Helldivers 2’s Politics Appear To Be Flying Over The Heads Of Some
MolochAlter @ MolochAlter @lemmy.world Posts 0Comments 385Joined 2 yr. ago
MolochAlter @ MolochAlter @lemmy.world
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We are talking about the same people who think Fallout isn’t political and the Brotherhood of Steel is a cool good guy army.
Firstly, in the Bethesda games the political aspect of Fallout is so paper thin they may as well be correct, most people have not played the Black Isle fallouts.
Secondly, you need to realise that people don't see something as political if there is no dilemma in their mind, they see it as moral instead.
A good example: the Megaton ""dilemma"" in Fallout 3. Ostensibly, you could make an argument that the conversation of land development vs settler rights is a political one. The argument as to whether the lives of rando fucks living in shanties and slowly dying of radiation exposure are worth preserving if the alternative is starting over and building something better for other people could also be political at some point in history.
But in modern society, shaped by enlightenment ideas of equality and the concept of human rights and dignity, these have stopped being political questions because they sit in conflict with the basic social mores (hence moral questions) our society is built upon, and thus they take on a moral character instead.
The question "should we slaughter a bunch of useless peasants we are not in charge of to turn their land into my 15th palace" would hardly have been a matter of debate for some Mongolian horde for instance (yes, I know they didn't have palaces, you get the point), the debate would have been about ratios of enslaved captives vs killed in battle, if anything.
The vast majority of people's engagement with politics doesn't even approach the level of brainrot you see online.
People want security, prosperity, and for people not to suffer needlessly. That's about it.
In fact, most debate in society is about what those 3 concepts mean, not whether they're good ideas.
Some people also demand freedom but they're not the majority, and definitions of such and whom it should extend to also vary greatly.
So looking at the fallout 3 and 4 Brotherhood and saying "those are the cool post apocalyptic knights and they're the good guys" is a perfectly in line read for the average not politically savvy person. The Brotherhood is not perfect, but they want more or less those things.
That's also why New Vegas is by far the better game because it actually poses 2 forces (Legion and NCR) in opposition as to the meaning of those concepts and not as to whether they are goals worth pursuing, an actual political dilemma, unlike say "should people be allowed to drink water without getting radiation poisoning."
I think what a lot of people miss here is that when people say "keep politics out of x" what they mean is "keep blatant cringeworthy soapboxing out of x."
Helldivers is tongue in cheek and doesn't feel the need to bash you over the head with "But actually fascism bad" every five seconds, instead it has gag recruitment ads and an overall really funny presentation that works whether you get it or you don't.
I guarantee you that no rightoid looks at a one world government "super earth" with fond eyes.
- If you're an identitarian the fact that the Helldivers can be men or women is unacceptable, not to mention it's not clear if they're ethnically homogeneous
- If you're a libertarian the de-individualization and constant surveillance/propaganda from a totalitarian state is unacceptable, double that if you're an ancap
- Monarchists would probably like this if it were an explicit monarchy, but it's not, so they would probably also not like it
The only faction who would like this game's world is classical fascists, the kind Mussolini was, which ironically a lot of people seem to really really like on any side of the political spectrum, cause it's literally just totalitarian ideological illiberal authority.
What the fuck are you talking about? These two things aren't even remotely alike.
Yeah, pain is more tangible and actually experienced, whereas what society actually looks like is 99% vibes and personal biases.
So this applies even more to sociology than to painkillers.
First, shitting on folks who are new to left politics and (god forbid) harbor excitement for these new insights. At least we have folks leaving comments like this to grind that eagerness out of them.
Christ on a pike, "enthusiastic about politics" is probably the worst thing you could ever be, it only leads to pie in the sky idiocy and utopianism.
Yes, please let's grind that down as fast as possible, politics is a pragmatic exercise like doing groceries and taking a shit, you shouldn't be excited about it. The only people excited by politics are fanatics and zealots and we could do with a lot fewer of those on all sides right now.
Then, it failed a narrow expectation you fully put on it. Maybe it was using an a medium to express an idea in a novel way. What a concept. Let’s call it Art. It can be something other than homework.
Yeah, God forbid I use my experience of the medium to judge a piece of art.
All this is, is a more biased, more cut down version of games like Papers, please, Not for Bradcast, or The Westport Independent, that doesn't even use its gameplay loop to really give any direct experience of the issue it's trying to showcase.
Having played it until I got bored of it, the only feeling reinforced through the gameplay is "boy i wish I could read faster".
It doesn't even leverage the idea that you need to send newspapers to print, allowing you to plan your front page to build a more coherent narrative, you literally just need to constantly swap articles in and out of the paper as if people's copies would change in real time. It doesn't account for the appearance of bias or conflicting interests between the parties you want to keep happy. It lacks nuance and a proper understanding of how to evoke what feeling through gameplay.
So, yeah, I think it's banal and aggressively poorly thought out, not even mediocre but genuinely bad. Are you going to argue otherwise or are you just gonna say I'm being too harsh or unfair?
