This has been said before, in various forms, usually in passing on the way to a different argument. But it’s been on my mind a lot lately, so I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to tackle it head-on:
The unsustainable churn of the AAA videogame industry is contributing to the growth of new, smaller studios; studios that will soon be able to compete against huge corporations that routinely flood the talent pool with layoffs and burnout, and win.
I cried the first time I held a Nintendo 3DS. The experience was a revelation that I’ll not soon forget, and even if everyone stops making games for it tomorrow, my blue 3DS XL is not going anywhere. That little machine is a window into a part of human experience that most people take for granted, but which is otherwise inaccessible to me.
Backing up:
I am mostly stereoblind. Stereoblindness is a blanket term for any condition that prevents a person from perceiving depth using binocular vision. Depending on whom you ask, it affects somewhere between 3 and 15 percent of the world’s population, which creates an interesting demographic hurdle for the 3D television industry. Some people are stereoblind because their vision in one eye is severely impaired, others because their brains are unable to coalesce images from both eyes into a three-dimensional result.
Mars One Station, June 2024:
“On the air in ninety seconds!”
Valentin looked up from his work and refocused his eyes. Was it Wednesday already? Only two more days until the weekly teleconference with the producers. He hoped next week’s sponsor would be less obnoxious than this one.
I have avoided writing this… post… essay… thing for longer than I care to admit. There are a few reasons for this, not least of which is my general distrust of armchair pundits shouting their officious editorials into the abyss of the internet. There is also the worry that what I write here could be construed as a sort of manifesto, which might be a bit self-indulgent of me (though if I ever were to write a manifesto, it would be indistinguishable from this one by Tom Francis). Further still, much of what I’m hoping to say with this piece is conjecture, with some bits of apophenia tossed in for flavor. The last thing I want is for my idle speculation to come across with the conviction of Gladwellian pseudoscience – or worse, a TED talk. Nonetheless, I have a theory about life on Earth, and it involves videogames (“BREAKING: Entertainment Professional Clings to Delusions of Relevance. More after Sports.”).