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Comment by jljljl | Hacker News Reader

>>> You are a lifeform that feeds on the transition of matter from low entropy to high entropy states

This is a video game. You could be anything, do anything. Introduce mechanics that do not require the consumption of worlds. Lots of games have mechanics that don't require stripmining planets.

I read the tweets more as disappointment that we can't do something different in our creation. Just because the real world is built on consumption doesn't mean all art has to be.

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If it's art, perhaps that's exactly the point the artist is trying to make. I think I tend to agree with critics of the article, because rather than explore that point, they use it as a chance to generate pageviews by an incredibly shallow moralizing of something that could be considered art.

Any transgressive or satirical piece of art could have this exact same critique leveled at it, but generally they don't because critics in other media have a more nuanced understand of the relationship between art and the artists intentions.

> Just because the real world is built on consumption doesn't mean all art has to be.

Correct. But because the real world is built on consumption, criticising creative expression for exploring that is at best invalid. What's going on with Polygon is that they're making this invalid criticism to further their political narratives.

What are their political narratives?

Whichever shallow ideologies and narratives happen to be trendy. The sort that frequently spring forth from the rich vein of cultural authoritarianism that runs though most journalism these days.

You are accusing a blog of having shallow and trendy ideologies, but you can't even describe them?

I chose not to in this case, leaving it as a sort of exercise for the reader. If the cultural authoritarian nature of certain types of modern media, of which Polygon is but one example doesn't immediately ring some bells for you then I'm not sure we have a lot of common ground. And me listing out a set of what I believe to be negative ideologies and narratives might quickly get off topic and acrimonious. Was I wrong?

While I agree with you in general on the subject of Polygon's political bent, I don't think the criticism is invalid because of it. The crux of the issue is this:

> There is no way to create on these worlds

You needn't look at anyone's politics, pro or con, to wonder: in a world where the second best selling game of all time is Minecraft, how much sense is there in a galaxy-sized sandbox where you can't build anything?

If the games not based on consumption how will they monetise it post-sale though!?! /ignorant-cynicism

What do you mean? Marx made plenty of money off his books.

Interesting thought that I've not explored before, any idea how much - what he did with it initially?

Should all cameras be forced to create Dadaist interpretations of what they capture instead of a best-attempt at the actual image?

The camera's mechanics aren't as restrictive of what or how you can take pictures as NMS is of what you can do with its simulated universe.

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