Hypothetical of course, but I'm curious to learn of Yea Forums take on this. A friend of mine brought this up recently and it seemed interesting.
Under communism, capitalist profit motive would be removed. We'd see more creative projects that aren't motivated purely by money. With no need to chase after capital, developers would be willing to take more risks and make more experimental games, crunch and other exploitative labour would likely disappear. Free and open-source games would be the norm. There'd be a games industry without any bosses etc.
How are games in North Korea and China? There's your answer.
Lucas Williams
No creativity, no games, no freetime.
Samuel Watson
Are there really no good games from daddy China?
Liam Richardson
>Do you think games would be better under communism? No, doing anything under extreme conditions doesn't work. Games under capitalism don't work either, I think America has really gone out of their way to prove that over the last few years.
Videogames are vanity items, therefore they are of capitalist regime. It's really funny to see how all the modern commies are just rebelious kiddies from rich families.
>There'd be a games industry without any bosses etc. Yeah and look at how Valve turned out. You must he very young/naive/or intellectually dishonest to believe that communism would actually result in those changes for games
good games need creative freedom, creative freedom needs freedom of thought, free thinkers in china are under house arrest at best. they are efficient at churning out the games most AAA companies are pining for, low cost high customer retention etc. though.
Jaxson Russell
>intellectually dishonest is there a bigger misused buzzword?
Noah Gomez
It's well documented that valve tried to implement a without a hierarchy except Gabe at the top and all thay happened was a bunch of soft cliques formed, just like soviet society
This isn't video games. This is political bullshit.
Asher Ramirez
>capitalist profit motive would be removed Do you dumb fucks actually believe this? Unless we somehow discover a way to have unlimited energy and material resources, thus giving everyone absolutely anything they might want, people trying to improve their standard of living will always be a thing.
The only thing communism does is change the means to do that from acquiring money to having connections and kissing ass in the party administration.
Hunter Hernandez
Valve's entire business model and how they function as a company is entirely capitalist. I'd say it's the peak of capitalism. They make 0 effort yet rake in billions thanks to sales, trading cards, the cuts they get from game sales etc. Just because they don't have a strict hierearchy doesn't mean they're commie you dumb mutt. You have no clue of what actual communism entails.
Jaxson Thomas
>We'd see more creative projects that aren't motivated purely by money. Then it would be shit. Passion can only take you this far, to have a quality product one must have a hierarchy, and people working on it has to be forced to perform a good work. If i had to make code for free during my spare time i'd make it quick and fast and call it a day, it would have no downsides for me and i could get a living anyway. And don't get me wrong, i like what i do but everything has it's downsides. Since i write code for a company that requires a standard i have to spend a lot of time thinking and optimizing boring ass shit, but the end product is miles better than anything i would've ever made if i could spend those 8 hours daily wanking
>people think China is communist still China has been pumping out LOADS of games recently, and their biggest presence on the overseas market is Tencent, which owns fucking Fortnite. They're not all that bad either. Not as refined as stuff here, but not terrible.
There have been communist games, btw. None particularly great and all from Europe before the USSR fell. The lead staff at CDPR grew up making games under communism, which existed in a very similar scene to the one that gave rise to Apogee and ID Software; people trading tapes and floppy disks across magazines in a tiny, passion-project driven market with barely any money changing hands. There were also a few situations where games got pulled from the market for being SLIGHTLY political. Likewise, you had to circumvent the censors (often outright smuggling) to get the hardware you needed.
But some entrepreneurs did rise out of it and made a living, even in Poland, largely as distributors.
I think what you're trying to imagine, OP, is a communist games market that both had more money to throw into it, and the lack of state censorship that basically every communist government to this date has exhibited. Even in hypothetical Rich Communist Land, there's a big possibility that game developers wouldn't be funded very well due to games not being very essential to life. They might exist in a much more "cultural" space like the arts proper do, in which case they would be VERY weird. Or they could exist in a sports space, like Starcraft does in South Korea.
>Entertainment >Communism There's a reason why piracy is so rampant in China and Russia, because nobody can afford to walk into a GameStop.
Gabriel White
Yeah games would be better without capitist profit motive.
Grayson Baker
It is a cultural thing as well. Also neither of those is communist.
Zachary Butler
>no nazbol gang Modern marxists are just liberals larping with red colors. Crush progressivism out of gaming alongside EA and other jewy crap they inserted in gaming.
Do you think videogames would be better without americans and their need to politicize everything?
Yes it would.
Xavier James
>The lead staff at CDPR grew up making games under communism No one in the CDPR staff is old enough, communism in Poland got axed 30 years ago
Brandon Cruz
>it's well documented he says, not providing any documentation While I understand you might think that Valve from the get-go, as a company without a real "capitalist" behind it (i.e. a company entirely made up of workers that exploit their own fruits of labor without a middle-man), it's still a shit comparison. Valve still has investors behind it, thus Valve still goes for maximum profit as main goal of the company. It doesn't matter how the company is internally structured if it is still holistically capitalistic externally. In that case, it's more of an experimental capitalist hierarchy rather than an outright socialist one. Personally I'd like to see it at least tried out, seeing the stagnation and oversaturisation currently happening in the AAA videogame industry, inherently caused by the overly free market.
