Univocity: Streaming, Metaverse & Evergreen Brands

A Future Dead On Arrival

Today we'll describe the inner logic and implicit ontology of evergreen brands, streaming and the metaverse. All appear built on a univocal or homogenous conception of being. The future they envision is dead on arrival insofar as its template of what is to come is based entirely on sameness, the past.

[What is univocity?] Univocity, the doctrine that being is essentially-homogenous (and that difference is a result of linguistic and social construction[i]), reduces formal to material causality; within the genus of material causality, many are reduced to one/collective to individual cause[s]. As Lagrange observes, the reduction of specific differences to vocal sounds yields a singular, essentially unique being[ii].

[Univocity in the game industry] This univocity assumption is foundational to a) the reduction of video games to affect or commercial intention, yielding reoccurring brands transmissible between artists; b) the centralization of interfaces and computing hardware. Implicit in both is an assumed underlying sameness and equivalence/commutability[iii] to all artistic conceptions: that they can be conquered by formula or method. Difference is taken as susceptible to quantification or capture within some universal container or index, a presupposed "locus of transcription"[iv] or brothel of neutralization[v] of all possible objects.

[a] So formal reduce to material causes: the signified to the act of playing or signification (and concomitant emotions/experience) on one hand, or making of the game or act of representation on the other (associated financial incentive). The very content and end of creating the work (its creative conception) homogenizes and coalesces with consumer satisfaction and profit motive. We see this in the slogan "make gaming for everyone", accessibility agendas and live service cannibalization of treasured ips. These are cases of affective and intentional fallacy respectively: calls for the bastardization of intelligible content for the interest (not of the work but) some party. The game is conflated with who it serves, denuded of any intelligibility or intrinsic purpose. Material complexification (VR, control schemes, delivery methods) and evergreen brands replace conceptual innovation and diversity.

[b] And (within the genus of material cause) diverse individual operatios are reduced to a singular collective one (many to one material cause[s]). The subjective causation of video game meaning is centralized via rentier monopoly over computing hardware and universal metaverse integration of all software.

References

[i] Butler Desire 214 (https://www.amazon.ca/Subjects-Desire-Hegelian-Reflections-Twentieth-Century/dp/0231159994)

[ii] V2 198

[iii] Guattari Schizoanalytic 43, 48 (https://www.amazon.ca/Schizoanalytic-Cartographies-Felix-Guattari/dp/1441167277)

[iv] Baudrillard Ecstasy 27 (https://www.amazon.ca/Ecstasy-Communication-Jean-Baudrillard/dp/1584350571)

[v] Baudrillard Symbolic Exchange & Death 31 (https://www.amazon.ca/Symbolic-Exchange-Death-Jean-Baudrillard/dp/1473907586)