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I wasn't saying that NO video games have political stories or undertones or anything like that. I was taking exception to the statement that "all video games are inherently political" which I still disagree with but forget who posted it. Like, I don't see anything overtly or inherently political about Mario Bros, Tetris, NBA2k, Sonic, Gran Turismo, Mario Kart, Doom, Wii Sports, MLB: The Show, Evil Within 2...and a lot of games. Stuff like Bioshock, Fallout, GTA, MGS and Far Cry that are a little more serious, sure, but "politics" still isn't my main take away from the majority of stuff I play and at best I'd say it depends on the game. Not the medium as a whole. Maybe some of you are right and I'm just not looking for it but for most titles I get into, no. I don't wrap up RE2 and consider the deeper political message there. Seems like you have to squint and it could just be me like I said but is, say, chess a deeply political game because it pits black against white, is an artistic form of war and has pieces that evoke royalty? Maybe it is.
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Nov 8, 2021 22:53
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Since it was seven years ago and there were competing narratives and propaganda bullshit about gg at the time and since, I suspect a lot of people have either forgotten or never had a good sense of what gamergate was even about. Thankfully there's a video going over the timeline of the movement in detail. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLYWHpgIoIw The short version: gamergate was about misogyny from the jump, Milo and Steve Bannon made the conscious and wildly successful bid to push it towards movement conservatism, and most of the people who stuck with gamergate are proud members of the alt-right today.
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Nov 8, 2021 23:03
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I mean, the original Sonic the Hedgehog games had a pretty intentional pro-environmental message built in (the developers have said as much), but I get what you're trying to say. Is a game trying to make a political statement or are people reading politics into it.
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Nov 8, 2021 23:03
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I think its fair to say politics work their way into most all art in some way, shape, or form because "politics" tend to be any of the important stuff that matters and affects people's lives and how they see the world. So like even if you're not making an active effort the conditions of your life still influence the art you make. I do think people have a tendency to sometimes read too deeply into very shallow political influences and elements though. Like sometimes a very casual or careless use of something can mean something in and of itself, but sometimes a movie or video game or something just has a confused political message mess because it was just using that stuff as a means of getting the story and elements it wanted. And people can tend to get lost in the weeds of that kind of stuff or try and extrapolate a lot out of a little (see any conservative article ever about songs or movies they think are "actually conservative").
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Nov 8, 2021 23:11
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BiggerBoat posted:Like, I don't see anything overtly or inherently political about...Tetris 
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Nov 8, 2021 23:16
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BiggerBoat posted:I was taking exception to the statement that "all video games are inherently political" which I still disagree with but forget who posted it. Like, I don't see anything overtly or inherently political about Mario Bros, Tetris, NBA2k, Sonic, Gran Turismo, Mario Kart, Doom, Wii Sports, MLB: The Show, Evil Within 2...and a lot of games. Stuff like Bioshock, Fallout, GTA, MGS and Far Cry that are a little more serious, sure, but "politics" still isn't my main take away from the majority of stuff I play and at best I'd say it depends on the game. Not the medium as a whole. Perhaps a better way to put it is, "all stories are political". It would be hard to read politics into a game like Tetris that's 100% mechanics, but a story, even an intentionally threadbare one like Doom, is going to be political. Consider Doom 2016, with a strong anti-corporate message typified by the Doom Slayer aggressively shutting down any attempts by the corp guys to rationalize their decisions and actions. Or, as mentioned previously, Sonic and its environmentalist message. A sports game or puzzle game, sure, you might be hard-pressed to fit politics into that mold. But once you have a story, with good guys and bad guys, you have value judgements, and that means politics are going to seep in whether you want them or not. ETA: Even consider many games in which violence is the only method you have of dealing with the problems and roadblocks you face, and the only way of dealing with a bad guy is to kill them. What kind of political message is that sending? TheArchimage fucked around with this message at 23:20 on Nov 8, 2021 |
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Nov 8, 2021 23:18
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You're really good at making long posts that don't say much other than "I don't understand this because it doesn't personally affect me." Maybe you should listen more and talk less. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Nov 8, 2021 23:22
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If a sports game is based on real sports franchises then it becomes political, as the act of purchasing and playing the game as your money will go to the owners while the players will receive little to no compensation for the use of their names and likenesses, and that money will invariably be used to lobby governments for everything from tightening copyrights to anti-LGTBQ+ measures. Everything is political. Everything has ramifications.
