I can think of some obvious examples to start with, but my subtle but insidious nominee is Fable III. Fittingly for a pretentious grifter like Molyneux, the game requires you to raise a specific amount of gold or your kingdom is destroyed and you get a bad ending. The goalposts are moved by the game if you raise money in ways it doesn’t approve of, and it is simply impossible to reach the fundraising goal in any way that isn’t at least Enlightened Centrist levels of evil, the kind that lanyard-wearing neoliberals giggle about. That’s right, you need to be at least this evil or your kingdom is destroyed. So deep and really makes you think about the hard decisions that are made by the ruling class, doesn’t it? :zizek:
The Last of Us 2
Neil Druckmann was raised in Israel and has stated that the game’s “cycle of violence” theme is modeled after his understanding of the Israel-Palestine conflict. The game both-sides the conflict between the main factions, making you switch perspectives between the two main characters repeatedly.
The ending of that game for me was a drudge. I was invested so I kept playing, but emotionally I just wanted it to be over and I had a feeling very similar to watching someone self destruct their life and knowing you can’t stop them. I felt pity and sadness and frustration. Apparently that was not the intended effect:
“I landed on this emotional idea of, can we, over the course of the game, make you feel this intense hate that is universal in the same way that unconditional love is universal?” Druckmann told the Post. “This hate that people feel has the same kind of universality. You hate someone so much that you want them to suffer in the way they’ve made someone you love suffer.”
I suspect that some players, if they consciously clock the parallels at all, will think The Last of Us Part II is taking a balanced and fair perspective on that conflict, humanizing and exposing flaws in both sides of its in-game analogues. But as someone who grew up in Israel, I recognized a familiar, firmly Israeli way of seeing and explaining the conflict which tries to appear evenhanded and even enlightened, but in practice marginalizes Palestinian experience in a manner that perpetuates a horrific status quo.
“cycle of violence” theme is modeled after his understanding of the Israel-Palestine conflict
understanding
:chesus:
The Civ series is basically Whig History: The Game.
I’ll add one more for now. I will never forget that back in Civilization II, the corruption mechanic that most civilizations had to deal with in the modern era could be bypassed simply by choosing “democracy” as the game describes it over its competitors. We never have corruption in US-style “democracy” do we? :amerikkka-clap: Also, inventing capitalism has absolutely no downsides and is only a boon, though to be fair all capitalism does on its own is allow you to convert your people’s labor into additional money which checks out. :marx-hi:
Rise of Nations lets you pick between “consensus” (Republic, Democracy and Capitalism :agony:) and “totalitarian” (Despotism, Monarchy and Socialism) governments, which give you different bonuses. This is how the game describes both:
“Consensus governments are dedicated to the economical and scientific development of a nation. Their Patriots offer production and defense bonuses and provide healing to nearby units and buildings.”
“Totalitarian governments are devoted to military development and warfare, benefiting nations fielding lots of units and often waging wars. Their Patriots are oriented to offensive warfare and always give the benefits of a Supply Wagon (eliminate attrition and provide supply for artillery units).”
Company of Heroes 2 which portrays the USSR as evil for conscripting its people to fight in die in a “pointless” war to… checks notes …defend itself from an army hellbent on waging a war of extermination against it. But that’s just low-hanging fruit.
For something more subtle, I’d say most games that lament the “Evils of Humanity” feel pretty reactionary. The idea that something bad is inherent to humans (war, crime, bigotry, corruption, etc) and we just have to learn to accept it, without any other investigation into the matter. One game that comes to mind is Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux where
spoiler
the new ending has the main character turn immortal and get stuck into an endless cycle of needing to purge the Dark World over and over again because humanity cannot stop its self-destructive tendencies. Keep in mind that this is supposed to be an allegory for climate change.
I mean, the “worst” are the ones that have natsec money behind them and are insidious propaganda tools, see Call of Duty. The only reason there shouldn’t be a push to have that series halted completely is that it would be incredibly alienating to normal people. Otherwise, there’s rich history of outwardly reactionary games to choose from. Freedom Fighters is Red Dawn if it didn’t suck. 2044 AD is literally the femnazi game.
