But they will not let him.

The Switch 2 arrives like a boat with no fish. A clean hull. A polished deck. No Games. Just promise. He watches the announcement from a conference room, hands folded, knowing what is in the vault. Knowing what could have shipped. Knowing what died quietly in a folder with a project name that will never be spoken again. Some Games are finished enough to hurt. Those are the worst. Those go on a shelf and stay there. You sign the NDA. You swallow it. You go back to your desk.

Fans cheer anyway. They cheer re-releases. They cheer the Same Games again, and again, and again. Same maps. Same jumps. Same ghosts, polished and sold like heirlooms. The company learns the wrong lesson, the lesson capitalism always teaches when the audience forgives it: do less. Why risk something alive when the dead still sell?

The salaryman knows this. He has known it for years. He keeps a notebook he never shows anyone. He sketches mechanics during lunch. He deletes them before going home. He tells himself it is honorable to endure. In Japan, endurance still counts for something. Suffering is not a brand; it is just suffering. You show up. You do the work. You wait your turn. Maybe next cycle. Maybe next hardware. Maybe never.

Still, there is dignity here. There is restraint. There is shame when nothing ships. The failure is felt, even if it is hidden.

Now look west.

There, the studios are loud. They tweet. They posture. They hold panels about Games they have not made and will not make. Leftists dominate the floor; not the serious kind who build unions and factories, but the soft managerial kind who confuse ideology with output. They turn Games into statements and statements into excuses. Years pass. Hundreds of millions burn. Nothing ships, or what ships is broken, apologetic, afraid of fun. They call this progress.

The Nintendo salaryman does not tweet. He does not moralize. He wants to make a jump feel right. He wants a mechanic to sing. He is trapped, yes, but he is not hollow. He knows what a Game is. He knows when one has been lost.

That is the difference.

The Absolute State is this: a man who wants to work and cannot, surrounded by fans who reward stagnation; and an industry elsewhere that can work but chooses not to, drowning in ideology and process until nothing remains but noise. One is a tragedy of restraint. The other is a farce of excess.

At least the salaryman still dreams. At least he still hates the empty launch. At least, somewhere deep in the building, there are Games that exist, even if only as ghosts.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5823703&forum_id=2Vannesa#49599695)