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Nov 8, 2021 23:24
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Screaming Idiot posted:If a sports game is based on real sports franchises then it becomes political, as the act of purchasing and playing the game as your money will go to the owners while the players will receive little to no compensation for the use of their names and likenesses, and that money will invariably be used to lobby governments for everything from tightening copyrights to anti-LGTBQ+ measures. I gotta say, I think the joke I decided not to post about how The Show is political because there's no ability for the union to lockout in protest of my clearly predatorial abuse of the free agency and trade system was more fun.
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Nov 8, 2021 23:29
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Also Super Mario not political? The plot is interdimensional travelers intervening in a military conflict between two states to restore the Mushroom Kingdom monarchy via a decapitation strike on the king of koopa
VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 23:51 on Nov 8, 2021 |
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Nov 8, 2021 23:47
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nine-gear crow posted:They also got stalker-mad at Funimation and various employees and associates of Funimation for when they fired Vic Mignogna for being a prolific sexual predator too yup, that too! Wanderer posted:I think Quinn's changed things up. Her Twitter bio now says she/they. THIS. GG has pretty much permanently made a large portion of gamers to always be hyperalert to anything that they feel goes against their preconceived notions of what qualifies as 'good' or 'neutral' traits in games, and anything that diverts from that path will be labeled "political". and this extends outside of gaming to all kinds of media as well. DarklyDreaming posted:It's because way back in 2014 most of these people would hold ostensibly leftist positions on weed/climate change/healthcare. They just happened to be massive racists and sexists who had a visceral reaction to anyone who didn't look like them. my theory is that there were a lot of people who loved edgy humor and such, but still identified as liberal/democrat. anecdotal, but i saw this a lot back when i first joined SA during the bush years, where people HATED bush, were willing to vote for kerry, but loved saying "n*gg*r" and "f*gg*t", and poo poo on feminists all the time. as time went on, and people, mainly the ones in the previously mentioned groups, said 'hey, uh this stuff's not cool, actually', these same supposed libs/dems took it personally. i think they legitimately thought that them voting democrat gave them a pass to say all that other poo poo, and when they realized that wasn't enough, they got super pissed and moved over to more 'tolerant' pasteurs and became reactionaries or just straight up MAGAs.
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Nov 9, 2021 00:03
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Twelve by Pies posted:Out of curiosity, why does the video game industry have the most issues with this? Other industries have problems with this too I'm sure, but like, movie critics don't seem to have the same problem with harshly reviewing a movie and then losing special privileges over it. Is it just because movie criticism is more mainstream and not seen as still somewhat of a niche hobby like video games are? Payola leading to a captive press isn't unique to video games. Even in the more distributed environment we see now, you see tons of tools (of the human variety) shilling, and mostly very cheaply, for various kinds of tools (of the plastic or metal variety) on YouTube. but what I think was unique about it wasthat the gaming audience melded itself around the payola being peddled. They liked it--because it reinforced what they already believed and the identity they were constructing for themselves. And of course, payola was one of their big rallying cries. Because this is part of the right-wing grift: it's not bad when we do it, but it's terrible when somebody else does it. Games we like were flying reviewers to resorts so they could hole up in a hotel room to play the game and then go party and drink their faces off, and that's fine, but the (untrue) suggestion that a feeeemale (note: as I understand it, Quinn identifies as nonbinary but didn't at the time, so the public perception was as such) might have done an ill-rationalized something (because Depression Quest was loving free) was beyond the pale.
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Nov 9, 2021 00:09
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packetmantis posted:You're really good at making long posts that don't say much other than "I don't understand this because it doesn't personally affect me." Maybe you should listen more and talk less. a. It's my thread b. I listened for 2 or 3 pages c. I admitted that maybe I had a blind spot and was open about that d. was this short enough? e. what's your problem?
