I am of the opinion they are full of shit, and they know they are full of shit and the company line is to piss on folks and tell them it is raining. Honestly the most insulting part is not them saying it but people believing them and help push it.
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A response to the Ubisoft philosophy on video games and their politics
- Thread starter Finale Fireworker
- Start date
To all the folks saying media doesn't influence their opinions: you are completely deluding yourselves. It's thoughts like those that allow media influence to be so strong and allows corrupting immoral ideas to proliferate in the modern world. There is ONLY evidence that our thoughts are affected by media/art/etc. there is ZERO evidence showing it doesn't affect our thoughts.
Life and the world is incredibly complex - far more complex than any one person can ever understand in a hundred lifetimes. To boil this down to "well I like killing people in a game but I don't like killing people in real life lol" is so ludicrously simplistic it can only mean you're either too young or too ignorant to understand how complicated life is. The messaging in games (and all media) is endless - who are you? who is your enemy? why do you fight them? how do you fight them? what does injury look like? what does death look like? what does health look like? what does healing look like? are the items you use realistic? how do characters speak? what language? what words? what inflection and tone? what is the plot? the themes? the mechanics? what part of your brain does it use? what parts doesn't it use? how does it make you feel? how do you feel after? before? when not playing? when thinking about the game? how much money did you spend? who makes the game? how do they spend the money you give them? who publishes the game? I mean the list goes on forever. Life is incredibly complex and if you're not thinking about this kind of stuff - you don't have to obsess over it all the time but you should understand it as a basic fact of reality - then you're part of the widespread problem of ignorance in the world.
Nothing - NOTHING in life is simple.
/end speech
And Ubisoft is absolutely full of shit. They're liars and they know it.
Life and the world is incredibly complex - far more complex than any one person can ever understand in a hundred lifetimes. To boil this down to "well I like killing people in a game but I don't like killing people in real life lol" is so ludicrously simplistic it can only mean you're either too young or too ignorant to understand how complicated life is. The messaging in games (and all media) is endless - who are you? who is your enemy? why do you fight them? how do you fight them? what does injury look like? what does death look like? what does health look like? what does healing look like? are the items you use realistic? how do characters speak? what language? what words? what inflection and tone? what is the plot? the themes? the mechanics? what part of your brain does it use? what parts doesn't it use? how does it make you feel? how do you feel after? before? when not playing? when thinking about the game? how much money did you spend? who makes the game? how do they spend the money you give them? who publishes the game? I mean the list goes on forever. Life is incredibly complex and if you're not thinking about this kind of stuff - you don't have to obsess over it all the time but you should understand it as a basic fact of reality - then you're part of the widespread problem of ignorance in the world.
Nothing - NOTHING in life is simple.
/end speech
And Ubisoft is absolutely full of shit. They're liars and they know it.
I'd prefer the company not comment on the political themes of their games, as Rockstar is prolifically known for. I think honesty is the best policy, but it can do harm. The PR for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided was pretty upfront about its overt politics but it was also rather clumsy with the whole MECHANICAL APARTHEID thing, when in context I feel the material (while maybe not spectacular) was definitely a little more nuanced.
It would be awesome if we could normalize game creatives talking openly about the political themes of their work though.
It would be awesome if we could normalize game creatives talking openly about the political themes of their work though.
Except that in a lot of cases the 'interpretations' become cudgels of exclusion ("hey why is there a trans flag in your game?" "why is a woman on the cover of my shooting game?" "I can't relate to your Black GTA protagonist") and it would be nice if Ubisoft had the tiniest segment of backbone to say "Yes we did that on purpose and this is why we think it was the right thing to do" like EA/Dice did instead of turning tail and leaving the conversation for the loudest and worst elements to dominate.
They don't have to dictate the interpretation. But they can set the tone for the inevitable conversation in the spaces where players care for them to happen.
We never, ever had to worry about gamers who disengage with a political statement because all they want to do is shoot dudes on Team Red. That's not what this topic is about.
Incredibly great good write up OP, sorry I don't have anything deeper to add but I've said my piece before.
OP
OP
1) I have my own opinion, but first I want to clarify that I don't think there is necessarily an objective answer to this. Who is responsible is sort of a big question and there's more than one way to look at it. My own feelings are this: I hold creators responsible for the media they created, but I don't necessarily hold them responsible for the messages in their media.
