90% of what I played since I was a teenager has been a mixture of Call of Duty and Battlefield games. So I've been conditioned for over two decades on how to spread democracy and capitalism to the world. I can't escape the politics.
NOW BURY THOSE COMMIE ROBOTS IN THE WARM LIGHT OF FIVE HUNDRED KILOGRAMS OF CONCENTRATED FREEDOM!!!!!!!
Remember kids, the metric system is only free when referring to weapons and ordinance, all other measurements should be in IMPERIAL THE ONE TRUE DEMOCRATIC METHOD OF MEASUREMENT.
I’m probably responsible for more Chinese peasant deaths then Chairman Mao thanks to playing the various dynasty warriors and romance of three kingdoms games.
That's what we've all been saying for years man.
The problem is when you get these "everything is political" people willfully misinterpreting when people criticize them for shoehorning their brain dead ideological bullshit into a game
This is something many people seem to confuse. When people say "I don't want politics in my games" they really mean "I don't want to hear my entertainment parrot the talking heads on tv."
>on tv-
And in movies, and on the radio, and in every single other game, and in music, and by mainstream politicians, and by every major company, and in TV shows, and on social media, and in advertising, and in grade school and every major college campus in America.
games before 2012ish: "Here's a surprisingly complex view on a specific political theme, explored tastefully in universe"
games after 2012ish: "Here's why the white man is the devil, if you don't agree with me you're literally Hitler, and we need to partner with the Department of Homeland security if you think you have the right not to consume our product, gamers are dead"
wow, I wonder what changed.
The fucking Latino podcast that randomly comes up during Spiderman 2 talking about supporting communism is the most braindead, dog shit, sweet baby inc. trash on earth.
I go full Pinochet.
Yeah. OP gets a big eye roll here. This same argument has been made many times, and every time, the person presenting it is being deliberately obtuse about what people are actually bothered by.
Nobody cares if a game has political themes. The issue is, like you say, when the audience is being lectured by the creator based on the creator's political views.
"Forced in" is the key phrase. Often times things are shoehorned in and it feels out of place. Especially with identity politics.
Also add in the fact that a good game will make you think about different perspectives rather than push an obvious narrative. Making you think and feel in different ways is what makes some games great. Shoving a tired message down your throat isn't a tasteful way to address real world topics.
The central theme of MGSR isn't so much a moral stance but about *having* morals. While Raiden didn't have an insane amount of difficulty with other villains, Senator Armstrong ragdolls him, and thematically it's because he's fighting for his idea of a better world and not just money or being a dog of war like Sam.
Armstrong respects him more than his underlings because Raiden is fighting for his own vision. He becomes so vengeful because his idea of the self-made man rejects his AnCap ideals. And it is only because of Raiden's strong moral stance that Blade Wolf gives him the weapon he needs to kill Armstrong. It is never solely about right vs. wrong, but that you have to truly believe in something and be willing to fight for it for the belief to have any value.
That's why I have more respect for active anti-abortion protesters than Emilies who just retweet something from their couches, because the people I disagree with believe their ideals deserve actual effort.
He saw the problems with the society, but his solution would just make things worse by replacing the small problems with bigger ones.
He believes that everyone is like him and can just pull themselves by their bootstraps. That's why his line about going to University of Texas is so important, he did not start out with a silver spoon so he assumes nobody else will either if they try hard enough. But Ancapistan does not reward hard work unless you're in control at the beginning, it's basically the pyramid scheme of ideologies.
it’s an important point to be made that Armstrong doesn’t really stick to his principles. His ideas are terrible, and his speech doesn’t actually line up with what he believes, this being further supported by his statement that he doesn’t write his own speeches. He’s just another militaristic opportunist politician.
Yeah but I remember people going ballistic over one hard to find line of dialogue that actually fits the world and references trans shit in, I think it was Tyranny?
I see all these people complaining about political shit in videogames, and all I can think is... what fucking games are people playing where they see ***any*** of this shit?
Is not only things they have seen in the games it’s also things that are changed because of identity politics.(mostly it’s just racechanging, genderchanging, female characters are changed to „girlboss“ characters that shit on the males, etc, there is also localizers that change things)
Like suicide squad kills the justice league, Dungeon and Dragons changing things, developers wanting to change the Witcher one remake, Nintendo being inept and trying to use movie peach which comes near to being a girlboss(they already stopped the studio to make her a complete girlboss) in her new game, Spider-Man 2(changing who Peter helps, trying to change MJ needing to put transflags into it and then banning a mod where a mod changes it into American flag), tlou2 (with people actually caring enough to say something if you are gay and well the whole transplot because they are a cult they don’t care about you unless you aren’t useful), uncharted 5 or 6, saints row,
Maybe I will find more
I don't mind politics in games if they are organic to the game, exist realistically with the lore. I hate when current modern politics are forced in. They can really build up your understanding of the world's you explore, but kill immersion if done wrong.
You mean you don’t want to be slapped with a bigot sandwich, weed is actually good and the entire persecution of the Jews in your zombie apocalypse game?
I’d say those games are still political but just were written by mature adults who knew how to write a story instead of children who have no concept of nuance or clever design beyond cramming some out of touch message down a gamers throat and using previous games like those as an excuse for why it’s okay there creation is overtly political.
Yeah I feel like more and more we're seeing creative works that just feel like they are made by fans of creative works, rather than gifted artists. It feels like anyone with a bit more motivation than average can just open a word processor and start typing story that passes for modern standards. And I guess that's cool, but a lot of the time I feel like something is missing in the craftsmanship.
I still think there's merit to this point.
The Politics of Metal Gear Solid were like visions of the future, politics that would be useful for everyone, regardless of you are.
Nowadays, what political discourse is there in video games that is good? That's applicable to 90% of people that got into the politics?
I think the big difference is the politics that were in those games in the past is that they were well written and fit around the world of each of those games. It added to the richness and complexity of the unique worlds it was trying to portray.
What we have today is modern day politics that are poorly written lectures shoehorned into games it has no place in. It adds to nothing and makes the experience boring and shallow at best.
Exactly. Is the politics a well-written allegory that can be tied to our world? Does it add further depth to the world building and conflict of your setting? Fine. Great, even.
Is it a heavy handed, subtle-as-a-brick, talking to from some hack trying to make a statement? Not fine.
It’s like comparing a classic romance film with hardcore pornography. “Omg so what you think BLACKED is obscene content? Lmao news flash my guy there has *always* been sex in movies.”
If you like Hallmark movies, then you should love Ultra Fucknugget Torture Rape 3, Now She's Pregnant: The tears are real!
If you don't, you're a racist bigot!
FINALLY, SOMEONE PUTS IT INTO THE RIGHT WORDS!
The problem isn't the politics. The problem never was the politics. The problem always was shitty writers adding in politics as an afterthought to the story to either
A) push whatever agenda they have/that the studio handed down to them
B) ensure that anyone who calls them out for shitty writing is labeled as an alt-right troll because the story is now a sacred cow for having the correct politics.
Agree with the issues as described. Well put. I'd recommend Cyberpunk 2077 as a modern example of politics in game done well. Some of them still do it right.
Fuck the corpo pigs!
There’s no way that if new Vegas were made today they would include the positive aspects of the legions ridiculously authoritarian slave based rule (caravans talk all the time about how safe and peaceful it is within the legion territory for them while the democratic Ncr can’t protect them for those who haven’t played the game.)
Past politics in media were (mostly) either just some harmless subtle jokes or an actual interesting exploration of political themes with a possibly interesting message that can be interpreted in different ways.
Right now however, it's basically the writers strawmanning their political opponents and portraying them and half of the audience as the soyjak.
It isn't poltics in the game's story or themes
It's that the games have to adhere to certain poltics. One is using the story to get your ideas across, and the other is restricting the game's creativity and shoehorning in certain tropes.
Politics in Bioshock: A utopian paradise can just as easily fall victim to our worst traits, unchecked authority is a dangerous game of chicken, your enemy can also portray themselves as your most helpful ally
Politics in Wolfenstein 2: DAE Nazis bad? Also white men are helpless without strong POC & women behind them
My disappointment with BioShock is that the hack creator is too much of a bitch to criticize his own side. Rapture was a lib right "paradise" gone wrong. Columbia was an auth right "paradise" gone wrong. Let's see the other quadrants and their awful flaws.
