Yes politics are great in videogames, if the writers don’t share just 1 braincell like with many current AAA(A) games.
You’d think it’s common knowledge, yet they still churn out these depthless, one dimensional millenial writing slop.
Metaphor: ReFantazio's success is further proof that politics are good in videogames, actually—no matter what reactionaries tell you
Submitted 1 week ago by Billy@lemmy.dbzer0.com to games@lemmy.world
Comments
Bananobanza@lemmy.world 6 days ago
BruceTwarzen@lemm.ee 6 days ago
Politics in video games used to be: metal gear solid.
Politics in video games now is: is that a grill protagonist in my vydia game?
HollowNaught@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Politics are irrelevant
Good writing is good and bad writing is bad
Nexy@lemmy.sdf.org 6 days ago
Politics is not actual politics, its not normative womans, gays and trans people.
Sylvartas@lemmy.world 6 days ago
its not normative womans, gays and trans people.
Not broad enough. When “gamers” say that something is political, what they mean is that it contains politics they disagree with. The ones you cited just happen to be the things they easily recognize because their favorite right wing grifter is raging about them 24/7. As you also said, they usually don’t have the media literacy required to recognize more subtle political messages, which can be pretty funny. I remember when Disco Elysium was first released and they were very confused because it contains some actual, pretty deep political reflections
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 5 days ago
misk@sopuli.xyz 6 days ago
I understand that half of the world is currently healing psychological trauma from the US election results but Atlus has been commenting on politics in their games for much longer.
Viri4thus@feddit.org 6 days ago
Nobody normal complains about politics in games, what people complain about is poor writing and US cultural idiosyncratic defaultism in games. Perhaps if ESA members hadn’t laid off the lion’s share of adult writers in the room to hire cheap, overwhelmingly ignorant, uneducated and straight out of college dev teams with a superiority complex, we could get good narratives. There’s a reason why everyone and their mothers keeps harping about indie games now, that’s where the laid off talent went, they make independent games now. But it’s cheaper to take “journos” to Disneyland than keeping a roster of devs with 10+ years experience. In the past, there was already a backlash on journos for their habitual prostitution to the companies they cover but that message was quickly erased in favour of “gAmErS aRe MiSoGyNiStIc”. Now, most traditional game news outlets are owned by a handful of holding companies, and most of their articles are AI generated drivel by, you guessed it, people not holding journalism degrees. Gaming journalism has become the off ramp of untalented and incompetent language/social science majors who are too inept to actually find a job in their field. That’s why we get this level of shitty journalism, because technically, they really don’t know what being a journalist is, from the ethics standards to the reporting without inserting personal bias. No self respecting journalist chooses covering hatsune miko’s latest release when there are so many conflicts in the world that need covering, so we get Felicity, Mars and Bruno, English major extraordinaires, who end up on a dead end career with wages capping at below 40k pounds per anum that justify their lack of journalistic ethics by “It’s the perk of the profession since we don’t get well paid”.
There were more articles covering game character sexuality than the mass lay offs of the last two years that left entire families without sustenance. Then people are surprised that orange nazi cheeto gets elected by the dumb yanks? The megaphone holders for social issues have room temp level IQ. When was the last time that a “game journo” or major dev from a AAA outlet seriously addressed relevant issues like social inequality or poverty? Do yourself a favour and compare the google interest in the topics “transgender”, “hunger”, “unionization” and “lay offs” and tell me that it isn’t by design that an issue that affects an infinitesimally small percentage of the population has so much air time in comparison to an ongoing genocide and hunger crisis in the global south. I guess rich white teen problems are more serious than brown people dying. The bourgeois left has set back the class struggle for 100 years. Enjoy the hard right turn of modern western society.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 6 days ago
There were more articles covering game character sexuality than the mass lay offs of the last two years that left entire families without sustenance.
No, there absolutely weren’t.
Schreier’s politics come out in his writing as well as social media. The drum he’s been beating for a long time has been about labor and unionizing.
Katana314@lemmy.world 6 days ago
I’d even consider the possibility he’s right, but not for reasons that support his argument.
Games and media present transgender and minority groups in an unobtrusive way, and bigots create 17 articles complaining about their basic inclusion for the sake of “DEI”.
Viri4thus@feddit.org 6 days ago
Both GPT4 and Gemini estimate a 3:2 ratio between articles addressing video game character sexuality and those addressing lay offs and unionization in the games industry.
I won’t continue this discussion because “Schreier’s politics come out in his writing as well as social media. The drum he’s been beating for a long time has been about labor and unionizing.” is basically what I wrote on Schreier using more words, which indicates you’re more interested in being a confrontational than engaging in an honest discussion on the topic. Enjoy the Cheeto for 4y.
sirboozebum@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Gaming “journalism” was always mostly crap.
Even in 1990s and 00s.
Boiglenoight@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Games have a large male audience and many of those males are white. When new games focus on protagonists and issues that do not resonate with white males, this aggravates the audience and it only takes a few vocal few to whip the group into toxic online behavior.
Metaphor is set in a fantasy world populated by Japanese. The characters may seem to be of a multiracial society, but it’s understood that this is not a western game but an eastern one through a western lens. It could have the most radical political discourse but as players we quietly accept that this is a foreign story and not one that reflects on western issues and prejudices.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 4 days ago
The opening moments of the story are about intense racism over the most minute differences.
vasus@lemmy.world 6 days ago
The right/gamergate not contesting this whole issue being called “Politics in videogames” is the biggest blunder. I don’t know the best way to call this phenomenon (political preaching?) but surely there is a better phrase. Right now you can’t talk about this stuff without getting hit by “Oh, you claim to hate politics in videogames yet you love Bioshock” type retort, when the actual thing people have problems with are californian nutcases pushing their views on US political crap onto the player as if it were gospel.
Katana314@lemmy.world 6 days ago
What is wrong with Californian views on identity politics, when it’s not just bad writing? Is it the acknowledgement of people that are gender nonbinary?
vasus@lemmy.world 6 days ago
I just dislike a lot of the studios based there (Insomniac, naughty dog, ubisoft) for how hard they try to push POC/minority representation in their games. Especially when it doesn’t make sense (black samurai)
Lewdiculous@reddthat.com 6 days ago
Ah, yes, of course… It had to be PC Gamer with this take.
Just make good games and and focus on that, the push to shove politics and activism into everything has everyone tired and burned out. It just builds skepticism from the wider gaming audience.
RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Well, there’s politics… and there’s politics.
CosmoNova@lemmy.world 6 days ago
No, I don’t think it’s as simple as that. Politics are good in games when done right, but they can also be nothing more than a distraction when the narrative has huge errors or lacks and depth in general.
Renacles@lemmy.world 6 days ago
I mean, yeah, good writing is good and bad writing is bad.
I think the article is going against the idea that politics should be kept away from games.
PunchingWood@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Politics in games isn’t the issue.
It’s the concept of pushing real world politics in games that is the problem.
Sometimes they can overlap, but they needn’t to. Some things are just obviously pushing the agendas of developers, instead of making it feel like a legit part of the game universe.