Games Should Not Be Democrat Propaganda
So I was watching a video by Geeks & Gamers on this article at a gaming site I’ve never heard of. Here’s the video in question:
The article is entitled “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare isn’t political, claims Infinity Ward” and is written by some feminazi chick named Natalie Clayton. The point of this stupid piece is that while the developers of the game in question have declared that the game isn’t “political”, the author thinks they’re either hypocrites or stupid, because war by its very nature is “political.”
The feminazi didn’t actually interview the developers of this game – instead, this is her stupid “response” to an interview conducted by another site, one called Game Informer.
“Do we touch topics that bear a resemblance to the geopolitics of the world we live in today? Hell yeah, because that is the subject matter of Modern Warfare,” said Minkoff.
“Are we telling a story that has anything to do with the specific governments of any countries that we are portraying? No. So if you’re asking, like, is Trump in the videogame, no, he isn’t.”
This, right here, is probably the crux of the issue. That, and there’s no stupid side-story about a pair of queer soldiers trying to find time to make out with each other while dodging enemy fire.
This is the actual interview, of which is a video.
I watched the video. The gameplay director claims that the game isn’t “political”, but he also says that “political” doesn’t mean anything in the context of the game, and that the notion of it being “political” is interpreted differently by different people.
So, Natalie Clayton’s idea of a political game is a game that has war in it. However, when people like me claim a game is political, we mean something very different. I don’t see a mere war story as something inherently political.
Then the gameplay director states that Trump isn’t in the game. I think the word they want to use, and should have used, is that the game isn’t partisan.
Natalie Clayton wants the game to be partisan – she wants the game to be a vehicle to promote Democrat talking points and values, like inclusion and diversity. The game’s focus, however, is on more broad and timeless concepts, as the other guy in the video states. Making it an allegory to contemporary politics, especially in the way someone like Natalie wants it to do, will probably date the game. Dating the game breaks the immersion for the player. That’s one reason why “real names” aren’t used.
Go to the four minute mark on the Game Informer video. The gameplay director doesn’t use the word “partisan” but he clearly means that he does not want the story to be partisan and take sides. Instead, they clearly want to explore the broader themes that come with modern warfare.
So the stupid bint closes with this:
It rings of a very modern reading of politics. One in which wars, violence and power are read as natural and free of biases, but adding women, queer or PoC characters to a piece of media is “injecting politics”. If the actions of states and power aren’t political, what is?
Yeah, they’re free of biases because people on all sides engage in such activities. I’m guessing that’s why these two guys see them as “apolitical”. That, and war, violence, power struggles, etc have happened throughout history. Once again, I think these guys made the mistake in not differentiating between political and partisan. I get what they’re saying. It’s not political in the way Natalie Clayton thinks it should be.
Now, I have never played any of the games in the Call of Duty series, so I don’t know if you create a character or if you play as one. Even so, that line about “adding women, queer of PoC characters to a piece of media is ‘injecting politics’”, frankly, irritates me. It is also very telling.
So, regardless whether or not you create a character or play as a specific character, who the fuck cares if said character is gay, female or non-white? Why does the character in question need to be any of those things? Why do these kinds of characters need to be in the story in the first place?
Is this stupid bitch at all aware that not all countries on this Earth are like the US or Western Europe? Is she at all aware that there aren’t openly gay people serving in the militaries of a lot of countries? Depending on the actual story in this particular installment of the game, it’s likely that one of the countries involved in the fictional conflict isn’t an “enlightened” Western country desperate to fill their militaries with these icons of representation Natalie Clayton loves so fucking much.
So yes, shoehorning a black lesbian into the game just to placate Natalie Clayton’s insatiable need for “representation” would definitely be political in a way that the developers just aren’t interested in.
I suspect that they want the themes to be as broad and universal as possible, for the best immersion experience. They don’t want you to focus on “oh, this regime is gassing all their gays”, but rather, “this regime is horrible and they’re gassing their own people – we need to stop them.”
A regime gassing innocent people is timeless. A regime gassing a specific group of people for whatever reason puts the game in a specific time period. Gassing Jews? Oh, that’s World War 2. Enslaving blacks? Oh, that’s the Civil War.
So yeah, maybe she’s right in that, yeah, the game may be a political thriller, but she’s being disingenuous because she knows exactly why they aren’t calling the game political. She’s also butthurt about it, because all games have to include members of the Victim Class or else they’re racist/sexist/homophobic and therefore bad.
And, as I said before, I don’t know why this game has to have any of that shit in it. It’s a freaking war simulator. Your character is primarily going to be shooting enemies and dodging enemy fire. There isn’t going to be time for the player to contemplate the horrors of gassing lesbians or lynching blacks.
It’s like this dumb bitch has never actually played a game. No, I’m not pondering political issues while I play Fallout 76, Destiny 2 or Elder Scrolls Online. I’m just trying not to get killed and managing my inventory.
Nobody plays a game to be lectured on contemporary politics, and this “inclusion” and “diversity” bullshit is contemporary politics, and is something a lot of people are just flat-out sick of.
So, unlike the Geeks & Gamers dude, this isn’t enough to get me to buy the game, but kudos to them for not bowing down to the Diversity Kommissars. Focus on the gameplay and story, please. Nobody wants a Democrat National Convention simulator.