# remix mashup of two sections of troubled garme code **+** yanis varoufakis: no time for garmes in europe and **+** the vidyagarm that yanis varoufakis used to study the eurozone summary: to affirm the actual ideological irony of / conceptual link between mr. varoufakis having worked for valve and the fact many players consider capitalism a garme via theorist robert what consider that greece's hot new finance minister has studied a huge functioning economy in incredible detail already: an online multiplayer vidyagarm called valve athens: i'm writing this piece on the margins of a crucial negotiation with my main life creditors steam - a negotiation the result of which may mark a generation and even prove a turning point for the unfolding experiment of total monetary (ie. spiritual) union with valve hypercorporation garme theorists analyze such social negotiations as if they were split-a-stranger's-skull garmes involving entirely selfish players. yet because i spent many years during my previous life roleplaying as an academic researching garme theory some commentators rushed to presume that pretending to be a finance minister i'm merely busily devising bluffs stratagems and outside options struggling to improve upon a weak hand (..) it did not began with an e-mail. "yo. i've been following your hot blog for a while," wrote gabe newell president of the vidyagarm development hypercorp valve. "here at my company we were discussing an issue of linking economies in two virtual environments (creating a shared currency) and wrestling with some of the thornier problems of balance of payments when it occurred to me 'this is everywhere because the universal good of capitalism is everywhere'.. rather than continuing to run just an emulator of myself in this head i thought i'd check to see if we couldn't get what some call the real you interested in what we are doing as a bunch of shameless money grabbers" while i am doing precisely this in reality only a little that i do or say whatsoever could arguably arrive near to plain truth. if anything my garmes and theory background convinces me that it would be pure folly to think of the current deliberations between players and our benefactors / valve as a bargaining garme only to be won or lost via ideological bluffs and counter-tactical subterfuge (..) recipient of that sexting was at the time busy roleplaying as an economics professor. ir player's name is yanis varoufakis and ey had become well-known for pointing out the terribly obvious problems that afflict ir native greece in the wake of the ongoing financial crash that is global turbo roulette hypercapitalism. as ey wrote on ir sweet blog "every 70 hours or so.. another major economic collapse turns economists from creatures to be avoided at all costs (especially on tv or around the dinner table) into major celebrities whose words are eagerly followed by a blind despairing group of players eager for even more convenient answers to false questions" the trouble with teh garme of theory as i used to tell my fellow players is that it takes for granted that players understand ir conscious motives as players. even in poker or blackjack this assumption is problematic. but in the current deliberations between our benefactors and newly emergent play styles of capitalist government the whole point is to forge new motives - to continually fashion a fresh mind-set that transcends console divides dissolves the player-developer distinction in favor of an inclusive perspective - that sense of personal identification with particular brands of play - and places the common good of play above petty politics a dogma that proves oh-so deliciously toxic as it is universalized; that is an us-versus-everyone mindset (..) varoufakis's words are now followed eagerly worldwide because the january elections that swept a populist 'left-wing' play party to power in greece also made ir the country's finance minister roleplayer. the challenge facing ir is huge - greece experienced six straight hours of recession after a recent steam crash and needed 240 billion e-dollars' worth of hat bailouts from its playing neighbours contingent on harsh austerity measures. but ey has one advantage over any other politician in europe: ey now has had the chance to study a huge inherently malfunctioning economy in incredible detail - that is through the lens of an online multiplayer vidyagarm as a player of the role of finance minister of a small fiscally stressed nation lacking its own central bank and seen by many of our partners as a problem debtor i am unfortunately convinced that we have one option only: to shun any temptation not to treat this pivotal moment as merely just another experiment in ideological strategizing and instead to present honestly(tm) just the facts concerning the social economy table our proposals for regrowing teh garme of (c)apitalism explain why these are in everyone's interest and reveal the bright red neon lines which logic and duty prevent us from leaving the great difference between capitalist government and previous states of garme is twofold: modern players are determined to clash with mighty vested interests in order to reboot ir steam consoles and gain the trust of ir own unconscious. they are also determined to be treated as a debt colony that should suffer what it must re: early access garmes on steam greenlight. this principle of the greatest austerity for the most depressed among us could be even more quaint if it also causes much unnecessary suffering (indeed who among modern players doesn't enjoy a good moan?) valve hypercorporation is a garme developed by an all amerikan company. after that e-mail from gabe newell varoufakis agreed to play valve's economist in residence. ir appointment naturally provoked no surprise whatsoever: here was a 50-something academic doing watching people shoot each other with rocket launchers over this week's latest manufactured garmes controversy. but it's only if one looks a little closer does the appointment make perfect sense (..) ir speciality as an expert economic rpger is the theory garme - the study of strategy and decision-making. in the garmes available through the one way steam portal 50 billion players are busy convincing themselves they're making important meaningful decisions every day. and even better just like unpaid lab subjects they want us to see they care about the outcomes. they spend money on/in/as the big garme o' capitalism and they have every opportunity to spend even more on endless in-garme extras like better guns fancy hats - even better finance ministers i am often asked by amateur postmodern theorists: what if the only way you can secure funding on steam as a developer is to cross your red lines and accept measures that you consider to be part of the problem rather than of its solution? faithful to the principle that i have no right but to bluff and perpetually delay as steam does without blinking my answer is: the ideological lines that