SCM History Assignment
There was an assignment posted recently that rubbed me the wrong way. My classes have mainly been focused on the evaluation and our thoughts surrounding history within the past one hundred years. Yet today, we've been asked to evaluate how the SCM, their works, and why we are where we're at. I have some thoughts on their practices and promises. I also don't fully believe they were the only option one-hundred years ago, but can't say that their current behavior is all that problematic either.
I understand that SCM is a natural monopoly now, they're allegedly the only company that provided humanity with the opportunity to escape the world while it heals, promising so many folks the opportunity to live their dreams, no matter who they were. They overpromise and underdeliver, especially in this era of all-digital lives. Their advertising fed on the hopes and dreams of so many people, spanning out into so many sectors, even promising that everyone would have a chance at a dream life that could only happen in their greatest fantasies. They claimed it was optional, but then people were forced into the simulation against their will, and I know a lot of people felt they suffered for it. It's a mystery to me how they managed to convince so many people to begin with, especially with such lofty adverts.
I mean, imagine telling someone you could cure an incurable illness, at the price of your current body. You'd be surrendering your mind to an android to just keep living, would it be worth it? For some, sure, absolutely it would be, they have families and friends they want to keep up with. For others, it wouldn't work, because they feel there is greater value in staying the way they are, and having that choice is so important. It feels like SCM violated that very concept of choice by pushing people into their simulation and making the argument that it was necessary for the survival of humanity. It seems more and more predatory as they expanded their promises, allowing more stories of people who were happy inside the simulation to worm their way into the public consciousness without a full disclosure of what it means to leave the real world behind.
Plus the constant undermining of other competitors via their website, constantly under updates, and advertising the fact that there were changes made feels like such an underhanded way of trying to prove that they're better.
They've also absorbed multiple social media companies in the meantime to bolster their reputation from what I've seen. From what's been explained, they had absorbed multiple sites in order to gain advertising access, and from there worked on multi-media campaigns that continued to over-promise on their goals of "giving people a life they deserve and will enjoy." It seems to me they were attempting to limit other companies' attempts to bring in folks who could have come up with another solution to Earth's declining environmental health. I mean, once SCM partnered with a given social media platform, you'd rarely see other adverts for other actions that could have had a plausible impact on the state of the world. SCM appeared exclusively as the only company that had the interests of the Earth and humans in mind, often frequently stating that they were "the only company to consider both the Earth's health and everyone's peace of mind while she heals."
Add on top of that prices that were substandard for the tech industry of the time, it reads more as a scramble to get as many users as possible, potentially to cover costs unseen by users and officials. It appears to be a logistical nightmare starting to provide support for so many individuals entering a simulation, even if it was originally from a web browser or PC program setup. Originally there were visible issues, the simulation sometimes going offline for days at a time in the very beginning, and I can't imagine there weren't costs associated with these outages that SCM didn't attempt to recoup, possibly from newer user sign-ups.
I suppose my problem is that a lot of these issues appear to be due to improper research and understanding of how consumers actually behave, and how all these changes and advertisements are just preying on ignorance while trying to cater to the largest number of people possible. It's not like they really had any actual competition to begin with, especially considering the government contract they received to maintain populations and facilities for everyone's bodies to rest in.
Though I have to admit, their practices today, outside of the acquisition of some extra social media platforms that have since been incorporated into everyone's interfaces, have been rather tame. They've maintained focus on providing clear communication on content updates, guides for new users that manage to come in later than everyone else, and have been considerably tame on advertising to people.
Actually, I haven't seen many advertisements at all, and it's kinda funny seeing posters up attempting to convince people they need a product or service that hasn't already been recommended by someone else to begin with. A lot of cities have plenty of reviews for local shops, services, and even for elected officials, and a lot of economic activity relies on that word of mouth. I suppose since there are so many people and even artificial intelligences within the program that traditional advertising isn't as necessary as it once was, especially since populations tend to convalesce around cities and townships. It's hard to have international businesses when folks are happiest with the city-state system that allows them to maintain communities, while still keeping an air of the unexplored.
That's something SCM does really well gameplay-wise, balancing the need for urban and business development, while keeping the wilds of adventure and exploration.
Keeping to that sense of an interconnected and intimate community means businesses need to be reliable and considerate in order to keep business, even if it is a not-so-traditional service like social media management. Everyone knows everybody, so again we return to a socio-political construction that allows for news to travel fast and people to boycott businesses and owners who attempt to take advantage of consumers.
SCM has succeeded in providing a better consumer protection protocol than any legislation has in a long time, actually, just by maintaining a smaller business system and standardized currencies built into the game. It also holds importers and exporters to higher standards, as cities won't buy from unreliable suppliers once the ruse is discovered, and that has an immediate effect on the supplier city's economic maintenance. It also ensures everyone can go to any city to purchase what they need without having to worry about exchanges lessening their purchasing power. I've seen it for myself at the college, a supplier recently had a bad batch of building materials go out, half-rotted lumber and faulty steel brackets, actually. They were immediately sent back with notice of termination of the contract they had with their customers. People were laid off that day, as they were forced to issue a refund and either reforge or destroy the faulty materials, as instructed by the city safety inspector.
While college classes are free, students still dropped out to find new jobs because some had families to feed on top of the whole debacle, and no longer had the time to pursue intellectual interests. Some folks even moved cities over it, but they still come back here to check in with friends and visit their favorite shops when they have an opportunity to.
It's been about a year since that incident, and while part of the city has recovered, not everyone's in the best position. Plenty of adjacent businesses actually closed as a result of the reduction in revenue, and people weren't spending as much. Recessions and depressions happen a lot easier now as a result of the newer economic system, but economies also bounce back a lot faster, especially with newer businesses migrating to different cities to find their markets.
SCM as a company has been questionable in the past, especially with the development of the simulation, but overall? They're perhaps more reasonable than other companies with more questionable missions. I had read their mission statement awhile ago, but reviewing it for classes this week reminds me more of the mission of the older conservation efforts.
"Our duty first is to Earth, then to humanity, but we aim to create a balance where humans and the natural world can co-exist without throwing off one another's most fulfilling balance" was how they phrased it on their site.
I suppose there's room to convince governments of the time that this "need" was so prominent in the face of great environmental challenges that it would appear the SCM had the only solution, but still, I'm hard-pressed to believe that it required undercutting the rest of their industry. If there could have been another solution, we'll never know now, but I have to admit, again, I wouldn't exist if they hadn't made the choices they had made. It doesn't mean I won't be critical of their, we'll say interesting, past actions.
