The NBT in gaming: Expiring Software Licenses. Revealing humanities flaws.

[RIP-Felix]

RANT WARNING

If you have a driver's license then you might be familiar with the idea that it expires. On mine at least, I have 8 years from the time it was issued to when I have to make a trip back down to the DMV. I'm on my third renewal! You might say the worst thing about renewing your license is the photo! While getting older and less attractive sucks, it's not avoidable. The second worst thing about renewing your license is having to pay $80 for a piece of plastic!

I can accept that a driver's license is official ID. As such it's important that the photo, height, weight, eye color, and gender be updated. 8 years is a long time. At 17 I may have been a good looking, 6' 2", 190 Lb, brown-eyed, thick brown-haired, male named John. 8 years later I could be  6' 1", 250 Lb, brown-eyed, Long blond, female named Jane! That last one is becoming increasingly relevant! Clearly the government needs to update our official ID! But why make us pay for it? Isn't that why I pay federal and state income taxes? What about property taxes? Death Taxes? Hell, IDK! All, I know is that the system seems rigged to make me pay for stuff that I shouldn't have to! Be it the DMV or visiting a state park. It seems like a lot of the things the government charges me for should be free if I have to kick back 15-25% of my earnings to uncle same every year!

Silly rabbit, hiding taxes is for politicians! Welcome to the world of hidden fees, your training is nearly complete. In a world where no-one like using the words "tax increases" we have to come up with ways of hiding them in other government services. If it were possible to get bipartisan agreement on the need for increase taxes or reduced government spending, then they wouldn't need to over complicate everything. But it isn't, so they do! "Cry me a river, that's just the way it is. Deal!" That's the message you get from politicians. "The world is screwed up and that's just the way it is." That's nice, way to blow off responsibility! I thought it was the responsibility of our elected officials to make things better, not whine about how hard it is to actually do the job they begged us to hire them for! I get it, we just have to accept that, in this political climate, we have to manage our expectations and accept that progress will be slow. That it will get better over time. Eventually things will be the way they should be...

Os so they lie! Because thing haven't been getting better, they have been regressing. Reading about the lives of the average American in the 1950's compared to today is comparable to the difference between buying a video game in the 90's vs today. And that finally bring's me to the point of this thread. If the government has figured out a way to hide taxes in fees for govenrment services as a response to push-back against tax hikes, How is the video game industry hiding profits in online services?

We have all been aware of the increase in Downloadable Content, subscription services, and pay-to-play. These have crippled the mobile gaming platform! What was once seen as an emerging platform for gaming that had to potential to rival console gaming has shot itself in the foot. It's a cliche now. If you want to be nickle and dimed, sinking housands of dollars a the same game for years, mobile gaming is for you! IOr should I say, 'any one of the thousands of mobile game is for you," because they have an update every week extending the story and gameplay options, endlessly moving the goals posts as players progress. You can never reach the end, so you're not likely to play more than a hand full of them before you're broke or dead! They don't want you to finish the game, because you're their cash cow. And that's how they see you - As cattle to be milked profit!

Mobile games only needs to be good enough to keep you playing. That's why mobile game companies employ behavioral psychologists. They're not about making good games. They're about exploiting human psychology to get you addicted to watching Ads - for rewards, the pleasure center of the brain, Or by paying subscription fees to avoid overly annoying Ads. "Annoyed? Pay to make them go away! Or by employing gambling mechanics to get you addicted. 2.3% of people have an addictive personality. Out of 331 million Americans that's 7.6 million users predisposed to addiction. Even if they got 1% of them addicted the their game, that's 76,000 users willing to pay subscription fees and for in-app purchases that can amount to thousands of dollars a year. These companies are making millions of dollars annually off Americans alone. But these games aren't just available to Americans! They can be downloaded by anyone from around the world with internet access and access to a credit card.

Have you ever opened an app and the thing you need to click on jumps down just as an Ad loads under your fingertip, tricking you into clicking on it? You only realize what happened as the popup loads God knows what on your phone! Do you dismiss that as poor timing? Or do you wonder if that's by design? It is! That's behavioral psychology! It's why your Facebook news feed is designed to refresh when you swipe down, it's that psychological itch you have to scratch every time you get a notification, and it's why can't put your phone down for more than a few minutes at a time. Your phone addiction is the result of someone else's $80,000 student loan debt! They'll exploit humanity to pay that off and mobile game companies are hiring because the fully know it! Facebook knows it. Video game makers know it. Everyone knows it.

"Big deal? Everyone's exploiting everyone, right?" That's nice, way to blow off humanity! I thought it was the responsibility of people to make things better, not whine about how hard it is to actually be a good person! I get it, we just have to accept that, in this economy, being a good person that doesn't exploit human behavioral psychology is financially irresponsible. We have to manage our expectations and accept that progress means joining the dark side. The sooner you abandon ethics and a good conscience, the sooner you pay off those student loans.

So what's this Next Big Thing? Well, we've already ruined video games with DLC, pay-to-play, gambling mechanis, Ads, subscription services, and gamplay designed to keep you paying the same game for years. How else can they get more money out of you? How does the government get more money out of you? How did I start this rant off? That's right, with Expiring Software Licenses. Specifically License Renewals!

