Cliffski's Blog - Kickstarting inequality.
Kickstarter is the absolute poster-child for inequality amongst gamers, based on income. Now I am definitely not a raging socialist, but I know a lot of gamers are, and I find it a bit weird that it doesn’t bug them that when these kickstarter games ship, not only will gamers with more money that them be swanning around with better outfits and weapons, (This already happens in F2P games), but some of the NPC’s will have the names of the ‘wealthy’ backers. Some will even have their digitized faces in the game. Elite is actually naming PLANETS after people who back the game with a lot of money.
Gamers say they hate in-game product placement and advertising. It compromises the game design for the sake of money. I agree. So why are we deciding that the best way to name our planets or design the appearance of our NPC’s is to put that part of game design up for auction? Why should gamers who are wealthy get more influence over a game that those who flip burgers for a living? The cold hard economic reality of the real world is bad enough without shoehorning it into games too.
Cutter wrote on Nov 24, 2012, 19:54:Prez wrote on Nov 24, 2012, 17:25:
I don't get his complaint at all. In-game advertising is a cynical money grab and annoying to those who already paid for the game (obviously exempting F2P games). Having characters, planets, or other things named after the largest donors (without whom the game very likely would have never been made) isn't the same at all. I don't get his reference to socialism at all either.
Spot on. Too many people bat around the word socialist without understanding what it means in the context of a democracy - particularly in the US where many have been brainwashed into using it in a negative context. There are plenty of rich people in socialist oriented societies - they just pay more in line with whats their fair share. That's it. No boogeymen. The sky doesn't fall. And they have a better overall standard of living for everyone.
His complaints are groundless because if you don't want to back a game that's obviously P2W like Star Citizen then you don't back it. Just because someone can afford to drop 5k on and get a mob named after them bothers me as much as not having any other luxury item in life. Sure it would be nice but it really doesn't bother me. So long as I get a good game in the end I could give a shit less. In fact I think its pretty fucking silly dropping several thousand dollars for a virtual item when it comes right down to it.