Individualsit production under capitalism and what this has to do with videogames
I’ve been reading some socialist literature lately and occasionally I find passages in them that perfectly manage to give words to something I always felt was wrong, but had no real way to describe why.
Sometimes I also find passages where I felt incredibly seen, like this one from Engels’ “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific” which you can find here
The means of production, as well as the product, of the individual producer became more and more worthless; there was nothing left for him but to turn wage-worker under the capitalist. Wage-labor, aforetime the exception and accessory, now became the rule and basis of all production; aforetime complementary, it now became the sole remaining function of the worker. The wage-worker for a time became a wage-worker for life. The number of these permanent was further enormously increased by the breaking-up of the feudal system that occurred at the same time, by the disbanding of the retainers of the feudal lords, the eviction of the peasants from their homesteads, etc. The separation was made complete between the means of production concentrated in the hands of the capitalists, on the one side, and the producers, possessing nothing but their labor-power, on the other. The contradiction between socialized production and capitalistic appropriation manifested itself as the antagonism of proletariat and bourgeoisie.
The comparison isn’t 100% there, because just the circumstances are different (also there's a lot in the paragraphs before and after that quote, that fleshes this out, but I can't quote the whole book!), but the mechanism in which individual producers of goods in early capitalist societies were pushed into wage labour, reminds me a lot about my experiences in making small videogames.
Steam, like any other capitalist marketplace, makes no distinction in regards to who gets to sell their games there and how their production is handled. That’s all up to the individual actors within the marketplace, be it companies with hundreds of employees, or random people that make games from their bedroom. The only thing that controls whether or not you can make a game, is whether or not you have the capital to make one. And that’s true for any kind of production. As long as you have the means to make whatever you want, you can do it. And since everyone gets to make and distribute games and since everyone is required to earn money with the selling of said games, you get into a situation where you are forced to compete with every other game on Steam. Which leads to situations where people that have to starve themselves in order to get the money necessary to submit a game to steam, are competing against corporations that have a marketing budget that alone would be enough to make hundreds of smaller games.
You are, as an individual creator, forced to compete against capitalist corporations that operate with a socialized mode of production and that’s a fight that is impossible to win.
When confronted with this situation, the singular creator has several options: Stop making games and find a job in the workforce and thus becoming a worker, trying to build a singular support system around them (via patreon or some other means) that alleviate the pressure of competition somewhat, but still doesn’t solve the general issue, or becoming a capitalist yourself, by gaining the capital to found a company and employ other people who then can make games for you, while not retaining ownership of their work.
Indie developers, like any other kind small business, sit in this weird space, where their economic situation is incredibly precarious, while their class association very often is closer to those of larger corporations, than the working class. This leads to situations where, in the case of videogames, smaller developers are actively working towards making things worse for the majority of smaller game devs, in order to gain even the smallest advantage. You see this with exclusivity deals, subscription platforms, demands for Steam to “have quality control”. It’s all fueled by the interest of them getting out of their precarious situations and joining the ranks of the true (and rich) capitalists, instead of realizing that it’s these systems that are responsible for their own precarity.
When making Splinter Zone, I had this dream of earning just enough money so that I can keep existing, without having to deal with any of the bullshit capitalism forces you into. I think a lot of people dream about finding a way to escape capitalism. This is why crowdfunding is so popular and why a bunch of left-leaning folks in games are founding co-ops, where every member has the same ownership of the whole company. Those are all great things, but just as my dream of escaping capitalism was squashed by the reality of the anarchy of capitalist distribution, so are these modes still susceptible to it. A co-op will still have to produce and sell goods, crowdfunding is reliant on platforms that largely work within a capitalist framework. You can lift off the pressure, but there’s no escaping.
Today I saw an article that went into detail as to how and why Microsoft’s Game Pass subscription is maybe a good thing for game developers and (once again) made the mistake in generalizing stories and facts that only apply to a small number of studios that have been asked in this specific moment in time. We had these same stories, of studios getting saved through steam, or because they ported their game on switch, and each time, these platforms got flooded by other creators, who were looking for the same kind of salvation, but couldn’t find it. Instead the people who own these platforms, get to profit off of everyone’s desire to carve out their existence. The stories might be good for some, but give it some time and the invisible hand of the market will make existence for everyone but those that already own everything miserable.
Instead of hunting for the next thing that might lift you out of precarity, ask yourself this?
Why does Valve own Steam and gets to take a 30% cut off of every sale? Why does itchio take a cut (that you can at least adjust yourself), while not redistributing said cut to every single creator on their platform? Why is it that corporations own our ways of producing and selling goods, while forcing us to work for their benefit? Why don’t the game developers own the platforms their games are being distributed on and why don’t the workers have ownership over the means of production and the goods that come out of it?
As much as I understand the need to exist in this world, at some point we all have to decide if we’re okay with fucking everyone over, if that means we can keep existing, or if we’re willing to push, collectively, towards something that will make things better for everyone. There’s this notion that small game developers are all equal and friends and that we should show solidarity to each other, but when a handful of people in this space get to exist and through their existence make things substantially worse for others, than they’re part of the system that needs to be destroyed, and not part of the solution.