Simple, everyday gamer Davin Andersen reportedly wishes video games would stop pushing unneeded political agendas and instead focus on just being fun. He’d also support…
I think it can just mean “no overt political themes”. The implied politics of medieval setting in a fantasy game for example might not be enough to register as “political” for most people. If that game was about the horrors of migrating orcs and how we need to stop them from ruining Fantasyland, I think that might be a bit more of a political game.
Oh well in that case I prefer overtly political games. Like Mario, which is about rescuing the mushroom kingdom’s head of state and driving Bowser’s soldiers out of the territory they’ve occupied. You even lower Bowser’s flag at the end of each level.
While I know you’re joking, it does show how complex the thing is. The intention counts for a lot too. Someone inferring a political message from it would be different than intentionally trying to make one.
I’m not joking, I’m being 100% serious while using a totally incongruous example to make my point that tons of stuff people refuse to believe is political, is deeply political. My point further reinforced by the fact that you found it difficult to accept that I think Mario is political. People are LLMs, they don’t understand the words they’re using, they just regurgitate according to probabilistic association models. The word politics is associated probabilistically with seriousness, so people assume silly fun things like Mario can’t be political. They don’t understand the words they use, they just use heuristics. People aren’t sapient creatures, they literally have the same intelligence as chatgpt.
Then you’ve just deeply misunderstood what people mean by those terms. I’m not sure if that’s what people think has no politics at all, rather it’s not what people mean when they use the terms non-political or political video game. It’s not Super Mario they mean when they talk about political video games, but rather stuff with a lot more overt, direct and intentional message and topics.
Words are made up, what they mean depends on the context and shared understanding of them. When people talk about politics in video games, I think it’s alright to get the inferred meaning and go with that. Pointing out that everything is political doesn’t really do much.
If you’re going to make Wittgenstein’s argument that language exists only to fulfill a social purpose, then I am happy to engage you on that deeper level, but in doing so we must confront the purpose of the vernacular usage of the word “politics”. If it’s not a word based on representing some idea of truth, what is it for? As the Hard Drive has correctly pointed out, it’s for complaining about minorities in video games. It’s for racism. Personally, I think we should call out the use of racist tools, including social tools such as words. If someone complains about politics, we should call them a racist and move on with our lives.
Like I said early on, I think it can just mean “no overt political themes”. It’s not Super Mario they mean when they talk about political video games, but rather stuff with a lot more overt, direct and intentional message and topics.
Treating everyone not into overt political messages in a game as racist seems a bit, jeez. Should at least ask first what they mean.
Oh, we’re backing away from the social utility theory and back into the argument that words have meanings, but now with a descriptivism argument? Okay, sure. I can’t tell what you mean by overt, the game manual for Super Mario explains the whole political situation, I don’t see how Mario could be more overt. So I’ll assume you just mean direct (as in directed toward the player) and intentional, unless you can define overtness. In that case, whether a game is political or non-political depends entirely on the internal thoughts and feelings of the developers, not on the actual content of the game. I think the only way you could ever be sure a game was political is if the developers gave a press release stating the game is political. Otherwise I’m gonna go the skeptic’s route and say all games that don’t have developer statements of politics are non-political. According to your definition of politics, of course, which I don’t generally agree with. But in terms of prescriptivism, 90% of the games people complain about politics can’t be proven political. For example I would not be convinced Metal Gear is political at all until I saw an interview where Kojima directly stated he intended to change people’s minds about politics. For all we know he’s just a big philosophy nerd who wanted to ask a lot of cool questions in Metal Gear because he likes philosophical themes. That seems pretty on brand for him. So I’m gonna go ahead and deny that Metal Gear is political according to the common lexicon.
What in the world. I just mean that most people won’t consider Super Mario political but if it was trying to say that monarchy was the best thing ever then that would feel political to people.