If you have been paying attention to those software update "terms of use agreements, - and let's be honest, you haven't - then you should already know that you don't actually own the games you buy digitally. Recently I noticed that when you rent a movie for $2.99 on amazon prime they allow you 24 hours to finish watching it. "Pretty standard stuff", I thought. But then I read more and it said 'upon purchase the movie will be added to my queue. Once I start watching it, I have 24 hours to finish it. And that when I'm done watching the movie, it will be automatically removed from my queue.' In other words, I can only watch it once! They made it sound like I could watch it for 24hours, like you youed to be able to do when you rented a VHS from blockbuster. But no! This is 2.99 per viewing! If you liked it and thought your mom should see it. You have to pay another $2.99.  If you're a parent and want to prescree a film to determine if it's appropriate for your kids to watch. You have to pay twice. If they like ed it and wather to watch it again, as kids do. Another $2.99. We have an entire generation of kids today that are growing up having no concept of what physical ownership means! That you could pay once fore movie and watch it until the disc wears out. That owner ship is capital! An investment in property with intrinsic value! And that by giving up your right to ownership means you are making no investments. You buying power is entirely captured by those retaining ownership, in perpetuity. That's what renting means. You can pay off someone elses mortgauge or your own. If you rent you can't sell it, because it doesn't belong to you. That's the hidden danger!

That's what's happening with our video games. They are going digital, because they can more easily remove your ownership. When you buy a game they can rent it to you for a year, 2 years, or until they shut down the e-shop. At which time they revoke your license and you have to pay to renew it. They know you won't pay more than 60-70 dollars for a game. But the also know you don't read the user license agreement. That's where the'll hide the rental contract that says your license expires in 3 years. Or even that they reserve the right to revoke it anytime for any reason. Imagine having an extensive stream library and having all of those licenses revoked because you criticized vale on twitter! Or being permanently beaned from X-box live, gamepass, PSN, etc. That's not far fetched. The day where your entire digital library can be used to blackmail you into keeping your opinions to your self is already here. It's frameworks has been steadily been built and the last Remanent of personal ownership is on the cusp of being phased out. With all digital consoles like the PS5 digital. Sony says, they are just testing the waters. But why? Isn't is obvious?! They want to see if the public is ready to give up personal ownership!

Luckily the answer to that question has been a resounding NO! The disc version of PS5 is preferred. However, the number of people who prefer the convenience of digital purchases are growing. Especially umon the younger demographic who grewup in and era of i-tunes and digital media. Their entire lives are online and they aren't old enough to be nostalgic yet. What happenes when they want to watch Kick-ass again! No problem, $2.99 on Amazon prime. What happens when they get the itch to play the last of us again. No problem $60 for a 2 year license on PSN. What's the big deal? If they want to play, view, listen, experience, they'll just rent it. And in their sterile modern apartment with no material possessions living paycheck to paycheck, what will they do when an unexpected medical bill arises? Or the car breaks down? They'll have nothing of value to sell to make rent. They'll be forced into bankruptcy and destitution.

So who holds all the money? Where is all the wealth? In the hands of the owners! The monopolies. Money is power. So they are the Oligarchs too! Then they will fight eachother for what's left. Ultamately it ends in autocracy. Society has one person with all the money and power, everyone else enslaved! That's game over. The slaves revolt and start again. Oldest story in the oldest books. Why? Because that's human nature. Behavioral human psychology. That's biology bitch!

Technically, you never have had ownership of software. Even when you buy physical games. It's just harder for software companies to come into your home and reclaim their game from your software collection. Physical objects fall under property law, which is far better defined by legal precedent than digital property. After all, more legal battles have been fought in the 200+ year history of US law before the internet was a thing! It's the same everywhere. The digital frontier is as lawless as the wild western frontier was in 1850! And just like opportunists exploited pioneers who settled the west, so too are digital settlers being exploited by opportunists. History repeats! The law simply hasn't caught up yet! Until it does, there are trillions of dollars waiting to be extorted. Data is now the worlds most lucrative industry, surpassing energy, which is ironic since electricity created the data industry. This is a case study in how backwards our valuation of commodities are. That a thing can cost more than the thing that makes it possible. That destroying the earth is more lucrative than saving it. That we can become so compulsive and complacent we dismiss everything we wish the world could be by saying, "that's just the way it it."

But the world didn't make itself this way. We did. And if you still believe we can change, then you didn't pay attention in school. You only perked your ears up when your teacher said you could be anything you wanted. Fire fighter, astronaut, fighter pilot, or an archeologist like Indiana Jones! Well, are you any of those things? Did you do the best you could to get there and still get beat out by someone smarter or more ruthless than you? 99.999% of the time the answer is no! You didn't do your best, you weren't smart enough, or ruthless enough. And yet that 0.0001% chance was enought for your teacher to give you false hopes. To reject the idea of giving you realistic assessment of your chances. That you would have to work really hard and might still not make it. That you better get motivated to work harder in school and have a realistic backup plan. Perhaps you wouldn't have put all your eggs in one basket when the thruth hammer broke all of them at the same time.