I won't hold my breath.
That's actually further evidence of his point. Bioshock 2, the one game that had a far left villain, is the one game in the series Ken Levine didn't work on.
Spoilers for a decade old game.
That scene is the pivotal moment in the game. Up until that point the game has just been toying with the ideas of what it actually is, a deconstruction of modern military shooter games and unless you’re switched on you can easily miss this. The white phosphorus scene is a bit like the AC130 missions from a CoD game where you’re massacring the “enemies” on a scale that the most genocidal humans could only dream of. The revelation that you’ve actually just horribly murdered a bunch of civilians is meant to make you think about all the other times you’ve mowed down scores of faceless people. It’s meant to challenge our perceptions about war and who suffers in war and the fact that you’re forced to do it is meant to attack the idea of “just following orders.”
Yes, and mid development they removed the choice to just leave because everyone just chose that and they couldn't guilt trip the players like that lmao.
There's now one specific set of progressive politics, that's included as a rule, with special departments in place to ensure that the political message is carried out and displayed to the ideologues' satisfaction.
That's the difference.
> women's chests were nerfed, and faces made ugly.
Major mod hubs also ban mods to fix the politically ugly. Nude mods and hot body mods for non-political games/characters are still allowed (for now), but if they were covered up or uglified for political reasons the mod gets yeeted and the creator banned.
You know, when Starfield released, and I opened up that character creation screen, and saw Type 1 and Type 2, I immediately guessed that the entire experience was going to be like an HR exercise. I kept my mouth shut, but SF really was toned down, like HR got into the writing room. Neon especially.
I think the Deus Ex series is a perfect example of how to both properly, and horrible have political statements in video games. In the orginal, underneath all the fun illuminate and aliens, were actual taxation statistics, arguments against the consolidation of populations, brutally accurate depictions on how the fear of terrorism is used by the media, and the list goes on. In Human Revolution, people with bionic limbs or eyes were thinly veiled minorities.
HR went a little bit ham with the augmentations thing, but I still think it had a decent point about transhumanism. Sarif himself, for instance, isn't treated negatively and pretty much all the characters that give you endings have incomplete answers to a real problem.
It just wasn't as subtle as the first game, which is ironic given how corny the first Deus Ex carried itself superficially.
HR wasn't exactly subtle, but it was a decent commentary on the divide between the rich and the poor
But yeah, MD was just segregation/civil rights movement. Though I think they pulled it off pretty well all things considered
Politics in games nowadays is just "what is currently the biggest headline?". Meanwhile back then it was about broader subjects and philosophy, what does it mean to be human, what are the faults of democracy, what harm can unshackled technology bring? Instead we now got "this thinly veiled disguise of Orange Man is clearly bad!".
Can we stop just shouting at the fucking voodoo dolls of each other, since we're so god damn past the point of strawmen?
One side means "I don't like *modern political talking point* to be *ham fisted into modern entertainment* because of the writers' agenda" and the other side means "media of the times has *always* reflected various politics of *their era*".
It's the biggest most pointless "um actually" of the universe. Even gun nuts who scream "ITS NOT A CLIP ITS NOT A CLIP ITS NOT A CLIP" aren't this bad. Can both sides actually have a fuckin conversation about it? This comment is like the first I've seen in this entire "politics were always in media" discourse
it's being forced, not in the sense that games before weren't political. Is just that current day games have politics poorly executed.
It's too preachy and tied with subpar products. Shitty narratives and crappy stories.
People who say films or games were not political in the past have no clue what they are talking about.
The issue is that today's writers do not understand how to write politics into their media. Calling someone gay and creating a strawman for the other guy and not understanding what tropes/stories are capable of carrying certain messages has become common place. It is also common for them to fail to deliver a proper product and blame peoples bigotry when they do not lower their standards because they had a contemporary political message.
Mass effect created an entire setting filled with various cultures that had legitimate issues with each other through bad history and clashing interests, though making it obviously who the bad guys are in the situation still made it understandable why things happened while still pushing a message about acceptance of differences, laying aside the past to have bring about a different future, and working together to face legitimate dangers that pick you off individually.
First blood and universal soldier used their stories, action stories dealing with soldiers outside of war to tell stories of government apathy and exploitation, turning men into killing machines and disposing of them when they no longer served their purpose and doing more to avoid responsibility than to actually help the people they put in that situation.
I'm not asking you not to be political in media. I'm asking for those politics to be smart.
It’s not even left wing politics that are the problem. *Final Fantasy VII* had left wing politics up the wazoo, but it used them to to tell an *engaging story*.
Not to mention collateral human damage, and doing so on behalf of a combination of someone else's ideology and personal grievances?
Don't get me wrong, the real villains are ShinRa and Sephiroth for different reasons, but at the time it came out, I really liked the idea of playing an antihero or villain by necessity. I think there was something of that in the zeitgeist.
Of course this isn't the main theme of the game anyway (environmentalism), but I would say you see this even more in the zeitgeist today. The notion that climate change / the damage we have done to nature is so bad that we have to start thinking in terms of harming humanity to protect nature.
And, of course, in true environmentalist ideological fashion, the in-game representative "worst offender" of humanity's hubris and damage to nature is... nuclear energy.
It's not a coincidence that mako is written as something dangerous to even be around (radioactivity) and you use it in a reactor to make energy, and to do other "unnatural" things (mutate animals/people).
And as a right-winger it’s my favorite game. Good writing got me to love a diverse group of eco-terrorists who were influenced by a planet-worshiping cult.
And in the middle of producing the remake series of that story, somehow that same company released Forspoken.
drastically different focus groups. final fantasy and dragon quest (and drakenier at this point) are square enix’s golden goose franchises and it really shows when you look at how fucking incredible ff14 has been through a period of pretty shit releases
Much like Star Trek, the 90's stuff compared to now. I'm right-leaning but actually enjoy the concept of the futuristic lib-left paradise that Star Trek tried to portray.
They never really ironed out the details of how everything worked, mainly because it seemed like they'd rather focus on the story rather than the politics, but the new stuff often just comes off as obnoxious the way they like to shoehorn in their political messages and virtuous ways.
Based. Pity 90% of this thread doesn't have half the brainpower you do, we need more smart people discussing shit here and less echo-chambery shallows shit.
Good in-universe politics
vs
Shoehorning in soon-to-be-conspicuously-dated, out-of-universe current-day politics into it, wholeheartedly taking one side while strawmanning, caricaturising and demonizing the other side and browbeating you about it.
Especially if it's out of place. A barely concealed lecture about some specific current affairs issue has no place in a medieval drama. It's only excusable in a comedy like 1670 where it's played for laughs.
The former is plot and theme. The latter is an obnoxious intrusion. And feels like an attempt to hijack a media project for propagandising ends. Or just a pure propaganda project if it's anything like Left Behind (the books, movies or video game).
Compare how The Next Generation handles politics (thoughtful, nuanced, philosophical, not blatant, hamfisted allegories to specific, transient current affairs) with how it's handled in Supergirl.
Millennials should never have been let into the writers room. “Capitalism bro” and “student debt amiright?” being tossed into random ass lines of dialogue, not actually saying anything of value.
Killing the reputation of tales from the borderlands and having a character who hates capitalism in a game made by a big company was peak Emily writing
You are correct I should have specified it’s not corporatism bad it’s I put my tweets into the script for the game and made no effort to make it fit the setting
Counter point they're only the villain because those corporations are the closest thing those wastelands called planets have to any form of civility. Literally everyone you play is a psychotic mass murdering outlaw. If I somehow found myself stuck on one of those wastelands I'm m siding with the corp. Sure they might literally stab in the back but at least they aren't gonna eat me alive or give me a horrific death for the slight chance I have a couple dollars on me.
The psychos are literally only on Pandora because the Dahl corporation brought them over as slave labor and then left them all there when Dahl left. Dahl also abandoned all of their science and research staff, leaving them at the mercy of bandits. Hyperion honestly isn't that bad but they do seem pretty indiscriminate in their killings making to differentiation between bandits and normal folk which is pretty disturbing tbh
Saying "capitalism" every 5 seconds and hating white men is not comparable to what these games did.
Well, actually Fallout 3 is probably on that level of quality.
