As the political divides in our world
have become increasingly pronounced,
more and more frequently
on message boards, forums, and Steam reviews,
I've seen the demand that creators, writers, and reviewers
keep politics out of games.
That is not possible. All media is political.
[INTRO]
Heinlein wrote libertarian science fiction
and H. G. Wells wrote socialist.
"The X-Men" is about the civil rights movement,
Red Skull started out as a commentary on war profiteers,
and, of course, Captain America was created
to argue that America join the fight against fascism
at a time when most Americans were against doing so.
"Star Trek" is a post-scarcity, liberal democratic utopia
and, successfully or not, it ardently tried to show a world
where race and gender no longer determined what you could be.
On the other side, the recent incarnation of "Battlestar Galactica"
is an allegory for the post-9/11 questions
of liberty versus security in a democracy
that considers itself continuously at war
with some invisible but omnipresent threat.
See, you can't just extract politics from media.
Media is created by people,
people are products of their culture and times,
and so, intentionally or unintentionally,
they are going to express their views
through the outlets they have.
Our perspectives and understanding of the world
inevitably shape our creative work.
This is part of what makes the work human,
what makes it alive.
And besides, even if we could somehow
extract politics from our entertainment,
we would lose so much!
Many of the best creative works out there,
the ones that leave us with something to think about
that inspires us to ponder our world
and still sticks with us years later?
They deal in political ideas.
They present ethical questions
or portray an idea of how society should or shouldn't be.
From "Dune" to "Ender's Game" to "The Witcher"
to literally countless other treasured stories,
if we say "Get politics out of my art,"
we lose all of those works.
Now, we can talk about how on the nose
a work should be with its politics.
That's totally worth debating
because it's a delicate balance.
We can even talk about the methodology
for approaching these things.
We ourselves talked ages ago
about how games are unique in their ability
to allow the audience to explore ideas
rather than simply having a writer or a designer
express their ideas at you.
We talked about how careful we have to be
about letting players make real choices
rather than accidentally indoctrinating them
with choices that aren't really choices at all.
But we shouldn't simply get politics out of games,
whatever that means.
We can handle politics.
This medium is a big kid now.
We can handle a bit of heavy lifting.
In fact, we need to.
Not that we could get politics out of our games anyway,
because all media is political.
Even when it's unintentional, media shapes culture.
Culture shapes society,
and political views are a product of society.
When our go-to cannon fodder targets in shooters
moved from being Nazis
to being people who look Middle Eastern,
that almost certainly wasn't an intentional political
statement on the part of those games' designers,
but those games did reflect a shift in culture
and a shift in politics
and, moreover, they reinforced those shifts.
The intelligence community studied how
watching shows like "24" made Americans
more likely to believe in the efficacy of torture,
regardless of all evidence to the contrary.
Many police departments claim that shows like "CSI"
have made it a lot harder to do their job
because jurors now expect a level of proof that simply
is not possible in the realities they work under.
These attitudes, shaped by media,
went on to affect our political realm
and changed policy and law.
They nudged the Overton window just a little bit.
And games like "Papers, Please" and "This War of Mine"
draw directly from our world and our politics
for their very mechanics,
while games like Cards Against Humanity
not only leverage our political understanding
for their humor, but get directly involved with politics,
launching whole expansions
to support a political candidate.
Even as we play, we pick up political philosophies
and internalize ways of viewing the world.
In almost any strategy game,
the correct way to win is almost always
to improve technology and increase resource production.
This is almost hardwired into you
if you play enough strategy games.
Now, that mindset actually represents
a very modern social and political perspective
and yet we frequently apply it to time periods
like Ancient Rome or the Hundred Years' War
where it wasn't really true,
where political stability was a much greater factor
in determining which civilizations triumphed in a conflict
than technology or even resource production.
You see what I mean when I say that we literally can't
get politics out of our games?
We can't remove the political
because games are created by human beings
who, even when they don't realize it,
are influenced by the political space they live in.
Now, that doesn't mean that we have to agree with the creators.
In fact, in any democracy, we should be happy to disagree.
We should welcome things that spark discussion.
And it doesn't mean that we have to be less passionate about it.
Now, we should be civil with each other,
but it's OK for media to matter
and for what media is saying to matter.
It's OK if it makes you angry or upset.
It's OK to think that the politics expressed
in a piece of media are great and support them,
or to think that they are heinous
and to fight against those politics.
It's even OK for corporations to say
that they won't support a piece of media
because it represents something they do not wish to endorse.
We absolutely are mature enough as a medium
to handle that.
We are mature enough as a medium
to explore these topics.
Because, without politics in games,
you don't get "Missile Command"
with its commentary on nuclear proliferation,
you don't get "Final Fantasy VII"
with its environmentalist bend,
you don't get the "Call of Duty" series' military patriotism
or even "Just Cause"'s take on covert regime change.
Without politics in our games,
we would lose so much, but, more than that,
we can't get politics out of our games anyway
because all media is political.
See you next week.
[OUTRO]