It’s more that when the writing is bad something is perceived as “political”, as the insert of whatever political messaging is being used comes out of nowhere and smacks the player like a cudgel. That’s what most gamers have a problem with, obviously there’s a loud minority that rage about stupid shit like Jesse Faden being too masculine. But that’s not what most people are talking about.
Games need to tackle these issues head on and fully integrate them into the world, not just tack on preachy dialog that doesn’t make sense within the wider game world.
FF16 is blatantly about slavery and no one really complained, it’s not exactly peak fiction, but they at least had everything contained within the world. FF7 is the same but with fossil fuels and much better writing.
New Vegas is the best example, it’s simply written well and gives the player agency.
Death Stranding did a great job of both integrating it’s themes directly into the world, and also tackling them head on without any remorse.
Helldivers is so ludicrously full on and absolutely dripping with it’s pro fascist ideology that everyone knows what they’re getting into from the intro video, and then the game starts adding texture and “are we the baddies” energy straight away.
Fucking Disco Elysium is near universally praised by the wider gaming audience, and I don’t even think I need to explain how that one is political.
It’s the same reason why most ideologically driven media is cringe as fuck. Christian media being a prime example, it’s contrived slop that doesn’t make sense within its own story. Like God’s Not Dead and it’s illogical legal system built on feels and Shapiro logic.
Who remembers the weird pro-life Doctor Who episode? That was bizarre and out of place. The characters stopped acting like themselves for the sake of whatever message it wanted to get across. It just felt really out of place.
The Last of Us Part 2, to label the most controversial example, had periods of good and bad writing, but focusing in on the “violence bad” part of it’s messaging, it completely missed the mark. Giving the characters names that they shout was just hilarious, and having Ellie repeatedly kill dogs whilst Abbie pets them was just so hamfisted. Then making the gameplay violent and fun which just divorced it further.
TLDR: Gamers People love politics in video games media, they hate hamfisted preaching in video games media. Especially when it doesn’t make sense in the crafted world
The drama with helldivers was because fascists saw the over the top campy depiction of fascism and unironically agreed with it. They had no idea they were the ones being lampooned. You should look at the reactions when they found out the devs were actually not fascists. They were distraught.
Please could you provide some examples? I’ve legitimately never seen someone upset at the devs for not literally being fascists.
If I have to go out of my way to find this, I’m assuming it falls under the “loud” minority group. I’m sure these people exist, but it’d surprise me if they made up a significant amount of the over 12 million players.
Edit: Had a further look, there seems to be more people complaining about people taking it literally than people actually taking it literally. I did find like 3 Reddit posts, but all had 0 upvotes and like 30 comments telling them they’re wrong and stupid
Specifically starship troopers, but you know what kickstarted that discussion again. Also a bunch of Twitter discourse. Reddit is generally left adjacent. You won’t find too much fash shit there.
Sorry man, but that’s a relatively milk toast YouTube video with 81k views. Definitely very right leaning, but outright fascist is a bit much. She clearly has no media literacy or is deliberately misleading people.
Her latest video got only 11k views, and most of her titles look like some right wing grifter shit like “Ben Shapiro SILENCES
Candace Owens, CANCELS Debate?”.
And I’m sure that right wing grifters will use this for content, that’s what they do.
I wouldn’t say that shows anything more than a loud minority. Honestly 81k views is lower than I expected and more proves my point
It’s more that when the writing is bad something is perceived as “political”, as the insert of whatever political messaging is being used comes out of nowhere and smacks the player like a cudgel. That’s what most gamers have a problem with, obviously there’s a loud minority that rage about stupid shit like Jesse Faden being too masculine. But that’s not what most people are talking about.
Games need to tackle these issues head on and fully integrate them into the world, not just tack on preachy dialog that doesn’t make sense within the wider game world.
FF16 is blatantly about slavery and no one really complained, it’s not exactly peak fiction, but they at least had everything contained within the world. FF7 is the same but with fossil fuels and much better writing.
New Vegas is the best example, it’s simply written well and gives the player agency.
Death Stranding did a great job of both integrating it’s themes directly into the world, and also tackling them head on without any remorse.
Helldivers is so ludicrously full on and absolutely dripping with it’s pro fascist ideology that everyone knows what they’re getting into from the intro video, and then the game starts adding texture and “are we the baddies” energy straight away.
Fucking Disco Elysium is near universally praised by the wider gaming audience, and I don’t even think I need to explain how that one is political.
It’s the same reason why most ideologically driven media is cringe as fuck. Christian media being a prime example, it’s contrived slop that doesn’t make sense within its own story. Like God’s Not Dead and it’s illogical legal system built on feels and Shapiro logic.
Who remembers the weird pro-life Doctor Who episode? That was bizarre and out of place. The characters stopped acting like themselves for the sake of whatever message it wanted to get across. It just felt really out of place.
The Last of Us Part 2, to label the most controversial example, had periods of good and bad writing, but focusing in on the “violence bad” part of it’s messaging, it completely missed the mark. Giving the characters names that they shout was just hilarious, and having Ellie repeatedly kill dogs whilst Abbie pets them was just so hamfisted. Then making the gameplay violent and fun which just divorced it further.
TLDR:
GamersPeople love politics invideo gamesmedia, they hate hamfisted preaching invideo gamesmedia. Especially when it doesn’t make sense in the crafted worldThe drama with helldivers was because fascists saw the over the top campy depiction of fascism and unironically agreed with it. They had no idea they were the ones being lampooned. You should look at the reactions when they found out the devs were actually not fascists. They were distraught.
Please could you provide some examples? I’ve legitimately never seen someone upset at the devs for not literally being fascists.
If I have to go out of my way to find this, I’m assuming it falls under the “loud” minority group. I’m sure these people exist, but it’d surprise me if they made up a significant amount of the over 12 million players.
Edit: Had a further look, there seems to be more people complaining about people taking it literally than people actually taking it literally. I did find like 3 Reddit posts, but all had 0 upvotes and like 30 comments telling them they’re wrong and stupid
https://youtu.be/mj19jSHxtoA
Specifically starship troopers, but you know what kickstarted that discussion again. Also a bunch of Twitter discourse. Reddit is generally left adjacent. You won’t find too much fash shit there.
Sorry man, but that’s a relatively milk toast YouTube video with 81k views. Definitely very right leaning, but outright fascist is a bit much. She clearly has no media literacy or is deliberately misleading people.
Her latest video got only 11k views, and most of her titles look like some right wing grifter shit like “Ben Shapiro SILENCES Candace Owens, CANCELS Debate?”.
And I’m sure that right wing grifters will use this for content, that’s what they do.
I wouldn’t say that shows anything more than a loud minority. Honestly 81k views is lower than I expected and more proves my point