Good evening, World! Man, doesn’t it seem like all the news talks about lately is CO-VID 19, what the governments around the world are doing about it, and crazy Trump antic #: 362, 482 (Please don’t quote that number; I pulled it from where Obamagate advocates get their facts)? Tired of hearing about the same old depressing stuff? Well, today is your lucky day, for I have something else depressing to talk about that involves neither Prez Donald Trump nor the killer virus everyone is trying to wish away with premature reopenings: Data control! More precisely, data control as it corresponds with entertainment. Now I’m sure most of you, especially those in the gaming community, are already aware of how annoying stuff being digital is: With you requiring an internet connection to play most games currently and the Xbox 360 scare when they were trying to make games exclusively digital. However, what if I were to tell you, in Morpheus-sunshades-style, that many gamers are in support of games going full-digital now? Why, in the name of Master Chief, would they ever support such a measure, after Microsoft wanted to create a limit on you lending copies of the games to others? The issue deals with data, as most games nowadays, especially blockbuster titles, take well more than a single disc to tell a game’s entire story, and many game enthusiasts predicting the memory needed for PS5 and Xbox Series X games will be MUCH larger. It makes sense when you think about it… Afterall, who wants to switch between multiple discs to play a game and deal with the issues of scratches? However, the digital landscape has already been showing the precursors by making it so most games are NEVER exclusively restricted to discs. In other words, we’ve all been tricked into the restrictions of digital data without even knowing it… I’m talking about game patches, of course. Think about it: After you buy a disc copy of a game, if your system can’t connect to the internet, you can’t even play the game until a software patch is installed on it, meaning you didn’t purchase a version of game you’re allowed to play in the first place! And if you want to play online without the latest version of the patch? Forget it. You would be playing a virtually “unsafe” game without the patch or a version easily exploitable; therefore, until you download this patch, you won’t be able to explore the multiplayer version of the game with the version you bought.
And this, ladies and gentleman, is the problem of data control on the gaming side. Amazon recently made the move to remove certain manga and light novels from its Kindle Bookshelf for… reasons unclear. You can read the article here: https://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2020/07/15/exclusive-amazon-takes-light-novels-manga-from-the-kindle-bookshelf-publishers-respond. By not owning the physical copies of the manga and light novels, and by trusting Amazon to have their best interests in mind, many lovers of their favorite manga or light novels have been denied their once reliable access to their favorite manga due to a companies unclear attempt at censorship (Some believe the company’s “inappropriate” algorithm for books flagged these works, and there weren’t enough employees at the company due to CO-VID to stop the flags… but that’s ANOTHER issue and blog post for another day.) To end my long rant, I believe this is all a combination of our new Renter Culture, where you outsource what you want to provide a service because it’s cheaper than owning and maintaining the “hardware” yourself (some sick, expanded version of IaaS?) and our technology advancing beyond the common man’s understanding. We would rather trust a company to give our game in bits so we don’t have to switch disks or worry about scratches. We’d rather go to a site with thousands of volumes of manga to read so we don’t create a pile of them in our apartment, but we lose something valuable as we hand the reins of our technological world to those who understand it better than we do: We lose control over what WE pay for. Remember, back in the 90s, you’d pay $50 for a complete game off the shelf; now you pay $60 for something you can’t even play with hours of patch downloads. And you CAN pay a monthly pass for a manga streaming service to carry all your works… or you can pay this amount PLUS what you’ll pay for the hardcopy of the manga the site decides to censor (Let’s be honest, you’re not canceling that subscription yet because it still has those runs of Loud Orange Ninja and Goofy Stretchy Pirate Adventures you love so much.) So, in retrospect, is our new digital renter culture really better for the consumer, for that “customer who’s always right” in our capitalist system, or is it truly for the benefit of tech gurus who want to give us baby food when we ordered a main course? Make the right decision: We’re not all tech wizards or even “casuals,” but pay attention to issues concerning technology just like they were the latest tax hike or pull-back on abortion bans. Remember: The technology Benzos controls today will run the future you live in tomorrow, especially at the crazy rate in which our technology advances. Stay safe out there, and peace out…
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MAYJOR E. JohnsonAll updates for my projects, any news I find interesting, and my personal thoughts will go here. Archives
February 2022
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