Seriously. Every form of entertainment has baked-in political assumptions, and that definitely includes #ttrpg . You might choose not to examine them, but this is an active choice on your part, and you don’t get to pretend that your entertainment is “free of politics”.
I disagree, because typically it means someone is racist or sexist and just doesn’t want to see people of color or queer characters. Such people may still be willing to engage with the political aspects of their gaming insofar as they may join initiatives like Stop Killing Games or argue that game devs should be treated better, but they’re just bigoted assholes who can’t handle people of color or queer characters.
Also don’t mistake this as a defense of them. They’re deplorable. I’m just saying I don’t agree with the statement as written.
You can tell what someone’s politics are by what they consider political.
I was astonished at some of the Steam reviews of Outer Worlds after playing it. People proper pissed off that their experience had been ruined because there’s a female side character with an optional side quest where she wants a date with another woman. Like how thoroughly filled with hate do you have to be as a person, to be fine with all the mass killing but suddenly get a moralistic high horse about a fictional character going on a dinner date you don’t approve of.
Sad that Steam are making a comment of their own by allowing those reviews to stay up.
How DARE you make your game try to reflect reality.
Steam definitely has a libertarian streak, seemingly. I wish I had started switching over to GOG a lot sooner.
I mean sometimes I just want to take a break from thinking about it and larp as “The good guys” for a while
Honestly, with how things are right now politically - FAIR!
Let me roll some silly dice as a silly little guy while I ignore the prelude to another world war.
What’s the political assumption of pong?
I mean I don’t disagree with the sentiment, the moment something has world building or a story or goals that relate to real life non-abstractly, there’s at least a political assumption, potentially an intentional statement. And people just don’t notice when it conforms to their world view. But politics free entertainment can exist, even if being able to engage in that entertainment necessarily requires some sort of engagement with real politic systems.
Though the most memorable games tend to be the ones very intentionally making statements anyway.
Closest I’ve got, which I’m surprised nobody has mentioned, is the very concept that entertainment is a worthwhile pursuit, and that we aren’t made solely to work. Pong serves no functional utility, which is a statement unto itself.
That said, it feels a bit like a cop out to me, from what that quote is supposed to mean. I’d be content to rephrase it to “any sufficiently complex entertainment has politics in it”. For example, I feel like this could almost certainly be said about stories in general, but I’d struggle to find the politics in many simple children’s books, besides “children should be read to”. Although the more I think about it, teaching all children to read was once quite political.
Children’s stories have tons of politics. They’re almost always intentionally pushing a message of some kind, like “Be nice to ugly people because they might turn out to be really hot and/or magical later.”
Pong is competitive rather than cooperative, and I find that very meaningful.
Glancing at Wikipedia for any Pong discourse. Found a likely example. Turns out Pong had a bug (read: feature) that contributed to its place as the first commercial success in video games. Quote,
the in-game paddles were unable to reach the top of the screen. This was caused by a simple circuit that had an inherent defect. Instead of dedicating time to fixing the defect, Alcorn decided it gave the game more difficulty and helped limit the time the game could be played [per payment]
So, Pong established the concept of video games systematically favouring the rich. Are we there yet, is that political enough?
There is still no political assumption in the game itself. Of course the moment you consider the means of acquiring it, everything touches on politics, even going to the forest and throwing a random stick, because forests existing is politics, them being accessible is politics, and you being allowed (or not) to throw a random stick is politics. That doesn’t make the concept of “throw stick at target for fun” political.
Alright yes, if you deliberately draw a circle around a portion of your entertainment and say “this is the part I like because it’s not political!” that’s still a political choice, which is the entire point OP is making, ICYMI.
Everything is political, even the choice to isolate one thing as non-political. The fact is that politics are only escapable if you’re privileged to be the kind of person who gets to say “shut up about politics, I’m trying to play Pong!”
Yeah generally when talking about a thing you draw a circle around the thing, that’s how that works. My glass from ikea isn’t making any political statement or assumption in its design as a finished product (unless you consider presumed size requirement for a beverage container to be political, though inherently nothing about it even states its purpose, so even that is doubtful) the process behind its design, manufacturing, and sale very much is political as fuck though.
You slightly moved the goalposts there. The assertion is not “Everything is making a political statement” it’s “Everything is political.” Your ikea glass reflects your social class, the international relations between where you are and where it was made. It may have been made by an oppressed person in some third world shithole (or even sweden!) It may even be a political statement, like a designer somewhere made it curvy because he thinks people are more likely to buy something with a “feminine” silhouette.
Okay, well I’m drawing a circle around how much more interesting it is to talk about politics than whatever this was.
Pong represents the slow but inevitable march towards socialism
That’s a false argument your are making here.
First : it’s a TTRPG group. You can’t have TTRPG without world building, story goals, etc.
