer a "practical science based plan to find purpose through transcendence, vocation, and love, drawing on philosophy and faith traditions." And...I cringe. Because when I look into it, he's promoting stuff like "faith" and "family" and "work", and all I see is the conservative worldview. Ya know, the one that I left that assumes that we need these things in order to be functional human beings. It's total BS. Anyway the book isn't out, i haven't read it, I don't plan to, but I do want to address this issue from an actual humanist perspective, given I would also say that human centered capitalism is fundamentally based on such a perspective.

On meaning

The concept of meaning in some objective sense is a human created concept. it's our attempt to find our place in this cold and uncaring universe of ours. On a subjective, personal level, this is fine. People can believe whatever they want, and live it out insofar as they don't harm others. But what I resent is this idea that we NEED meaning and blah blah blah and therefore let's force everyone to work and all. The protestant work ethic is BS, it really is. It's just a narrative that came from the more repressive versions of Christianity that was adopted by rich people to turn us into an army of wage slaves who think the meaning of our lives is to do labor for them. And I fear that this book, and that seems to be what reviews so far indicate from past books that this guy wrote on similar topics, just ends up reflecting. I mean, this guy writes a lot of books and most of them are pretty conservative in their orientation. 

Anyway, from a humanist perspective, THERE IS NO MEANING. The universe is cold and uncaring. It doesn't give us a purpose. There is no cosmic reason for us all to be here, we just are, and you know what? My own take is that you might as well enjoy it and live on your own terms, not terms dictated to you by other people. 

In a lot of ways, my take on the meaningless of life is similar to Camus and absurdism. Try as we might to challenge the idea of the absurd, the absurdity is the reality, and we might as well accept it. but for me, this isn't a bad thing. It's FREEING. It means you dont have to really be doing anything with your life at any given point. Life is a sandbox. Enjoy it. Live it on your terms. Do what you want. I'm not to judge. I don't wanna tell people what to do, what I dont like is others telling me what to do, and thats where the mental illness comes in. 

Why purposeless people are mentally ill

 There's a lot of talk about why people who lack purpose are mentally ill, not well adjusted, and why we need structure in our lives. In my view, it ultimately comes down to this. It's anomie. A mismatch between society's value and reality. We impose a lot of idealistic crap on people about work and purpose and when life doesnt turn out that way for a lot of us, we become disaffected and feel depressed. We see good things happening to others, and we wonder why we cant have that picturesque life. We feel like something is wrong with us, because society tells us something is wrong with us. The protestant work ethic is a cure looking for a disease, and the disease manifests itself in a self fulfilling prophecy. 

The solution to anomie is to get society working according to the values, or to realign the values to the reality of society. For the most part, most of these self help books are about realigning us to conform to society's values. But what if you dont want to conform to those values? What if, much like myself, you kinda view work as a sisyphusian task. A pointless bunch of BS we have to do, that we wish we didnt have to do, but society insists that we have to do it for our own good? Well, then this crap becomes spiritual violence. And when mental illness happens, we say, "see, if only their outlook conformed to the values of our society, they'd be better off." So a lot of people think the solution is trying to make everyone conform to this weird idea of what society is and should be to stave off existential dread. 

This is ironically why we still have to work so hard in the 21st century. Working hours kept going down until the great depression. Then FDR went all hardcore pro work because people feared a future in which we didn't have to work and thus wouldnt have it structure our lives. But for me, I don't fear that future, because Im not conservative brained and accept that BS. I'm this nihilist/absurdist type who sees this stuff as spiritual violence and wants liberation from this.

And that's the thing. If you get out of "the cave" like I have, you dont wanna go back. It all seems so fake. The puppet show that is life for many people doesnt do it for me any more. But all these cave dwellers keep insisting i need purpose in my life blah blah blah. 

That's basically akin to telling me to go back in the cave, forget all I learned, and to stfu and enjoy the puppet show. 

No, I don't wanna do that, I want liberation. 

Again, it's fine if these people want to live their lives that way, but I feel like im too smart to follow them. I know too much, I've seen too much. The illusions and delusions the common people of this reality accept don't do it for me any more, I want something different. But I cant have it different because the whole cave relies on keeping this illusion up...forever. 

And that's why I would say I feel whatever depression and angst over the situation that I do. Because I dont wanna live my life according to THEIR rules and THEIR expectations, but according to my own. But I'm bad for that because I need Jesus or some crap. 

