Gamers Love Politics – We Just Hate Bad Writing

Final Fantasy 7, Metal Gear Solid, The Last of Us – there’s no doubt that gamers love a title uses politics well. But message boards are filled with cries of “I don’t want my games to be political.” Where is this disconnect coming from, and how can developers get around it? The answer is in better writing.

Some gamers are bigots. There are people who just won’t play a game with a black protagonist, or that has a trans or gay character. That’s true of every community, and often the loudest talkers are the least representative of the whole.

But gamers who hold Metal Gear Solid up as one of the greatest examples of storytelling fall in with the same angry, uneducated crowd when they parrot the “no politics” narrative. Worse, it’s doing more damage than good.

Politics in Gaming

Narrative-driven games are inherently political – almost anything with a story is political. Metal Gear Solid is anti-war. Final Fantasy 7 is pro-environment. These aren’t “blink and you miss them” themes. This isn’t arguing that The Very Hungry Caterpillar is anti-capitalist. Without their stances on nuclear proliferation or the dangers of big business, these games wouldn’t exist.

These themes are constant, and they’re not exactly subtle. Metal Gear longs for a day when war isn’t a necessary evil – every 2 hour cutscene is soaked with it. There is no such thing as good and evil, just greed and fear.

Everything in Final Fantasy 7 is the fault of Shinra’s overreach. The company’s grip over the entire planet leads to the creation of Sephiroth and Avalanche. They have everything, and still want more. People suffer to increase their bottom line. Shinra destroys a village, killing countless people, to frame a group that aims to destroy them.

If you’re not seeing the political statement in these games, you’re not paying attention.

And that’s just picking two extremely popular examples. We could go all day.

Look at the way Geralt is treated in The Witcher. Look at the way the Fireflies are depicted in The Last of Us, and at how Joel and Sarah are treated in the opening cutscene. Resident Evil – science and business. Shenmue – looking for sailors.

Even the likes of Mario, or anything with a good vs evil story, must give the bad guy something to stand for. These are political statements, even if they’re mild.

Games are political and nobody usually cares. You wouldn’t know that looking at the community, because that’s not what so many of them seem to say.

Political Fallout

Nobody ever wrote an article saying Metal Gear Solid was bad for having a political subtext. Nobody ever got up in arms that one of the primary protagonists in Final Fantasy VII was black.

The reaction would be very different today.

Tell Me Why is getting flak for having a trans protagonist and for even bringing it up in in-game conversations. Some people are so thin-skinned that a scene where an older guy is mildly corrected is being used to paint a “straight white guy bad” narrative. It’d be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic.

Almost every major release is met with outrage. And this isn’t a left/right thing. The Last Of Us Part 2, Ghost of Tsushima, Cyberpunk, Call of Duty – all of them have had some sort of political upset attached to them. Why?

Social media is to blame, like most things in life. We’re so used to being able to pick and choose what ideas we expose ourselves to, that the idea of wanting something that pushes an alternative viewpoint is foreign and even offensive to us. There are people who want to see the above games fail because it would reinforce our idea that their beliefs and their beliefs alone are the correct ones.

This attitude hurts their own personal growth, but it also hurts the industry as a whole.

Overcorrection

Here’s the thing: people who say they don’t like politics in games are hypocrites. They’ll refuse to buy the next Watch Dogs game because it’s anti-Brexit, but will buy any number of other titles loads with political clout. Many of those games – I’d argue the majority – probably still don’t line up with their political viewpoint.

It’s easy to swear off games you’re not going to buy anyway. You see it with cancel culture all the time. Michael Jackson hasn’t been canceled because he’s a hugely popular artist. Someone who hasn’t released an album in 20 years and who only had one great sony anyway is much easier to get rid of.

Politics in games make a story worth listening to. Bioshock Infinite’s handling of race and of the dangers of revolutionaries were, while shaky, what gave it its edge. Imagine Metal Gear or Final Fantasy without their political leanings. The gameplay would still hold up, but they wouldn’t be talked about all these years later.

Good writing takes a stance. Good writing argues a case. All but the most fragile of idiots can appreciate good writing, whether it’s something you agree with or not. The problem is that writing isn’t always good. That’s becoming increasingly true.

Throwing politics to the wind

The internet has given rise to slacktivists who think signing a petition or sharing a post means you’re doing something. Those people are now writing video games, television series and movies.

Imagine the dopamine hit you get when you share a post saying “black people are people”, and then imagine it when you put that exact same message in a $100m video game.

Now, the message isn’t wrong. That’s important. The only people who disagree with it are assholes, assholes who you’re not going to convince with a throwaway line in a video game.

It’s bad writing. There’s no nuance to saying gay people aren’t hellbound sinners. There’s no to-and-fro that comes with any political stance, because it’s not a political stance, it’s a cheerleading cry. A 10-hour game exploring religion and homosexuality could be incredible, but one line in a 50-hour JRPG saying that gay people are A-ok is less than the least a writer can do with that issue.

Good writing will never convert people who don’t want to be converted but bad writing isn’t going to do anything either. Gamers who say they want to get rid of politics are looking for a future where stories are designed to not say anything (unless it’s something they agree with, but that’s a different article).

In the run up to Far Cry 5, Ubisoft promised the game wasn’t political, even though it obviously was. Why? Because they didn’t want to turn off white, gun-toting right-wingers from buying their product. If Far Cry 5 hadn’t sold well enough, their next title would have been a weird amorphous apolitical blob, the storytelling equivalent of FIFA match.

That’s not the future anybody wants. Video games are better with diverse casts, challenging subjects and politically-motivated ideas. Manufacturing that stuff works about as well as manufacturing the Justice League worked for DC. You need talent, hard work and a touch of bravery to make any great story. Developers need to step up and make sure that is being delivered.