it all sucks now.

Let me start by saying that I am ultimately blessed in spite of the circumstances. I do have a job where I make enough money to survive (for now), I have a place of my own (for now), and I have a loving family that supports me (usually when I’m not being coherent). I live in Central Florida, which in the midst of all its ongoing problems remains a friendly, diverse, and creative community full of wonderful places to visit. Being here at this time makes me more blessed than many parts of the world.

So I will not forget any of this when I announce:

Everything I love is turning into shit. And those most responsible don’t even care and don’t mind profiting from the shittiness of it all.

The world of gaming and especially the world of movies and creative arts altogether is in absolute dire straits. More and more talented companies full of talented people are being bought out and merged with behemoths that will rather eliminate jobs altogether as opposed to losing a fraction of a penny for the shareholders. With everything joining forces in larger and larger bubbles, the avenues for creativity have been closing and with that, fewer options and fewer jobs in order to participate in making said art.

And this affects me personally, for I originally went to school for video games and film. Didn’t finish, but that’s another story, the effort was still made.

I went to school for video game design before switching for film in order to focus on screenwriting. I had already been blogging and writing stupid reviews in the mid-2000s. I’m sure some of these reviews can still be somehow found in the doldrums of IGN and IMDB. Either way, I felt like I was creative enough to doll out scripts that would make fun movies or television shows. But in this world, it requires patience, connections, consistency, luck, but most importantly connections. And they just never fell through because the world has become expensive, and trying to get into the world of cinema or gaming can be a lengthy task whose risks can threaten the livelihood of your loved ones that may financially depend on you to provide.

Why continue being in an industry that is willing to kick you out at any given moment? Think of the tens of thousands of jobs lost in gaming alone, think about the thousands of people laid off by Disney as they change hands, or think about the thousands of upcoming layoffs after the ridiculous Warner Bros./Paramount merger into the silly Skydance name that nobody wants. Even Netflix and Amazon, some of the largest companies in the entire planet, are not immune to the layoffs, despite record profits and consistent success.

What breadwinner in a family would want to indulge in this endless battle of participating in a creative industry that is obsessed with profit margins? My already-limited connections abandoned these places to pursue safer, more stable jobs in other industries, which is understandable considering their family responsibilities, but that’s just more people who could have helped me or could have introduced great ideas and helped create wonderful things instead of settling elsewhere.

Not just from a career standpoint are things bad for me and tens of thousands of others who had always been interested, from a consumer standpoint things are becoming worse even when the technology has advanced enough so that it doesn’t have to.

Think about the Skydance come 2027, it now has Nickelodeon AND Cartoon Network underneath its umbrella. This means the artists, writers, producers will ultimately merge and the personalities of each animation branch will become neutered and streamlined. There are clear differences between what makes a Nickelodeon show and what makes a Cartoon Network/Adult Swim show, and these quirks is what made each special and allowed for the 1990s and 2000s to have so much variety.

You had more than one pipeline of talent creating new fun stuff, Spongebob Squarepants doesn’t happen or get greenlit without the existence of Rocko’s Modern Life and Nick constantly trying to compete against Disney, Kids WB, and Cartoon Network. But what if say Disney had bought Nickelodeon in the 90s, would you still have ended up with the creation of Nick’s most popular cartoon of all-time? Or would the blending of animation studios have resulted in layoffs, corporate tastes shifting, or diluting the talent pools and separating core groups?

Competition breeds better art, but it also creates more jobs and more opportunities for creative folks seeking an avenue to showcase their skills and their voice. One giant conglomerate that owns all the avenues will always lead to inferior output.

I bring up Disney because they established the tone for major corporations in shifting strategies in the 21st century under Bob Iger. When they purchased Marvel and Pixar almost simultaneously, it determined that what will be creating value moving forward isn’t the things you make, but what IPs you can control. Marvel could have worked independently with multiple studios and companies and continued making their money that way, but now Disney has the final say on everything under Marvel’s umbrella. The quantity and range of ideas they could have implemented while independent was never going to happen with the Mouse as the boss. Some of Marvel’s sharper edges was going to be smoothed away, their presence in the gaming industry was going to be minimalized (which resulted in Marvel vs. Capcom never achieving the popularity and quality of the late 1990s).

To be fair, the Marvel Cinematic Universe gave us a lot of wonderful movies and revolutionary ideas on how to handle output of blockbuster films, but the need to keep a consistent tone and narrative timeline restricts many properties from fully exploring different ideas. And guess what, Chris Evans is coming back once again to play Captain America, six years after his story had properly wrapped up. And of course, we still don’t have a Hulk movie because IP obstacles prevent him from having actual full cinematic representation.