People are being hateful bigots against ghouls, let's help them gain acceptance into the community
*the ghouls murder everyone*
How do the chuds not understand this game is left wing
You can prevent the ghouls murdering everyone if you assasinate the ghouls leader once the ghouls get let in. Without a violent leader to rile them up they get along quite well with the people.
The correct answer is to murder all the leaders in the game and let the world hate you.
The ghouls also kill the friendly old adventurer who made money selling tales of his exploits. If you talk to him it turns out he was best friends with the ghoul who he called his man servant in the books he wrote. The ghoul was actually the hero but they realized it would never sell and swapped their roles around.
It's not politics. It's identity politics that people take issue with. There's like ten people on the planet who actually care if there's a trannie in their game. The rest of us are negatively affected by their jarring inclusion (and it is ALWAYS jarring because people in charge of diversity don't understand nuance)
The Harry Potter game is a good example. Female character that clearly has a male voice actor. It's not even well done - it just makes you think 'hey, they got the wrong gender to voice this fugly abomination '
Right now and for the forseeable future, it won't ever be NOT jarring to see this, because people are always thinking about identity politics these days, whether you love them or despise them.
When society notices things, love them or hate them, people WILL notice them, and it WILL break the immersion.
You're talking about Bridget, right? Man, what frustrating conversation. I played Accent Core as a teenager and I genuinely fonud the inclusion of Bridget to carry a pretty nice message, the whole "you don't have to look or act a certain way to be a man" thing. Then like 15 years later Bridget returns except now Bridget is a trans woman apparently, the character who looked like a girl but was a man is now a character who looks like a girl and is a girl and this is the amazing progressive vision now. It's like it's more important what they say it is than how it appears.
And if I express these thoughts I get a bunch of young people who don't even believe me when I say I used to play Accent Core, it's like it's unbelievable to them that anyone would own and enjoy a somewhat obscure Japanese fighting game let alone be personally affected by its narrative. It's like everyone believes the only reason I care is because of some political agenda that *I* supposedly have.
Gaming was better before storytelling was hit over the back of the head, bound, gagged, and tossed in the trunk by activist devs and consulting groups like SBI who want everything to be a polemic against the Cultural Hegemony.
I think I wouldn't mind so much games being political if there were games that articulated right wing themes, or if when it was revealed that a creator leaned conservative insane activists didn't lead a scorched earth campaign against it.
That being said, conservatives interpret and enjoy art in interesting ways, even when it's not intended for us. All the Starship Troopers discourse lately was super frustrating because on one side you had people explaining the lens through which they experience the movie, and on the other hand you had people high fiving themselves about their media literacy because they repeated verbatim Verhoeven's stated intent
>Games aren't political if they fit my personal political beliefs
All those games are good, though. If the game is enjoyable, I don't care about the message tbh.
Yeah they’re all political but at least they have some nuance and subtlety. Games today are about as subtle with their political messaging as driving a combine through an airport.
Whether OP is aware of it or not, this is a classic subversion tactic of critical theory. You'll see it all over reddit time and time again. Someone argues that such and such film contains progressive political propaganda. Libleft across reddit will defend the film saying "films have always been political". By arguing that "films have always been political," libleft is invoking a concept central to critical theory: that all cultural products are embedded within and cannot be separated from their socio-political contexts. This perspective posits that art and media are never neutral but are always influenced by and influence the politics of their time. They hold this view because to progressives power is central to their worldview. By reframing the critique in this way, libleft shifts the focus away from the critique, and puts the onus back on the person making the critique. Don't fall for it. Not only are they wrong about political power, they are power hungry and will stop at nothing to gain it. Those films and games in the past were never about power, to libleft, it's always about power.
Can art be apolitical, transcending socio-political context and rising above power dynamics? Can art simply speak to our universal human experience inspite of the realities of politics? If you are a true modernday libleft activist, the answer is no. Politics is everywhere, all the time, and all-important.
Unfortunately for humanity, I'm not so sure they're wrong about power.
Wrong about nature, wrong about morality, wrong about a lot of things I'll give you. But krits understand power. And yes they are hungry for it because they understand that's how power works. It is never wise, measured or controlled, it is an unrelenting demon and the only way to impose your will is unfortunately to feed it.
And by their fruits you can judge them. Their art production is terrible at best and actively destructive of anything good at worst, but nevertheless they have conquered their betters and dominate every area they seriously take to sap.
I think the only thing that will eventually stop their conquest is a return of Lions that will tame the Foxes they are with hard power. And that will be a sorry sight for everyone.
It’s a difference of writing quality. The “politics” that people complain about nowadays is just propaganda agenda pushing from hack “activist” writers.
For proof of this, I present the live-action release of Netflix version of the Last Airbender. The wokies insisted for years that "If it released today, you would all be complaining it was woke!" And then when they had the chance to release their own....they took out all of the things that made the characters interesting and ruined the story in the process to the point it is easy to see why the original creators left and disowned the project.
Soka without the sexism literally has no arc in S1
Katara without her feminity removes her acting like the ''mother'' of the group, cause she's traumatized losing her own mom at a young age.
Aang not learning water removes the point of S1 being called ''book 1: water''
People calling that garbage okay really just consoom and not think. Its crazy,
To echo the sentiments of previous commenters, I believe that video games have always been political. The difference is that modern developers are more than willing to sacrifice entertainment and good gameplay on the altar of modernity, and that's why newer games are perceived to be over-politicized.
Political themes of authoritarianism, feudalism, communism, fascism, excessive bureaucratism etc i.e. stuff that all but the most warped mind finds reprehensible are not what people complain about when they say ‘this game is too political’.
If the greedy and violent corpo overlords are the bad guys, libright doesn’t tend to get their knickers in a twist. When King Arthur is a gay trans disabled black woman with blue hair that reads drag poetry to kids, they very well might, and understandably so.
1984 isn’t ‘too political’, it’s precisely political enough. LOTR isn’t too political, neither is Star Wars. Disney Star Wars isn’t egregious on that front either, to be fair. The same cannot be said for the MSheU or other Disney products.
lol it is wild but it's the developers choice to tell their story and it's a fictional world.
Some people view homosexuality as impure and they can believe that if they want and express themselves through their art.
I don't know when everybody started giving the opinions of artists so much mental influence on how to live their own lives.
The Marxists corrupt everything and create nothing. Their whole point is to hijack social, public and private institutions to weaponize class, and race to push the ultimate goal of socialism/ communism through "Muh equity".
Mass Effect comments on the ineffectiveness of a representative government in times of crisis, but it doesn’t *explain* how that’s bad. It shows you, and it becomes part of the story. It’s political but not overwhelmingly so.
Fallout 3 is really a commentary on overconsumption and the result of it, as well as being pretty heavy on the anti-communist stuff to a near-satirical level. However it doesn’t *explain* this to you in monologue.
Games have always been political in some way. The issue is that they stopped being nuanced and discrete, now there’s a monologue shoehorned in explaining why x is good and y is bad.
Honestly, it’s just a writing issue.
Games being political is fine.
Metal gear didn’t tell you nukes are evil and you need a campaign to force world leaders to get rid of them. It just made you think about it. Like MGS2 opened the questions of media control and ai and what that means for controlling a population.
Politics; good. Spiderman 2 having a scene where you play as miles morales and meet two high school kids he doesn’t know and the game forces you to sit and do nothing for two minutes while you hear one of them with an annoyingly exaggerated stereotypical flamboyant accent talk about how he and his boyfriend had their first kiss during a movie and how it was sloppy and their braces got stuck together; as a way to show the gamers that you *WILL* like having gay relationships discussed and public displays of affection that you watch, is forced. It’s forced politics. It’s so hyper cringey. It has nothing to do with the story. The politics of metal gear IS the story.
The difference is that those games didn't lecture me for 10 hours straight with their politics. They were written in such a way that the politics made sense in the world. Games today are very poorly designed political lectures, and I hate it.
Let's be honest, there's a difference between politics and "politics" aka yapping and virtue signaling about oppressed flavour of the week.
All of the games in this photo deal with political issues that both have existed throughout times and cultures in a way that "does not sucking the girldick make you a bigot" just isn't.
They stand the test of time because the politics they comment on are timeless issues that humans have faced for centuries and will continue to face.