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Nov 9, 2021 00:12
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BiggerBoat posted:I wasn't saying that NO video games have political stories or undertones or anything like that. In addition to the RL implications of sports games mentioned above, NBA 2K has a story mode, and there is a reasonably political reading of that story mode, even in the most basic "rookie to superstar" telling from the games in the early 2010s. That doesn't mean it's good at it, by any means (holy poo poo, the Spike Lee year was...it was...it was a thing), but there is a definite political stance taken--even if through inaction--by any means. There are also political points being made through its mechanics. Simulation is depiction, and picking what to simulate, what to depict, is editorial. For example: there's a pretty good argument, IMO, that the NBA free agency system is bad for players as providers of labor. NBA 2K does not explore this, and reifies the status quo by making game mechanics out of it. Though in more recent releases they've included really neat ways to evolve that stuff in MyGM mode--you can have the simulation just decide that rookie free agency happens sooner, that the salary cap goes up, etc. in a random way. But whether or not there's intent to it, the viewpoint being expressed by the game can't not be political. It's art, even if it's commercial art. TheArchimage posted:Perhaps a better way to put it is, "all stories are political". It would be hard to read politics into a game like Tetris that's 100% mechanics, but a story, even an intentionally threadbare one like Doom, is going to be political. Consider Doom 2016, with a strong anti-corporate message typified by the Doom Slayer aggressively shutting down any attempts by the corp guys to rationalize their decisions and actions. Or, as mentioned previously, Sonic and its environmentalist message. A sports game or puzzle game, sure, you might be hard-pressed to fit politics into that mold. But once you have a story, with good guys and bad guys, you have value judgements, and that means politics are going to seep in whether you want them or not. Here's the first paragraph of the story of the original Doom: quote:You're a marine, one of Earth's toughest, hardened in There's a political stance here, even if it's attenuated in the game (plus everything TheArchImage notes). There is an attitude being expressed here, and if you read the manual (which I did as a kid, I haven't seen that paragraph in 25 years and it is seared into my brain), you knew what it was. tracecomplete fucked around with this message at 00:21 on Nov 9, 2021 |
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Nov 9, 2021 00:17
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TheArchimage posted:ETA: Even consider many games in which violence is the only method you have of dealing with the problems and roadblocks you face, and the only way of dealing with a bad guy is to kill them. What kind of political message is that sending? Yeah, that's a thing I notice. Like its odd how often these open world games actually aren't that open because they require you kill a bunch of people to advance. And even on occasions where you ostensibly have a choice but you don't really because hey just end up dead anyway. I remember playing that Telltale Choose Your Own Adventure Walking Dead game and spending a lot of time just trying to find a way to save characters' lives. But like, you can't really. There's an end point and your path there can vary but you always get there in the end. And I don't think there's something deep and manipulative in that. I think when you say "political" some people interpret that as the art being propaganda or rhetoric. Its violent games being violent. But of course there's things you can see in the patterns of who dies or what happens to who or just why this stuff is popular and marketed in the first place. And that stuff's all politics.
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Nov 9, 2021 00:25
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VitalSigns posted:Also Super Mario not political? The plot is interdimensional travelers intervening in a military conflict between two states to restore the Mushroom Kingdom monarchy via a decapitation strike on the king of koopa This is only true if you take the live action movie or the Super Mario Bros. Super Show as canon, rather than Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island which shows Mario and Luigi as having always lived in the Mushroom Kingdom.
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Nov 9, 2021 00:27
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God drat the super Mario bros movie is so good.
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Nov 9, 2021 00:28
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How are u posted:God drat the super Mario bros movie is so good. But how political is it?
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Nov 9, 2021 00:49
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Twelve by Pies posted:But how political is it? 
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Nov 9, 2021 00:53
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Twelve by Pies posted:But how political is it? King Koopa is a business man turned dictator who overthrew a stable and functioning government (albeit a monarchy) and rules the Mushroom Kingdom through fear and oppression with a force of jackbooted internal security troopas at his bidding, and a pair of working class heroes lead an uprising that ultimately throws down his fascist empire in a matter of days. Sounds kinda political to me 
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Nov 9, 2021 00:53
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Twelve by Pies posted:This is only true if you take the live action movie or the Super Mario Bros. Super Show as canon, rather than Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island which shows Mario and Luigi as having always lived in the Mushroom Kingdom. this seems like a retcon cause in the first mario games, mario and luigi were supposed to be plumbers from brooklyn. also they're both italian. How are u posted:God drat the super Mario bros movie is so good. unironically, yes. i initially hated it as a kid cause it was pretty much nothing like the source material. but once i realized how nearly impossible a faithful live action mario adaptation would be, i softened my position on the film greatly. honestly, if it didn't have the mario moniker attached, it would have been a perfectly fine B level sci fi flick
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Nov 9, 2021 02:46
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TheArchimage posted:ETA: Even consider many games in which violence is the only method you have of dealing with the problems and roadblocks you face, and the only way of dealing with a bad guy is to kill them. What kind of political message is that sending? I just wanted to 3rd this as by far the most common and pervasive political message in video games. And if you don't think that's political that's just because you're so deluged with it that it seems normal. But if you were a pacifist you might see it as shockingly offensive.