Ryder Evans
this
Grayson Williams
We already know from our own government that those in power can't be trusted. We already know any country that tries communism turns into a dictator run shitshow, so why even bother with communism?
What did you want him to say? That you're retarded?
Jayden Reyes
The answer is no. Most people that fervently worship communism do so as a deflection for their own personal failures "If only it wasn't for this damn capitalism then i could be free to do what i want". It's just an excuse for their own inaction. There has never been a greater incentive to do anything than under capitalism because a single game /could/ make you a billionaire. Yet certain people believe that free of any incentive they'll somehow manifest what the want. Ultimately what they truly want is to be granted success without effort. The whole idea that games are bastardised because of capitalism itself is overplayed, of course major players are scummy but there is a massive spectrum of success and even smaller more niche games can find significant success undertale / va-11 hall-a
^that's what games looked like under communism in the 80s.
And actually, now that I think of it, VA-11 HALL-A/Valhalla is a game made recently under communism in Venezuela. So it's a small, passion-led indie game for a niche market, with little competition. But because Venezuela is economically tanking harder than anywhere in what must be the past 100 years now, it's not making any of it's money inside it's own boarders.
I'd imagine a healthier communist economy might produce more games like that; small scale, niche genre/less competition, with people inside their boarders buying them more often. So basically it would be PS1 era development scale, but with better technology.
Indie game makers don't do it for the money you know.
Christian Lee
Chingchong soulless, whis is/was one of Yea Forums's fotm games
Cameron Mitchell
I do it both for the money and making something I legitimately enjoy. It's not like you have to choose one or the other.
Christian Reed
games would have better graphics, better gameplay, and be way more immersive. Everything would be better.
Daniel Miller
Marcin Iwiński, the founder and CEO, is 45. He's talked about how he got into games development before the wall fell many times now: youtube.com/watch?v=WMA75tqwFQQ
>a healthier communist economy Doesn't and have never existed in the history communism was founded.
>small scale, niche genre/less competition, with people inside their boarders buying them more often. Will never happen as along as it communist government will always rule.
Jaxson Roberts
his own government tried to steal it from him dumbass
Joseph Reyes
STOP HACKING MY NINTENDO RUSSIABROS!
James Allen
Yeah he was 15 when Poland got indipendent from communist claws, i'm sure he had a long and prolific career by then and managed to make a living out of it.
Don't forget to Sage, Report and Hide these off topic and /pol/ threads.
Juan Baker
Yeah money is needed for survival and luxuries. But under communism those would be available and I doubt you would stop making games then.
Sebastian Flores
>playing video games when you could be killing commies instead
Lincoln Miller
>>a healthier communist economy >Doesn't and have never existed in the history communism was founded. Russians lived longer during communism than now.
Ryan King
>people think China is communist still That depends on what you define as communist.
Most burgers think communism means "a system were the state controls everything", then yes, China is communist.
However, if we go by the actual definition of communism (a stateless, classless society), no, China isn´t communist in the slightest, but then again, neither would be any self-proclaimed communist nation in history.
Evan Torres
But we were talking about indie game development there, not game development under communism. I doubt that the commies would be happy with the kind of games I make either.
Austin Carter
Most burgers are idiots when it comes to anything political.
Charles Rivera
>A polish game dev tried to make video games in the Soviet fucking Union >Therefore, communism is perfect environment for video game development Just because people that liked video games existing in communist countries doesn't make those countries the perfect place to make video games.
you really expect a communist to know a little detail like?
Josiah Anderson
High budget AAA titles wouldn´t exists.
So yes, it would be better.
Thomas Cook
>>Therefore, communism is perfect environment for video game development Where was this implied again?
Kayden Ramirez
>There have been communist games, btw. None particularly great and all from Europe before the USSR fell >There were also a few situations where games got pulled from the market for being SLIGHTLY political. Likewise, you had to circumvent the censors (often outright smuggling) to get the hardware you needed. not that user but read the thread
>Russians lived longer during communism than now. Because food rationing was a lot easier after all those Russians were genocided.
Carson Clark
no because nobody would bother making food since they get paid either way. that is, until the system inevitably collapses for what should be obvious reasons
Leo Miller
>Because food rationing was a lot easier after all those Russians were genocided. Don't forget Ukrainians.
Brandon Price
What a great argument that adressed things that were said. oh wait.
Jaxson Gonzalez
Games wouldn't be allowed, it would be classified as a distraction from serving the will of the state as a mindless worker drone.
>We'd see more creative projects that aren't motivated purely by money yeah but they'd all be half-assed indie pieces of crap that go nowhere, because most people arent motivated to do their best for no reward see the open source movement for a good example
Jordan Young
If so many people were killed that would had lowered the life expectancy not raised it.
Jackson Hughes
He's TALKING about people who did. And yeah, he actually did start his career before the wall fell. It's not as if the Soviet bloc just clicked their fingers and turned capitalist in an instant either; it took multiple years to restructure trade and industry, and to build their economies back up after Russia left most of them skint. Most of eastern Europe is STILL poor as shit even today.
Which is why I have repeatedly used the word "hypothetical". If there were to be, somehow, a communist country that DID have a good economy and wasn't marred by an oppressive government or a Cold War, that's what I speculate a games industry would be like. I mean, there's a difference between communism and socialism that's lost on most people, but it's close enough to imagine what that would be like.