No, instead teachers gave multiple generation false hope about a future that wasn't theirs! They told you about the progressive era of the 1930-1960's when the national parks were established, social security, financial protections to prevent another greet depression, when the interstate highways and bridges were built, and when a high school degree entitled you to a middle class wage. A prosperous time when the future looked bright. They wanted to fill you with hope, instead of prepare you to live in reality. And you took it up the ass for 12 years! Then you dropped out or graduated your pubic eduboning and paid for real school.

That's where you learned how you were lied to. That the golden years where 40/245 years of US history. That they were not a model for the society you were born into! Telling you how great you could be if you was willing to do literally anything to get it isn't conducive to a healthy society. All it did was create generations of entitled Karens! Pissed off wannbe's willing to cut the next guy's throat to get what they were promised!

Even Plato and Aristotle knew every Democracy devolves into an Autocracy, over 2300 years ago. And he has been proven correct since! We're supposed to believe our little democratic experiment is different, just because we divided the power between 3 branches of government and had a few good years? It barley survived 1 malignant narcissist! Then you take psychology, biology, history of western civ, sociology, difference discrimination & power, history of science, and evolution. You begin to understand as an observer of human history the following.

We are selfish and acquiesce to eogcentric leaders. The draw lines in the sand. and say, "this is us and they are the enemy." We don't intervene because we're selfish, self preservationists with bystander apathy. It's not us, it's distastefull, but it's not me. Don't get involved and make it you! Mind your own business!" We're all entitled karens who prefer not take personal accountability, nor are we willing to go against the egocentric tantrum throwing leader, not in substantial numbers! It's easier to point the finger and blame our problems on "them." The unsuspecting "them." "They" are not expecting to be the object of someone else's unjust anger. They ignore the problem, hoping it goes away. Or "they" ramp up their retoric in their own defense, confirming the "us vs them" slander and propaganda. Tensions rise over resources, skirmishes, violence between individual members acting on their own or covertly as an agent of either state, confirming suspicions of hostile intent. All kind of stupid actions that occur between two tribes believing each other need to protect themselves against the aggressive other group. People unify behind the leader, the choice becomes, us or annihilation. "We don't like the leader, but it's better than death." War! The whole world takes notice, and out of fear they will be the next "them," band together to defeat the existential threat.

Individuals become tribes. Tribes become clans. Clans form states. States unify. Unions conquer and become empires. Empires overreach and overstep, concentrate too much wealth and power in the hands of too few people. They make too many enemy's and are overthrown from within or are defeated. Over and over again this scenario has played out. It's the cliche of human history.

It's literally this scene in Hook:

There is no reason for the in fighting! They have a common enemy in Hook. And yet they are weakening their own force by fighting amongst themselves over who's the rightful leader. It's pointless. And if you take that even further, then there is no reason that the lost boys and pirates can't coexist. It's just a power struggle between pan and hook. Bothe the pirates and lost boys would be better off if they deposed their leaders and merged their tribes. One unified us. Thatere are no them. Everyone has to agree to sacrifice some comforts so that everyone can have a standard of living that's better.

But that doens't work either. They must eventually or no one would survive. The fighting would only perpetuate until the consequences of putting up with these egocentric leaders hist everyone. When the violence reaches too height a price they will cast out their demagogues for peace. Eventually people loose their appetite for war. Then they'll whine for the rest of their lives about the futility of war and the decisions that led them there. But these times don't last long. Within a few generations that memory is gone and history begins repeating again. Everybody gets all lovey dovy. Then that stops being cool. Their kids will fall asleep during those classes and only perk up for the action scenes! People learn lesson for themselves and are rebel against their parents. Humans don't listen to lessons from the past. We selfishly barrel into the same mistakes and face the consequences only when forced. That's humanity. Wilful ignorance to our peril.

We are not a logical species. We are emotional first. Logic goes out the window when emotion takes over. Logic bends to selfih whims. We believe only what we want when it's convenient in the moment and attempt to convince ourselves with logic that we can continue doing whatever we want. "Follow your heart" and other nonsense. We look for evidence that confirms what we want to believe. We throw out what doesn't fit and isn't convenient. Whatever allows us to believe we're good people doing our best. And whenever that's challenged, we ignore and berate, throw tantrums, as if reality were a battle of wills. Our specie is doomed. You'd think reason would prevail, but we bury our heads in the sand and hop the wolves just go away! They don't.

Video games are supposed to distract us from these troubles. A form of Escape! When the world becomes too much to handle I just want to crawl inside fantasy and pretend I'm not here. And then some Karen has to ruin that too. They have to take what I like about games and ruin it for their own enrichment. That's what's happening with video games. They are trying to own the last thing that allows me to escape people like them and greeding up the place.

 

GET OFF MY LAWN!

[Draco1962]

And while you are exiting my nicely trimmed and maintained turf, can you get your manager?

[tthurman]

You think it's bad now?  The fun is only starting: