r/gaming • u/Miserable_Phase_2519 PC • 10h ago

Dwarf Fortress' creator says the industry's in shambles over AI and layoff-happy CEOs: 'Everyone I know, their bosses are slowly getting psychosis'

https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/dwarf-fortress-creator-says-the-industrys-in-shambles-over-ai-and-layoff-happy-ceos-everyone-i-know-their-bosses-are-slowly-getting-psychosis/
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u/Arclite83 8h ago

We have issues as a species with "scale". About every 3 zeroes (x1000) is a new "universe". You live at 2m, an ant lives at 2mm, etc, up or down.

In money, that means beyond especially a million (x2) we are bad at appreciating a billion or a trillion. At this point you aren't a "citizen" if you don't have 5M, you're the great unwashed. There are 26M millionaires in the US - and they're not above the water line on this.

It's not the 1%, or even the 0.1%. And they don't control 90%, or even 99%. The degree at which we've exceeded "unfair/biased" is such that it was already "bad" half a century ago. Today it's just broken. The shell companies have shell companies. The Panama Papers did NOTHING to stop or even slow that kind of global money laundering. We like to rail on Citizens United here, but the money going INTO those PACs is also from these same sources.

It has fundamentally changed global politics. Corporations are world powers. Individuals are world powers. Countries that curtail that do so through oppression/ideology, but a good portion let the Musks and Bezos and Rockefellers and IOCs of the world rise and fall. It's why regulations need to sit over capitalism or you get private islands and "human rights optional" spaces (where's Shelly Miscavige? Ask Milan Kundera).

The US has been starving that particular beast for a long time now, deregulating, etc - mostly in the name of "don't look up" survivalism at the end of Pax Americana, so it's not like any one person or President COULD solve these things. It's holding patterns, reinvestment, Calvinball government to keep the plates spinning. We won't starve or run out of TP. But not much can stop this new Gilded Age, especially now with AI as it is.

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u/Rejusu 8h ago

Yup. This is so true of many things but money especially because it's much more abstract than size. People don't even have to be that poor, you can be making good money and still have zero appreciation for what being a billionaire means. I've almost given up pointing this out to people who think the money Rowling gets from various Harry Potter projects actually matters. To them it's still funding transphobia despite the fact Harry Potter could disappear off the face of the earth and she'd still be so rich that she could fund her campaign of hate until she dies and it wouldn't scratch the surface of her wealth.

I can respect avoiding it because of how you feel on the subject but anyone who thinks it makes a practical difference just can't appreciate scale.

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u/lavapig_love 6h ago

Donald J. Trump can!

He's singlehandedly done more to encourage discussion and candidates supporting actual bonafide socialism than anyone since President Carter.

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u/Arclite83 4h ago

I should have put Trump on the list there. He's just part of the problem. His "anti-establishment" is really just pro-self, and he's happy to fire sale the US because we were foolish enough to trust him that "you're going to love it" despite his literally lifetime of disasters and cons.

It's the Joker, in your desperation you turned to a man you didn't understand. And yet I still see "but Biden" as he burns the world.

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u/lavapig_love 1h ago

And I really should have put an /s after my post, as is longstanding Reddit tradition, because I was being kinda sarcastic.

Kind of. People are giving DSA candidates in general a chance, not just Mayor Mamdani, because the normal Democrats are failing to fight and the Republicans are turning fascist.