Small brain political theorist:

small brain political theorist:
>it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine an end to capitalism

big brain video game developer:
>even once capitalism has destroyed the world, the ideology of capitalism will live on

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=NyeTaXv6o4Y
twitter.com/AnonBabble

Explain how the Genghis Khan tribe and the Roman dudes were capitalist?

Fallouts 3 and later (all item-management RPGs) are based around the crassest commodity fetishism. This is embodied in the "unique" weapons: their scarcity as commodities gives them real, material powers. The entire game system is capitalist by virtue of its total economy

that's a nice interpretation

Capitalism is here to stay because its right. Stay buttmad commie

capitalism is based around two people mutually trading goods for mutual gain, and the development of an economic, stable, climate. This is almost non-existant in the game as the governments slave, tax people for services they don't provide, don't pay the courier for his services, and purposefully promote gambling, prostitution, and drugs to their allies.

No, capitalism is based around the extraction of profit from the people who provide goods and services through their labour, by a managerial/ownership class who provide nothing. There are no "economic, stable, climates", only lesser degrees of mismanagement.

Obviously there's a huge emphasis on materialism but I don't see how that's necessarily capitalistic, especially when all the stuff you do in between getting new things is designed to be the primary source of enjoyment.I think this argument would probably apply better to pure grinding games like diablo, but even then the grinding and collecting is ostensibly building up to playing the endgame content. There's also no markets/real exchange happening with NPCs and unless I'm wrong I don't think materialism alone is exclusively capitalistic.


Anyway this thread is no mention of books so far.

According to who? Karl Marx and Stalin? Who had no education in economics as a professional skill?
Also, all of the tribal raider gangs like the vipers and powder gangers in the game would count as communists, which is what your people are.

You're talking about content, I'm talking about form. What takes place when you suspend your disbelief (slavery, profligacy, etc.) is distinct from what *must* occur for the physical game world to function. In other words, there is an ideology that informs the physical mechanics of every game. In FNV, the existence of items as named things that can be traded within a definite functional currency in the form of caps, denarii, or NCR dollars is enough to make the entirety of the game dependent on a capitalist system. Money is treated as a natural, qualitative constant that can be modified only quantitatively. Neither Legionaries nor Great Khans can escape the necessity of item management.

i didn't think about looking at the gameplay but i guess it backs the argument up pretty well

the main theme of the game was about rebuilding the new world in the image of the old. all of the factions in new vegas derive their identity from the pre-war world of capitalism despite the fact that the world ended because of capitalism, even with the knowledge that capitalism will destroy the world the ideology is too strong for people to let go or imagine anything new.

Actually i thought about it better and you're wrong. The idea of unique weapons as powerful artifacts is derivative of the idea of the "Artifact" being an object that represents both the status and the power of his wielder. For example Excalibur in the arthurian cycle, or the One Ring in LOTR. Unique weapons are used in this sense as a means to give the player satisfaction from achieving a high in-game status (after all the main driving force in the gdr narrative is the reward at the end of the quest). This is also the reason why lategame powergodding in bethesda game is so fun, but gets boring after a while. I'm btw.

Imperialism and jingoism and state-sponsored lotting and raiding is not capitalism. Slavery is inherently anti-capitalist.

I'm . Sorry i linked the wrong post.

>the romans, literally nazi usa with a regimented aconomy, and colonial territory of california were capitalist
you need to stop seeing everything as capitalist because it didn't exist in those places

What did new vegas have to say about Hegel again?

>implying video games have any sort of ideological depth outside of "good guys may do bad things and bad guys may do good things"

>Slavery is inherently anti-capitalist.
No, it's absolute capitalism where even human life is viewed as a commodity. In this form of capitalism humans exist to be rounded up as slaves just as trees exist to be chopped down for lumber.

All you're doing is smearing
>this form of capitalism
you're not actually offering and evidence that its capitalistic. As you're not allowed to accuse people of crimes without evidence acceptable in a court of law.

