Politics in gaming

Funnily enough, this is yet another article somewhat attached off the back of an idea made somewhat popular in discussion by Colin Moriarty. I didn't have a reason to mention him specifically last time (though, he was the person I was referring to as bringing up a judge panel idea), but this time it's probably important because he has the best set stage I've seen to the question here today on this video. Though that said, I first heard it from a die-hard Uncharted fanatic talking about what one of the lead people at Naughty Dog had said. I... really don't like the guy who speaks on behalf of them, and he has made some incredibly absurd and painfully ironic statements, but I actually agree with both him and Colin on this one. However, I've clearly got more to add, otherwise I wouldn't waste my time writing this stuff. ...and there's a lot to write about it. So if you don't know the question by now, let's pitch it: Should we take politics out of gaming? The quick answer is, no. And here's why (minor witcher 3 spoilers):

It's about good writing, not shutting down politics

The longer answer is why you're reading this article instead of doing something better with your time. Anyway the topic comes up when Naughty Dog's director (I think) was asked to keep his personal politics out of The Last of Us 2. He responded with a clear "No", and even pointed to the original's ending as a sign of his political influences. Again, I'll agree with that sort of idea. However, the problem is... this almost feels like one of those dumb internet communication bits. I hear a lot of, and would even say I come very much from the same side that says not to put politics in gaming. I get it, I sympathize with it, and depending on the phrasing I'll be standing on that side of the issue. However that's the key here, the phrasing is all messed up from this side. It's just like with objective reviews. Nobody is actually asking you to suck out your soul and human tone from a review, so you can get everything 100% factual. We're asking for you to give the most transparent, least biased sort of review, and take some effort to explain how you arrived at your conclusions. There's a big difference between that, and slapping together some political message infused review that you were secretly paid off to give a good score, which is something that has and even continues to happen. Similarly, when people ask of you to keep political messages out of games, there's a huge difference from Metal Gear Solid subtly telling you about the dangers of war and patriotism, versus Far Cry 3's protagonist being a whiny baby about how much of a "monster" he's become because he had to fight to survive.

Far Cry 3 is the icon of what you don't want to do with politics in gaming. They decided to write in a message they thought would strike out against the culture, and be all edgy and make the average american shooter fan think. In truth, it was such a confused and poorly written mess, that it wound up being hated for it's "ironic" racist message instead, because it turns out the FPS is fun market aren't actually the audience right now that gets all worked up on messages. Instead it's the people who naturally see the world in the same stupid light FC3 did, with rich white spoiled kids having joy rides, drug fueled maniacs, how fighting to survive is a savage and brutal chore, and that your game is hip for having weed and dubstep in it. So they didn't connect with the racist white guy ruler satire that was pulled, and called it racist, which... it kind of was, but not in the way they thought. It's just that the game was that poorly written. Furthermore, the worst part, was the main character and his forced hokey "I'm a monster!" dialogue that just came in constantly by a certain mark. That may have been the only time writing ever left me only cringing... and literally cringing, not some exaggerated disgust, not laughing at it for being so bad it's good, but literally "How on earth did someone sit down, and actually write this, and it passed off as a good fluid narrative arc!?" type of thoughts meeting with a physical remolding of my expression. It was just relentlessly hokey and badly done, with a character going from "I don't like this, and I'm scared!", to enjoying it one mission, and then imediately after that he has these unnatural and forced conversations with his friends about how him killing people is "winning" in the most forced creeper voice I've heard. It was terrible, and even FC4's writer called it out.

“I think the important difference is we don’t want to be didactic, we’re not trying to teach people. I think a lot of Far Cry games have fallen into the trap – telling you that violence is bad, and that you’re bad for playing the game. You don’t want to play a game for 40, 50 hours to be rewarded by systems that have a narrative layer on top of that, telling you that you were bad for doing those things, that humans are terrible.”

