Video Games

Drawing upon anthropological evidence, economist Thorstein Veblen’s treatise, “Theory of the Leisure Class” showed that instead of utility in the classic sense, people actually derive some social value from projecting affluence. In other words, frivolous displays of waste may not actually perform some task efficiently in terms of straight up functionality, but many of these acts project the impression that the consumer is affluent because of their ability to not work, but instead enjoy a life of leisure. For people’s tendency to consume without regard to the waste in otherwise scare resources, Veblen coined the term conspicuous consumption. In its most egregious form, this takes the form of an aristocracy exploiting the working class, who serves their beck and call. But in a modern context, Veblen’s idea of a leisure class should make us reconsider how we spend our days, starting from our primitive ancestors to modern day, and consider what value we put on time itself, without question our most precious resource. Veblen's most salient point is an important one: The more our time is spent on fruitless pursuits, the more we're regarded to have time to spare. One can create an impression of superior status simply by pissing their time away. Anyone who's discussed a difficult test in school with their peers can relate to this interesting paradox. There's always someone in class who claims to have gone into an exam with little to no preparation at all and, with little sweat off their back, aced the test.

People’s ability to meet their most basic needs of shelter, clothing, and food have been taken care of for as long as the human race has been able to sustain life. But the amount of effort that has gone into meeting those needs has consistently been reduced. The most noticeable gains are evident when considering the Industrial Revolution through both the division of labor and economies of scale. While having your basic needs taken care of is all fine and well, human nature, as it was and is, never seems to be satisfied with just taking care of basic needs. One of the assumptions defining utility is that people have infinite wants, but that they are willing to substitute and trade off some things, forsaking consumption of a full case of Ramen Noodles for the opportunity to enjoy Jet’s Pizza once a week. These preferences can be graphed in the form of indifference curves. When taken in the aggregate, indifference curves of all individuals together form the demand curve. For personal reasons, the Ambidextrous Economist has taken a vow to wait as long as possible before he is forced to draw a graph.

The clash between management and labor, the forty hour work week, the idea of having a full-time job to work at until retirement, laws against monopoly power... these are all products of the Industrial Revolution, and remain as vestiges here in the Information Age. But as machines have become more efficient, the workforce’s answer has not been simply to accept those gains as that of productivity. Instead, the idea of creating a flawless document in one fifth of the time in a word processor instead of a return-carriage typewriter has created another curious death spiral: What was once ‘good enough’ is no longer ‘good enough’. It has to be ‘better’. The evolution of video games graphic capabilities and advancing functional interfaces are testament to the fact that ‘World of Warcraft’ is a significant step up from ‘Pong’.

The rising standards of living consistently show all the signs that there is no possible way to satiate the populace’s ever-revised need for conspicuous consumption, suggesting that Veblen’s critique against is very much grounded in fact. In one of his more controversial posits, Veblen considers having children to be one of the most demonstrative examples of conspicuous consumption. Having children is a factor multiplier that raises the cost of both the basic needs and the inevitable wants that figure into human beings’ propensity to consume at voracious levels if left unchecked. Veblen considered the prohibitive cost of raising children to be a natural mechanism for population control.

One of the most poignant examples Veblen makes is in regards to fashion, and he does it in a way that’s easily understood in terms of the video game market. We know, for instance, that this year’s style is in demand, and therefore we are prepared to pay a premium. As a whole, for as materialistic as it sounds, as a people we’re not fond of giving off the impression that we’re unfashionable, which means that whatever trend the top designers are peddling this fall, we’re off to buy updates to our wardrobe. But what of the value of a fashion from ten years ago? Somehow the antiquity of the ten-year-old hat carries with it the countervailing value of nostalgia. Last year’s fashion is less than worthless, but the ten year old hat’s antiquity now commands a premium? There are exceptions. Some things never go out of style. In much the same manner, older gaming systems like the original Nintendo system are now sought after as collectibles just as the advancing complexity and increasing quality of modern day systems like XBox 360 and PS3 continue to lap their predecessors. Old school Commodore 64 designs are now being re-marketed with modern-day processing and storage capabilities, cashing in on the brand value that is retained the same way antique furniture is sought after and commands premium prices once it’s differentiated and distinguished significantly enough from more current models.