It's all worldview, it all goes back to the cave, blah blah blah.

Human centered capitalism is intended to free humans from this prison

So this is where I get super critical of andrew yang platforming this guy, and shows once again why this guy is so cringe sometimes. love the dude for his 2020 campaign, but I don't think he really understands this stuff on as deep of a level as, say, I do. Again, human centered capitalism as a concept was created in part by me back in the early/mid 2010s. It was a culmination of my leaving "the cave" that is Christianity, dealing with all of these existential questions myself, and finding my own answers. Ya know, something a lot of people seem deathly afraid of. 

The capitalism part is me expanding a humanist philosophy into economics, rejecting the protestant work ethic and replacing it with a secular ethos instead. It can be said that another pillar of the idea I've considered floating is "there is no purpose but that which we create for ourselves." Because my ideas are functionally a rejection of the protestant work ethic, I wanted to replace it with a more nihilistic/absurdist take, but rather than view it negatively in ways that cause us to fall into despair, I see it as liberating. Because, in my worldview, the wealthy and powerful use these ideas of purpose to enslave us. All of this stuff is a massive psy op on us to make us wanna work for a living producing stuff for rich people. It's like bioshock infinite and all that dystopian propaganda you see everywhere trying to convince people to wanna work and not ask for more. Same thing here. Heck, i recognized when I first played bioshock infinite in 2013 that it kind of was analogous to our own society and how so much effort is spent wanting to keep us these docile little wage slaves.

So...for me, UBI and this whole idea of wanting to liberate people from work is just...a natural downstream logical conclusion of my assumptions.

1) There is no purpose but that which we make for ourselves

2) Our society is like a matrix, with rich people using religion to turn us into docile wage slaves

3) People fear secular humanism because it frees us from this matrix, allowing us to realize that their ideas are nonsense, and allowing us to build our ideas on a new set of principles. 

After looking at the practical solutions to our problems, I concluded that policies like UBI, medicare for all (single payer at the time, public option now as i refine paying for these ideas), and free college/student debt forgiveness would help get us there. They would create a blueprint for a society in which over time, as the economy continues to grow, we'd be able to free ourselves from work. It allows those who wanna work to work, recognizing that some wont want to be "unplugged", and recognizing that we cant have a society without labor in the first place, but it also liberates those who dont wanna. Basically, because life is a choose your own adventure sandbox anyway, it allows people to choose, recognizing that pluralistically, we dont all think the same, we want different things, and again, in a society in which we all want different things and arent the same, that we should allow that diversity to manifest in different decisions.

The christians believe god put them here to work? let them work as they want to. I dont believe their nonsense? Let me alone and let me live on UBI. it's quite simple.

The problem is that christian nationalist types often arent the live and let live types. They're the types of people who believe that their ideas came from god himself, that human nature is evil, and that people need to be forced into their way of living "for their own good." And that's where a lot of these do gooder conservative mindsets come from. It's a worldview, issue, it's always a worldview issue. Except, I kinda recognize the world should be pluralistic, and these guys...dont. Because im libertarian, and they're authoritarian. 

Again, it all comes back to worldviews. 

Which is why I get disappointed when someone like yang platforms this guy and has weirdly conservative mindsets on work and purpose at times. I mean, to be fair, yang got most of his ideas from the UBI community but seems to have at best a surface level idea of them, I mean, he's never been the best representative of the movement. I just glaze the guy so much because he's like the only mainstream figure who has tried to advance ANY iteration of these ideas. 

But yeah, can't say I'm a fan of this stuff. 

Conclusion

So, like everything, it all comes back to worldviews. This whole "humans need purpose" nonsense is a bunch of crap that comes from protestant christianity whether directly or indirectly. While it has some observed reality in science, I view it as a self fulfilling prophecy. Of course when you teach people the world is supposed to work a certain way and your life should follow some kind of script and your life deviates from the script, you're gonna be miserable and depressed. But then when the disappointment wears off, it becomes liberating. But then when you realize that society tries to force you to live a certain way against your natual rhythm in life, it becomes miserable again. because you're not allowed to live as you want, because of these authoritarian do gooders shoving their ideas down your throat.

And that's how I see this. I beleive nihilism is the best way to approach purpose. There is no purpose but that which we create for ourselves. This should be liberating, and allow us to live as we want without expectations, but then people are jerks who dont allow you to do this. And most dont think as deeply as I have about this, so they keep falling back into various levels of the cave.  