If slavery isn't capitalism then to what economic system does it belong?

Which is it Veeky Forums?

torture
slavery belongs to the criminal code and The Law as proscribed and written by God.

But isn't the idea of the commodity essentially a development of the idea of the artifact? Since during the Middle Ages great deeds and power were popularly considered inseparable, didn't e.g. the relics of St. James have real, material value due to their ostensible "deeds"? That is, because they had been "touched by a saint" (they were once his) they know have value in the form of sacred powers. Isn't the commodity just a more generalized form of this? The unique weapons certainly borrow that older conception of sacred power, but they maintain the general quality of being "mass-produced," so to speak. While a relic of St. James must be truly unique (there can only be one thing that looks like it; this or that specific bone fragment cannot be mass produced), "This Machine" is merely a powerful battle rifle among many unremarkable battle rifles.

Managers do plenty. But the most important role they serve is as the first layer of insulation between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The second and third are the police and military/PMCs. The violent state apparatus is a problem for any conscientious marxist.

another words capitalism...

The Law is not an economic system

guilt

God you're dense. The "Law" you speak of is just a regulation of capitalism. Capitalism without regulations is still capitalism. I'm not sure where you are confused on this...

The mind

>belief isn't there

Karl MArx basically wrote that in a communist society there would be no police officers or judges, is anything that is not a part of his fantasy: capitalism?

>But isn't the idea of the commodity essentially a development of the idea of the artifact?
Not quite. The equivalent of a contemporary status symbols (for example a Lamborghini or a big house) in the middle ages were other status symbols (for example a castle or clothes made from exotic materials). The difference between a status symbol and an artifact is that, imo, one exist only in a fictional narrative (because of the fictional narrative and for the fictional narrative) and the other is a real-world thing, based on real world parameters which determinate its value as a status symbol. Everyone irl (in theory) can get a Lamborghini, but in the videogame only you can possess Unique Weapons, as they are a testament of your unique (within the fictional world) ability. I'd also say that is the idea of the powerful artifact that derives from IRL status symboles and not the other way around.

>status symboles
*status symbols

Who's saying anything about communism? Did you reply to the wrong user, user? How is your question even remotely relevant to the topic of slavery being or not being capitalistic?

post Veeky Forums games

Man, i really wished they gave Kirkbride more artistic freedom. 36 lessons is one of the best things to ever happen to vidya.

...

i'm sleepy as fuck and i write like a retarded mongoloid
sorry

someone started quoting marxs theory of labor in the previous statement.

>Everyone irl (in theory) can get a Lamborghini, but in the videogame only you can possess Unique Weapons, as they are a testament of your unique (within the fictional world) ability.

This confuses me because you say "everyone in theory can get a Lamborghini," which places its power squarely in the realm of the fictive, but you also say unique weapons are testaments to your ability "within the fictional world." Both of these seem to me to derive their powers from fictional narratives.

If you're saying that a Lambo is necessarily desirable because it's a "performance machine," that's a capitulation to advertising. I personally would have very little use for Lambo, and I'm certain that most people who own one have little use for it as well (other than to show off status).

What gives the unique weapon its material power in the game? It can't be "your unique ability" because: the weapons are objects outside of your character's self, and many of the unique weapons (Blade of the East, Big Boomer, etc.) are carried by NPCs. Unique weapons are such only because they are programmed to be the powerful among the common. The premise of the unique weapon is an inversion of the principle of the artifact: "Scarcity gives power" in the former, "power is scarce" in the latter.

