Detroit: Become Human - PC is a game about optics.
It's easy to think esports is a success if you are involved in the business of esports. It's hard not to think of esports as a colossal failure if you actually care about esports.
A lot of people think I spend my anytime minutes railing against gaming; esports, in particular, thanks to my very public ignominious defeat at the battle of "The last 20 years." I won't deny that I am proper washed, the copious amount of salt on this omelet, or that I have graduated to the Achilles in His Tent trope.
But this isn't the reason I talk my talk. I do that because I'm tired of watching gaming groundhog day play out over and over for the last thirty years. Mark Fuckin' Cuban of all people hit the nail on the head. The thing that makes esports broken is not treated as a bug, it's respected as a feature. The Meta.
The esports industry has always attempted to market itself in line with Football, Baseball, and Basketball since the lights came on. Hmmm, what could be a few differences between the esports industry and these sports?
- Could it be the gigantic barrier of entry for esports?
- Could it be the Battle of the Five Armies (Platform, Developer, Team, Promoter, Players) that has raged for the one ring (control) since esports began?
- Could it be the comically toxic community of esports, who are getting more dangerous and unstable every day?
- Could it be the 1,000,000,000,000 games identified as esports but the .01% of games that are supported as esports?
- Could it be that most esports industry "professionals" are literal fuckin' idiots that are not qualified to manage a Finish Line in Hoboken yet receive ten million dollars to fail over five years thanks to a business plan that treats Twitch viewers like actual money and also explicitly states the business will make no actual money?
- Could it be SoftBank? No punchline.
- Could it be a 20-minute old game franchising with a 20 million dollar buy-in, consuming its own community like an ouroboros?
- Could it be game developers acting like gods? Creating a game and updating it as they see fit, thereby destroying the lively hoods of the people that pitch camp around the game, simply because it's their toy and they can do whatever they want?
- Could it be a tired 17-year-old kid sitting in a room 22 hours a day because to stay pro he has to compete in at least one online tournament a day, two LAN's a month, stream 2/3rds of the day to keep his 500,000 followers happy and also it's in his contract, doesn't have anywhere to go because the team moved him to a "Team House" for six months out of the year to train where he is away from his family, his culture, doesn't know anyone in the city, hates his teammates, and the management, and has begun to literally hate the game they play, feeling trapped by what they once loved? The only way to escape they see is to retire from esports. Burned out at 18 years old.
Baseball wasn't perfect at the start, but over time they built a system where a kid could play catch at four, move onto little league at twelve, play for a college education, move on to the pros, then, if they were good enough, have their jersey lifted to the rafters as they, in their old age, played catch with their child.
Esports are games designed with no end. That's the difference.
Anyway, playing Detroit: Become Human on the PC is hella weird cause it's like you are playing on one of these android niggas' cousins. I was talking to my PC tower-like, "Bro, what should I do in this scene." Then Alexa politely asked me to stop saying "Nigga," it got uncomfortable. The game's writing has the same uncanny valley you see in the eyes of a robot. But it's also good. It's shitty good, like a Rockstar game.
Shouts to info. rip tc rip tb rip tall-t. Love is wise, hatred is foolish. Get out there and do great things, we believe in you. Also Jobz.
The Protoculture Mixtape : Issue : People : Gumption
