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Video games as (cultural, societal, political, & historical) satire.

D

Disgraced

Member
Do you believe video games can do this sort of satire effectively? And if so, what games?

Personally, what immediately comes to mind is Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, Bioshock, Hotline Miami, and more recently CounterSpy. All of the previously mentioned including some hilarious, pretty brilliant stuff in my opinion.

Also, do you think that in the future video games having this kind of satire can and will provide a significant and interesting lense for viewing and analyzing the current cultural and social climate, specifically games like GTAs IV and V set in and made for the era in which they were developed? This might just sound like crazy-talk at this point, but do you think it's possible kind of thing could even be incorporated into historical education eventually?

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Let's discuss maybe.
 
P

PlumCantaloupe

Member
I wouldn't say are; but definitely can be. More like a reflection of the culture, albeit pixelated.

EDIT: another good example I can think of is Conker's Bad Fur Day - one of the last obvious and great spoofs.
 
O

orthodoxy1095

Banned
They can certainly do it effectively, I just don't know that they do. Stories in many games aren't necessarily their strong suit to begin with, so adding a complex layer of social satire could be pretty hard to do in some cases.

The Fallout franchise should count here too. Same for Dead Rising. Also Papers, Please.

However, I think we need to nail down what satire is. I don't think GTA is satire. Seems more of a parody. Even if we call it satire, it certainly isn't good satire from a critical standpoint.
 
D

Disgraced

Member
orthodoxy1095 said:
They can certainly do it effectively, I just don't know that they do. Stories in many games aren't necessarily their strong suit to begin with, so adding a complex layer of social satire could be pretty hard to do in some cases.

The Fallout franchise should count here too. Same for Dead Rising. Also Papers, Please.

However, I think we need to nail down what satire is. I don't think GTA is satire. Seems more of a parody. Even if we call it satire, it certainly isn't good satire from a critical standpoint.
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Totally true about Fallout, DR and Papers. I just named some off the top of my head. I think you could maybe say the same thing for TES too, Skyrim to me has some really interesting things to say about racism, classism, and imperialism among other things especially with the civil war and all that.
 
Northeastmonk

Northeastmonk

Gold Member
ComputerMKII said:
Yes, provided they're not made by Rockstar.
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Rockstar has done more for gaming in terms of pushing boundaries. If anything they've made people question the rights game designers have with creating games regardless how people feel about their games. It's not like we haven't been there before (eg. Mortal Kombat) but they keep pushing that control aspect with media. Even though the ratings board exists it still gets fought over.

GTA is satire. It literally takes everyone's daily lives and shows how a dark side would play out. There are people with GTA attitudes everywhere. It's modern satire. People want to get rich, people kill each other over drugs, there's always someone cheating on another person, the list goes on and on. The only thing they do is throw a scenario where the worst of the worst happens. Most people don't even play the plot from what I hear on the news and from another spectrum.

If you're talking BioShock Infinite. I think yes, but even people on FOX News don't respect it at all nor do I think they care. The media is too much of a quirky comment. They focus on violence and drugs. They can't see the satire.

If a game shows a part of society that differs with the normal then it is satire. I think games hit home faster than the news does. Gaming gets a point across. It tells a story in way that happens. Which is probably why they got mad at Modern Warfare 2. The USA was fighting terrorists. You went along with one in a game. You saw their intentions. The media got mad. C'mon.. it could happen now, in a movie 5 years down the road, or in a book. It's going to happen. It's storytelling. It's going to push that boundary regardless what happens. Tragedies are going to happen like movies are going to happen. Bad presidents in game = real life.. it's satire.

I think MODS should just be forgotten about.
 
C

Corpekata

Banned
GTA 5 is more of the South Park school of satire where they just present a bunch of assholes and makes a point of "Man, look at these assholes."

I'd agree it's barely satire, especially lately. Spoofs and parodies share some common things with satire, and some arguably cross boundaries, but most aren't satire.
 
