https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zarnitsa_game
I mean, horses for courses, but you could argue that there would be no D&D were it not for capitalism in the first place.
This is a fascinating thing for me to read because it is brought up every single time someone points out how capitalism encouraging the profit motive over anything else negatively impacts something.
It's also incredibly sad though, as the concept of creating things out of pure joy seems like such an alien concept to some people. What's so special about D&D that makes it so it could only be created in an economic system where the person who created it would face poverty if they didn't?
Conversely, it could be argued that in a system where people don't have to be coerced to do things they despise out of fear they won't have a place to live, they would have the time and mental energy to spend creating things they enjoy, actively including the billions of people who are too busy doing meaningless jobs to create anything in the equation.
Pretty sure he would have created D&D anyway, yes. But if not for capitalism he likely wouldn't have done the work to standardize and share D&D with the world and instead just kept it as his own homebrew campaign rules. Today it would be easier, but back then? No way.
For proof of that, you just need to look at Tetris. It spread so quickly that it had to be banned from universities. Tetris' history does bring up other issues, but spread of information is not one of them.
Not to mention all the reasons why a book of roleplaying rules has less memetic potential than a small quick to play single player game. Today with good screens and internet it is plausible, pretty sure there already are such systems out there, but it couldn't have happened in the 70's and I'm pretty sure it would never happen in the 80's either.
There have been plenty of games and other creative projects that became successful ignoring or even despite the economic system.
In fact I would argue that many of the most artistic games that had the most positive impact on me personally were made because they simply had to be made.
I'm not a fan of table top games (haven't tried them seriously enough) but I could give you a long list of computer games that are just oozing of passion, artistry, profound insights and deep respect for both their craft and their players. A good portion were successful financially, but certainly not all of them.
Anyway, I do think that the gaming industry would be much worse if not for capitalism. As you say you can find plenty of good passion projects to play, and even though most of them don't blow up some of them do, giving tons of money to people who have a passion for making games. If not for capitalism, the moment the person starts to add more workers to his project he no longer owns the IP since the concept of owning means of production is a core part of capitalism and IP is a means of production. Now I'm all for worker rights etc, but democratizing the decisions of how an IP should be handled and what should happen with game design etc isn't a good thing, I don't think the people he hires should have any say in that, I bought his products since I liked his vision and don't want new people to ruin it.
Means of production are scarce property which is used (and consumed—even if only for a time) in the production of other goods. "IP" is not a means of production because it is not scarce. This also implies that it is not property, despite the misleading name. It's a social engineering project instituted by governments and not a core element of capitalism.
Was there ever a working system without some form of coercion? The common forms of coercion are either withholding resources (usually money), or restricting freedom (prison / labor camp).
Maybe historical data alone without other context isn't the best way to predict the future -- unless you're trying to make it look like the past. IMO much of the open-source world appears to function entirely without "some form of coercion"...
So how can you get people do unpleasant but necessary work without direct benefit for them?
> much of the open-source world appears to function entirely without "some form of coercion"...
Does it? My impression is that the tedious and unpleasant work in large projects like Linux is often done by those who are paid for it.
I don't think we're going to be able to discuss this. Our priors are too different. This question sneaks the premise that people won't and don't "do unpleasant but necessary work without direct benefit for them", despite counterexamples littering the (impressively capitalist) world. Engaging with the question on its face is accepting the premise. It'd be like if I asked the parent "by ensuring that nearly everyone has to do often-meaningless and sometimes actively harmful things in order to avoid succumbing to exposure, what are the powerful people (who can, and do, choose not to debase themselves thusly) trying to prevent?"
For that matter, I might recommend David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs, in answer to implication that all work is necessary.
>My impression is that the tedious and unpleasant work in large projects like Linux is often done by those who are paid for it
Linux itself didn't spring from a salaried worker, and large open-source projects having paid maintainers wasn't a requirement for their inception. AFAICT, paid maintainers exist precisely because their open-source projects have grown too large, unwieldy, and important to be allowed to be someone's pet project that's only worked on in spare moments.
And it's not that nobody's interested in large open-source projects, it's that the current system doesn't allow one to focus oneself entirely on something that doesn't make money, because without money, one dies of exposure. I can say this with confidence, because all those open-source projects that now support paid workers evolved from smaller ones whose contributors worked for free-as-in-starving-artist.
Little Wars was written by HG Wells ( Socialist and a member the Fabian Society