this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
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Privacy
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This may honestly be it for me.
I quit playing games because of all the greed and hype, I went back to piracy when streaming started to fracture and greed set in, I left non-federated social media because of the enshittifaction and invasiveness, and I go to fairly extensive lengths to block ads and protect my privacy as much as possible...
And instead of moving to any number of fair, non-exploitive business models, they're just going to force ads down my throat like that episode of black mirror.
If this goes through I'll be sorely tempted to wipe everything I can and start over as best I can. Only interact with the Internet when I need to.
You'll find me paying cash at the local used bookstore, at least until all the major publishers make that illegal.
EDIT: It's honestly depressing, I genuinely enjoy technology and the internet, but when companies like Google are able to force garbage like this it just sucks all the joy out of it for me.
It's like everying is becoming a shitty mobile game. Do the toolsheds that develop Candy Crush clones not think we can understand why in app currencies are sold in bundles of 100 but every thing we purchase with them requires amounts that end with a five? Does Google not think we know the real motivation behind a system that strives to prove ads were delivered to your browser either?
I know a lot of people may not see the real driver here, but I'm tired of being underestimated and infantalized by a bunch of dorks trapped in a corporate echo chamber. I think I'd prefer it if they just straight up said they're going to sacrifice our privacy and user experience for a quick bump in stock value.
Most people don't have an understanding as to why things are the way they are. I'm constantly shocked at how I need to explain things which I consider to be blatantly obvious. From what I can tell, the average person just goes about their lives without much evaluation of the world they're in. They buy the things they're told to buy, like the things they're told to like, and don't think much about why they do the things they do.
True, but I don't think it's due to a lack of faculties for most people, it's just not an area of interest or a primary concern. It should be, because this sort of consumer and media manipulation is being used to enable some very dangerous things at present, but it's really hard to make headway when you're telling people how fucked up and unhealthy the one thing that's providing them with a little escape and joy is.
It might be easier to lead an addiction intervention.
I try to reframe privacy concerns with the idea that if someone was stalking you and recording your every action in physical public spaces that you'd be pretty disturbed. Most people get it, they understand the idea and can view their internet activity through the lense of that metaphor.
But they don't really feel it, and that's where the disconnect comes in. How do you get people who don't feel the Internet is part of "real life" to understand how invasive this is on both and intellectual and emotional level? Because of digital privacy and user rights don't hold some sort of emotional significance for them, it's going to stay a back burner issue in their lives.
Careful, you don't want to veer into this line of thinking.
At least not without your special sunglasses!
It's like the evolution of the $x.99 mental trickery. They realize that getting $1 1-2 times a day was much more palatable than $20 a month or once.
I refuse to play mobile trash because not only will I not give in to that shit, I refuse to play games that purposely are made worse because not enough people are paying (and there's never enough)
Yup, it's easier for a user to justify a small purchase and lose track of how much they're spending and that's exactly why they do it.
It's the same with in-app currency, they sell you 100 coins or gems or whatever for $2.99, then charge you 75 for the shortcut to the progression required upgrade. You don't want to let a quarter of your money go to waste, so you're more tempted to put another $2.99 down to utilize it and buy the next upgrade. Cue the leveling treadmill.
It's a sort of weaponization of the study of human behavior IMO.
Yeah, that's literally brain washing, they have psychologist advising them on the best way to make you addicted to their games/products.
Like all of the marketing/advertising market, they want you to subliminally think of their products, they want to reprogram your mind. That should be illegal, seriously disgusting tactics. They all should be shamed for this cancer of the mind.
This is the end game of everything when capitalism is involved, not surprising in the slightest
There are some quality games on Steam tho. You don't need to play bloated AAA games.
I do muddle around a little bit with indie games, and I've honestly let some of this make me a little too cynical, but it just feels different these days.
Yeah, indie games is the way, feels like the early days of gaming when games needed to be good to sell. I'm still playing AAA games but indies are really a breath of fresh air. And I still play older games too, there's a lot of great games that are devoid of shady monetization and gameplay.
You quit playing games, but went to piracy for watching movies? Why not pirate games?
It was more due to the way a lot of the games I liked to play started to make changes to gameplay to try and push players to spend more money. Unnecessarily long grinds with subscription based paid shortcuts, freemium/premium BS, game modes that started to require you to be online for a certain amount of time each week to progress.
Gaming was always more of a social thing for me, and once it started to feel like an unpaid, part time job for me and my friends it stopped being fun.
EDIT: I may be projecting dark patterns onto something that's just driven by market forces these days, but I kind of doubt it.
Ah, okay, you're just having trouble finding games that you find enjoyable, then. Understandable.
Yup, and as I said, it's possible that I'm attributing these design changes to the wrong thing, but it's hard not see them as greed driven when you consider what's happening in other parts of our digital lives.
Oh, they're definitely greed driven. You have to do research on games nowadays to find ones that aren't predatory, which is more trouble than it's worth to some.
I find that factory-building genre games tend to be not greed driven like DSP, Satisfactory, Factorio, etc
Maybe focus more on offline gaming. Seems to be much less toxic than online.
That's why I stopped playing games to, but also why I just loved the new zeldas. I didn't have to spend hours to complete the game, I wanted to spend them by exploring the map. Seeing the coll mini games the developers setup and facing new challenges.
There are some quality games on Steam tho. You don't need to play bloated AAA games.