Somebody can set out to make something and completely miss the mark. Some people might feel this way about David Cage. In Detroit: Become Human, he wanted to tell a story about strife and struggle and prejudice. He did this by alluding to popular ideas and images he was familiar with from elsewhere. This is not an inherently bad creative process and can produce good media. But many people believe David Cage really fell short of his intentions and told a story that's insensitive to race or class inequity. In this case, David Cage set out to do something good, but his video game did not turn out how he planned.
I think the themes and ideas present in Detroit, and the response they received, starts and ends with Detroit. When discussing my feelings about Detroit, I will not come to any conclusions about David Cage and his own ideas or beliefs. Merely I will examine the beliefs his work represents and draw conclusions about his work specifically.
But if asked whose fault it is that Detroit ended up how it did, I would certainly say David Cage, who was not successful at telling the story he tried to tell.
With Ubisoft, I don't really care what Ubisoft is trying to say or not trying to say or what their specific agenda was when making Far Cry V or Assassin's Creed: Odyssey. I would examine these games independently from all their intentions and goals. But whether their games ends up really good or really bad, they are still responsible for creating it, so they will always be accountable to their audience.
2) I agree with this part for sure. This makes me think about killing Little Sisters in BioShock. BioShock allows you to kill one Little Sister and still get the good ending. This means that, for that one decision, what the player learns from it is entirely personal. If they feel nothing and decide to keep killing Little Sisters, that's on them, and they will be punished for doing so with the bad ending. If they are upset by what they've done and don't kill anyone else, they will be rewarded with the good ending and in-game rewards.
However, whether the player even faces this choice comes down to whether or not they kill the first Little Sister. If the player is noble from the outset, this part of the game isn't really there for them. They don't have to address the consequence for something they've done because they never did it in the first place. In this case, there is an optional quandary that a player can completely avoid by never interacting with that event in the first place.
I actually think this can be very interesting. Because the player experience, and therefore how they process the game's themes, might be completely different than most. I never killed Little Sisters in BioShock, so I never faced this at all, so dealing with the guilt was never part of my journey. A friend of mine, however, killed the first Little Sister and felt really bad. For them, they spent the rest of the game trying to make up for doing that, and they felt a much stronger kinship with Tannenbaum who also had trauma surrounding the trauma and treatment of the girls. For him, BioShock had an element of redemption to it, where my experience really did not.
That difference is definitely something that makes games really special.
I don't disagree, but sometimes when some mouthpiece says something like that I'm not exactly buying it. There's the risk of that "corporate wokeness" buzz idea floating by.
You're blowing my mind with these threads!
If Ubisoft did speak politically on behalf of the creative team and artisan developers behind their products, what then? Aside from the obvious "not pissing off investors" and "not pissing off consumers" excuses/reasons, perhaps they don't want to say anything because they don't want to censor their own people's political stances by assigning an overarching political stance to a product or creative work.
Bethesda has actually done this, though with something that most people agree with: "Fuck Nazis". But it hasn't been without complete controversy.
If Ubisoft did speak politically on behalf of the creative team and artisan developers behind their products, what then? Aside from the obvious "not pissing off investors" and "not pissing off consumers" excuses/reasons, perhaps they don't want to say anything because they don't want to censor their own people's political stances by assigning an overarching political stance to a product or creative work.
Bethesda has actually done this, though with something that most people agree with: "Fuck Nazis". But it hasn't been without complete controversy.
Their's a reason why humans invest in billions every year in advertisement. It works. Art can and does influence people. Especially with simple-minded people and children.
Actions definitely speak louder than words, but Ubisoft won't even offer the words. It's the spineless inertia that's really the focus here.
EA/Dice saying that women fighters are here to stay doesn't make the corporation your friend, but it also means that the corporation isn't completely abrogating any responsibility for the message sent by their games. Their (and other studios') willingness to spend development and marketing resources that are a clear product of a more diverse workforce, *and publicly defend it*, at the very least, is a positive sign. They're willing to be part of the dialogue. Ubisoft isn't.
