The game is bigger than ever. With diehard fans paying him up to $70 apiece for his over $200 million budget games, the video game industry is now bigger than the movie and music industries combined. Video games got a particularly big boost from the lockdown. More gamers than ever have escaped their homes and stepped into immersive fantasy worlds.
However, like much of our cultural life, the video game industry is currently under increasing ideological pressure. Both industry officials and journalists see gamers not as fun-loving enthusiasts, but as a staunch army of reactionary white men in need of a moral fix.
One title that epitomizes this trend is Naughty Dog’s. Last of UsThis action-adventure game was widely acclaimed for its beautiful, immersive graphics and engaging story upon its release in 2013. After her own daughter is killed in a zombie apocalypse, player character Joel must do everything in her power to protect Ellie, a girl immune to the disease that turns people into zombies. Joel and Ellie travel across America in hopes of using their immunity to find a cure. The story was praised at the time for being “overwhelmingly beautiful and real” and for its positive representation of masculinity. Flawed but stoic, Joel quickly became a fan favorite.
Fast forward seven long-awaited years The Last of Us Part II, and Joel is killed off early in the game by a new transgender character, Abby. “Stupid old man,” she said, and beat him to death with a golf club. This is a metaphor for if there was a culture war.
Fans were understandably unhappy with this ruthless treatment of the beloved hero. and story emphasis”. We later find out that Ellie is also gay. Last of Uswhich immediately evoked “toxicity” in fans.
Awakened ideologies are also incorporated into first-person shooter action titles known for their realistic violence and strict age limits. electronic arts games 2018, Battlefield Vis a first-person shooter set in World War II that caused a backlash among fans after it prominently featured female soldiers in its marketing, including the game’s cover. The move was particularly baffling given that the overwhelming majority of those who died fighting in World War II were men. As usual, the industry accused fans of being “misogynistic.” One reviewer could hardly hide her disdain for her fans, labeling her fans “young, angry white men.”
Even video games about war seem to have to promote an awakened worldview in every sphere of culture.
You can see this change in Activision’s marketing. call of duty series. Back in 2010, black ops Went with the line “There’s a soldier among all of us”. modern warfare 2 As shown, the game’s military content is intentionally downplayed.
The impact of political correctness on the gaming industry extends to code. Epic Games, Creator fortnitereleased the latest version of its free game development software, Unreal Engine 5, with new official coding standards earlier this year. Many pages of technical coding conventions have numerous commandments about the language developers can use when coding in the engine. Epic presents these proclamations as “guidance and suggestions” to help coders behave “more respectfully and appropriately”, but elsewhere they list “mandatory” top-down rules to use the service. revealed to be a rule.
For example, coders are told not to use “words that refer to historical trauma or lived experiences of discrimination” such as “slaves, masters, nuclear weapons.” Other prohibited terms include “abort, run or native”, as well as “blacklist” and “whitelist”. These are all commonly used terms in the vast technical tasks of game development.
This is, in a nutshell, “all-embracing” authoritarianism. In other words, be kind or otherwise. Many developers have little choice but to comply. Epic Games engines are trusted by thousands of small studios around the world. We cannot afford to develop the same state-of-the-art technology in-house.
Gamers themselves have little choice but to accept this sermon in video games. Few studios today are capable of producing high-budget, story-driven games. Last of Usor level action glasses call of duty.
Video games are considered an escape from reality. They are a showcase for developer creativity and imagination. What a shame to see all this sacrificed for the sake of Awakening.
Laurie Wastell I am an intern at spiked.
Comments
Post a Comment