And that's kind of the problem with society in general. While we're democratic, the elites control the info the masses get and then they govern by tyranny of the majority, with the stupid people outnumbering and outvoting the smart. It's the core reason why everything is messed up. Sadly, the whole purpose thing goes beyond just republicans and into the dems, but the dems kinda just capitulate to conservative values and just offer a weaker version of the same thing.

I try to offer the opposite "pole" here to go back to my discussion on centrism. The republicans offer conservative christianity and all of the metaphysical baggage to go along with it, and I offer secular progressivism in response. All my ideas naturally flow from my core assumptions about the world, and I feel comfortable in defending them. 

For me, my own purpose is, ironically, to spread this knowledge. I dont wanna do pointless work for pointless pay. or wait for Jesus to come back on a winged horse because the war in Iran triggered the apocalypse. I wanna enjoy my life and not waste it doing what other people say for no good reason.  Again, religious people wanna live their lives according to that stuff, that's fine. I just resent them trying to shove their crap down my throat.

And yeah. That's how I view it as a human centered capitalist myself. Remember, for me, humanism is where the human centered aspect comes from. It's secular humanism applied to economics. Which means a rejection of all of that metaphysical crap associated with christianity, which includes the concept of live having some sort of external objective meaning. My views are about liberating people from the conservative and christian way of doing things and letting them live life on their own terms. While that might be scary for some, well, I kinda believe we need a mass society wide existential crisis anyway. And I'd rather challenge existing assumptions than just concede the argument to their perspective.  

Are we heading toward a video game crash?

 So, John Romero, legendary video game developer, basically said that the video game industry is "crashier" now than it was in the 1980s. The 1983 crash was apocalyptic btw. It wrecked 97% of the industry. While right now we don't seem to be hitting those extremes, we seem to be in dark times.

Well...honestly, I don't see where this industry is going. it doesn't seem sustainable. I mean, I discussed "peak gaming" before and how gaming is becoming unsustainable. Between the end of moore's law (or at least it slowing down), ballooning video game costs, video games taking years to make, and being buggier due to their complexity and lack of optimization we've been having issues.

Hardware is a HUGE issue. like, we're talking PS6 next year and a new xbox. Except....consoles arent getting cheaper. if anything, in the age of AI they're getting more expensive. The PS5 is now going up to $650. Xbox went up to $700. The Switch 2 is $450. A basic gaming PC is going up to around $800-1000 now, which used to be midrange. Where is it going to end?

Game developers want everything to be bigger and better. We're putting our hopes in ray tracing. We're pushing boundaries so hard we need AI upscaling to make games playable. We're pouring hundreds of millions and years of development into games that get poor returns. We're laying off staff even when games are successful, which the article mentioned. To some degree, its corporate greed, but it's like the industry is eating itself. 

I look at things from a consumer perspective. As I see it, hardware is getting more expensive. With this RAM crisis i dont even know how the next gen of consoles and PCs is gonna be affordable. We have tech where even smartphones can do gen 7 games with ease (in theory at least), and some are even as powerful as gen 8 consoles. We should be in a gaming golden age with the tech being cheap and ubiquitous. But with the mentality of pushing all boundaries at all costs, idk how we can improve on what we got. Gen 9 consoles never really got cheaper over SIX YEARS. And now they're more expensive. How can we even have a gen 10 if the hardware isnt there for us to buy affordably?

We're spending millions and years to make games that look like movies, only for many of them to be mediocre? Quite frankly, I'd rather play gen 8 games and before for the most part as the more modern games suck anyway. They release expensive, are slow to go down in price, and most arent buying them. 

Gaming has an affordability crisis for consumers and a sustainability crisis for developers. It doesnt have to be this way. Developers can just scale back ambitions a bit and focus on older tech. But because, much like capitalism, there's an inherent ideology toward growth, with the growth in this case being more computing power to push boundaries, the industry struggles to adjust. it's appealing more and more to fewer and fewer people as we're squeezed with higher costs for declining quality.

I myself am kinda just giving up on keeping up and while I have gotten some newer titles, im mostly focused on older games, since they were just better and easier to run. There's no reason we cant make games like in the past, most just dont want to because everything is pushing boundaries. 

All things considered it comes back to peak gaming combined with an affordability crisis. 