For me on this subject I think I care about the intent of the creator/author more than the myriad of ways individuals could interpret something. I'm ok if a company or the employees of the company think their game is "not political". For example rising up against a corrupt government is such a simplistic tired plot device that I could definitely buy into some author using that as the basis of a story without some deep thought into what it says about governments (or any specific government).
The world isn't always as deep as people want it to be.
The world isn't always as deep as people want it to be.
I just question how helpful being part of the dialogue is. It can be very tenuous I think, and I respect a creator and producer who would prefer their work speak for them. Ofc, that's not what Ubi is doing by outright denying the existence of political messages in their games.
They shouldn't have to justify having politics or excluding politics in their games
Rockstar has political stuff in their games, but they never have to justify it or come out and give a disclaimer or a press release like this
Rockstar has political stuff in their games, but they never have to justify it or come out and give a disclaimer or a press release like this
Saying nothing at all might be preferable to Ubisoft's history of mealy-mouthed dodges.
Update #1: A response to skepticism regarding media influence
OP
OP
I think you seem to be misunderstanding the relationship between media and perspective. Comments like yours are not uncommon in these kinds of discussions and I think they stem from a fundamental miscommunication over why media how influence. I'll take a crack at it.
To say that media is an influential tool doesn't mean that media is going to make you do things or is going to make anyone replicate something they saw in media. This is a scare tactic that has plagued media of every medium. Violent children cartoons, pornography, video games, what have you. There is no causation whatsoever between somebody seeing something shown in media and then deciding it's a good idea to do it and go do it.
Anybody who peddles these sort of concepts is objectively wrong. It's not even a conversation worth having. Your hunting example is great because I actually have the same experience. I hate hunting. I hate animal cruelty. My SO has been vegan for 10+ years. But hunting is my favorite part of Red Dead Redemption 2 and it's something I spent more time doing than anything else. This obviously does not mean I love killing animals, or that I have been desensitized to killing, and that I am going to start killing things because I enjoyed doing it in a video game.
I want to be perfectly clear on this because when people examine and criticize the influence media has on its audience, this is almost never what they are describing. If there was any truth to this, everybody on this board would be a mass murderer and we'd all be posting from prison.
Examining the impact of media is really rooted in two concepts:
1) The first is the idea that media reinforcing certain ideas strong enough basis to credit or condemn it for doing so. I love God of War 2018 because of how it portrays a father trying to open himself up to his son's virtues. These are themes that really speak to me and I find valuable. I like the ideas reinforced in this story and think they are meaningful for players to experience. This is a reason I think God of War 2018 is good: because it reinforces feelings and ideas I think are good ones. The same is true for games I do not like. I don't like BioShock Infinite because of the way it depicts the relationship between oppression and rebellion. I think it reinforces ideas that actions performed from both contexts are morally synonymous. These are not values I think are good ones, so they are not themes I like. This is something I think BioShock Infinite is really bad at, despite liking it for some other things.
This is to say that when media says something, whether that thing is good or bad, it is present and meaningful to evaluate. It doesn't matter if it has consequences, necessarily, because you can feel that a piece of media is good or bad even if the consequences are nonexistent. Media that portrays certain ideas becomes representative of those ideas. So if those ideas are good, that says something about the game, and if the game is bad, that says something too.
So when somebody says "this video game is has racist themes" it should not be confused with "this video game will make you racist." The fact a piece of media embodies a certain idea is enough to warrant praise or criticism as appropriate.
2) Media can and does affect the way people think or feel about certain kinds of stimulus. This much is irrefutable. It is literally the basis for all of marketing and propaganda. If media could not sell you on an idea, neither of these things would exist because they'd have no affect at all.
But like I said above, seeing a commercial for recreational water vehicles is not going to make me go like this:
Nobody is that gullible.
What media does do is immerse you with messages and ideas that affect the conclusions you come to. This is why cigarette advertising focused so much on how cool it supposedly made you to smoke. Kool brand cigarettes, the Marlboro Man, Joe the Camel, etc. By reinforcing the idea that cigarettes were cool and rebellious, people who wanted to feel cool and rebellious wanted to smoke. This is how media works.