i really want him to play new vegas just to see what he thinks of it

Uhm you make some good points. Let me reply.
>This confuses me because you say "everyone in theory can get a Lamborghini," which places its power squarely in the realm of the fictive, but you also say unique weapons are testaments to your ability "within the fictional world."
I wasn't clear enough here. A Lamborghini is a status symbol because it symbolizes your high social status (not because it is a "performance machine"), but everyone can obtain it. In the realm of the videogame you are the only true actor, a NPC can't really "posses" anything because it is just another object in a worlds of objects who only acquire meaning in function of the only subject of the narration: You (i mean the real You, not the videogame alterego You). Everyone can get a Lamborghini in real life, but only very few do. Only you can acquire the unique weapon (because you are the only true actor as i said), but you always do (unless you're a 90 y.o. man who can't play videogames).
>The premise of the unique weapon is an inversion of the principle of the artifact: >"Scarcity gives power" in the former, "power is scarce" in the latter.
Disagree. I think you're also confusing the fictional level with the metafictional one (this is one of the wonders of videogames). What gives Excalibur its power? On a fictional level, it is powerful because various reasons, on a metafictional one, because the author decided so. How is this different from unique weapons?
btw i'm hungry as fuck so i'm gonna eat something and then come back to this conversation.

>speak to Caesar
>no option to correct his plebby-as-fuck interpretation of Hegelian dialectics

i think arcade calls him out on it when you leave the tent, not sure

b-b-but Caesar is meant to be a pseud

>A Lambo is a status symbol because it symbolizes high social status
Circuitous logic

>Everyone can get a Lamborghini in real life, but only very few do. Only you can acquire the unique weapon (because you are the only true actor as i said), but you always do (unless you're a 90 y.o. man who can't play videogames).
But that is the problem of a fictional, self-contained commodity society: everyone can always have everything. This is better explored in an online game. If everyone had every weapon in e.g. WoW, the game would be boring and monotonous. Without the concept of artificial scarcity, an online video-game really couldn't function. Single-player games are this at an individual level, i.e. since you really are, as you say, the only player, you only have to "beat the game" (as opposed to other players in the game) in order to become essentially "all-powerful." This is what makes single player games "easier" than multi-player games.

I totally agree with your fictional-metafictional distinction, I'm actually using the same one. But that which separates unites as well. The meta-fictional provides the essential underpinning of the fictional. In other words, one's "style" (i.e. philosophy of aesthetics) is informed by one's philosophy in general, if we take philosophy to be a theory of practice.

...

>tfw Legion's faction is underdeveloped, and you'll never see the plotlines and missions there were fragments of.

>A Lambo is a status symbol because it symbolizes high social status
>Circuitous logic
Lmao sorry about that one, i mean to write something like "A Lamborghini symbolizes high social status because it is hard to obtain and it means you have a big penis and you are rich blablabla".

I agree with your analysis of WoW, but disagree that singleplayer games are also like that. In a singleplayer games you cannot not get the Artifact. You already have the Artifact, potentially, in the moment you start playing. In wow this is different because the objects exist in a social context (many actors). Arthur always gets Excalibur. He cannot not extract the sword from the rock. I think the same is true for singleplayer games. This is what i mean by an "Artifact".

>I totally agree with your fictional-metafictional distinction, I'm actually using the same one. >But that which separates unites as well. The meta-fictional provides the essential underpinning of the fictional. In other words, one's "style" (i.e. philosophy of aesthetics) is informed by one's philosophy in general, if we take philosophy to be a theory of practice.
Agree but i don't see how unique weapons can't be considered artifacts.
i feel like we're talking on two different levels tbqhs

>the world ended because of capitalism
>the in-game reason is because the communist Chinese nuked America

Do you have the dialogue or know the jyst of what he said?

>capitalism is based around two people mutually trading goods for mutual gain
nigger what
People trading happened millenia before capitalism started existing.

>China
>Communist and not state capitalist

yeah no buddy

youtube.com/watch?v=NyeTaXv6o4Y

Starts at 1:15 or thereabouts.

>ask Caesar about dialectics
>smugly tells player to read more
>proceeds to regurgitate the Fichtean thesis-antithesis-synthesis triad and claims it is Hegelian dialectics

Caesar confirmed for Veeky Forums user.

