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The Politics of the Video Game
illuminata writes "Can the video game industry keep its mittens out of the political slugfest? According to Kevin Parker's article Free Play, they sure can't. In it, he cites Dreamcatcher's Gore and Sega's Legacy Online and Jet Set Radio Future as main offenders. He even goes on to point out how some people want video games to convey their favorite political message in the future. Are there any particular titles or game companies that you think lay on the politics too thick, or is it all just a bunch of foof?"
Is this the one where you invent your own Internet?
The only computer game that makes me think of politics and politicians is Thief. Not because of the gameplay...
Trolling is a art,
> Are there any particular titles or game companies that you think lay on the politics too thick, or is it all just a bunch of foof?
Doom for Columbine is falsely accused of being political, but I think that mods like this may pave the way for better use of balance than more politically engendered titles, with corporate backing and all the politics that goes with that. Keeping it freeware is the key! (Then nobody can mess with it.)
This game had entirely too much politics. It was almost like they expected you to run a country or something!
The plot really jived with my strong anti-hell demon political stance.
...America's Army: Operations is little more than a thinly veiled recruiting tool for the U.S. Army.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
How about the COPS in GTA3? ;)
They seem an accurate portrayal of police in the US, especially now that we have the PATRIOT act. Do you ever see the cops hand you a warrant?
quote
Or was it all just a bunch of foof?"
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I thought that was a Pentium bug?http://www.x86.org/errata/dec97/f00fbug.htm
Well, we all know Hollywood sure can't. Game developers don't have quite the level of celebrity or exposure, but they are conveying a message.
It's hard to make something realistic and not weigh in an opinion.
most of the slant seems to be definitely doomsday, environmental, and decidely anti-government..
agan, this is just from reading the article. I haven't played any of the games mentioned.
Watch the Teaser Trailer for "The Lightning Thief" Her
... Duke Nukem Forever
Do you wish video games to have First Ammendment protection, or don't you?
KFG
a) The stuff that comes out of your ears when you have a cold.
b) An inane, repetitive joke on /. (see In Soviet Russia...)
c) A totally made up word with no actual meaning.
It is my understanding the NRA sponsored the development of the BFG9000. In fact, without their influence most games today would look like the Sims or Animal Crossing.
t
I think there's something inherently wrong with games that imply that taking over the world is a bad thing and must be stopped at all costs.
I feel, that if the right individual successfully conquered the world, we would enter into a new era of peace and prosperity.
Vote Karrde712 for World Emperor in 2004!
You may treat all information submitted above as wild speculation.
5 billion people survived the destruction of ALL agricultural plants? What did they eat, the other 5 billion?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
What about the myriad of war-themed games released in the recent years: Medal of Honor, Soldier of Fortune, BF1942, Call of Duty, etc?
is any more political than your average FPS cyberpunk anti-corporation plot. Sure, you're fighting the agents of oppression with graffiti and actively "fighting" police (since you don't kill anyone)... but is that much different than Deus Ex (other than BS-2000 and Cibo Matto being on the soundtrack)?
It is less political than more of an attitude (authorities are to be distrusted, corporations are greedy, etc.). Unless a game made a specific call to a political item (say Echo the Dolphin and the environment or that one about the animal testing where you swing the invulnerable rabbit like a mace) I can't really see calling these games political.
And maybe its just me, but I haven't questioned my own beliefs after playing a game.
What is music when you despise all sound?
With all the governments type from Anarchy, Despotism, Monarcy, Communism, Republic, to Democratic.
And with all the names of countries and political personalities.
Not forgetting the overthrowing of governments, and the happy-tax-science corelation, and the drivers towards the behaviour in each government type.
Communism promotes military strength.
Republic promotes sabotage/incite.
Democratic promotes growth.
Hey, that's my password you are typing
I think that in good taste and moderation, it can be okay, a parodical reference can provide a funny side-note; or it can be used as a metaphor for real life. examples: State of emergency, entire game was a metaphor for Big Brother, awesome game...there also a really was one not too long ago about cracking a political conspiracy(can't remember the name), it was supposed to suck.
www.kinematic.org/911.html
the project looks dead, though...
Politicians are always up the gaming industries butt (too violent, causes kids to be violent, etc...), so why can't the gamining industry get up the politicians butt??
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I loved Knights of the Old Republic --- I grabbed it as soon as the PC version came out. However, I felt the "Big Evil Corporation" thing was a bit lame; it was like the plot to a Captain Planet episode in a galaxy far, far away. You know, where the evil corporate barons are polluting the environment just for the sake of doing it and being evil? I half expected the kid with "Heart!" and his monkey to show up.
O.k Let's see an anti-gun FPS. You an (FBI agent) with a Tazer and sleeping gas are supposed to single handedly elminate a Wacoish compound of gun loving fanatics that are prepared to shoot you to preserve their rights.
There are some genres where it's hard to avoid a political agenda informing the game in some form or other. A few years back I designed some combat flight sims and had to devise background material for the campaigns. The temptation to editorialize on a subjects such as, say, the drugs war in Colombia was strong. For the most part I resisted and I hope found a middle way between Hollywood druglord fantasies and the political realities of what was going on in the country at the time. (And today: it's shocking how some of the events I built the campaign around later came true.)
So in my game I had FARC narcoguerrillas, right-wing death squads and I penalized the player for causing unnessesary collateral damage. There are some who will no doubt think I went to far, as if games on current events can somehow be cosily insulated from politics. But I reckon I did the right thing.
At the moment most games are first person shooters which might or might not have some weak plot to explain why it is necessery to shoot everything that moves. The primitive economies in most of these online games are really basic and aren't going to influence anyones voting patterns in real life. Wake me up in 5 years.
Struggling to find a day everyone can make? WhenShallWe.com
Then in Ages of Empires and Civilizations, I was a king!
In Starwars Galaxies, I played a mayor for a while. With a bunch of friends, we started a town, it grown big, my friends and some of the folks were reelecting me each week, until someone started to complain about my politics and won the vote against me. :(
Since I had a lot of powerfull artisans still in my camp, we boycotted thier artisans and raised the prices for them... heheheh, we showed those bastards how it was to be Cuban!!! héhéhéh
Politics make some games great!!! But it is not a must, just a good option games can count on.
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance." Isaac Asimov
Might as well ask if movies can avoid political/social issues. Or books. Or practically ANY creative work.
The OP makes this out to be a BAD thing ("mittens"? "offenders"?). Why the slant? Do you complain so much because Charles Dickens couldn't keep his "mittens" off of politics in his writings?
There are of course very few game plots that approach the beauty of a well-written novel, or even a mediocre one.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
There have always been producers that have had biased viewpoints for their titles. For example, Square/Enix seems to love putting their the anti-industrial viewpoints into their Final Fantasy games. Going back even as early as U.S. FFIII (FFVI in the series) it was always the evil, greedy, corrupt, industrialized nations at war with the peaceful, kind, gentle, treehuging fairie creatures who lived in harmony with nature.
Even as far back as Frogger, we were witness to the environmental impacts that industrialization has on nature. The brave but fragile frog's futile attempts to cross a busy highway to get back home only show the producer's bias -- they never show the poor truck driver, driving for 20 hours straight just to earn a living, fighting exhaustion but alert enough to avoid swerving his big white truck into oncoming traffic, just to avoid a frog too stupid to stay off the road, as more of a hero.
In my opinion, it's unavoidable that for the most part, serious issues will always be portrayed in games with some bias. It's up to the player, then, to decide for themselves whether the game reflects a viewpoint that can be carried into the real world. Games such as Deus Ex explored a lot of the political ramifications of conspiracy theory, but let the player decide for themselves which was the best path.
...was pretty outwardly anti-Globalization.
It also got boring pretty quickly. Hopefully you bought it after it flopped and the sticker price was halved.
Jet Set Radio? You mean the games about street gangs on rollerblades, each one based on a ridiculous* theme like sharks, love droids, and 3-year-out-of-date raver culture stereotypes, sticking it to the man via rail grinds, graffiti and pirate radio?
The one that ends (depending on the game in the series) in either a skyscraper rooftop battle on a giant spinning record against an evil dj booth, or a battle with a three story disco mind-control robot?
Is Kevin Parker seriously trying to say that game has an overtly political message? This just goes to show; some people have a vivid imagination, but little common sense.
*holy fucking shit, Slashdot posters, what's with all the high mod posts with the mis-spelling of this word as 'rediculous' lately? Buy a damn dictionary.