My personal least favorite’s probably Ronaldo’s ending in Devil Survivor 2. The writer’s brains are so steeped in liberal ideology. In this ending, the MC uses demon shit to create heaven on earth. Not “angels strip you of humanity and you worship YHVH all day”. They outright call it a paradise where everyone lives for each other, where people live for each other, basically skipping to whatever would come after communism. It’s presented with being on the same level as the ending where some blueblood loser (who starts off with magical shit) rules over a world of constant violence and death. The good ending is restoring Tokyo to the way it was, except your friends are personally better off in specific situations, I guess.
Sounds like how the most recent Evangelion series ended. :desolate:
well at least that has an excuse
the excuse being that they were always gonna be shit, and existed because of a combination of Anno’s hate and desire for more tokusatsu merch. Sure, they were cynical and empty, but don’t you want Anno to own the original Kamen Rider Cyclone?
I figured the old endings did enough, but even they weren’t enough to shut up the “Rei is the perfect waifu because her virginity can be taken over and over again and you can reset her virginity with each clone” terrifyingly creepy members of the fandom that existed even back then.
Riskiest click I’ve ever seen on Hexbear. :bugs-no:
ok understandable
Been thinking a lot about the ideology of Chess recently. The game goes back to ancient India and was designed to teach young men about army tactics. So in a way it was a bit like how COD prepares young men to join the military.
It changed into it’s modern form in Spain, where it traveled with Islam and was adopted by the spanish. I believe the original pieces represented infantry (pawns), cavalry, chariots(bishops) and elephants (rooks). The “queen” was then male and considered the “advisor” and moved like the king. Just as Isabela became the most powerful queen in the last 500 years of Europe, the advisor was changed to queen and the became the most powerful piece. Pawns also got their ability to become queens, which, being called “promotion” may be a reference to the original role as “advisor” but may also reflect a king’s ability to marry anyone and therefore make them a powerful queen. It was also during this time that the diagonal piece was named the “bishop,” representing the power of the church and flanking the monarchy, closer even than the knights to the king and queen.
This is all to be expected, I guess. What I find insidious about the game is simply the “black vs. white” color scheme. Could it have been lost on the Spanish that their skin color was lighter than the Muslims they fought? Is it lost on modern players that the white pieces are superior to the black (white has the advantage of going first and therefore is more likely to win)?
Another subtly insidious aspect is the widespread understanding that the computer knows better than humans. People who are good at chess are thought of as smart, therefore, even smarter is an AI that can beat the best players. Because the rules of chess are simple and the goal of checkmate is concrete the AI has an exact purpose and can be trusted to seek that purpose. The AI is therefore “always right.” This might produce in players a habit of deferring to computer generated models, forgetting that in real life the purpose and limits of a computer program can vary wildly and are set by it’s creator
This is all to be expected, I guess. What I find insidious about the game is simply the “black vs. white” color scheme. Could it have been lost on the Spanish that their skin color was lighter than the Muslims they fought? Is it lost on modern players that the white pieces are superior to the black (white has the advantage of going first and therefore is more likely to win)?
Careful with applying modern American interpretations of race to medieval Spanish history. Ain’t very historical materialist.
It’d be a good research topic though.
chess
Monarchist “great man” trash.
XCOM: Chimera Squad. 👏 More 👏 xeno 👏 SWAT 👏 teams 👏
All problems can be solved by kicking in the door guns blazing. Don’t have any evidence? Don’t worry, if you bust in and kill everyone, maybe you’ll find some!
We’ve fought long and bitterly against our subjugation. Now that humanity has access to literal space-age technology, we can grow as a united civilization to great heights!
Wait, it’s just the same as before but with aliens? Okay then…
Bioshock Infinite.
The city of Columbia was built as a haven for the ruling class of 1800s America. Complete with a white underclass and, of course, slaves. It was built by a scientist who discovered a new technology and was to serve as a floating World’s Fair showing the world how great and advanced America is. Pretty okay premise if done right. Many opportunities to talk about real history and draw comparisons to today. The city is politically divided among several factions, which isn’t a fleshed out mechanic in the game due to development issues. But you have a cult that worships John Wilkes Booth and hates Lincoln for ending slavery. You have people who are hyper religious and treat the Founders as religious prophets. You have normal upper middle-class people who are tuned out to the politics. You also have the revolutionary group Vox Populi who are trying to overthrow Columbia’s government and install actual democracy. Again, some great ideas in there for good stories based in real history. But then somewhere towards the end of the game it makes the Vox Populi just as bad as the imperialist, racists, sexists, zealots. When you start the game there is a couple being physically abused for miscegenation, in front of a cheering crowd. Yet the black lady trying to stop it is bad because her and other workers killed some cops and are pushing the middle class white people out of the city. It’s total “both extremes are really the same” kind of thing. And to make the revolutionary leader bad they write her to kill a baby or something? It’s been a while I can’t remember if she tries to kill Elizabeth or just Comstock. She was also going to use Columbia’s weapons and invade NYC to liberate people on land too. But that’s bad because NYC in the late 1800s/early 1900s was good.
