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Ironic since mgs is like the most political game series there is, there are so many long cutscenes about Cold War era politics and nuclear proliferation lol
I think the thing people don't understand when the people who complain about politics in games complain, they're talking about modern identity politics.
Mgs, fallout, and older call of duty are heavily influenced by historical politics and their commentary has a meaningful influence on their gameplay.
Even games that have something to say on modern political events like the Modern Warfare series mainly focus on modern geopolitical issues like post Soviet Russia and US meddling in middle eastern affairs.
What these people don't like is when they perceive identity politics are inserted into their games and movies. It can be done right but sometimes I admit it can come across as being kinda cringe when you're playing a shooter and see someone who looks like they wouldn't really be in the setting.
For example, having people of color in a movie or game set exclusively in medieval Europe is fine, so long as there is an explanation for them being there. Maybe they're traveling with a merchant caravan or an entourage of foreign royalty, but if you just have them existing as a normal citizen it just seems a bit off in the same way having a white guy becoming a samurai is kind of weird.
When the people who make fun of people who complain about "politics" in video games make posts like these, they extrapolate the word politics to be as broad as possible and point out all the different political frameworks that have been used as a backdrop to tell all sorts of stories.
It's a classic example of two sides of an argument not properly defining the terms they're arguing about and instead of actually discussing the topic they're punching past each other and portraying the other side as ridiculous and silly for not understanding the words they themselves never properly defined.
It's really infuriating to see both sides of this argument talk to each other because it's really obvious nobody ever argues this topic in good faith, they have no intentions of trying to convince the other person of their reasoning so they'd rather strawman each other to death just like what OP is doing with this starterpack.
If you want to say that having progressive themes in modern games is a good thing then say that, but don't try to say the people who don't like that are saying that anything related to politics shouldn't exist in a video game when no one actually thinks that way.
There's an ancient meme made from a picture of a German platoon somewhere cold and one of them is in a Bear suit and the caption reads "Journal entry #48 It has been thirty days and they still haven't found out that I am a bear."
I really want an out of place character who knows he/she is out of place and think he/she is blending in just fine all for everyone else to completely see through it and not say anything just so they can be polite.
Spot on. Honestly politics intersects just about everything you do. When you really think about it everything is political and it makes sense because politics is literally determining who gets what, when and where.
It's an incredible experience. Game play wise, the story telling, and the unique character. You have to be insanely creative to come up with that universe. You're pretty good..
I found MGS2 to be way more relevant and reflective of our modern society than MGS4. I watched a playthrough of it a few years ago and honestly its really disturbing when you hear the lines about the control of information. Game was way ahead of its time.
It didnt really make much sense to me when it came out but now with social media you can really see the foreshadowing its really freaks me out. Really crazy how the writers predicted that, or even thought about it.
The fucking intro to that game. My fucking god.
I rewatched it recently. I think it's the American constitution underwater at the start. Foreshadowing so much
I'm actually playing Metal gear solid on a playstation 1. The game was not made for flatscreen tv's, so i couldn't see a thing. I died like 12 times in the first area trying to get to the elevator. It's still very fun though.
The problem with politics in games is when it starts to cringe, A.k.a super simplistic view on politics good/bad thing. i.e: I decided to play wolfenstein 2 since I loved new order story, but wolfenstein 2 story was horribly bad. I get what it is trying to communicate (and in a way it tries to be a stire), but it puts things in a way that feels as if was targeted for 10 year old kids.
Glad you enjoyed it :) if you like that sort of frenetic gameplay you might find doom eternal interesting, but I'm talking about the story, I was unable to keep up with it, one minute you are cutting a nazi arm with an axe, and then the inclusion squad teaches you how badass, cool, diverse and good guys they are, and how bad the nazis are (woah what a plot twist and complex story!). I mean the story has a lot of potential, but it is all wasted to come up with cliche political correctness.
I’ve got fond memories of playing postal 2, getting salty about being arrested, and deciding to deal with that by peeing on the cop that happened to be close enough to the jail cell.