>capitalist
>capital
>cap

>caps

>The NCR is bad because it's bound to fail
>Let's emulate an empire that also failed instead
Ceasar WHAT THE FUCK man

>2017
>still thinking capitalism is an ideology and not an alien intelligence invading from the future

Isn't that a good way to sum up Hegelian dialectics though? I mean how else are you going to "basically" explain Hegel. It doesn't make much sense in the context of his empire though.

You definitely have the weapons in single player games potentially, but to me the same logic extends to multi-player games. Don't you have the weapons potentially in WoW? If you lack this potential, how could you acquire the weapons in any event? The number of actors necessitates an ever-increasing game difficulty; the capital of skill is continually deposited and renewed in the game by those who play it. In a single player game, there is a definite cap to this; the story can be fully completed.

In the story of Arthur and Excalibur, there is only one of each. Certainly the story has been widely distributed, copied, emulated, etc. I'm sure some people have had delusions of being King Arthur. But in the end, the logic of the story provides for one King Arthur. He is physically described, he does definite things, he has a temporal arc he must follow.

An open world video game modifies this on two fronts: first, the strict temporal structure is disregarded in favor of a broad one, and second, the artifacts are mass produced. The events of the Arthurian legend follow one another chronologically, while in FNV this archaism is confined to the "main story." All other quests can be done in more or less any order. And in the Arthurian legend, there is only one Excalibur. Arthur does not come across any Excaliburs that are not imbued with power, any swords that look exactly like Excalibur but are merely called "longsword" (or whatever). This property of exact replication is inherent in commodity society, but not in e.g. a strictly feudal one.

Obviously in games like Legend of Zelda the structure is different; Link will have one Master Sword, but things like arrows and bombs emulate the mass produced. There are fewer commodities because the game tries to recreate a less developed form of commodity society.

ok grant morrison

agreed. love MK and the batman games are good but I wish he'd write more fantasy.

But in the game they were hardcore commies tho

>elon musk

they might have been capitalists then, but most democracies were more intent on conquest than stability and infastructure back then.

Different sources within different fallout games point the finger at different people who started firing nukes. At times China is blamed, at times the US, at times it seemed to be a confusing mess. The Mothership Zeta dlc implied it was caused by the aliens.
My favorite interpretation is that Vaut-Tec had invested so much into preparing for the bombs, setting things up for the post-bomb landscape, and infiltrating both the government and military that they pulled the trigger themselves instead of waiting around for it to occur from some real conflict. Maybe to some extent they're still out there pulling various strings. A game exploring that would be much better than the shitpile that was 4, in my eyes.

How could they be communist if they were fighting for a state?

UHH bruh you might want to crack open a wikipedia or something. communism isn't wearing a DSA shirt and screaming impeach trump, it's the system of government wherein the state controls literally everything. supposedly because a top-down solution makes sense when clearly it does not. witness mass starvations in communist regimes, most notably the inept collectivization of the soviet union. 10/10 good bait fuckface.

The more I think about it, the more I think the Thalmor are supposed to be a Jewish characterization.
>big nosed
>elitist
>secret masters behind everything
What did Todd Howard mean by this?

Ok, here is wikipedia
"ultimate goal is the establishment of the communist society, which is a socioeconomic order structured upon the common ownership of the means of production and the absence of social classes, money[3][4] and the state"

>UHH bruh
>crack open a wikipedia
>the state controls literally everything
Yeah this sounds like just about exactly what I would expect when somebody learns all of their political theory with cursory glances at the first paragraph of a wikipedia article

yeah communism and our democratic republic are the same shit right?

>absence of social classes
a preposterous promise no matter what manner of snake oil you are selling. god would have to remake humanity.

