They Don't Own the Idea

This is the first time we have seen this much money spent pushing a game outside of the video game industry. My YouTube feed is flooded with positive D&D 2024 book previews, making every second video either 2024-related or someone discussing 2024 content. It is beginning to feel desperate.

I swear much money is being given to Google to hype this.

The more I see, the less interested I am. An old saying is that a lie repeated enough is the truth, and we certainly see the repetition. Another disturbing trend is this manufacturing of alternate realities. We are no longer allowed to have our own opinions, especially regarding entertainment and gaming.

Our opinions will be delivered to us via YouTube algorithms.

Some billion-dollar company will give a trillion-dollar company tens of millions of dollars, and whatever truth they want to happen will magically be the accepted reality. Shills hungry for pennies and attention will always be there to push new things on the cheap. It is all money passing from one Wall Street firm to another.

The community will never see a dime.

When gamers support indie games and remove money and attention from the cycle? Then they get angry.

Even supporting old games via POD feeds into the cycle; they are siphoning money off you for nostalgia. Those ideas "own" your idea of fantasy gaming. You can never leave the classic D&D settings or mindset.  "The planes" encompass every other setting, even 3rd party ones.

"We own all this, even if we don't."

I see this in gamers. They will want to express a fantasy character, and the first thing they do is run to D&D Beyond to create them; even though the character has nothing to do with D&D, that system "owns the idea."

Beware when one company owns an entire genre of imagination and expression of creative ideas. This is the theft of myth and lore that Disney does so well, where the stories we pass down between generations become "corporate IP monetized for profit."

That isn't Tolkien. That is D&D.

Of course, the Little Mermaid has a talking fish in it.

Putting my money into the pockets of smaller teams, indie creators, and people hungry for my gaming dollars is always better. I willfully remove my money from the cycle. I support communities outside the default choice. I say no to Wall Street, and the cyclic money siphons like a needle in our imaginations.

You can't be socially progressive, preaching communal ownership of everything and giving fistfuls of money to Wall Street to own a part of your imagination and identity. You just can't. It is incompatible with who you are, and shockingly, I need to say this. I'd say the same thing to the people who work there. Why are you doing this?

Myth, legend, heroism, and the concept of fantasy are not owned by one billion-dollar company to be put behind a paywall.

They are freely owned by the people.

The ownership of the ideas inside our heads.

The ones that belong to all of us.