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[Ogbert]

This man is an utter bore.

Leftists don’t want politics in games. They want their politics in games. A key difference.

 

[#Phonepunk#]

If you do not want “politics” or controversial topics in your games then don’t call the medium an art form

The thing is, there already are politics in there. If all art is already political then what is the point really?

Are we saying people in general need to talk more about politics in games? Then that is on critics and reviewers. Maybe Jim should spend more time discussing content and less ranting about pricing.

Are we saying game devs should sacrifice work hours normally spent on level design or bug fixes or polish and put that towards politics instead? That seems like telling people how to make games. Not a fan of that

 

[Dacon]

If you do not want “politics” or controversial topics in your games then don’t call the medium an art form

This is a silly statement.

 

[Halo is Back]

The thing is, there already are politics in there. If all art is already political then what is the point really?

Are we saying people in general need to talk more about politics in games? Then that is on critics and reviewers. Maybe Jim should spend more time discussing content and less ranting about pricing.

Are we saying game devs should sacrifice work hours normally spent on level design or bug fixes or polish and put that towards politics instead? That seems like telling people how to make games

All I’m saying is that some of the greatest works of art and the expansion of its influence have been from something controversial or political. Many people were shocked by Shakespeare’s plays and his plays were know by critics as schlock entertainment but now his work is taught all throughout literature.

Wether or not the representation is good or bad is entirely a different story but it would be a pretty boring medium of art if it never tried to tackle more controversial topics. Art is also a reflection of society so yea it is very likely that developers would want to put their personal beliefs in their games.

 

[#Phonepunk#]

Wether or not the representation is good or bad is entirely a different story but it would be a pretty boring medium of art if it never tried to tackle more controversial topics. Art is also a reflection of society so yea it is very likely that developers would want to put their personal beliefs in their games.

1) they already do. all representational media is inherently political. my point is they don't need to "put their beliefs into" their art. that happens naturally. with every work of art, the creator's fingerprints are all over it, regardless of how objective they try to be. yes, even documentaries are subjective, just from the photographer deciding to frame a photo THIS way instead of THAT way they are injecting bias. that is fine. that is human. so this is already a thing that happens in every work of media ever. i don't get the demand that it happen... more?... i guess?

2) saying "developers should put their personal beliefs" is fine until you consider how many people that is. for many games it is hundreds of people. do all of them get a say? or is it just the leads, they get to set the agenda and everyone else has to continue working regardless of how they feel on the topic. or is it just the parent company? if it's the parent company then all potentially political work will have to go through an approval process with top producers to make sure it coheres with company standards. wouldn't that suck? what if you are hired on as an artist and midway through you discover you don't agree w the politics of the game you are making? should you lose your job over that? do you see how messy & unrealistic the demand is?

 

[Mr Nash]

This whole "everything is politics" just makes me think of those annoying cousins that show up at Thanksgiving dinner after being away at college, probably read some Chomsky, and want to make everything about politics through some weird combination of wanting everyone to take a side and some form of pseudo-intellectual self-fellating. It's slimy weasel words to insert politics into a conversation. Doesn't matter if it's games, movies, sports, or someone picking their nose, they'll try and find a way to shoehorn it in. In my experience, the best thing to do in these situations is ignore the person until they wander off to mope in a corner because nobody "gets" them.

 

[Pot Meet Kettle]

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.

 

[120v]

my issue with this sort of stuff, people who want Bioshock Infinite to tackle racism, Far Cry 5 to take on trumpism, ect... what exactly is it that would make you happy? do you need to gun down a bunch of KKK members and then segue into an emotional interlude about how racism is bad and america is bad. like would that really be a more engaging experience for you

i wouldn't mind a game that tries to "go there" by any means but it's like walking out of the theater after watching White House Down and grousing over how it's too cowardly to tackle universal healhcare and jamie foxx's presence never really said anything about the suppression of african americans, ect. these are just games about shooting people when you whittle it all down

 

[Dacon]

Art encompasses a plethora of subjects, themes, and concepts.

