The Video Games Industry Is A Problem — Whether You Like It Or Not
I want to make something very clear about what is going on in the video game industry.
And just like that, I can hear a lot of readers rolling their eyes. Many were probably unaware that anything was going on at all in that industry, because… Well, it’s just video games. How does something that frivolous come to be an industry of its own? Let alone one to have anything truly serious going on.
The fact of the matter is, it is the entertainment medium of choice in this day and age, and it has evolved as rapidly as any other technology we take for granted. Also, regardless of its frivolity and supposed waste of space, it is the option many parents turn to for both distraction and education for their small children. It provides a release valve for adult stress, and a replacement for destructive habits. They teach us. They entertain us. They connect us. Video games provide a strange safe haven for children and adults alike.
But we have passed a crucial tipping point. Video games are no longer confined to a single game console that simply plugs into your television, as so many parents remember them. They are almost fully online, requiring usernames, passwords, accounts with this service and that service… And credit card numbers. Credit card numbers a small child can be easily led into pulling up using a parent’s Google Play credentials and plugging in, with a parent sitting casually beside them.
And grown people don’t realize this. They haven’t realized it until just recently. The people designing moderns video games this way count on that, using the old assumption that this medium is for dumb, lazy children, and sad, gross adults, and therefore isn’t important. They count on you shrugging and saying, “What? It’s just video games.” They count on you to not care, and figure that anyone dumb enough to spend thousands of dollars on one game gets what they deserve.
That kind of spiteful apathy must be such a blessing. Sometimes, I wish I could use my own fleeting, righteous indignation to excuse my lack of care for my fellow man, so I could carry on my individual little life feeling as though I’ve done my part by passing judgment on someone for their own unique problems not being my own. Unfortunately, I think and feel deeply, and wouldn’t know what that kind of detachment from society is like.
Therefore, my anger with this industry is multi-faceted. It has layers, and subtle implications, and warning flags of every color imaginable. And I already know, most people will laugh it of with a shrug and say, “What? It’s just video games.”
The video games are not the problem, though. The problem is the people producing them. The predatory tactics they employ to prey on children and the mentally compromised under the noses of their caretakers. The bad habit they share of psychologically abusing their employees, forcing them to work 60 to 100 hour weeks for months at a time for a pittance, to get the product completed in time to fire them all before their health benefits kick in.
If Mattel started making Barbie like this, say, with an accompanying shopping app for your kid’s iPad, that prompted them to enter the credit card information stored in your Google Play account, so they could spend real money on the chance to win pretend Barbie accessories to complete a collection and win pretend points, you would be furious.
If gun manufacturers started openly, proudly bullying minors into buying guns without licenses, parental consent, or any kind of safety training, just because they figured the parents weren’t paying attention, you would complain.
If cigarette companies came clean and ran honest marketing campaigns about how they blatantly target children and minorities because they know those demographics are at risk and easy pickings, you would feel sick to your stomach.
But video game companies are doing all those things right now. Right here in our country. And spreading that poison into other countries around the world. Who are the ones complaining the loudest? British parents, whose young children emptied their bank accounts trying to unlock parts of soccer simulators or hidden object games, not realizing they were spending real money. The Belgian parliament, after concluding that these predatory tactics included gambling aimed at children and subsequently banning certain video games from their entire country.
Meanwhile, in America — the source of the problem — all the real adults are still rolling their eyes and shrugging. “What? It’s just video games.”
The leaders of this industry know it darn well, too. They know that the medium still isn’t taken seriously, and know that they can still get away with murder on their own soil. They seem to wallow and take pride in the way they exploit people with addictive personalities, or who simply don’t understand, because they know those issues will be met with victim blaming. The parents should have been watching. You shouldn’t have been playing with something you knew you were addicted to. No one neeeeeeeeeds to play video games.
If you boot up an E+ rated game, all soft and squishy and bright effects and silly noises clearly made for toddlers, and it fools your kid into charging hundreds of dollars to your bank account, you are clearly the one to blame. If you were playing the game as a distraction from a gambling addiction, and it surprises you with a gambling function down the road and sucks you in, it’s clearly your fault for not being stronger than harmless code.
No one neeeeeeeeeeeds to play video games, for sure. No one neeeeeeeeeeeds to drive on our crappy, cracked, pothole-lined roads either, because it can jack up your car something bad. And if it busts your tire or cracks your windshield, not like the fault lies with local and state government, whose job it is to keep our roads drive-able. The fault is obviously yours, for just having to drive all over the damn place for your own convenience. Shame on you.
The leaders of this industry are brazen, and proud of it, in an industry that isn’t taken seriously enough to deserve regulation or rules. They dance on graves in broad daylight, because they are the graves no one cares about. Until now. The graves of children with careless parents are one thing. The graves of poor minorities and their addicts are one thing. The low-hanging fruit of far-off shores are one thing. The graves of grown white men are invariably another thing entirely. Preying on their own insecurities and addictions and fierce protection of titles they grew up with, the most dangerous people in the world are starting to share in the same pain as the rest of us.
And of course, that simply won’t do. A dumb problem for dumb kids is quickly becoming a white man’s problem, which immediately makes it a serious problem. After all, hell hath no fury like a white man vaguely inconvenienced, put in the same category as people who are not white, or not male, or god-forbid both.
Remember less than a century ago, what the very idea of a talking film was taken about as seriously as video games are today? The industry is held in such high regard now, taken so seriously, grossing so much money, and hidding so many horrors. What do we know of them? Even after #MeToo, still very little, because Hollywood has the good sense to beat its servants quietly, privately, and dance on their graves after hours where no one will see it.
A normal person would never have imagined it a few years ago. Not in an industry held with his high esteem, and responsible for so much of our mindless entertainment. Not when its leaders were taken so seriously for their talent, and wisely kept their greed and wrath out of sight, out of mind. And so it still is, for the most part, today. But when that dark side creeps out into the light, it shocks us. It hurts us. We feel betrayal, that someone who gave us so many reasons to feel indifferent forced us to feel outrage instead.
It sends a chill through my heart to think of what other leaders in other industries get away with quietly, by just not shouting their corruption from the mountaintop. Because the leaders in the video game industry beat their servants to the bone on the sidewalk, in front of the people they are peddling their wares to. They dump the husks of their victims in shallow graves and tap dance the soil in place where everyone can see it. And when onlookers try point out how wrong it is, and that someone ought to stop this madness, others roll their eyes and shrug.
“What?” they insist like its obvious. “It’s just video games. Serves those fools right for wasting their time on a dumb game! Did you hear about Matt Lauer, though? The scandal, it just ain’t right.”
The issue is in the very worst parts of capitalism being allowed to thrive and speak for our country on the whole. The issue is that a handful of people in one sector are preying on your children, and on your weakness, in the most insidious ways and not even trying to hide it. They don’t have to. They know that no one will stand up for you. They no longer build games, but traps for the weak-minded, knowing that even if some of us wise up, it won’t be enough to break them. And if they lose a few bucks because of that? Crack the whip. Force the product out months ahead of schedule, unfinished, and charge for fixes and patches to the rest of the game later. Do it quick, and lay off half the staff without paying overtime or anything extra.
Too keep your own multi-million dollar salary and bonuses on track. And be sure to save it all in your private Dutch bank account, where it can’t be taxed. Because that is the American way of the future.
If any other industry were this hateful and so loudly proud of it, We, the people would stand up and do something about it. So where are we? What are we doing? When are we going to stand up, topple this ivory tower, and convince the world that corporate corruption is not the sum of our parts?
The short answer is, we won’t. What? It’s just video games.
