No shit, I am less likely to pick up a game if it's politically charged.
Regardless its may not contain political theme, but problem that this may comes out still playing as remaining (probably symbolic American Nationalist) soldiers of now extinct nation vs most like Anarchists and Warlords in post-apocalyptic Washington DC. lol
Can't blame them. Political divisiveness is higher than it has been in a long time and we have seen games take huge sales hits from even implied political soapboxing.
Ignoring political problems in media doesn't help anything. Politics affects every element of life, people should accept this and open up to it
Well too bad your games make a fucking political statement regardless and it's a bit of an odd one. Most of the time games that try not to have any end up being really confused or bland.
Please leave politics out of video games its not like I fucking get enough of it everywhere I go already
You are right but aren't video games a form of escape from reality?
At least, that is what I use them from.
One person can only take so much of reality, which includes politics.
The moment a game decides to shove any sort of modern day political shitcockery into it, it becomes a fucking mess to discuss about it anywhere that's not already the fanbase's place.
Just look at any BFV comments section that's not posted in the fanbase's places and try not to want to gouge your eyes out.
Many video games are comments on reality and experiences. So that probably boils down to interpretation
so a game called The Division is ironically bland and as inoffensive as possible. Cool.
When it comes down to business it's fairly obvious, any strong open political stance is going to lose customers. However if you look at video games as a term of artistic work there is certainly some room for political ideas or messages to speak. That's not to say all video games should or have to include political messages however as we see this medium develop we're definately going to see a lot games which will feature a political message in them.
Currently a lot of videos games to make greater statements about the world we live and and extended messages beyond just the world of the game (INFRA comes to mind as a commentary on the state of infrastructure maintenance and neglect) so I think it's natural we're going to see video games which also incorporate political messages.
The more subtle the better it is imo.
Besides a lot of games I play, either don't have any comments, it's subtle or I am just dumb.
Don't know what messages Zelda, Mario and Pokemon would have tbh.
But eitherway I just don't want it shoved down my throat, if it's there but not in my throat like most games nowadays, then that is fine, however if it's in my throat then yes I will care.
Don't take this the wrong way but a lot of American politics are being put into Games lately, I'm not American, I don't care nor understand the way your politics are over there.
If there is any politics I wanna care about, it's about my Country, and even then unless it's extremely serious, I don't care.
You might think my opinion is dumb and it probably is, but after the last few years, it's just so fucking hard to go a day without having Politics mentioned.
Most of us see enough of politics every time we open a web browser. I rarely want to see it when I'm playing games and trying to relax.
Ah yes, "politics", like when people complain about LGBT characters. Love reading the comments when something like that happens. Anyone remember the trailer for The Last of Us 2?
I mean it depends how well it fits into the story or overall themes of the game (and how well it is done)
Let's say an anti-war message in a game set in a post-apocalyptic world fit because a war is central to the game's setting
But if it doesn't, like say having a pro-equal rights message in a farming game it just feels hamfisted or insulting
And finally if it conflicts with the story entirely, like a few games having a fps character who condemns the enemy extremism despite having a body count in the thousands, it just comes across as baffling
most politics should stay out of games because politics require some amount of nuance and most games have the subtlety of a brick in the face.
That's not all there is to politics/ political media
depends on the kind of politics. the word doesn't refer to just trump and CNN, it's also what you see a lot of with x-men, for example. there's discrimination, radicalization, terrorism, in a superficial and family-friendly package of course, but still, it's politics. the GTA series delves into a ton of politics and so far, that's only made me love it more. the problem as i see it isn't getting political, it's just being bad at it
Always find it odd when people say to leave politics out of video games, something that people never asked of film or TV or music. And then the same people want video games to taken seriously as art.
I suppose most video games generally suffer from bad and hamfisted storytelling, often with unrelatable protagonists and pantomime villians.
The first mistake is thinking that art and storytelling can be apolitical. At best they can do is avoid trending topics.
Although, yeah, I can see why it is bad for business. Big budget games are made with mass appeal in mind.
I believe if a game is going to have politics it would be best to have that be the theme of the game or at the very least be relevant to the plot,just putting politics randomly with no reason to a video game isnt going to make it much good.
If the game has a blatant or intended political motivation behind it, then sure, whatever. That's your beef. But going out of one's way to do something controversial involving hot political topics in hopes of bolstering sales is, truth be told, stupidly reckless. This actually backfired on Wolfenstein 2 with the whole "punch a Nazi" marketing campaign that will probably end up more remembered than the actual content of the game itself.
Nah, I want politics to be outta TV/Music/Films where it's not needed.
Not every one of course, just the shows/songs/movies where it isn't needed, for example, shows set in another World.
'Being political' doesn't mean the same thing today as it did like, 10 years ago imo. Some of the things the far right will label as 'political pandering' or 'virtue signaling' is fucking insane. They make nearly every game, every piece of media, heavily politicized even if its mostly an external influence.
Because of that, worrying about keeping politics out of muh vidyer gaems is just stupid because every piece of media is going to represent art/society/politics in some way, you simply can't avoid that. If you do want to stick to mindless video game entertainment fun, theres plenty of titles out there where the political ideas are minimized enough to ignore them. In fact in the VAST majority of AAA titles, including this one (I can only assume) it's so sanitized that it doesn't matter at all, only if you're looking for it.
Wanting to punch Nazis used to be the most uncontroversial thing ever though. I can imagine a developer that has miraculously not paid attention to politics in the last 5 years just using Nazis as the default enemy and then being accused of pushing an agenda.
Tom Clancy's The Division refuses to throw Trump under the bus.
Trump. The guy that we are pretty damn sure is a puppet for the Kremlin.
This is literally a Tom Clancy novel playing out in real life and you aren't going to capitalize on this? It is a plotline so far fetched that we would have considered it jumping the shark just a few short years ago. Now it is reality and you don't want to play with that? Really?
I didn't even think about it that way, but you're absolutely right. Capitalizing on the current political climate in a Tom Clancy story just seems perfect, in fact I would say it seems completely natural if it weren't for the 'interesting' political state America is in at the moment.
So this could really be a case of wanting to avoid politics actively hampering your artistic merit, which regardless of your stance on politics in media is pretty damn harmful to video games as a burgeoning artform.
I think one important thing to mention is gameplay is an important part of having politics or even just a good story in your game or not. In a game like Division where its an ARPG focused heavily on numbers and is willing to have bullet sponges, I don't think thats exactly the best spot to put politics, save for maybe some background and world building details. In Deus Ex, a game with gameplay being far more grounded in reality than Division, thats a great spot to put in a story that has social or political charge behind the writing. If the player is being ripped out of the story by clashing gameplay, or vise versa then that's a terrific way to sabotage your own game.
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