The Business: A Major Preference Cascade Tell Is Here

How do you know when you see a Preference Cascade in action? When its biggest boosters jump ship.

CarBot is, like Asmongold, one of the long-running boosters of that Irvine-based subsidiary of Activision-Blizzard. Their parodies have had a long-standing audience, including within the company, such that there is an official mod of Starcraft based on the parodies done.

This is a big tell that the zeitgeist shifted. One can dismiss Asmongold easily as he is a Wrongthinker, but CarBot is A-OK and so to see him go is damning- especially when he not-so-affectionately mocks the company for allowing degenerate practices such as botting to wreck both the player's enjoyment and the game--and company's--internal economics.

Not that CarBot won't be just as much the Jester to FF14, but the affection formerly shown will now be applied here, and we'll see more of it down the road.

And yes, the smarter heads in both corporations pay attention to such things because they are reliable tells, tells now confirmed by available data, and we can safely conclude that--Cult convergence or no--that Irvine-based company isn't going to be what it is for much longer. Something's giving way, and what comes after the collapse cannot be guessed at this time (regardless of speculation).

All we know is that the collapse of the company's character has hollowed out the company's competency, and now everything else is cascading down- resulting in players fleeing the offerings for alternatives, with the MMO being the final pillar to plummet into the abyss and will take what remains of the company with it.

Collapse is a process. It starts within. It spirals outward unless arrested and reversed. It has not, so it consumes like a black hole until nothing remains.

And the real tragedy? I could not care less about its fate. Trash deserves to be removed with all the dispassion one has for scraping mud from one's shoes.