Everybody knows, if you want to write a good story, you've got to have themes. Everything from children's tv to Scandanavian murder dramas to even the damned Bible understands this. However, even with this artistic consensus in mind, there are some themes that are avoided, taboo even.
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| (Image property of Irrational Games and 2K) |
In the medium of video games, one such thematic taboo is 'politics'. (Note the quotation marks there, because 'politics' can mean a lot of different things depending upon who's speaking). It's a sentiment that has been part of video game discourse for as long as I can remember. Even as a teenager, discovering for the first time just how wild and varied a lot of gaming history was, I have always remembered seeing people complain about politicising video games or games having an agenda.
Today then, I want to dig into this idea of 'politics' in games, both in terms of how much there really is and, more importantly, why games and the video games we play should stop being quite so allergic to anything political.
Where is the politics?
In trying to describe what exactly people mean when they talk about 'politics' in video games, I'm reminded of SCOTUS judge Potter Stewart. Once, when asked to designate what counts as pornography, Stewart famously said, 'perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it'.
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| (Image property of Treyarch, Raven Software and Activision)) |
You see, if you take people's word for it, 'politics' can mean very different things. Recent waves of right-wing culture-vultures have suggested that any representation of a minority or depicting a female character in modest clothing could be considered political. Meanwhile, there has also been plenty of criticism for military shooters like
Call of Duty for glorifying the American military and demonising foreign minorities. So often, just like Stewart's views on porn, what counts as 'politics' depends upon the views of the beholder.This might be because politics is something of a dirty word. In a post-Iraq, post-Watergate, post-insert-releveant-political-scandal-here-depending-on-nationality world, people have become trained to see anything associated with party politics or hot-button issues as inherently suspect.
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| (Image property of Rocksteady Games and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment) |
For me though, this is something of a narrow mindset. Take Batman as a character. He's about as morally simple as fiction gets. Punch bad guys, save innocents, done. But, consider Batman this way; he's an extra-judicial vigilante who monopolises crime-fighting for his city and who enforces an anti-firearm and anti-killing edict for others to follow. As morally simple as he may be, there is still political messaging on display.
For another case in point, take pretty much any FromSoftware game. Be it Elden Ring or Dark Souls, almost all of FromSoft's games deal with the theme of entropy. Moreover, at the end of their games, players are often presented with a choice, to supplant the previous lord or ruler and re-establish the status quo or, instead, to overturn the entire system and push the world towards something new and unknown that might be better or might be significantly worse.
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| (Image property of FromSoftware and Bandai Namco Entertainment)) |
While, in context, these ideas are dressed up in centuries of magic and lore, when you strip all of that away, they fundamentally reflect political choices that humans have been faced with. We see examples of both types of ending playing out only sixty years apart in the real world. The American Revolution overturned the British colonial system for something new, while, back in Britain, we decided to reform the previous system to restabilise the status quo. Dark fantasy world or otherwise, these are political themes.
Herein lies my problem with gamers' complaints around politics in games. When you get down to it, all games are political on some level. The problem is, that the only time politics is ever complained about in games is when it overtly focuses on things we don't like.
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| (Image property of FromSoftware and Bandai Namco Entertainment) |
What's so scary about a little politics?
This raises the question then, if political themes are present in all of our favourite games on one level or another, why is it that games and gamers are so afraid of them?
Well, in short, I think all of us are a little afraid of our own capacity for empathy. Again, I'm reminded of something strange. This time, it's that ClickHole article from 2018, 'Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point'. On some level, all of us are afraid of being challenged in our beliefs and being proven wrong. We've all experienced at least one time when someone we fundamentally do not like has said something quite clever and we've had to accept that they aren't all bad. It's uncomfortable, it's frustrating and, above all else, it makes us feel like an idiot.
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| (Image property of Rocksteady Games and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment)) |
This, I think, is why people get so uncomfortable about games being openly political on the few occasions that they are. People are afraid of stepping into a writer's world and having to confront issues on their terms, just in case we end up empathising with a view we don't like. This is also why, I think, we are so happy to accept games with political themes if they are dressed up in fantastical elements like Batman or Elden Ring. We can say to ourselves, 'Oh no, Helldivers 2 has nothing to do with fascism or the military-industrial complex's strengthening grip on culture, it's just about shooting bugs!'. This way, we never have to reconsider our view, feel the need to change or, most importantly, have to feel like an idiot.
The result of all of this is that game developers and publishers are terrified of getting overtly political in any meaningful way, because ever point you make or view you present will risk alienating someone in the audience. This, at the end of the day, is why political games are such rare finds.
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| (Image property of Arrowhead Game Studios and Sony Interactive Entertainment) |
'Why is this a bad thing?' I hear you wonder. 'Games that have subtle themes have never hurt anyone, so what's the problem?' Well, the problem is in the question, Mr Straw Man. These games have never hurt anyone. For video games as an artistic medium to make any meaningful progress, I think they need to start breaking a few more hearts.
I've watched plenty of films over the years that have made me think or made me feel uncomfortable and, while I haven't always enjoyed it, I can't deny that I feel like a healthier, more well-rounded person for it. Video games are ideally poised to do this as well. The interactive element of a game creates whole new avenues for challenging our pre-conceived notions and existing political views. I genuinely believe this because, often, when games do actually try to get political, they do it seriously bloody well.
I still hold that Bioshock is my favourite game ever, not because it's the best one I've played, but because it is so thoroughly unapologetic in how political it is, and by openly embracing its political ideas, it is able to take the player to some fascinating places. It asks questions that other games haven't and it made me think about ideas that I hadn't considered before. In short, it broadened my horizons.
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Now, imagine if that happened more frequently. Imagine if more games could openly put forward a thesis or a unique political perspective that a mass audience could engage with and learn from. Not only would it encourage a greater diversity in creative thinking as new games would be made as counterpoints to others, it could expose entirely new audiences to themes and ideas they hadn't considered before.
One of the rare cases when this actually did happen was with Spec Ops: The Line, which used the prevalence of military shooters in the late 2000s as a launching platform to ask hard-hitting questions about American exceptionalism, the military and the media we consume. But, as I said, this is a rare occurrence. As it stands, the industry has crafted a Pandora's Box for itself that the bean-counters and marketing teams of the world are too afraid to open for fear or alienating 1% of their audience, and I can't help but feel like we're becoming worse people for it.
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| (Image property of Yager Development and 2K) |
Conclusion
I acknowledge that this isn't exactly new ground that I'm breaking here. Most of what I've said has been said before in one form or another. Nonetheless, this is a topic close to my heart. Between work, studies and leisure, video games and politics have always been closely-held loves of mine, and I find it a shame that they intersect so infrequently.
As I've established above, all games have politics of one form or another, whether we choose to notice it or not. I have no problem with that, long may it continue. Rather, my problem is how reluctant the writers, directors or publishers of games can be to actually address these themes head-on. At times, it feels as though a conscious choice is being made to avoid any meaningful reflection on the part of games and instead they are being designed to preserve the sensitivities of a very picky audience.
We, as consumers, also have our own parts to play here. We need to be more open to new ideas and different perspectives and what they can do for as as people. An obvious way to do this is to play more indies. Indie games tend to be more openly political, and it's one of the things that I love about the independent games ecosystem. However, it goes beyond that. When a big budget game does choose to try and say something, it is also up to us to listen. Games are an unparalleled medium for encouraging empathy between people and, rather than shying away from that, we should try to embrace it, both for the sake of games as art, but also for our own sakes.
As always, thank you for reading this stream of consciousness if you made it this far. I wish you all a wonderful day.
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