The Modern Entertainment Industry Is Dying Under Capitalism.

im sure a lot of you have seen Sony's recent decisions with their consoles- they're not making physical copies of their games moving forwards, while planning to shut down the online stores for the PS3 and the PS Vita. i myself dont have a PlayStation, but i can recognize that htis is a symptom of a massive problem within the entertainment industry: capitalism is killing it as we speak.

the first example i brought up was with gaming, so lets stick with that for now. like i pointed out, PlayStation plans on only selling digital versions of their games, to the point where even if you buy a physical case, all youll get is a download code. Nintendo has also opted to subtly push its customers to buy their games digitally, as doing so grants the customer with a virtual game card they can swap between consoles or share with friends and family members. the problem with this is that traditionally speaking, Nintendo has made it much more expensive to purchase a game digitally than it is to get it physically. if a game's been out for long enough, i always buy it secondhand and physically, because i know it'll come at a fraction of the price it would be to buy it on release, let alone months or even years afterwards as a digital copy. Pokemon Sword and Shield are eight this november, but they're still sixty dollars to buy digitally on your switch or switch two. 

lets move on to movies and television. the whole reason cable television is dying out is because of streaming services stepping in and taking a more limited role in what it does. if you have or had cable, you had access to every channel. if you have a streaming service, you only have what that service offers, which they can change whenever they feel like it. Netflix and HBO Max are at this rate famous for suddenly removing well-loved  content that was legally exclusive to their platforms, while giving another season to a show no one asked for. advertisements are a whole other ballpark- the point od paying $10-12 a month for a service is so that i wont have to see advertisements, but certain platforms said "fuck that," added them in, and asked you to pay extra to get rid of them. im not doing that shit, nor do i have to if i have an adblocker on my computer. another issue with streaming services is that they act as a perfect cover for canning genuinely good shows or movies. Disney+ will put the full seasons of currently-airing Disney Channel shows on the platform, and people will complain that the show feels "too slow" when its designed to be watched in one or two episodes at a time, not a whole season in one go. every series that's still built for television and not streaming is essentially doomed to get baseless criticism for "poor pacing," when in reality the pacing is most likely fine. dont get me started on the movie situation: the reason Disney keeps churning out banger sequels but shit remakes is because they see the success of those sequels as proof that people really do want to see the classic stuff make a return. every time they basically set up more creative films to fail, they use it as an excuse to claim those films were "too ambitious,"  because surely thats a sign that people actually HATE new stuff, and only want the classics...!

youd think that the solution is to just go indie, but even the indie scene has gone to hell. if you arent mega popular online, you're basically gambling with the entire fucking internet to get hype, and half the time the attention is coming from spinlesss dudebros who call everything corny, search through your entire internet activity online, and find something mildly upsetting at WORST that you did in 2017 as proof youre evil. or you could get an instant straight shot to support by partnering with GLITCH, who has hired multiple voice actors and creators who have been or have knowingly hung out with those who have been racist, and have made no acknowledgement of this. 

before someone mentions the magic of piracy, as good as it is, blabbermouths on the internet have ruined that too. site after site gets taken down because people will publicly share where they pirate content on thier tiktok or twitter accounts. if i dont share whatever site im using to watch cartoons or movies, im gatekeeping. but whenever i laugh at people for thinking that, someone gets mad because "well YOU shouldnt be pirating in the FIRST PLACE!!" im actually a bit grateful that the one mod who was not happy with piracy was demoted, because i can say this without getting sniped: entertainment should not be stuck behind a paywall. if you want me to watch or read things from their legal hostings so badly, then you can pay for me.

TL/DR: everything about the modern entertainment scene is designed so that you spend more while corporations spend less. capitalism is the reason.