Pac-Man or Pong requires at least working electricity and some practice at the game to reach higher levels, which requires leisure time - therefore it’s a political statement that the poorest in the world can’t afford the equipment, the infrastructure and the culture to play and therefore its very existence is a political statement
I think it can just mean “no overt political themes”. The implied politics of medieval setting in a fantasy game for example might not be enough to register as “political” for most people. If that game was about the horrors of migrating orcs and how we need to stop them from ruining Fantasyland, I think that might be a bit more of a political game.
Oh well in that case I prefer overtly political games. Like Mario, which is about rescuing the mushroom kingdom’s head of state and driving Bowser’s soldiers out of the territory they’ve occupied. You even lower Bowser’s flag at the end of each level.
While I know you’re joking, it does show how complex the thing is. The intention counts for a lot too. Someone inferring a political message from it would be different than intentionally trying to make one.
I’m not joking, I’m being 100% serious while using a totally incongruous example to make my point that tons of stuff people refuse to believe is political, is deeply political. My point further reinforced by the fact that you found it difficult to accept that I think Mario is political. People are LLMs, they don’t understand the words they’re using, they just regurgitate according to probabilistic association models. The word politics is associated probabilistically with seriousness, so people assume silly fun things like Mario can’t be political. They don’t understand the words they use, they just use heuristics. People aren’t sapient creatures, they literally have the same intelligence as chatgpt.
Then you’ve just deeply misunderstood what people mean by those terms. I’m not sure if that’s what people think has no politics at all, rather it’s not what people mean when they use the terms non-political or political video game. It’s not Super Mario they mean when they talk about political video games, but rather stuff with a lot more overt, direct and intentional message and topics.
Words are made up, what they mean depends on the context and shared understanding of them. When people talk about politics in video games, I think it’s alright to get the inferred meaning and go with that. Pointing out that everything is political doesn’t really do much.
If you’re going to make Wittgenstein’s argument that language exists only to fulfill a social purpose, then I am happy to engage you on that deeper level, but in doing so we must confront the purpose of the vernacular usage of the word “politics”. If it’s not a word based on representing some idea of truth, what is it for? As the Hard Drive has correctly pointed out, it’s for complaining about minorities in video games. It’s for racism. Personally, I think we should call out the use of racist tools, including social tools such as words. If someone complains about politics, we should call them a racist and move on with our lives.
Like I said early on, I think it can just mean “no overt political themes”. It’s not Super Mario they mean when they talk about political video games, but rather stuff with a lot more overt, direct and intentional message and topics.
Treating everyone not into overt political messages in a game as racist seems a bit, jeez. Should at least ask first what they mean.
Oh, we’re backing away from the social utility theory and back into the argument that words have meanings, but now with a descriptivism argument? Okay, sure. I can’t tell what you mean by overt, the game manual for Super Mario explains the whole political situation, I don’t see how Mario could be more overt. So I’ll assume you just mean direct (as in directed toward the player) and intentional, unless you can define overtness. In that case, whether a game is political or non-political depends entirely on the internal thoughts and feelings of the developers, not on the actual content of the game. I think the only way you could ever be sure a game was political is if the developers gave a press release stating the game is political. Otherwise I’m gonna go the skeptic’s route and say all games that don’t have developer statements of politics are non-political. According to your definition of politics, of course, which I don’t generally agree with. But in terms of prescriptivism, 90% of the games people complain about politics can’t be proven political. For example I would not be convinced Metal Gear is political at all until I saw an interview where Kojima directly stated he intended to change people’s minds about politics. For all we know he’s just a big philosophy nerd who wanted to ask a lot of cool questions in Metal Gear because he likes philosophical themes. That seems pretty on brand for him. So I’m gonna go ahead and deny that Metal Gear is political according to the common lexicon.
What in the world. I just mean that most people won’t consider Super Mario political but if it was trying to say that monarchy was the best thing ever then that would feel political to people.
Pac-Man or Pong requires at least working electricity and some practice at the game to reach higher levels, which requires leisure time - therefore it’s a political statement that the poorest in the world can’t afford the equipment, the infrastructure and the culture to play and therefore its very existence is a political statement
That’s the main theme of the original warcraft games. No one called them political.
The intention counts for a lot too. Someone inferring a political message from it would be different than intentionally trying to make one.