Comment on Why People Don’t Catch The Politics In Their Favorite Games

HauntedCupcake@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

It’s more that when the writing is bad something is perceived as “political”, as the insert of whatever political messaging is being used comes out of nowhere and smacks the player like a cudgel. That’s what most gamers have a problem with, obviously there’s a loud minority that rage about stupid shit like Jesse Faden being too masculine. But that’s not what most people are talking about.

Games need to tackle these issues head on and fully integrate them into the world, not just tack on preachy dialog that doesn’t make sense within the wider game world.

FFXV is blatantly about slavery and no one really complained, it’s not exactly peak fiction, but they at least had everything contained within the world.

New Vegas is the best example, it’s simply written well and gives the player agency.

Death Stranding did a great job of both integrating it’s themes directly into the world, and also tackling them head on without any remorse.

Helldivers is so ludicrously full on and absolutely dripping with it’s pro fascist ideology that everyone knows what they’re getting into from the intro video, and then the game starts adding texture and “are we the baddies” energy straight away.

Fucking Disco Elysium is near universally praised by the wider gaming audience, and I don’t even think it needs to explain how that one is political.

It’s the same reason why most ideologically driven media is cringe as fuck. Christian media being a prime example, it’s contrived slop that doesn’t make sense within its own story. Like God’s Not Dead and it’s illogical legal system built on feels and Shapiro logic.

Who remembers the weird pro-life Doctor Who episode? That was bizarre and out of place. The characters stopped acting like themselves for the sake of whatever message it wanted to get across. It just felt really out of place.

The Last of Us Part 2 to label the most controversial example, had periods of good and bad writing, but focusing in on the “violence bad” part of it’s messaging, it completely missed the mark. Giving the characters names that they shout was just hilarious, and having Ellie repeatedly kill dogs whilst Abbie pets them was just so hamfisted. Then making the gameplay violent and fun just divorced it further.

In short, gamers people love politics in video games media, they hate hamfisted preaching in video games media

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