I could not have found a more perfect image for FC3's  writing

So basically it comes down to less "don't do politics. At all. NEVER!" and more about... please write good. Be smart, do cool things, make me surprised, or even develop something so well that I can come to my own conclusions, or analytics who clearly have too much time on their hands wind up telling me something and I have to go and look over the game again and go "OH YEAH! Woah!". That's a cool thing, even if I won't necessarily agree with it. Far Cry 4 actually wound up doing something like that, with Pagin Min's ending where he basically calls out the protagonist as, not a monster, but someone who came there for an adventure. Essentially he winds up telling you "I realized, I was just using [a death] as an excuse to do whatever it is I wanted to do. Just like how you are, holding [story objective object] as an excuse to do whatever you want to do. But god damn if it isn't fun!" In an open world chaotic shooter game, my mind melted with how much that went through to smash the 4th wall and pull the player in, talking directly at you... because, that's the notion I've always had with these games. You get some loose thread of a total objective, but it gets delayed and in it's sleeping background noise, you build an empire of sandbox activities and fun little run around activities, doing whatever you want on your own time and choice, slowly getting to that point where the game tells you it's done... and leaves you telling you that the place is still all yours. Pagin Min literally does just that, and it's incredible writing if you ask me, whereas FC3 felt like it was forcing a message in that contradicted with it's very nature and fought against every piece of itself in stupid and forced ways.

On top of that, FC4 does also do more direct political stuff, and also better. You've got this situation in which the rebels are divided on how to rebuild the land once they overthrow Pagin, and so you get to choose between the conservative religious guy (that later goes blood crazy and regresses social rights), and a socialistic progressive (who enslaves citizens, profits off of drugs, and implicitly murdered a little girl to bury old religious values). They're both exploring extreme ends of a country in turmoil, and in the end you as a player can kind of see what's terrible and wrong about each, and think on it some. It perfectly fits the troubled setting, the way people can manipulate each other, and works inside of this kind of game framing and even adds to it. That's good well-written political stuff.

I've already also brought up the Witcher franchise, which has political sabotage, corruption, moving social rights clashing with tradition, race issues, guerrilla warfare, just modest and interesting lessons. Furthermore, Killzone even has political messages, and uses history to mix up and make a WW2 sci-fi universe that has also been interpreted as an American Revolutionary war piece as well. And what about the countless games that involve you rebelling against a government entity of some form? What kind of political pacifism is that, when it's blatantly eating out of the hands of every libertarian/anarchist/conspiracy nut out there. Oh, but don't worry, we have the anti-libertarian Bioshock for you as well. Oh, and then there were all those WW2 shooter "honoring" the vets. Not exactly a hot issue to sweat over, but it involves the history of political decisions, war, and the portrayal of sensitive events some may not agree with being condensed into a video game. Hell, look at what happened with Battlefield 1 when EA had the audacity to tweet some cheesy puns with the game. Even Doom (4) has political influences despite proudly tossing it's narrative to the side, because the reason we discovered Hell was supposedly to solve our energy crisis. I'm not saying it delivers any real message about it, but it brings it up, and ties it in with the plot and perhaps took shape from one of the designer's political leanings. I'm serious, and if you don't understand, you clearly haven't played one of the best games to come out in the last decade. Still it's not so serious about politics or any real message, and that's just fine as well.

Yes, this kind of game even does it

Just making fun stories can lead to it

Here's another thing, you don't even need to be truly trying to even capture a narrative theme that can come off as political. Sometimes it just happens. I myself have been working with three different stories, and of them, only one winds up not sounding political. It's not that I'm sitting there pandering to someone's views, or trying to lecture people on my own, but rather just what I wound up writing for a believable feeling of the setting. In one case it's fantasy racism/tribalism, prejudice, and the corruption of power. Honestly though I just wrote it because I have fun making up new cultures and having them pick at each other, meanwhile an antagonist wants to control everything for antagonizing reasons. Meanwhile a sci-fi story I wrote, could be taken as pro/anti-colonization (depending on what characters are speaking), there's a somewhat pro-war line in the 2nd part, in retrospect I think I wrote a character who could be taken as an allegory for a trans person, and yet there's also an environmentally aware science team speaking in the exact same chapter of that part. Oh, and there's an SJW-like person who's playing the victim card to delay a debate up until someone shuts her up. That last bit I will freely admit is a bit of insertion of my views, but the rest of it just happened more naturally in the environment and characters I created, and I still wrote it in a way that it made sense to the character's motives and later events of the story. The only story that doesn't have an accidental or intentional political message yet, is due to it's super high fantasy nature that it's too close to greek mythology and trickster folk tales to have any serious message. Even then, that might change as I get more than 3 chapters into it, as it's my newest thing.

