Anyone else get irrationally annoyed when games anachronistically whitewash deeply shitty societies to the point that it turns into apologetics, just to avoid grappling with problematic themes?
Anyone else get irrationally annoyed when games anachronistically whitewash deeply shitty societies to the point that it turns into apologetics, just to avoid grappling with problematic themes?
The specific example that made me start thinking about this was how AC Odyssey has a sidequest where a slave doesn't want to be freed because he thinks being a slave is cool, actually, which is both absurd apologetics but also misses that in Greek and Roman systems manumission was a form of social control that both rewarded and indebted slavers' most loyal collaborators. That turned into thinking about how just absolutely absurdly shitty classic Greek society was in general, and how AC Odyssey made it this weird wholesome egalitarian slaver dictatorship where everything's cool and good except for the bad mean guys who are indistinguishable in methods or goals from anyone else.
That's also one of the things that pisses me off about Starfield so much, how the "good guys" are a pair of far right colonial empires: one is literally just the fascists from Starship Troopers, and the other are a bunch of feudal ancap dictatorships. Even the villains are just saturday morning cartoon villains who are bad and mean but don't really ever do anything distinct from the "good" factions except be ontologically opposed to you, the main character.
Someone else pointed out recently how HOI4 ends up effectively doing Nazi apologetics the same way, where in trying to avoid giving their worst fans a holocaust button they just outright remove all the actual horror and material actions the Nazis did altogether.
And I don't think I even need to get into how rampant this problem is in liberal fantasy settings, which are always full of apologetics for monarchism, because that's well tread ground for criticism. It's enough to make something like how the original Mount and Blade handled the in-universe nobles as being inherently sexist and classist pieces of shit who were obstacles for a female and/or commoner PC to fight against and overcome almost refreshing, instead of it just being like "yeah these awful pieces of shit who are all definitely mass murderers and worse are actually cool and nice to you and not really all that bad really" like so much feudal apologia media does.
And yeah, there's a point to be made about not wanting to grapple with problematic themes and all, but where there's the line where that just turns into apologetics for the very problematic thing you're trying to avoid dealing with at all?
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I’m not even in my mid 20s yet but I’ve become jaded with video games and media in general. I never finished reading Capitalist Realism because it meanders too much, but the first few chapters stuck with me. Every piece of media wants to critique “the system” but all of them fail to say anything meaningful. At this point, any time I see the word “mega corporation” in the premise of a game or movie, I immediately dismiss it as dogshit.
The exception would be Andor. Probably the only mainstream piece of media that doesn’t obscure the ugly truths of what it means to resist an oppressive force.
Someone else pointed out recently how HOI4 ends up effectively doing Nazi apologetics the same way, where in trying to avoid giving their worst fans a holocaust button they just outright remove all the actual horror and material actions the Nazis did altogether.
Don’t forget that they also took away civilian casualties even though that would affect so many things like production, recruiting, and psychology. They added this to Vicky 3 but I don’t know. The warfare kind of sucks and yes I know they didn’t want to prioritize that. But if you’re going to add all these dependent systems you might as well show the carnage.
But the best part is that many Paradox fans (and developers, I assume, since they’re e*ros) believe that Stalin is more evil than Hitler, but they have mechanics for the great purge and famine. Don’t forget CoD with their “gulag” mechanic In their own logic, they don’t even take what they consider genocide seriously because if they truly believed their own words, there’d be characters fighting each other with AKs and striped pajamas
Every piece of media wants to critique “the system” but all of them fail to say anything meaningful.
One may dye their hair green and wear their grandma's coat all they want. Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who would critique capital end up reinforcing it instead.most self aware video game
Communism is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.
Is it possible to learn these abilities?
Not from a liberal.
and amphetamines
This is you?god as my witness it will be
I like the line but I never liked how aware Joyce is of this. In real life people like Joyce are fully consumed by the ideology and blind to what capital even is. Maybe she's just cynical.
I mean, Karl Rove read Mao. I don't dislike the implication that at least some of the bourgeoisie are fully ideologically aware of what they're doing
she's not a capitalist though. she's a professional agent of capital. she went to a university overseas where she probably read mazov. she's a specimen of the kind of person we encounter when real political change is foreclosed upon in the public imagination.
e: in fact there's a reason why she gets the line about capital subsuming criticism of itself, and why she's the one to teach Harry about the wider world and the Pale. she is capitalist realism personified, empowered, and yet without agency.
She is a capitalist, being a member of the Wild Pines board of directors.
is about as unaware as average capitalist.
But.....but I have green hair
But did you wear your grandma's coat? Or 20 yards of linen?