papasquat's recent activity
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Comment on Ahead of an all-digital future for PlayStation, Sony needs to prove in courts that players know they don't own digitally purchased games in ~games
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Comment on Ahead of an all-digital future for PlayStation, Sony needs to prove in courts that players know they don't own digitally purchased games in ~games
papasquat Link ParentI think that has a lot more to do with Valve being generally seen as an overall hugely positive force in gaming, with a history of very few anti-consumer decisions versus basically any company in...I think that has a lot more to do with Valve being generally seen as an overall hugely positive force in gaming, with a history of very few anti-consumer decisions versus basically any company in the world with the same amount of revenue.
People generally trust Valve not to fuck them over. They don't trust Adobe, or Sony, or Microsoft to do the same. A lot of that is that Valve is privately owned unlike all of those other companies, but just as importantly is who is running it. Gabe Newell has spent decades at this point consistently building up the trust of its customers in a way that few modern companies have.
Valve has always been an absolute anomaly, not only in the gaming space, but for a business as a whole, almost entirely because of Gabe Newell.
Once Gabe retires or god forbid, passes away, I think a lot of PC gamers will view their Steam libraries much more skeptically.
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Comment on Ahead of an all-digital future for PlayStation, Sony needs to prove in courts that players know they don't own digitally purchased games in ~games
papasquat Link ParentConsoles (were) far ahead (or behind, depending how you look at it) of PC when it comes to game ownership. There's historically been far less of a need for software DRM in consoles because they...Consoles (were) far ahead (or behind, depending how you look at it) of PC when it comes to game ownership.
There's historically been far less of a need for software DRM in consoles because they control both the platform and the media, so very effective hardware DRM could be implemented that made owning a disc synonymous with owning a game.
That hasn't been the case with PC games since... Ever really, so publishers had to invent new ways to do DRM like CD keys or online DRM platforms.
One of the beauties of console gaming has always been that if your friend wants to check out a game you owned, you could just give them the disc. If you no longer played a game, you could just sell it on eBay or trade it in.
On consoles, games were physical objects. On PC, they never really were.
If I was a console gamer, I would be pretty pissed off if that paradigm changed.
As a PC gamer, I'm frankly a little jealous of how good they'd had it for so long. I have probably tens of thousands of dollars of games on steam that I don't play, and likely will never play again. It would be nice to be able to sell them to someone who would.
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Comment on Ahead of an all-digital future for PlayStation, Sony needs to prove in courts that players know they don't own digitally purchased games in ~games
papasquat Link ParentNah. I'm not one of them though. It makes weapons feel entirely disposable. Even the super rare awesome ones. I don't mind weapon durability in games if 1. It happens at a reasonable rate, and 2....Sidenote about Breath of the Wild: Am I the only one, who actually likes breakable weapons?
Nah. I'm not one of them though. It makes weapons feel entirely disposable. Even the super rare awesome ones. I don't mind weapon durability in games if 1. It happens at a reasonable rate, and 2. Its temporary, with a sustainable wait to maintain weapons. BoTW fails on both of those fronts.
I can find an awesome endgame sword, and the thing seriously lasts like 30 hits. Even the cheapest harbor freight wrench I've ever bought allows me to turn a bolt more than 30 times. Using those weapons reminds me of the chairs and furniture in old wrestling games that you could use as improvised weapons. You could hit someone with it and it would last a few hits and then fall apart. Makes sense and feels grounded when talking about a chair, not so much when talking about a masterfully crafted sword.
But to each their own, I understand the point about using a variety of weapons, and I'm usually very into systems that force players to do that, I just wish it was done in a different way
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Comment on Ahead of an all-digital future for PlayStation, Sony needs to prove in courts that players know they don't own digitally purchased games in ~games
papasquat Link ParentI think a lot of the time they do that to disguise the loading process in the background. It feels better for most people to see a splash screen instead of waiting for a UI to load. In some cases...I think a lot of the time they do that to disguise the loading process in the background. It feels better for most people to see a splash screen instead of waiting for a UI to load. In some cases that's either not the case though, or the splash screen takes longer than the loading would have normally. Fuck that.
