Permanently Deleted
Call of duty. The sheer number of people that game brainwashed into joining or supporting the military
I’m going to go ahead and say the Warcraft series.
There’s good races and bad races. There’s science races and greedy races (ok I get this is common in games). The good guys are hyper Christian, blonde, and patriarchal. “I will cleanse this land” is a quote. The world is hyper monarchal . Oh ya, in Warcraft 2, you put down a literal peasant revolt of your own peasants.
Fuck I’m old.
Its so funny that horde is not supposed to be the “evil” side yet they replaced the evil warchief with the undead girlboss war criminal.
I saw the cutscene of her doing war crimes burning down the tree. Did that ever resolve into anything meaningful or was she just blatantly evil?
Are the horde races still doing jeff dunham tier racist impressions for voices?
Just world of Warcraft alone is the opposite.
Huge world vs small, history that makes no sense, no real decisions to make as a character, no real npcs, everything is combat, cluttered UI.
The ideology of the game is that races alignment is more important than material, everyone will always be at war, it’s impossible for orcs to be friends with humans.
The monarchies/religion parts, but also the gods are 100% real and physically exist, there is no mystery as even knowledge of life after death is established, and there are true enemies who are evil demons.
Disco Elysium is the anti Wow.
SimCity 2000
Disco Elysium has all kinds of themes but ima chose the ones that’ll let me do this bit.
In DE you are pretty powerless you fail through the game and stumble unto a conclusion, in SimCity 2000 you are all powerful, demolish entire neighborhoods to build a highway, call down floods, meteors and all kinds of biblical disasters. As the eternal ‘Mayor’ you are basically a philosopher king and people hating you or loving you is based on how well you do. This doesn’t even get into how a ‘city is simulated’. Oh people just become criminals, a certain amount of people are always criminals no relation to their material conditions at all. How do you deal with crime? Why you build a police station nearby. Public transit is kept down by the fact that people can drive everywhere and don’t need a parking space.
In conclusion Disco Elysium is living in a post soviet city/society, while SimCity 2000 about constructing and living the US society/city.
Also all the Call of Duty and God of Wars etc are just too easy.
I watched a video about how the creators of SimCity researched making that game, and basically they read all of the liberal theory of city planning lmao. That’s why in both SimCity and in real politics the only solution to crime that can be considered is increasing police presence - the difference is that in SimCity it works because it’s programmed to work, and in our reality it just makes things worse.
It’s a great example of doing ideology without realizing that you’re being ideological, since the devs would probably say like “we’re reading the experts/following the data”, etc.
Halo comes close. It’s basically a school shooter simulator which also works extremely hard to justify the Iraq War. (In the 2000s, “religion bad” = islamophobia.) The grunts look and even kind of sound like kindergarteners.
GTA III: San Andreas also comes so close to having good politics. If you could unite your various neighborhoods to provide mutual aid, and if the police were considered just another gang, it would have good politics.
The later part of San Andreas begins by CJ having completed his sellout arc, even pointing out to Sweet how he’s now got all this luxurious shit, to which he criticizes him for having completely forgotten about the neighborhood.
Also, you still have CRASH using divide et Impera tactics to profit off of gangs and their drug operations in Los Santos, while poverty and crime remain extremely high.
Unfortunately, things kinda shit the bed with the Los Angeles Riot part of the game, going full “wtf why are they destroying their own communities”.
Having the alliance with the Aztecas also extend to say the Vagos etc., having a bigger part of the game be dedicated to the attitude of the police against the Black and Latino communities would have made the game better politically. [disclaimer: I’m not American]
It’s not the worst when it comes to politics, but yeah it could have been better.
Also, “Crack is bad” is a big part of the game, and there’s a corrupt fed character, why wasn’t he the main antagonist? If Rockstar had balls, the final level would involve a truce with all the gangs, they all invade a CIA facility, and then kill Mike Toreno.
I thought Toreno’s role in the story wasn’t bad - it’s very clear he’s using CJ and only pulls the strings to free Sweet after a dozen missions of increasingly unreasonable demands. He’s even introduced as a member of a drug smuggler syndicate that indirectly helps the Ballas and Big Smoke expand their criminal empire for the sake of geopolitical squabbles and fed infighting.
He’s basically the guy that allowed Tenpenny to become a powerful man and let various of the more unscrupulous gangs get rich off of narcotics he probably turned a blind eye to the Nicaraguan Contras selling.
Halo comes close. It’s basically a school shooter simulator
:jesse-wtf:
Like I agree broadly with the Iraq war criticism but… what?
there used to be this shooter series called America’s Army that was pure american military propaganda. now that call of duty is that instead, i havent really heard of AA anymore
if i’m not mistaken America’s Army was actually produced (not just consulted on) by the US Army, and at one point was intended to be an active recruitment portal (as in, get good enough at AA and they will ask if you want to enlist)
that’s if i’m not mistaken ofc
You’re right! A Marine recruiter actually contacted me and tried to recruit me while I was playing it too. Told me I could be an epic sniper or some shit lol
The funniest part is that rather than being a hoo-rah action packed game where you feel awesome and epic, it was a slow, methodical tactical sim where you had to literally sit and watch a lecture on first aid in order to take the combat medic role. And the only thing it taught me about being in the military is that your life can be extinguished in seconds, pointlessly and easily. probably not the message they were trying for though
I remember they shut down the servers a few years ago. IIRC AA was a bit more realistic than COD, but not as realistic as ARMA, an entire genre that basically doesn’t exist anymore.
ARMA on the other hand is probably both a much better recruitment tool and much worse—like a real ARMA-head would probably be the ideal grunt but most people bounce right the fuck off those games cause they’re boring as shit
George Wiedman of Super Bunnyhop put forth that arma is the only anti war war game because of the realistic part of walk 30 minutes somewhere and then get shot dead by a guy you never saw. It’s a very unglorious experience