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
Sometimes games, great games even, are taken from politically charged source material. The evil Haitians of Vice City invoke political considerations, as do all the recent spate of Iraq War spin-offs. Its inevitable. Also, common gaming themes like violence, sex, and the rest of the usual suspects invoke politics. My question is, so what? Politics happens.
Did I make it?
Wow, I get to be the first person to mention Deus Ex. The Illuminati, Majestic 12....just chaulk full of political conspiracy theories. There's also Metal Gear Solid 2 which was almost as bad.
Worst game ever.
You can spin all these storylines as having some sort of political basis, but really, don't most game designers just pull this stuff out of their ass? Even if it turns out to be a decent storyline, I find it very difficult to imagine someone sitting down and trying to figure out how they can convey the message that "big corporations are evil" or whatever else. The only thing they're trying to do is come up with something that will hopefully be entertaining enough to sell enough game copies so they can get paid.
What about that game where you have to launch a pie on Bush's head?
Here is a story about the group Hezbollah using a game based on the open source genesis3d game engine. It is called special forces, link HERE
He makes a good point about the prevelance of the Market economy in video games, but this is probably more of a prgmatic than political decision. Could you imagine trying to program a game with a functional Command driven economy? It would be an interesting experiment in Economic modeling. Does anybody know of a game that makes a good run at this (ie. not a fixed per turn income or anything like that, but something relatively sophistocated)?
The commercial has a bunch of children reciting the pledge of allegiance, interspersed with bits of violence from the game, and then ends with the phrase (in red) "Freedom isn't free."
Maybe I'm just a liberal hippie communist, but I always thought the basis of free government was a willingness to follow the rule of law, not brainwashing children into military service.
... or the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and tens of thousands of Americans wounded, injured, maimed, or hurt...
Pong is considered a metaphor of modern society's struggle with nuclear waste.
:)
In the game, the waste is represented by a tiny dot with the major political players tossing it back and forth until one slips up, thereby accepting the waste within their district. Defeat comes to the player that proves they are unable to protect their constituants, with 21 being the threshold required to lose re-election.
You didn't really think it was a simple game of table tennis, did you?
This is not my sig.
Remember when Mortal Kombat (or was it MK3, cant remember), but i'm pretty sure it was a politician in California who lost his top over the blood and gore in the video game. Remember how in later Mortal Kombat games you had the ability to turn off the blood? This could be seen as parallel to to Half-Life, in which you had the ability to lock people out of the game. I doubt Valve did this for the sole purpose of making the world a better place.
je suis parce que j'aime
The feel good, eco-nonsense pap that gets bandied about by the main characters in MGS and MGS2 caused bleeding in my ears. Thank God I could hit the x button repeatedly to skip the majority of it, otherwise it might have started to make sense. In other words, I might have turned into a Japanese person.
Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
Shamelessly promotes its own mascot abuse agenda. Forcing a mascot penguin to race, how pointlessly cruel. Then distributing it for free, allowing anyone to participate, and then distributing the source to allow coders to do whatever they please with this cuddly little penguin. Stop the madness!
And don't forget the futuristic sci-fi governments of Alpha Centauri. I found that Democratic + Mind Control best suits my style of play.
unbiased is impossible. the notion of unbiased (reporting, movies, games, whatever) is dangerous because it offers a disguise for people who are trying to gain momentum behind their political stance. if everybody read (listened, watched, played, etc.) thinking about the source of the content and what they might be trying to push, then the world would be a better place. instead most people seem to be stuck trying to determine if a message is the norm, or the "main stream view". that leads to being easily duped by politicians and salespeople (experts at delivering a message regardless of the content). No message is unbiased. An the notion of an unbiased message is proliferated by those who want to pull one over on the masses.
--Brian
It always bothered me that the SimCity manual editorializes that Reaganomics doesn't work. (Somewhere toward the back, in the section on economic srategies I think -- it's been a while.) I think the game is even set up to demonstrate that 'fact' for you under one of the pre-configured scenarios.
Now, that said, SimCity does a pretty decent job of teaching you firsthand that taxes are necessary and that overtaxation hurts as much or worse than undertaxation, so the political commentary isn't fatal, just annoying.
BTW, to all the Reagan-haters out there (and there are a lot of you) that are getting ready to click the "moderate" button: please consider that disagreeing is not same as flamebaiting or trolling. This is a discussion, not a war.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
I don't even know what point they are trying to make but they try real hard to make one. and if you want really mind numbing political rable thrown at you try playing D2 when you finaly finish the horrific game you get to see 30 minutes of whats wrong with the world (children starving etc..)
When i was younger, nobody seemed to care much that i was slashing away in Ninja Gaiden on my trusty NES, or spraypainting via some simpsons NES title.
Has technology really changed so much to make this difference, or has the view just been given a shady light in the events of the past 5 years?
I guess what im trying to say....in the words of David Cross, "What were the video games that hitler played?"
He hid them well. He had them before the US invaded; everyone knows that. He proved it when he used them. We also knew Saddam himself existed too, and it took months to find him. Unlike WMDs', Saddam needed a breathing hole when he was buried in the ground.
I feel the Metroid series unfairly portrays futuristic space pirates. Has any considered their plight? They only need the Metroids for the incredible energy (handy for overclocking), but somehow politics spins it into "taking over the galaxy" and sends operatives in to destroy the "pirate" research facilities.
Witness "The Passion", which was an enormous success largely because it got people out to movies that normally can't stomach them. I think videogames tap into some of that.
As an example, I find SNL and the Daily Show irritating because lately they try to make lame political statements. So I just don't watch them anymore ... instead I stick to Chapelle Show, South Park, and adult swim.
I've kind of moved away from most movies, tv and music and towards videogames for similar reasons. They don't have a sophomoric political message to irritate me. I hope that doesn't change.
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
Shhhhh. Don't tell the truth. The left-wing media has a Democrat to elect. You don't want to spoil their plans.
...in the original civ how they had the series of historical figures to compare you to when determining your civ score. That one had some recent politicians on it, with the lowest being Dan Quayle (IIRC).
Member of Orkut? Annoyed with spam?
Unless you have played a game similar to planetarion, or similar game, you have no idea how much on-line games can have huge political conflicts.
The entire game was a "strategy" game but it really involved simple uot and out politics. There were two kinds of successfull players.
1. Players that were good at the game, and good at the politics (the top tier)
2. Players that were bad at the game, but good at the politics.
Being Good at the game, that involves management of resources, being on till 3 am and getting up every 2 hours via an alarm clock.
Being good at politics was to find a lot of friends to help you.
When I started in round 3 of the game, you simply did not have to be good. All that you required was that you had friends that would CRUSH ANYONE THAT FOUGHT YOU.
I was a "good" player, which means I stayed up way to late, and got up way to early to monitor my fleet. I got crushed several times because I was picking on players who were not as good players but had better political connections.
The next round I actually got a couple friends together and we constantly were sending messages/e-mails/sitting in chat to constantly improve our political situation. My goal for that round was to get my galaxy (which i controlled a group of 25 people) to get into the top 800, instead we got into the top 400, mostly because of strong strategic alliances.
The game was pure rampant capatilism, except all companies had the same product and a few got a relative monopoly (the top 400 galaxies controled well over 90% of all resources)...
The game always reminds me as the best argument for government controls on large companies.
Planetarion sucked later on, but it really was exciting during that time.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
Its cut-throat, b0rk-your-opponent politics, in a world of zombies...
http://efil.blogspot.com/
First one that sprang to my mind is an arcade game down at the local pizza joint here in town. Revolution X with Aerosmith. Gameplay sucked but there were some decidely big overtures against a despotic government. And I think we can all agree that our government has curtailed civil liberties since the games release. Whether that was needed or not is a whole other flame war.
I would have thought the most politically-oriented game ever was Republic the Revolution. It gave a pretty stereotypical view of Eastern European politics. Dunno what the message being sent was though - it was too crap to finish!
Mephistopheles and a 7th level Hell Demon(tm), I'd like to protest the knee-jerk Hell Demon bigotry that panders to the lowest common denominator here on /.. Considering how many of you will eventually be residing here because of your AD&D, pr0n, and video game usage, I'd think you'd want to be on better terms with your eventual overlords.
Then they came for the hell demons...
What Ronnie did wrong was increase spending greater than the increase in revenue (thus the increase in the debt).
A lot of games with a military setting these days are focusing way too much on war against terrorism. I was visiting gamespot last night and the first thing I see is an ad of a game with Ossama Bin Laden's face and a caption saying something like "we fight against his terror".