Then in 2012, the even bigger blow happened, which likely opened the floodgates and started the buying spree we’re seeing today. Disney bought Lucasarts, which includes the gaming division, Indiana Jones, and the entire Star Wars brand. Suddenly, not only was Star Wars never going to expand beyond what Disney wants, but now the company is dismissing dozens possibly hundreds of books each with their own ideas and interpretations of the Star Wars universe.

I was never invested in the books (because I hardly read books to begin with), but 1996’s Shadows of the Empire multimedia project and Genndy Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars are some of the greatest non-George Lucas Star Wars content we’ve ever experienced and its just background fodder without any chance of a continuation---because Disney declared them as non-canon. Great IPs with vast universes like Star Wars and Marvel used to have many voices contributing to the brand, now you have to get past Disney first.

So that’s why the Coyote vs. ACME saga was such a breaking point for most cinephiles. I personally cannot write and produce a Looney Tunes movie because its under Warner Bros. control, but at the same time even IF the movie is made you can’t guarantee that it will see the light of day. All the major streaming players have already eliminated and shelved shows and movies that have already been made, and will refuse you access to them because it will save them money in tax breaks. Hardworking folks throughout the industry will see some of their contributions hidden behind paywalls, and then potentially hidden behind tax breaks, never to appear again, and making it that much harder for you to boost your portfolio while seeking the next project.

Coyote vs. ACME had been shelved for years before being sold for a whopping 50 million dollars despite the CEOs’ dismissive attitude towards it. Then it turned out that the movie was actually very good, led to strong reviews, and enough word-of-mouth that it ended up outgrossing Warner Bros.’ Supergirl over the course of the summer. It was a victory, but a slightly hollow one as the CEO of the company he helped tank still managed to walk out with over a quarter billion dollars after the Skydance merger went through. In today’s America, CEOs are being primed to kill the companies they run because they will win out at the end, even if it will be at the expense of the company and the labor that keeps it barely afloat.

Then there’s the gaming side, where we have seen Sony and Microsoft buying up tons of companies and IPs only to lay off all the talent and not even use the franchises they decided to own. Especially with AI threatening the livelihood of tens of thousands of creative jobs while greedy lazy CEOs try to find ways to produce content without paying people, this is arguably the closest the gaming industry has gotten to a full crash since the 1980s, and this is currently the most hostile job market in the field of gaming in the history of the medium.

As people lose jobs, as entire companies go under, we’re also seeing a reduction in AAA titles, leaving Nintendo as well as the emulation and indie scene having to pick up the pieces to keep gaming relevant, affordable, and palpable for a disillusioned consumer base having to deal with escalating prices in software and hardware.

Yes, Nintendo has also been part of the price rises, but they have not raised the price of their consoles OVER THREE TIMES IN THE LAST 20 MONTHS unlike what we’re seeing from the others.

Remember Star Wars? Well, Disney chooses who can make the games, and had made an exclusive deal with EA Games that got so bad they backed out of the contract with years to go. EA still got to do some games, but the exclusivity had disappeared, which likely meant less money for the CEO. Now look what happened in the last month: Galactic Racer becomes a hit because it’s made by a talented studio that used to make a highly-successful arcade racing series before being bought out by the very same company who had exclusive rights to Star Wars (among other gaming franchises). Yet even as the popularity of Galactic Racer grows, EA kills a separate studio and lays off thousands, a studio that had been in operation for decades and created highly-acclaimed games throughout this century. Even with the success, a studio has to die, more money has to be saved for the shareholders, people have to lose their jobs and revert back to an employment field that is already a crowded and limited space.

Its rough, not going to lie. It had taken me a while to write this, because I didn’t have a proper way to finish it. I don’t have solutions; I don’t have ideas on how to recover from this decade-long discontent mood towards things I used to generally love for such a long time. I consume nowhere near as much cinema and gaming as I used to, and I really miss that part of my life. I miss having the energy to put on a game and try to conquer it, I miss not having that overwhelming dread in the background. I miss my writing, I miss bouncing fun movie ideas with others, I miss the creative benders. I miss having the love for movies I definitely used to have.

The United States has become a cesspool of awful awful people purposefully ruining everything we enjoy consuming, whether that be in sports, gaming, cinema, television, content creation, social media, and even journalism. I fear that unless we make some drastic changes in the country’s politics, it’s only going to get worse and more irritating. We need major changes; this country is structurally broken and the consequences trickles from real world problems to complications in the way we consume media and entertainment.

The consumers and the artists deserve significantly better, period.