I mean, I get it too (Gaming)

by Vortech , A Fourth Wheel, Thursday, July 02, 2026, 12:11 (2 hours, 25 minutes ago) @ Kermit

Hmm. Just the other day I drove my Saturn over to Sears to pick up some Kodachrome film to use on my vacation, which of course I'd planned using a travel agent. I'm visiting Italy, by the way, inspired by the movie ROMAN HOLIDAY--a friend had loaned me her copy of it on betamax last year. I dialed her up the other night to thank her again, but the line was busy. Yeah, the established producers stay established and nothing ever changes.

The fact that some things are old does not prove any point that cuts against anything I have said. Unless you are trying to say that all change is good. I certainly disagree with that assertion. In fact, my point has been that change exists and the natural general direction of that change under capitalism is toward the benefit of the producer/companies/rich and against the consumer.

If you are, in fact, trying to convince me that historically, change is good for the consumer, I would not have picked: a famously superior video cassette format that died because the merits were outweighed by forces of capitalism, a profession that used to provide high-touch service that benefited travelers but was driven to extinction by companies doing cost-cutting, a retail and manufacturing company that was done-in by choosing to make products with long warranties and high quality sold by career experts but cost more than the cheap disposable crap sold by websites, one of the greatest movies ever, and film stock so respected that it is to this day hoarded and prized by collectors and imitated digitally by people who were never alive to even touch it. ¯\(ツ)/¯

You can try to curb it by implementing regulation and laws like antitrust. But that's substituting human judgement for the "free market". Some great things have come out of the system, but those are almost always some iconoclast's personal vision that is financed by the seedier parts of the system. So, where does this human judgement come from; who gives ideas to the iconoclast? The critic.

The free market IS human judgment at scale—many humans making independent decisions.

Even if you have faith in the wisdom of crowds — which I have learned not to, but we're getting far afield here — it is not a source of creative direction (If Ford asked people what he should make they would have said "faster horses") and it would require access to a wide range of different options which is a problem I have discussed a lot so far.

P.S. The Critic, by the way, is also the "fountainhead of the public" will that will sometimes change what is considered a minimum viable product, so what exactly are you arguing against here, anyway?

I am not sure what "fountainhead of the public" means, but you seem to imply that only some people can be critics, as opposed to all consumers being critics all the time. I was arguing against the idea that we must align with Cody's ideas of what is acceptable in a game else it's our moral failure. It seems as if you are arguing that he is the Critic with a capital C--thereby the only one who can have ideas or legitimate judgments about what we should spend money on. I disagree.

Ideas come from somewhere; a source, a fountainhead, a specific point from which a wide range of impacts will flow. When you speak of "the public" making decisions, they do not do so sua sponte in a vacuum of ideas; these decisions are influenced by experiences they have had with others. Specifically, critics.

Nobody said only Cody can have an opinion. That's a straw man you have introduced into the conversation. My question has been why you think only Cody can't share his opinion.