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video games: do they promote socialism?

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Oct 12, 2005 LeberMac link
Ooop! You saw that didn't you? You saw him repressin' me!
Oct 12, 2005 ananzi link
I have a serious point and like most of my brilliant ideas, it will be stolen by a Wall Street Journal reporter and turned into a legitimate story... minus all the interesting flouwery language of course. Bland bland bland, that's all the dominant media is these days.

But I defy you to simply answer my question, conservatives.

If the free market is so wonderful, how come our entertainment all involves the principles of socialism, your arch nemesis, your filthy red virulent Moby Dick of government?

And liberals, I demand your response, your dear heart is the free mind, yet you anger at humoresque? You dance drunken and naked at midnight, but you cannot stand a silly thought!

Fay, Fay! I shall meet you in B8, and fate decides us!
Oct 12, 2005 Spellcast link
isnt it fie, fie.. not fay, fay? unless you mean to imply that we are all of the seghlie and unseghlie folklore variety creatures.. in which case your spelling is correct.

as to why our entertainment requires imposed balance and economic limitations as opposed to a free market economy it's quite simple.. the userbase of the vast majority of games are not computer programmers.
the main element of a free market economy that simply cannot be simulated in a game is innovation. a free market economy requires a constant and regular infusion of new ideas, better ways of doing things and faster methods of production. these things balance out the advantages of an established group/product and allow the possibility (not the certainty) of competition in any given market.
Since innovation requires totally new thought, and a game universe can only encompass items designed (intentionally or otherwise) by a limited group of people, and materiels can only be manufactured, distributed, and sold by methods that same group of people provide; innovation cannot truly exist in a game world. Without innovation another method must be used to allow the possibility of competition.. and the most common method used by games is a centralized controls system to achieve some form of parity..
If everyone playing the game had access to the code and the ability to program thier own ideas/methods into it two things would be possible.. one of them would be a free market economy.. the other would be the extremely high possibility of the game crashing.. but thats neither here nor there.
Oct 16, 2005 ananzi link
spellcast i am deeply sorry i did not reply to you in a timely fashion, i did not realize i was so important that you wanted commentary on your ideas. had you asked a question i would have speedily replied, had you insulted my vim and vigor i would have replied within the minute!

but what can i say, i think your theory is equivalent to arguments of the 1930s that computers will never surprise us because they only do what we tell them.

already players of this, basic, very controlled game, have found 'better ways of doing things' and figured faster ways to get credits.

now as to people being able to put code into the game, they already do form primitive 'innovations' by their actions. to be able to insert more 'innovations' would of course destabilize the system from time to time, as it does in real life with the boom and bust cycles of any economy.

nevertheless, many games have been built on this principle, perhaps the most obvious example being games where people write programs that attack the other players programs.

on the other hand many games have 'innovators' that are cheaters, which destabilizes the system, which makes the whole game meaningless boring and no fun.

as for the american stuff, i was, in fact, having a laugh.