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Nov 9, 2021 02:55
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Mr Interweb posted:this seems like a retcon cause in the first mario games, mario and luigi were supposed to be plumbers from brooklyn. also they're both italian. Before he was a plumber he was a carpenter. Like Jesus so still pretty political.
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Nov 9, 2021 03:11
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BiggerBoat posted:I wasn't saying that NO video games have political stories or undertones or anything like that. It's not that every video game is explicitly covering the sorts of topics that typically get grouped under the header of "politics," such as race relations or specific philosophies. It's that "politics" is a much broader category than it's typically given credit for. Any creative work is coming from a specific perspective, one way or the other, and that perspective always says something. Even if it's obvious, transparent, goofy, or deliberately facile, it's still there. As such, you can't "keep politics out of [video games/tabletop games/comic books/movies/cartoons/toys/etc.]." There's always something being said, one way or the other.
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Nov 9, 2021 04:13
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It's also fine to just enjoy media at face value and not try and read deeper meanings into it. There isn't anything wrong with that, I think everyone does that sometimes to an extent, though that in itself is political because you're more likely to be able to not read politics into it if you're privileged to not have to think about those kinds of things. This isn't meant to be insulting or accusatory, but it's just how the world is. Like, as an example, there's talk about whether Zelda might be playable in Breath of the Wild 2. She probably won't be, because she hasn't been playable in any mainline Zelda title (side games like Cadence of Hyrule and the Hyrule Warriors games are exceptions of course). As a dude, I can kind of sit back and not really care and go "Well Link has always been the hero, as long as the game is good it doesn't really matter." It doesn't affect me. To a young girl who really likes Zelda and wants to be able to play as her, it's a different story and can be really disappointing, it's much harder for her to just go "Oh well, it's no big deal." And as other games have become more inclusive of race and sex, it does feel like a step backwards for a major franchise like Zelda to go "No girls allowed." And I don't think it's an issue of "the creators of Zelda are misogynist" because I don't think that's true (it could be, but I don't have evidence of that), but it could be due in part to how media is. I watch a lot of tokusatsu (read: "Japanese Power Rangers") and in Kamen Rider and Super Sentai, there are characters who are women, but those characters are almost always "one step behind" the male characters. They're not treated poorly, but are rarely given the spotlight or allowed to be cool and awesome. This is because these shows are targeted towards boys and while they don't mind if they get girl viewers, they welcome it, the show isn't really "for" them. And the same is true for magical girl shows like Precure; it's meant for young girls, and while there's sometimes male characters, they're never a huge focus and don't do much. This isn't exclusive to Japan of course, I put "one step behind" in quotes because it's the phrase Paul Dini used when he talked about the cancellation of Young Justice. The executives flat out said they didn't want too many girls watching because they didn't buy toys like the boys did, so the female characters should get less focus and not be allowed to do as much. So the role of women in society, how corporations feel about how women consume media, all these things are present in things like Zelda. And again, it's fine to just play the games and not think about that, and enjoy them just as they are. Because the games are about evil pig man mad at those meddling kids for ruining his plans so he magically becomes an immortal spirit to chase down their descendants. But what it is, is influenced by politics, it reflects the beliefs of its creators. It's possible to read too much into it, but I don't think it's wrong to say that it's kind of disappointing that the creators of Zelda feel that she shouldn't be allowed to be an active part of the games that have her name in the title. Mr Interweb posted:this seems like a retcon cause in the first mario games, mario and luigi were supposed to be plumbers from brooklyn. also they're both italian. Yeah they were specifically from New York according to Mario Bros., but when the series made the jump to Super Mario Bros. it was decided that Mario was a citizen of the Mushroom Kingdom. So the live action movie/Super Show didn't really invent that "from real world Brooklyn" thing, but it does mean that for every Mario game where the Mushroom Kingdom is a thing, that it isn't their origin. Mario Bros. can just be its own weird side universe, like Donkey Kong and Wrecking Crew.
