"Capitalist Present, Collective Future: An Analysis of Labor in Night in the Woods and Tacoma"

[kane_magus]

Watch on YouTube

"Return the power to the workers and separate your boss from their teeth."

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(As the video warns, mild spoilers for Night in the Woods, incredibly heavy spoilers for Tacoma.)

The video starts with a story about a man who almost froze to death in a transfer truck and then got fired by the company he worked for because he abandoned the trailer rather than freeze to death. A story which, though it was not mentioned in the above video, also involved a certain asshat who would later go on to be a current Supreme Court justice.

So... whereas the previous Night in the Woods video essay I posted mostly discussed Mae's mental issues, this one (by a different guy) uses NitW and Tacoma (along with mentions of Rockstar Games and Telltale Games and others) to talk about how and why Capitalism sucks turgid, encrusted, rancid asshole.

"Working on video games almost always comes with a catch, and most frequently, that catch is crunch."

Just going to say it again: crunch is dogshit. It is counterproductive. It is damaging, both to the product and, more importantly, to the people making the product. As I've also said before, this has been known for decades. Yet, it still happens, to this day. (I'll also say it again, the main thing I learned during my four years at DigiPen was that, ultimately, I really didn't want to be an employee in the video game industry.)

Regarding the Tacoma ending super-spoilers, yeah... like Ted Faro, fuck Sergio Venturi.

"My home, North Carolina..." Ha ha, hey, that's cool. *sentence and paragraph continues* Ah, yes, so depressing. As someone who also lives in The South™, let me just give a hearty "Fuck The South™." That's what North Carolina gets, when the entire state legislature of North Carolina is controlled by the GQP. (It still amazes me that we've had a Democrat governor for the past three terms, including the current one.)

Then back to comparing all that to Tacoma and NitW. Man... too bad Elon Musk doesn't possess enough teeth to share with every employee he's ever wronged in his putrid life. (Donald Trump, either, for that matter.)

Want another game that handily fits this theme? Mouthwashing. (If one doesn't care to buy and play that game directly, one could watch a full LP, found here, done by Woolie and Reggie.)