Do Video Games Affect Your Political Views?

A recent tweet sent via Twitter from @PoliticalLetter struck a chord with me. The tweet read: “Dear Video Game Designers: Create content that gets people to revolt against the upper class, instead of the usual imperialist propaganda. I had to pause and reflect for a few minutes, I don’t think I had ever heard of video game content being described as “imperialist propaganda” before so what the heck were these people talking about?

Then I started to look more closely at some of the games in today’s market and I noticed a few common trends amongst several different franchises. Popular names such as Metal Gear Solid, Call of Duty, and Battlefield are pretty well-known for throwing around words like “Patriot”, “Loyalty”, and “America”, but certainly such references couldn’t be construed as propaganda could they?

Were the people behind @PoliticalLetter really trying to imply that companies such as Activision and EA, developers like D.I.C.E. and Hideo Kojima, had some sort of hidden pro-America agenda? Naturally this is all speculation since the tweet that they sent was rather vague (and was also one in a whole list aimed at various corporate and commercial groups) but it can’t be argued that their intent was to get people to start talking and to start thinking.

I began wondering if my own political views, as passive as they are, were being affected by the games I played. Is the upper class so fearful of being run out or overthrown that they’ve begun resorting to video games in order to secure their importance amongst young adults and teens? While games such as Modern Warfare and Battlefield do strive for a sense of realism, one would be hard-pressed to deny that such games also tend to glorify the actions of their characters who, more often than not, are American.

Now, while I’m sure we as a nation are a long, *long* way from seeing “Solid Snake Wants You!” posters plastered around our neighborhoods, I can’t help but think that @PoliticalLetter’s tweet was meant to show us gamers the slippery slope we might be sliding down without even realizing it. Perhaps it’s time for us to take a step back and ask ourselves not only what do we believe in but *why* do we believe in it?

It’s easy to take video games at face value but it’s important for both us gamers and the gaming industry at large that we also pay attention to the messages being conveyed to us through these games that we enjoy so much. Ultimately, I think @PoliticalLetter’s tweet was meant to clue us in on something: at the end of the day, it’s the gamers who define and shape the gaming industry, we should just be mindful of what exactly we’re shaping it into.

As the Ancient Greek aphorism goes: “Know thyself.”

Tim

If you’re a Marxist who doesn’t know what the outside of a university looks like then anything you don’t agree with is imperialist propaganda.

Ultimately this attitude can easily be defeated by pointing out that the precise same argument shows the establishment also wants people to become 18th century pirates, glossing over the painful realities of pirate life and the suffering of their victims to make it look awesome.

Truth is this attitude confuses cause and effect; games use your *existing* attitudes towards real wars to provide motivation without setup. The three big questions for a gamer in any game with a story are “who am I?” “what am I doing?” and “why am I doing that?” In a game about a fictional war you have to explain all of those, while trying to keep dialog natural (let’s face it, nobody in the game world will need to know why they’re fighting Fictionasia). In a modern warfare or WW2 game those questions are answered for you; this is also why the less clear- cut a war is the more people will have problems with the gameplay (more people have problems with modern war scenarios than WW2 or cold war Russia vs. America ones, and *far* more have problems with Vietnam games).

In real war you also have conveniently pre-designed uniforms, locations, vehicles, weapons, scenarios, characters, and so on: all things you’d need to do yourself if the war was fictional.

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by simple laziness.
Mike Ockizard

Tim pretty much nailed it there. I don’t think the developers are so much trying to push an agenda so much as they are trying to give the player motivation. If the game centers on the US military in conflict, it is because they know who their market is, and making the player play as the Taliban might not be the best decision if they want to sell games outside of Kerblakistan. That is also why more games tend to use real world military in fictional wars. You get the benefit of patriotism, without all the hassle of the controversy surrounding actual conflicts. Although it sounds simple, I still like knowing I am one of the good guys in combat games, and I suppose setting that up can come off as “pro-Imperialism”.

I still think it is funny that someone actually felt motivated enough to try to get game developers to put anti-Capitalist agendas into their game. Revolt against the upper class? What good would that even do? Destroy all those that spend money and create jobs so that we can have everyone on welfare and give the gov’t total control over every aspect of our lives? Brilliant!!! Those people who want rich folks money so badly should try getting it the same way they did……by working!
Tim

As an addition, I think you’re being rather too supeficial in your analysis; look more closely at most modern games and you’ll see that while they might celebrate the player’s actions, the power structures above the player are very seldom afforded the same respect; these are the power structures that the tweet seems to think these games are glorifying.

Think carefully; how many games have you played recently where government institutions themselves and powerful individuals are shown as benevolent and incorruptable and their actions only result in bad things if they are undermined by selfish underlings? Certainly that doesn’t apply to Call of Duty, where in Modern Warfare the entire US intervention achieved nothing and resulted in the destruction of a city, not in MW2 where the villain is a senior US officer assisting the very people he’s supposed to be fighting against, not in Blops where you spend most of the game being tortured by the CIA while recalling all the ethically dubious shit you did for your country, and not in MW3 where the actual heroes are a disavowed task force wanted by their own countries for treason.

Also not in Battlefield where if you went along with your CIA interrogators a nuke would have destroyed New York, and not in MGS where the entire US government is a sham created by a shadowy conspiracy trying to rule the world. In MGS the only time “patriot” is used to describe anyone it’s either the evil conspiracy or a woman regarded as a traitor by her own country. In Medal of Honor the only named “bad guy” is an incompetant desk-job senior who ignores the men on the ground and makes everything worse. Even in the Arkham games, which are normally about a rich guy beating up low-lifes, Bruce’s money is no substitute for his fists and in both games the power structures above him are headed up by corrupt figures with evil agendas.

You want to see what a good old jingoistic game looks like, dig up a copy of Desert Strike for the Genesis. Your orders are right and only ever harm bad people, the enemy leader is “the Madman” who has no redeeming features and tortures people, and you even start with a shot of your Apache pilot relaxing on the beach when he gets a phone call to save the world, because that’s totally how being a military pilot works.

The comment you posted reveals a political view so far left that even the games industry, which is stacked to the rafters with left-wingers, looks right-wing to him. The only way to satisfy the poster of that comment would be turning your console into his personal soap box and silencing all dissenting opinions. Maybe the console could remind people that we’ve always been at war with Eastasia while it’s at it.