And before you highlight that this is free, so is The Westport Independent, and it's been out for almost 10 years (god I feel old).
But essentially saying “I’m above the target audience and it’s pointless”…cool, share something you made
LOL I'm not about to dox myself to prove a stranger wrong, if you want to feel like you have successfully defended your point because you want to think I couldn't have pulled this crap off, feel free to do so.
My criticism stands on its own regardless of my own output or even of myself as a source for it.
if you want something on media , censorship, spin, ect? I'd say Not for Broadcast is pretty good.
Everyone consumes whatever they agree with with less critical thinking, it's an absolutely normal bias to have and nobody is immune.
That's why when you hear someone say "I do my own research" you don't think "this person must be highly educated" but rather "this person listens to 'alternative' media."
Just because you consume a different kind of propaganda, doesn't make you wiser, it makes you have a different set of biases.
This feels very "just found out about politics and damn" tbh.
The game isn't really teaching anything of note beyond "private entities have their own interests," which anyone who would even find this compelling already knows.
Yeah I'm not eager to go from sending my floorplan to zuck to sending it to the CCP, lol.
It currently does, I still use mine both standalone, and linked with my desktop on the oculus platform and SteamVR, since i disliked how cheaply made the oculus 2 was.
Right now I'm waiting for a competitor to the quest to even appear on the market, since there doesn't seem to be any other standalone option right now.
It should still work fine with SteamVR right? I'm not too pressed.
And the best/worst part about this is that the press refusing to acknowledge it proves the point that this is a clique covering for eachother, which will inevitably be amplified into a concerted conspiracy by their opposition, when really this is just yet another example of cronies covering for cronies and a smattering of true believer ideologues.
I'd say it's waaay better in a lot of places.
By and large most gamers are not dysfunctional, if they use something as escapism it's not to a pathological level, it's simply a hobby.
Sad but true, escapism is a huge factor.
No, but russians game a lot.
I tolerate intolerance, I don't tolerate violence, it's very simple.
The same tolerance I afford you, openly advocating violence in an open forum, i afford nazis.
You should be happy that this tolerance is in place, since you benefit from it.
The paradox of intolerance you are so daftly hinting at explicitly draws the line at circumventing debate and resorting to violence and intimidation.
That is the intolerance that shall not be tolerated, but since you never actually read the text and are ""educated"" through memes you wouldn't know that, because of that idiotic fucking comic you knuckledraggers love reposting to bolster your off-brand "can't be a fascist if I'm antifa" bullshit.
my opponents doing political violence
Cringe and bad.
Me doing political violence
Based ang good.
Absolutely not unhinged god complex thinking, I'm sure you're not equally as authoritarian as the people you despise.
it feels like what they really want deep down is to accelerate.
Predictable byproduct of the borderline adventist "rapture" that is "the revolution".
No, they read the meme and interpreted it correctly, that the pathologization of not wanting to be opposed is bad (You know, as displayed by the obviously evil look on the doctor wojak and the giant syringe), thus they wouldn't need to raise that objection.
If you don't think of it as a military dictatorship (remember, this is not the real world, it's fiction and people read into it whatever they want) then super earth is the good guys.
Super earth is painted as the most pristine fascist ideal of the polity united under a single uniform banner (because everyone who wasn't in line has already been purged or will be, shortly), why would your average normie (who by definition won't be strongly objecting on principle) ever oppose that if not for the means it was achieved with?
Most people come into fiction assuming the author agrees with whatever they think.
That's why you can hear lefties praise Ocarina of Time as anti-monarchist because Link is deposing Ganondorf, when it's obviously restorationist since Link is actually reinstating the rightful king of Hyrule, not ending monarchy altogether.
That's also why preachy, obnoxious, clumsy propaganda that bludgeons you with its political stance sells about as well as a kick to the teeth. Anyone who agrees will be bored by hearing repeated talking points, and anyone who doesn't will despise the message, not be moved or convinced.
Good art with a political message makes you actually come to the conclusions the author came to through the process of enjoying the art and having the experience the author has built in it.
For instance, by humanizing a character with ideas or traits you find distasteful.
Like the original Starship Troopers book, whose main character is not a blonde blue eyed all American boy, but Tagalog-speaking Filipino Johnny Rico, whose ethnic background Heinlein hides until the final chapter to make his 60s mostly WASP teenage boy audience identify with him, so they can have the realization that in a society that does not care about race they would not even realise which race the characters are until something practical comes up (his natively speaking Tagalog in this case), which was exceedingly anti-racist for the 60s.
Bad art tells you the political conclusion you should reach then calls you a bigot for rejecting its message. It's less than worthless as a political tool, it's actively detrimental because it creates the kind of staunch opposition and attempted purges we see weekly at this point trying to get woke shit out of media, the same way we had those in the 2000s with conservative trash like the "drugs are bad and a single joint will ruin your life" we would see in sit-coms every fucking season.
Every side does this when they have hegemonic control of media production, and everyone who isn't aggressively brainrotted eventually gets fed up because not only is it not helpful, it makes for bad art even when you agree with it.