R

Robert Williams

Neo Member
orthodoxy1095 said:
If it's satire, it's terrible satire. And I stand by that.

This blog post talks about it a bit.
Click to expand...

That's an interesting article. I can remember playing GTA San Andreas excessively and at some point thinking that, while it wasn't legitimate satire, the sheer mass of cynical observations added up to some significant social commentary.
 
C

chrominance

Member
D15GR4C3D said:
Also, do you think that in the future video games having this kind of satire can and will provide a significant and interesting lense for viewing and analyzing the current cultural and social climate, specifically games like GTAs IV and V set in and made for the era in which they were developed? This might just sound like crazy-talk at this point, but do you think it's possible kind of thing could even be incorporated into historical education eventually?
Click to expand...

Definitely not crazy. I mean, I remember having an entire university lecture once about Robocop (which actually has quite a lot to unpack when you think about it). Though it's somewhat scattershot in its satire and occasionally very heavy-handed, you can see a lot of themes in GTA both in terms of what it makes fun of and what it presents without much commentary.

As an aside: GTA's satire doesn't have to be good in order to be examined from an academic standpoint. I don't think much of Rockstar's brand of humour; it feels too nihilistic shock-jock, like "everybody but me is crazy in roughly equal measure." But clearly Rockstar's staked out a specific position in much of its satire, and its resonance with a significant portion of the gaming audience means that position is worth looking at.
 
S

sn00zer

Member
Im struggling with whether or not GTAV is clever satire or an extrememly xenophobic view of Americans by Europeans
 
O

orthodoxy1095

Banned
Corpekata said:
GTA 5 is more of the South Park school of satire where they just present a bunch of assholes and makes a point of "Man, look at these assholes."

I'd agree it's barely satire, especially lately. Spoofs and parodies share some common things with satire, and some arguably cross boundaries, but most aren't satire.
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Precisely. It's a social commentary for sure, and a poorly written satire at best.
Robert Williams said:
That's an interesting article. I can remember playing GTA San Andreas excessively and at some point thinking that, while it wasn't legitimate satire, the sheer mass of cynical observations added up to some significant social commentary.
Click to expand...
I definitely wouldn't say that GTA isn't a significant social commentary. I mean to some extent, most games are a social commentary on the status of a culture and its values. But GTA is a bit more poignant in that regard, and it certainly is a social commentary. It just isn't "satire," because satire is a specific genre of literature/media.
 
T

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
I think they have the potential to honestly be the most potent medium for satire. I really mean that. They excel over other mediums at creating worlds, and that's so naturally suited for satire (and its cousins parody and general absurdity) that I'm honestly surprised we haven't seen more yet. I certainly think they're a better fit then the attempts to bolt other traditional dramas into video game frameworks
 
K

King Tubby

Member
The Technomancer said:
I think they have the potential to honestly be the most potent medium for satire. I really mean that. They excel over other mediums at creating worlds, and that's so naturally suited for satire (and its cousins parody and general absurdity) that I'm honestly surprised we haven't seen more yet. I certainly think they're a better fit then the attempts to bolt other traditional dramas into video game frameworks
Click to expand...

I agree with you. Games have the potential to be a far more potent medium for many literary genres by incorporating player choice and taking advantage of that involvement. Metal Gear Solid 2 has been lauded for doing exactly that as a postmodern satire of video games and video game players (among other things).
 
SerTapTap

SerTapTap

Member
The Technomancer said:
I think they have the potential to honestly be the most potent medium for satire. I really mean that. They excel over other mediums at creating worlds, and that's so naturally suited for satire (and its cousins parody and general absurdity) that I'm honestly surprised we haven't seen more yet. I certainly think they're a better fit then the attempts to bolt other traditional dramas into video game frameworks
Click to expand...

Little Inferno's a pretty good satire IMO. A problem with video games is, as AAA products anyway, they're very expensive, expected NOT to have an important storyline or social commentary of note, and expected to appeal to as broad an audience as possible. There's a lot of room for satire and more general social commentary in the indie space, though unfortunately it makes less of a splash due to less eyeballs on it.