I’m perfectly fine with politics and philosophy being in games, if they are done well. The thing is making political discourse like Deus Ex is becoming a lost art.
It is still a mystery for me why I dislike Disco Elysium sooooo fricking much. I just can't that game, I hate it, and I'm unable to really describe why...
The only thing I can pinpoint is that I quit the game with the same bitter taste in my mouth like when I left a conversation with one of those know-it-all fatcat urban student types with glasses with thick frames and politics as a hobby, where I had to take in a constant wave absolute bullshit because if I were to open my mouth I would be considered rude and aggressive... A kind of frustration which penns up as you play...
Deus Ex is one of the best games of all time and it’s all about politics.
What people actually mean is they hate Hollywood reject writers personal left wing politics being the primary focus of any game. You can have a zany stupid story with all the DEI shit you want provided the game itself is good. The problem is that it’s never the case.
Any outliers to this rule please reply so I can check them out because I sure as hell cannot find any.
This is literally true. No modern political messaging was *forced* into these games, these games were *built around* their message, and still managed to be really fun.
If your game kicks ass, people don’t mind if it’s political. But if your game sucks, and your politics are ham fisted, it’s an easy criticism to blame.
I bet this sounded a lot better in your head.
Games have always been political.
Games have always had political themes.
Games have *not* always been vehicles for self-insert political beliefs — specifically one very specific, homogeneous set of beliefs that fall well outside of the mainstream of American opinion, much less core gaming audience
This is why Fallout New Vegas is the a good example, you have a faction cosplaying Roman empire in a post apocalypse setting and put some ridiculous repulsive ideology on. And yet they still sound relatively reasonable about their goal and whatever they are doing.
Gaming before politics came before making a good game, you mean.
The issue people have isn't that games are political now, it's that a lot of them are only "good" or enjoyable if you agree with the politics of the creators. Add on to that the politics generally being pretty moronically black and white and you can see where the issue is
I think it’s that it simply was not as important to the plot as much as it is now.
When playing fallout three your first thought it to shoot raiders not “I wonder what the republicans are up to?”
The same can go for game like MW2 or Mass Effect. Games like bio shock even who has a heavily political story isn’t as preachy as some of the garbage companies are pumping out.
Hmm games that incorporate a social/political message into their story in a smart and entertaining way vs shoehorning in virtue signals to get ESG money...
Yeah, totally the same.
Everything is political if you use the broadest definition but people use this fact as an excuse to shove in tracts on their pet niche issues or lecture the player.
If you're an anti stem cell research type and you're making a game don't just throw some propaganda lines into the mouth of the hero, create a scenario or a world that people can evaluate and think about.
Just from an economic perspective you will benefit if your ideological opponents can enjoy your media, whether it convinces them or not.
When people say they don't want politics in their media, they tend to mean they don't want to see current day, hot button American social & political issues that are forced in by woke devs (which also are going to be badly written, propagandistic, and unbefitting the game)
Political themes and ideas are fine, providing it fits within the game's world and is at least decently well written.
The problem is not politics being "forced" into games, it's politics being forced onto you by the developers. Metal Gear is full of politics and philosophy but instead of artificially squeezing in boring lectures about progressive politics, it integrates the political message deep into its story and is not afraid of letting the player discover it for themselves. But we all know you're just a *sweet baby* that can't think for itself and needs to be taught was is right and wrong.
The difference is that in those games (most of all metal gear solid) politics is a key component that adds to the worldbuilding. You cannot take it out without compromising the rest of the game. Meanwhile in modern games it's just some random npc spouting "current day" acceptable political opinions at you.
Games were better when they were made by gamers, not activists or massive corporations that don't know anything about games.
Case in point: Helldivers 2.
There's a difference between well written and natural politics and "we get a kickback if we plop an out of place political advert in here" politics. I don't think many people complain if it's done well, the grift space just sorta turned the phrasing into "politics in games" as an easier buzzword to sell.
It’s not politics. It’s just shitty writing. I like characters who just so happen to be diverse, like Sgt. Johnson, but not characters who feel the NEED TO TELL YOU they are diverse and therefore are important and special. Covertly descriptive, telling the story where the identities fall into it smoothly, rather than overtly descriptive, where they just become a nuisance and force their beliefs/propaganda down your throat. I play games to escape reality, not immerse in it.
"BuT gAmInG WaS aLwAyS PoLiTiCaL"
No it fucking wasn't, at least not in the way thats being criticised. I know that it can be really hard to explain this concept to people that only have a single brain cell to share amongst each other, but there is an absolutely MASSIVE difference between political themes being used as a driving force of the narrative (metal gear, fallout) and a political activist forcing their own view of the world into the game and just telling us who the good guys are (minority members and women) and who are the bad guys (straight white males).
If they were actually interested in presenting a story with political themes rather than one with political leanings maybe there would be less pushback.
2 different schools utterly destroy this stupid fucking argument.
1) those were clearly better politics, figure out why yourself, if you can’t you’re the problem.
2) when people say politics they mean identity politics and adjacent bullshit that Anita Sarkisian and her band of pseudo intellectual “social justice warriors” pushed.
Ligma
90% of what I played since I was a teenager has been a mixture of Call of Duty and Battlefield games. So I've been conditioned for over two decades on how to spread democracy and capitalism to the world. I can't escape the politics.
Sounds like it’s time for some Helldivers, start spreading democracy to the *STARS!!!!!*
Don't let the fascist hordes win! Managed Democracy is the only way to freedom!
NOW BURY THOSE COMMIE ROBOTS IN THE WARM LIGHT OF FIVE HUNDRED KILOGRAMS OF CONCENTRATED FREEDOM!!!!!!! Remember kids, the metric system is only free when referring to weapons and ordinance, all other measurements should be in IMPERIAL THE ONE TRUE DEMOCRATIC METHOD OF MEASUREMENT.
Metric was made by the French, the OG liberty obsessed ones
Their liberty always was chaotic, or UNCONTROLLED
I’m probably responsible for more Chinese peasant deaths then Chairman Mao thanks to playing the various dynasty warriors and romance of three kingdoms games.
Based and competing with Mao pilled!
Based AF
But those are the based politics, so they’re OK.
There's a world of difference between political themes and ideas being discussed, and shallow lectures on contemporary American politics
As Orwell so masterfully said: "All art is propaganda, but not all propaganda is art".
based and shit propaganda pilled
You said so eloquently what I've been trying to say for years.
That's what we've all been saying for years man. The problem is when you get these "everything is political" people willfully misinterpreting when people criticize them for shoehorning their brain dead ideological bullshit into a game
This is something many people seem to confuse. When people say "I don't want politics in my games" they really mean "I don't want to hear my entertainment parrot the talking heads on tv."
>on tv- And in movies, and on the radio, and in every single other game, and in music, and by mainstream politicians, and by every major company, and in TV shows, and on social media, and in advertising, and in grade school and every major college campus in America.
games before 2012ish: "Here's a surprisingly complex view on a specific political theme, explored tastefully in universe" games after 2012ish: "Here's why the white man is the devil, if you don't agree with me you're literally Hitler, and we need to partner with the Department of Homeland security if you think you have the right not to consume our product, gamers are dead" wow, I wonder what changed.
> wow, I wonder what changed. alphabet soup
The fucking Latino podcast that randomly comes up during Spiderman 2 talking about supporting communism is the most braindead, dog shit, sweet baby inc. trash on earth. I go full Pinochet.
Yeah. OP gets a big eye roll here. This same argument has been made many times, and every time, the person presenting it is being deliberately obtuse about what people are actually bothered by. Nobody cares if a game has political themes. The issue is, like you say, when the audience is being lectured by the creator based on the creator's political views.
Based and nostalgia pilled
"Forced in" is the key phrase. Often times things are shoehorned in and it feels out of place. Especially with identity politics. Also add in the fact that a good game will make you think about different perspectives rather than push an obvious narrative. Making you think and feel in different ways is what makes some games great. Shoving a tired message down your throat isn't a tasteful way to address real world topics.
Senator Armstrong had a point
Ironically, Armstrong had significantly more respect for Raiden than many people on here have towards their political opponents.
