#this rant brought to you by someone complaining that 'bg3 is too big and complex'

[ragsy]

really boggles my mind how, in the discourse around Big Corporate Media Productions being too bogged down in marketability and revenue these days, people just. forget that smaller, creator-driven projects still exist.

"all the movies coming out of hollywood these days are made to be as unobjectionable as possible to appeal to mass audiences and they're full of product placement and military propaganda" okay. watch other movies then. there are mid- to micro-budget films coming out ALL the time on EVERY conceivable platform. check movie critic blogs and film festival entries and the new releases tab on your streaming service of choice.

"all the songs coming out these days are made to go viral on tiktok in easily clippable chunks and then be forgotten in a week" okay. listen to other music then. there are record labels that are nothing more than one guy, three buckets, and an audio engineer. there are artists out there who are making music that is weirder and less marketable than you can possibly imagine, who have <100 monthly listeners on spotify. you will love them. go find them. browse bandcamp or indie music communities or ask your friends for recommendations; i guarantee they are all sitting on one that they are DYING to share with you.

"all the video games these days are huge expensive bloated open world shooters full of microtransactions and unnecessarily detailed graphics that won't run on a computer that's only a year old" you know what i'm about to say. there are games that exist outside of the AAA space that are smaller, more focused, made by developers who aren't being ground into a fine paste by overwork. buy a bundle on humble or itch, find a streamer who focuses on indie titles.

it can be daunting to step outside of the "things you've already heard of" and "things that have been advertised to you" bubble, but i PROMISE you, there is so so so much more media out there that you will LOVE that isn't the product of some corporate executive focused on the bottom line. you just have to LOOK AROUND a little bit.