Sort of the nature of the beast; exceedingly few harsh satires make it to mass-market, South Park is one of few that survive mostly because it appeals both to the basic "lol that dude don got killed" sense of humor and a higher context as well (to varying degrees and varying levels of quality, but I do thing, after a few seasons, it started to do this rather well).
 
C

conman

Member
Inherently ambiguous. Games like GTA are both satire and endorsements of the culture of violence, exploitation, etc. Just because GTA can laugh at itself that doesn't make it politically or socially justified. If I tell a racist or sexist joke and laugh at myself for the ridiculousness of my racism or sexism, that doesn't magically make the racism and sexism disappear. On the contrary, it makes it even easier to be racist or sexist, while attempting to justify it by calling it "satire."

Is genuine satire possible in gaming? Sure. But it's not as common as most think it to be.
 
V

Village

Member
orthodoxy1095 said:
If it's satire, it's terrible satire. And I stand by that.

This blog post talks about it a bit.
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The article takes GTA as a big joke instead of several jokes of which many are indeed satire. " The gameplay lacks an ironic punch" the game play is a vehicle to get you from point to point. Who you are playing as , why and the situation at the momento may or may not be satire. The guy is looking at GTA as a whole, he done already fucked up. GTA is a bunch of things, sometimes is satire, sometimes its complete absurdist comedy, sometimes its quite grim and dark comedy, sometimes its introspective comedy, sometimes its not comedy at all.

And as far as you not liking it, its fine that's your opinion. That doesn't make it not satire, you just aren't a fan and that's ok.
 
SerTapTap

SerTapTap

Member
conman said:
Inherently ambiguous. Games like GTA are both satire and endorsements of the culture of violence, exploitation, etc. Just because GTA can laugh at itself that doesn't make it politically or socially justified. If I tell a racist or sexist joke and laugh at myself for the ridiculousness of my racism or sexism, that doesn't magically make the racism and sexism disappear. On the contrary, it makes it even easier to be racist or sexist, while attempting to justify it by calling it "satire."

Is genuine satire possible in gaming? Sure. But it's not as common as most think it to be.
Click to expand...

Now, satire is an intent. It is not "less satire" because it is "bad" or, much, much worse, because you disagree with it. This is just the "are games art" "no games are bad art and bad art is not art" argument. By saying it's not genuine satire all you're really doing is admitting it is satire but saying it doesn't "count" because it doesn't meet your personal standards.

To be fair, the same crap is drug up against a lot of non-game satire. It's a situation where lots of people like to attack whether it's satire rather than the points brought up. I obviously don't agree with the validity of that rhetorical attack, but it does make satire a fairly unsafe vehicle of criticism due to the amount of pedantry you expose yourself to (as, frankly, evidenced in this thread).
 
B

BorkBork

The Legend of BorkBork: BorkBorkity Borking
Prevolition said:
No one has mentioned Earthbound yet?
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Is it satire though? I always associate satire with a bit of bite while EB's world is quite gentle. There is subversion of expectations, but I don't think Itoi actually pokes fun at American life, but instead presents a strange and intensely nostalgic version of it from a Japanese perspective.

Maybe Mother 3 is more satirical with its look at capitalism and consumerism, but even that's pretty complex.

I don't know what I'm talking about.
 
M

MegamanPoweredUP

Member
I really loved satire in Earthbound, because it was so raffinate. I lough every time I think about that wife who spends all day watching a rock in Summers.

Imo, to do an effective satire, a videogame shouldn't have a Simpson's humor. It has to do it softly and bring it to you by gameplay.
 
B

Bobby Roberts

Banned
Discussing satire on the internet is hard because satire has become, for many people online, not much more than a joke whose punchline is "I meant to do that."