 It's not just my own stories I see this in, but look no further than Warhammer 40K, or Zootopia. Zootopia actually had the same theme as the 1st story I mentioned. It wanted to take animals, and make them a self-aware society, and sort of develop a mythos around tribalism and whatnot. It seemed like they had no better intention than just the fun of it, like I did. However it wound up turning into a movie with a "message" because that's just how Disney works, where you usually need to find some sort of kid-friendly message or pitch to teach people. It's a win-win from a corporate perspective, and that's fine with me. The funny thing is though, it was even darker at one point, with a message more centered just as much around police state fears. Then W40k is all about space crusaders, and is so stuck in this proudly "grim dark" tone of madness and tribalism, that the fans of the series cannot process it with a serious face. The W40K fanbase is full of people who look on and laugh at the overzealous reaching of the series, can easily tell you how fucked up every faction is, and yet we love it for a good read and work of fiction. We've slapped everything from twilight parodies, to making a punchline out of heresy. Still, this is in a way, about politics. W40K is about war, religion, and corruption. Just like with Doom, that doesn't mean they're trying to force you to think of them as good or bad, but they've created this world that has so clearly touched on that, and has brought in real experiences and interpretations from out culture and political situations. Meanwhile Zootopia has even been dragged in and framed as being anti-Trump... even though the movie wasn't made at all with him in mind, and never started out with a "message" anyway. But nope, hearing "actually guys, they just wanted one a more unique self-aware talking animal movies" doesn't make great headlines or marketing, so it's got a theme that can be interpreted in a few different ways by people who want to over-analyze it, so some left-wing news site can tell you why it warned us about Trump and take some interviews out of context.

Not even talking animals will let you hide from politics & drama

Concluding...

Hardly anyone is asking you to shut politics out completely. We're asking you write it well, write it to be fun, and write it so we can still enjoy our games. Heck better yet, this is gaming, make your message in the mechanics. I remember how Hoard reminded me of an old Taoist proverb, where the more towns and riches I won over, the harder it was to keep them safe. That came to mind without a drop of text or narrative. Brothers, a Tale of Two Sons, incorporated an emotional family bond in it's adventure using a co-op like control method for a single player game. MGSV has sever risk and reward issues regarding it's nuclear weapons. That is all possible, and it's far better than someone forcing in a political message, or some forced message of any kind. That's why Spec Ops still has some detractors, suggesting it went too far and did too little right. Others (like me) will point out how stupid Far Cry 3 was. Deus Ex was ironically hated by the very side supposedly happy about games as "art" and inclusive, and maybe they'll have some good criticisms in there about proper use of messaging. I didn't see an issue with it myself. However none of us are telling you to stay away from post-apocalypse because it might be environmentalist propaganda. We're not telling you to stop your government overthrowing plots, because it could be raising libertarians. We're not serious about leaving all your influences, wishes, and who you are at the door (even if some people pose the demand in this stupid way). Gamers just want you to write smart, same with any book worm or movie goer

Gaming is still a form of both art, and yet escapism. The two aren't contradicting like some would tell you it is, but they can clash depending on their goals. As a gamer who adores in-depth mechanics and user-power, I tend to love games that are higher on the escapist end and empower you to do awesome ridiculous things. Still, I stay for the lore, world building, and I dig for messages from there. Furthermore, one of my favorite heroes isn't some Peter Parker, or Bruce Wayne, but actually Robin Hood... you know, the guy who's entire plot was being upset over taxes and poverty? Very few people actually stop and talk so much about the politics of Robin Hood, and that's because it's just made fun. Whether it's Errol Flynn, Disney, BBC's show format, or making fun of the 90's variant, people just talk about the characters, best adaptations, and how great they are instead of "Was he a socialist, or libertarian?". It's just about how you build your world up, and if you still have fun in mind, or go for more of a condescending, lecturing approach. Let's hope you have fun in mind. Your work, message, and whatever else will last around a lot longer if people actually enjoy it and it's written well for that purpose. ...and on that note, why hasn't there been a modern Robin Hood game!? Come on guys, get on it!