Rinse and Repeat

: history, September 05 2022 ▶

A gamer by birth I was searching something to play. Before my vacation I was quite busy (and tired) at work, so gaming / binge watching were scarce commodities, but, with some free time afterwards, I started to look around. Gamescom 2022 was at its end, same for the school's summer vacation, no knowledge of new titles for months - how hard can it be? Well, 2 weeks later I am writing this article in utter frustration and fear for the future of this world.
Months ago I have uninstalled "World of Warships" (been playing it since release in 2015) - it has become the poisonous mess of unbalanced (Russian) ships, copy-paste content, crazy bugs and idiotic players (pay-to-win mostly). "Dune: Spice Wars" grabbed the attention for a while, but also lacked the depth to keep me exploring. I caught myself watching hundreds of replays of "Starcraft" (24yo game) and "Warcraft 3" (20yo game) - the first still going strong in Korea, which is absolutely amazing! My PC is rather powerful so, at least hardware-wise, there is no show-stopper. I started searching for a game, where I can deep-dive and potentially escape the "desert of the real world" ... and there is literally nothing out there worth playing! Checked Gamescom titles - from bland sequels, through so-deep-in-development-it-may-never-see-the-light overpromising titles, to the casual remakes. Nothing to sustainably grab the attention. Then browsed Steam and EpicGames stores for weeks - same thing - unfinished games, utter lack of creativity, nothing unique, nothing even moderately intriguing. Remakes, remasters, retitles, reskins, retextures. Re-,re-,re-, repeat.
During my vacation had to drive for quite some time, stuck with whatever radio stations consider modern. Sampled songs, remixes, re-edits. Sounds from the 90s-till-2010s, mixed with some electronic garbage, flagged as brand new songs.
Movie-wise the situation was even worse. Sequels to brilliant franchises flopped miserably. "Dune" - a stunning visual success and "Top Gun: Maverick" was a sweet 80s nostalgia (nothing more), but everything else ... oh Lord, give me strength! I have not seen so many shows canceled in their 1st season. Latest drama is the "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" - it costed Mr. Bezos $250mil to obtain the rights alone and another $470mil for making the Season 1. It bombed miserably even before it started, to such extent that Amazon and its daughter company, IMDB, fixed the review ratings and ultimately banned all reviews. The "independent" critics in "rottentomatoes", properly-fed as always, awarded the amazing 84%, but the audience smashed it with 39%. Personally, I do not believe it is that bad, but again - I am not the biggest Tolkien fan so cannot really tell. But what I can tell is I could barely stand "Star Trek: Discovery" (just a few episodes needed to quit; similar results as per Critics/Audience) and "Star Trek: Picard" was just "meh". Watching Patrick Stewart (82yo) struggle keeping his lines was just sad. Vulturing on a rotting corpse, rather than some development of the beloved universe - that's what it was. And many other examples...you know exactly what I mean.

OK, none of this mess is some news. If your IQ is above the room temperature you already have some idea why this is happening. Here I am trying to summarize the problems with the "Modern Entertainment Industry", not necessarily in significance order.

1. Lack of ideas.
It appears that modern screen(song)writes are just empty. "Everything is already done" is not far fetched, but also not always the truth. Unlike tech (where real discoveries nowadays are almost impossible), writing a "entertainment product" is nowhere near as hard, time consuming and expensive. You need (a ton of) talent and motivation. Especially for musicians - Metallica still gathers 50K+ people on their concerts, singing the same songs for the past 3 decades. Can you compare them to a band from 2012 onward? No, you cannot. Any contemporary hit-song is hammered down on a conveyor belt and sold to the highest bidder (one-time-hit performers mostly). Recently, everything is just "sampled" garbage, rinse and repeat. I guess talented people are busy with other activities.