I admit it's just a game and that, just like any other form of creative product, the creators are free to pass whatever message they want, but come on, doesn't that feel more like political propaganda than pure entertainment?
Something as open to debate as war on terrorism shouldn't be used, at least that openly, into video games. Counter-Strike was ok but that.. I think they're going a little bit too far. It's like that thing with Germany banning the Wolfenstein games. I think censorship sucks mega ass but I can understand their point of view.
Whether we like it or not, there are underlying messages within the games, and players are there to push the limits, since the risks are basically none. Anyone whose been following TSO (designed to be Perfect-land) knows about the Alphaville elections' being rigged, which can only be described as humorous. There was a big discussion about what we are teaching our teenagers, as the losing non-rigged candidate is in RL a 14-year-old girl. To which I can only respond -- we are teaching them that elections are rigged, that's why in English we have the phrase gerrymandering. And just wait until we get electronic voting...
In any case, the question becomes, as game developers and designers, what is our responsibility in creating the framework and rules of these alternate realities? Can we do better? Or at least, can we create a few games where antisocial behavior isn't the most fun behavior available?
One of the striking passages from "The Utopian Entrepreneur" was about doing a focus group, discussing the Purple Moon games. One of the fathers was a bit distressed that the game had ethical content, but when asked later in the interview about his opinion on the ethical content of Mortal Kombat, for example, he answered that it was not a game about ethics -- but Purple Moon was.
With the amount of time our kids are spending playing games, we owe it to ourselves to offer some alternative to games where the basic goal is to smash stuff up, overthrow a government or make lots of Simoleans. Takers, anyone?
Morlocks eat Eloi
Dogma - "let's just say we'd like to avoid any empirical entanglements."
Honestly most all gaming throughout history has been political. If you look at Cowboys and Indians as children - you'd see children hating Indians for no other reason than hating Indians. These games instill racial and political hatred for Indians even in modern culture -
* half of hatred for Indians comes from parental upbringing
* 1/4 childhood games
* 1/4 most likely personal opinion - but influenced by the other 2
(above would be stats for the 45 & up crowd)
Just about all Video games in the 80's & 90's that involved oriental characters (ninjas, etc) showed a white guy beating up the "communist evil chinese" - not in all cases, but most. This subtlely instills hatred of race - rather than just hatred of political philosophy.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Is the most political game.. I mean come on, you go around eating pills, you get attacked by ghosts that are semi-transparent, you can send the ghosts to jail by eating a super pill and then tracking them down...
Okay maybe not..
Mod +5 Drunk
Freedom Fighters gives Communism a really negative image, in my opinion.
In Galaxians, you score more for shooting the bold, enterprising aliens who go on bombing runs, and less for shooting the ones who just sit there in a grid. The lesson is clear -- be a mindless, obedient worker so that nobody has an incentive to hurt you.
On a more serious note, notice how the Civ series suddenly dropped the 'fundamentalist' govt type... with a little self-righteous note in the manual about how great they were for doing so. Ew.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Yes, now that the patriot act is out, I see cops running around and beating people on the streets everyday. Its amazing how ever since they passed the patriot act, cops just storm into my house five times a day seizing stuff, along with the FBI, and John Ashcroft is leading the herd, cackling madly about how he loves his job. Don't forget to mention those terrabytle ram disks that, according to your hero michael, are currently being used for the foreginer fingerprint database, the foreigner tip database, the matrix database, various mad projects at the nsa, and several other projects that may or may not exist (not like truth matters to you guys.)
Its funny how you libs will try taking a potshot at that whatever the topic. "Oh wow, blenders are on sale at K-Mart...I doubt I could buy one without the patriot act letting the man come arrest me for it." Random fact: 60% of the american people not only support the patriot act, they feel it isn't strong enough.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
Maybe you are.
"not brainwashing children into military service"
Presenting information is just that. It is not brainwashing.
Because I don't recall that.
Like movies, novels, and plays before them, computer games have discovered politics. Even the pure, plot-driven action that remains often comes attached to heavily politicized back-stories.
Personally, I don't remember the time when stories existed in some magical land of pristine unaffected factual recounts of events.
There are no stories without perspective and no stories without bias of any sort. Even Asteroids has an anti-mineral bias (who's gonna think about the space rocks!?!?!). But to argue that perspective doens't belong in stories is to deny one of the reasons why we read, watch, listen, and play along with them - we want to hear other peoples' ideas about the stuff going on around us.
Games don't exist in a vacuum. Games are stories. Stories don't discover pplotics and other forms of "bias." People do (like writers.)
Anyone who wants factual data should stick to Excel spreadsheets.
I think the author of the article has conflated "politics" with "economics" in the first few paragraphs. While I appreciate that Parker is critical that recreational pastimes like gaming may be taking themselves too seriously, I'm not sure what the hell his point is.
Is he also critical of Monopoly, with it's trvialized depiction of pre-tax-reform US industry and culture? Are fat little men in top hats really in charge of all public utilities, and able to charge whatever they want for rental of their slums? Shocking!
Singling out the so-called massively multiplayer games like Asheron's Call for being too "real" because the players are demanding a certain level of reality in their game play is a pretty weak argument that games, in general, are getting too political. Microsoft is in the business of selling software and subscriptions. Whether or not they are "scrambling" to offer what their subscribers want is hardly relevant.
People who design software and systems know that how the software is used in the wild is often very different than the your own idea of how it should be used. It's not surprising that people who pay good money to play Asheron's Call and Star Wars Galaxies want to create simulated economies, culture and history. As far as I'm concerned, this is just a more sophisticated versions of old BBS culture.
People grow culture. It's what we do.
I'm not convinced that any of this has anything to do with his other contention, that the software manufacturers themselves are getting over-political. Which is it? Are the customers demanding more immersive worlds, or the designers injecting overwrought politics into gaming? Are these really the same thing?
The other games he mentions seem to fall easily into the post-apocalyptic near-future scenarios that share dystopic fictions with a whole range of popular culture. Comics, anime and (of course) science fiction stories have mined this vein for decades. Placing your otherwise undemanding first-person shooter in some kind of science fiction setting to explain why you happen to be a hyper-muscled uber-soldier tearing holes in the "bad guys" seems perfectly reasonable to me.
How is this different from, say, Escape from New York or even "Buffy"?
While the author brings up some interesting points, he seems to miss the mark on every target he aims at. Maybe he needs to just relax and play some Unreal Tournament.
-- clvrmnky
I always thought Metal Gear poured it on a little thick. The anti-military / conspiracy plotlines just seemed to go a little too far sometimes.
Most game plots are very linear, and the worlds aren't detailed to any appreciable degree if you go 'off the beaten track'. The is only natural because programmer, artist and developer time are expensive. This leads to a lot of assumptions being made during development about both the world and the perspective of the characters in it. It also has to work in terms of game mechanics. You also want to create a worldview that the majority of the people playing the game can connect to, without either boring the crap out of them or pissing off too many PTA types or yokel politicians. Most important of all: SOMETHING HAS TO BE HAPPENING. There has to be drama-- something to make the main character decide to ACT. It helps if it's something that looks good in a screen shot, too.
Taken through all these filters, it doesn't really surprise me that most games have simplistic and heavy handed "messages". It seems to me that has a lot to do with the limits of the medium as currently understood. MMPORPGs have the possibility of changing this, due to their open-ended nature and the way they can evolve over time.
Also, the author mentions simulacra as if it were a purely postmodern marxist concept, but the sort of simulacra he describes is what J.G. Ballard called a 'Baudrillardian Simulacra' which is the term he used for a sort of copy without an orginal. That may sound like a silly concept, but they can be powerful social forces. The most common sort of this is a yearning for the 'good old days' that never existed.
In Deus Ex, particularly if you're running out of health, incapacitating guards with the riot prod and pepper spray is often a very effective method of getting past (a couple of hits from the riot prod will knock most things unconcious, or if you just need to get past, one prod hit or catching them with pepper spray will stun them for long enough). The tranquilizer darts fired from the mini-crossbow are also very useful, or there's always the tear-gas grenades. With EMP grenades too, you don't even need to destroy the guard robots.
Indeed, one of the NPCs will criticise you and give you less equipment if you kill too many opponents in the first level (this was spoiled slightly by counting knockouts as kills, thus penalizing everyone except stealth players; the first patch changed this so non-lethal weapons were advantageous too, I think).
