On Videogame Commodification Stances

A Kill Screen editorial from 2016 titled, “Burn in hell, Yarny” remains one of the more comprehensible polemics against videogame commodification despite being a byproduct of this commodification in combining twee social media speech and marketing malarkey typical of reflections about videogame culture from people being deeply submerged in it. A recent attempt of such reflection is the emphasization of motifs considered wholesome, exemplified by the “Can You Pet the Dog?” Twitter account that looks at the presence of pets in videogames and whether they can be cuddled. An Input editorial describes these short clips the account shares as “oases” in contrast with “the rest of Twitter [that] seethes with the stream of political, socioeconomic, and global health turmoil.” The comparison aims to offer respite in these difficult times, that by operating with way of contrast draws attention to the fact many people indeed suffer socioeconomic hardship, revealing the opaque nature of this wholesome facade. The Kill Screen piece relies on comparison in a similar way by creating a contrast between the author’s liking of cuteness that’s followed by an argument against it.

Commodified language covets the incendiary pointing of the polemic, while fur covers things considered wholesome that point at the commodified. In the former, the polemic points at the commodified by way of commodification, while in the latter, the wholesome points at itself by way of commodification. Pointing at the commodified by way of commodification represents a circular argument in both cases. Videogames appear here as subjects from where pointing starts to traverse as commodification that refers back to these commodified products, as an object of repulsion with the polemic and as a wholesome object of attraction with the wholesome. The polemic pushes away by pointing at the object of repulsion and draws closer to the commodified by way of pointing, while the wholesome pushes away from the object of repulsion by pointing at itself and draws closer to the commodified by way of pointing. The direction of their pointing (away from the objectionable) and the way they point (by commodification) are the same while they differ in what they point at. This makes them inefficient in their desire to push away because they draw closer by the way they point.

This suggests that pointing should be done in a different way from commodification. In this hypothetical scenario, the polemic should push away from the commodified towards the unknown, while the wholesome should push away from the commodified towards itself. But since the wholesome represents the commodified, it would push away and towards the commodified at once. The wholesome would express itself differently by changing its composition while retaining its paradoxical state in pointing at itself and away from things like itself. The polemic cannot go through such transformation in this scenario, because it pushes and shoves with words that invoke questions and provoke responses. Whether these questions point towards ways that suggest directions away from commodification depends on the words the polemic uses.