2. Corpo greed.
I remember the big writers strike ~2008 and the aftermath - we were overwhelmed by bullshit movies for years. When the person, who wrote the script, receives a dime and some Hollywood clown "voice acts" for millions, the former surely reconsiders further such endeavors. Greed cuts corners and a brilliant idea ultimately fails due to the low quality or presentation of the end product. It even endangers the people during their work - Alec Baldwin accidentally shot a lady on set, as the company replaced the gun experts with some cheap idiots. In another twist, the Greed does not care about the franchise longetivity, the fans, the ideas, the legacy - they will just make a survey on what will bring the quick bucks and follow its results, regardless if it may end the product's universe or not. The Greed will push out an unfinished game and will cut 3 of the planned 10 episodes (murdering the plot) of you favorite series. The Greed will take money and adjust the movie/game/music video to the narrative of the puppet masters, despite knowing that the majority of the audience will hate it.

3. Squeezing the franchise.
Star Wars, StarTrek, World of Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft, FIFA, etc - all victims of milking the franchise dry. The Corpo Greed rushes dull, repetitive, numerous spin-offs, just to grab the short-term fruits. In another article I wrote about high-ranking CEOs, who do not see past the quarterly-bonus-horizon. Same applies here. If they notice a decline, they will not try to improve, they will not listen to the community. They will inflate the product with some unnecessary, unwanted, dreary content presenting as "the next big thing", thus frustrating the audience even further. As cheap as possible!

4. Pay to win / watch.
You buy a streaming subscription. Several months later some of the content requires additional payment. Or you buy a AAA-game (~$80) and the multiplayer component introduces real-money-only loot-boxes with premium equipment. Or an "expansion" 3 months after the launch, which basically forces you to spend cash if you want to continue playing. Sound familiar? This is not related to the quality of the product, but is a predatory practice, which destroys people's trust and drives the fanbase away - same result as if the game is bad.

5. Overpromising and and under-delivering.
Games in particular are plagued by this. Regardless if an unfinished game is published due to greed or plain management's stupidity it can destroy a franchise irreversibly. Another example is watching an incredible trailer, then receiving something completely different on your PC/Console/Movie screen. Especially if the game/movie lasted forever to produce and consumed millions in green - you just scratch your head in disbelief where all these money went?

6. Woke "culture" and correctness (I know and I do not care).
We reached the most controversial and significant cause. Recent movies, games, music are deliberately pumped with brutal brain-washing messages, not to the taste of the regular person. Most of the time they have nothing to do with reality - they just follow somebody's sick agenda (the puppet masters). Black people need more recognition (...than white!) - put a black actress as Ariel, the little mermaid. Wakanda is the most advanced country in the world (but surrounded by 3rd World such). We need strong (black) female characters - the next James Bond can be a (black) lady - what a wonderful idea! Not enough LGBTQ stuff on screen - let's randomly throw gay scenes here and there. Oh, it is a children's movie - even better! Our primary political opponent is USSR/Balkan/MidEast/China - the bad guys will always be dumb Russians/Balkans/MidEasterners/Chinese (replace the variable to match the recent enemy). "Refugees" need to be respected more and get all benefits immediately - all trespassers from now on are "refugees" and the actors, women and children of course, match racially the current immigrant influx.
Forcing such foreign "virtues" will always fail, no matter what! People are already pushed too far from the Woke culture (it is "canceling" itself as we see) and will fight against any such "entertainment". We have numerous examples of such fiascos and LoTR is its latest victim.

P.S.
Just I was hitting the "nothing to watch" mood, decided to try "The Boys" - a long-time bench-warmer of my "to watch" list. And, oh boy, was it a good one! A fresh breeze of honest brutality, hard-hitting sarcasm, some soul dive, intriguing and intense story. A twisted parody of the modern Corpo-culture and Marvel/DC pink-unicorn's bullshit. I had so much fun, I can forgive the casual plot holes, pinches of "woke" and cut-backs. Highly recommend it, especially in the light of the upcoming Season 4.