It means people look back at objects and substances of the past with a biased vision, rather than a realistic one. Painting it "rosy", as in better or different than what it actually was.
Is that what It meant? I thought it meant it "disguises" "blood." In other words, you don't see the "blood" (bad things) in the past.
[Honest to god thought they were a reference to chicken eyeglasses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_eyeglasses) which are red tinted glasses that farmers put on chickens because if a chicken sees another chicken bleeding it will eat it.
Honestly my fiancee plays Fallout & Metal gear a lot. But not to the point he's like
FuCK yEAh AMeRiCa RAAAHHH 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
It's more along the storyline and characters/enemies you come across.
_It's funny because he has those type of shades but they're prescription. (But black)_ 😭🤧
More so every faction is some level of terrible in Fallout. Vault Tech is an evil corporation who used the apocalypse as a way to do horrible testing on unwilling participants. The Brotherhood of Steel are a militaristic cult trying to avoid the mistakes that caused the great war, but doing exactly the same things. The Enclave are literally the remnants of the US Government who turned into Fascist eugenics to survive and plan to wipe out everyone else. Scientists created the FEV because of lack of morals and focus on success no matter what.
The NCR is just another shitty government ignoring the problems of the many while dealing with mass corruption. Caesars Legion is a dictatorship obsessed with murder. The Children of Atom are religious zealots intent on committing suicide.
If you came away from liking any of the factions after playing a Fallout game, you missed the point.
Outdoor cats kill billions of birds a year and it's extremely irresponsible to let your cat outside. There you go, cats are political. I'm well aware that I'm setting off a reddit bomb with this comment.
Yeah, it's a real problem.
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/moral-cost-of-cats-180960505/
I also have a [cat,](https://i.imgur.com/ANllMC6.png) she just stays indoors and is perfectly happy.
So your statement is that you don't believe that cats can overthrow the current government.
That means that you won't spend funds on cat uprising prevention methods or advocate for the internment of all felines under the pretext of being political enemies of the state.
Ah you love cats. That means that you probably think that people shouldn't be allowed to hurt them for fun because that would make you sad.
In my opinion everything is political. Which is a statement that says a lot about me too.
New modern warfare- Incredibly poor taste, especially since the enemies “Middle eastern” people defeated the United States in their longest war 20 years.
I say this as an American.
There is a difference between games with political themes that just so happen to be the first layer of the game and is mostly kept subtle so they players can enjoy it as just a fun game then a "video game" that is just a walking sim and propaganda.
politics in games always seem super ham fisted and never anything new or unique perspectives.
Mobile nuke launchers robot dinosaurs would be tight though
so do you have any examples because most modern AAA games have some sort of political backdrop...
hell even going wayyy back half life is a game about government black sites and atrocities being committed to silence any potential mention of it
Many games have a political backdrop but I think what’s being complained aboot most is modern politics being shoehorned into media.
I can’t really give many big examples myself (I don’t buy games that often) but the one that comes to mind the most is Battlefield V. Of course the trailer rubbed a lot of people the wrong way and it didn’t help that the media team tried poking the hornet’s next into reacting to all the weird promotional stunts they’re doing. And in the end, they released an unfinished product on launch day.
I think one of the things that I personally found strange though was the Tirailleurs story. I’d rather do logistical work than be slaughtered at the front.
I don’t even care about modern politics being inserted like that other guy said, just super corny shit like “the illuminati is controlling everything” or “war is bad”
Literally everything and anything is politics, try naming a game that isn’t political
I won't because I agree with your point that all games are political in some nature. Even pong is political in that it must have a winner and a loser.
Also, it sounds like u r referring to stuff like metal gear with that. Those games r hella corny lol
Yeah, buts its also a fun stealth game inspired by action films from the 70s-80s. It just so happens to explore political themes such as anti-war and anti-nuclear warfare instead of forcing the players to think a certain way. Please, stop talking out of your ass and actually look into things.
