introduction

Recently, the Factorio DLC came out. Since Factorio was such a well-made game, it pushed the game to the first spot top-selling list. And Someone on Steam subreddit posted about it. Everything until this point was very predictable. What I didn’t forsee was that some people were complaining about its price.

complaint

Their main complaints could be categorized into 3 parts:

1. It’s an indie game, how come it can sell this much?
2. The game never went on sale.
3. The game increased prices after years after being released.

Of course, as someone who loved Factorio (despite never finished it), I laughed at those comments. I simply didn’t see why the game couldn’t sale at that price point simply because it’s an indie game, the game must be on sale all the time, and the game couldn’t increase prices. At the same time, I was a chicken, so I was mostly judging them in front of my screen without actually leaving a comment.

world view

After around 10 minutes, I was tired so I stopped. However, I asked myself: they behaving liked that must have a reason - what would their reasons be? I had read about we all saw this world differently despite it being the exact same world we all lived in. Thus, my conclusion was: they behaved like that because it was conflicting with their world views.

To most people who used Steam, including me, we were accustomed to sales. There were simply so many sales on Steam that some of us decided to basically never buy any games that weren’t at least, say, 50% off. We were so used to the idea of “if the game was X years old, we should be able to get it at Y% off.” In fact, during the Next Fest, I played a lot of demos and wishlisted games that I liked. However, I did not have the intention to buy them at their original price - I added them to wishlist so that I would see them when they have at least 50% off sale.

For people like this and if Factorio wasn’t their type of games, of course they’d feel entitled that the game should go on sale. And when Factorio didn’t do it - in fact, the did the opposite of it, they increased the price - it directly conflict with their world view. In their world, things had order, things should operate in certain way, and if things didn’t do that, those things were illegal. Factorio, in their world, was illegal. “This was outragous! This was a crime! this was immoral! This should be illegal!” Worse, the game being the first on the top-seller list would make them think: “how could people be so blind? Why was everyone so stupid except me?” They got defensive and they got angry because their world view did not reflect the real world they lived in. And this meant… they were… wrong. “How could I be wrong?”

I was susseptible to this as well. I disliked Blizzard so I never paid a single dime - yet people were still buying Hearthstone preorder or Overwatch 2 cosmetics. I also felt that people were blind that they kept supporting Blizzard. But, in fact, it was me who was wrong - my world view simply didn’t reflect the real world.

self importance

We all thought we were important in this world. Which was probably why there was another kind of comments some people say: “I didn’t buy it because it never went on sale.” Voting with your wallet, as they say, was one of consumers’ weapon against companies. These people, trying to boycott the companies/products by not buying it, thought they were important in this world. They thought that by not buying the game, they were “punishing” the company for not putting their games on sale. To be fair, this was normal - I thought I was important as well!

Unfortunately, most people in this world just wasn’t that important. If they don’t exist, the world wouldn’t change much. If they die the next day, the world wouldn’t stop spinning. In fact, in the grand scheme of things, no one was important. I realized that I wasn’t important in this world at all when I realized that most (actually all, but I still wanted to feel important) of my actions simply didn’t matter. I couldn’t change shit even if I tried.

Disclaimer: I didn’t write this to encourage people to commit suicide. I wanted to encourage people not to base their emotion on things they couldn’t change. Rather, base it on things they actually have power to influence over. For example, in my case, I couldn’t change anything regarding politics apart from voting every 2 years. Thus, instead of watching political news and getting angry, I started focusing on myself and my relationship. I started to learn how to draw (in Krita), how to 3D model (in Blender), and how to make games (in Godot). I was very proud of how much progress I had made! In terms of relationship, I simply stopped being angry and correcting people. If people said the wrong things, unless it would affect people’s live, I simply agree and disregard. I am now way more happy than past me simply by changing my focus.

self reflection

As I mentioned above, I was also succesptible too all these problems. I have no solution but I do have something I want to achieve: when I saw comments/news/etc. conflicting with my world view, perhaps I should focus on observing it and see what is really out there and update my view accordingly instead of focusing on reacting and becoming defensive. This felt very similar to mindful meditation where, when you thought about something other than your breath, you simply let it go without any judgement. Focusing on observation than reaction.