Half a century ago, when Marx was writing Capital, free competition appeared to the overwhelming majority of economists to be a “natural law”. Official science tried, by a conspiracy of silence, to kill the works of Marx, who by a theoretical and historical analysis of capitalism had proved that free competition gives rise to the concentration of production, which, in turn, at a certain stage of development, leads to monopoly. Today, monopoly has become a fact. Economists are writing mountains of books in which they describe the diverse manifestations of monopoly, and continue to declare in chorus that “Marxism is refuted”. But facts are stubborn things, as the English proverb says, and they have to be reckoned with, whether we like it or not. The facts show that differences between capitalist countries, e.g., in the matter of protection or free trade, only give rise to insignificant variations in the form of monopolies or in the moment of their appearance; and that the rise of monopolies, as the result of the concentration of production, is a general and fundamental law of the present stage of development of capitalism.
I’m emphasizing the point that is the only part of the quote that doesn’t fit the modern day so closely you would think some really good Marxist author wrote it recently.
I spent five minutes searching for the right emote to express my anguish at that fact and then gave up because none seemed to fit quite right. My comment was too ambiguous without one it seems.
Capitalism leads to concentration of capital. Concentration of capital leads to Monopoly. Monopoly leads to imperialism. Imperialism leads to fascism. -Lenin Yoda
excited for this to continue until there’s one aaa game developer, called Slop. They release one £200 game a month, and the only thing the human mind is capable of remembering about these games is that the graphics were pretty good
Fuck yeah my kid learns to gamble before he can even understand basic probability.
There will also be Nintendo, who will also fleece you but in different and mind bogglingly weird ways
They’re called amiibos and they are the best way to be fleeced ever invented
There’s been a million mergers in the last 15 years that I’ve been like “are we seriously gonna let this happen? Don’t we have laws against this?” And then it happens anyway. Throw it on the pile lol
Fingers crossed they at least do something about Bobby
I’m hoping Microsoft dusts off Metal Arms (blizzard bought Swinging Apes studios ages ago) to try to have their own edgy action platformer to compete with Ratchet & Clank.
Fingers crossed they at least do something about Bobby
What are they gonna do?
“Please sir, go enjoy your billions elsewhere. Thank you.”
I mean it would be good to see him go, but him facing any consequences is a laugh.
Lol I came this close to putting “obv his class position will protect him from real consequences but it’d be nice for him to be gone” but thought obviously that would be implied here
taking more time to catch the new people up.
343 is also using a heavily updated version of the blam engine initially made for Halo 1 in the late 90’s, so the new hires have to learn something new that they will never use again unless they get hired to make a new Stubbs the zombie game.
This explains why Bobby Kotick has been adamant about not stepping down no matter what. That dude is probably on the verge of the biggest payday of his life…which is saying something.
Between this and the Bethesda purchase, there seems to be a growing lack of independent publishers in gaming.
There is, but I also think there have never been as much independent video games being published; it feels like a golden age compared to, say, the 90s. And so many bangers (Stardew Valley, Oxygen Not Included, Factorio, Satisfactory, Papers Please, FTL, Subnautica, and so on and so on).
Sorry, I meant independent of the console manufacturers, not like indies.
Oh I’m sure, the list is just the ones that came to mind. Again, it feels like a golden age; to the point where you even have a hard time keeping up with great games coming out; I discovered Green Hell, another independent one, completely randomly at least a year after it had come out. It’s great, by the way.
I’ve no idea to be honest, it’s the only one of two out of my list I haven’t actually played (the other being FTL); I do know it’s been critically acclaimed, hence the inclusion. You may well be right.
I think you’re totally right. There’s definitely an indie golden age going on rn. So many games and so many all time greats.
I think how we got here is the ubiquity of tools like Unity and Godot that made game making possible for smaller or individual devs. As well as the diminishing returns of better graphics and or intensive games.
What I’m really interested in is seeing his this golden age will end. I think we’re seeing the beginnings of it. Different indie developers have grown and some have started not just developing but also publishing. I have to imagine we’ll see a conglomeration of indies behind just a few major indie publishers.
