If we understand about the illusion cheap fifa coins of control, then we can totally get his rage: he bought a machine that he thought would give him agency, but really he was trapped in yet other system that provided only the facade of power. Lots of people laughed at him, but we shouldn’t because his Xbox One experience was basically a commute from south-east to north-east London. And that really is bullshit.
Up until this generation, console manufacturers understood their role as the gatekeepers of the autonomy experience. Switch on a PlayStation 1 or 2, or a Sega Mega Drive or whatever, and the response is instant: a nice jingle, a logo onscreen. Then we’re off.
The machine’s wish is the player’s command. But now we’re moving into an age where players often have to be shepherded toward firmware updates, where hard drives are filling up, where games require constant patching. The autonomy that games so effortlessly provided for 40 years is being chipped away.
Games, then, aren’t about power as much as they are about just having one fricking place where the system does what it says it will where, even if the game content has restrictive rule systems, we exert full interactive control.
In our jobs, in our relationships, we know this isn’t true, we know it deep down and it really gets to us. www.utfifa.co If the trust relationship between agent and game experience breaks down too, that is really serious. Nobody wants to be the powerful ruler of a world they can’t trust or rely on. That way madness lies.