Fun fact about capitalism (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Thursday, October 17, 2019, 16:36 (1650 days ago) @ cheapLEY

At the risk of treading into politics, I’ll just say a lot of this is not only about Destiny. I think the fact that “they’re just a business trying to make as much money as possible” is floated as a legitimate response and everyone takes that as a matter of fact and just accepts that as a completely legitimate defense is absolutely troubling. Yes, it’s at least a little hyperbolic. It’s a video game, there are far bigger issues to worry about. But it’s a tiny indicator of a problem in the system at large.

In my eyes, most conversations around this topic these days go drastically off the rails, mainly due to a few big misconceptions.

Capitalism is not an economic system that just sprung up out of the ground in a vacuum. It is the result of a far deeper philosophical and moral system of values. You start with the belief that every single human being is inherently valuable, and that each of us are ultimately responsible for our own choices. From that comes the inherent right for each of us to decide what is valuable to us, and to what extent, including our own time. And where we disagree with each other, we’re free to negotiate, and if that doesn’t work, we’re free to just walk away from each other. And so on.

What I’m getting at here is that capitalism inherently exists within a moral code. It is not, despite the common accusations, “all about making money”. Many people/businesses/corporations do appear to operate under that assumption to varying degrees, but that is absolutely not because of capitalism. Greed is greed, and it has been around since long before capitalism. Go anywhere in the world, at any point in human history, and you will find people crossing moral lines to acquire “more”.

The funny thing is, this inaccurate claim that I’m pointing at (the claim that the whole point of a business is just to make money) is used by people on both sides of the arguments that form around these topics. Apologists and defenders will say “hey, they’re just a business trying to make money, and that’s the whole point so who can blame them”. Meanwhile, some critics will point at perceived moral infractions (in this case, possibly predatory or misleading sales tactics) and say “See! This is the problem with capitalism!”.

I think this leads to misunderstandings on both sides and a lot of arguing past each other. But I think the whole thing is simpler than some people make it out to be. One of the fundamental moral codes on which the entire capitalist system stands is trust. For any of this to work, the parties involved need to be able to trust each other. Nobody wants to feel like they’ve been tricked into a deal they didn’t realize they were making. Which brings us back to the main topic at hand. Reading through that Reddit post in detail, there are a couple examples of Eververse implementation that do look disconcertingly close to “tricks”. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t, but they look suspicious enough to some people to raise red flags. Others may not have the same reaction, but IMO it is absolutely fair and reasonable for Destiny players to point at the things that bother them and say “hey Bungie, you’re making me wonder if I can trust you here”.

For me, that really is what it comes down to. Trust is the commodity of real value that keeps a company going. Yes, they need and want money, but trust is what allows Bungie to spend years and hundreds of millions of dollars making a new game, and it’s what makes players want to spend their money on each new Bungie game on day 1, instead of buying something else. And ultimately, trust is such a personal thing, we can’t really argue about it. All we can really do is try to get the facts straight, and then decide for ourselves.