By Nelson Schneider - 04/12/20 at 03:03 PM CT
I don’t think it’s necessary to retread the well-trampled ground of Atari’s (delenda est) past crimes, since I covered that dark chapter in videogame history quite well enough back in 2012. Yet, just when it seemed that the worst platform-holder in all of gaming history was ready to turn over a new leaf with their rebooted Atari VCS ‘open’ tinker-friendly console (which still hasn’t shipped nearly a year after going up for pre-order), two new Atari (delenda est) projects have come to light for 2020, and they are wholly indicative that the vile subsidiary still hasn’t learned its lesson.
First off, Atari (delenda est) has created a new cryptocurrency to compete with Bitcoin and its myriad ilk, which seems to be tied intimately into the Atari VCS’s online ecosystem. These so-called “Atari Tokens” are meant to be a new take on the old token-based economies of “totally legitimate businesses” like carnivals, county fairs, and traditional arcades where players of games of chance and/or skill can earn the cryptocurrency by doing well at said games. Of course, we all know that cryptocurrency is a scam designed to allow technocrats to skim profits off of bubble-based pseudo-economies in the same way that plutocrats have done for centuries. The fact that Atari (delenda est) isn’t even trying to sugar coat their latest endeavor is, however, quite disconcerting. Oh, and you can conveniently buy Atari Tokens with Bitcoin or Etherium! Wouldn’t you love to trade your moderately valuable fake money for totally worthless fake money?
Hot on the heels of Atari’s (delenda est) new fake currency, the vile subsidiary is providing rubes the perfect way to spend said fake currency: Online gambling! Yes, Atari (delenda est) will soon launch an online “Crypto Casino” where they proudly tout the fact that they can get around local regulations and allow for larger betting limits than traditional casinos, all while skimming profits off the fact that the casino chips are their own Atari Tokens. And, of course, lest we forget that The House, be it a physical location or digital portal, always wins, it seems that Atari (delenda est) has finally, after all these decades, given up on legitimate business practices and earning money by creating and selling a product that people want, and is instead content to live out the rest of its days as a virtual grafter, exploiting the worst organic software flaws in that evolutionarily crowd-sourced operating system known as “human nature.”
When even the worst and most vile modern game publishers, like Electronic Arts, are recoiling in terror from the stink of loot-box-based gambling in their games, largely because multiple world governments across the globe have decided to call a Spade a Spade, the fact that Atari (delenda est) is rushing toward the precipice with arms spread wide is mindboggling. Gambling is the complete antithesis of what the videogame medium has become over the course of its 40+ years of evolution. Yet Atari (delenda est) is demonstrating its position as a relic of a dead branch on gaming’s family tree, a branch that represents rigged, coin-siphoning arcade games and exploitative scams that blatantly endeavor to make as much money while providing as little value as possible. Where would modern gaming be if other game developers and platform holders had followed this model over the decades instead of charting a new path toward creating engaging, high-quality software?
There’s simply nothing more to say other than:
