By Mvume Ndimba
As a man who is fond of chaos and drama, I do a lot to try and keep myself distracted and out of trouble.
I began my journey as a writer seeking just that: to take my natural attraction to disorder and mess and channel it into something that can be enjoyed by people other than myself.
An example of this is my insistence on referring to the newly dropped Hantavirus as the “Hentai virus” to my friends and colleagues in the hopes that they go on in their lives and refer to it as the hentai virus to the rest of the people they hang out with. I gain nothing but the sweet satisfaction of knowing that someone out there is calling the Covid-19 rebrand virus by the name of cartoon pornography. And honestly? That’s enough for me. It’s not much, but it makes me happy.
So, in order to be a functioning member of society who isn’t getting into trouble every day, I also enjoy gaming as a way to soak up some of this chaotic energy.
Gaming has traditionally been the everyman’s hobby. Games and consoles were never cheap, but you could afford to feed the hobby relatively easily in the past. Saving up for a couple of months was enough. It was accessible and fun.
Well, that is, until people started to figure out that you could make money in the gaming industry.
When Hobbies Became Products
Almost overnight, the industry began cannibalising itself. Companies of the past wanted to make art with their games. They wanted to create something new and exciting. Game development was a labour of love for them.
But not anymore.
Today, gaming is a shameless cash grab where companies go out of their way to ruin the experience for the consumer. There was a time where the only difference between being good at a game and being great at a game was your own ability. Now, the industry has been infected by microtransactions, in-game purchases, and the main leading culprit of them all: the subscription model.
At first, the subscription model made sense, right?
“I wanna watch this movie tonight, but I don’t really see a need to own the DVD forever.”
Go to Video Tavern. RIP, big homie.
“I really love these sneakers, but I don’t have enough money right now.”
Go ahead and get a store account, loved one.
Subscription models, in theory, are a great way to access the things you want without having to pay full price for them. It was a cool concept until the turn of the decade.
Now, I’m sure you all noticed that after the pandemic, a lot of things got weird.
Sport didn’t feel the same. Movies felt less like standalone films and more like two-hour advertisements for Product X or the extended universe of whatever franchise you’re watching. Everything has lost its soul and that’s directly because of the subscription model.
There are no more soccer people running soccer, no more gamers running gaming, and no more cinephiles running film. Instead, what we have is a bunch of dorks with MBAs making decisions based solely on a P&L report.
Whatever makes the most money is what gets pushed. It doesn’t matter whether people love it or hate it, because they’re talking about it.
Who cares that nobody asked for a live-action Moana film starring Dwayne “The Ad” Johnstone? People are talking, and that’s all that matters to these people. Because when the movie comes out, some people will watch because they like it, and others will watch because they hate it and want enough information to hate it properly.
Then, sometimes, by some miracle, an actually original story comes across your path. It’s fun, entertaining, and feels fresh. Then those same dorks with MBAs get their hands on the IP and immediately start milking it.
Now you have Joker 2 starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga. You get a WWE where merch machines like The New Day can be released purely because talent refuses to accept worse contracts to help TKO bankroll its current obsession with Jelly Roll and Pat McAfee.
You can’t remember the last time you turned your TV on and didn’t see an advert for some betting platform.
The Subscription Economy Owns Everything
The world is completely commodified, and the one major culprit is the damn subscription model.
You have a Netflix account? Cool. Let the WiFi slow down and see what happens.
You bought a PlayStation? Awesome. But you can’t use it properly unless you log into the PlayStation Network at least once every 30 days.
You have a roof over your head? Great. But let the landlord decide they no longer want to rent to you anymore.
Cool new car, bro. Just don’t miss a payment, or the actual owner of that car will be at your door looking for their property.
The average South African is slowly being priced out of ownership. And even when you do own something, companies either make it impossible to enjoy the full benefit of it without paying monthly fees, or make it impossible to access it without paying monthly fees.
Looking directly at you, Sony.
The entire planet is under the thumb of some spreadsheet-loving, bespectacled, receding-hairline-having, attention-starved dork begging for approval from the ruling class by showing his masters how good he is at extracting money from an already financially burdened working class.
Can We Still Own Anything Anymore?
So I say all this to ask the question: how do we unsubscribe from life?
Those of us born before the mid-1990s remember a time where you could go an entire week without spending money. Impossible in the Big 26.
Some of us remember stacking VHS tapes, CDs, books, games, and DVDs up in our homes almost like functional art, a visual representation of every piece of media that impacted you enough to keep it.
Hell, I vividly remember seeing my first piece of coochie at my friend Devon’s house because his dad had a massive stack of Playboy and Hustler magazines behind his bookshelf. Even that is a thing of the past thanks to the death of print media.
The subscription model only makes sense when it makes financial sense for the end user.
But if there were ever a feasible long-term alternative to the Netflixes of the world, we all know how that would end. Make a little noise. Make a little money. Catch the attention of the aforementioned dorks. Get bought out or priced out. Then the subscription fee increases to cover the acquisition.
Also, billionaires are such losers, bro.
Can we discuss that for a moment?
If I had R100 billion, you would never see me again. You wouldn’t catch me trying to be a celebrity. Why?
This is the greed they talked about in the Bible. You have all the money, all the property, all the IP, and somehow you still want everybody’s attention too?
Imagine being so insecure that you buy an entire social media platform and change the way it operates so only you and people who agree with you are heard on it.
Dorks everywhere you go.
Just dorks with MBAs. Or rather, Multi-Billions in Assets.
Leave a Reply