Take down a resurrected Maggie Thatcher in this upcoming Doom II campaign

Quoting: TheSHEEEPInstead, the point is that developers should keep their personal opinions and views where they belong (various discussion platforms exist for that purpose) and not taint an entertainment product in order to try and shove their views down the audience's throat via (usually very thinly veiled) pandering, preaching and self-insertions.
Stuff like that is insidious and disgusting.

This is extremely arbitrary and unhelpful. If the issue is "personal opinions", does that mean that you cannot create an game that deals with issues you have opinions on? These kinds of standards would have prevented the writing of works like Star Trek and 1984, where the writers had strong personal opinions that inspired their works. Bad, Orwell, bad!

I see two possibilities for what "don't put politics in video games" actually means. Either it means that your problem isn't actually politics, but rather than the quality of the writing which you perceive as preachy or pandering. In this case your problem isn't actually with the politics but poor writing and thus you should really be complaining about poor writing rather than politics.

The more "insidious and disgusting" possibility I see is that this complaint is raised by people when they encounter something that dissents from their norms. Status quo politics aren't political at all, but if it's something I don't like then it's political and if it's political then it has an agenda and if it has an agenda it is a threat. In this case the "don't put politics in video games" is but an attempt to shut down dissenting viewpoints because they are scary. A modern military shooter which glorifies a US invasion on a foreign country is totally apolitical, but a game having a trans character in it is a vicious attack against society that must be stopped before it leads to total chaos and anarchy.

Either way, I don't think the slogan really serves a purpose because clearly even you agree that there are games that deal with politics well. So, perhaps people should be more specific in what they are actually thinking.

Quoting: SamsaiThis is extremely arbitrary and unhelpful. If the issue is "personal opinions", does that mean that you cannot create an game that deals with issues you have opinions on?

Of course you can, but if you let your opinions run rampant with whatever content you produce and don't manage to separate yourself from the product, the result is nothing but propaganda.

Quoting: SamsaiIn this case your problem isn't actually with the politics but poor writing and thus you should really be complaining about poor writing rather than politics.

One of those leads to the other, it is unavoidable.
If your focus is on pushing some agenda, your focus is not on doing good writing/worldbuilding/etc. and that will always show.

I'm glad you brought up Star Trek - the worst episodes of all the seasons are those in which the writers forgot about their actual job of being writers and instead went all-in on the preaching - you could say they went against their Prime Directive (ba-dum tshh).

So yes, my problem is with the personal politics of the authors, because when those take the front seat, the writing - and other parts, too - suffer enormously.
You can not make it a complaint only about bad writing, because that is just a symptom, not the cause.
The cause is bringing your own politics in.

Quoting: SamsaiThe more "insidious and disgusting" possibility I see is that this complaint is raised by people when they encounter something that dissents from their norms. Status quo politics aren't political at all, but if it's something I don't like then it's political and if it's political then it has an agenda and if it has an agenda it is a threat. In this case the "don't put politics in video games" is but an attempt to shut down dissenting viewpoints because they are scary. A modern military shooter which glorifies a US invasion on a foreign country is totally apolitical, but a game having a trans character in it is a vicious attack against society that must be stopped before it leads to total chaos and anarchy.

Cases like that definitely happen, but I'd say only on the ends of the horseshoe. And extremists from those positions can safely be disregarded.

In the vast majority of cases when I've talked to people about exactly that issue, people agree that it's not about agreement or disagreement with the positions themselves.
In fact, I'd say most people bothered by the preaching agree with the basic point behind it (maybe not surprising given that gaming community as a whole is more left-leaning), but the product is still tainted for them.

Quoting: TheSHEEEPOne of those leads to the other, it is unavoidable.
If your focus is on pushing some agenda, your focus is not on doing good writing/worldbuilding/etc. and that will always show.

I am skeptical of the strong link you assert between political motivation and poor writing.

And if your focus is on pushing some agenda, your focus should be on doing good writing because if you have an agenda to push, it is in your interests to sell that agenda well. If a piece of media fails to do so then it's poorly written, and I don't see what value is gained by insisting that the writing would have been better had the writer been less politically engaged. That isn't even criticism, it's just baseless speculation without substance. It isn't constructive and nothing can be learned from it.

Quoting: SamsaiAnd if your focus is on pushing some agenda, your focus should be on doing good writing because if you have an agenda to push, it is in your interests to sell that agenda well.

You can only have one focus, one thing that is worth more to you than anything else about any given project.
If it is writing, the rest is subjected to it in order to achieve that goal.
If it is agenda pushing, the rest (incl. writing) is subjected in order to achieve that goal.

