The main goal of a private company is to make money. That's it. As crude as that might sound, that's just the core of our economic system (and it's actually a fact that's even taught in university economy courses; personal experience). Whatever other goals a company might have, those are secondary to that of making money.
Therefore a company should always strive to do things that maximize income and minimize losses. Less scrupulous companies might resort to underhanded shady tactics, playing with fire with regards to the law, other companies may be much more honest and always play by the rules, but the bottom line is that whatever they do, the main goal is to maximize profit.
One thing that will not maximize profit, but instead will potentially cause diminished income, perhaps even losses, is a company taking a socio-political stance, and openly advocating for a certain political view, especially if controversial. In other words, when they engage in virtue-signaling. That's because when they do that, they alienate a significant portion of their potential customerbase, potentially driving them away. Rather than maximizing their potential customerbase (and thus profit), they are deliberately cutting off part of it. Which makes absolutely no sense. They are deliberately alienating part of their customers, and thus cutting their own profits, for no benefit.
But that's the power of virtue-signaling, ie. showing your moral superiority. I believe that it's quite literally a mind-drug. As in, when you virtue signal loudly to a public, when you exude your own moral superiority by loudly proclaiming how some people around you are morally inferior, it actually physically gives you a chemical rush. I bet that if it were measured, it would be noticed that it causes the brain to induce endorphin, dopamine and/or some other hormone production.
When individuals do it, they are just making themselves assholes. However, when a company does it, they are doing it at their own expense, potentially alienating their customers and cutting their profits. Yet some of them still can't help but do it anyway. (And the funny thing about virtue-signaling is that once you engage in it, you can never back down, take back what you have said and apologize. You have to keep doing it, no matter how much it harms you or your company. It's an addictive drug of the mind.)
For example, the company Campo Santo, creators of Firewatch, recently decided to DMCA PewDiePie for his let's play of that game. Not because of anything related to that video (which was published a year or two ago), but because of a completely unrelated video where he utters the N-word in the heat of the moment during an online game session. Representatives of Campo Santo went to social media to boast how they DMCA'd him because of that, and they encouraged all other companies to do the same.
The ratings of the the game on Steam started immediately plummeting, with people flooding the rating system with negative reviews.
I will never buy that game, nor anything from that company. I don't care how good that or any of their future games may be, I will never buy them, out of principle.
Recently, Bethesda, of all companies, decided to do some virtue-signaling of their own. They made an official tweet post about their new game Wolfenstein II, which reads "Make America Nazi-Free Again", with a video that has the message "not my America". It couldn't be clearer that they are alluding to Trump and the current regressive leftist rally of calling everybody who disagrees with them "nazis".
They are alienating a significant portion of their potential customerbase... and they don't even care. While the game setting is an alternate universe history where nazi Germany won, and is in control of the United States (and has been so for many years), they could have just stayed out of the whole political debate and said nothing, and let the game be what it is. Nobody would have minded, and they would have probably enjoyed the game just fine.
But no. They had to virtue-signal, potentially pissing off a large portion of their customers.
Whether this will have any significant effect on the sales of the game will be seen (it might not), but personally, out of principle, I will not be buying the game. I don't care how good it might be; it may be the best video game ever created, and I would still not buy it. There are literally hundreds of other games out there for me to play. I don't need this one. I won't be playing this one.
I did buy the previous Wolfenstein game, and I thought it was ok. I might have bought this one as well. But that's it. If nobody else, they lost at least me as a potential customer. I will never buy the game. I hope they are happy.
Ubisoft Montpellier, a subsidiary of Ubisoft in France, really got their virtue-signaling dopamine rush when in the last E3 conference they boasted how the cast of their upcoming game Beyond Good and Evil 2 is so "inclusive" and "diverse" and "multicultural" and whole bunch of other SJW buzzwords. It really sounded like sermon in the Church of Progressiveness. (And no, it wasn't tongue-in-cheek, or humorous, or light-hearted, or just some kind of side quip. It was presented 100% seriously.)
That speech alone gave me so much nausea that I added the game to my list of games I will never be buying out of principle. I loved the first game, but I don't care how good the sequel might be. It may be the greatest and most mind-blowing game in history, and I still wouldn't care. I'm not buying it. They lost me as a customer.
My advice to companies? Just stay out of politics. Say nothing related. Don't take a stance. Don't try to virtue-signal. Make good games for all your customers; don't alienate a demographic just so that you can get your dopamine rush.
Therefore a company should always strive to do things that maximize income and minimize losses. Less scrupulous companies might resort to underhanded shady tactics, playing with fire with regards to the law, other companies may be much more honest and always play by the rules, but the bottom line is that whatever they do, the main goal is to maximize profit.
