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Culture War in Video Games
More than half of American adults — yes, adults — play video games. Many of those “gamers” are playing Mahjong, Sudoku, or crossword puzzles on their phones; so it’s fair to say the statistics are often exaggerated (like calling golf or darts a sport). But since PC and dedicated console gaming picked up in the 1980s and have flourished into an industry rivaling Hollywood revenues and productions (indeed, Hollywood actors now commonly perform in video games), entire generations have grown up with the medium.
Games are just another option beside TV and novels as a way for responsible parents to wind down at night or share entertainment with the kids. And I don’t mean Pac-Man.
Of course, even someone who grew up with video games might prefer other media or interests. But it is increasingly important that conservatives recognize this industry as another influential front in efforts to define the aspirations, expectations, and boundaries of our culture. As with cinema, deliberate decisions are being made to integrate leftwing ideology and political correctness into games.
This industry is as uniform as Hollywood in its assumptions, its goals, and its willingness to defy a majority of consumers in “representation” of leftist fashions and exclusion of contrary ideas. California is the heart of game development, with satellites typically based in leftwing cities like Austin or Paris. Game journalism is similarly monolithic in regard to the major corporations like IGN, Gamespot, Kotaku, and Game Informer; though there is some dissent among smaller blogs and video channels.
As in TV shows, there has long been a push in games toward more gay romance subplots and more female protagonists. “Pride” flags are offered to players as free cosmetic additions within many games even when nearly all other cosmetics must be purchased.
This month, Black Lives Matter banners have been included on many in-game greeting pages. Microsoft has a reward points system with options to donate the cash value to one of a handful of left-wing charities. Black Lives Matter was added among those groups for donations and advertised on the Xbox home screen to millions of gamers. Seemingly every gaming news organization invited token blacks (even if some guests proved astute and enjoyable) to join their podcasts and other content. Sony and Microsoft delayed their biggest marketing events of the year to give BLM the spotlight.
Reactions to political fads and offense culture sometimes take the form of sudden changes to game content. The developer Infinity Ward, owned by publishing giant Activision, recently altered a Border Patrol optional outfit in Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare from the description “Show them the error of their ways and make them pay with D-Day’s Border War operator skin” to “Play along with the deer and the antelope with the Home on the Range D-Day operator skin.” Journalists roundly agreed that Border Patrol agents are not respectable and that the former description applauded violence against immigrants rather than cartels.
Years ago, Marcus “Notch” Persson, the legendary developer of Minecraft — a game every kid today knows, which was purchased by Microsoft for $2.5 billion — was scrubbed from the credits of his own creation after publicly questioning radical feminism, gay politics, and anti-white bigotry. That was before “cancel culture” entered common terminology. Do Hollywood studios alter movie credits to erase writers or directors?
Watch Dogs: Legion is among the more anticipated blockbuster (or “triple A”) games due later this year. The gameplay is impressive in many regards, not least in its photorealistic layout of London and an innovative “Play As Anyone” system that lets the player choose almost any person roaming the city to be among one’s team of protagonists.
But then there’s the setting. I honestly wouldn’t mind if developers and journalists alike didn’t consistently remark on how “familiar” the game’s vision of a post-Brexit dystopian London seems. Here is the cinematic trailer.
Socialist and revolutionary themes are popping up in several games this year. Cyberpunk 2077, arguably the most anticipated game of the year (and rightly so) is set in another near-future sci-fi dystopia that imagines corporations as the primary villains. I’ve lost count of how many times I have heard game journalists working for corporations comment on the evil of corporations.
Character customization in Cyberpunk 2077 will extend to choice of genitals. When the crossdressing fad rose to prominence, Polish developer CD Projekt Red leapt to assure gamers that transvestites would be included as a character option, complete with mix-and-match body options.
Hopefully, that gives the non-gamers among you some idea of the cultural winds permeating every branch of art and entertainment.
Published in Culture
The more things change….cultural appropriation!
Not Safe for Work (contains reference to flyting):
Civilization: Revolution is a simpler, arcade-like variant. Some enjoy that more than the drier Civ games.
Simpler games not requiring a lot of manual dexterity include Plants vs Zombies, Peggle, the first Puzzle Quest, and XCOM. There are also video game variants of board games. Carcassonne and Catan are good, but I’m partial to RISK: Factions.
But since you enjoyed Doom once upon a time, check out Orcs Must Die! It’s more about setting traps than shooting. And it’s silly mayhem. A friend worked on that series.
Bringing it back around to politics, I’m cautiously optimistic about the gameplay in Far Cry 6 but slightly concerned about the story. The setting is loosely fashioned after Cuba.
As usual, the Far Cry story is about an inexperienced protagonist being thrust into a deadly environment (with both human and animal threats), gradually obtaining the skills and tools necessary to lead a small band of rebels to overthrow a brutal tyrant. Essentially, it’s a survival action adventure set in a “far cry” from civilization.
To prepare for this latest in the series, developers apparently toured Cuba and even met some old revolutionaries familiar with guerilla warfare. That could be innocuous. I worry only because so many leftists are naíve enough to believe Che Guevara and the Cuban revolutionaries were actually heroes, rather than brutal murderers and dictators themselves.
But it could be great. We’ll see.