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Comment on Ahead of an all-digital future for PlayStation, Sony needs to prove in courts that players know they don't own digitally purchased games in ~games
papasquat Link ParentConvenience is what drove me back into TV show/movie piracy. I don't mind paying for entertainment. I pay for a lot of it. What I do mind, is deciding I want to watch a movie searching the catalog...Convenience is what drove me back into TV show/movie piracy.
I don't mind paying for entertainment. I pay for a lot of it. What I do mind, is deciding I want to watch a movie searching the catalog of a service I pay monthly for, not finding it, having to go online to figure out where I can pay for it, creating an account, putting my credit card info in, downloading the app, signing in, figuring out the subtly different interface, then setting a reminder to cancel the subscription when I'm done watching it.
Its just a pain in the ass, and I'm not going to subscribe to 10 different monthly services on the off chance I feel like watching a movie or show from them. There was a period of about 8 years when Netflix mostly had everything I wanted to watch, and I felt perfectly ok with paying for it. Those days are long gone, and at this point, piracy is way easier than dealing with the cluster fuck media companies have created out of pure greed, so fuck them, they don't get my money, and I watch their stuff for free.
If video games or music ever get to that point, I'll pirate them also. I have zero moral qualms with doing it.
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Comment on Gamergate but actually in ~games
papasquat Link ParentIn a vacuum, its weird that gamergate is seen as this moment, because it's centered about an obscure game no one has ever heard of, and the conflict of interest at play isn't really that clear...It wasn't just gamergate, but that time was really the cataclysm for traditional games journalism.
In a vacuum, its weird that gamergate is seen as this moment, because it's centered about an obscure game no one has ever heard of, and the conflict of interest at play isn't really that clear cut.
To me, the actual moment regarding an industry reckoning about ethical games journalism should have been one with a much more substantial story at its center: the firing of Jeff Gerstmann from Gamespot.For those who are unfamiliar, Jeff was an editorial director at gamepot in 2007. He published a negative review of the game Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, a AAA game published by Eidos interactive. The issue for Gamespot was that they had just signed a marketing deal with Eidos, branding the whole website with a Kane and Lynch theme.
What followed was Jeff stating Giant Bomb, and a mass exodus from Gamespot by Jeff's colleagues over to Giant Bomb.
This was a real story about games journalism conflicts of interest, with real money behind it, and real careers impacted. It was a big story at the time, but not even close to what gamergate became.
If there was a real moment to examine gaming journalism, it was in 2007, not 2014. It wasn't about a woman though, and there was no salacious relationship story to go along with it. As a result, the real fuel for gamergate wasn't present: misogyny.
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Comment on Gamergate but actually in ~games
papasquat Link ParentThere's no way I'm watching a six hour video on virtually anything, much less gamergate. That said, I think there probably are interesting angles to examine how a drama post containing one little...There's no way I'm watching a six hour video on virtually anything, much less gamergate. That said, I think there probably are interesting angles to examine how a drama post containing one little miniscule seed of a story (conflict of interest in a story about a virtually unknown video game) is turned into a cultural turning point.
"The internet does misogynistic harassment" is probably the least interesting thing about gamergate at this point. Partially because it's been covered to absolute death, and partially because we've seen the pattern repeat thousands of times since.
In 100 years though, that post could very well be seen as a hugely impactful turning point marking the American descent into open fascism, so examining the mechanisms behind that could be interesting.
That said, I'm not gonna watch a six hour long video to find out. This new breed of YouTube video essayists really need to learn how to edit.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
papasquat LinkWarhammer 40,000: Darktide: I bought this near where it came out and had a lot of fun playing with my friends, but as happens so often with games like this, they got distracted by the next shiny...Warhammer 40,000: Darktide:
I bought this near where it came out and had a lot of fun playing with my friends, but as happens so often with games like this, they got distracted by the next shiny thing before barely scratching the surface of the game. I recently started playing it again, and I really like it, with a few caveats.- Class differentiation: this is an issue I had with both vermintide games too. Every class has a primary weapon (Melee weapon) and a secondary weapon (ranged weapon, almost always a gun). There are differences in the classes, they have different talents, an active ability that they can use, and they're different sizes, but they all basically play the same. The differences don't become hugely apparent until you have a lot of hours in the game. The talents are subtle, and there are just so many of them that it's hard to tell wtf is going on and why you're doing so much or so little damage. A lot of these talents are auras that you have a very tough time telling where they're coming from.