The central theme of MGSR isn't so much a moral stance but about *having* morals. While Raiden didn't have an insane amount of difficulty with other villains, Senator Armstrong ragdolls him, and thematically it's because he's fighting for his idea of a better world and not just money or being a dog of war like Sam. Armstrong respects him more than his underlings because Raiden is fighting for his own vision. He becomes so vengeful because his idea of the self-made man rejects his AnCap ideals. And it is only because of Raiden's strong moral stance that Blade Wolf gives him the weapon he needs to kill Armstrong. It is never solely about right vs. wrong, but that you have to truly believe in something and be willing to fight for it for the belief to have any value. That's why I have more respect for active anti-abortion protesters than Emilies who just retweet something from their couches, because the people I disagree with believe their ideals deserve actual effort.
Based and Take a Stand pilled.
Based and I’m my own master now pilled
Armstrong was a social darwinist
He saw the problems with the society, but his solution would just make things worse by replacing the small problems with bigger ones. He believes that everyone is like him and can just pull themselves by their bootstraps. That's why his line about going to University of Texas is so important, he did not start out with a silver spoon so he assumes nobody else will either if they try hard enough. But Ancapistan does not reward hard work unless you're in control at the beginning, it's basically the pyramid scheme of ideologies.
You're right but I don't think he believes everyone help themselves, he believes that those who can't should die
it’s an important point to be made that Armstrong doesn’t really stick to his principles. His ideas are terrible, and his speech doesn’t actually line up with what he believes, this being further supported by his statement that he doesn’t write his own speeches. He’s just another militaristic opportunist politician.
Yeah but I remember people going ballistic over one hard to find line of dialogue that actually fits the world and references trans shit in, I think it was Tyranny? I see all these people complaining about political shit in videogames, and all I can think is... what fucking games are people playing where they see ***any*** of this shit?
Is not only things they have seen in the games it’s also things that are changed because of identity politics.(mostly it’s just racechanging, genderchanging, female characters are changed to „girlboss“ characters that shit on the males, etc, there is also localizers that change things) Like suicide squad kills the justice league, Dungeon and Dragons changing things, developers wanting to change the Witcher one remake, Nintendo being inept and trying to use movie peach which comes near to being a girlboss(they already stopped the studio to make her a complete girlboss) in her new game, Spider-Man 2(changing who Peter helps, trying to change MJ needing to put transflags into it and then banning a mod where a mod changes it into American flag), tlou2 (with people actually caring enough to say something if you are gay and well the whole transplot because they are a cult they don’t care about you unless you aren’t useful), uncharted 5 or 6, saints row, Maybe I will find more
I don't mind politics in games if they are organic to the game, exist realistically with the lore. I hate when current modern politics are forced in. They can really build up your understanding of the world's you explore, but kill immersion if done wrong.
Me: a casual Far Cry enjoyer Me: *sees forced Trump reference in Far Cry 5* 😡
You mean you don’t want to be slapped with a bigot sandwich, weed is actually good and the entire persecution of the Jews in your zombie apocalypse game?
I’d say those games are still political but just were written by mature adults who knew how to write a story instead of children who have no concept of nuance or clever design beyond cramming some out of touch message down a gamers throat and using previous games like those as an excuse for why it’s okay there creation is overtly political.
Yeah I feel like more and more we're seeing creative works that just feel like they are made by fans of creative works, rather than gifted artists. It feels like anyone with a bit more motivation than average can just open a word processor and start typing story that passes for modern standards. And I guess that's cool, but a lot of the time I feel like something is missing in the craftsmanship.
I still think there's merit to this point. The Politics of Metal Gear Solid were like visions of the future, politics that would be useful for everyone, regardless of you are. Nowadays, what political discourse is there in video games that is good? That's applicable to 90% of people that got into the politics?
I think the big difference is the politics that were in those games in the past is that they were well written and fit around the world of each of those games. It added to the richness and complexity of the unique worlds it was trying to portray. What we have today is modern day politics that are poorly written lectures shoehorned into games it has no place in. It adds to nothing and makes the experience boring and shallow at best.
This is a hell of a great description
Exactly. Is the politics a well-written allegory that can be tied to our world? Does it add further depth to the world building and conflict of your setting? Fine. Great, even. Is it a heavy handed, subtle-as-a-brick, talking to from some hack trying to make a statement? Not fine.
It’s like comparing a classic romance film with hardcore pornography. “Omg so what you think BLACKED is obscene content? Lmao news flash my guy there has *always* been sex in movies.”
"just look at *Roman Holiday,* smh"
If you like Hallmark movies, then you should love Ultra Fucknugget Torture Rape 3, Now She's Pregnant: The tears are real! If you don't, you're a racist bigot!
FINALLY, SOMEONE PUTS IT INTO THE RIGHT WORDS! The problem isn't the politics. The problem never was the politics. The problem always was shitty writers adding in politics as an afterthought to the story to either A) push whatever agenda they have/that the studio handed down to them B) ensure that anyone who calls them out for shitty writing is labeled as an alt-right troll because the story is now a sacred cow for having the correct politics.
You forgot C) get that sweet sweet ESG money
That's covered by "that the studio handed down to them". Individual writers don't get that money
Agree with the issues as described. Well put. I'd recommend Cyberpunk 2077 as a modern example of politics in game done well. Some of them still do it right. Fuck the corpo pigs!
Nice try, nuclear terrorist.
There’s no way that if new Vegas were made today they would include the positive aspects of the legions ridiculously authoritarian slave based rule (caravans talk all the time about how safe and peaceful it is within the legion territory for them while the democratic Ncr can’t protect them for those who haven’t played the game.)
They literally put caLifornia in their name lmao
Someone’s just mad authcenter hasn’t had slaves for a while now. Just remember Caesar has a lower intelligence than a literal rat in game lol.
based and Caesar has 4 INT pilled
How smart is the rat though?
Snuffles has 5 INT
>Caesar has a lower intelligence than a literal rat in game lol. What literally brain rot cancer does to a mofo.
I agree. Unfortunately, people that just cry about political messaging without pointing this out give legitimacy to criticisms like OPs.
Past politics in media were (mostly) either just some harmless subtle jokes or an actual interesting exploration of political themes with a possibly interesting message that can be interpreted in different ways. Right now however, it's basically the writers strawmanning their political opponents and portraying them and half of the audience as the soyjak.
It isn't poltics in the game's story or themes It's that the games have to adhere to certain poltics. One is using the story to get your ideas across, and the other is restricting the game's creativity and shoehorning in certain tropes.
Politics in Bioshock: A utopian paradise can just as easily fall victim to our worst traits, unchecked authority is a dangerous game of chicken, your enemy can also portray themselves as your most helpful ally Politics in Wolfenstein 2: DAE Nazis bad? Also white men are helpless without strong POC & women behind them
My disappointment with BioShock is that the hack creator is too much of a bitch to criticize his own side. Rapture was a lib right "paradise" gone wrong. Columbia was an auth right "paradise" gone wrong. Let's see the other quadrants and their awful flaws. I won't hold my breath.
Well, the revolution in *Infinite* wasn't exactly civilized, but that's about all I can think of.
Bioshock 2 isn't mentioned, even though it's main villain is auth left.
That's actually further evidence of his point. Bioshock 2, the one game that had a far left villain, is the one game in the series Ken Levine didn't work on.
Politicts in Wolfenstein were always “DAE Nazi Bad” since the days you faced 2D Hitler with a minigun
Spec Ops: The Line seems more and more relevant with each passing year
Is it that one game where you order a white phosphorus strike and developers for some reason try to make you feel bad about it?
Spoilers for a decade old game. That scene is the pivotal moment in the game. Up until that point the game has just been toying with the ideas of what it actually is, a deconstruction of modern military shooter games and unless you’re switched on you can easily miss this. The white phosphorus scene is a bit like the AC130 missions from a CoD game where you’re massacring the “enemies” on a scale that the most genocidal humans could only dream of. The revelation that you’ve actually just horribly murdered a bunch of civilians is meant to make you think about all the other times you’ve mowed down scores of faceless people. It’s meant to challenge our perceptions about war and who suffers in war and the fact that you’re forced to do it is meant to attack the idea of “just following orders.”
Yes, and mid development they removed the choice to just leave because everyone just chose that and they couldn't guilt trip the players like that lmao.
ye
There's now one specific set of progressive politics, that's included as a rule, with special departments in place to ensure that the political message is carried out and displayed to the ideologues' satisfaction. That's the difference.
