Original Post
hey guys,
I'm currently conceptualizing a video game idea, but this post isn't intended to discuss the game design itself. Instead, because the game will openly be by intention, radically political in nature, I would like to canvass opinions whether people believe it is appropriate to develop an explicately political game, or whether gamers would consider it to be an invasion and intrusion into the gaming realm.
I don't mean political in the sense of championing one political cause or ideology over another. Rather it would take the form of challenging the basic assumptions that have become deeply in our cultural milieu, such as predominance of individual over society, selfishness over solidarity, competition over cooperation, accumulation over sharing, market over community....These elements are now considered to be fundamental truths and very rarely questioned in our society's public discourse. Video games are no exception.
Games are essentially rule based systems that allow the player the ability to interact within the games structure in order to achieve a specified goal. Its a video games capacity for representation, which provides a game designer tremendous power to interpret and portray the world based upon their views and beliefs and shape the experience of the player, constrained as they are by the rules instilled into the game by the designer. They may not be conscious of the underlying assumptions that underpin the rules embedded within their video game's structure. For 30 years we've been bombarded with the message that there is no alternative to the predominant narrative of neoliberal/neoconservative ideology, so its little wonder video games too follow the same blueprint.
As a disclaimer, politically I'm now pretty pragmatic. I ascribe to Bismarck's phrase that politics is the Art of the Possible. Over the years I've flirted closely with Anarchism (without rulers), though I'm no longer so doctrinaire about my opposition to formal government. You could describe me as a libertarian-socialist or Panarchist. Panarchist essentially means there would be allowances of a diversity of forms of governance, each operating simultaneously and providing for humanity's disparate needs. What frustrates me is that since the fall of the Soviet Union, not only are our choices constrained by the supremacy of the capitalistic system, but the narratives of the neoliberal/neoconservative philosophy are so pervasive, that they are all but unquestioned.
Since the events of the Great Financial Crisis myself and many others like me have been emboldened to question, challenge, and even reimagine other narratives and possibilities beyond the current paradigm. We live in exciting times.
I've played video games for a long time. Ever since the days of the Amiga 500. I play for fun, not just to champion my particular political views and the game would be in the same spirit. I would like to make a fun game, but one that also serves a dual purpose. For me, the beauty of a video game is that it can be an abstraction of elements of the real world. Because a game's structure is more stable (not necessarily static) a designer can expose more of the workings underpinning the structures that comprise the aspects of the world you wish to portray. The neoliberal/neoconservative political theorists and "economists" construct a bloodless, rational model of the world, which conveniently leaves out salient facts such as overt violence, implicit threat, social control, relations of power, propaganda, constrained opportunities, which underpin their system all of which could be exposed by cleverly designed game mechanics.
I've been out of the video game arena for awhile now, due partly to my mistaken dismissal of them as a waste of time and because my unwillingness to invest in a PC capable of playing the latest games. Obviously I have now rethought my position to an extent here I would like to develop my own game. Since I'm in the dark regarding recent game developments I may be wrong in believing there to be few games where cooperation, rather than competition is an explicit game mechanic. Modern scholar in scientific domains as biology, behavioral economics, political science, and game theory have revealed the value of cooperation within nature and human society. I am particularly inspired by Elinor Ostrom's work in outlining various principles that are conducive to allow ordinary people to successfully manage communally owned resources cooperatively. Any strategy game that hopes to faithfully model and simulate a cooperative dynamic would need to integrate those principles.
I've come across a couple of articles that explore the politics in video games theme, one of which is relatively brief about video games' unquestioned assumptions about the nature of virtual economies in games and another written from the angle of media criticism about the failure of System Shock to offer a valid challenge to Ayn Rand's vision of a extreme libertarian utopia, because it still clung to the trappings of capitalist economic relations and a conservative image of a successful endgame. The latter is a very long read. My post is nothing in comparison.
http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr/2010/04/22/economics-you-can-play-not-economics-you-can-use
Feedback and continuing dialogue is welcome.