Grand Theft Auto is not really satire. It's parody, and it's over-the-top recycling of cliche convention, but it's not really satire. It's not generally mocking the activities you're undertaking as a means to point out how stupid and damaging the activities themselves are. To satirize something means you don't approve of it, you're criticizing it. What Grand Theft Auto does more often than not is to take the scenario of straightforward genre conventions, and blow them up and make them larger than life so that they're more ridicuous, and easier to enjoy on their own terms. That's not satire.

Making fun of something isn't automatically "satirizing" it, either. You need to be making fun of it in a way that it's obvious you're trying to wring social commentary out of the comedy, and that the comedy and the commentary need to be somewhat close to equal footing, and that the comedy and commentary need to be 100% IN CHARACTER. Little to no winking to let you off the hook. Hopefully the commentary doesn't subsume the comedy, then it goes from being satire to something else.

Satire isn't easy.
 
E

efyu_lemonardo

May I have a cookie?
I'm not sure if satire is the right word to describe it, but the Pikmin games definitely have an intentional layer of commentary on both colonialism as well as environmentalism.
 
V

Village

Member
BobbyRoberts said:
Discussing satire on the internet is hard because satire has become, for many people online, not much more than a joke whose punchline is "I meant to do that."

Making fun of something isn't automatically "satirizing" it, either. You need to be making fun of it in a way that it's obvious you're trying to wring social commentary out of the comedy, and that the comedy and the commentary need to be somewhat close to equal footing, and that the comedy and commentary need to be 100% IN CHARACTER. Little to no winking to let you off the hook. Hopefully the commentary doesn't subsume the comedy, then it goes from being satire to something else.

Satire isn't easy.
Click to expand...

GTA5 does this in spaids.

They have entire characters dedicated to satire.

Edit: You seem to come up with rules of satire that do not exist. That's neat I guess...
 
D

Duster

Member
BobbyRoberts said:
Making fun of something isn't automatically "satirizing" it, either. You need to be making fun of it in a way that it's obvious you're trying to wring social commentary out of the comedy, and that the comedy and the commentary need to be somewhat close to equal footing, and that the comedy and commentary need to be 100% IN CHARACTER. Little to no winking to let you off the hook. Hopefully the commentary doesn't subsume the comedy, then it goes from being satire to something else.

Satire isn't easy.
Click to expand...

I'm confused by the varying definitions of parody, satire and the like but going mostly by this it sounds like the Oddworld series is one of the better examples of satire in videogames.
Mostly regarding it's depiction of corporations exploiting the environment and their workforce.
 
J

Josephl64

Member
it definitely has the potential to do so, but as for specific titles that really call out to me...I can't really name any
 
E

efyu_lemonardo

May I have a cookie?
Molemitts said:
Define the differences between satire and parody, please.
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Was wondering this myself, found this explanation which I thought was appropriate:

A parody is a composition that imitates the style of another composition, normally for comic effect and often by applying that style to an outlandish or inappropriate subject. Seth Grahame-Smith's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is a perfect example of parody. Grahame-Smith took Jane Austen's text and introduced zombies into the storyline. Throughout the reworked novel, he maintained Austen's writing style, voice, and even much of the original storyline, creating a new work that is recognizable as being Jane Austen's but that definitely isn't.

A satire, on the other hand, is intended to do more than just entertain; it tries to improve humanity and its institutions. A satire is a literary work that tries to arouse the reader's disapproval of an object — a vice, an abuse, a faulty belief — by holding it up to ridicule. Satirists use euphemism, irony, exaggeration, and understatement to show, with a greater or lesser degree of levity, the follies of mankind and the paradoxes and idiocy that they can lead to.

Some great examples of satire include George Orwell's Animal Farm, which ridicules the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia; Voltaire's Candide, which attacks the philosophy of Optimism; and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, which satirizes the "high-class" tastes, social expectations, and popular philosophies of his time.
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Also, this seems consistent with the above explanation:
What is a parody?