The classes all pretty much look the same too, except for the ogryn. They're just... Guys, and there are so many cosmetics that it's hard to tell what class is what.
- Systems/currency/etc: This is a problem with basically every live service game, so I'm not singling out this one. There are just so many currencies in the game. There are "ordo dockets" which is the basic currency, there are "aquilas" which are the real money currency, there are "ingots", which are a special challenge currency. There's plasteel, which is used for upgrading weapons in some way, there's diamondite, which is also used for upgrading weapons. There's probably others I'm forgetting, but engaging with this kind of stuff is just exhausting to me. It reminds me of credit card churning where people spend all this time researching transfer deals and stuff, and that kind of thing really just turns me off and feels like work. I know that they do this because these types of games are intended to be fueled by cosmetic purchases on an ongoing basis, but to me, at this point, its to the detriment of the actual game. I wish devs just had one currency if the game needs it, and then they had cosmetic items available to purchase with dollars/euros/whatever your local currency is outright. Its to the point that when I hear the newest games made up currencies it makes me feel second hand embarrassment. "Collect more Eldritch Shards to get this cloak" or whatever just makes me groan now.
That said, the gunplay feels really good with most guns. The melee combat feels satisfying, and I'm bad at it, but I know there's a lot of hidden depth with it, and good god there's a lot of stats to look at if you really want to min/max your character (I don't).
The voice acting is incredible and the writing is generally very good, although I will admit to not actually paying attention to any of the overall story. The dynamic inter character banter has always been the best part of the writing of left 4 dead-like games anyway, and I've never really cared to engage with the overall stories much anyway.
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Comment on Gamergate but actually in ~games
papasquat Link ParentYeah. I remember reading the original Zoe post and coming away with it thinking 2 things: Zoe Quinn seems like a pretty shitty, manipulative person in the context of romantic relationships. But...Yeah. I remember reading the original Zoe post and coming away with it thinking 2 things:
- Zoe Quinn seems like a pretty shitty, manipulative person in the context of romantic relationships.
But more than that,
- The guy who wrote it seems very immature and butt hurt about the whole thing.
Its funny looking back on it with the life experience I have now, and I think both of those things still hold true for me.
Still, I've seen a lot of commentary blaming the OP of the Zoe post for all of the fallout of gamer gate, and unless you're assigning clairvoyance to the guy, I don't see how there's any way he could have predicted the insane butterfly affect that resulted from his actions. Was the post immature? yeah. was it whiny? yeah. But it's something a lot of people would do in the same circumstances.
So yeah, Zoe is (or at least was) a pretty shitty person to her boyfriend back then, and the boyfriend was pretty immature and shortsighted for posting it, but gamergate became a gigantic toxic nightmare far bigger than either of their sins very quickly afterwards. Zoe bore the brunt of it, which she didn't deserve, but it's not exactly her ex boyfriend's fault either.
Neither of those takeaways have much to do with ethics in games journalism though.
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Comment on Gamergate but actually in ~games
papasquat Link ParentI mean, the stakes are not virtually zero, but they are very, very low compared to what gamergate became. Most movements, no matter how abhorrent, usually start with a tiny grain of legitimate...I mean, the stakes are not virtually zero, but they are very, very low compared to what gamergate became.
Most movements, no matter how abhorrent, usually start with a tiny grain of legitimate grevience. Taking gamergate in its totality, it's safe to say it was a right wing, misogynistic movement used by racists, sexists, transphobes, and general far right people to push society in general further to the right, and is in large part responsible for Donald Trump being elected.
At the same time though, video games are the most lucrative entertainment industry in the world, and it's by a long shot. There are hundreds of billions of dollars floating around video games, it directly employs hundreds of thousands of people, and it wields massive cultural influence.
Journalism around it is as big of a deal as journalism around sports, movies, fashion, music, or tv. Is it as important as journalism uncovering political corruption or human rights abuses? No, but it still has a lot of influence on a lot of people's livelihood. It still matters, and in a perfect world, you could look into questionable conflicts of interests without it turning into a fascist firestorm that makes women fearful for their lives.
