So, this is something that I bring up regarding yesterday's slew of posts, my frustrations with them over the past year, and the recent Halo infinite debacle.
I'll use halo infinite as an analog for this. Look, I've had my issues with game monetization before. I'm the dude who refused to get xbox live back in the day because the idea of paying $50 a year to play a game I already paid for didn't sit well with me. I'm the dude who fought against DLC for years, and spent years boycotting the concept, only to come around toward a handful of exceptions for games I really wanted in the last years the model was really used. I hated a lot of game monetization over time. But, I ALWAYS had clear objections.
Don't double dip. Don't charge me for a product, and then lock basic features of accessibility behind a paywall. Don't make me pay $60 for halo, then $50 to play online, then $10-15 for map packs to maintain my access to the game. Don't hold back content to sell it to me later at higher prices later on. Give me the whole purchase for one flat fee.
Or, if you go the f2p route, don't make it pay to win. Again, I remember combat arms implementing "specialists" with like 40% movement boosts and 1 hit kill weapons, resulting in people running circles around me and killing me while my f2p gun couldnt even hit them reliably. That said, make the stuff available to get for free. Maybe even implement REASONABLE grinding systems for it, and ensure it's never OP.
Over time, both business models improved, and now they're kind of merging. Paid games dropped DLC and implemented f2p type cash shops to sell cosmetics, and some games started going f2p and focused primarily on...cosmetics. So selling cosmetics is the big thing. Grinding for battle passes is the big thing. And this I'm largely fine with. My issue is with additional fees past purchasing the game to access more content, and with f2p games giving in game advantages to people. I have no issue with game devs making money. It's HOW they make money. And that said, when halo infinite is f2p with paid customization, it makes me happy.
That's what separates me from the perpetual outrage machine. Unlike the outrage machine, I have solid metrics of what WILL satisfy me. And when my metrics are reached, I'm largely happy. So with infinite I'm like "cool, free game!". But, the outrage machine is now screaming over this, and screaming about how much better paid DLC was, and stuff like that. And I really have to wonder, will these people ever be happy?
I dont know. I surfed r/halo before this crap went down, as I played MCC, and they were always a weird sub who never could be satisfied it seems. Everything about the old halo games was revered as perfect, and everything 343 (game studio that runs halo post 2010) did was bad. They nitpicked them over everything, while ignoring the massive gaping flaws with the old games. And the recent infinite debable is more of that. Remember the good old days of halo 2/3/reach? pepperidge farm remembers. Except...that's the era I found so detestable with gaming business models. So the new model is an improvement, I'm like yes, this, this is what I want, and everyone is screaming about it.
I just don't get how people can get so angry and butthurt over a free game with paid cosmetics. This crap is amazing to me. I dont get why everyone's complaining. Is progression/battlepass perfect? No. But it's close.
Which brings me to politics. I can be satisfied politically. Basic income of a livable level, medicare for all, free college/student debt forgiveness, expanded public housing, climate change legislation, that's what makes me happy. If a candidate meets me on those things, I would support them and be happy with them. And if I accomplish all of the changes I set out on, I might even become "conservative" in the "I like this, I don't want it to change" sense.
But then I see the left these days, and I really have to wonder if they can be satisfied. Looking at them, I'm not even sure Bernie would be enough for them. If Bernie did everything he wants to do, all I'd really want after that is UBI. But these guys, well, they seem a bit different. Everything with a lot of them these days is "socialism", and then you have the SJWs wanting their stuff, and I just feel like these guys are in perpetual outrage mode. Also a huge reason I'm not really super thrilled with the strikes, like I support the causes, but eventually it just gets to the point of "oh we got $15? now we want $20, 30, 40", and these numbers might not even be sustainable without tons of inflation. Now, I get it, some of them are anti work and don't want to work in the first place, kind of like me, but any time I propose ways to get there among the anti work people, I just get screamed at and gatekept by literal socialists claiming I'm not one of them because I support UBI and UBI orietned capitalism is feudalism. Okay, well, what if I said I dont trust these guys without a UBI as their ideas are totally unworkable?
And you know what, I really wonder, if these guys got everything they wanted, if they would be happy. Probably not. Johnson faced this issue himself in the face of the civil rights movement, and how he gave the idpol people everything they wanted and they still weren't happy. If Bernie people got everything they wanted, or SJWs, would they be happy? Probably not. And if you gave them 97% and didn't give them 3% on mostly minor issues, they would scream over the minor issues. Just look at how they treat anyone like say yang who is pro Israel. The level of purity the left demands from people is getting insane, and too much even for me. And even if they gave people 100% of Bernie's platform, they'd still scream because it's not literal socialism or whatever fantasy system they support.
Idk, it's a huge reason I'm getting turned off from the far left. I have actual goals and visions that are achievable with certain policies. I developed certain goals, and certain metrics to achieve those goals. If you achieve those goals, I would largely be happy and it would be minor course corrections from there baring nothing goes too horribly wrong.
But can the modern left be satisfied? I really have to wonder. And sometimes I wonder if that's why the neolibs don't even take them seriously and mock their demands. Now, the neolibs arent in the right, dont get me wrong. They are worthless and support nothing basically. But, between these two extremes, I have to wonder if they feed each other. Centrists mock the left and dont accomodate them at all, left becomes more extreme. Left becomes more extreme, centrists dig in.
You get someone like me or yang, the centrists think we're extremists and the extremists think we're centrists. We can't win either way, and we fit in nowhere because everyone is so entrenched and tribal in their own little bubbles.
Politics in 2021 is frustrating. it's a huge reason I'm largely stepping away from it I think. I just can't handle this environment, where one side of the left is useless, the other left demands insane purity, and no one really represents my actual ideals and goals. It just makes me want to curl up into a ball away from everyone and not deal with any of these people.
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