Video Games & The Weight of Woke

Letters from O'Brien #19

I feel like I should write about something slightly different today. For a long time, I have been aware of the complete mess that is the tech entertainment industry. From journalism to actual tech and game development studios, a strange mindset has taken hold of those behind the creative process. I am particularly interested in addressing what is taking place within the video game industry, as I see it affecting my young peers more than a mere corruption of Hollywood.

For many the state of the gaming industry may be overlooked and considered as rather unimportant. Indeed, I thought the same, until I realised how the gaming industry both incubates and propagates the same radical leftist ideas which currently affect our entire society. In fact, the more I research this topic, the more I find that this industry may be one of the most radicalised, with practically no position left un-corrupted.

So where to begin? I should start by addressing what I see as the root cause behind the tech and gaming industries inability to safeguard against woke ideas. Unlike, say the film industry, the gaming industry has never really been political in any real sense. Those behind the actual work were not politically minded. They likely were unaware of the infiltration of the ideas we see today into their own workspace. Regardless, once the ideas were in, pressure from above and below (a classic Marxist tactic) began being applied to the creative process. This included massive publishing companies and journalists who held the keys to a games success. But more on this later…

Battlefield V - WWI with female-only battalions?

REMOVING THE HUMAN ELEMENT

Before I jump into the political nature of what is happening, I must touch on an issue which is discussed fairly often, not just in the ‘gaming space’ but within the social sphere at large. That is, free speech, and the ability to actually communicate with one another. Within multiplayer video games, communication systems were always necessary to enhance the experience.

Now however, things seem to be changing. Many modern multiplayer games seek to disrupt human communication. This has only occurred within the past half decade as far as I can see. Before this shift, part of the appeal of multiplayer games was the ability to actually compete against people one could communicate with. Naturally, this came with aggressive language, cursing and ‘racism’. However, over a decade ago none of this was seen as particularly abnormal behaviour for the rebellious youth who turned to competitive games as one of their preferred ways of releasing pent up energy. The rough and tumble communication was part of the experience, the most provocative were simply laughed at, and everyone got on with the competition.

The major shift against this appears to have begun around 2015. Game developers have pushed hard against such things as voice chat, labelling it as an outlet for ‘abuse’ and ‘racism’. Instead, modern games attempt to compartmentalise individuals into smaller and smaller groups, or in some cases simply disable voice chat all together. Likewise, text chat is heavily censored on many (modern) online games. Again, this crackdown on free speech is done in the name of social justice and fighting against abuse and racism.

As far as I am aware, there are games which still retain the full breadth of voice and text chat, but these are becoming rarer as politicisation and anti-‘hate speech’ campaigns continue to be pressed against their audiences. By the way, these hate speech campaigns never work. In one rather comical example, Sony attempted to integrate a system which monitored all player chats for keywords and banned players it identified as using racial slurs. As it turned out, all the algorithm had almost exclusively banned black players who used racial terms as slang.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

HOW SOCIALISM DESTROYED THE INDUSTRY

My personal interest in this ‘gaming issue’ stems from what I have seen produced by both the gaming industry, and the tech industry more broadly over the past decade or so. For starters, the upper echelons of the gaming industry mirrored the same ideological rot found in the social sciences within academia. I am unsure why this is the case, but it evidently is the case. This has lead to a deliberate stifling of creativity and even potential earnings.

I say this because storytelling has been suffering across the board. It mirrors what has been happening with films and other forms of entertainment media. The art of storytelling has been lost or crushed by the gaming industries largest stakeholders. Where once creativity sparked great creations, political narratives have taken over. These narratives - by the way - reject ‘conventional’ storytelling methods and formulas such as the Heroes Journey (which has proved compelling to engage an audience).

This is justified by the claim that ‘the personal is political’. This idea takes films, games, television shows, books, and so forth, and then claims that these products are inherently ‘political’ because they involve interpersonal context. In the past, this would have simply be seen as taking part in the human experience, but now it is seen as the knowing participation in political discourse.

This entire issue came to my attention long before woke ideas had gone mainstream. About a decade ago, I noticed the emergence of radical leftist politics amongst tech journalists, many of whom were also working in the gaming industry. Such nonsense was met with universal mockery from the public, since this absurdity was not only illogical in its claims but also foreign on the cultural level. Since then, the Critical ideology has gone mainstream. This is partially why I believe that corporations were financially backing this push, since it generated practically no organic movement within the tech sector.

My own theory is that the general cultural trend of video games becoming ‘worse’ is a deliberate ploy. let me explain:

Firstly, several major publishers have deliberately gone against the accepted norm for no good business or artistic reason. For example, Ubisoft is known for marketing games with a focus on visual elements, yet has downgraded these elements in many of their more modern games. Initially this was written off as either a choice done in the name of optimised cross compatibility, or that promotional material had been touched up or pre-rendered, however it has since been assumed that much of the release content was deliberately downgraded for release. This makes no sense. Regardless…

Secondly, the majority of those who play games are in opposition to the politicisation of these video games by developers and publishers. In response, developers will label players racists, bigots, and such. The result? A huge drop in players across the board. The response from developers? Continue insulting players, claim they are promoting bigotry if they do not purchase politically-charged products, or dare complain about the political elements within a product. This is profoundly anti-free market, since it rejects the idea that the customer could see value in something before a purchase, instead positing that the customer must be forced to consume a product if it aligns with the right political narrative, even if the advertising didn’t include said elements.

