I Hate Video Games. And Capitalism.

That's a total misnomer. I actually love video games. When I was younger, I had often wondered if I should pursue programming as a career path (thank God I didn't though when I look at how most programmers are treated these days). And I love capitalism, at least an ideal capitalism based upon honest work and creativity. No other social-political system is better suited for innovation and merit-based individual reward.
However, the state of the current video game industry is indicative of nearly everything wrong with the American capitalist system.
Fifteen years ago, the video game industry was rather small (at least compared to what it is now) and those that worked within the industry were passionate about what they did and, for the most part, game creators did their best to create a damn good game as that was virtually the only way to make sure your game sold. (The notable exception to this was games with licensed titles, such as "Batman" or "Spider-man," which had the potential to sell on name alone and consequently were often horrible games).
In recent years though, the video game industry has become a multibillion dollar industry (in fact, in 2008 video games outsold packaged moves, i.e. what you buy at the store, in the U.S.). Anyone that's played games for a good while now can tell you this has not, in general, been a good thing.
Sure, it's had some benefits. For starters, video games are no longer considered a hobby of nerds only (though MMORPGs still tend to fall in that category). But beyond that, studios are able to put a lot more money into the product, meaning that at the very least, the games tend to look a lot better (it should be noted however that retro-styled games are making a comeback, e.g. Minecraft). And not only do they often look better, but they sound better as well. It is not uncommon for a game's musical score to be done by a professional composer with an actual orchestra in an actual sound studio, as opposed to the days of yore when the music was done by one of the game's programmers on his computer with a MIDI program and subpar recording equipment. As well, in that vain, we also see real actors doing the voices for video games now instead of amateur actors or the games programmers.
It shouldn't go unmentioned that many of these "advances" would not be possible without the advancements in computer technology the world has seen. None the less, the gaming industry would rarely see most of these benefits without making the money it does.
And when it comes down to it, these benefits are all superficial; not a one of them serves to improve the actual content of games. Yet that doesn't seem to matter anymore.
One would think, as the industry has grown, the desire for most people within the industry would be to make better games. Instead, as has been seen in every other financially large industry in America, the only desire has become to make more money.
Games are no longer sold on merit, but instead on hype (much like nearly everything else in America). When gamers finally realize that they (yet again) bought a piece of shit video game, they are promised a patch to fix many of the complaints about the game. However, those patches rarely fix most of the real problems and often create new issues. This cycle continues for a couple years until the publisher (those that actually release the game) come out with an all new game of the same type (usually a sequel to the one everyone is already playing) claiming to have finally fixed everything. This again is part of the hype and the cycle start over again.
Throw in the fact that many senior developers and programmers are often "let go" to make room for recent college grads (meaning they lay off the higher paid employees with experience and bring in much cheaper labor that has no idea what it's doing and is often much more malleable to the publisher's wishes) and you have the perfect example of everything wrong with American Capitalism.
A very few people at the top of these corporations continue to make more and more profit from these antics while the industry itself suffers. Of course, the shareholders continue to make money (not much, but they're happy to not be losing anything), so there's no call for change (at least not from those who can affect it).
I would be remiss not to clarify that not every video game maker is guilty of all this. There are some smaller companies out there still truly passionate about their product. But they are few and far between and disappearing all too fast as the industry continues to move towards being concerned with nothing more than profit (as companies such as Activision and Electronic Arts have helped it to do).
Anyways, this rant has gone long enough (yet again). Not to say I won't go into something similar in the future (probably geared more towards capitalism and less towards video games), but for tonight this is enough.