i'll admit that the business side does at least provide a framework that maybe doesn't exist in the same way in other industries and maybe that's more honest in some ways. but it also very much at odds with the argument for it as a culturally transformative space that features challenging art

no American or anyone else should be forced to abide by the standards either lol

"if i just make a law that says 'the new world is now hereby and henceforth permitted from being born' i'm good right?"

aww yeah. Grandaddy was a major band for me too. i'm glad you covered Levitz. i know it wasn't an officially sanctioned album but i listened to my Concrete Dunes CD to death

aw yeah we still had yet to do a Grandaddy episode (tho we had planned on it) and we've been on hiatus for awhile now. i def have some other Grandaddy fans in my life who would appreciate this too

oh man this is wonderful

oh definitely, this is not a defense of capitalism and any defenses of art's value have to not be wedded to that - just more of an acknowledgement of where things tend to go eventually.

i agree with the post before this that live service/gambling addiction games are where things are at right now but the market can shift very quickly so i wouldn't be surprised if we see a shift towards more stuff like HORSES in the future if there's enough demand for it

i distinctly remember you calling him Frank Luntz before like a decade ago so i like that not remembering who he is has been your thing for a long time

that's fair! some friends of mine don't like the game either. just wanted to bring it up because i saw you say that it feels like no one is talking about the sexual assault stuff in the game

people have just accepted it because they feel no agency or ability to change it. it's understandable but it also just reflects a devaluing of the whole space and means a lot of art invariably comes with people who can financially afford the loss of pursuing a career, which makes it less relevant

okay, thanks for the clarification. i agree with the idea that if you expect people to do everything as a side hustle you can't build a whole space out of that. one thing i hate about the music world is that you're just expected now to have another job and there's no possibility for anything else

whether or not you think some of the 'shock' 'humor' moments land or undercut the points is fair - but that is also the universe that this game occupies, and is very clearly not meant to be a good or just universe. i also just disagree about the game as a whole though because i do like it.

i don't know how to put this into words in a single bluesky post but i think the game's handling of sexual assault and the general dehumanization of bodies is appropriate to the larger world it captures and it feels less confused of a way of dealing with that than a game like Mouthwashing to me

if you don't consider work made for free or not for profit as worthwhile because it's "devaluing the space" for more "serious" career artists, i don't know what to say to you. that is a completely irresponsible position to have in this day and age and throws a ton of great art under the bus

also a lot of the supposed "middle class dilettantes" in this category are people on the fringes and barely scraping by. and besides, middle class "dilettantes" have made some of our greatest art anyway - see the work of Charles Ives, insurance salesman.

and it's not just videogames but every art form. most of the people at the top of the music industry at this point seem to have little to no interest in the actual music part anymore. everything space is just a venue for more technological transformation. so it's a fight that's on us all now to have

videogames got some money and interest from the tech world because of their capability in realizing a tech vision of reality. but as far as them existing as their own art form that does things other art forms do, there is no interest. that's a battle we're all going to have to fight for ourselves.