Second : Pong is not a TTRPG. AFAIK.
Third : In case you don’t know, people who tend to say “no politics in my gaming” (like gamergaters) actually do a very political statement as for them “being black” or “being gay” or “being a woman” etc. is often seen as “politics in [their] gaming”.Sure, you can try to argue with the words, but it’s not just words, they exists in a context and the context is that it’s a fascist dog whistle.
The statement was “every form of entertainment”. Tbh tho yea i didnt really notice it being rpgmemes so it wasnt super relevant, that statement was surely not just meant for ttrpgs tho.
I fully agree you can’t have a ttrpg without political assumptions
Actually it’s hard to keep politic out of RPG.
In game, politic is what makes the game more than just killing random person you know the Princess who want to escape a political marriage, the advisor looking to become the lord, the church and and the merchant guild trying to gain influence ? All of that is politics. and all of that is what makes your campaign fun.
In real-life, like any other social activity especially if you get wider than a closed circle, politics get involved, your club need to talk with the mayor to get a slot in the municipal culture centre or rent a room in a school. Moreover, RPG tend to have a bad reputation and be not correct according to conservative which make it even more political than tons of other RPG, if you let church and right-winger tell you which hobby are acceptable you won’t be able to play RPG
The politics those people wish to avoid is things like the princess wanting to escape a political marriage because she’s gay
They don’t mind politics just so long as it’s not gender or identity politics
only conservatives ever think about this, same goes for movies/shows with “too much inclusivity, and diversity”
Ghost of Tsushima:
A Samurai and several of his battle-ready female companions try to reclaim their island after Mongol invasion.
I remember thinking “did they really have female warriors and lords back then who called the shots and fought alongside the men? I like the message, but a bit of realism would be nice…”
And then our brave stoic rugged Samurai literally prostrates himself in front of his lord/uncle at every opportunity constantly grovelling and professing how unworthy he is and how he seeks only to serve, and then I’m thinking “oh yeah… the stoic Samurai is a trope, they were either small militias or snivelling arms of the state.”
So I’m okay with realism being bent if it means I’m not constantly questioning the values of my main character.
I’m not super familiar with either the game or Japanese history, but I found this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onna-musha
It seems that women were regarded more equally prior to confucianism.
The page for the game says:
Jin’s samurai armor and katana are not historically accurate, with his armor based on that of the Sengoku period during the 16th and 17th centuries. According to Chris Zimmerman, one of Sucker Punch’s cofounders, samurai armor from the 13th century was “jarring looking” and did not align with players’ expectations of what samurai armor would look like.
Totally-not-samurai-looking armor:
Yeah I’ve made peace with what I want from the game, because period-perfect accuracy would be way too jarring to stomach
I absolutely want politics in gaming. Without it, we’d be stuck in the arcade era. Sure, sometimes I also like to zone out on puzzle games which are largely devout of it. Imagine The Witcher 1 without politics, is there even a game there?
“Politics” or “the way one sees the world”?
Because I’m pretty sure there’s a language disconnect regarding worldview.
A dev has their game reflect their worldview, and a social curmudgeon experiences political rhetoric cognitive dissonance, illustrating the incongruency and the fact that they are, indeed, a tool. ARRGHHH MUH FREEDOMS
I love politics in gaming, I loved Fallout 3, NV,4 (I still enjoyed it but to a lesser extent), Cyberpunk, and Outer Worlds 1/2. I love it when a game has multiple factions, I love when you get to really understand the politics of a fictional world, and I love stories involving politics.
Yes agree, scheming and politicking can make the game mechanics really work.
they want something that won’t challenge their preconceptions one iota. they don’t care about artists crafting a story, they want slop that confirms their biases.
“i don’t want politics in my games” is an insane thing to say when the biggest franchises for decades have been games about wars. All art is inherently political, but come on. War being apolotical? Literal babybrain. No, politics is when woman and black and I suppose
Exactly! Almost everything in our lives that matters ultimately is reliant and depends on politics and policy. When people say “I don’t really care about politics,” what they are really saying is they don’t like thinking at all.
I’m very curious what political message shapez is sending. It’s a factory building game that takes place in a seeming void where magical shapes appear out of nowhere and then simply get thrown into what appears to be a black hole there’s no particular discernible story or message just a fun puzzle
Politics in gaming is awesome, ham fisted writing and design wrapped up in an opinion lecturing the player so it breaks the universe ruleset is crap and does more damage to what ever message you were trying to push.
Sadly a lot of socially important messages are pushed as a selling point by people who don’t really have the background to fully create a bridge that speaks to People.
This is the same for a lot of creative work our artists are increasingly coming from privileged and protected backgrounds that we’re losing the depth and edge of the art. Indie games as usual are the standard games like Star dew address so much about humanity in a beautiful way.
I play crusader kings for the plot not the politics😄