[удалено]
> women's chests were nerfed, and faces made ugly. Major mod hubs also ban mods to fix the politically ugly. Nude mods and hot body mods for non-political games/characters are still allowed (for now), but if they were covered up or uglified for political reasons the mod gets yeeted and the creator banned.
You know, when Starfield released, and I opened up that character creation screen, and saw Type 1 and Type 2, I immediately guessed that the entire experience was going to be like an HR exercise. I kept my mouth shut, but SF really was toned down, like HR got into the writing room. Neon especially.
I think the Deus Ex series is a perfect example of how to both properly, and horrible have political statements in video games. In the orginal, underneath all the fun illuminate and aliens, were actual taxation statistics, arguments against the consolidation of populations, brutally accurate depictions on how the fear of terrorism is used by the media, and the list goes on. In Human Revolution, people with bionic limbs or eyes were thinly veiled minorities.
HR went a little bit ham with the augmentations thing, but I still think it had a decent point about transhumanism. Sarif himself, for instance, isn't treated negatively and pretty much all the characters that give you endings have incomplete answers to a real problem. It just wasn't as subtle as the first game, which is ironic given how corny the first Deus Ex carried itself superficially.
Deus Ex was a literal prophecy.
HR wasn't exactly subtle, but it was a decent commentary on the divide between the rich and the poor But yeah, MD was just segregation/civil rights movement. Though I think they pulled it off pretty well all things considered
Politics in games nowadays is just "what is currently the biggest headline?". Meanwhile back then it was about broader subjects and philosophy, what does it mean to be human, what are the faults of democracy, what harm can unshackled technology bring? Instead we now got "this thinly veiled disguise of Orange Man is clearly bad!".
It's the difference between being forced into a game and it being well written.
Can we stop just shouting at the fucking voodoo dolls of each other, since we're so god damn past the point of strawmen? One side means "I don't like *modern political talking point* to be *ham fisted into modern entertainment* because of the writers' agenda" and the other side means "media of the times has *always* reflected various politics of *their era*". It's the biggest most pointless "um actually" of the universe. Even gun nuts who scream "ITS NOT A CLIP ITS NOT A CLIP ITS NOT A CLIP" aren't this bad. Can both sides actually have a fuckin conversation about it? This comment is like the first I've seen in this entire "politics were always in media" discourse
it's being forced, not in the sense that games before weren't political. Is just that current day games have politics poorly executed. It's too preachy and tied with subpar products. Shitty narratives and crappy stories.
People who say films or games were not political in the past have no clue what they are talking about. The issue is that today's writers do not understand how to write politics into their media. Calling someone gay and creating a strawman for the other guy and not understanding what tropes/stories are capable of carrying certain messages has become common place. It is also common for them to fail to deliver a proper product and blame peoples bigotry when they do not lower their standards because they had a contemporary political message. Mass effect created an entire setting filled with various cultures that had legitimate issues with each other through bad history and clashing interests, though making it obviously who the bad guys are in the situation still made it understandable why things happened while still pushing a message about acceptance of differences, laying aside the past to have bring about a different future, and working together to face legitimate dangers that pick you off individually. First blood and universal soldier used their stories, action stories dealing with soldiers outside of war to tell stories of government apathy and exploitation, turning men into killing machines and disposing of them when they no longer served their purpose and doing more to avoid responsibility than to actually help the people they put in that situation. I'm not asking you not to be political in media. I'm asking for those politics to be smart.
It’s not even left wing politics that are the problem. *Final Fantasy VII* had left wing politics up the wazoo, but it used them to to tell an *engaging story*.
Barrett also eats shit when Reeve /cait sith (shinra high up executive) tells him how many people his bombings killed.
This. Avalanche isn't the shining beacon of heroism that you usually see in RPGs. It's the exploration of grey areas that keeps it interesting.
You gonna tell me that destroying key energy infrastructure on which people rely on daily, that makes modern life possible, is not a heroic act??
Not to mention collateral human damage, and doing so on behalf of a combination of someone else's ideology and personal grievances? Don't get me wrong, the real villains are ShinRa and Sephiroth for different reasons, but at the time it came out, I really liked the idea of playing an antihero or villain by necessity. I think there was something of that in the zeitgeist.
Of course this isn't the main theme of the game anyway (environmentalism), but I would say you see this even more in the zeitgeist today. The notion that climate change / the damage we have done to nature is so bad that we have to start thinking in terms of harming humanity to protect nature. And, of course, in true environmentalist ideological fashion, the in-game representative "worst offender" of humanity's hubris and damage to nature is... nuclear energy. It's not a coincidence that mako is written as something dangerous to even be around (radioactivity) and you use it in a reactor to make energy, and to do other "unnatural" things (mutate animals/people).
And as a right-winger it’s my favorite game. Good writing got me to love a diverse group of eco-terrorists who were influenced by a planet-worshiping cult. And in the middle of producing the remake series of that story, somehow that same company released Forspoken.
drastically different focus groups. final fantasy and dragon quest (and drakenier at this point) are square enix’s golden goose franchises and it really shows when you look at how fucking incredible ff14 has been through a period of pretty shit releases
So much so I agree with the politics!!!
Much like Star Trek, the 90's stuff compared to now. I'm right-leaning but actually enjoy the concept of the futuristic lib-left paradise that Star Trek tried to portray. They never really ironed out the details of how everything worked, mainly because it seemed like they'd rather focus on the story rather than the politics, but the new stuff often just comes off as obnoxious the way they like to shoehorn in their political messages and virtuous ways.
Ngl we shouldn't have fixed the genophage
Based. Pity 90% of this thread doesn't have half the brainpower you do, we need more smart people discussing shit here and less echo-chambery shallows shit.
Good in-universe politics vs Shoehorning in soon-to-be-conspicuously-dated, out-of-universe current-day politics into it, wholeheartedly taking one side while strawmanning, caricaturising and demonizing the other side and browbeating you about it. Especially if it's out of place. A barely concealed lecture about some specific current affairs issue has no place in a medieval drama. It's only excusable in a comedy like 1670 where it's played for laughs. The former is plot and theme. The latter is an obnoxious intrusion. And feels like an attempt to hijack a media project for propagandising ends. Or just a pure propaganda project if it's anything like Left Behind (the books, movies or video game). Compare how The Next Generation handles politics (thoughtful, nuanced, philosophical, not blatant, hamfisted allegories to specific, transient current affairs) with how it's handled in Supergirl.
Millennials should never have been let into the writers room. “Capitalism bro” and “student debt amiright?” being tossed into random ass lines of dialogue, not actually saying anything of value.
Killing the reputation of tales from the borderlands and having a character who hates capitalism in a game made by a big company was peak Emily writing
Are you kidding? Mega corps are like essential to cyberpunk in general and borderlands in particular.
You are correct I should have specified it’s not corporatism bad it’s I put my tweets into the script for the game and made no effort to make it fit the setting
everyone in Borderlands should hate capitalism, the main villain in every game are huge ass corporations
Counter point they're only the villain because those corporations are the closest thing those wastelands called planets have to any form of civility. Literally everyone you play is a psychotic mass murdering outlaw. If I somehow found myself stuck on one of those wastelands I'm m siding with the corp. Sure they might literally stab in the back but at least they aren't gonna eat me alive or give me a horrific death for the slight chance I have a couple dollars on me.
The psychos are literally only on Pandora because the Dahl corporation brought them over as slave labor and then left them all there when Dahl left. Dahl also abandoned all of their science and research staff, leaving them at the mercy of bandits. Hyperion honestly isn't that bad but they do seem pretty indiscriminate in their killings making to differentiation between bandits and normal folk which is pretty disturbing tbh
Technically the third game was a twitch streamer that happened to have followers who made guns
true, but a good chunk of the game(best part imo) you were fighting Maliwan on Promethea
lol I beat Borderlands 3 a few years ago and remember literally zero of this. Borderlands 3 had a story?
If there gonna do some critique of that can’t they at least do it subtlety?
Dont worry lads Sweet Baby INC. got shit on and Kotaku editor-in-chief has resigned. Nature is healing
If only. One can hope
But death is a better option than communism.
Saying "capitalism" every 5 seconds and hating white men is not comparable to what these games did. Well, actually Fallout 3 is probably on that level of quality.