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Nov 9, 2021 05:00
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Twelve by Pies posted:Yeah they were specifically from New York according to Mario Bros., but when the series made the jump to Super Mario Bros. it was decided that Mario was a citizen of the Mushroom Kingdom. So the live action movie/Super Show didn't really invent that "from real world Brooklyn" thing, but it does mean that for every Mario game where the Mushroom Kingdom is a thing, that it isn't their origin. Mario Bros. can just be its own weird side universe, like Donkey Kong and Wrecking Crew. I had forgotten that all the bricks and plants in the original SMB were people transformed by evil turtle magic.
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Nov 9, 2021 05:31
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Killer robot posted:I had forgotten that all the bricks and plants in the original SMB were people transformed by evil turtle magic. 
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Nov 9, 2021 10:49
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Never realized how much Turt looks like Colin Robinson from What We Do in the Shadows. Obviously everyone in the Senate is an energy vampire.
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Nov 9, 2021 15:53
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Extremely handsome, but somehow able to be evil in every way legislatively. I wonder who he will appoint as his successor?
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Nov 9, 2021 16:02
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Why would he need a successor, as far as anyone knows his phylactery is still intact.
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Nov 9, 2021 18:58
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Nonsense posted:Extremely handsome, but somehow able to be evil in every way legislatively. I wonder who he will appoint as his successor? We already know that one, by the way. Remember the district attorney who let the cops who murdered Breonna Taylor walk away scot free? It’s gonna be him. He’s apparently been McConnell’s apprentice for years and McConnell has been grooming him for higher office with the intent on taking his place as Kentucky’s evilest senator in the event that he should ever die.
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Nov 9, 2021 20:42
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Twelve by Pies posted:Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island which shows Mario and Luigi as having always lived in the Mushroom Kingdom. Which is obviously ludicrous
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Nov 9, 2021 20:58
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nine-gear crow posted:he should ever die. good thing the senate is all liches now
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Nov 9, 2021 21:36
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Thank god the worst mod on the site was here to protect a fragile boomer from mild criticism in ~*his thread*~ lmao.
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Nov 10, 2021 04:11
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Sometimes when I feel like posting I just lie down until the feeling goes away.
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Nov 10, 2021 05:01
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DarklyDreaming posted:It's because way back in 2014 most of these people would hold ostensibly leftist positions on weed/climate change/healthcare. They just happened to be massive racists and sexists who had a visceral reaction to anyone who didn't look like them. But with Bush gone, a lot of conservatives (especially younger ones) increasingly portrayed themselves as rational incarnations of pure reason only interested in "facts" and "logic." And it turned out being an atheist didn't prevent you from having lovely politics and/or views of other human beings, so tons of people who ostensibly found themselves on "the left" back in the day ended up in the ranks of reactionaries.
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Nov 10, 2021 09:02
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packetmantis posted:Thank god the worst mod on the site was here to protect a fragile boomer from mild criticism in ~*his thread*~ lmao. Hey, how about this: Either shut the gently caress up about your probe or you can eat a 30 day for this glorious shitpost. Either actually discuss stuff and debate or lurk more If you have a problem, take it to QCS, not the Right Wing Media thread. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 15:04 on Nov 10, 2021 |
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Nov 10, 2021 15:02
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packetmantis posted:Thank god the worst mod on the site was here to protect a fragile boomer from mild criticism in ~*his thread*~ lmao. You're a dipshit and BiggerBoat is a great poster who created a nine year, 3000+ page thread for you to talk poo poo in. Go away.
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Nov 10, 2021 17:12
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tracecomplete posted:There's a political stance here, even if it's attenuated in the game (plus everything TheArchImage notes). There is an attitude being expressed here, and if you read the manual (which I did as a kid, I haven't seen that paragraph in 25 years and it is seared into my brain), you knew what it was. This is incredible, I had no idea. I grew up on Fallout as a fifteen year old and it took me a bit to understand why the Vault Dwellers didn't like my friend Marcus.  But everything is political. Some times more and sometimes less but even if you look at a game like Fortnite it's combat over limited resources. Halo has strong environmental tones. No poo poo, video games are political. They’re conservative.
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Nov 10, 2021 17:58
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| # ? May 23, 2024 11:34 |
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Call of Duty was already skating on the edge of poo poo before they hired Oliver North and “Press F to pay respects”. Part of why I haven’t bought one in 10 years.
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Nov 10, 2021 18:07
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