It's a pity you can't just knock out guard dogs when they try to eat you, but the developers didn't bother giving them separate "unconscious" and "dead" states, so you have to kill those if you can't avoid them (if you use a "non-lethal" weapon, they die anyway).
Essentially, video games are at the same stage right now that movies were at before the Cold War. In the case of the movie industry, it took a few intelligent yet entertaining titles to get people to take the medium as seriously as, say, politically-themed novels. As for examples, "The Day The Earth Stood Still" comes to mind, as does pretty much every Stanley Kubrick movie beginning with "Dr. Strangelove." All contain very serious political/philosophical messages, and were obviously not intended for the regular movie-of-the-week crowd. While one may argue that the movie industry has since been dumbed down due to the overabundance of special effects, you still get gems like "Brazil" or "Pi" on occasion that really challenge your values and intellect.
I think that, in recent years at least, we have been seeing the beginning of such a revolution with video games. More recent "adult" games such as Syberia (which included some very subtle and interesting anti-industrial messages) and Planescape-Torment (which addressed some rather challenging philosophical questions) are already beginning to appeal to those who favor thought-provoking experiences over blasting the hell out of everything that moves. Others, such as Republic-The Revolution, have tried and failed to deliver a serious political message, and still others (think: all of the Tom Clancy games, with their over-simplified "us vs. the terrorists" message) are making a mockery over what could be much more. All the gaming industry needs is that one, popular, breakthrough game.
Many Bothans died to bring you this sig.
This isn't all that new. One of Infocom's pieces of interactive fiction, A Mind Forever Voyaging, was explicitly political. Similarly, Infocom's Trinity took on the subject of atomic weapons. Both of those games were released in the mid-1980s.
A bit of a curiosity:
Earlier this week, a norwegian comedian, Shabana Rehman, insulted the well-known, and reportedly militant, mullah Krekar by lifting him up in an attemt to prove that he was not very dangerous. The Mullah, which found this very humiliating, has filed a complaint to the police (and managed to attack a journalist while doing so).
However, this incident has now resulted in a online game called "Lift a mulla".
Actually a bit boring. Use your left and right arrows to play if you must
The belief in a biblical god is an ignorant one
Civilization III, for example - if you read the civilopedia entries for the many concepts/ideas in the game, their descriptions are definitely not very right-wing.
But to be fair, they do let you randomly drop nukes on people.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
I find it intriguing that the majority of the examples in the article were not trying to put forward a political agenda. They have storylines that depend on disasters caused by political issues currently unresolved. Most science fiction (books, TV, movies) do this -- because the whole point is to extrapolate a future world from our current world. The writers of video games are as human as the rest of us and certainly have their opinions of the political state in the world around us. Not many of these games actually push a political agenda. They just use topics that are hot in the political world.
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
Of course games can be political. Simcity leaned heavily to the left, with a heavy emphisis on public transportation and enviromental concerns. It also encouraged you to ban smoking in public buildings.
Just like in Hollywood, a lot of protagonists revolved around the "perceived" threat of the times.
Soldier of Fortune for instance has gone thru the "Middle Eastern" country and South American Drug Barons.
China is now perceived as a viable threat as evinced in Command & Conquer: Generals
Picking the enemy is making a statement.
You couldn't just pick the Vatican, or Albania (as happened in the movies Hudson Hawk, or Wag the Dog) without some kind of premise.
Is it preparing the hearts and minds of the public for a future conflict or just reflecting what's already there. With today's media war coverage, keeping public support is important and I don't think a game with the Palestinians being oppressed by the Israeli Army would market in the US of A at all.
Funnily enough, such a game does exist! IIRC Slashdot quickly "labeled" it as propaganda.
Battlefield 1942 had a mod where the Middle Eastern country had special forces troop type could suicide bomb and they were great for taking out tanks. That "feature" didn't survive long. And if it was non PC, how come we can still use flamethrowers?
So the next time you decimate the opposing forces, think about the real world equivilant. Is it just a reflection or is it projecting it's image into your head.
Oriental Hero "I want to live in a city where the Police don't shoot you" Jean Charles de Menezes
While you are playing MGS, amidst the "love upon a battlefield", there is a definite tone of nuclear disarmament, and you get the sense that the Hideo Kojima didn't much care for defense companies who get big-budget contracts. Any radio calls to Nastasha were always about "We cannot allow nuclear deterrance to be our policy" and "Landmines must be banned throughout the world". A huge portion of the game revolves around gene therapy and cloning.
Was Kojima trying to get a political message out? I think so. Did it affect the game in a negative way? Not really.
SmashTech - No smashing of tech involved
Gamers won't play what they don't like. They won't buy what they don't play. Publishers will obey their sales data. QED.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
I was watching a friend play Tropico last night. His dialog, condensed, sounded something like this.
"I'm going to be Fidel Castro!"
"Hey, Russia just gave me a bunch of money! I can do anything!"
"Hey, that guy's trying to run against me for President. I'll just suppress him and his followers and rig the elections."
"Hey, the people are rising against me!"
May we never see th
I play video games to (temporarily) escape from the real world, and here polical brainwashing dogma follows you right into your virtual world. Its sickening. Its happened in TV, movies, comics, novels, its everywhere! Where does a guy/gurl have to go to just play and have a good time? Why does there ALWAYS have to be a political message?
WE want ENTERTAINMENT, not PREECHING! If I wanted preeching I would go to church or a college.
We were talking about the WMDs, you know, the ones that were ready to use and represented a clear and present danger to the US and its allies?
Interesting: I was playing 'Raven Shield' last night and thinking about the whacko politically correct politics it's based around.
For example, in one of the early missions I had to rescue some hostages who worked for the IMF, as though they provided some benefit to society worth risking your life for: again, it's a very linear game where saying no or shooting them is not an option you can choose. Personally I much prefered 'Strike Commander' from years back, where a mission or two involved destroying planes belonging to the evil IRS.
Most of the posts are missing the games that REALLY have politics in them:
The Civilization (including Alpha Centauri) series. These games make certain political ideologies inherent in the game, as well as allowing players to make their own political choices. Alpha Centauri makes (implicitly) the point that a Fundamentalist religious government is a viable form of government, while on the other hand, implying that certain losses of liberty would take place. This is a very political statement. It lets you choose between horribly oppressing your citizens and letting them run free and happy -- (and lets you win either way) a VERY political choice.
The SimCity series is a perfect example of implicit rules -- it assumes that unless you, the Mayor (the government), do it, nothing will happen in your city. While fun for gameplay, does this send the right message? You can agree or disagree.
Does anyone remember Privateer 2? The finale of the game was you taking over your dead brother's interstellar crime ring that you'd been fighting the whole game. There's definitely some serious debate here, or with Jedi Knight, where if you make the "bad" choices, you become the Evil Emperor yourself. But if you look at the "choice" you make, it's certainly up to debate about whether it was right or wrong.
Someone above mentioned Splinter Cell:Pandora Tomorrow. The makers of the game have very specific political beliefs, but they're pretty subtle in the game.
At any rate, I found this article to be very interesting, and expanded on some of the points it mentioned.
http://reason.com/0404/fe.kp.free.shtml
It's "Absolute power corrupts, Total Control is even more fun!"
Nevermind the political partisans.
For ideological games, it's Wisdom Tree
They had their greatest success in the NES era with their bible games, but they continued to produce even afterwards.
Hard-to-forget games like Super 3D Noah's Ark
You know, you'd think a storyline like Deus Ex 1's would have political underpinnings, but I sure didn't notice any.
:D
In that game, everyone was a crook.
Barb & Laura really should have read little Georgie some of Aesop's Fables when he was younger.
Muslims portrayed as terrorist, while performing vile and evil actions without regard for human life. They did refer to themselves as freedom fighters, which makes the entire game just a smear campaign in my eyes. Innocent as it seams, redefing words is half the game of politics these days in my opinion.
Regardless of what you Americans think about muslim fundamentalists, many of them consider themselves freedom fighters, and in my not so humble opinion, not totally without merit either (Israeli oppresion (justified or not), several invasions (panama / iraq / afghanistan / iraq), US troops in Saudi Arabia etc).
I mean.. would it have hurt so much to just cite one example during the GLA campaign of 'evil' acts (or atleast acts percieved as evil by the GLA) done by the other sides?
