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.
Jesus… if you beat yourself up this much over games, how do you deal with stuff that really matters. Do you moralize over the gas you buy? Do you consider the cable company who gives you the internet connection, when you have only one option? Do you freak out over every single piece of food you purchase, and the supermarket you buy it from, and the television you watch?
Or do you only wax endlessly on video games? Play what you want to, or don’t, but you’re putting way too much thought into this, and if that’s what you want to do, you’ve made your choice, but then perhaps you need to stop buying almost all video games, and read up on crunch, because almost every video game is made at the expense of their employees, and their mental health.
You do you.
As for me, I’ll continue to support companies who I think make a good product, and not avoid stuff like Hogwarts Legacy, or Balder’s Gate, because I realize the majority of the money I spend to pay for those games go to the developers who worked extremely hard to give fans something special. Because you won’t hurt the big companies, but you definitely will destroy the developer and the company that made the game with that attitude.