Thirdly, Critical Theory - the famous neo-Marxist ideology responsible for much of the modern socialist rot - explicitly makes the case for this destruction of beauty, creativity, or any other positive element which upholds the ‘existing society’ and thus stands in the way of cultural destruction and revolution. Many of the higher-ups within the tech industry openly admit to supporting utopian socialist ideas. Likewise, many would have no problem sacrificing culturally iconic gaming series to reach some ideological end.

The last point is that game developers and publishers alike have been more than willing to sacrifice profit and success ideological evangelism. The deliberate destruction of renowned series and franchises in the name of spreading ‘the political message’ is more than abnormal. Likewise, the willingness of developers to market products which they are fully aware will fail financially is practically unheard of.

God of War

CULTURAL DISHARMONY

As author James Lindsay puts it, this attack on the entertainment industry may very well be merely a reflection of a larger attack on the social level. The aim of this particular undertaking is to uproot cultural points of reference, leading to demoralisation, lack of beauty, and conflict. For the younger generations, video games have had the same emotional effect as films and television. This attachment is shared amongst thousands or even millions of people, thus becoming a cultural anchor around which people can unite in understanding. By attacking and uprooting this, Critical ideology can fracture unity and a sense of cultural placement and insert itself in place of what it destroyed.

I agree with Lindsay, and believe that this is being undertaken on two levels. Firstly, small developers and startups with potential are coerced into contractual agreements by larger organisations. This exact same thing happens in the social media world, where startups with potential enter the so called ‘kill zone’, where Facebook, Amazon, and Google compete to either buy out or suppress the ideas being presented. In this same way, small developers with the potential for success (usually with ideas which don’t bend the knee to socialism) are acquired by larger publishers with the promise of funding and distribution, but stifled in their creative ability. In contrast, smaller developers with the potential for greatness who do not ‘sell out’ are targeted by campaigns seeking to limit their success. Two great examples of this; the tactical shooter Six Days in Fallujah, which was universally attacked by journalists for its ‘racist’ content (it dared to show American soldiers actually fighting terrorism during the Iraq War), and the SWAT simulator Ready or Not, which was similarly smeared by journalists as a ‘right wing fantasy’ aimed at those who want to fight domestic terrorism. Both games - rather ironically - received so much support from this negative publicity that they have both since skyrocketed in popularity, but unfortunately the majority of such games never see the light of day, and are cast into the abyss.

That is the first tactic - to destroy potential cultural influences that don’t align with the socialist agenda. The second is far more impactful. Developers (often under instruction from publishers) will take existing series with cultural renown, such as Halo, Call of Duty, Battlefield, Warhammer, Metal Gear, and many other franchises that have been running for decades. Then, these franchises are subjected to heavy reinterpretation by onboarded writers and ‘advisors’. The rewriting process usually includes the displacement of iconic figures within the story, or the removal of successful elements within the actual game. In the case of story driven games, iconic heroes are demonised, or at least mocked and belittled, and new characters are added to ‘supersede’ the ‘outdated’ roles of the previous heroes or villains. This process happens so often in entertainment franchises that it has been totally normalised.

Call of Duty

THE WAY FORWARD

All of these issues become more evident by the day. However, for the first time since I noticed the emergence of these radical ideas over a decade ago, I am beginning to see a strong push-back. This seems to be the case amongst young people - particularly those who have been disenfranchised. There is a growing anger online, not only in response to the politicisation of video games, television, and other forms of entertainment, but in response to the social media platforms which have attempted to censor and silence any such criticism.

I believe that the tech industry is soon to face an ultimatum; politics, or profit? Thus far, those who have taken the route of political have survived only insomuch as their dying audience has allowed them. Netflix is a great example. Google and Facebook have also tested the waters by first censoring, but then stepping back from some of their censorship campaigns made obvious over the past two years. Why? Perhaps because they realise that entertainment media and its constituents - such as social media - ultimately exist within the realm of ideas, and to attempt to destroy that would doom the corporation in the long term. Even these industry giants will eventually fall if they prioritise anti-capitalism and politicisation over simply acting at the behest of the user. Look at Vox, a website which runs on an annual allotment of several hundred million dollars, yet - as far as I am aware - has never technically turned over any profit. Running a deficit like this is made possible only because Comcast has siphoned money at its own expense. The same is true with countless other websites, publishers, developers, and so forth. This cannot last.

As I mentioned previously, people are almost universally pushing back against the ridiculous and reductionistic modernisations of films, video games, television series, and so forth. Whenever a new reboot is announced, a new series is pushed, or a new trailer is released for something which obviously bows to the ‘political thing’, it now receives near-universal criticism. Why has it taken so long? I believe the initial success woke films and entertainment received was purely a result of people being unaware of the ideological underpinning. Now - finally - that is beginning to change on a near-universal scale. After several years of bad films, series, games, and so forth, people are fed up. This is exacerbated by the fact that entertainment is usually what people turn to in times of crisis. With such crisis looming on the horizon, people will not be satisfied with a corrosive political message. It is highly probable that an ultimatum will come for these production companies in all entertainment industries.

When this ultimatum comes, the organisations which choose politics over profit will have their days numbered, whilst those who choose profit and user satisfaction over politics will eventually win.

O’Brien.