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Comment on Stop Killing The Internet: No digital ID and no age verification in ~tech
papasquat Link ParentI think most people currently don't care about it because they view it as an inevitability, like the weather. People get data breach notifications all the time, and they don't like it, but their...I think most people currently don't care about it because they view it as an inevitability, like the weather. People get data breach notifications all the time, and they don't like it, but their attitude is "well, my personal info has already leaked a dozen times in the past decade. What's one more?".
Everyone hates junk mail, spam and targeted ads, but there's no alternative that's ever been presented.
Yeah, you'd have a lot of money to run against, but so do environmentalists, public healthcare advocates, urbanists, and tons of other issues where people mostly feel one way, but capital feels another, and all of those things have gained at least some semblance of traction. So it's hard, but it's not like it's impossible to take on business.
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Comment on We surveyed 6,000 Americans. Here is the winning message for Democrats - Opinion, Dustin Guastella and Erica Etelson in ~society
papasquat Link ParentMost people in general wouldn't mind living in a fascist state, with one giant caveat: as long as they're not the ones being persecuted. Most people would, all things equal, prefer everyone be...One of the most surprising things to me about the rise of American fascism is how okay many Americans of voting age are with it. Not necessarily enthusiastic supporters, but, unbothered about living in an American flavoured version of the definition of a fascist state, or the most useful version I've come across.
Most people in general wouldn't mind living in a fascist state, with one giant caveat: as long as they're not the ones being persecuted. Most people would, all things equal, prefer everyone be treated with respect, but if it comes down to persecuting and scapegoating minorities and their own well being being impacted in any way, they'll choose the fascism every time.
That's part of the reason why fascism has any kind of success at all. If someone came in and said "we're going to put people in camps, and we'll all have to tighten our belts a bit to do it, but it's the right thing to do", no one in their right mind would ever vote them in. It would be a fringe movement by die hard lunatics that have devoted their entire core to hatred.
Facists don't do that though, they say "we'll put those people in camps and that will solve all of our problems. We'll get our jobs back, we'll be prosperous, you can have lots of kids and not worry about crime or anything!" And people believe them.
The human tendency to look out for you and your family's interests over compassion for strangers takes over, and even though fascists are blatant liars, and even if you're in the "in group", life overall sucks under fascism, by the time most people realize that it's too late.
It just takes the right combination of social conditions, and charismatic fascists, and any society is vulnerable to it.
That's why the effective counter message isn't "hey guys actually concentration camps are wrong. We cannot morally vote for these guys". Yeah, it's true, but that's not what people care about.
People care about their own well being, so the counter message should actually be "your life will suck under these policies. Take a look at our real, proven plan for how we can actually make this place better for you and your family, and take a look at all the times the fascists failed at that"
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Comment on Who likes GTA? in ~games
papasquat LinkI love GTA online, with some very, very strong caveats, because the way I play it doesn't seem to match how virtually anyone else I've met online plays it. I detest the open world stuff. I hate...I love GTA online, with some very, very strong caveats, because the way I play it doesn't seem to match how virtually anyone else I've met online plays it.
I detest the open world stuff. I hate the heists, the stupid property purchase stuff, the dumb missions, the random rolling around getting into death matches with players who have the latest overpowered crap that Rockstar had them buy shark cards to use.
What I do like is curating playlists with my friends of custom games in a private lobby. We'll do a round of sumo (everyone is in the same car, they try to stay in increasingly small bubbles around a small, set map while everyone tries to push everyone else out), a race or two. Rockets vs cars (cars go over a huge ramp to try to kill people on a platform, who are trying to blow up the cars with rocket launchers), and lots of other games like that. There are a ton of really fun custom games that involve cars and guns, because that's what GTA is great at.
Its a ton of fun, it's not super tryhard and sweaty, you don't have to grind for anything, and it's not full of hackers, because it's a private lobby.
Every time I play the game though, it becomes more of a pain in the ass to do the one part of the game that I think is any good. They randomly delete fun custom games for no reason, the interface is god awful, the game has always taken forever to load, and they force you to use that stupid in game cell phone for everything.
If there was a similar game that just had the custom game stuff with similar gameplay that I could join my friends via steam with, we'd drop it in a millisecond.