Art is by no means defined by politics and the very idea that it is, makes me chuckle.

my issue with this sort of stuff, people who want Bioshock Infinite to tackle racism, Far Cry 5 to take on trumpism, ect... what exactly is it that would make you happy? do you need to gun down a bunch of KKK members and then segue into an emotional interlude about how racism is bad and america is bad. like would that really be a more engaging experience for you

Mafia 3 and RDR2 did exactly that and people still werent happy.

 

[DeepEnigma]

Whenever I hear the saying, "everything is politics", it is just a phrase used for people admitting that they can't evolve past their core tribal programming.

Walking primal contrarians.

 

[120v]

imagine if doom (1993) were reviewed today

"it's a game about batting in a foreign mining field - and yet id software can't bring themselves to to 'take a side' on Bush's american imperialism imposed upon the iraqi people. you're blindly led to blow up demons but coward developers don't interrupt the fun by commenting on further implications of how saddam's removal could inflame divisions between the sunni and shia. 4/10 wouln't buy from them again..."

 

[GAMETA]

Let me put it in simple terms:

Politics are fine, political propaganda isn't. That's it.

 

[Lionel Richie]

For that matter, he has a good general observation: the people who claim they're apolitical or neutral... well, they're lying. If you refuse to take a side, you're advocating for the status quo. Don't like the status quo? Then take a stance.

Bullshit! People who don't feel confident enough to contribute in a meaningful discussion about politics or otherwise shouldn't be forced to partake in them. You maintain the status quo by having multiple ignorant voices echoing each other instead of any deeper ones being heard. It's how we got to the dunning–kruger as fuck Twitter generation we're having to endure.

 

[#Phonepunk#]

Whenever I hear the saying, "everything is politics", it is just a phrase used for people admitting that they can't evolve past their core tribal programming.

fact is, it has been proven pointless to build any statement of intent into a piece of political agit prop. it will be taken out of context, distorted, twisted, by each and every side.

what does Jim bring to the table? he wants games to be art. if he was an art critic he'd spend all his time complaining about the prices of seasonal tickets instead of the art. he'd be calling Picasso a rip off artist for using found materials.

 

[DeepEnigma]

fact is, it has been proven pointless to build any statement of intent into a piece of political agit prop. it will be taken out of context, distorted, twisted, by each and every side.

what does Jim bring to the table? he wants games to be art. if he was an art critic he'd spend all his time complaining about the prices of seasonal tickets instead of the art. he'd be calling Picasso a rip off artist for using found materials.

He is every bit guilty of being an ideologue. He wants the "right kind of politics", and/or more material for his shtick.

 

[Xenon]

Mafia 3 and RDR2 did exactly that and people still werent happy.

That's because diversity is not their main goal, but rather remaining champions of it. It's the fight that gets their juices flowing. That's why there will always be something wrong and people like Jim will be paid to point it out to them. Dudes a shill for the far left and must remain so to get paid.

 

[Shai-Tan]

my issue with this sort of stuff, people who want Bioshock Infinite to tackle racism, Far Cry 5 to take on trumpism, ect... what exactly is it that would make you happy? do you need to gun down a bunch of KKK members and then segue into an emotional interlude about how racism is bad and america is bad. like would that really be a more engaging experience for you

i wouldn't mind a game that tries to "go there" by any means but it's like walking out of the theater after watching White House Down and grousing over how it's too cowardly to tackle universal healhcare and jamie foxx's presence never really said anything about the suppression of african americans, ect. these are just games about shooting people when you whittle it all down

That's ridiculous, of course, but it all rests on good writing. If a satirical radio station was in Far Cry 5 and didn't land its jokes about Trumpism, the state of political discourse or whatever it would be way too cringy to listen to. It's not surprising that they avoid trying to ape the GTA guys who despite achieving what developers would love to aim for, still get panned by critics outside of games for social commentary that's too basic or not woke enough.

When tv like The Wire is rare there's no chance we'll get anything like that in games writing. We celebrate games like The Witcher for well realized story with quest lines that could be pulled from true crime tv shows with monsters and swords swapped in the place of bad guys and guns.