Some people might bring up the development troubles as a reason the story got so simplified into horseshoe theory. But there are early gameplay videos from before the troubles started that show Vox Populi implying they want to sexually assault Elizabeth. So they meant for them to be bad from the beginning. The only real thing that was different was that Comstock was supposed to me more nuanced. So the people’s revolution of communists were pretty much always a political cartoon and they had to jam the right wing factions into one guy. Instead of getting the subtleties of “cleanse all the immigrants” from many different factions, we get it from one guy. Thanks 2k/Irrational.
Ken Levine is a fucking hack and always has been. Keep him away from games.
I’m surprised no one here has mentioned Assassin’s Creed yet. All conflict in history stems from two competing ideological sects of callous murderers who wanton manipulate populations into doing their bidding and for some reason one side in this conflict is supposed to be the moral superior of the other. Also some of the supplemental material is batshit and basically just a way for the devs to denote certain historical figures as good or bad depending on what organization they belonged to. All other conflicts are secondary to the overarching philosophical differences of two sects competing for magical thingies.
At the same time those games have probably the most sympathetic portrayal of Marx in a western piece of fiction, so there’s that.
they made marx a lib which is argubly worse
Yeah, they made him a weird pacifist utopian who was against revolution
Tbf I think he was criticizing propaganda of the deed anarchists, it’s a big factor in the split of the first internationale.
Right, a lib.
…no, banishing anarchists from the first internationale didn’t make him a lib
Intensely lib, in a manner that has not been successfully conveyed until Ubisoft got their hands on him.
You guys really haven’t read a lot of Marx’s correspondences, have you?
I’ve been replaying Mass Effect and there’s literally a side quest where a bunch of biotic “terrorists” have taken a chairman from the Alliance hostage. Specifically because he voted against reparations for L2 biotics, being an L2 biotic requires implants which cause insanity, mental disability, and crippling pain. So Shepherd is literally sent in as an agent of capital to kill them, and you don’t have anyway to express any sympathy to the biotics. The paragon path is literally just telling the biotic leader that you won’t kill him if he lets the chairman go, and whooooa as soon as you convince the leader to stand down, the chairman has a change of heart. This stood out to me cause it’s just a small side quest, but the series both sides genocide and has you actually commit genocide in 2. The Batarians, despite the series trying their best to paint an entire species as xenophobic slaver/terrorists, are victim to multiple war crimes committed by the player character. The game has created a situation where there are ‘good’ aliens (the council races) and ‘bad’ aliens (batarians/vorcha/krogan) and the lives of the ‘bad’ aliens matter significantly less than the good aliens. You get hordes of vorcha and batarians to kill, and dialogue and story reinforces the fact that it’s okay. There might as well be calipers in the game. It’s honestly kind of fucked to play through.
Mass Effect has also always been ridiculously US centric and thus pro US military when it comes to depictions of humanity as a whole. It goes for all races, but if you’re a civilian you’re usually depicted as either useless or just conniving evil, and we should listen more to the military. Take the council or Udina, they’re all just useless pencil pushers who want PROOF that something is happening before they want to act, luckily we have Colin Powell… I mean Admiral Anderson there to back you up.
This isn’t even touching the ideological nightmare that is the spectres.
The SpecTRe program is so good for storytelling purposes as it gives you a reason to do whatever you want while also giving you a strict mission guideline to do.
But it’s not a great thing to have when you really think about it.
Punching the reporter is framed as cool/justified. Twice.
Mass Effect always had a “screw Batarians, am I right?” attitude, framing them as both pathetic and yet vaguely menacing. Real ur-fascist hours.
Mass effect is reactionary trash. The entire premise of the game is that you’re an ultra-cop who can do anything he wants and fuck the law. The whole Krogan genocide is a great replacement narrative.
