<story><title>Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure</title><url>https://democracyjournal.org/arguments/digital-capitalisms-war-on-leisure/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>FooHentai</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m currently going through a phase of setting up a games room, and acquiring a bunch of slightly older video game consoles and games to populate it. I&amp;#x27;ve settled on PS2 and PS3, and Xbox&amp;#x2F;360 as the sweet spot for this. Partly due to price (they&amp;#x27;re not old enough to be worth much, but not new enough to be hawked at retail prices).&lt;p&gt;But a factor just as big as price is how, from about mid-360 and PS3 onwards, gaming stopped being a case of &amp;#x27;buy a disc and play the game&amp;#x27; and became &amp;#x27;register online, tie to a service which will be withdrawn at some point, and pay extra for bits of the game that would previously have been free&amp;#x27;. All of that stuff transformed gaming media from about 2007 onwards from something that you could put on a shelf and return to at your leisure, into this ephemeral thing that you must buy into at the peak of the hype cycle, or it won&amp;#x27;t exist in proper form (if at all) when you do get around to it.&lt;p&gt;That said, this phenomenon is mostly limited to commercial games. There&amp;#x27;s an incredible grassroots movement of indie, modding, and retro gaming that everyone is free to immerse and engage in, where this issue just doesn&amp;#x27;t exist. My reaction to cutting-edge gaming for the past decade or so has been largely to turn away from commercial games and find entertainment via other gaming channels.</text></comment>
<story><title>Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure</title><url>https://democracyjournal.org/arguments/digital-capitalisms-war-on-leisure/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Andrex</author><text>This is a good read, but I question this line:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Video games, at their best, offer everyone an equal chance to overcome the same challenges on an equal playing field. “Pac-Man,” after all, didn’t let you add extra quarters to purchase immunity from the ghosts.&lt;p&gt;I mean, in a way they did. If you had more quarters to spare in Pac-Man, you&amp;#x27;d be more likely to make it further than your cash-strapped compatriot.&lt;p&gt;But then again arcades peddled these types of &amp;quot;pay to win&amp;quot; mechanics long before the App Store, and so probably aren&amp;#x27;t the best example to use in an article like this. NES era games would be more appropriate I think.</text></comment>