Welcome to this week’s brand-new episode of the SubStick! We’ve got a big studio audience today and you as our star contestant, ready to compete for a grand prize. What is this prize, you ask? Why, an all-expenses-paid vacation to Hawaii!
The audience applauds you.
Now, all you have to do to secure this grand prize is to answer one question. Patty, please spin the wheel.
Patty is the woman spinning the wheel.
We’ve got our question. Remember, there is only one correct answer.
Now, let me just tally the results, and… the winner is you! Congratulations, big champ!
The audience violently cheers.
Within less than a minute you managed to secure a Hawaiian vacation! Don’t worry about reading the fine print, just get on the plane and you’ll be set.1
This Month’s Recommendations
Movie: The Searchers by John Ford
Album: Kid Spirit by Family and Friends
Game: Crypt of the NecroDancer by Brace Yourself Games
Book: Story by Robert McKee
A Mini Progress Report
The summer is upon us, and I have finished a draft of Project Storm. Sorry about all you Progress Report fans, but writing SubSticks and scripts at the same time takes a lot of work for a professional procrastinator. With changes in my life, I constantly become dissatisfied with the state of each SubStick. Apparently having a Substack in the first place isn’t cool anymore. That makes me a loser, and we can’t have that.
I want to try a bit more experimentation, and these changes might be accompanied by shifts in length and structure and level of controversy. What’s the point of the SubStick if it isn’t suited to who I am? And what’s the point of suiting it to who I am if you don’t know who I am? I’m Stick. So, there might be some level of panic.
I like consistency, however.
Flame Wars Of Hell
The internet’s true nature is the equivalent of men and women barking like rabid dogs, cultists blaming ideological enemies for great losses, and politicians fighting anonymous pranksters. This past week featured particularly ugly arguments that reminded everyone that as much as social media has helped connect communities and friends, it has also amplified the worst tendencies of the human social ladder.
Anonymity allows for a greater amount of cold-hearted vitriol without any sort of accountability. Targets can be virtually anyone accessed via any window of opportunity. There’s no need to worry about unimportant, trivial things like grammar and polite courtesy. Never before has the “enemy” just given pretty much everyone a chance to speak their mind. Of course, comments can be hidden, users can be blocked, and arguments can be countered, but these battles no longer require physical or visual interaction. There’s a world of difference between talking to something and texting them.
A short while ago, a 17-year-old jumped off a bridge. This young man, who identified as transgender, posted a picture on Twitter sensationalizing his own suicide as it was taking place. He did this despite believing he would not be there to witness the reaction, and this is because young people can no longer experience life events without broadcasting it onto their social media profiles. The relationship is so symbiotic that their internet persona is an extension of them.
It wasn’t necessarily the act itself that caused the reaction to spiral out of control. The act of posting the act opened up such a personal, sensitive, life-altering event to the eyes of this anonymous internet. Whether the fire of this reaction was amplified because viewers were cued into the fact that the original poster would not be alive to witness their reaction or not can’t be confirmed. But a large chunk of the response was less than sympathetic.
There’s only so much anger you can direct toward government systems and cultural zeitgeists before it feels like yelling at clouds in the sky. It’s impossible to behead the king when his power is controlled by hundreds if not thousands of faceless bureaucrats. So why not shift all the blame towards one specific supporter of the system2 who can no longer hear you? It’s disrespectful to the dead, and to their friends and family, but on the other foot, from a certain deluded perspective, you’re punching a pillow. It can’t feel anything. And it’s not like they would have shown any sympathy if something ever happened to you.
We all saw a similar reaction when Luigi Mangione murdered a healthcare CEO. The system is made up of too many people with vague responsibilities. Redirecting grievances to one person and then murdering them as if you had placed all of your pain into what is functionally a tulpa seems to be an easier solution.
This frankly unsettling retort to the death of a minor caused activists to take to the trenches to reason that said behavior is exactly what caused the suicide in the first place. “It’s bullying like this that drives innocent kids just trying to be themselves to jump off bridges.” But these ideologues refuse to engage or confront why their community is so uniquely fragile.