I'm currently conceptualizing a video game idea, but this post isn't intended to discuss the game design itself. Instead, because the game will openly be by intention, radically political in nature, I would like to canvass opinions whether people believe it is appropriate to develop an explicately political game, or whether gamers would consider it to be an invasion and intrusion into the gaming realm.
I don't mean political in the sense of championing one political cause or ideology over another. Rather it would take the form of challenging the basic assumptions that have become deeply in our cultural milieu, such as predominance of individual over society, selfishness over solidarity, competition over cooperation, accumulation over sharing, market over community....These elements are now considered to be fundamental truths and very rarely questioned in our society's public discourse. Video games are no exception.
Games are essentially rule based systems that allow the player the ability to interact within the games structure in order to achieve a specified goal. Its a video games capacity for representation, which provides a game designer tremendous power to interpret and portray the world based upon their views and beliefs and shape the experience of the player, constrained as they are by the rules instilled into the game by the designer. They may not be conscious of the underlying assumptions that underpin the rules embedded within their video game's structure. For 30 years we've been bombarded with the message that there is no alternative to the predominant narrative of neoliberal/neoconservative ideology, so its little wonder video games too follow the same blueprint.
As a disclaimer, politically I'm now pretty pragmatic. I ascribe to Bismarck's phrase that politics is the Art of the Possible. Over the years I've flirted closely with Anarchism (without rulers), though I'm no longer so doctrinaire about my opposition to formal government. You could describe me as a libertarian-socialist or Panarchist. Panarchist essentially means there would be allowances of a diversity of forms of governance, each operating simultaneously and providing for humanity's disparate needs. What frustrates me is that since the fall of the Soviet Union, not only are our choices constrained by the supremacy of the capitalistic system, but the narratives of the neoliberal/neoconservative philosophy are so pervasive, that they are all but unquestioned.
Since the events of the Great Financial Crisis myself and many others like me have been emboldened to question, challenge, and even reimagine other narratives and possibilities beyond the current paradigm. We live in exciting times.
I've played video games for a long time. Ever since the days of the Amiga 500. I play for fun, not just to champion my particular political views and the game would be in the same spirit. I would like to make a fun game, but one that also serves a dual purpose. For me, the beauty of a video game is that it can be an abstraction of elements of the real world. Because a game's structure is more stable (not necessarily static) a designer can expose more of the workings underpinning the structures that comprise the aspects of the world you wish to portray. The neoliberal/neoconservative political theorists and "economists" construct a bloodless, rational model of the world, which conveniently leaves out salient facts such as overt violence, implicit threat, social control, relations of power, propaganda, constrained opportunities, which underpin their system all of which could be exposed by cleverly designed game mechanics.
I've been out of the video game arena for awhile now, due partly to my mistaken dismissal of them as a waste of time and because my unwillingness to invest in a PC capable of playing the latest games. Obviously I have now rethought my position to an extent here I would like to develop my own game. Since I'm in the dark regarding recent game developments I may be wrong in believing there to be few games where cooperation, rather than competition is an explicit game mechanic. Modern scholar in scientific domains as biology, behavioral economics, political science, and game theory have revealed the value of cooperation within nature and human society. I am particularly inspired by Elinor Ostrom's work in outlining various principles that are conducive to allow ordinary people to successfully manage communally owned resources cooperatively. Any strategy game that hopes to faithfully model and simulate a cooperative dynamic would need to integrate those principles.
I've come across a couple of articles that explore the politics in video games theme, one of which is relatively brief about video games' unquestioned assumptions about the nature of virtual economies in games and another written from the angle of media criticism about the failure of System Shock to offer a valid challenge to Ayn Rand's vision of a extreme libertarian utopia, because it still clung to the trappings of capitalist economic relations and a conservative image of a successful endgame. The latter is a very long read. My post is nothing in comparison.
http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr/2010/04/22/economics-you-can-play-not-economics-you-can-use
Feedback and continuing dialogue is welcome.
