Three World Wars

[James98]

Gaming Communism
By Stalfos Conner

http://www.atcoalition.com/news/viewarticle.php?id=20
http://www.atcoalition.com/articles/gaming_communism.pdf

Video game and console giant Nintendo used to be dominant in the video game industry since the launch of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console in the early 1980s. In fact, Nintendo saved the video game industry from the North American Video Game Crash of 1983.

Released in 1977, the Atari 2600 video game console quickly became one of the most popular video gaming systems ever, popularizing the use of video game cartridges (instead of having video games built-in) and video game consoles in general.

Back then, it was easy for programmers to develop video games and publish them for the Atari 2600, as they were free to do so. There were no restrictions, laws or whatever to prevent them from publishing Atari 2600 video games.

Due to the success of the Atari 2600, the company behind it – Atari – developed a monopoly over the video game industry. As the money generated from Atari 2600 kept coming in, Atari deemed itself invincible and began pouring money into one ill-fated project, after another. The programmers of Atari were less happy about Atari's monopolism (also known as economic dictatorship), particularly because of Atari's failure to give them credit for their work. As a result, many programmers left Atari and formed their own companies; with Activision – founded in 1980 – being the most prominent one.

Atari in turn, went to court and tried to block – to no avail – third party developers from releasing video games on the Atari 2600. The move backfired on Atari's already damaged reputation, all in the face of increasing competition. As a result, Atari needed third party developers to keep its monopoly.

Atari then published (and in some cases developed) a series of video games, including "E.T." – which turned out to be a major flop, bringing the company into a major crisis.

Meanwhile, game developers remained free to publish their work without restriction on the Atari 2600. One of these game developers was a company named Mystique, which began selling pornographic video games under the banner of "Swedish Erotica".

Women rights groups widely protested against the Mystique video game "Custer's Revenge". In the game, the player controlled a nearly naked character named "General George Armstrong Custer", after the United Stats Army officer and cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the Indian Wars. The objective of the game was to dodge arrows to get to a Native American woman and rape her.

Leftists immediately sought to impose censorship on video games; others sought to prevent games like Custer's Revenge from being released due to their depiction of rape. Unsurprisingly, Mystique didn't help Atari's image from further deteriorating, to say the least.

Atari's six year old monopoly was collapsing. Atari had failed to replace the Atari 2600 with a successful successor; suffered from a bad public image; overproduced game cartridges, causing a pileup of unsold inventory and depressing prices; wasted money on other ill-fated projects; and suffered from many other problems, which allegedly caused the North American Video Game Crash of 1983.

The "crash" could have perhaps been more appropriately named the Atari Video Game Crash of 1983, but due to Atari's monopoly in the industry, the rest of the industry was also hit.

However, the near collapse of the North American video game industry was short-lived. Released in Japan in 1983 and in the USA in 1985 by the Japanese company Nintendo, the NES console successfully conquered the video game industry, beating all other competitors with high quality first party games, such as the Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Brothers and Kid Icarus; thus establishing a new monopoly over the industry.

Nintendo introduced the "Nintendo Seal of Quality", an image displayed on video game cartridges indicating that Nintendo approved the game for release on their video game consoles. In other words, the anti-competitive policy behind the Nintendo Seal of Quality gave Nintendo the power to dictate which games game developers could release on the NES or any other succeeding Nintendo console. Moreover, Nintendo charged licensing fees to developers.

Not surprisingly, Nintendo's main competitor at the time, Sega, followed suit with the "Sega Seal of Quality".

No more were game developers free to release any game they wanted on any major video game console. The loss of this freedom caused a heavy decrease in video game releases, which meant less competition for Nintendo and Sega. The immediate consequence of this was that Nintendo and Sega became almost the only console developers around.

In the late 1980s, Nintendo approached consumer electronics entertainment industry giant Sony (also a Japanese company), to develop a CD-ROM add-on for Nintendo's NES successor: the SNES. Despite coming to an agreement, the partnership resulted in a disaster as Sony tried to get complete control over any and all titles written on the SNES CD-ROM format. In turn, Nintendo, tried to ditch Sony by partnering with Sony's competitor, Phillips, causing Sony to turn the add-on into a full console, which it named the PlayStation.

