avarice as a sin, neoliberalism, paid mods, mobs, threats, socialism, gamergate and you

[tartarsauce2]

friends of mine feel that the triple A gaming industry is/should crash(ing), aka neotokyo is about to E.X.P.L.O.D.E. (not necessarily true but these days everything feels like it will)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architect_%28role_variant%29
The scientific systemization of all knowledge, or architectronics, is highly developed in Architects, who are intensely curious and see the world as something to be understood. Their primary interest is to determine how things are structured, built, or configured. Architects are designers of theoretical systems and new technologies. Rearranging the environment to fit their design is a distant goal of Architects.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INTP

prelude:
I'm new to mods, completely new, I mean so new that I discovered how they actually work as mod-ules that are independently put in just recently, I approach stories in an analytic manner pretty much every time so for me this post is about PC gaming, but I use more general trends as reference points to help place things in a different manner

I have no programming skills but come up with all sorts of ideas and when the ball gets rolling I can come up with a full probably fully cohesive concept in 30 minutes, so it's a thing I was thinking of doing and am poking at learning the necessary skills to actually construct things that I think up - because I'd like to see about getting into game design as a career someday but I feel like I need to be able to prove myself first

I've been listening to the totalbiscuit podcast, and I'd like to give a broader explanation of what's going on since my area of expertise is REVOLT and CONFLICT, that relates to what's going on since I've noticed that the overlord of nexus mods is a little naive about due to his narrow focus, his arguments are fair and legitimate for the most part but there's some effects from the real world (outside of the modding community in this case) that are outside his considerations that are reasonably well known about that change the dynamics in important ways and explains the reaction and the whole ordeal, firstly I'd like to say that this is about warnings and not simply dogmatic rejections of paid mods

main body:
neoliberalism provides insight into overly optimistic attitudes towards money, now I do know that many hobbyists include inter-change of goods and sales as well, so it's definitely true that this sort of thing can exist fairly decently, however gaming has elements that are different, in the environment we are in today in the gaming industry there's a lot of scummy sales practices, DLC galore is not necessarily scummy if the game model is properly done but there's a certain amount of temptation to do it inappropriately that doesn't exactly exist for physical goods

I'm a socialist/anarchistic inclined person who's also completely atheistic to put forwards my bias (you might wonder why I refer to sin), libertarian socialist probably, neoliberalism has gotten a bad rap because it's ultimately responsible for a lot of expansionary behaviours by nation-states into other ones spheres, this is similar to valve being the gaming version of walmart, which comes from the neoliberal system - it's a system of ordering that has a lot of blind spots and the arguments are logical, sometimes rational but usually not wise to what's going on based on human nature taking advantage of those blind spots (chomsky calls it free market fundamentalism, sue me I agree), I don't mind a market, I think a market is possibly good

creating a paid system for skyrim creates a divide - which DOES create jealousy, but it also destroys the community's amicability and disfavours the less skilled but dedicated individuals often - and helps flashy but less productive people get more of the tangible benefits, because where money is involved, manipulation of people and playing politics attracts more and more of the kinds of people that aren't as dedicated to modding for modding's sake, this is where gamergate kind of comes into the situation, roughly where it belongs

intellectual properties benefit from memetic mutation and growth, running a site costs money, I think valve's main problem is that it's a corporation, trying to act "anarchistic" which is technically impossible but one can get close like how one approaches zero in calculus, but it's incredibly hard, for this reason I advise paranoia as the minimum antipathy to paid mods even if you're going forwards with them, the allure of monetary driven optimism is deceptive and is often how groups that previously puttered along less than gloriously but continually fall apart - this is where threats, mobs and let's say baltimore style behaviour comes into play, and avarice as a sin

there's a lot of blame one can put all over the place when this sort of thing comes to a head, but my interest in posting is to provide some information so that people can be aware of it, and AVOID it to begin with

TLDR:
paid mods supporters
don't get greedy, you will get greedy under the paid mods system done by valve, they try their best as a flat corporation but they're still a corporation and legally obligated to be greedy :s sorta

paid mods dissenters
don't threaten people? but I think you're right to be worried, but there are some reasnoable opportunities that could help encourage modding without threatening the modding for modding's sake aspects and not encouraging gold rush monetization schemes

in general: look for ways to make donations a little more plausibly helpful! like a popularity thing, or mod of the week/day, that's community oriented, possibly with the overlord or some "untouchables" in terms of sheer popularity judging things - look for alternatives, thread them together as a cohesive package and be patient - also note that judges may not have any paid mods?

well something like that, anti-corruption is a VERY important topic and central to this whole damn thing, because naive optimism is dangerous just like uneducated backlash, one is about "getting new things" and the other is about "keeping existing things" but it's ultimately about ground, the commons exist as an important anglo tradition BECAUSE it solves this problem for mutual usage amongst interested parties in history as one option - how you'd implement it I have no idea it's your community not mine (yet)

 

*mod edit* You may actually be thinking this way, may have some points somewhere, but most of this comes off as senseless rambling and baiting. There is no good response when you open up saying "the AAA industry should burn". There is no good response when you come off stating clearly that you are an "expert" in causing revolt and conflict. There is no good response when you fall into politicized nonsense making claims about a thing you know next to little about. Thread closed with the strong suggestion that refrain from similar postings until you have a better sense of what this community is about. If you are just here to cause a stir, kindly move along and save everyone the headache. - Vagrant0

Edited May 1, 2015 by Vagrant0