(flame away)
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
Yes it looks like all the "bad" worlds have a liberal slant. However it is also true that liberal distopias (sp?) make for a more interesting background for a game. The evil powers were overcome with greed, resulting in fantastic effects that even they did not plan on, possibly resulting in a world where everybody including the evil is in bad shape, where there is no way to fix it so the game play is limited to a controllable microcosm.
A conservative distopia would be a Communist dictatorship, or a world like 1984. In that the individual cannot do anything, so there is no game. If they could then it is not a conservative distopia, as there is possibility of overthrowing the evil government. Perhaps you could play a nasty enforcer, locating those who dare to speak out against the government and getting rid of them, but it seems people don't want to identify so closely with an evil character.
I would say conversely that all the "good world" games, especially those space-trading ones, present an Ayn Rand fantasy world where everybody seems quite happy despite the absolute freedom to even shoot your competitors.
You must have gotten into the political aspects of Cowboys and Indians way more that we did. Ours were pretty much just two sides with costumes. We didn't have any idea what a real cowboy or indian was, and wouldn't have hated either if we did.
Where did you grow up, Little Big Horn?
More than likely the FF series has gone the furthest of anything in making political statements of one type or another...in the early games, there's an anti-Imperial bent for sure, the large dominating country that's trying to take over the world. Baron and Vector..
In VII, the pro-enviromentalism aspect of the story is basically impossible to avoid. The large power reactors are killing the planet, and the party is trying to stop them.
VIII and IX really relaxed the political aspects of it all I think, going for a more basic love and fantasy story respectivly..
X really brought it back with a vengence however. It's basically a cautionary tale on the dangers of religious devotion and conservative acting. (Why do we do it? Because we always have). Won't spoil it for anybody who hasn't played it, but everything gets turned upside down on its ear near the end.
I would expect that in GTA, because it's one big satire on the modern world. They lampoon everything. It's not a subtle political message--it's a joke.
Oregon Trail.
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
Whose arguing that people don't have the right to put political messages in a game?
I hate when someone criticizes something, and someone else responds with, "Well, don't you think they have the right to...?" Uh, yes I do. I never argued they didn't have the right. I just criticized what they did with that right. It's my right to do that.
what is so wrong with them trying to make a political statement? Time was when art was defined by it's political nature. Now we want "art" to be brainless eye candy and we get all worked up when "artists" voice their opinions in their works.
"Over five billion served"
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Most political game ever is Civilization III! I always play as the Communists...
Can anyone direct me to a contemporary military-type videogame of this sort which deals with the problems caused when a significant percentage (I'd call 30% significant) of people start breaking the smaller corporate-sponsored laws and the government starts breaking the really big laws? Because I can't name any off the top of my head.
Maybe contemporary video games aren't political enough...?
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
Think about it - Max Payne = the problems w/ drugs.
NARC, same thing.
Deus Ex - politicians.
EVO (back on the SNES) and Ecco the Dolphin = environmental nutjob propaganda.
Most of the Japanese titles have the same stuff going on as well, only they're really big into post-apocalyptic stuff after Hiroshima/Nagasaki took place; lacking an evil-stereotypical-bad-guy for their culture (you know, the one who is merely "Out to Rule the World) they go for the "I'm gonna blow everything up haha I'm insane" bad guy instead. (see: Sephiroth)
Instead of ranting about the bias of the guy that posted it, why not follow the link to the actual facts and learn about the cyclosarin found in Iraq? You know, the nerve agent which the Democrats have been telling us isn't there for the last year or so.
Can the online forum industry and its participants keep their mittens out of the political slugfest?
According to KFG they sure can't.
KFG
I wonder if it would get you in trouble if you distributed a Quake III Arena mod where all the 'bots' were actual members of the Bush Administration.
Is it a first admendment protected right to want to distribute a game where you can go around blasting those fascist lying corrupt bastards with rocket launchers all day?
Just curious.
I don't really care about the subject matter here, but it sure is nice to see someone post something like this non-AC. Anybody else tired of the little AC bitches? Fenix gots balls.
Crushing my karma one post at a time.
That is NOT mainstream. "Insight" and "The Washington Times" are not even legitimate periodicals: they are newsletters of the Moonie cult (check the mastheads) and don't even make money on their own.
Games are (generally speaking) a work of fiction that involve humans, and being fiction you need a story. I would argue that it's almost impossible to tell a story that involves human beings that would not become "political" if it has any degree of elaboration.
Example:
"Bruce Wayne's parents were shot in the alley one night." OMG ANTI GUN AGENDA!
"Your parents were poor and sick, and being unable to afford medical help died when you were at a young age..." OMG SOCIALIST MEDICINE AGENDA!
Both of these are fairly standard boiler-plate backgrounds, but fall under the article's scope of questioning.
I love how in the Hunter series the town is called Ashcroft.
You know the Bush-huggin' righties must be desperate for "proof" that Iraq had WMDs when all they have for references are nutball web sites and vague sentences buried in 300-page reports.
Let's not kid ourselves; if there was real, concrete proof that Saddam Hussein had WMDs and planned to use them against the United States, George W. Bush would have a press conference inside of an hour to trumpet their discovery, and he'd be flogging it in every other sentence on the campaign trail. The fact that Bush-Cheney 2004 is making so much noise about John Kerry's medals instead is an implicit admission that the Iraq WMD stuff was all bullshit.
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
I find your post ludacris.
(My pet peeve. Admittedly, ludicrous has a strange spelling, but one rapper comes by and people don't even bother to try to learn to spell it anymore.)
EA's games are subtly political. All of them try to show how mainsream USA is the greatest thing ever: Madden/other sports games, James Bond, SSX (yes, really).
The list goes on forever.
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
These game makers are going to cut out huge percentages of their markets by makeing games political but, the market of Linux users is not big enough to make ports. Market share must not be important to theme. Either that or they don't realize that I am not going to by their new super FPS if its got Kerry poasters on all its virtual walls.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
...how over 50 percent of the American people could possibly believe there is still WMD in Iraq, all they need to do is read the above post.
David Kay (a big supporter of the WMD theory before the war) has made it very clear what the facts on the ground are:
Yes, I am ignoring a few web sites which posted a tiny amount of evidence which has subsequently proven to be wrong. But that is dwarfed by the overwhelming evidence being ignored by a majority of the American people. But don't tell me I'm ignoring the facts because of my certainty: Before the war, I was convinced there was WMD, too.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
I detest the DNC's Attack Salamander. In fact, I've never heard him say a thing about the subject. I know about the Moonies and their newsletters from when they first started publishing: perhaps 10 years before I ever heard Carville's name. However, just because Carville and myself might both share a strong dislike of public figures like Reverend Moon and Idi Amin does not mean we agree on much!
"Also, the Times, like the Christian Science Monitor, has grown from it's humble beginnings as a cult-published rag to being, not only a legitimate newspaper, but a very reliable one"
It is still controlled by the Moonie cult. Any value it has is despite their efforts.
" it's as factual as any other paper in America, including the Washington Post and NYT."
Unlike the Wash Times, the Wash Post and NYT are legitimate newspapers. They are run like a real newspaper: they print news, and make their money from subscriptions and ads. They are run as a legitimate business by owners who happen to have liberal views. The Wash Times, in contrast, is nothing more than a newsletter paid for by a criminal cult. There are plenty of legitimate conservative newspapers in the country, look elsewhere.
Conservatives look extremely idiotic when they support the Times. Thankfully, there are some of us who are smart enough to look beyond "Oh? That loony cult rag leans to the right? It must be GREAT!".
Finally, you claimed "Insight no longer has any connection to the Washington Times"
You need to learn to get your facts straight. From Insight Magazine's OWN web site:
"Insight on the News is a national biweekly newsmagazine published in Washington by the Washington Times Corp. As Newsweek is the sister publication of the Washington Post, Insight is the sister publication of the Washington Times."
As you can see, Insight is still the personal organ of some convicted kook who thinks that he is Jesus reincarnated. How can any Christian, conservative, or Christian Conservative support these Moonie newsletters at all?
I heard they wanted to release America's Air National Guard: Missing Inaction, but Karl Rove nixed the idea.
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
Or did there seem to be WAY too many political (very liberal) statements made in the loading screens of Battlefield: Vietnam? I'm not sure that slashdot's the place to comment about things being too liberal though ;).
This space for rent, inquire within.
One night while inebriated and playing Vice City, I came to a realization: it subtly reenforces society's morals on the player. If you kill someone, they send cops. And if you kill the cops, they send more cops! Rob a store, cops come. Bump your car into a cop, cops chase you. It's through the operant conditioning of cops chasing you making the game harder, that it pushes the messages of not killing, stealing, and driving responsibly.
