So....for once I'm going to talk about gaming. I'm a big gamer, but this blog is primarily about politics and philosophy, so why am I discussing gaming here? Well, because in this case, gaming is POLITICAL. There's a whole politics to gaming, within the market economy and peoples' behaviors to certain business practices, and the concerns mirror many of my concerns relative to the labor market and capitalism in general.
So, today, I'm going to focus on the Nintendo Switch announcement. I'm not gonna lie, while I'm a huge gamer, I dislike consoles (glorious PC gaming master race for the win). And I've lost a lot of interest in Nintendo over the direction it went under the DS and the Wii, and how they seemed to put gimmicks like motion controls and touch screens over quality. But here comes the Nintendo Switch, a game console that also doubles as a handheld, and is much more powerful than most handhelds to date. It can run skyrim, that's impressive. And honestly, being able to take a handheld capable of running, say, 360/PS3/5 year old PC games is something that is appealing to me. So I actually was gonna be open minded to this one....well...until now.
You see, Nintendo announced yesterday that the Switch was gonna have paid online gaming, joining the ranks of Microsoft and Sony in this respect. Me, being an opponent of the increasing monetization of games (I miss the days I go to the store, buy a $50 CD or a $60 cartridge, go home, and get the full experience, no strings attached), am completely turned off by this.
Look, I despise the monetization of gaming. I despise paying more for less. I despise people having to pay for services that used to be free. I despise anything that is against my interest as a consumer. And quite frankly, reader, you should too. It's the same philosophy I have with work. Why should we want to work harder for less money? Why should we pay more for less? Why do we let businesses get away with this crap? The gaming industry is a good example of the "creeping normality" found in capitalism in general. If these changes were made all at once, people would oppose them, and fight against them, but because these changes are being made incrementally, people don't notice that the environment is changed until it's too late to do anything about it. This happens in the gaming industry a lot, with things like DLC and paid online services.
With paid online services, Microsoft was the first to pioneer this idea. On PC, online gaming was both high quality and free since the 1990s. Nintendo and Sony didn't have developed online services, but when they developed them, they were generally free. Yet, people still bought xboxes, they bought them to play halo, to play call of duty, etc. And people gladly forked over their money for something you can get elsewhere for free. And you know what? In 2013, when Sony announced the PS4, they did the same thing, paid service, comparable to Xbox Live. And now Nintendo, the last console holdout, is joining the trend with the Switch.
While 10 years ago, people had the dignity to at least oppose these ideas in principle, today, they don't blink an eye at them. Heck, people who still oppose these ideas are considered the weird ones. People who complain on reddit are being told about how this is now an "industry wide standard" and that it's expected to have to pay for a service that's...quite frankly, always been free on my platform of choice, the PC. And beyond that, people are defending the console makers' right to make money, and blah blah blah. It's a shame people have more empathy for the game companies than for the consumers. As consumers, with our own interests, we should be outraged by this idea and oppose it vigorously. But again, people are complacent, because they've been trained over the years to accept this as the dominant business model and if you don't, you're weird or entitled or something. Well screw it, I'm weird, I'm entitled, and no, I won't be buying the Nintendo Switch, and I'll even make the case that neither should you, if you care at all about this stuff.
It's the same crap that happened with DLCs. 10 years ago, people were freaking out over Oblivion adding horse armor to the game. But now, it's expected to fork over $60 for a game, and another $50 for a "season pass" to have access to all the extra content. DLC isn't something that's done to make the game better, it's something done to extract maximum profits from the consumers and make games worse. Multiplayer games have split player bases and sometimes premium players get advantages in game for paying more. And the microtransactions on the mobile market, forget it. So many games are crap on mobile because they're made to extract maximum profits from you. And people actually buy this stuff, that's the real problem, people actually buy this stuff. And ultimately, it doesn't make the gaming experience better, it makes it worse, as pursuit of profit trumps all other concerns.
Listen, it is important for us consumers to oppose business practices we don't like. I won't say I never ever get DLC these days, but it's rare. Outside of Battlefield premium a couple of times, far cry 3 blood dragon (a standalone game that's "DLC" and a few other examples, I almost never buy DLC. I do it on principle. I want people to include content in the base price of the game, not withhold it to get more money from me. I refuse to pay for online services when free alternatives on PC like Steam exist.The only way we can put a stop to these practices is if we vote with our feet. Think of it like striking. You need to have collective action by all members of a party to withhold your labor, or in this case, your money, to force a business to stop doing crappy things. If even a few people do it, like is the case with paid online and DLC, it is validated, and then it becomes industry standard, where you're seen as weird if you don't do it. If you buy a nintendo switch, you are validating the end of free online on consoles, which is a major blow for gaming as a whole. This is the equivalent, using the striking example, of being a scab. You go out, do what the business wants, and stop it from folding and buckling to the majority in the name of the greater good. And unlike work, which is unfortunately involuntary to a degree in our society, gaming is a luxury, you don't need it. And even more, free alternatives DO exist on PC. Steam is free, and you can play many of the games coming to switch like skyrim and rocket league on cheapish laptops, let alone desktop PCs. Heck, there's even handheld PCs now like the GPD Win if you want something with the switch's form factor (let's be honest the switch is a glorified nvidia shield tablet). You have no excuse.
I can't stop you from getting a nintendo switch, it is your choice to get one. But, I can at the very least argue why it's a bad idea, and why the choice to do so validates certain bad business practices that should be opposed and avoided. I really hope I convince at least someone to think it over if they were going to get one, and understand how doing so validates the creeping normality that is screwing over consumers in the gaming market. If you let them do it, you validate paid online gameplay for all time. With Nintendo going to the dark side, free paid online on console is effectively dead and will only be a thing on PC. Think about it.
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