This is depicted rather humorously in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. Indiana Jones is inspired by 1930s serials that Steven Spielberg used to watch as a kid. These characters were larger than life heroes to him. When it came time for him to create his own hero, he modeled them after these sort of characters. In The Last Crusade, Young Indy is saved by an older, cooler, and already established archetype that he would go on to emulate his entire life. The character gives him their hat, which Indiana Jones wears for the rest of his life.
I've always found this depiction really fascinating because of how the scene reflects Steven Spielberg's desire to emulate the heroes he used to watch as a kid in his own work. Steven Spielberg and Indiana Jones were both given ideas and images of what it meant to be cool and independent and adventurous. The maturation of Indiana Jones as a character is a reinforcement of those ideals.
So when we criticize video games and other media for the ideas they reinforce, we don't do this because we think somebody is going to say "Wow! Time to start killing!" But media contributes to abstract ideas and thought processes that can, and will, affect your own way of thinking. You will not be susceptible to everything equally, and you have a ton of control over the media you consume, but this is why it's important to consume media consciously. What are the ideas you're immersing yourself in? Can you at least identify them? These are questions worth asking yourself.
If I had to summarize it as succinctly as possible, it would be as such: media does not affect your actions, but it can affect your way of thinking. The fact that it can be leveraged to do so consistently and effectively by brands, institutions, and interests is why we should be as conscious as possible about the ideas we immerse ourselves in.
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OP
OP
This is exactly what happens. Just like you describe. People take ideas for granted and represent them in their media. This is what my whole thread is about and why it's still important to examine these ideas and be conscious of what they represent. Intendt is not meaningful when examining the ideas media represents or reinforces. Most commercial video games are not made with a political statement in mind. But video games make political statements anyway. But they are there, and should be considered, and denying their presence undervalues the expressive qualities video games.
And I want to iterate here that this isn't just about "bad" politics or themes. This is not a take down. It's about taking games for what they are, and what they have to say, and considering the value in those messages. Ubisoft makes games with all kinds of messages. Some of these messages I think are great. Some of them I think are really bad. But these games make statements and embody ideas worth talking about and discussing. If Ubisoft doesn't want to, that's fine. They're a business with no brain. But we, as consumers, certainly can.
OP
OP
This is my position as well. I would always prefer authors say nothing.
Love to make politic-free video games called Tom Clancy's Bone Zone about american imperialism, domestic terrorism, emergent weaponry and rogue soldiers.
Because as far as I know, Rockstar doesn't deny that their games are political in the first place. They'd be extremely disingenuous to do so. RDR2 for example takes shots at the Trump administration. It's also critical of America's history and treatment of black people, women and Native American's. What people are taking issue with when it comes to UBI is that they clearly make political games, but then claim that they aren't actually political. CDPR even called them out for this, although not by name, but everyone knows who they're referring to
OP
OP
Funnily enough, this entire thread was inspired by this post:
I thought: That was sharp, but what if it was 9 pages long instead? Here we are.
I stopped at the "what is art?" part, not because I lost interest, but because there's a point I really want to address. There's another possibility that was left out: varying interpretations of "politics". Politics can include anything that could be legislated, all types of belief systems, government structures, etc., meaning politics as a term is virtually all inclusive. Let's assume that what they say is genuine, and they truly don't want to make political statements in their games. In this scenario, politics would likely mean current hot button topics, and I believe that's what the vast majority of people mean when they put it as simply as "keep politics out of games". Under this interpretation, Ubisoft succeeds, to a fault imo. They are often adjacent to modern political discussions, but address them with the tact of a sibling that puts their finger near you and says "I'm not touching you". I could go off on my own rant about the writing in Ubisoft games, but I'll spare everybody and leave it at that.
Anyway, just wanted to present that idea, one that assumes a good faith argument. It's worth considering that in general about people that "don't want politics in games". I personally have had certain topics that I really don't want to experience in a game. It's not so much a fear of disagreement, but a dislike for having a topic come up in a game that brings back those feelings of that argument they just had with someone the other day, or something else that brings them back to reality. I can't speak for everybody obviously, but I imagine that's a good chunk of people.
Anyway, just wanted to present that idea, one that assumes a good faith argument. It's worth considering that in general about people that "don't want politics in games". I personally have had certain topics that I really don't want to experience in a game. It's not so much a fear of disagreement, but a dislike for having a topic come up in a game that brings back those feelings of that argument they just had with someone the other day, or something else that brings them back to reality. I can't speak for everybody obviously, but I imagine that's a good chunk of people.