I did mostly enjoy the GTA V single player campaign when it came out, and I've played through all of the games campaigns since GTA III, and they're fun, but mostly forgettable. They're definitely not a top 10 single player campaign or anything, but if I'm buying GTA VI for the multiplayer, and I probably am, I will likely play through the campaign also.
I think most people that are still playing GTA online are either very invested in the grindy min maxy aspect of all the random dumb money making schemes that Rockstar puts into the game a few times a year (which I'd rather gouge my eyeballs out than engage with), or they're playing on custom RP servers, which... online RP has always struck me as a really sad approximation of a real social life with actual friends. Not hating on anyone into that stuff, and I love role playing, but only with actual people I'm actually friends with. I think the people who heavily engage in online RP communities tend to take it far too seriously, and use it as a substitute for actual human connection, which, to me, feels deeply unhealthy.
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Comment on Meta agrees to heavy restrictions on teen users in major lawsuit settlement in ~tech
papasquat Link ParentYeah, it kinda reminds me of smoking companies advertising to kids. They didn't have to have cartoon mascots, or advertise to kids using the flinstones or whatever. They were selling an addictive...Yeah, it kinda reminds me of smoking companies advertising to kids. They didn't have to have cartoon mascots, or advertise to kids using the flinstones or whatever. They were selling an addictive product that grows out of the ground. All they had to do was dry it, wrap it in paper, package it, and sell it for the equivalent of 5 bucks a pack, and they were making money hand over fist. It wasn't enough for them though, and they had to get younger and younger kids hooked, which started the beginning of the end for them.
These social media companies remind me a lot of big tobacco in the 80s and 90s. The feigning of the ignorance around the harms of their product. The sniveling spineless groveling. The failure to acknowledge the harm they've caused and the fear mongering about personal freedom and how good hard working Americans just want an nice cigarette/endless algorithm feed at the end of the day to take the edge off, but the paternalistic government won't get off their backs.
Its all bullshit, and the only thing they're actually afraid of is their bottom line.
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Comment on Stop Killing The Internet: No digital ID and no age verification in ~tech
papasquat Link ParentHonestly, why? Like actually, what are the real political roadblocks here? Yes, there are a lot of special interests that have a lot of financial incentives towards making this not happen, but...The problem with this is that it's not going to happen
Honestly, why? Like actually, what are the real political roadblocks here?
Yes, there are a lot of special interests that have a lot of financial incentives towards making this not happen, but it's also a ridiculously, broadly popular proposal. Its not a left right culture war issue, or some line in the sand for conservative or progressive politics. Almost everyone hates being mined for data, spam, robocalls, and so on.
You'd face increased funding from opposition candidates if you ran on that, but it would be a pretty broadly popular policy proposal as long as you could maintain some semblance of control of the narrative.
There's basically no regular voter who is on the site of giant social media or data aggregation companies.
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Comment on Meta agrees to heavy restrictions on teen users in major lawsuit settlement in ~tech
papasquat Link ParentIts extremely location dependent. Here's a good source from fidelity though: https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/smart-money/average-salary-in-us The number is kind of meaningless though to...Its extremely location dependent. Here's a good source from fidelity though: https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/smart-money/average-salary-in-us
The number is kind of meaningless though to be honest. Like, emotionally, I still have an association with $70,000 a year as a threshold for "a lot of money", and something like $45,000 as "average", which mostly has to do with my age.
The actual number isn't what determines what's a lot versus what's barely acceptable though, the purchasing power of a dollar is, and we've had record inflation in the US in the past few years.
That emotional association with what passed for a high versus average or low salary when you started working sticks with you, probably for your whole life. It explains a lot of the boomer mentality of "you're making $50,000 a year! What do you have to complain about money about???".
When your biggest cost is already paid off (housing) and you don't interact with the economy as much anymore, it's easy to forget that inflation is an ever present force in working people's lives, and that wages haven't kept up with it. Someone making $70,000 a year today is poorer than people who made $10,000 a year when boomers were kids.
That's an easy concept to understand intellectually, but tough to take to heart and feel on an emotional level.
