In video games

[dredger]

Hello all,

I was just leaving the forum to play one game, on steam, the well known game platform of Valve.
They use to make "pop up" a windows with the "daily promotion"

Before that, i was reading articles as I use to do to get infos about what's happening in our world.
And, I just read less than 1h before that Washingtown was menacing Poutine if the russians sent troop in Syria, it's hot news apparently.

...and the game's name which pop'ed on my steam is ...

"Act of Aggression" (-15% if i buy now)

... it's an RTS, with a "cool" musik, like "war is cool" ...

I was just a bit puzzled of this ... coincidence (?)

Let's see if the terms "act of aggression" will be used in the coming days...

 

[taratai]

There was always propaganda in games. You could think that games would be spared, if even books weren't? :P (just look up Tom Clancy's <instert whatever title here> book series, you'll see what i mean)

There was a game called Real War, with 2 sides, The Good US of A, and the Evil Bad Terrorists (called International Liberation Army ingame), with everything hinting that the terrorists are You Know Who.
The portrayal of the USA is in general nauseating in games, but Real War really outdid everyone else, as there was a mission where you, as the US, had to destroy a hidden ICBM launcher. If you played as the ILA before, you had the same mission from their perspective, when you had to trap that ICBM launcher so that when it is destroyed, it blows up with a big mushroom cloud. So, obviously, the Evil Terrorist Scheme succeeds, the nuke goes off, and then in the game it is said how the world is outraged at the poor, poor USA that they launched a nuke on those people. And poor, poor USA is left alone against the terrorists (they still defeat them in the last mission, of course, since they're The Good Guys).

I was like... seriously?!

So, this is hardly anything new, and hardly limited only to the RTS genre. They're pumping up the propaganda whenever they can. And it's not even because the developers are paid for it by the CIA or anything like that (even though in some cases it is true). It's simply because how much they themselves believe the official narrative.

And as someone who works on a game, i noticed that there is a strong drive to "prophetize" with what you create. To say how things will turn out, so when they do turn out how you think they will do, everyone will say "this person knew it! we should have listened!". Just like people wanted to "prophetize" with movies (how many of those futuristic visions turned out true, though?), or with books, they try to do it the same with games. However, it's mostly about what people believe is true, or want to be true, not what really is true. It's another form of serving yourself, so once (how you believe) everything will turn out the way you think, you'll be able to say "HA! I TOLD YOU SO!".

But life is a beach ;), and doesn't want to turn out the way people wish.

It's most likely the same in this case. Just a bunch of people wanting to "prophetize".

 

[3DStudent]

Hi dredger. I think that games, like all forms of media, are certainly propagandized. It seems that your experience with the promoted game was a likely coincidence. They will inject whatever war narrative is currently out in MSM. I recall in the mid 2000's it was always the player fighting the Arab terrorists.

Like taratai is saying, video games, like every other aspect of society, get ponerized. So you see a vast number of shallow, violent, and addictive games out there.

There's a thread on video games here

And a great classic article on SOTT here.

 

[dredger]

Hello 3D Student,

Thanks for the article and thread, didn't know about this article.
I play less than before, but worked in the domain, and noticed these last year much ... things in some video games which sadden me.

For instance last year i started to play the last Wolfenstein (Wolfenstein The New Order ... only the title), and I was puzzled by a scene at the very begining of the game (a kind of introduction level) where your hero was captured with 2 others, and you had to choose which one would be sacrified just by looking at him. So i kept fixing the bad nazi sadic expecting another choice at the end, and also to see if the developpers considered this kind of reaction. And yes they did, after +/- 5 minutes, they killed my hero and i had to restart.
It's not much more "propaganda" here, just a kind of "trivialization of violence", as we can see now in many video games or series. And yes, i can confirm by being an old player, that the video game market is as you said : ponerized, but also stultifying, fast rewarding ... they use player's compulsivity to sell their games. Well, could say much more about but it's not the exact subject here.

 

[Perri475]

Senseless violence has definitely effected mainstream gaming (if i'm not mistaken drones are controlled very similar to current war games..**). As every other facet of entertainment (in some way or another)... One game came out within the past 5 years that pointed out all this is a pretty amazing way though. It's called spec-ops the line. It plays itself as the most generic typical military shooter you can think about. The game is actually pointing out tropes about the trivialization of violence. You commit horrible atrocities under the power-trip logic that you're doing good. The end of the game makes you face all the stuff you've done and also pointed out that you never had any reason to commit the acts other than living out a self-righteous ''patriotic'' rampage. It was a pretty polarizing game to come out this day in age! Although it remains more of a cult hit

This video goes more into depth about it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjaBsuXWJJ8


Fwiw just thought this was relevant to the thread and maybe some-what interesting! Who would've thought a company would get away with making a satirical meta-shooter?!

** https://www.vice.com/read/drone-video-games-documentary-203