Why gaming would be better in communism
Leftists will often talk as a joke about the fact that they want their games to be worse and late, because they want the working conditions for game developers to improve. But a real communist perspective on gaming can offer us insight into all the ways in which gaming could be substantially improved by a communist restructuring of the economy.
Gaming is like any mass media and art form subordinated to the capitalist mode of production in basically two ways: in economy, the way in which it is determined how games are made and monetized and in ideology, the way in which it is determined what themes and stories do games tell and what ideology and behavior they promote. In both of these ways, capitalism limits and disables games from being the ideal realization of the possibilities of the medium, both from the standpoint of pure economy, consumer politics and from the standpoint of game design and game content.
If we look at the economical state of the gaming industry and the problems with which it is plagued, we see that the industry is plagued both by monopolization and excessive fragmentation and the resulting anti-consumer policies and by the continuing issues with intellectual property, the right to own games you purchase and the abandonment of old games and old systems for the forever continuing adoption of new technologies. Monopolization causes one of the most pressing issues in the gaming industry – the proliferation of microtransactions and games as a service. Microtransactions and other forms of monetization than classical ones are a prime example of how capitalism hacks their own games for profit, while games as a service allows both for advantages, which could shine in a communist reorganization of gaming and disadvantages, which are produced by the capitalist mode of production. Games as a service, or subscription services, could offer unseen levels of availability of games, the cheapening of games for consumers and the democratization of content, which allows players to experience games which they wouldn´t otherwise experience because they wouldn´t purchase them. This could be a liberating way of consuming games, if fragmentation of the companies under capitalism wouldn´t cause that you had to pay for ten subscription services. In communism, you could have one subscription service for all games and all platforms, even if the developers would compete against each other. The most anti-consumer policies are a result of this fragmentation combined with monopolization of the gaming industry. This is most expressed in platform exclusives. Apart from those exclusives, which are determined by the controls and interface, like the lack of RTS and strategy games on consoles, exclusives are a wholly anti-consumer policy and only causes that players have to purchase different machines and different copies of games to play them at all. You have to have a PC if you want to enjoy the optimal game controls and interface, you have to own a console, if you want to play Sony or Nintendo games, because they are mostly only running on their own console (even though Sony offers a cloud gaming service for some of its games for PC) and the console wars and the sale of consoles in the competition is except for Xbox almost wholly based on the power of exclusives. In communism this problem would be solved by banning exclusives and having only one or multiple comparable consoles to choose from, on which all games would run natively. The problem of interface could be solved by requiring console developers to develop console games with native mouse and keyboard support, which would enable you to combine the ideal interface of the PC with the low cost and accessibility of consoles. With the widespread adoption of digital downloads as the prime delivery method of games the question is repeatedly brought up if consumers really own their game and will have access to the digital download for perpetuity. This doesn´t seem to be the case and that is not only because companies go bankrupt, but also because digital stores and consoles are being discontinued. With the widespread adoption of the requirement of an internet connection for consoles to run, the question is being raised if these consoles will be in the future sometimes completely unrunnable and with that a lot of games lost. This leads us to the question of archiving and preservation of old games. Because of the capitalistic nature of the industry and because there doesn´t exist public archiving of games, most old games are lost to time and even if they can still be played, even if that is not assured, they are certainly not supported for the newest OS and platform. In communism or in a different capitalism, we would have at least a digital Game library and all games, or games selected democratically, could be updated for the newest OS. In communism, we could engineer a console which would play on emulation all the old games of all the old consoles and we could even make these consoles available to the public free of charge, in places, in which kids and adults could come to play these games.
To the second point, the content and design of games is also determined by capitalism. It is no secret that since at least Wolfenstein and Doom in 1992 and 1993 respectively, violence in games has been on the rise and has dominated gaming ever since. Today most games are concentrated on combat, war, violence and the goal of most gaming is to kill the opponent. Even though one could think this is a conservative talking point, this fact about games is a fact which has to be understood as part of the reactionary bourgeois ideology ruling in our society and it has to be accepted that this preference of combat and killing does influence the thinking of players and of society. The influence of the reactionary ideology of games is not only limited to basic game design, but also to the whole content of game design and to the stories and content games share and promote. You can analyse with a complete certainty, that the ideology of most game franchises dominant today like Call of Duty, GTA (although it has progressive undertones), Assassin´s Creed (has too progressive undertones), Tom Clancy´s, Battlefield, Mortal Kombat is reactionary or leaning to the reactionary side and that the genres itself and the representation of the genres are reactionary. Mostly reactionary genres rule the day, like FPS, most RPGs (with the exception of KotOR), RTS, action games and horror games, while progressive genres, like puzzle games, some strategy games, grand strategy games, adventure games, story games and walking simulators are on the wayside. Adult games in the big publishers don´t exist, while almost every game is about killing. Even while this exists, the genres itself are not modeled after the goals of innovation and promoting empathy, love and understanding. I, as a communist, want strategy games that aren’t about killing and war, I want horror games about the Holocaust or a genocide or slavery, I want adventure games that aren’t about treasure hunts, I want story games that are about liberation movements, I want puzzle games that are about philosophy and science, I want FPS that offer pacifist play throughs, I want RPGs that offer multiple and complex endings and interrelated decisions and quests with different outcomes in every playthrough and that are about anticapitalist critique, I want grand strategy games about politics and the politics being hopeful and communist, I want RTS games about space exploration and space sims at last that offer a bright future. Video games are also limited in their artfulness and innovative gameplay by the way marketing in capitalism functions, by the way games are monetized and by the undemocratic nature of capitalistic companies. There are few art games and weird games because they are risky and could not make profits. Some games should be also subsidized like all culture and that because of their art value. That would enable truly innovative games.
But most of all, game development in capitalism is undemocratic and not very responsive to what players want. Communist planning, which would be based on consumer input and the measurement of this input in a digital accounting, planning, ordering and delivery platform would make games much more suited to what players want. Game designers could unlock the game design partially or wholly to the democratic control by consumers and consumers could be part of the development process by volunteering to do some work. The resulting product would be much improved and more cost-efficient to produce.
The gaming industry is a proof that communism could actually deliver better products for consumers, that it would enable more convenience for consumers, preserve video game history and unlock the potential of planning and consumer input in making games.