-no broken link
You blind hatred of Bush has so blinded you that you are forgetting that everyone agreed that Saddam had these WMDs. Even Bill Clinton. The fact that he used them on the Kurds is indisputable.
"The fact that Bush-Cheney 2004 is making so much noise about John Kerry's medals instead is an implicit admission that the Iraq WMD stuff was all bullshit."
The Bush-Cheney campaign has said almost nothing about Kerry's 18 or so contradictory medal stories. The medal noise is coming from places like ABC-News.
Yes, SP is politically biased.
I can handle intelligent conversation, and/or views I am sympathetic to. I don't like sophomoric criticism of my views, but sophomoric vindication doesn't bother me. Ideally, you aren't sophomoric at all, but I don't think there are many that really mind sophomoric expressions of views they espouse. I think the ratings are in agreement with me on this.
Hence, SP, but no DS or SNL.
I mostly mentioned south park because it's humorous to me that I find it less offensive than the Daily Show :)
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
Many of mine do, too. In fact, that is why I am conservative instead of liberal.
Wow, I played that game for a few weeks and I had no idea that it had a story line. I though it was just shoot everything until nothing moves on the screen...
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
There are two basic categories for evaluating a games politics.
- How well does the simulation match reality. This applies even for fantasy games, because while the physics may be fantasy or hightly simplified, there are still elements that symbolize abstract features of real things.
- The second is what moral framework the game provides for its simulation. This is no different from a novel, whether realistic or fantasy.
For instance, you are blowing up other ships/people who are presumably sentient beings. Hopefully there is a good reason for this. If the reason is "it's fun", that is politics. If the reason is "to stop them from destroying me first", that is a different kind of politics.the money to pay for it came out of the Army's recruiting budgets. Thay also said it was a tool for recruitment.
No real secret.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Hell, politics isn't just *in* the Clancy titles, it's the *name* of one of his games ("Politika"). ;)
The main difference with a Clancy title, however, is that the politics are integral to the storyline -- it's not just a gratuitous reference. Think of the "Rainbow Six" series; without the political angles, it's, well, just another shooter. And SSN (the nuclear sub sim we did for Virtus prior to forming Redstorm) involved conflict betw. the US and China due to China's assertion of ownership of the Spratley Islands. Again, without the political elements there's no point in playing the game, unless you just happen to like driving subs.
From the makers of VirtualValerie comes VirtualClinton.
In this installement you are
President Clinton.
Your goal is simple, bed as many interns as you can, without having Hillary or the American public find out.
It's an all out oralfest!
Remember oral is not sex.
So dust off that State of the Union Address, and grab a copy today.
Be sure to try the NEW "I didn't inhale" expansion pack.
VirtualClinton and the I didn't inhale expansion pack are available at EB, BestBuy CompUSA and Toys R Us.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
NARC had a plot?! Come on. Narc had about as much of a plot as Final Fight or Double Dragon. That's not to say that NARC didn't have an anti-drug message, but I don't think it was preachy so much as ridiculous. I mean did anyone really think that there were junkies running around the streets throwing giant glowing hypodermics at people?
First books convey political messages, then television, and now games! When will it end?
No media is safe in America as long as this "First Amendment" holds sway, away with it!
When will people simply learn to be happy consuming, bleeting, drinking, and being fleeced... uh, sheared?
wah wah wah, you don't like bush.
Wah wah wah, why are you bitching about it on a website about technology?
Wah, wah, wah, your prattling is about as insightful as the log in your optics.
Read about the origin of the game monopoly. The parents post was ontopic. Yours is a troll, and a lackluster one at that. I would excouriate you more, but It's lunchtime.
What is the problem with politics in video games? Politics is about ideas and principles (at least it is supposed to be), and any video game worth its mustard must involve just that. I think we've gone too far in considering politics too touchy a subject to discuss, when really it should be constantly considered and discussed. I think the only problem is when the politics are compromised, that is when people misrepresent their opinions due to outside pressures. This can come from friends, family, bosses, coworker, lucrative endorsements, fear of litigation, etc. If a game espouses communism because the creators consider it a tenable ideology, thats ok with me, if they do so because of secret envelopes of cash being dropped at the dev's front door by ex-KGB intelligence officials now working for an international conspiracy, that's not really cool. If the game includes politics in an honest & forthright way I have no problems (even though I may disagree with the opinions expressed, and that may impact my enjoyment of the game). That is the perogative of the dev's, and is certainly present in any game with heart.
Mod me down, and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Evo didn't seem like environmental nutjob propaganda. It had the whole 'mother earth' hippie type feel, but nothing about the environment, per se. I thought it was a pretty nifty idea for a game.
In spite of how much people like to disagree with the sentiment, video games are an art form, and as such will sometimes have political messages in them. Myself, I always tend to put little shots in at current issues in my games, more because I live here and now, and not in the future or medival times where such games take place, so in creating content, I often draw from the real world.
I DO, however, find blatant they way some like to make their games totally pieces of propoganda, like the anti-MS games that litter the net, somewhat distasteful.
The difference, I think, is in the focus. If a game can manage to represent the values of it's creator without becoming a pure manifestation of those values with little else behind it, then it is nothing more than the nature of the art.
As for politics usually expressed in video games, I find that you're almost always on the very liberal, counterculture side of things. You're always either fighting, or cleaning up the mess from some corporate experiment, or government gone mad, or police forces or something. The number of games where "go out and kill the bad guys" means catching criminals seems to always be the minority.
Just my $0.2CDN
It's been a long time.
Your evidence that WMDs have been found is that drums of chemicals were found that - upon proper testing - turned out to be pesticides.
If those chemicals really had been anything other than weapons of mass _grasshopper_ destruction, don't you think the administration would have been all over that?
Can't you come up with evidence that doesn't require assuming the army's chemical weapons experts are either incompetent or lying? Don't you think they'd make damn sure whether it was a chemical weapon or not?
No libertarian favors this. What libertarians favor is the people making choices themselves. This can include, of course, people organizing voluntarily into groups (which can include corporations).
"I consider myself both a libertarian and a socialist"
You cannot be both. If the State has control of your economic decisions (socialism), then there is little liberty left to claim.
"Unfortunately most people associate libertarianism with "The Libertarian Party". "
"I guess the term "anarchist" is good enough for me"
You are nothing like that either. Anarchists favor no government. Socialists favor a super-strong government.
You are in the same boat with Noam Chomsky, who claims to be libertarian while writing passionately year after year that the government must control everything for our own good, or the "anarchist" Emma Goldman, who pushed to increase government regulation and control.
You can tell the difference between a real libertarian and a fake one. The real one chuckles and shakes his head when you say "We're from the government and we're here to help you". The fake one gets a warm, fuzzy feeling inside.
Picked up Pandora Tomorrow the other day, and cracked up when I heard this exchange between Fisher (super-duper spy) and Lambert (stuffy boss)
L: "... and we don't know yet if he [the person Fisher is stalking] is an American or a terrorist yet, so be careful"
F: "The two aren't always mutually exclusive..."
L: "Hippy!"
---
Also funny was when Lambert scolds Fisher for saving his own butt, while not saving an NPC informant (who subsequently gets blown up)
L: "That was quite a way to say thanks! I'm ordering another psych evaluation for you!"
F: "Sorry. Next time I won't kill him"
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
Prove one of my single points wrong. I notice stunned silence when I used actual current text from Insight to show that you were wrong that Insight was not still Moonie.
I did err by implying that Moon was the same as Amin. That was not my intent. I was just listing a pair of obviously despicable individuals. Perhaps a comparison to Ken Lay would be better. both Moon and Lay have scammed millions. Such massive fraud and organized-crime activity is not "harmless".
"The Times also sells ads and makes money"
Not enough. It is run at a loss: it is not a real business. The Moon cult pays for it to be published. Real newspapers aren't run this way; it is not sustainable.
"None of your points about the publisher negates the facts found by the Insight reporter in question"
It could be true. However, you should find another source for the info than a jailbird's rant rag. Yes, Moon happens to be conservative. He is a big Bush backer, too. We conservatives don't need friends like him; just like Clinton didn't need friends like Johnny Chung.
Yeah! Theeeey toook our jabs!
That's right. All your base.
it was really fun to play.
I'm just saying is all - especially if you see the Humans ending, you get the hippie "we are all stewards who have messed up the planet, we should go back to being naked hunter-gatherers" feel out of the ending.