Despite Nintendo's monopoly over the video game industry, Nintendo couldn't beat the multibillion and multinational conglomerate Sony. The PlayStation outsold the SNES and SNES' successor, Nintendo 64.

As a result, Nintendo lots its monopoly and Sega was beaten out of the console market, releasing their last console, the Dreamcast, just before the PlayStation 2 – the successor to the original PlayStation.

Nintendo moved forward with the release of PlayStation 2's competitor – the GameCube – a small step from the Nintendo 64.

Then, software giant Microsoft, in their never ending quest to extend their monopolies to everything related to software, released their first console: the Xbox. In the typical Microsoft tradition, the Xbox didn't offer anything but an attempt by Microsoft to extend their software monopolies to the video gaming industry. The Xbox is merely a personal computer repackaged as a console, armed with video game titles that were developed by companies Microsoft had either bought (i.e. Bungie and RARE) or paid to release the games (i.e. $50 million dollars for exclusive rights to publish two episodes of the game Grand Theft Auto).

Both the PlayStation and the Xbox extended the video game console to play music, movies and so on. Thus, the video gaming industry became limited to three major consoles, and all other competition was wiped out.

Sony again managed to beat Nintendo with the PlayStation 2, selling 136 million consoles – more than any other console before it. Microsoft also managed to outsell Nintendo with the Xbox, selling 24 million consoles. Nintendo's GameCube lifespan ended with 21.74 million consoles sold.

Nintendo was being dwarfed in the industry it had dominated for about a decade and the quality of their products was decreasing (as seen in the case of Super Mario Sunshine (originally developed for the Nintendo 64 but released on the GameCube)). Nintendo gained a reputation as a company that only targeted kids (though that was not always true).

For the next generation of video game consoles, Nintendo released the Wii; Microsoft released the Xbox 360 – a slightly updated version of the Xbox; and Sony released the PlayStation 3.

Unlike Microsoft and Sony, Nintendo decided to put a little more effort in innovation, primarily by including a motion sensing capable wireless controller with the Wii, which can be used to detect movement in three dimensional space. Another part of their plan to compete with Microsoft and Sony included a change in their target audience; namely, a broader one. Nintendo decided to attract non-gamers to its products without abandoning "casual gamers".

The strategy former monopoly, Nintendo, employs is – not surprisingly – "gaming communism" (more specifically, enforced egalitarianism and enforced socialism). Perhaps the best example of that is the release of Mario Kart Wii, the successor of Nintendo's famous racing video game franchise. The previous Mario Kart installments had already introduced some form of egalitarianism, but Mario Kart Wii has taken it a few steps further – to say the least.



During the race, players can use a selection of weapons and other items to fight and slow each other down. The items can be picked up at various places on the road in each lap, in the form of a block, after which the game decides for you which item you will get. The further behind you are in the race, the better the weapons you will get.

In fact, the entire game is specifically designed to benefit those with the least skills the most, while even punishing those with the most skills – in an attempt to "equalize" players, in order to diminish the difference between their skills. For example, Mario Kart offers players behind in the race the infamous "Spiny Shell", a weapon specifically designed to target the player in first place (in order to slow them down).

However, winning the race now depends more on luck than skills, in general.

Not surprisingly, this form of enforced equality doesn't work out too well in the racing mode of Mario Kart. In the long run, skilled players still have more chances of winning. However, where communism really shines in Mario Kart Wii is in the multi-player Coin Runners game mode.

The Coin Runners game mode is based on the Battle Mode from previous Mario Kart installments, where players don't race but instead only fight each other on specifically designed tracks. However, unlike in those previous Mario Kart games, players no longer have the option to play one-on-one, as they now have to play in teams, composed out of computer controlled characters.

Coin Runners focuses on collecting coins. The team which collects the most coins wins. Almost all of the items that are present during the racing game play are present in Coin Runners, including the Spiny Shell. Each team contains ten players and each track contains a few dozen coins. At most, a player – with some serious luck – will be able to collect approximately 40-50 coins.

