Don't want to leave but cannot pretend
“I don't recall the Soviet Union having a thriving video game industry.”
That is such a WEIRD thing to say, not only because it’s contradicted by a glance on Wikipedia (did you know that the most famous Russian game designer of the burgeoning era of videos games was Alexey Pajitnov, the creator of the worldwide megahit Tetris) but it’s also not relevant or constructive. It’s like responding to criticisms of slavery’s inhumanity with “but the North has WAGE SLAVES”.
Note: if anybody wishes to learn more about the history of video games jn the Soviet Union (and Russia in general), here’s a link to a website describing by the history of Russian video games in pretty good detail.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
“That's a weird emote to express frustration at the fat cats keeping the workers down.”
Where’s the confusion here? 
is a weird emote to end your post about your frustration with worker exploitation. It’d be like ending a text about how your grandma just died with “XD”.
Edited by fredhot16 on May 8th 2024 at 10:33:30 AM
Trans rights are human rights. TV Tropes is not a place for bigotry, cruelty, or dickishness, no matter who or their position.
Ah, that's because its closest to angry glaring I can get on tv tropes emoji. Though admittedly that's confusing when its commonly used for sarcasm or playfulness as well
Anyway, its trend with me that goes years back where I have weird ways of interpreting emoji then I'm confused when other people get confused by it
Edited by SpookyMask on May 8th 2024 at 9:18:14 AM
Best Ogre
I feel like 
would get the point of "I'm not happy about this" pretty clearly.
I saw the pothole, but I just want to note for the record...
The Soviet Union made what is by far the best selling video game of all time, at 520 million copies nothing else even comes close, and you would be hard pressed to find a person on the planet who doesn't know the name.
Tetris says hi.
Edited by Imca on May 9th 2024 at 3:23:31 AM
Owl House / Infinity Train / Inside Job Fan
They made a whole movie about it.
Reading up on all this, and it reminded me of articles I read last year suggesting that subscription-based models like PS+ and Gamepass had plateaued:
https://gameworldobserver.com/2023/06/08/game-subscriptions-growth-stalled-game-pass-ps-plus
Hot take: I don't think that we need to abolish capitalism to deal with the current issues in the gaming industry. Absurd to believe, but true.
"We live in a society" - Winston Churchill, probably
Don't want to leave but cannot pretend
If you wanna start a convo, you’re going to have to do a LOT MORE then just say “absurd to believe but true” as though it’s self-evident.
What, for example, would you consider necessary to fix the gaming industry that would not be “abolishing capitalism”? Or even lassiez-faire capitalism? What would you even consider to be capitalism or not?
And I hope you back this up with plenty of citable evidence with no strawmanning or trying to pick a fight with other people elsewhere in a non-constructive manner.
If you’re going to spout a hot take, it better not be half-baked.
Edited by fredhot16 on May 8th 2024 at 1:16:35 AM
Trans rights are human rights. TV Tropes is not a place for bigotry, cruelty, or dickishness, no matter who or their position.
I will say I don't think anyone here has outright stated that we should/must abolish capitalism specifically to fix the games industry.
At most I think people have stated society's fixation on laissez-faire capitalism has hindered the establishment of laws that would prevent this behavior.
For my part, if I were to fix this problem via legislation it would be something like a law against firing people when profits are up without any particular cause. Something along those lines.
On a sidenote, I'd argue that Socialism actually wouldn't inherently fix the problem of "Investorism". I could see a Socialist system having a similar problem, just replacing Shareholders with Central Planners and Government Officials.
"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"
I actually wanted to be Resileaf
Unions would go a long way to fix the problem of no-cause firings.
Unions, yeah, they're a good idea.
"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"
☆♥☆
Tetris is literally the only notable game to have been made in the Soviet Union, so pointing out its existence doesn't do anything to disprove the statement that the Soviet Union didn't have a thriving video game industry. I don't understand why three different people brought it up like it's some kind of slam dunk rebuttal. Like there's other notable games to have been made in Russia, but that's after the Soviet Union collapsed.
Unfortunately, it's a very common False Dichotomy argument to treat any criticism of Capitalism as the US currently practices it, or other labor and economic laws, as inherently promoting Socialism.
