Figured I'd make my first-ever thread on this new site, so:
There's a Ross Scott video about a lawsuit that game developer/publisher Atlus has brought against people maintaining a server emulator for their dead MMO, SMT: Imagine Online.
One notable aspect here is that Ross approaches this with the attitude that there exists an alternative world where Atlus is instead on the business end of lawfare, a world where consumer rights is the dominant paradigm instead of our world, where corporate rights and welfare are given more priority. Notably, Ross even uses the phrase "Overton Window."
(Side bar: Compared to previous videos where he's talked about the subject of dead games (i.e. a game that has been rendered unplayable/inaccessible by a developer or publisher, typically in the form of MMOs and any other game that relys on an internet connection to a central server), this video feels a bit more "political" compared to those. Or, at least, it carries more of a Culture War scent than previous videos. Ross's discussion on these topics could have, and probably still could, be described as "apolitical" ranting not uncommon in the pre-GamerGate era, when dunking on gaming corporations was something that "tits-n'-beer liberals" could do without pushback.)
Now, I recognize that for many posters here, rejecting the dominant frame of the Overton Window is nothing new. It arguably goes back at least as far as Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, and in the modern Culture War, subscribing to different frames or substituting your own reality is a driver of the "two movies" effect. But Ross's more playful usage of rejecting the frame almost resembles a sort of role-play--it's just something he does, along the same lines as him off-handedly claiming to live on the moon in his Game Dungeon series. Now, of course, this is just Ross Scott's unique brand of weirdness, but at the same time, it got me wondering:
How effective/convincing could one be if they acted or lived according to the frame they wanted to live under? There's been discussions that have touched upon LARPing, cheap talk, and being the change you want to see in the world. I imagine most socialists/communists of today are already mostly there, casually throwing out memes of the left and not batting an eye. What other not-so-polarized/politicized issues, besides games preservation, could be pushed forwards by alternate-reality-mindset? Nuclear energy? YIMBY-ism? Or does everyone just know the hard difference between an is and an ought, and this post is mostly redundant?
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Notes -
I always interpreted the pro consumer anti bigcorp angle as the left-wing's default since anti corporate sentiment was the dominant GenX Lefty ideology, and hasn't really changed. If anything GamerGate was initially aimed squarely at harming indies and the press for daring to go after beloved products of bigcorps, and bigcorps only started to earn ire when they followed the Overton window left years later.
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