I'm sorry, but who the F*ck thinks game makers can't put whatever messages they want to in their games. I don't care if a game tells kids to lick Cheney's balls. If a kid wants to lick Cheney's balls, he needs to decide for himself that it's the right thing to do.
and the hell demon community. When someone dares to say anything negative, or heaven for bid, Shoots a hell demon, you guys get all up in arms, indignant about the shabby treatment you get.
But where are you when your demonic hordes are defiling bleak hungarian villages? Where's your statement urging restraint from fellow demons?
I haven't seen such hypocricy since the great zombie protest on the Washington mall in 97, and we all know how that ended.
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
Wow, no one else mentioned this yet? This game has a lot of political reference and huge controversy and so on. I mean, the friggin loading screen says something along the lines of "This game is not suitable for people under the age of 17, or those seeking to establish or enhance their political careers"..
But of course once you actually get into the game you see stereotyped minorities (and majorities), the ability to do hugely controversial things like pissing on peoples' dead bodies (and kicking their bodies around... or hell, doing both at the same time), hitting people in the face with shovels...
The game almost feels like a huge promotional product for anarchism.
Not as a child but as an adult - read for comprehension and quit trying too hard to get funny mod points!
CNN is left-wing indeed. Its politics are on the left side, it has a general left-wing editorial policy, and it was founded and run by a major left-wing activist. CNN shows all the time where Fallijah is on a map, and even tells where it is verbally. That this guy does not know that Fallujah is in Iraq has nothing to do with CNN.
Better beer for all!
Unmentioned in the article, Alpha Centauri (publisher Firaxis, of Civilization fame) is maybe the most overtly political 'game' I've played (outside President Forever).
AC is a competition between faction leaders, each with an outright political philosophy, to control the evolution of a newly-colonized planet. You choose from one of the 7 game factions: Greens, Communists, Scientists, Capitalists, Warrior-Clan, Fundamentalists, and One-Worlders (and 7 more in the Alien Crossfire plug-in... complete list here).
Having played each faction several times (hence, playing against each faction several dozen times), I can tell you that AC is the quintessential example of what the article is pointing to.
Expecially since the Capitalist and Communist factions were always the least outwardly hostile and aggressive, in terms of conflicts over disputed resources, whereas Greens and One-Worlders (which are mocking clones of the UN) were the most violent, unbelievably. Knowing the world the way it is, I could write this off as just an imbalanced simulation (and no less entertaining).
But thinking it through, what is the author of the article actually worried about? Who is going to use a game as a model of the real world when the real world contradicts the game... at least in terms of politics. It doesn't take long before a strident youth is told "the world just don't work that way, kid". I think we've all experienced that, at one time or another.
You've obviously never seen it.
"Surely a left wing station would be running [the torture of iraqis] at the top of every hour."
Go to cnn.com. It is their top headline. I assume that the TV stations are treating it the same way. This means, according to you, they are "surely a left-wing station". The centrist station Fox News also has it on their main page, but not as high as the CNN listing.
If you've ever played ZPC you'll know what I mean without me even explaining it. This game features a pretty grim future where a fascist government runs everything... their soldiers resemble Nazi soldiers and their voices match the image as well. The environment of many levels features distant looming corporate buildings, ominous and faceless... In a few levels there are posters on the walls like "ASPIRE TO EXPIRE" and "we want YOU dead" (like the Uncle Sam "We want YOU" posters) or something along those lines... In these levels there are loudspeakers blaring distorted propaganda (which hugely resembles Hitler's voice if you ask me) increasing the political significance even further.
The game was made in 1996 and was based on the Marathon 2 engine, so it's a bit old. It's still interesting to play though (and fun, I like the whole atmosphere of it)...
Screenshots can be seen here and here. Here is a hi-res image of the box... Notice the really contrasty logo and imagery - it adds to the dark atmosphere of the game.
All the art is done by KMFDM album-cover-artist Aidan Hughes, who has a pretty recognizable style that compliments the style of the game really well.
Hell, to further the corporate-fascist bleak-future atmosphere, there's music created by Paul and Roland Barker (uh, although I've never heard of "Roland" Barker anywhere other than this game so I'm pretty skeptical about that), members of Ministry and The Revolting Cocks. Coolness.
Erm, I never found Max Payne preachy at all. I mean, I'd be pissed if a bunch of drug fiends shot up my family.
Followed to its logical conclusion, if you believe that video games are art, you shouldn't be surprised if there are elements of politics in video games.
Is Oliver Twist a book, or a political statement?
Is Apocalypse Now a movie, or a political statement?
Is Guernica a painting, or a political statement?
Art is intrinsically political, so perhaps the emergence of political statements in video games means that they're becoming a more evolved form of expression.
Is that so bad?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
It may not have been directly political, but there is one game that immediately springs to mind when one thinks of egomaniacal philosophical babbling: Metal Gear Solid 2. Kojima needs to shut the hell up already.
Yeah, because there has certainly never been art with a sci-fi, fantasy, or just plain surreal/stylized bent portraying any political viewpoint whatsoever.
Please. How can you suggest the Jet Set Radio games don't "overtly" contain political messages, seeing as how they (especially the original) go right out and state various political messages? Freedom of speech is celebrated, obviously, but also the idea that public areas (including the airwaves) should contain art by the public, and not just corporate advertising. Most of the music uses heavy amounts of sampling, which is a political statement in its own right. Hell, just the point about 'greed will destroy you' with the endboss (the head of a major corporation you have been fighting against, basically driven insane by his own lust for power) certainly has a political viewpoint to it.
You are certainly welcome to disagree with, belittle, or trivialize the political viewpoints of games like Jet Set Radio, but to suggest they don't have any is just idiocy. JSR opens with a written message that says "Graffiti is art." Welcome to the world of political messages, buddy.
And at least play them (especially the superior original) before you try and describe their merits to people, jeez. Sharks? Love-droids? Huh?
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
I don't really care about mod points at all actually. I just post whatever comes to mind.
I can read quite well and you said, "If you look at Cowboys and Indians as children - you'd see children hating Indians for no other reason than hating Indians."
To which I still reply, as children we didn't hate Indians or Cowboys, and we played C&I regulary. I guess I grew up in a tolerant household it never even occured to us to hate Indians. Blaming any part racism on childhood games is just forgiving bad parenting.
I'll reward you with another datapoint.
I'm 26, and view myself as a pretty hard-core conservative. One area I differ with basically all politicians, but mainly conservatives, is I'm against the death penalty for moral reasons.
That said, I think much of the backlash towards "liberals" is based on the fact that the US underwent a cultural revolution in the 60's that was as real as any civil war, it just happened socially. As the baby boom generation started to get into positions of influence (professorships, news-reporting, legislatures, law offices) in the 70's, and 80's, you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting someone telling you you shouldn't be swinging a dead cat, because it was politically incorrect for one reason or another.
The group that started out talking about how you should free your mind of your own initiative, changed when they got power. Now, rather than it being something you Should do, it became something you must do, or you'll be prosecuted, or called the devil, or be compared to hitler.
I'm a republican out of San Francisco, and I became a conservative because I instinctively knew that if all all media outlets essentially agreed with each other on everything, then certain viewpoints weren't being heard. I had to find other mediums, such as the evil talk radio, and the dastardly internet, but during the process of finding opinion/news from an outlet other then the SF chronacle/examiner/daily worker, I began to truly resent the united front that had been built in the media.
I think you will find something similar in the current generation of 20 somethings that show disdain for tree huggers, et all. You could appropriately label it a counter-revolution.
Thanks again for the polite query. If you're ever in town, and you want to hear a smart mo-fo on the radio, listen to Bill Wattenberg on 810am, sat/sunday nights from 10pm-1am. That's your news for nerds right there.
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
I think this article is discussing representation and ideology as if they are one.
The same arguments that apply to other forms of media about representation, how people/politics/ are portrayed, are valid for video games. Sure we have to remember that a lot of game content is created by the player, but basically we are talking about what we "see"
The really important thing to discuss with regards to games, is the implicit ideology that opperates within the game. Sim City and Civ bring it to the forefront, but the fact is that all games are based on systems, not the real world, and those systems will reflect the views of their designers.
Hideo Kojima injects politics and homosexuality into ALL of his games. Even Zone of Enders on the GBA has pornographic homosexual references. I've noticed that SOME other developers have been injecting some kind of a message into their games, but it's not something that I care about. You just ignore it the same way as you ignore TV shows that are pushing an agenda.