Being mean on the internet certainly isn’t a help,3 but it doesn’t match up logically when it happens to nearly everyone who uses it. Yet the stats are still skewed. Parental abuse wouldn’t cause such high rates of self-harm either, because it happens to tons of people as well yet transgender individuals still remain abnormal. The only other explanation is that it isn’t an external factor, but an internal one. An old phrase reads, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me.” Mean words online could never hurt as much as an aching in your bones that you have mutilated yourself for nothing.
Gaming The System
Video games are too expensive, and yet I keep buying them. The problem is the quality is inconsistent. It’s bound to happen when you’re dealing with so many different developers and studios.
The typical price has been $60. I’ve paid that amount for games that I played for five hours, and other games for a hundred. $20 for a game played for forty hours, $50 on a game played for three. This is usually chalked up to poor monetary habits; gaming tends to be addictive. Other times it’s the standard industry price: $60 indicates AAA quality. I might pay five bucks for a multiplayer game I can sink a dozen hours into with my friends. There’s the rare game that is so good I would gladly pay a hundred dollars for it.
Check your friends’ Steam profiles and it’s likely at least a few of them have sunk an egregious amount of time on a game that is free to play. Technically, video games have never been more varied and cheaper. They’ve only just upgraded from $60 to $70 after over a decade. Sales and discounts are constant.4
So the community stirred when Nintendo’s flagship launch title for their upcoming Switch 2 console, Mario Kart World, was priced at $80. To jump another ten dollars so soon is a ballsy and probably dumb move optics-wise. We all know inflation was pretty bad, and the game is technically cheaper if you got it bundled with the console. But some people like to own their games physically, like me. Clearly this faux-outrage hasn’t stopped the Switch 2 from selling out their pre-orders.
So, other than the obvious answer of corporate greed, why is Mario Kart eighty dollars?
The first answer is found via comparison. Many other people have made this point as well in an attempt to shill. It is not the only answer.
The first installment of the Mario Kart franchise, Super Mario Kart, was released for the Super Nintendo in 1992 at a price of $50. Adjusted for inflation, that is $115. Have you ever played Super Mario Kart before? Sure, it’s fun, but do you think that’s a game worth $100?
In fact, every game in this series is pretty expensive when adjusted for inflation.
Super Mario Kart (1992, Super Nintendo): $115
Mario Kart 64 (1996, Nintendo 64): $120
Mario Kart: Super Circuit (2001, Game Boy Advance): $81
Mario Kart: Double Dash (2003, GameCube): $87
Mario Kart Wii (2008, Wii): $75
Mario Kart 8 (2014, Wii U): $81
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (2017, Switch): $78
So that kind of averages out to $80, doesn’t it?
I know what you’re going to say, though. The problem isn’t necessarily the price, but the idea that games have gotten dumber, buggier, and have taken longer and longer to develop yet still release half-baked with paid DLC and microtransactions. I suppose I can’t dispute that, but I also can’t apply it to Mario Kart, because everyone likes Mario Kart.
The most recent game is eight years old5 and people still play it at parties. The online community is alive and well. Tournaments remain active. I have sunk over three hundred total hours into it. So a new game that I can cherish for years to come both by myself and with my friends long after it releases? I have the knowledge and experience with the series to understand that I will almost certainly like the new installment. So, maybe all that is worth $80 to me. It’s not like I’m going to make that a regular habit.
There is a question of “why not just keep playing the old one instead of paying so much money for a new one that’s barely improved?” But that’s like asking why I’d pay to watch Terminator 2 when I can just watch the first one. Yes, the original is good, but the whole point of the sequel is that it’s better.
“There is no hope... but we will walk after our own devices... and we will every one do the imagination of his evil heart...”
Hawaii of course refers to the former name of Haiwee, California, an unincorporated community in Inyo County with an estimated population of 26, including you
and subsequent victim of that system
it’s why I try not to do it too often
unless you’re Nintendo
technically eleven if you consider it’s an enhanced port of a Wii U game from 2014