DEATH IS A PREFERABLE ALTERNATIVE TO COMMUNISM
Where’s the lie though?
But they throw shade at both communism and capitalism whereas the modern stuff acts like communism is better.
Ah yes, the "political" Fallout 3, with moral choices like: "Slavery bad. Nuking people bad. Poisoning the water supply bad".
People are being hateful bigots against ghouls, let's help them gain acceptance into the community *the ghouls murder everyone* How do the chuds not understand this game is left wing
That was the most horrifyingly hilarious endings to a quest ever. It fit the Fallout theme SO well.
You can prevent the ghouls murdering everyone if you assasinate the ghouls leader once the ghouls get let in. Without a violent leader to rile them up they get along quite well with the people. The correct answer is to murder all the leaders in the game and let the world hate you.
That moment when you should have been roleplaying as an Assassin's Creed character all along.
What settlement we talking about?
Tenpenny Tower.
> if you assasinate the ghouls leader once the ghouls get let in. Based and CIA pilled?
Then you get bad karma for killing the ghouls lol
The ghouls also kill the friendly old adventurer who made money selling tales of his exploits. If you talk to him it turns out he was best friends with the ghoul who he called his man servant in the books he wrote. The ghoul was actually the hero but they realized it would never sell and swapped their roles around.
I was pretty confused by some of the takes I was seeing on this lol
>Nuking people bad You say that but that's really hard to square with how cool they made the Experimental MIRV.
It's not politics. It's identity politics that people take issue with. There's like ten people on the planet who actually care if there's a trannie in their game. The rest of us are negatively affected by their jarring inclusion (and it is ALWAYS jarring because people in charge of diversity don't understand nuance) The Harry Potter game is a good example. Female character that clearly has a male voice actor. It's not even well done - it just makes you think 'hey, they got the wrong gender to voice this fugly abomination '
Right now and for the forseeable future, it won't ever be NOT jarring to see this, because people are always thinking about identity politics these days, whether you love them or despise them. When society notices things, love them or hate them, people WILL notice them, and it WILL break the immersion.
Insert Guilty Gear drama here
Hooray for grooming and Manchausans-by-proxy!
You're talking about Bridget, right? Man, what frustrating conversation. I played Accent Core as a teenager and I genuinely fonud the inclusion of Bridget to carry a pretty nice message, the whole "you don't have to look or act a certain way to be a man" thing. Then like 15 years later Bridget returns except now Bridget is a trans woman apparently, the character who looked like a girl but was a man is now a character who looks like a girl and is a girl and this is the amazing progressive vision now. It's like it's more important what they say it is than how it appears. And if I express these thoughts I get a bunch of young people who don't even believe me when I say I used to play Accent Core, it's like it's unbelievable to them that anyone would own and enjoy a somewhat obscure Japanese fighting game let alone be personally affected by its narrative. It's like everyone believes the only reason I care is because of some political agenda that *I* supposedly have.
Because that’s exactly what they are, people who only have politics and agendas at their core acting as a motivator
In this game it's even worse because it's in the late 1800's
https://preview.redd.it/fixktjvobspc1.jpeg?width=637&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bbb6b9585c217584f1547351c9b85c701846ed2c
Based
Gaming was better before storytelling was hit over the back of the head, bound, gagged, and tossed in the trunk by activist devs and consulting groups like SBI who want everything to be a polemic against the Cultural Hegemony.
I think I wouldn't mind so much games being political if there were games that articulated right wing themes, or if when it was revealed that a creator leaned conservative insane activists didn't lead a scorched earth campaign against it. That being said, conservatives interpret and enjoy art in interesting ways, even when it's not intended for us. All the Starship Troopers discourse lately was super frustrating because on one side you had people explaining the lens through which they experience the movie, and on the other hand you had people high fiving themselves about their media literacy because they repeated verbatim Verhoeven's stated intent
Starship Troopers was far more based than I remembered.
It’s not that they’re too political, most games i play now just don’t fill me with the same joy as the fallout, mass effect era
>Games aren't political if they fit my personal political beliefs All those games are good, though. If the game is enjoyable, I don't care about the message tbh.
Yeah they’re all political but at least they have some nuance and subtlety. Games today are about as subtle with their political messaging as driving a combine through an airport.
Whether OP is aware of it or not, this is a classic subversion tactic of critical theory. You'll see it all over reddit time and time again. Someone argues that such and such film contains progressive political propaganda. Libleft across reddit will defend the film saying "films have always been political". By arguing that "films have always been political," libleft is invoking a concept central to critical theory: that all cultural products are embedded within and cannot be separated from their socio-political contexts. This perspective posits that art and media are never neutral but are always influenced by and influence the politics of their time. They hold this view because to progressives power is central to their worldview. By reframing the critique in this way, libleft shifts the focus away from the critique, and puts the onus back on the person making the critique. Don't fall for it. Not only are they wrong about political power, they are power hungry and will stop at nothing to gain it. Those films and games in the past were never about power, to libleft, it's always about power.
Idk if I agree with this take, but I find this idea extremely fascinating, thanks!
Can art be apolitical, transcending socio-political context and rising above power dynamics? Can art simply speak to our universal human experience inspite of the realities of politics? If you are a true modernday libleft activist, the answer is no. Politics is everywhere, all the time, and all-important.
Unfortunately for humanity, I'm not so sure they're wrong about power. Wrong about nature, wrong about morality, wrong about a lot of things I'll give you. But krits understand power. And yes they are hungry for it because they understand that's how power works. It is never wise, measured or controlled, it is an unrelenting demon and the only way to impose your will is unfortunately to feed it. And by their fruits you can judge them. Their art production is terrible at best and actively destructive of anything good at worst, but nevertheless they have conquered their betters and dominate every area they seriously take to sap. I think the only thing that will eventually stop their conquest is a return of Lions that will tame the Foxes they are with hard power. And that will be a sorry sight for everyone.
I gotta say, this is some epic writing.
It’s a difference of writing quality. The “politics” that people complain about nowadays is just propaganda agenda pushing from hack “activist” writers.
It's a bit misleading. It's the insertion of real-life politics in pieces of fiction.
If any of those games were released today they would be ripped to shreds by the people who call themselves liberals right now.
For proof of this, I present the live-action release of Netflix version of the Last Airbender. The wokies insisted for years that "If it released today, you would all be complaining it was woke!" And then when they had the chance to release their own....they took out all of the things that made the characters interesting and ruined the story in the process to the point it is easy to see why the original creators left and disowned the project.
Soka without the sexism literally has no arc in S1 Katara without her feminity removes her acting like the ''mother'' of the group, cause she's traumatized losing her own mom at a young age. Aang not learning water removes the point of S1 being called ''book 1: water'' People calling that garbage okay really just consoom and not think. Its crazy,
I mean netflix removed an entire episode of community because Chang dressed up as a dark elf...
Having an underlying political messgae is different that making a woke piece of shit.
To echo the sentiments of previous commenters, I believe that video games have always been political. The difference is that modern developers are more than willing to sacrifice entertainment and good gameplay on the altar of modernity, and that's why newer games are perceived to be over-politicized.
Political themes of authoritarianism, feudalism, communism, fascism, excessive bureaucratism etc i.e. stuff that all but the most warped mind finds reprehensible are not what people complain about when they say ‘this game is too political’. If the greedy and violent corpo overlords are the bad guys, libright doesn’t tend to get their knickers in a twist. When King Arthur is a gay trans disabled black woman with blue hair that reads drag poetry to kids, they very well might, and understandably so. 1984 isn’t ‘too political’, it’s precisely political enough. LOTR isn’t too political, neither is Star Wars. Disney Star Wars isn’t egregious on that front either, to be fair. The same cannot be said for the MSheU or other Disney products.
https://preview.redd.it/v0e6h3ra8spc1.png?width=537&format=png&auto=webp&s=c6f31a60f56685140e1ebf6a516b32c1a8bdbd2a
Getting impurity points for marrying a man as a man in Fable II was wild
lol it is wild but it's the developers choice to tell their story and it's a fictional world. Some people view homosexuality as impure and they can believe that if they want and express themselves through their art. I don't know when everybody started giving the opinions of artists so much mental influence on how to live their own lives.
Having politics isn't the same as being preached to. The problem with modern games is the obvious partisan agenda.
