A while ago, I wrote and published a peer-reviewed article about the “curious” and very deliberate efforts by the developers of certain games to proclaim that their games shouldn’t be interpreted in a political way, despite all evidence to the contrary. The abstract goes like this:
Developers of AAA videogames which feature recognizable military forces, governmental law enforcement agencies, and geopolitical conflicts routinely make claims that their works do not make “political statements.” This article takes seriously the claims made by several developers, revealing their attempts to radically narrow the definition of the term “political.” Through a critical discourse analysis, this article will articulate several key theses held forth by the developers regarding systemic media and expressivity, the responsibility of the player, and the inevitable constraints of production and technology. These points are deployed by the developers to build an argument for a reduced scope of the term “political,” as well as to propose an ideological framing of videogames as an expressive medium, which ultimately serve to obscure the role that ideology plays in the production of videogames. (Ruch, 2021) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/22041451.2021.1902167
I say “curious” because in the end, it is clear why developers would avoid endorsing any particular interpretation of their game: because publishers they are beholden to (and to some extent, the developers themselves) want to continue selling games to as wide an audience as possible, and there is no quicker way to alienate those paying customers than by making any kind of statement that could be construed as “political.”
So, what we have to deal with is the developer of a game about retaking Washington D.C. from a band of terrorists claiming that their game is about “exploring a new city.”
It’s asinine.
When I wrote the article, I felt like I might have been scratching the surface of something important. I took a videogame and media studies on-ramp to this freeway of the bigger topic: lying. Just straight up, unadulterated fabrication surrounding us, constantly.
These years later, I feel that this tendency has only increased. Modern media (and society as per our mediation of it) is positively lousy with untruth.
Surely none of this is particularly shocking in the general principle – we’ve theorized about misinformation and researched propaganda for… ever. However, I do feel that we have recently gotten closer to a tipping point, where at least some of our most heinous liars are being called into court, where it is still against the actual law to lie, and are being asked to explain themselves.
This is all well and good, but what about the zealous believers? Those who will not be convinced that the sky is blue, the Earth is round, and Biden is President?
I keenly remember the proclomations of the dawn of democratized communication that the internet supposedly heralded. We bespeckled, obsessive nerds could finally reach out and connect with those few others who shared our interests, all around the world. Queer folks, racial minorities, and other marginalized groups were able to connect without regard to geography. But, unfortunately, so could those Flat-Earthers whose beef was with geography itself.
Now we pump those folks full of self-confidence and validation on a grand scale. It’s alarming, to say the least, to realize just how pervasive lies have become.