Slashdot Mirror
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?"
In Soviet Russia, jokes repeat you!
Sorry, had to do it.
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.