# valve's steamy capitalist ideology of everybody wins > so now if i went and made a major security situation out of it everybody steps in; administration steps in and there's no exclusive rights for anybody nobody wins" (emphasis mine) > ~ burke carter j corporate executive and special projects director of weyland-yutani hypercorp // video here to see this talk as simply one about "in-garme economies" - which is precisely how it sees / presents itself - is to conveniently forget how playing garmes (be 'in' them - aka garmes as ontology) is already and fully economic what such talks deliberately fail to take into account is that the greasiness of accounting should be critically taken into account when talking. notice the steam dev days video intro screen - a subtle shifting cloud; indeed which could be more cool calm pleasant natural(tm) and sensually mysterious? the first thing kyle davis says as ir (psychological) ice breaker is "wow this is a really big and exciting room" - and immediately after (w/ some embarrassment) "ah ok so.." that is to say "-and now down to the brass tacks gentlemen" it's as if what ey meant by 'big and exciting' is "yes i too feel the exciting buzz about in-garme economics" whatever ey might of said as an intro isn't important; rather ideology often lies in the cloudy gap between the unstated false initial idea (that we're already 'on the same page' - as expressed through the icebreaker - and the immediate segue into '-and so here's what's happening'; ie. the apparent facts wait up there kyle keep your golden spurs from jingling for a second - let's first see what it means to (/try to) exist naked and flailing about in this cloudy steam of global capital in the same way there's actually a lot to discuss about capitalism considered as steam kyle simultaneously states - yet just doesn't really admit that "there's probably going to be a lot of information in this talk - and it's going to go by pretty fast" what is the fuel burning in the engine of garmes heating water into steam and turning the wheels of development ever faster? where exactly is this heavy industrial train heading and along whose tracks? how can passengers - willing or otherwise - even get off at this point? kyle: "the questions are really valuable and the questions which come out of those questions are really valuable" - stop thinking of new ways to further monetize my user feedback the talk is "how to make your product better": it could be read as "how thinking only in terms of 'products' makes life worse" dig how kyle's constant expression of 'open arms palms up' seeks to express ideas about openness generally - implying innocence honesty integrity and a willingness to share (/in the holy profits of somehow unquestionably fair trade) what's clear about the steam of capitalism as expressed by valve is that its fuzzy semi-transparent gauziness and assumed 'naturalness' isn't somehow entirely scalding blinding and toxic in its friendly reasonableness; that as long as 'everyone wins' - as long as most garming citizens most of the time report a 'positive overall experience' then we can all continue uncritically breathing inside such an ideology - right? yet all that might be constantly wafting out of such a valve are big stinky and inherently disingenuous capitalist fart clouds - a silent dollar green hiss of false ideas masquerading as the happy unreasonable reasonableness of its global totalizing systemic limitation and diffused (perversely polymorphous) generalized acceptance as slavoj zizek states in the sublime object of ideology > it is this paradox which defines surplus enjoyment: it is not a surplus which simply attaches itself to some normal fundamental enjoyment because enjoyment as such emerges only in this surplus because it is constitutively an excess. if we subtract the surplus we lose enjoyment itself just as capitalism which can survive only be incessantly revolutionizing its own material conditions ceases to exist if it stays the same if it achieves an internal balance // republic of bob