One thing that will not maximize profit, but instead will potentially cause diminished income, perhaps even losses, is a company taking a socio-political stance, and openly advocating for a certain political view, especially if controversial. In other words, when they engage in virtue-signaling. That's because when they do that, they alienate a significant portion of their potential customerbase, potentially driving them away. Rather than maximizing their potential customerbase (and thus profit), they are deliberately cutting off part of it. Which makes absolutely no sense. They are deliberately alienating part of their customers, and thus cutting their own profits, for no benefit.
But that's the power of virtue-signaling, ie. showing your moral superiority. I believe that it's quite literally a mind-drug. As in, when you virtue signal loudly to a public, when you exude your own moral superiority by loudly proclaiming how some people around you are morally inferior, it actually physically gives you a chemical rush. I bet that if it were measured, it would be noticed that it causes the brain to induce endorphin, dopamine and/or some other hormone production.
When individuals do it, they are just making themselves assholes. However, when a company does it, they are doing it at their own expense, potentially alienating their customers and cutting their profits. Yet some of them still can't help but do it anyway. (And the funny thing about virtue-signaling is that once you engage in it, you can never back down, take back what you have said and apologize. You have to keep doing it, no matter how much it harms you or your company. It's an addictive drug of the mind.)
For example, the company Campo Santo, creators of Firewatch, recently decided to DMCA PewDiePie for his let's play of that game. Not because of anything related to that video (which was published a year or two ago), but because of a completely unrelated video where he utters the N-word in the heat of the moment during an online game session. Representatives of Campo Santo went to social media to boast how they DMCA'd him because of that, and they encouraged all other companies to do the same.
The ratings of the the game on Steam started immediately plummeting, with people flooding the rating system with negative reviews.
I will never buy that game, nor anything from that company. I don't care how good that or any of their future games may be, I will never buy them, out of principle.
Recently, Bethesda, of all companies, decided to do some virtue-signaling of their own. They made an official tweet post about their new game Wolfenstein II, which reads "Make America Nazi-Free Again", with a video that has the message "not my America". It couldn't be clearer that they are alluding to Trump and the current regressive leftist rally of calling everybody who disagrees with them "nazis".
They are alienating a significant portion of their potential customerbase... and they don't even care. While the game setting is an alternate universe history where nazi Germany won, and is in control of the United States (and has been so for many years), they could have just stayed out of the whole political debate and said nothing, and let the game be what it is. Nobody would have minded, and they would have probably enjoyed the game just fine.
But no. They had to virtue-signal, potentially pissing off a large portion of their customers.
Whether this will have any significant effect on the sales of the game will be seen (it might not), but personally, out of principle, I will not be buying the game. I don't care how good it might be; it may be the best video game ever created, and I would still not buy it. There are literally hundreds of other games out there for me to play. I don't need this one. I won't be playing this one.
I did buy the previous Wolfenstein game, and I thought it was ok. I might have bought this one as well. But that's it. If nobody else, they lost at least me as a potential customer. I will never buy the game. I hope they are happy.
Ubisoft Montpellier, a subsidiary of Ubisoft in France, really got their virtue-signaling dopamine rush when in the last E3 conference they boasted how the cast of their upcoming game Beyond Good and Evil 2 is so "inclusive" and "diverse" and "multicultural" and whole bunch of other SJW buzzwords. It really sounded like sermon in the Church of Progressiveness. (And no, it wasn't tongue-in-cheek, or humorous, or light-hearted, or just some kind of side quip. It was presented 100% seriously.)
That speech alone gave me so much nausea that I added the game to my list of games I will never be buying out of principle. I loved the first game, but I don't care how good the sequel might be. It may be the greatest and most mind-blowing game in history, and I still wouldn't care. I'm not buying it. They lost me as a customer.
My advice to companies? Just stay out of politics. Say nothing related. Don't take a stance. Don't try to virtue-signal. Make good games for all your customers; don't alienate a demographic just so that you can get your dopamine rush.
hi there, lots of things happened around the world any update in your blog?
ReplyDeleteI apologize if you have been expecting me to comment on current events and politics, but for the sake of my own sanity, and to not make this blog heavily slanted on one single topic, I have been actively trying to minimize the number of political posts (with a bit less success as of late). I have, in fact, been tempted to write several posts about several things, but my thought process is that if it would just be repeating what other people have already said (mainly on YouTube), it would be rather useless. I'd rather write some original thoughts of my own.
DeleteI might make a post about how many American universities have stopped being universities and become social justice cult indoctrination camps. I have also been thinking about writing a post about the Finnish constitution, and how (perhaps a bit surprisingly) much weaker it is compared to the American constitution. (This is something I have already written about, in Finnish, in my "old blog".)
I understand your concerns. I like reading articles instead of listening to youtube or any other video blog, because I find reading is faster than listening and it easy to scroll up and down the paragraph for further review.
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