But at the same time, its also an oversaturation crisis. As we know, most gamers only play a handful of games these days, but they play them a lot. Even I'm going this. I spend most of my time on BF6 quite frankly. I play other games too, but BF6 is my main one. I spend about as much as most do on gaming, but if anything, i buy cheaper games. As we saw my spending habits are around $200 a year for 9 games, that's $23 a game give or take.  And I just have a ton of stuff to play. Like, sometimes I dont even want new games when I can buy them because Im like "I have enough to play." I've reached my saturation point where sometimes the problem with the amount of games i want to play isnt money, it's time. If I only dedicate a few hours a day to gaming, and I spend more time than most my age, then I'm only gonna be juggling say, 2-4 games at once. Maybe 1-2 MP games and 1-2 SP games or something. Like right now I'm playing BF6, outer wilds, and gears of war. Before that, I was playing outer worlds 2, and doom the dark ages. I might also boot up BO7 although yeah that one kinda sucks. 

But yeah. How many games can I play? And they're all competing for my time. And most are designed to be time sinks these days. I cant even get invested in a lot of games I want to because I just dont feel like I have the energy to do so. Because I got so much other stuff to play. 

And all these games gotta make money to keep themselves relevant. So that's why the industry is cut throat. 

And then you gotta keep in mind the corporate culture. 2020s capitalist culture isnt healthy. It's "late stage capitalism", where everything is financialized and the shareholders have unrealistic expectations of profits and are bleeding people dry. Like BF6 has been in the spotlight lately. It was the most successful game commercially of 2025. But they laid off staff lately, and apparently had such unrealistic expectations for sales and profits that they just laid off the team that made the best product they ever had just about. BF6 is the most profitable battlefield ever. But because these guys' standards were to make several times the money they actually did despite that, it's considered a failure. If that's failure, how can anyone win? And if no one can win, why even play? 

And that's the other side of the "peak gaming" problem. The expectations are so high that they can't be met, but that just means the industry is ultimately gonna eat itself. Some of this is because they got overly bloated studios that are underperforming, but even when they perform, the result is the same. So these companies are just gonna kill themselves long term. 

Again. It doesnt have to be this way. All of this is self inflicted.

If we made games cheaper, they'd reach wider audiences. If we didnt push boundaries, we could play them on existing consoles, even old consoles, even phones these days. And we'd still get like 2000s/2010s quality on phones. It's possible these days. Like, from what I can tell my razer edge handheld is like having an i7 2600k with 6 GB RAM and a GTX 460. I remember when that was a pretty respectable gaming rig like back around 2011ish. And there are higher end ones than that. 

So it's not like we can't make games that are leaner for older hardware and make gaming cheap, ubiquitous, and profitable. Even with the RAM crisis, if we tempered expectations a bit and DIDNT push 16-32 GB RAM with 8 GB VRAM for minimum requirements, we could make tons of high quality games that are fun to play. I mean, again, we got 2010-2015 era hardware in our pockets these days. There's no reason we can produce a world of gaming that's cheap, ubiquitous, and sustainable. 

Honestly, part of me is cheering for the industry to crash. Because honestly, it beats a world where $800+ is the bar for a new console. Where we spend 5-10 years pushing games that should have amazing graphics on paper but look blurry as crap in practice because of forced upscaling and TAA. Where games cost $70-80 and take longer to go on sale because operating costs to produce them are so out there. 

It's so unnecessary. I mean so much of this is totally avoidable and the result of stupid and unsustainable decisions by rich people with stupid and unsustainable expectations.

And btw, if we are getting "next gen" soon, I hope to see the AI industry crash. That's another one. More stupid rich people with ridiculous expectations pushing an industry that isn't sustainable and is disrupting gaming and computing as a whole. How are these companies gonna turn a profit? hell if i know, this AI thing looks like a massive bubble to me. And before people say AI is here to stay and won't go away, I think the 1983 video game crash or the 2001 dot com crash sum up what's gonna happen there. It's not that these things are gonna disappear completely if a crash happens. Just that they'll go back to a more sustainable model. That's what needs to happen. But for AI, and PC hardware, and video games. We need a crash so the market is more aligned with consumer expectations. Right now, it's just not. You got these greedy rich people with unreasonable expectations ruining the industry, and im all for them finding out after F-ing around. Let everything crash, and let the market recover naturally out of that.