Any attempt to "balance" things will at best lead to mediocre results and at worst an odd mixture of good writing and blunt preaching alternating within the same product.

Quoting: SamsaiThat isn't even criticism, it's just baseless speculation without substance. It isn't constructive and nothing can be learned from it.

Right, baseless... except being based on probably hundreds (by now) of examples from games, series, movies, entertainment industry itself, etc. from the last two decades proving it right.
With no example (to my knowledge) proving it wrong.

But, sure, go ahead and ignore it if it doesn't fit into your worldview.
I have long stopped caring if someone on the internet acknowledges facts presented to them or not. I doubt that presenting you with more would lead to any useful results.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 18 September 2021 at 5:47 pm UTC

Quoting: fagnerlnThe problem of Linux communities is that the huge part of it isn't people that cares about freedom of the individuals, is just socialists that want to "fight the burgesses".

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: elistoAlso WTF is burgesses ?

I wondered about that, too, but now I have this urge to fight it

There was a guy named Steve Burgess used to have a show on CBC. Maybe that's who they mean?

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: elistoAlso WTF is burgesses ?

I wondered about that, too, but now I have this urge to fight it

There was a guy named Steve Burgess used to have a show on CBC. Maybe that's who they mean?

He could just have a problem with female burgers. Maybe he only likes ones made from bulls. Or maybe he doesn't members of the governing body of Colonial Virginia. Can't tell.

Quoting: fagnerlnThe problem of Linux communities is that the huge part of it isn't people that cares about freedom of the individuals, is just socialists that want to "fight the burgesses".

I think the term you're looking for is bourgeoisie, fella.

Quoting: TheSHEEEPOne of those leads to the other, it is unavoidable.
If your focus is on pushing some agenda, your focus is not on doing good writing/worldbuilding/etc. and that will always show.

I'm glad you brought up Star Trek - the worst episodes of all the seasons are those in which the writers forgot about their actual job of being writers and instead went all-in on the preaching - you could say they went against their Prime Directive (ba-dum tshh).

So yes, my problem is with the personal politics of the authors, because when those take the front seat, the writing - and other parts, too - suffer enormously.

I personally am a Lord of the Rings fan. I could argue for hours that it's the greatest work of the 20th century. Well, many would disagree, but almost everyone would agree that Tolkien's worldbuilding was not just excellent, he practically was responsible for the term coming into use. And certainly few would accuse him of neglecting his writing, whether they actually like his writing style or not.

But Tolkien clearly had several agendas going in LoTR. For instance, it's no co-incidence that the people who started Greenpeace all had their copies of LoTR when they set off in the original Greenpeace boat. And it's generally agreed that one aspect of LoTR was a reaction against the whole of Modernism, both literary and cultural and economic--right back to Sir Isaac Newton! Only a fool would consider LoTR to have some kind of journalistic neutrality. And in fact, as has been argued about journalism itself, neutrality in writing isn't really possible--every writer, and every piece of writing, is standing somewhere.

I think there's an irony here. You're fine with really blatantly overt politics. But, despite saying that what bugs you about the less-overt political writing is its deception, what you really don't like is its failure to deceive adequately. What you want is writing whose political leanings are sufficiently organically worked into the whole that you are in fact deceived and fail to notice what they are doing.

Quoting: fagnerlnThe problem of Linux communities is that the huge part of it isn't people that cares about freedom of the individuals, is just socialists that want to "fight the burgesses".

Ah, yes, freedom of the individuals. You mean like this:

Quoting: TheSHEEEPRight, baseless... except being based on probably hundreds (by now) of examples from games, series, movies, entertainment industry itself, etc. from the last two decades proving it right.
With no example (to my knowledge) proving it wrong.

The problem is that your standard is so arbitrary and undefined that you can declare any flaw in any piece of media as having been caused by a political agenda. At the same time you can also reject any counter-examples by claiming that some arbitrary level of political-ness wasn't met by that work or its creator. So I am not exactly surprised that you have a vast multitude of examples about how politics are ruining entertainment and no examples to the contrary.

In the last two decades games have only gotten more interesting and not less. And the boring games and movies aren't seemingly the ones with a strong message, they are the ones that are watered down for the sake of mass market appeal. Which funnily enough seems like the most probable outcome when you put people in charge that are the perfect examples of the types of writers you value: ones that totally separate themselves from their works and have no personal political motivations of their own, at least as far as what ends up on the screen.