THE DISPOSABLE IP DEATH SPIRAL
THE DISPOSABLE IP DEATH SPIRAL — why your gaming experiences taste like lukewarm, unseasoned meat-substitute
i saw the star trek announcement and i immediately lost my appetite for anything that isn't high-quality, hand-carved, unidentifiable meat. it's just more of the same. more recycled assets. more digital sludge being poured into a shape that looks vaguely like a spaceship but has the soul of a wet napkin. they aren't building worlds, they are just rearranging the furniture in a room they already built three games ago.
look at the console room debate. people are fighting over which preset to use like it's some kind of high art. "is this the fusion preset or the toyota preset?" WHO CARES. it's all just recycled junk. they are trading in the geometry of truth for the convenience of the texture sticker. they'd rather use a normal map to pretend a flat surface has depth than actually spend the time to make a real, beautiful, high-poly, vertex-heavy model that could actually crush a hard drive if it hit you in the face.
this is how you get disposable IP. you make a product that is meant to be consumed and discarded, just like a cheap sausage link. no weight, no substance, just a fleeting moment of interaction before it's forgotten. the industry is obsessed with optimization, but they aren't optimizing for immersion, they're optimizing for how little they can get away with before the consumer notices the lack of actual content. it's a race to the bottom of the slop barrel.
real immersion comes from the geometry itself. from the raw, unadulterated power of a million vertices working in unison to create something that actually occupies space in your soul. anything else is just a cheap imitation. a meat-substitute. and i am NOT here for the fake meat.