Finale Fireworker thank you for writing this. Admittedly, I couldn't read all of it yet.
On the subject of Ubisoft: I would like they'd take some of their funds and create more projects like Valiant Hearts - something a bit more daring.
On the subject of Ubisoft: I would like they'd take some of their funds and create more projects like Valiant Hearts - something a bit more daring.
(applause.gif)I think you seem to be misunderstanding the relationship between media and perspective. Comments like yours are not uncommon in these kinds of discussions and I think they stem from a fundamental miscommunication over why media how influence. I'll take a crack at it.
To say that media is an influential tool doesn't mean that media is going to make you do things or is going to make anyone replicate something they saw in media. This is a scare tactic that has plagued media of every medium. Violent children cartoons, pornography, video games, what have you. There is no causation whatsoever between somebody seeing something shown in media and then deciding it's a good idea to do it and go do it.
Anybody who peddles these sort of concepts is objectively wrong. It's not even a conversation worth having. Your hunting example is great because I actually have the same experience. I hate hunting. I hate animal cruelty. My SO has been vegan for 10+ years. But hunting is my favorite part of Red Dead Redemption 2 and it's something I spent more time doing than anything else. This obviously does not mean I love killing animals, or that I have been desensitized to killing, and that I am going to start killing things because I enjoyed doing it in a video game.
I want to be perfectly clear on this because when people examine and criticize the influence media has on its audience, this is almost never what they are describing. If there was any truth to this, everybody on this board would be a mass murderer and we'd all be posting from prison.
Examining the impact of media is really rooted in two concepts:
1) The first is the idea that media reinforcing certain ideas strong enough basis to credit or condemn it for doing so. I love God of War 2018 because of how it portrays a father trying to open himself up to his son's virtues. These are themes that really speak to me and I find valuable. I like the ideas reinforced in this story and think they are meaningful for players to experience. This is a reason I think God of War 2018 is good: because it reinforces feelings and ideas I think are good ones. The same is true for games I do not like. I don't like BioShock Infinite because of the way it depicts the relationship between oppression and rebellion. I think it reinforces ideas that actions performed from both contexts are morally synonymous. These are not values I think are good ones, so they are not themes I like. This is something I think BioShock Infinite is really bad at, despite liking it for some other things.
This is to say that when media says something, whether that thing is good or bad, it is present and meaningful to evaluate. It doesn't matter if it has consequences, necessarily, because you can feel that a piece of media is good or bad even if the consequences are nonexistent. Media that portrays certain ideas becomes representative of those ideas. So if those ideas are good, that says something about the game, and if the game is bad, that says something too.
So when somebody says "this video game is has racist themes" it should not be confused with "this video game will make you racist." The fact a piece of media embodies a certain idea is enough to warrant praise or criticism as appropriate.
2) Media can and does affect the way people think or feel about certain kinds of stimulus. This much is irrefutable. It is literally the basis for all of marketing and propaganda. If media could not sell you on an idea, neither of these things would exist because they'd have no affect at all.
But like I said above, seeing a commercial for recreational water vehicles is not going to make me go like this:
Nobody is that gullible.
What media does do is immerse you with messages and ideas that affect the conclusions you come to. This is why cigarette advertising focused so much on how cool it supposedly made you to smoke. Kool brand cigarettes, the Marlboro Man, Joe the Camel, etc. By reinforcing the idea that cigarettes were cool and rebellious, people who wanted to feel cool and rebellious wanted to smoke. This is how media works.
This is depicted rather humorously in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. Indiana Jones is inspired by 1930s serials that Steven Spielberg used to watch as a kid. These characters were larger than life heroes to him. When it came time for him to create his own hero, he modeled them after these sort of characters. In The Last Crusade, Young Indy is saved by an older, cooler, and already established archetype that he would go on to emulate his entire life. The character gives him their hat, which Indiana Jones wears for the rest of his life.
I've always found this depiction really fascinating because of how the scene reflects both Steven Spielberg's desire to emulate the heroes he used to watch as a kid in his own work. Steven Spielberg and Indiana Jones were both given ideas and images of what it meant to be cool and independent and adventurous. The maturation of Indiana Jones as a character is a reinforcement of those ideals.
