Hi, everybody! Sorry for the rant!
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.
OP did not indicate anywhere what kind of food they buy. You are judging them without knowing their habits.
You’re right I am, but I do stand by it.
Mine is simply a more specific example of the “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism” argument that has been repeated here many times.
It was a reasonable to assume OP frequently purchases food
You mean the argument saying we cannot fix the system without abolishing the system? You’re using it to instead justify the inequities of the system and henceforth ignoring them because you completely missed the point of the phrase?
You specifically mentioned avocados and meat. I know some people who only buy local food and do not buy meat. Your reasoning would not apply to them.
You know what an example is? Regardless of whether I agree with him or not, those were examples. They good list a whole bunch of other foods or shampoos or drinks or whatever the hell you can imagine. The poster was trying to make a point. Fixating on the examples and giving personal examples of people you specifically don’t do the two things the poster mentioned doesn’t make the argument lose its merit.
My personal opinion on the subject is very different than the poster’s, which can be summarized to that I don’t oppose art because I don’t like the artist, I won’t stop reading Lovecraft or listening to Vivaldi because they were trash people, because their art is great. So I don’t in fact agree with what the poster said, but clinging to personal examples to refute an argument while ignoring the global average which is what the argument was using is disingenuous.
With the same logic, since the people you know don’t eat meat, that’d mean there’s no problem with the meat eating in the world, which I’m sure you’d rush to point out the absurdity of logic there.