Hey everyone ā just wanted to let you know that I thoroughly dislike paywalls. Horrific/Terrific has a few of them up but as of today those babies are coming DOWN.
I donāt think that anything I write here should be restricted from anyone. I do think that a weekly newsletter is enough work on its own to warrant compensation though. Writing Horrific/Terrific takes at least a day of my time every week; tbh I want to be able to spend even more time on it ā I donāt want to just churn out some news and go āwell gosh isnāt this bad??ā every Friday. Iād much rather actually have ideas and be analytical. Iāve been trying to go more in that direction in recent weeks. If you like my writing, and if you can afford it, consider donating so I can keep going (and keep making it better!)
Itās Ā£4 a month, and if you pay for a whole year up front you get two months free. I honestly cannot stress enough that I am not here to ādo marketingā ā I am just here to write. I simply do not possess the knowledge or energy to silo my posts into āfreeā and āpaidā in a way that makes sense from a business perspective. Iām just a person who likes to write; if you decide to start donating Iāll very likely be able to write more. Think of it that way!
Right, enough of that; time for the good stuff. This week felt like a professional wine sommelier was challenging me to a duel ā and I have an embarrassingly rudimentary palette. But, anyway:
The Microsoft Activision acquisition has been approved by EU regulators ā prepare for your favourite games to become exclusive to the Xbox
Google has announced a big update to search ā prepare to become an NPC in the magic circle (keep reading to understand what that meansā¦)
Oh and Twitter has a new CEO but Iām kind of struggling to care
š° Restricting playtime
Microsoft have pursuing an Activision Blizzard acquisition for a while now, and this has been āblockedā by major regulatory bodies in the US, the UK, and also the EU. Exceptā¦ the EU are now saying the acquisition can go ahead.
Some context: Activision Blizzard make extremely popular games, such as Call of Duty and Overwatch. Right now you can play these games on most consoles (including PC). If Microsoft absorb Activision Blizzard, there will be nothing to stop them from jacking the prices up and making them exclusive to the Xbox or Windows. Currently, Call of Duty is mostly played on either the PS4 or PS5, and itās clear that Microsoftās goal is to make that not be a thing anymore. The EU have approved this deal because Microsoft say they will allow cloud gaming platforms to license Call of Duty and Overwatch for ten years ā this is not a good deal. This is literally putting a limit on something that before would continue without question.
Every single article Iāve read on this acquisition deal has failed to raise the most obvious point: discussions about licensing deals wouldnāt be happening if Microsoft didnāt already own a console and other gaming ecosystems. Activision, who make Call of Duty, would never have to think about limiting availability to their own game. Why would they? They surely want everyone to play their game, because thatās how they make money.
When youāre as large as Microsoft, you donāt make money from widening access channels to your content and products ā you make money from doing the exact opposite. This is why paying to entertain yourself makes no sense (I meanā¦ I donāt think paying for ANYTHING makes sense but thatās a whole other article). Gamers donāt want to manage subscriptions and buy yet another console just to play the games that make them happy. They just want to play the games.
š° Generative AI puts everyone in the magic circle
What about playing a game against your will? Without even noticing?? A couple of weeks ago I talked about how the AI hype guys on Twitter are obsessed with using AI to transform play into work. Then, the other day I read this piece about professional Go players who have lost to AlphaGo, an AI trained to play Go (FYI Go is an ancient Chinese board game) . All of this has kind of prompted me to think about the āgameā of AI, and how nowadays we struggle to leave its magic circle.
In case youāre not familiar with the concept, the magic circle is the kind of āplaygroundā you enter when you decide to play a game. Itās a space (either physical, virtual, or even just in your head) where you temporarily forget about reality outside of the circle, and submit to the rules of the game. So, if youāre playing football, and you simply do not care about scoring goals, you have not entered the magic circle, and you arenāt really playing the game ā because a key part of football is caring about the score. Football players who cry because they win/lose matches are very much in the circle.
Think about Call of Duty: this is basically a ārealisticā war game. People do more than simply enjoy it; they care about it. For instance, the guns in the game are serious business. Communities discuss at length how they can customise and optimise their loadouts for maximum damage and efficiency. The guns look like this:
So in this sense, for many, Call of Duty has a huge magic circle. When players discuss loadouts and tactics outside of the game, they are still in the circle. Letās quickly look at another game which is also broadly about running around and shooting things: Lovely Planet. In this game though, your gun is a wand, you canāt customise it (or anything else), and the āenemiesā are cartoonish and ridiculous.
So, this game has a teeny tiny magic circle, because you leave it pretty much as soon as you stop playing. Itās fun and silly, but obviously not the most complex thing in the world; you canāt necessarily get āreally into itā beyond just playing for a few minutes and then laughing. (Just FYI I love this game and have no interest in Call of Duty. In case that was unclear.)
I think this demonstrates the different ways in which people play. Some people really like to revel in complexity, and spend time working things out. Some people just like to dive in and make funny noises. And obviously thereās a lot of stuff in between, and these preferences depend on what youāre in the mood for.
Frank Lantz, the writer of the piece about AlphaGo, described professional Go players as engaging in āthe most advanced form of creative and intellectual laborā. With the introduction of AI, we have the ability to both trivialise and instrumentalise the creativity and complex thinking that comes with playing a game like Go to a high standard: all of the human thinking and problem-solving can now be absorbed by machines, and be used to bolster our collective productivity.
Ever since Googleās announcement about the new Search at their I/O conference, commentators have been lamenting over the generative AIās potential to replace even complex high-paid jobs. In case you missed this announcement, the new Search will spit out a generated AI answer to your query, right above the usual list of results. What this does is simplify and flatten out the entire process of searching for something online. Itās a clear next step to the āsingle interfaceā internet; you will no longer have to trawl through results and subject yourself to clickbait, youāll just get a neat and tidy answer to your question and move on. This is assuming the answers are accurateā¦ which they arenāt, of course.
This flattening truncates any extra thinking you may have to do to find something, or to work something out. If outsourced to machines, āhigh thinkingā might just become something that we do for pleasure ā e.g. in games. But the thing is, under capitalism, when the systems employs automation to do things traditionally done by humans, the humans donāt get respite from labour ā actually, the opposite happens. If, suddenly, complex brain-heavy work becomes āeasyā with the addition of AI, the expectation is that human output should increase. So no, high-paying ādifficultā jobs wonāt be replaced, they will just become very boring, repetitive, and not high-paying anymore.
Back to the magic circle: at first I thought that the increasing ubiquity of AI would eliminate all the magic circles in our lives, but instead I think whatās happened is that weāve been plopped into one single circle. And this magic circle has grown so large, with such blurry boundaries, that we canāt even tell when weāre in it. We engage in this magic circle not as players, but as non-player characters, just kind of bumping into the different features and constraints introduced by the true players of the game: the select few people who get to create and maintain the systems (AI and others) we use in our lives every day.
Anyway, thatās enough of me trying to sound smart. Once again, if you can, please donate so I can keep writing this newsletter to a high(ish) standard. Thank you!