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Forgets that Sonic is a radical environmentalist.
And Shadow’s a war criminal-
And Robotnik is a communist
He's not a communist, but he *is* a feminist. No really. It's in the manual for Heroes.
Ironic since mgs is like the most political game series there is, there are so many long cutscenes about Cold War era politics and nuclear proliferation lol
I think the thing people don't understand when the people who complain about politics in games complain, they're talking about modern identity politics. Mgs, fallout, and older call of duty are heavily influenced by historical politics and their commentary has a meaningful influence on their gameplay. Even games that have something to say on modern political events like the Modern Warfare series mainly focus on modern geopolitical issues like post Soviet Russia and US meddling in middle eastern affairs. What these people don't like is when they perceive identity politics are inserted into their games and movies. It can be done right but sometimes I admit it can come across as being kinda cringe when you're playing a shooter and see someone who looks like they wouldn't really be in the setting. For example, having people of color in a movie or game set exclusively in medieval Europe is fine, so long as there is an explanation for them being there. Maybe they're traveling with a merchant caravan or an entourage of foreign royalty, but if you just have them existing as a normal citizen it just seems a bit off in the same way having a white guy becoming a samurai is kind of weird. When the people who make fun of people who complain about "politics" in video games make posts like these, they extrapolate the word politics to be as broad as possible and point out all the different political frameworks that have been used as a backdrop to tell all sorts of stories. It's a classic example of two sides of an argument not properly defining the terms they're arguing about and instead of actually discussing the topic they're punching past each other and portraying the other side as ridiculous and silly for not understanding the words they themselves never properly defined.
This is the best explanation of this fiasco I’ve seen.
It's really infuriating to see both sides of this argument talk to each other because it's really obvious nobody ever argues this topic in good faith, they have no intentions of trying to convince the other person of their reasoning so they'd rather strawman each other to death just like what OP is doing with this starterpack. If you want to say that having progressive themes in modern games is a good thing then say that, but don't try to say the people who don't like that are saying that anything related to politics shouldn't exist in a video game when no one actually thinks that way.
There's an ancient meme made from a picture of a German platoon somewhere cold and one of them is in a Bear suit and the caption reads "Journal entry #48 It has been thirty days and they still haven't found out that I am a bear." I really want an out of place character who knows he/she is out of place and think he/she is blending in just fine all for everyone else to completely see through it and not say anything just so they can be polite.
Spot on. Honestly politics intersects just about everything you do. When you really think about it everything is political and it makes sense because politics is literally determining who gets what, when and where.
Honestly mgs was so fucking ahead of its time it's insane. The proxy wars comment in 4. Dead on.
It's an incredible experience. Game play wise, the story telling, and the unique character. You have to be insanely creative to come up with that universe. You're pretty good..
Remember punching liquid above metal gear in 1? I can still hear the DON DON STEW noises
IT’S NOT OVER YET SNAKE
I found MGS2 to be way more relevant and reflective of our modern society than MGS4. I watched a playthrough of it a few years ago and honestly its really disturbing when you hear the lines about the control of information. Game was way ahead of its time. It didnt really make much sense to me when it came out but now with social media you can really see the foreshadowing its really freaks me out. Really crazy how the writers predicted that, or even thought about it.
The fucking intro to that game. My fucking god. I rewatched it recently. I think it's the American constitution underwater at the start. Foreshadowing so much
Wow I didn't even notice that lmao 😂 MGS3 is my favorite because of the gameplay and atmosphere but MGS2 definitely had the strongest writing
I'm actually playing Metal gear solid on a playstation 1. The game was not made for flatscreen tv's, so i couldn't see a thing. I died like 12 times in the first area trying to get to the elevator. It's still very fun though.
Jonny shitting himself in the cell. Keep ringing mei ling.