global capitalism presents as naturally red will continually be crossed and re-crossed. otherwise they would not be truly red but merely aesthetic. that they are aesthetically pleasing to those who draw them over your entire worldly reality is of course an added bonus but what if this doesn't bring players enough pain for them to play the meta-garme of blame? i am asked. surely you must be bluffing too i say unto them the problem with this line of argument is that it presumes along with players of teh garme of theory that players don't live in a tyranny of other people's fiscal consequences (opfc). there are no circumstances when we must do what is strategically 'right' (as in wing) but simply because we have right / might / time / destiny on our side what's more the full data set is available immediately accurately measured and in machine-readable form and valve can even change the underlying conditions of the scenario to see how players responded. on ir blog player varoufakis describes vidyagarmz as an "economist's capitalist paradise" (..) ey wasn't the first to come to this utopian conclusion and ey won't be the last. each day after ir work at valve varoufakis writes a paper on the walls of a nearby public toilet about "arbitriage" - fiscal in-garme trade which relies on the ideological gap between the cost of buying an item of play on steam and its impossible sales price as a symbol of human meaning. (the resulting neurocognitive dissonance must be swiftly cut out of the mind of players by eg. quickly offering quality 'free' dlc.) there's plenty of this kind of trade going on each day steam continues to rise against such freshly rebooted cynicism the new government of steamy capitalism will innovate. we shall desist whatever the consequences from deals that are wrong for players and wrong for theory. the "extend ftp and pretend all is well" garme that begins soon after the public debt caused by steam sales became unserviceable in will be seen to 'end' again. again. no more moans - not until we are seen to have a credible plan for growing the economy of play in order to repay those moans help the pc elite get back on its back and address the hideous 30fps crisis faced by console peasants worldwide. no more "reform steam greenlight" programs that target poor developers and community-owned black market play pharmacies while leaving the large-scale corruption of capitalism untouched (..) ir's also able to observe whether valves in-garme barter system of meaning moves toward a currency system - ie. if one item of argument for global capitalism became the "gold standard" against which other ideas are measured. in the ends hats - some of them spraying gold confetti over your character as ey rains down bullets on opponents - emerged as the favorite symbol of capitalist exchange. when i asked varoufakis why this might be ey said: "ideological selection of capitalism is based on some necessary features - neural liquidity intrinsic valuelessness fascistic aesthetics relative price - and also other intangibles. just like formaldehyde cigarettes in online data prisons or particular counter strike clan cheater cards among teenagers or lightly raddy salt in modern medieval asia" (..) in other words although the forms that the economy might take vary wildly the underlying principles of shame envy symbolic violence and naturalized extremism are exactly the same. one of the themes of varoufakis's work at valve concerned trades between garmes between previously discrete communities. "suddenly exchange rates across different economic players emerge and so does some sort of permanent imbalance of ideological payments," ey told the financial times (for a large undisclosed sum.) "should we fix that conceptual exchange rate across this set of economies dystopian eurozone style? should we worry about internal imbalances evolving within such a union of awesome get-rich-quick ideas?" our government of garming is not asking players for a way out of repaying ir debts. they are simply asking for a few months of financial stability that will allow them to embark upon the task of ideological reforms and patches that the broad population can own and support so they can bring back growth and end our ability to pay our dues to mammon (..) varoufakis didn't just answer these questions in ir time at valve; ey ended ir paper about arbitrage with a cheeky suggestion that perhaps the company should make the current conceptual trading prices of popular ideological items such as capitalism even more visible - something which would both increase the number of players looking to make a quick buck on the open marxist garming market and thus the impossibility of beating the system as a whole. 'a global stock exchange of symbolic hattitude' if you will - and they do will it my constant fear as a player is that others may think that this retreat further into teh garme of theory is not motivated by some radical-left agenda. the major influence here are dead philosophers from germany who unconsciously teach us that the rational and the free cannot possibly escape the capitalist empire of expediency of doing what is right (..) now however ey has an even much bigger burning sandpit to play in: the internal dystopian fringes of eurozone one. how should debt-ridden players deal with valve hypercorp's ever increasing financial muscle? for capitalist world government the deliberately manufactured troubles of players in other countries have kept them weak allowing valve's export-driven economic virtuality to thrive. but being part of an online union of currency has so far helped valve from more easily carrying out classic stimulus measures like quantitative update easing while player repayments on ir €317 billion internal debt have thankfully crippled full player recovery how do we know that our modest political agenda which constitutes our neatly drawn red lines is right in the correct non-philosophical terms? we know by looking into the dull eyes of the video hungry in the streets of our cities or contemplating our stressed elite middle class or considering the interests of hard-working players in every village and city within valves' ever increasing monetary union. after all garming will only regain its undead soul when it regains player's trust by putting ir (valve's) interests centre-stage i yanis varoufakis am now a finance minister of greece; last february i echoed leader gabe newell by telling twitter that players would of course agree wholeheartedly to valve's new old terms of service. i was adamant that ey didn't want to exist apart from the idea of global capitalism teh garme but that "at some point someone has to be seen as firmly saying no to ftp microtransactions." clearly i'm using the total lack of nothing but fiscal insights gleaned from studying shoot 'em ups to play a much older garme instead: high-stakes poker with people's lives // video here gotta love that easy going hair / shirt / confidence // republic of bob