If you do not want “politics” or controversial topics in your games then don’t call the medium an art form
Is the only thing that defines art and elevates it enough to be worth existing in your opinion, whether it is:
- meant to have a political statement,
- political usefulness,
- or political interpretation?
? That's the sort of thing fascists would say, when everything in life is meant to be in the service of the Party's goals.
Jim Sterling doesn't want controversial topics in games either.
- If he is on the receiving end of the triggering, he claims the content has no right to exist in 2019. He has demanded for more Mary Sues and Ga(r)y Stus in game writing, and argued that character flaws are too much and offensive.
- If his "enemies" are on the receiving end, he claims they have no right to find it controversial and he finds this very upsetting (here, like in this very video when he didn't like that conservatives weren't thrilled about Far Cry 5 being an AAA rendition of Duck Hunt NES with conservatives), which means he doesn't like after all the controversy to exist at all. The ideal situation would be if his enemies all converted to his side and liked the game and spent amends the rest of their lives for their past opinions, or if they simply disappeared off the internet all of a sudden.
It's also very transparent what this is getting at. Take games like Tetris or Mario that have no overt political themes beyond what "cultural critics" interpret out of them (heterocisnormativity in Princess Peach damseling, or anti-circumsension foreskin-clad burping nurses in Silent Hill 1) and want to hold the developers responsible for those interpretations and all of us to believe they actually said that, because death of the author or something.
When critics are at a loss, they say the game, by not pushing for a message of social change (and thus a hamfisted overt direct political message meant to indoctrinate the player and "shape" the audience to the mold of the "correct opinion"), is
"complicit with the status-quo". Here's your political message. It's also called that way to make it clear it's
a "cowardly" negative message, because it didn't make use of the
"platform" to propagate more "correct" political messages to as much people as possible and convert them.
This is by the way what Jim Sterling is accusing "cowardly" games like the Division 2 and Far Cry 5 of. He even goes as far as claiming they have no right to use specific settings, locations, plot points, time periods and context-charged artistic imagery, UNLESS they have a CLEAR political message (WHOOPS, here goes poof the notion that all games are political, how then are those games "APOLITICAL"? ) Jim Sterling has also demonstrated in the past that he also deems CLEAR political messages he doesn't like (even as tame as pick up culture in Super Seducer) greatly upset him, so it has to be a CLEAR political message OF A VERY SPECIFIC KIND.
Yes, Jim Sterling advocates that some plot elements are off-limits to creatives, unless they fucking better put some effort into serving the Party's interests in a way satisfying enough to the totally not gatekeeping, consumer friendly, advancer of all* the possibilities this medium has to offer, Jim Sterling.
Some "fans" pushing for the same ideals as Jim Sterling are wiser than that and pull the 'all games are political, this non-political game has politics which is the silent complicity with the status quo', because they need some excuse to tell other fans who don't really want propaganda for the left (or the right for that matter) in games, that they're unreasonable and that their request is impossible because politics are tied into the fabric of existence. Thus ALL games should have propaganda.