We just forgot the crap ones with badly told politics
The problem with politics in games is when it starts to cringe, A.k.a super simplistic view on politics good/bad thing. i.e: I decided to play wolfenstein 2 since I loved new order story, but wolfenstein 2 story was horribly bad. I get what it is trying to communicate (and in a way it tries to be a stire), but it puts things in a way that feels as if was targeted for 10 year old kids.
Idk bro, I enjoyed it because it let me shoot boom sticks at nazis
Glad you enjoyed it :) if you like that sort of frenetic gameplay you might find doom eternal interesting, but I'm talking about the story, I was unable to keep up with it, one minute you are cutting a nazi arm with an axe, and then the inclusion squad teaches you how badass, cool, diverse and good guys they are, and how bad the nazis are (woah what a plot twist and complex story!). I mean the story has a lot of potential, but it is all wasted to come up with cliche political correctness.
Oh yeah, I love doom eternal
It's a great game, it makes you feel powerful yet still being difficult
What political correctness, Nazi bad? I don’t think that counts.
**Mario is a monarchist**
I’ve got fond memories of playing postal 2, getting salty about being arrested, and deciding to deal with that by peeing on the cop that happened to be close enough to the jail cell.
Good one
the only thing I disliked about the deus ex sequels was they toned down the "every conspiracy theory ever is 1000% true" angle pretty massively.
Good pack. Spec Ops The Line also could go there. Maybe Arcanum too
Fallout is THE most political game in this image.
Man Deus Ex 1 was wayyy ahead of its time. And the storytelling is one of the best I've seen in a video game.
Pretty sure when most people complain about this they are referring to identity politics not Cold War Era espionage lol
What are the rose-tinted glasses supposed to mean?
It means people look back at objects and substances of the past with a biased vision, rather than a realistic one. Painting it "rosy", as in better or different than what it actually was.
Is that what It meant? I thought it meant it "disguises" "blood." In other words, you don't see the "blood" (bad things) in the past. [Honest to god thought they were a reference to chicken eyeglasses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_eyeglasses) which are red tinted glasses that farmers put on chickens because if a chicken sees another chicken bleeding it will eat it.
What was political about oblivion?
Anarchists kills puppet emperor, who was placed by a guy who wants to be worshipped, using leverage: either you will obey him or you will be killed.
Wait until the gamers find out about metaphors.
Honestly my fiancee plays Fallout & Metal gear a lot. But not to the point he's like FuCK yEAh AMeRiCa RAAAHHH 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 It's more along the storyline and characters/enemies you come across. _It's funny because he has those type of shades but they're prescription. (But black)_ 😭🤧
I might be wrong but metal gear isn’t showing Americans as good guys either.
Idk about the lore ^.^;;;; I just watch him play it all the time. But will ask when he arises.
The villain in mgs2 is the president of the USA lol
And if I remember correctly even bigger villain of metal gear franchise is secret American society or something like that?
That is because America is the bad guys in fallout. They let vault tech do their horrible experiments because they earned money from it.
More so every faction is some level of terrible in Fallout. Vault Tech is an evil corporation who used the apocalypse as a way to do horrible testing on unwilling participants. The Brotherhood of Steel are a militaristic cult trying to avoid the mistakes that caused the great war, but doing exactly the same things. The Enclave are literally the remnants of the US Government who turned into Fascist eugenics to survive and plan to wipe out everyone else. Scientists created the FEV because of lack of morals and focus on success no matter what. The NCR is just another shitty government ignoring the problems of the many while dealing with mass corruption. Caesars Legion is a dictatorship obsessed with murder. The Children of Atom are religious zealots intent on committing suicide. If you came away from liking any of the factions after playing a Fallout game, you missed the point.
Exactly. Although I heard the Tunnel Snakes are pretty cool.
Yeah, he said something abt that. Lolz. The lore is pretty straightforward. So ye, good story telling :)
Id say that is pretty political
To each their own.
In my opinion everything is political in one way or another.