>absence of money
ok soooo how do we manage the fair distribution of resources? what if we just hand out tokens that people can exchange for goods and services and transactions are kept in ledgers which are turned in to the state BRILLIANT

>absence of the state
right right We The People are also the body of the state and have ultimate authority but much like the soviet political class humans have a tendency to gather economic and social power in oligarchies at the top

humans are apes and i swear to fucking god communism is the dumbest shit in the world why do american children fall for this garbage

Stop posting any time now

>they might have been capitalists
Dude you don't understand what capitalism is about.
I'll give you a very big hint: it's in the fucking name.

you aren't getting a (You) from me faggot i mean besides this one but I LIKE FILLING OUT CAPTCHA

>communism is unrealistic muh nature muh soviet failures
Yes good post nobody has ever come up with such nuanced and unique arguments user this is such solid discourse you have set so many "american children" straight

Courier runs independent Vegas best new ending

Dude: they had money

>communism is unrealistic
>muh nature
>ALL HOGWASH MY MAN

yes good post nobody has ever tried Real Communism (TM) yet and I hope Hillary runs again how do you like my shirt it cost $23 #ImWithHer #SinglePayer #StrongerTogetherAgain

Define "money."

so absolute capitalism has no economic agents and only commodities? how is that capitalism again? who is going to exchange the commodities?

>another words
wew

The economic agents are treated as commodities that exchange themselves, idiot

I was mocking the fact that you saw people in a thread discussing communism and capitalism and saw it as your duty to come tell everyone how Real Life is nothing like communism and how people starved in the USSR as if this was a unique revelation none of us had ever considered in the past. If you noticed, the post you just replied to is my only one so far, and I never defended communism, capitalism, or hillary (lmao), I explicitly insulted you.

I thought they were rounded up, chump

>unique

The sky is blue. The truth doesn't have to be unique.

I'm not the person you originally responded to. I think you're both wrong.

whoa, I thought my position was just the negation of that user's -- what's yours, then?

itt: a bunch of psuedo intellectuals look way too deeply into a childrens game

>hillary clinton
>communism
this is your brain on /pol/

Capitalist commodity society is perpetuated by fabricating tacit assent. The majority of proletarians and bourgeois alike are slaves to ideology; they round themselves, and each other, up.

this went from a really good thread to a really cancer thread

Pharaoh (1999)

>Lonesome Road is not about American exceptionalism and the Frontier hypothesis
>Old World Blues is not about the joy of exploration and cognitive dissonance
>Dead Money is not about triumphing over your past without losing yourself
>Honest Hearts is not about the social conflict of indigenous groups being corrupted by outside societies
haha, fucking video games are dumb, right?

Not really, if you want to debate capitalism you should know what it is first. What you're thinking of would be industrialism, feudalism, etc.

Capitalism has nothing to do with labor, capitalism is just a trade system with little-to-no state intervention.

If everyone had a farm and there was no controlling government, they would instinctively trade the different commodities for things they need (Instead of having their own product in surplus), that's capitalism. What Adam Smith did was just name it, and then Capitalism itself has different 'sub-systems', Feudalism, Liberalism (Which is more socialistic, but still capitalistic), etc.

Please refrain from looking like an uninformed dumbass like , while you probably see him as a complete moron, you don't actually understand what you're talking about- much like him- and you're also a complete moron.

You again make some good points which oblige me to reply. But since I'm a lazy fuck i'll respond tomorrow.

House is the archetypal Anglo

The romans weren't capitalist. Caesar designed his empire to be unstable. He intended for the legion to collapse after his death so as to create a reset of the status quo for something better. the legion itself is in line with the stability of capitalism.

>Capitalism has nothing to do with labor, capitalism is just a trade system with little-to-no state intervention.
No it's not. Capitalism is the use of capital as a multiplicator of labour.
Capitalism is investing part of your profits in things like research, new machineries, etc. that will further increase your profit.

Funnily enough farmer trading they're goods for other goods they needs with no surplus and no state supervision is textbook communism

far left: ncr
centris: caesar's legion
far right: tunnel snakes

caesars legion is anarchism. NCR is a fucking totalitarian military state, how is it far lef- I guess that makes sense

Caesar's legion is a monarchy ready to crumble after the dead of the king (or player takes over)
House is centrist
Player is enlightened gnostic Budha ready to overdose on dmt and achieve chim.