The way the Batarians have been portrayed, from the very start, has always rubbed me the wrong way. Shepard, who is portrayed as a force for good (even his Renegade path has him framed as “crude but effective”), derisively tries to justify the Batarians being outcasts when talking with a terrorist leader speaking about their grievances. Even the goody-goody Paragon options doesn’t have anything to convey sympathy. Then comes Mass Effect 2 where Zaeed, the veteran of a fucking PMC, is portrayed as having a moral compass since he refused to let Batarians (“Goddamn Terrorists”) join the Blue Suns when he lead them (as opposed to his greedy partner). They’re so obviously a stand-in for [designated bad guy in the global periphery], even incorporating some of the DPRK (being a “Hermit Kingdom” and all).
Also, another thing about ME is that class conflict seems to never be brought to the forefront, despite the Galaxy being a crapsacharine neoliberal hellhole where corporations and their mercenary companies run amok, and poverty is still an everpresent problem. It’s effort to be a “dark” science fiction setting just end up making it Capitalist Realist as fuck.
The more the Batarians get genocided the nicer they become lol
It’s heavily implied in 3 that they’ll become good aliens after their entire civilisation was destroyed.
100% true, they literally get subjugated to goodness, which is literally what they did to the Krogan.
“I’m sure the Palestinians will stop hating us once we bomb/displace/starve them this time”
I recently played C&C Generals, thought the ideology there isn’t “subtle but insidious”, but rather just hilariously blatant.
Dr anthrax is the best character ever made
Red Alert is pretty bad as the Soviet Union gets hit hard with the villain bat.
Outer Worlds is also bad. Present a capitalist hellscape with anarchist and communist factions, and everything other than mild succdem stuff fails.
The Soviet campaign in Red Alert turned me!
I mean, they’re the more fun faction, but they are also depicted as imperialists who love killing civilians.
Also, it makes Einstein into a lib.
True.
the USSR in red alert is a villain in the same way Dr Robotnik is
sure they’re the bad guys but like, they absolutely rock
Red Alert 1 having Stalin as some expansionist warmonger is hilarious if you actually, you know, read history.
They should have gone for Trotsky instead. Even if that would be a hyperbole of his ideology, he would at least fit more.
Minecraft’s villager and pillager colonial mechanics is weird.
Also, having an entire race of long-nosed greedy merchants is kinda sussy considering Notch’s political views
I think he was gone and the dev team had disavowed him before that feature was released
Dishonored.
Don’t get me wrong, I love all the Dishonored games (Death of the Outsider is my favourite), but there is a deeply liberal undercurrent to the series.
Both mainline games are about getting rid of the bad aristocratic tyrant and replacing them with the “good” and “rightful” heir to the throne of Dunwall. The most telling part of this is the conflict between the Abbey of the Everyman and any supernatural covens/gangs like the Bridgemoore witches or Daud’s Whalers.
Both the Whalers and the witches have specific complaints within society; the Whalers are comprised of former gang members and disenfranchised labourers radicalised by the inequality in Dunwall, whereas the Bridgemoore witches are a radical feminist movement. Conversely the Abbey of the Everyman is a calvinist cult that carries out brutal crackdowns of anyone perceived to be a witch. Despite this the Abbey of the Everyman is consistently framed as being terrible but still the lesser evil. The Overseers essentially fall into the “woke” liberal defence of policing, “Yeah sure they’re bad, torturing and murdering randos and all that. But what are you gonna do if a witch turns up and starts killing people? That’s why we need more Overseers and they need to be increasingly militarised.”
When Delilah Copperspoon takes control of Dunwall and thus the Empire of the Isles, the Bridgemoore witches begin committing mass murder on the streets because… I don’t know they’re the baddies.
Time and time again the series shows any attempt to change the status quo resulting in pointless bloodbaths and mindless chaos, a status quo that need I remind you is a combination of Dickensian squalor and the Spanish inquisition.
Any changes that happen for the better, happen within the confines of the system. The miners union is the one group that is shown to be uncomplicatedly good, but even they are ineffective in timelines where the duke owns the mine because the union is only using peaceful protest. A kinda washed down vision of historical labour struggles.
The series is deeply critical of the aristocratic class. Every entry in it depicts them as selfish hedonists who’ll bleed a beggar to death if they think it will get them a good high at best, and brutal eugenicists willing to let a disease ravage the population in order to get rid of “undesirables” at worst. But this criticism falls weak when the right answer time and time again is always “replace the bad toffs with good toffs”.
The system isn’t a problem it’s the people, in other words.