In (partial, and before-the-fact) defense of Cyberpunk 2077, it is based on a late ’80s pen & paper roleplaying game and corporations are always the bad guys in the game as well as the SF genre it comes from. Sex changes are covered in a ’93 Cyberpunk 2020 connected ‘genre book’ called When Gravity Falls, based on a novel by the same name.
So this stuff is baked in, though it will no doubt be massaged to represent current sensibilities/fringe-group demands. In tracking this info down I saw posts full of sniffiness about the ‘tone’ in these games which are almost two decades old.
Presentism is lame enough, all by itself, but presentism applied to dated futurism requires a stunning lack of self-awareness.
Edit: The games are almost two decades old – the posts are minty snowflake fresh.
My son plays Storm Works, Mountain Blade, and Minecraft. He does lots of programming and has moderated. He currently runs a server for Minecraft. He’s 15 and he’s been playing for years. I was anti-gaming, at first. Now, I think he’s going to make a living that way.
My daughter plays Sims and it’s much more political, unfortunately.
How so?
The Sims was the first game I recall to offer gay relationships as an option. The series also perpetuates Hollywood’s notion that any good relationship culminates in premarital sex, perhaps on the first date. The sex is only hinted at in a cartoonish way — characters jumping under the covers and giggling.
But being a sandbox-style game — more about toying with set pieces than following a scripted story — The Sims 2, at least, was pretty tame. We are now up to The Sims 4.
The series is made by Maxis, the company of video game pioneer and SimCity creator Will Wright. I had the privilege to play his last game, Spore, early and help populate the evolution game with interesting creatures. Wright’s games all foster learning by experimentation. The Sims lets people intuitively learn about time management, budgeting, and other basic life skills.
I enjoyed The Sims 2 for the physics-free architecture. It was possible to design houses via a simple toolset. It didn’t hurt that I knew a developer cheat for infinite simoleons (money)!
It’s an amazing game. It is something of a critique of Objectivism, yes – but Bioshock 2 is a critique of collectivism. Bioshock Infinite manages to critique unreflective patriotism AND revolutionary violence. It’s the best of the three, I think, but not everyone agrees. Don’t miss the DLC – there’s a story set in pre-breakdown Rapture, and seeing the city at its heights (or depths, I suppose) is fantastic.
I haven’t found a game to play on my Mac that equals those experiences. I tried the Alien game, but sneaking around for three hours with two bullets and dying every time something happened – well, it got old.
I gotta write a review of the plot later.
I’m not familiar with the Dr Disrespect show. Twitch is the largest game streaming platform. They allegedly banned the show without warning and without explanation.
Overwatch, like a few other games, lets players spray-paint symbols and pictures temporarily onto the game environment as a way of socialization and wordless expression. The game’s cowboy character has long had an option of spray-painting a noose — a common thing in Wild West stories. Blizzard-Activision replaced it with a horseshoe symbol.
Meanwhile, EA will remove all references to the Washington “Redskins” in its Madden football game. Blame that one on Washington. EA’s contract with the NFL probably requires it.
I could probably report such changes every few days for the next month.
It never stops does it.
This week, Ubisoft is under fire for not giving female characters starring roles in the Assassin’s Creed series sooner. All decisions in that regard could only possibly be due to sexism, of course.
Ubisoft — one of the world’s largest game publishers — is completely restructuring after pushing out managers with allegations. “Diversity” is the war cry.
The publisher has defined itself as an innovator and powerhouse in the open worlds genre. But this shakeup will of course color and perhaps derail future projects.
I half-expected Far Cry 6 to be delayed from its February release date anyway — because advertised release dates are so much tissue paper in this industry. But now I wouldn’t be surprised if it is delayed and reworked just to inject the Far Cry series with its first female / crossdresser protagonist.
PS: It was announced that NPCs (non-player characters) in Cyberpunk 2077 will now treat the protagonist according to the voice selected (male or female) rather than the body type selected.
MMORPG giant World of Warcraft will now enable players to change their “gender” long after character creation.
Tell Me Why by Life is Strange developer Dontnod Entertainment will be included in Xbox Game Pass and will tell a story involving a trans character.
On the bright side, Microsoft managed to get through their entire July event without making a political statement. Both Microsoft and Sony are planning another online showcase in the coming months. Neither new console has been priced yet, though they will likely launch in November.
Deems like D&D had that covered long ago, but it was from a cursed item?
I’m pretty sure that this has been in the game for at least a couple expansions. You can also change your race or faction ($25 a pop).
Also, gender in WoW is cosmetic.
Right, “gender” was included among other character choices like “race” (species, really, since this is high fantasy) in traits that could be changed only for a fee. They want players to be emotionally invested in the characters they play, so the fee was mostly to encourage maintaining a constant avatar.
But with the Shadowlands expansion that fee will be waived. Note that Blizzard emphasizes “gender” and not race in the decision.
Blizzard designers think of some story characters as gay or trans, the producer says. But they don’t push it because China and other non-Western nations are a big chunk of their playerbase.
Eventually, the company management will drift further leftward or be replaced, like Ubisoft’s, for people who prioritize politics.
Fortnite will host videos to discuss how racists everyone is. They previously hosted movie trailers in the game world.
One wonders what is wrong with the message that it costs money to change genders. It turns out that surgeons expect to get paid.