In literary terms, a parody is a form of satire that imitates the characteristic style of another author or work in an exaggerated fashion for comic effect. The aim is to criticize or mock the original work in a humorous way.
Click to expand...

So satire that isn't parody would be a work that criticises existing works or ideas, but isn't so heavily influenced by their style that it cannot stand on its own. Also, it doesn't have to be humorous.
 
Silvawuff

Silvawuff

Member
daviyoung said:
all the Monkey Island games and Sam and Max Hit The Road satirise American culture really well
Click to expand...

This, totally this. In fact, point and clickies really helped define this sub-genre of gaming.

I think Day of the Tentacle had something to say about slavery, in its own sort of context.
 
M

MrNyarlathotep

Banned
In many ways Saints Row 3s portrayal of celebrity gangster culture and your place within it both by playing a celebrity gangster and by purchasing a game that revels in gangster ideals is a far smarter piece of satire than anything GTA has ever attempted.
 
E

efyu_lemonardo

May I have a cookie?
sn00zer said:
Im struggling with whether or not GTAV is clever satire or an extrememly xenophobic view of Americans by Europeans
Click to expand...

Going by the definitions in my post, I'd say GTA is parody rather than satire. Everything in it is an imitation of previous works or concepts (especially from certain cinematic genres) that has been exaggerated for comedic effect. Also, the aim is primarily to entertain rather than to provoke any thoughtful or constructive critical discussion.
 
Bl@de

Bl@de

Member
For everyone who has lived in a soviet state: "Papers, please". This game is perfect as satire . But most of the time it's rather sad, because that's the way it was. One guy deciding whether whole families are torn apart.
My grandma waited over 30 years until she learned that her brother was alive and well after the second world war. He was living in Germany. Even if it is a neighbouring country of Poland , it was divided through passports and political systems.

"Papers, please" has many of those stories. What makes it funny = Some of them are simply ridiculous. One guy appers dozens of times with numerous fake passports (drawn by himself), bad english and weird stories. Altough ... many people really tried weird things.

But I think it's rather hard to understand all the different things and subthemes in the game if your familiy is not from a country that used to be communist.
 
M

Molemitts

Member
efyu_lemonardo said:
Going by the definitions in my post, I'd say GTA is parody rather than satire. Everything in it is an imitation of previous works or concepts (especially from certain cinematic genres) that has been exaggerated for comedic effect. Also, the aim is primarily to entertain rather than to provoke any thoughtful or constructive critical discussion.
Click to expand...

Your post also claims that parody is a form of satire, though.

What is a parody?

In literary terms, a parody is a form of satire that imitates the characteristic style of another author or work in an exaggerated fashion for comic effect. The aim is to criticize or mock the original work in a humorous way.
Click to expand...
 
M

Molemitts

Member
efyu_lemonardo said:
right, which means making a distinction between parody and satire should be interpreted as making a distinction between parody and satire that isn't parody.
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Correct, but you claimed GTA is parody that isn't satire. Which, according to your source, shouldn't exist because parody is a form of satire.
 
E

efyu_lemonardo

May I have a cookie?
Molemitts said:
Correct, but you claimed GTA is parody that isn't satire. Which, according to your source, shouldn't exist because parody is a form of satire.
Click to expand...

which is why according to the definition in my post (which doesn't have to be the agreed upon definition in this thread, it was just a suggestion made to try and move the discussion forward) in the context of the question: "is it satire or is it parody?" the meaning of the word satire should be understood to be: "something that qualifies as satire but does not qualify as parody".

In that context, I think GTA qualifies more as parody than other forms of satire.
 
M

Mr Git

Member
I think it's possible for something to contain both satire and parody. I would say GTA fits that bill. Some of the obvious parodies like Weazel News and Life Invader are that - parodies. Although going deeper there are occasionally individual situations/stories and dialogue that do feature satire of western culture and society. I think if you were going to label the entire game as one or the other it would be a parody, but there are certainly moments of good satire buried within it.
 
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