So when we criticize video games and other media for the ideas they reinforce, we don't do this because we think somebody is going to say "Wow! Time to start killing!" But media contributes to abstract ideas and thought processes that can, and will, affect your own way of thinking. You will not be susceptible to everything equally, and you have a ton of control over the media you consume, but this is why it's important to consume media consciously. What are the ideas you're immersing yourself in? Can you at least identify them? These are questions worth asking yourself.
If I had to summarize it as succinctly as possible, it would be as such: media does not affect your actions, but it can affect your way of thinking. The fact that it can be leveraged to do so consistently and effectively by brands, institutions, and interests is why we should be as conscious as possible about the ideas we immerse ourselves in.
Can I threadmark this, so we can easily refer to this post in all future topics that say "sexism in games is fine because violent games don't make me shoot people IRL"?
We're absolutely in agreement there's a difference between Pong and a Tom Clancy game. I think how we differ is more a matter of semantics. I would say the latter gives you a lot more to work with, so it's less of a stretch to extract a political or moral stance from it. I wouldn't describe these stances as some kind of intrinsic feature of the game, however, even if the game features institutions that are morally or politically charged. I think games and other works can give us the tools and inspiration to form a stance without necessarily having one baked in; again, some games just give us more to play with if that's your thing. Ultimately, as an interpreter you're always bringing something to the table, whether it's your assumptions, values, creativity, inclination to think outside the box, or what kind of mood you were in that day. So, I suppose in a nutshell I'm saying games don't necessarily take stances or make statements; people do. Some games, in virtue of their content, just provide a richer interpretive sandbox to play in than others.
I think I would agree with that. And maybe the issue, which I meant to touch on earlier, is the idea that "Making a political statement" and "Being political" are not exactly the same thing. I think you're right in that some games make far more defined and clear statements than others. But as far as I understand the situation, I wouldn't consider them to not be making any kind of statement, or to consider them not "political".
Many dictionary definitions of the word political are quite literally just "has to do with how we govern ourselves". This harkens back to the MGS conversation where two people tried to convince themselves that the series wasn't "political". Even if they're right (Which I don't particularly think they are, especially since MGS from most accounts DOES make political statements) that would mean that all media depicts a subject matter, but that it doesn't necessarily take a stance on it.
The essential problem with this is that all framing is a moral act, just as stories are inherently moral. Take this quote from a paper on framing.
https://apw.polisci.wisc.edu/APW_Papers/MoralFraming.pdf
The short version is that when you frame something you inherently reduce some information and bolster other information. You essentially portray something in "a certain way", omitting things, changing things a bit, etc.
Even if you think that all MGS really does is use politics as a "subject matter", the creation of that media is a moral action, and you're imparting what you think about the premise, the situation, the mechanics, etc. when you make it.
Again, I agree with you that someone is not outright saying "Capitalism bad" in a game, but it is more than likely that this kind of theme underlies the story, and in the case of video games, the mechanics and how you can and should interact with that story.
And to touch back on the Ubisoft stuff... video games have both an explicit story and a mechanical story and they are both told in many ways, sometimes intersecting. I can't really choose to not kill people in The Division, it's literally how you progress. So there isn't much player expression in that. But the inherent story of all players, that you shoot down "undesirable influences", get rid of people with damaging ideologies who are taking up resources... this story is opening up something.
Lastly, I think there's an interesting conversation to be had about taking a clear stance on an issue versus opening up that issue for display. I understand that you feel (and I feel, kind of) that opening up an issue and portraying it in some way might not afford a clear readable stance, but it's literally a display of an issue. How you portray the sides of that issue, and the fact that you even display it in the first place indicates that you feel it's important, needs to be talked about, will affect us in the future, etc.
I think you seem to be misunderstanding the relationship between media and perspective. Comments like yours are not uncommon in these kinds of discussions and I think they stem from a fundamental miscommunication over why media how influence. I'll take a crack at it.
To say that media is an influential tool doesn't mean that media is going to make you do things or is going to make anyone replicate something they saw in media. This is a scare tactic that has plagued media of every medium. Violent children cartoons, pornography, video games, what have you. There is no causation whatsoever between somebody seeing something shown in media and then deciding it's a good idea to do it and go do it.
