Yesterday I Bought a Game

Yesterday I bought a game, and it felt strange.

For you see, I bought it on sale. BUT I did not just buy it on sale, I bought it with Steam Wallet money. BUT it wasn't just Steam Wallet money, it was with Steam Wallet money I earned selling trading cards on the Steam Marketplace, that I earned playing games. On Steam.

Not that big a deal. Honestly, there is no BUT here. I do have to wonder about this whole internal economy thing tho. Because now that the Steam internal economy is starting to really run at speed, I start thinking about Shadowrun. 

Shadowrun is Blade Runner meets D&D pulpy fun, but that isn't why I think about it in relation to my purchase. One of the cornerstones of the setting is Corporate Extraterritoriality, or that a corporation can control land the way a country does. Essentially, they can set the laws and rules on their own property, including issuing currency. This produces a society where employment by a corporation is like moving to a totalitarian state, with it's own money, specific products, and censorship. It actively encourages feeding your effort and money into the system, making a bloated and powerful apparatus that can't help but victimize you to keep operating. So when I buy a game on Steam using Steam money I earned playing games on Steam, it makes me think about hamsters in wheels and other lovely thoughts. 

If there is one thing that playing Diablo 3 has taught me, it's that a Spade is a Spade and a Skinner Box is a Skinner Box. Of course, there are caveats and checks and balances and it isn't an isolated process (somebody had to buy those cards from me after all), but I still feel like we are all in a bus that is slooooooooowly sliding towards something unpleasant.

Or maybe I just need to take a nap. I bought Rogue Legacy yesterday, and I was up really late. It's AWESOME :).