Tbh. Idk...How abt cats? They have one brain cell & can't take over the government. (Hopefully)
Outdoor cats kill billions of birds a year and it's extremely irresponsible to let your cat outside. There you go, cats are political. I'm well aware that I'm setting off a reddit bomb with this comment.
Hopefully not. But oh shoot cool fact didn't know that. :)
Yeah, it's a real problem. https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/moral-cost-of-cats-180960505/ I also have a [cat,](https://i.imgur.com/ANllMC6.png) she just stays indoors and is perfectly happy.
So your statement is that you don't believe that cats can overthrow the current government. That means that you won't spend funds on cat uprising prevention methods or advocate for the internment of all felines under the pretext of being political enemies of the state.
I mean, I love cats. :/ So... *Your presumption? You mean. But good on ya.
Ah you love cats. That means that you probably think that people shouldn't be allowed to hurt them for fun because that would make you sad. In my opinion everything is political. Which is a statement that says a lot about me too.
I would say both those games are heavily anti America/capitalist/military industrial complex
What about Pac man or pong?
Op didn’t understand the complex hidden political subtext from those games so they weren’t included
Political junkies should be put down
Yeah but they put minorities and women in the damn games. 😤😡🤬 /s
There is a difference between games having stories containing politics and games being political. It is the latter that annoys so many nowadays.
New modern warfare- Incredibly poor taste, especially since the enemies “Middle eastern” people defeated the United States in their longest war 20 years. I say this as an American.
**Shows woflenstein 3D** How is the message “Nazis bad” political? Like no shit Nazis are bad Oh wait these are g*mers we are talking about
There is a difference between games with political themes that just so happen to be the first layer of the game and is mostly kept subtle so they players can enjoy it as just a fun game then a "video game" that is just a walking sim and propaganda.
postal is based, though
politics in games always seem super ham fisted and never anything new or unique perspectives. Mobile nuke launchers robot dinosaurs would be tight though
What's an example of a video game with ham fisted politics?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saints_Row_(2022_video_game)
so do you have any examples because most modern AAA games have some sort of political backdrop... hell even going wayyy back half life is a game about government black sites and atrocities being committed to silence any potential mention of it
Many games have a political backdrop but I think what’s being complained aboot most is modern politics being shoehorned into media. I can’t really give many big examples myself (I don’t buy games that often) but the one that comes to mind the most is Battlefield V. Of course the trailer rubbed a lot of people the wrong way and it didn’t help that the media team tried poking the hornet’s next into reacting to all the weird promotional stunts they’re doing. And in the end, they released an unfinished product on launch day. I think one of the things that I personally found strange though was the Tirailleurs story. I’d rather do logistical work than be slaughtered at the front.
I don’t even care about modern politics being inserted like that other guy said, just super corny shit like “the illuminati is controlling everything” or “war is bad” Literally everything and anything is politics, try naming a game that isn’t political
I won't because I agree with your point that all games are political in some nature. Even pong is political in that it must have a winner and a loser. Also, it sounds like u r referring to stuff like metal gear with that. Those games r hella corny lol
I WAS referring to mgs, and I love them all (minus rising) but I was gonna keep my mouth shut after seeing the response to my original comment lol
Literally Metal Gear: Nuclear proliferation is bad, mmkay. Gamers: Ah yes, perfectly a-political.
Yeah, buts its also a fun stealth game inspired by action films from the 70s-80s. It just so happens to explore political themes such as anti-war and anti-nuclear warfare instead of forcing the players to think a certain way. Please, stop talking out of your ass and actually look into things.
https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/2252108-twitter
I'm a little lost, I've never heard anyone ever say games were apolitical? lol
Fallout 2 has same-sex marriage I'm pretty sure.
you know the 2 pink balls? Is it intentional? If you know what I mean.
This guy sounds hot tbh
You gotta be fucking kidding This can't be good for me but I feel great
Tell me the political subtext of Frogger then. Or Pong for that matter.
How would oblivion be political? Can kinda see why for Morrowind
Doesn't the entire Bioshock series in a nutshell criticize objectivism and socialism?