The game play behind Coin Runners focuses on creating illusions and expecting the player to believe they are coincidences; dependence on your team; and "spreading the wealth around" as USA president Barack Hussein Obama likes to describe his socialist policies. Coin Runners administrates this game play with an iron fist.

The team dependence alone kills the game, as the computer controlled characters barely do anything at all, unless you do barely anything at all. The better you play, the worse your team will play. At most, a computer generated team player will collect about 20 coins. The difference between a skilled player and his or her computer controlled teammates is absurd. A skilled player may collect get up to 30 coins, in which case his or her teammates will get no more than 10 coins, while the computer controlled teammates of the opposing team of the player with less skills, will do better by default.

The Spiny Shell now targets the player on the opposing team with the most coins, kicking 50% of his or her collection of coins out of the player's possession in a large circle around the player, making the coins available for other players to obtain.

If you have collected 30 coins, you will loose 15 of them when a Spiny Shell hits you, a loss of coins the entire computer controlled team combined often (or mostly) doesn't manage to collect by the end of the game.

There are options to escape a Spiny Shell. For example, you may get a Mega Mushroom or a Star item, both of which can make you temporarily immune to a Spiny Shell but they are only given to the players with the least coins. In case you obtain such an item and keep it and collect enough coins for the Spiny Shell to come around to enforce equality on you, you may escape the Spiny Shell but "coincidentally" (as the game would like you to believe) the Spiny Shell won't take long to come around repeatedly to finish the job, until you finally get hit. Managing to escape another attack, that would cost you 50% of your coins, is also enough to provoke a Spiny Shell.

The Green Shell weapon – a shell used to fire at your opponents – bounces around the track when it doesn't hit an opponent. The computer controlled characters suspiciously shoot green shells around at times during the game, causing a few green shells to bounce around. Despite the often large size of the tracks or the impossibility of green shells to move around in some places, they always manage to bounce their way towards the player with the most coins – creating an illusion that the hit was a "coincidence". The actual chance of getting hit by a green shell in an average track more than once per every ten to twenty five green shells fired is close to zero, leave alone the probability of being hit even once.

Video games used to be challenging. Nintendo's video games were no exception. Nintendo produced some of the best video games around. Yet, back in those days video games were seen as something only for children. Nevertheless, the games required you to think to make progress in them; egalitarianism (in these games) was taboo; and skills were appreciated and rewarded. It was called the Golden Age of Video Games. The documentary King of Kong (2007), which centers around gamers trying to achieve a world high score for the 1980s arcade game Donkey Kong, demonstrates that fact quite well.

Since Microsoft entered the video game industry, the plutocratic nature of monopolism took its toll on the industry and Nintendo in particular. Plutocracy is by default corporatism, which is also a characteristic of fascism (also known as the "Third Way" – a variety of socialism which builds around monopolism). Had laws truly prevented monopolies, Nintendo would never have resorted to "gaming socialism". In fact, Nintendo would have never been a monopoly in the first place; and thus, quality would come first instead of shameless lowering of the standards of the industry to the point of "gaming socialism", all for the sake of profit and survival. Monopolism is plutocracy; and plutocracy puts wealth above everything, including quality, morals and values.

Game developers should have the freedom to release their work for any console. Imagine if movies needed a specific console to be published: that would mean that only a few film studios at most would decide what all other film studios can and cannot release. Ultimately, as with the video game industry, that would leave at most one or two companies in control of the entire industry, while all other competition – and really, anyone in disagreement with these practices – would be wiped out, which is exactly how fascists, communists and plutocrats work. A communist state like North Korea does exactly the same with everything they can possibly control; and in return, they indoctrinate their own people from birth to worship the state and their "Dear Leader" – as they call Kim Jong-il -, the dictator of North Korea.

The majority of video gamers are still children and most likely, children will always make up a huge percentage of video gamers. Thus, politicians in the West are – often rightfully – concerned about violence in video games, but none of them have spoken out against the demoralization and devaluation of individualism through collectivism in video games today, which many children are growing up with.

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