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Comment on Meta agrees to heavy restrictions on teen users in major lawsuit settlement in ~tech
papasquat Link ParentI'd agree with you if social media and it's affect on teen depression were something new. But it's effects have been studied for decades at this point. We know that bombarding young, developing...I'd agree with you if social media and it's affect on teen depression were something new. But it's effects have been studied for decades at this point. We know that bombarding young, developing minds with people to compare themselves to, things that make them angry, advertisements that make them feel like outsiders, and features to keep them hooked on that content has a harmful impact on their minds and behavior. We know those impacts can result in depression, murder, and suicide. Facebook knows they have billions of users and that some proportion of them would be driven to do this stuff. They intentionally put those anti fearures in place anyway.
I think they're as directly responsible as anyone that runs a website can be.
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Comment on Young adults in the US are increasingly wary of AI, concerned it will take jobs in ~tech
papasquat Link ParentThat's one of the arguments I hear about the public good of traditional stock trading, (and one I sort of believe) that I still think is pretty weak. I haven't looked into the numbers...Even with normal stock trading, as disconnected as it is from reality, there's at least the argument that you're investing in the company and believe in its future, regardless of what you plan to do with the actual stock
That's one of the arguments I hear about the public good of traditional stock trading, (and one I sort of believe) that I still think is pretty weak. I haven't looked into the numbers specifically, but something like like 99.99% of stock trading is on the secondary market, meaning, it doesn't help the company whose stock is being traded at all.
In theory, the people running a company shouldn't really give a shit about the stock price. If Microsoft's stock jumps 1000% overnight, Microsoft doesn't benefit from that at all, except for individuals who work at Microsoft and also happen to own their stock individually. The company itself doesn't see a dime of that increase.
They get a big cash infusion at the IPO, and that's it. Afterwards, it's just a bunch of people who own a piece of the company getting richer or poorer based on the stock price, and not actually directly influencing the company's operations at all.
So if you're buying stock at in IPO because you believe in the company's mission, I can see that being a public good, but buying it after that doesn't really actually help anyone except for investors. That one is harder to contort your brain into seeing how it helps the world.
I GUESS one argument you could make is that the anticipation of the secondary market drives up IPO prices, and without it, companies would get far less investment, but you really have to squint at that one.
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Comment on Young adults in the US are increasingly wary of AI, concerned it will take jobs in ~tech
papasquat Link ParentThe more that time goes on, and the less that a company's stock price reflects its actual earnings, or even its projected earnings, the more that the entire stock market seems like an entirely...The more that time goes on, and the less that a company's stock price reflects its actual earnings, or even its projected earnings, the more that the entire stock market seems like an entirely pointless shell game, or the world's biggest casino.
It used to be that companies that were well run and had good indicators of solid fundementals had high stock prices, because investors could rely on a steady flow of dividends from that stock based on their revenue.
You own a company, it does something that people find value in, they pay the company, and you earn profit because you own part of it, easy.
Now though, much of the market seems to be growth stocks entirely decoupled from any projection of dividend revenue. We want the stock solely because other people want the stock. Why do those people want the stock? Well, easy, because other people want the stock.
Like imagine if the rest of the economy worked this way? You start a lawn care business and invest a ton of money on advertising and flashy graphics. You don't actually own a lawn mower, and when people sign up, you just hire some kid to do a terrible job and charge the people an insane subscription fee. Anyone paying attention to your business knows that you have no way of actually making money with this model, and you just hemmorage money every month, but your entire goal is just to get as many people as possible familiar with your brand, so that someone else buys it. The person that buys it is also aware that it makes no money and can't possibly hope to make money, but they're banking on the brand becoming even more visible so they can sell it to the next guy.
The whole country would collapse in six months. It's absolute insanity, but that's how some of the most valuable publicly traded companies work now.
I used to understand on a theoretical level what the public good of the stock market was. Now, the whole thing just seems like a massive waste of time and resources.
Eh, in small pockets, but not predominantly. There were discs that were sold of course, but there's been a very strong culture of sharing game code among PC gaming independent of the media it was on from the very beginning. Spacewar was freely distributed amongst university staff. Commodore 64 games were given out as source code in the backs of magazines. Shareware was an extremely popular software distribution model. You just gave the disks to your friend to copy, and if they liked it, they'd buy a license key.
Consoles never worked that way. They had cartridges you bought, and that was the game. The game didn't exist independently of the media it was on.