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How Video Games Reflect Ideology
A recent article at Bitmob sought to tackle the question of whether games could carry political meaning, arguing the negative since "The money, the media representation, and the general shadow of 'triviality' will always trail the word 'game,' because that is what makes it open to all markets." An opposing viewpoint has been posted by Lee Bradley, who says, "Perhaps the most profound shift in the games industry in the last few years has been the explosion of co-op. Not only are developers dedicating more and more time to providing co-op experiences in their games, they are also finding new ways of exploring the dynamic within it. ... Even in games where the co-operative element of co-op is less pronounced, the ideology is the same; you are not on your own anymore, you are part of a team. What's more, that team is more than likely multi-cultural and/or multi-gender. ... Now, this isn't to say that the lone white-guy hero has been eradicated. Far from it; the bald, white space-marine is one of the most over-used characters in modern gaming. But it increasingly rare that they are lone heroes. A shift towards team-based, co-op featured games is undeniable. In this way, mainstream video games, even those seemingly void of political statement, are implicitly political. While for the most part they are not designed to tackle political issues head-on, or carry overt political messages, they do reflect the values and the popular ideology of the culture in which they were created."
What about the possibility that previously in games due to technical limitations of the hardware the only character you could have is your "bald white space-marine"
That's how Mario came to have his distinguishing features.
"Due to the graphical limitations of arcade hardware at the time, Miyamoto clothed the character in bright red overalls and a blue shirt to contrast against each other and the background, adding white gloves to distinguish the character's arms on the screen as they swung back and forth. A cap was added to let Miyamoto avoid drawing the character's hairstyle, while preventing issues of animating his hair as he jumped.[8] To make him appear human onscreen despite his small size they gave Mario a large nose, and added a mustache to avoid drawing a mouth due to the difficulty of illustrating facial expressions at that size.[10]"
Squirrel!
As Nikita Khrushchev once said, the press is our chief ideological weapon,
...the press, and fear. We have two chief ideological weapons - the press, fear and surprise !
Amongst our chief ideological weapons are such diverse elements as the press, fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, an almost fanatical devotion to the writings of Karl Marx, and nice red flags.
Squirrel!
I play games to zone out too, but even I would have to admit that the strong environmental message of Final Fantasy VII or the anti-nuclear message of Metal Gear Solid did come across clearly to me at the time and I still remember them over ten years later. I have play many games since which contained a variety of messages on a wide array of topics, philosophical, contemporary and otherwise. Video games were essentially the only mass medium that ever seriously discussed the growing influence of PMCs and corporate militias during the 2004-2008 period. Even a bubble-gum entertainment game like GTA4 carried biting political satire on its radio stations.
Lots of people love to sneer at video games and dismiss them as children's toys, devoid of artistic or intellectual content. Most of those same people will happily regard a Hollywood bubblegum blockbuster as the apex of human entertainment and will trawl over it endlessly for months. I for one do not see how the worlds, setting and characters created in video games differ so greatly from those seen in other forms of fiction, nor why they should be dismissed so easily as intellectually void.
I play video games as a pasttime to escape from the world. But I inevitably find myself exposed to philosophies and dilemmas of interest and of some relevance to the real world. I happen to think that playing video games is a far more broadening experience than many give it credit for.
May the Maths Be with you!
The article is not nearly as good as I would have hoped. I do agree that there is some political ideology and cultural values to be found in many games, but just to make a general statement that most games being single player shows political ideology is absurd. I'll have you know that it is significantly easier to program a single player game than any other kind, so there were more (especially on limited hardware). Multiplayer didn't become such a huge trend until the Internet caught on, which parallels technological changes more than it does political changes.
I made a point in a term paper a few years back that the very nature of GTA, though transgressive, transmits a clear establishment message. You cannot beat the police in GTA. You may escape them, but you cannot stop them. Any attempt to directly oppose the police always inevitably leads to death as there will always be more of them than you. The police in GTA are individually stupid, collectively difficult to evade, and taken as an entire establishment entirely invincible.
Further, there's a recognition (especially in GTA San Andreas) of the fact that the player you embody is fundamentally broken and leads a life devoid of meaning. All of the most likable characters in the games are either killed, betray you or are the "straight men" - the people who point out to your character the failure of their lifestyle.
So although the GTA games allow you to explore your own dark side it seems to guide you to the message that not only is the world better off without your enemies (the people you kill throughout the game) but also without you (the killer).
The land shall stone them with the bread of his son.