"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"
Psst, hey you. Word on the street is you're ready to start building "communism" again.
Never trust anyone who uses "degenerate" as an insult.
Professional Forum Ninja
Edited by tclittle on May 8th 2024 at 3:34:06 AM
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."
Don't want to leave but cannot pretend
I also linked a website that talks more thoroughly about the history of video games in Russia, including the Soviet Union. Resi had also brought up that video games did not become mainstream until the 90s or so.
It’s not only a baseless allegation refuted by under five minutes of Googling but it also reminds me of when a Republican official interviewed Taylor Swift and tried to claim that under socialism, she would not be allowed to be a singer and sing the songs she wants.
If there’s anything that can turn a person against capitalism (besides living in America), it’s not engaging meaningfully with criticisms of the system or treating specific forms of a system as the only possible form.
Edited by fredhot16 on May 8th 2024 at 1:38:14 AM
Trans rights are human rights. TV Tropes is not a place for bigotry, cruelty, or dickishness, no matter who or their position.
Disasturbator
> Psst, hey you. Word on the street is you're ready to start building "communism" again.
how exactly do you build a communism,again?
New theme music also a box
A procrastination in of itself
If we want an extended discussion about different economic systems and how they produce video games we may want to move it to the Economics Thread.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
☆♥☆
The link you posted does nothing but further support the image that little was going on in the video game space in the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union regulated much of its entertainment and didn't allow much room for a game industry to take off. They had arcade machines being made from spare parts in military factories that were mostly ramshackle copies of American or Japanese machines, and they had LDC games being made by the government (same division that made calculators and the like) that were also copied off of hardware from other countries. They had an indie scene of fans of computer games (imported from other regions) that made their own games, but these were not sold commercially. Tetris itself was made by a programmer working for the government, and his game was taken and sold by an organization controlled by the government that had the monopoly the import and export of computer hardware and software, with Tetris's creator not receiving any compensation at the time.
The Soviet Union did not have a thriving game industry that was anything like the ones in countries like Japan and America.
Right, I wonder why the soviet union which collapsed in 1991 did not have a thriving industry around a hobby that did not get popular until the 90s? This is surely a mystery for the ages.
While there are some classic games that are still also around from the 80s, the only Amercian thing on that list your going to find is pong, and of the two I think its hard to argue tetris is the better game.
A few more notable classics came out of Japan, like Mario and Donkey Kong... but either way the point is that games were just getting big when the USSR collapsed, so even maintaining one notable name in the book is rather well notable.
Edited by Imca on May 8th 2024 at 7:44:14 PM
Clearly, the industry's problems can be solved only be embracing Feudalism
"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"
☆♥☆
What timeline did you arrive from that video games weren't popular until the 90s? The most popular videos were already selling millions of copies in the 80s, what line do we have to cross before it's considered "popular"?
And do you seriously think Pong is the only notable game to come out of America in the 80s? Well first off, akchually Pong came out in the 70s. Second, I could think of games like Wizardry, Ultima, Might and Magic, Dungeon Master, SimCity, Wasteland, Pitfall, King's Quest, Paperboy, Dragon's Lair, Gauntlet. Those are just what I can think of and I'm not that familiar with many old American games.
What was going on with games in Japan and America far outdoes what was going on in the Soviet Union before it's collapse, and it wasn't some matter of circumstance and coincidence, it didn't have a thriving game industry because its government didn't want one.
This whole argument of America vs the Soviet Union seems completely pointless? Who was arguing in favour of bringing back the Soviet Union?
What seems to have happened is that someone criticised the state of capitalism in modern day America, and people immediately jump to "so you want to bring back communism, hhmmmmmm?". Why?
Yeah, the whole line of conversation literally spawned from somebody posting a complete non-sequitur in response to somebody else mildly criticising capitalist practices in the video games industry.
That's it - I don't know why some people always go into immediate attack mode when somebody even implies the way things are run might not be perfect, but it's honestly getting tiresome.
Edited by DrunkenNordmann on May 8th 2024 at 1:25:54 PM
Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.
? Am I again being confused of how people interpret emojis? I have habit of applying multiple different one to same emoji depending on context