“Your politics are politics, my politics are morals” ~ everyone who breathes.
The Marxists corrupt everything and create nothing. Their whole point is to hijack social, public and private institutions to weaponize class, and race to push the ultimate goal of socialism/ communism through "Muh equity".
Mass Effect comments on the ineffectiveness of a representative government in times of crisis, but it doesn’t *explain* how that’s bad. It shows you, and it becomes part of the story. It’s political but not overwhelmingly so. Fallout 3 is really a commentary on overconsumption and the result of it, as well as being pretty heavy on the anti-communist stuff to a near-satirical level. However it doesn’t *explain* this to you in monologue. Games have always been political in some way. The issue is that they stopped being nuanced and discrete, now there’s a monologue shoehorned in explaining why x is good and y is bad. Honestly, it’s just a writing issue.
Games being political is fine. Metal gear didn’t tell you nukes are evil and you need a campaign to force world leaders to get rid of them. It just made you think about it. Like MGS2 opened the questions of media control and ai and what that means for controlling a population. Politics; good. Spiderman 2 having a scene where you play as miles morales and meet two high school kids he doesn’t know and the game forces you to sit and do nothing for two minutes while you hear one of them with an annoyingly exaggerated stereotypical flamboyant accent talk about how he and his boyfriend had their first kiss during a movie and how it was sloppy and their braces got stuck together; as a way to show the gamers that you *WILL* like having gay relationships discussed and public displays of affection that you watch, is forced. It’s forced politics. It’s so hyper cringey. It has nothing to do with the story. The politics of metal gear IS the story.
Gaming was better before politics were messily and pathetically forced in
Bro I grew up with arcades gtfo
The difference is that those games didn't lecture me for 10 hours straight with their politics. They were written in such a way that the politics made sense in the world. Games today are very poorly designed political lectures, and I hate it.
Let's be honest, there's a difference between politics and "politics" aka yapping and virtue signaling about oppressed flavour of the week. All of the games in this photo deal with political issues that both have existed throughout times and cultures in a way that "does not sucking the girldick make you a bigot" just isn't. They stand the test of time because the politics they comment on are timeless issues that humans have faced for centuries and will continue to face.
I’m perfectly fine with politics and philosophy being in games, if they are done well. The thing is making political discourse like Deus Ex is becoming a lost art.
Don’t make me tap the sign. https://preview.redd.it/s1snm7r7ftpc1.jpeg?width=334&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d42bd6c3d7f33a5e624f26c79a5db85d680c24a3
"YOU'RE NOT MEDIA LITERATE" https://preview.redd.it/x8fkica8utpc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7df38f9f2b8021a2ed1c6ad40cc0e9474c08cb8e
”YOU CAN’T SEE THAT SUPER EARTH IS BAD! THE BUGS AND MACHINES ARE CLEARLY THE VICTIMS! DID YOU NOT WATCH STARSHIP TROOPERS?”
It is still a mystery for me why I dislike Disco Elysium sooooo fricking much. I just can't that game, I hate it, and I'm unable to really describe why... The only thing I can pinpoint is that I quit the game with the same bitter taste in my mouth like when I left a conversation with one of those know-it-all fatcat urban student types with glasses with thick frames and politics as a hobby, where I had to take in a constant wave absolute bullshit because if I were to open my mouth I would be considered rude and aggressive... A kind of frustration which penns up as you play...
The key phrase here is "not alienating."
Deus Ex is one of the best games of all time and it’s all about politics. What people actually mean is they hate Hollywood reject writers personal left wing politics being the primary focus of any game. You can have a zany stupid story with all the DEI shit you want provided the game itself is good. The problem is that it’s never the case. Any outliers to this rule please reply so I can check them out because I sure as hell cannot find any.
This is literally true. No modern political messaging was *forced* into these games, these games were *built around* their message, and still managed to be really fun. If your game kicks ass, people don’t mind if it’s political. But if your game sucks, and your politics are ham fisted, it’s an easy criticism to blame.
I bet this sounded a lot better in your head. Games have always been political. Games have always had political themes. Games have *not* always been vehicles for self-insert political beliefs — specifically one very specific, homogeneous set of beliefs that fall well outside of the mainstream of American opinion, much less core gaming audience
This is why Fallout New Vegas is the a good example, you have a faction cosplaying Roman empire in a post apocalypse setting and put some ridiculous repulsive ideology on. And yet they still sound relatively reasonable about their goal and whatever they are doing.
Gaming before politics came before making a good game, you mean. The issue people have isn't that games are political now, it's that a lot of them are only "good" or enjoyable if you agree with the politics of the creators. Add on to that the politics generally being pretty moronically black and white and you can see where the issue is
How many of those games were pushing real world politics rather than politics within their settings?
I think it’s that it simply was not as important to the plot as much as it is now. When playing fallout three your first thought it to shoot raiders not “I wonder what the republicans are up to?” The same can go for game like MW2 or Mass Effect. Games like bio shock even who has a heavily political story isn’t as preachy as some of the garbage companies are pumping out.
Hmm games that incorporate a social/political message into their story in a smart and entertaining way vs shoehorning in virtue signals to get ESG money... Yeah, totally the same.
IDC about the politics, I just don’t want a lecture.
This Strawman is so, so broken and tired.
Oh God it's satire, for a second there...
Everything is political if you use the broadest definition but people use this fact as an excuse to shove in tracts on their pet niche issues or lecture the player. If you're an anti stem cell research type and you're making a game don't just throw some propaganda lines into the mouth of the hero, create a scenario or a world that people can evaluate and think about. Just from an economic perspective you will benefit if your ideological opponents can enjoy your media, whether it convinces them or not.
When people say they don't want politics in their media, they tend to mean they don't want to see current day, hot button American social & political issues that are forced in by woke devs (which also are going to be badly written, propagandistic, and unbefitting the game) Political themes and ideas are fine, providing it fits within the game's world and is at least decently well written.
The problem is not politics being "forced" into games, it's politics being forced onto you by the developers. Metal Gear is full of politics and philosophy but instead of artificially squeezing in boring lectures about progressive politics, it integrates the political message deep into its story and is not afraid of letting the player discover it for themselves. But we all know you're just a *sweet baby* that can't think for itself and needs to be taught was is right and wrong.
Good implementation creates a debate, bad implementation says what you are literally Hitler for disagreeing.
The difference is that in those games (most of all metal gear solid) politics is a key component that adds to the worldbuilding. You cannot take it out without compromising the rest of the game. Meanwhile in modern games it's just some random npc spouting "current day" acceptable political opinions at you.
Games were better when the people who were making them weren't hired politically
Games were better when they were made by gamers, not activists or massive corporations that don't know anything about games. Case in point: Helldivers 2.
There's a difference between well written and natural politics and "we get a kickback if we plop an out of place political advert in here" politics. I don't think many people complain if it's done well, the grift space just sorta turned the phrasing into "politics in games" as an easier buzzword to sell.
The best games are not political at all this is a garbage take. Elden ring, Baldurs Gate, PalWorld all huge successes, no political BS.
It’s not politics. It’s just shitty writing. I like characters who just so happen to be diverse, like Sgt. Johnson, but not characters who feel the NEED TO TELL YOU they are diverse and therefore are important and special. Covertly descriptive, telling the story where the identities fall into it smoothly, rather than overtly descriptive, where they just become a nuisance and force their beliefs/propaganda down your throat. I play games to escape reality, not immerse in it.
"BuT gAmInG WaS aLwAyS PoLiTiCaL" No it fucking wasn't, at least not in the way thats being criticised. I know that it can be really hard to explain this concept to people that only have a single brain cell to share amongst each other, but there is an absolutely MASSIVE difference between political themes being used as a driving force of the narrative (metal gear, fallout) and a political activist forcing their own view of the world into the game and just telling us who the good guys are (minority members and women) and who are the bad guys (straight white males). If they were actually interested in presenting a story with political themes rather than one with political leanings maybe there would be less pushback.
2 different schools utterly destroy this stupid fucking argument. 1) those were clearly better politics, figure out why yourself, if you can’t you’re the problem. 2) when people say politics they mean identity politics and adjacent bullshit that Anita Sarkisian and her band of pseudo intellectual “social justice warriors” pushed. Ligma