Political content best summarized as "War is bad, mkay?"
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
As for the Great Zombie protest of 1997, I'll just point out that while zombies are Hell beings, they are certainly NOT Hell Demons. It is racist of you to attempt to meld the actions of zombies and my Hell Demon colleagues. We are not responsible in any way, shape or form for the brain eating that occurred.
As for Hell Demon shooting, who cares? I'm a Hell Demon. Bullets can't harm me, silly human.
the reallife aplication of our value system. The kind of laws and officials you support or reject are based off of your belief structure. Games, like art, like TV, like clothing, like almost anything created by man, can't help but in some way reflect the mindset of the person who designed them. A game that takes place in space probably won't be designed by someone that hates the space program. Is that pushing a political agenda? No, it's simply inviting the public into your world, where a piece of your values will invariably surface. Civilization often requires you to raise taxes to improve your economy. Is that pushing a political agenda? No. It simply reflects the reality of the person who designed the system.
Ecco the Dolphin was "environmental nutjob propaganda?"
Oh that's right, PETA stands for People for Ecco to Thwart the Aliens!
Let me guess, Sonic the Hedgehog is a lefty screed against using animals as the brains of an evil Republican robot army, right?
Here I thought they were just kick ass games, I guess I need to spend a lot more time reading things into video games.
Personally, I think the (TV) commercial for Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow is pretty blatantly nationalistic... NSA Spook sneaking around shooting people and blowin' things up while the voices of children recite the pledge of allegiance in the background? Seems like a thinly veiled attempt to drum up positive public opinion for America's new unilaterally aggressive posture in the international arena. Maybe it's just me.
--Damn! We're in a tight spot!
I mean did anyone really think that there were junkies running around the streets throwing giant glowing hypodermics at people?
You obviously didn't grow up in my hometown. I was just lucky I had NARC to teach me that it was okay to shoot those guys in the head.
More recently in The Final Fantasy series, Square has portrayed the "peaceful, kind, gentle, treehuging" nation (Beville/Yevon) as corrupt to the core; and, in fact, as the original aggressor against the industrial nation (Zanarkand, the great machina city).
Not only that, but the surviving technological nation (the Al Bhed) is presented as being FAR more noble than the dominant anti-technology, "back to nature" one.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
(Or perhaps, as you say, "you've never seen it")
The only way CNN is "left wing" is in comparison to those bloody fools over at fox "news".
CNN may not be so fanatically loony as bill o'rielly and his lot, but they are certainly NOT left of centre.
cya,
john
... but in the first "Rainbow Six" game, the bad guys were an organization of "eco-terrorists" that infiltrated a "good old american" biotech corporation, and used its facilities to create a virus that would destroy humanity so nature could be saved.
A plot like that is nothing, is not lifted from some right-wing propaganda rag.
Imagine all the people...
Even very child-oriented games tend to be splattered all over with Politics. Take, for example, Pokémon.
Now, let's look at the basic format of Pokémon. You play (or with the TV adaptation, watch) a human who is a Pokémon trainer. Trainers violently catch, and train these creatures, battle them for sport, and breed and trade them at will. According to the TV show, Pokémon are intelligent.
Sound like any famous political issue to you?
And the resemblence to the slavery issue isn't the only poltiical theme in Pokémon. Note: The following paragraphs have spoilers, so if you actually plan on playing these games, care about the plot, and haven't already beaten them, turn away now.
The first Pokémon games, Red/Blue/Yellow, in addition to dealing with organized crime, also touched on government corruption. The single most evil organization in the games, ever--Team Rocket, a gang of theives--ran a casino in one of the towns, and took over a major scientific company (Silph, which was like a cross between Microsoft and Dow with a Pokémon bent) using inside operatives. But the real kicker was that the boss of Team Rocket, Giovanni, was also the most powerful gym leader--a government-sanctioned gym leader--in the region.
The second series, Gold/Silver/Crystal, also had political elements. Several gym leaders--like Falkner's and Koga's daughter (Jeanine? I think?) -- inherited their gyms from their parents. This almost seems to be a way of ridiculing the monarchy system, especially since Falkner and Koga's daughter suck (whereas Koga was difficult to beat).
But by far the most political Pokémon game I have seen is the Ruby/Sapphire series. In fact, Ruby/Sapphire seems to be a direct stab at certain political groups who are obbsessed with either animals or the environment.
Depending on which version you choose, the villain of your game is either Team Magma or Team Aqua. Both are fanatical environmental groups hellbent on something. Aqua wants to increase the water, and Magma wants to increase the world's landmass. Both resort to extremist tactics to acheive their ends, like unleashing deadly legendary Pokémon, disrupting volcanos, trying to harness Pokemon who can control the weather, etc. When I first beat the game, the phrase I used to describe Teams Aqua/Magma was "like PETA meets al Qaeda." In retrospect that isn't very accurate, but you can see where I was going.
I shudder to think where the next Pokémon game will go politically. It may tread even more dangerous ground than the stuff I write about in my Pokemon fanfics.
What should the main character be accomplishing with their actions? Should they be making the world a better place or a worse place? Most people opt for "make it a better place".
Well, if it's "make it a better place", then the world needs to be in a bad way, right? So they invent a world where something terrible has happened. They reach for the same tired bogeymen that are a staple of poorly-written dystopian movies: evil corporations and environmental damage.
In point of fact, there are plenty of games where a positive future serves as a backdrop. For instance, the "Extreme G" racer series is set in a future where mankind has everything it needs, so for excitement they construct these dangerous anti-gravity races. I thought it was clever, then I read a review that described it as "yet another" racer set in such a utopian future.
And there are many many more games with a strong storyline where politics are irrelevant. Too many to name.
The article seemed to imply that political messages in video games was growing, and that's just false. A small fraction of games have some overt political subtext, just as they always have. It's just that there are more games now, so the resulting number of games is also larger.
Is anyone else offended by the political agenda set forth in C&C Generals? The evil GLA which will stop at nothing to liberate... uh... we dunno, really. They're called the Global Liberation Army but the game thoroughly avoids letting the player know who's being liberated or why.
The behaviour required from a general of the GLA is, of course, deplorable. Killing your own townspeople is fine, apparantly, as long as you don't stop to think that the slaughter and/or oppression of your townspeople is one of the things you're pissed off about in the first place...
Makes you wonder, though, if this isn't a bit of satire at the way the pro-western news stations represent the information. Osama bin Ladin, for example, is portrayed as an evil terrorist who kills randomly but how many people even know why? Most people seem to think he kills because he likes it and few seem to have any trouble believing that. [insert obligatory comment to distance self from pro-terrorists].
How about NARC for NES?
This is probably what they are talking about:
Intel "f00f" Pentium bug
Never tried it out.
Don't know if it still works with the Pentium 2, 3, or 4.
Is anybody willing to verify that this 'bug' still works for the Pentium 2, 3, and 4s?
"Shock and awe" was aimed at Saddam's terrorist army, not the Iraqi civilians. Get real.
Yes. Compared to Fox, which is centrist, CNN is left-wing
"CNN may not be so fanatically loony as bill o'rielly and his lot, but they are certainly NOT left of centre"
They most definitely are. O'Reilly a loony? Maybe, but he is a moderate/centrist. CNN, on the other hand, strongly favors left-wing candidates and left-win causes. For example, CNN favors ruling elites controlling health care (a basic tenet of the left) instead of it being left to the people.
Capitalism is the system where the workers have the most control over what they own or create. In socialism, they have the least control: bullying authorities force them to behave one way or another.
"alternative/anti-authoritarian political systems... but it's still shows a lack of understanding."
If they reject socialism, syndicalism, etc it shows a strong understanding. While these systems look good on paper to a few, they are disastrous when implemented, and require a super-strong fascistic state to maintain.
"Clearly capitalism/democracy is portrayed as the "best" system. Intended or not, one could clearly argue there's a very heavy right-wing bias."
"It's possible to be communistic and Democratic"
That is known as "democratic fascism", in which the government owns everything but is democratically controlled. However, it really is not that democratic: once the government runs all of your personal affairs, there isn't much freedom left.
Leaving "capitalism" for another argument (such as the fact that the far-right opposes economic freedom such as capitalism, I find it amusing that you claim that a pro-democracy bias is "very heavy right-wing"
Was Red Faction (the first one) a leeeeeetle bit political? Aside from referencing individual games for political name checks and points scoring...aren't all games political in that tune out, jack in, escape to the simulation sort of way?