YurDucky 🦆 | 🇲🇽🇳🇮 |

Well this adds like ten more layers on the meta commentary of the blade runner collab lol. Given the success they’ve seen with lads it makes sense why they’re running with the possibility of creating the first fully-realized artificial companion. They’ve already proven their success at getting ppl to form strong emotional attachments to their products. This is the kind of thing that could revolutionize an entire industry of robotics, which any tech company would salivate at the opportunity to be at the helm of. It would also begin PPG’s transition from game developer into cutting-edge tech giant (which they’ve said is their long-term goal). It makes sense in hindsight why some of the kindleds felt like tech demos — it’s bc they were. I don’t think I need to explain why robotic companions as replacements for authentic human relationships can be dangerous. But we live in a time where tech companies seem hellbent on taking the tech from dystopian, sci-fi media at face value & ppl just want cool, new toys to play with that reminds them of that one thing from the movie they like. Media literacy is dead for a reason. As it pertains to the boycott, I would say this is largely irrelevant beyond Valko’s possible financial impact on their long-term investments. I imagine this is something that’s been in the works for a long time, so everything was already budgeted accordingly. The decreased revenue will likely just slow their projections, but not eliminate them. I gotta say tho, this isn’t the kind of move a company makes if they think they won’t be able to maintain a high level of cash flow. Regardless of what the KPI’s are showing us, PPG are moving as if nothing’s changed. That push onwards is either extremely arrogant & short-sighted, or bc they’ve come up w a strategy they’re confident will reverse the plummeting revenue trends. Whether that takes the form of Valko’s reinstatement (highly likely imo) or launching a new project (high risk for speculatively high reward) remains to be seen. In general, this has been a very expensive year for PPG. From investing in AI & robotics companies, purchasing a new, much larger office complex, increased legal fees, fully refunding BW, merch/game refunds both bc of Valko’s introduction & cancellation, the losses in production & development of Valko & his merch, hiring more staff domestically & internationally, the cost of collabing w Blade Runner, etc, on top of standard operational costs. Again, they wouldn’t be doing all this if they believed their current low rate of revenue is representative of their new baseline. They’re moving like they’re still making just as much money as before. Reading all of this, I think viewing the moves of PPG actually makes a lot more sense through the lens of a tech start up rather than a traditional game developer. Like that really just clicked a lot for me, personally. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with this. I don’t imagine we’ll receive many big any updates about it for a while. Regarding the boycott, this is an ‘interesting, anyway’ kind of thing. It’s not relevant at all. Personally, I think it all feels rather dystopian. I don’t want to live in the kind of world tech CEO’s seem so intent on making our reality. I think I’d be less pessimistic abt the big picture effects of this if we weren’t seeing the real time consequences of the current tech leaders actively using their capital as a means to gain political influence & push towards a technofeudalistic future. I love cyberpunk, but I don’t want to live in it. It’s all very bleak. We really learned nothing from the stories like Blade Runner.