 

[Aurelian]

Bullshit! People who don't feel confident enough to contribute in a meaningful discussion about politics or otherwise shouldn't be forced to partake in them. You maintain the status quo by having multiple ignorant voices echoing each other instead of any deeper ones being heard. It's how we got to the dunning–kruger as fuck Twitter generation we're having to endure.

The point is not to force them to join in, it's to persuade them to decide where they stand based on an informed opinion. Basically, to help them get out of that any-way-the-wind-blows mindset. We need better political education for the people who do vote, too, since many people are easily swayed by superficial gloss (see: the people duped by a fraudster like Trump).

 

[Lionel Richie]

The point is not to force them to join in, it's to persuade them to decide where they stand based on an informed opinion. Basically, to help them get out of that any-way-the-wind-blows mindset. We need better political education for the people who do vote, too, since many people are easily swayed by superficial gloss (see: the people duped by a fraudster like Trump).

I don't know man, calling people who voted on Trump misinformed is one of the factors that went into his election. There's a significant difference in being comfortable to discuss a matter and being completely ignorant about it, simply assuming the latter is patronizing and tiresome. It's why being "apolitical" suddenly is a thing, there's a constant attempt to educate people when perhaps they don't need to be educated. Combine that with most of the political discussion being centered around aggressively dunking on fools and you have a pretty saturated point of debate.

On this subject I very much agree with Bill Maher here:

 

[Aurelian]

I don't know man, calling people who voted on Trump misinformed is one of the factors that went into his election. There's a significant difference in being comfortable to discuss a matter and being completely ignorant about it, simply assuming the latter is patronizing and tiresome. It's why being "apolitical" suddenly is a thing, there's a constant attempt to educate people when perhaps they don't need to be educated. Combine that with most of the political discussion being centered around aggressively dunking on fools and you have a pretty saturated point of debate.

On this subject I very much agree with Bill Maher here:

If you vote for someone who lies about everything (no matter how obvious), has a long history of fraud and sexual misconduct, and bases his campaign around extremely broad plans he doesn't have the foggiest idea how to implement... you're uninformed. Just because people don't want to hear that doesn't make it wrong. The disgusting thing about American politics isn't so much the endless vicious attacks as that there are millions of people who will vote for someone without bothering to think about whether they're actually qualified. Experience? Competence? A baseline level of integrity? Pah! I'll vote for the rich man from TV because he yelled things about jobs.

Until the US gets back to respecting more of the substance of a politician than their superficial sheen, the situation isn't really going to get better.

 

[Lionel Richie]

If you vote for someone who lies about everything (no matter how obvious), has a long history of fraud and sexual misconduct, and bases his campaign around extremely broad plans he doesn't have the foggiest idea how to implement... you're uninformed. Just because people don't want to hear that doesn't make it wrong. The disgusting thing about American politics isn't so much the endless vicious attacks as that there are millions of people who will vote for someone without bothering to think about whether they're actually qualified. Experience? Competence? A baseline level of integrity? Pah! I'll vote for the rich man from TV because he yelled things about jobs.

Until the US gets back to respecting more of the substance of a politician than their superficial sheen, the situation isn't really going to get better.

To be fair, people weren't falling for it until the Dems united everyone into one single banner to vote against them. While the public could lack information, it's also true that the opposing candidate lacked competence. There's a rise in right-wing populism just as left-wing politicians are having an identity crisis, turning into some uncharismatic and antagonizing breathing postulates.

This is probably only going to "fix" itself in the next economic recession. People will put up with Trump doing anything as long as they have food and wealth to purchase leisure items. Take that away and he's dead on the water.

 

[Golgo 13]

I don't think that's entirely accurate. There's a difference between actively advocating for the status quo by saying "things are fine as they are!" and passively allowing it to remain by saying "shut up with the politics, I don't care."

If anything, projecting intent onto people that don't have any reeks of the bad faith "no pick a side tho" "you're with us or you're against us" mindset that politically infested this place before the meltdown, and continues to a lesser extent in the ongoing Microsoft vs Sony console warring.

Not everything is about politics, and attempting to drag people into it when they would rather not engage is obnoxious ideologue behaviour.