Anybody who peddles these sort of concepts is objectively wrong. It's not even a conversation worth having. Your hunting example is great because I actually have the same experience. I hate hunting. I hate animal cruelty. My SO has been vegan for 10+ years. But hunting is my favorite part of Red Dead Redemption 2 and it's something I spent more time doing than anything else. This obviously does not mean I love killing animals, or that I have been desensitized to killing, and that I am going to start killing things because I enjoyed doing it in a video game.
I want to be perfectly clear on this because when people examine and criticize the influence media has on its audience, this is almost never what they are describing. If there was any truth to this, everybody on this board would be a mass murderer and we'd all be posting from prison.
Examining the impact of media is really rooted in two concepts:
1) The first is the idea that media reinforcing certain ideas strong enough basis to credit or condemn it for doing so. I love God of War 2018 because of how it portrays a father trying to open himself up to his son's virtues. These are themes that really speak to me and I find valuable. I like the ideas reinforced in this story and think they are meaningful for players to experience. This is a reason I think God of War 2018 is good: because it reinforces feelings and ideas I think are good ones. The same is true for games I do not like. I don't like BioShock Infinite because of the way it depicts the relationship between oppression and rebellion. I think it reinforces ideas that actions performed from both contexts are morally synonymous. These are not values I think are good ones, so they are not themes I like. This is something I think BioShock Infinite is really bad at, despite liking it for some other things.
This is to say that when media says something, whether that thing is good or bad, it is present and meaningful to evaluate. It doesn't matter if it has consequences, necessarily, because you can feel that a piece of media is good or bad even if the consequences are nonexistent. Media that portrays certain ideas becomes representative of those ideas. So if those ideas are good, that says something about the game, and if the game is bad, that says something too.
So when somebody says "this video game is has racist themes" it should not be confused with "this video game will make you racist." The fact a piece of media embodies a certain idea is enough to warrant praise or criticism as appropriate.
2) Media can and does affect the way people think or feel about certain kinds of stimulus. This much is irrefutable. It is literally the basis for all of marketing and propaganda. If media could not sell you on an idea, neither of these things would exist because they'd have no affect at all.
But like I said above, seeing a commercial for recreational water vehicles is not going to make me go like this:
Nobody is that gullible.
What media does do is immerse you with messages and ideas that affect the conclusions you come to. This is why cigarette advertising focused so much on how cool it supposedly made you to smoke. Kool brand cigarettes, the Marlboro Man, Joe the Camel, etc. By reinforcing the idea that cigarettes were cool and rebellious, people who wanted to feel cool and rebellious wanted to smoke. This is how media works.
This is depicted rather humorously in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. Indiana Jones is inspired by 1930s serials that Steven Spielberg used to watch as a kid. These characters were larger than life heroes to him. When it came time for him to create his own hero, he modeled them after these sort of characters. In The Last Crusade, Young Indy is saved by an older, cooler, and already established archetype that he would go on to emulate his entire life. The character gives him their hat, which Indiana Jones wears for the rest of his life.
I've always found this depiction really fascinating because of how the scene reflects both Steven Spielberg's desire to emulate the heroes he used to watch as a kid in his own work. Steven Spielberg and Indiana Jones were both given ideas and images of what it meant to be cool and independent and adventurous. The maturation of Indiana Jones as a character is a reinforcement of those ideals.
So when we criticize video games and other media for the ideas they reinforce, we don't do this because we think somebody is going to say "Wow! Time to start killing!" But media contributes to abstract ideas and thought processes that can, and will, affect your own way of thinking. You will not be susceptible to everything equally, and you have a ton of control over the media you consume, but this is why it's important to consume media consciously. What are the ideas you're immersing yourself in? Can you at least identify them? These are questions worth asking yourself.
If I had to summarize it as succinctly as possible, it would be as such: media does not affect your actions, but it can affect your way of thinking. The fact that it can be leveraged to do so consistently and effectively by brands, institutions, and interests is why we should be as conscious as possible about the ideas we immerse ourselves in.
Thank you for taking the time to write this.
I agree with you and I very much like your way of describing media's influence on society. I'm sure many of my beliefs or the way I react to certain things or situations have been shaped, or at least influenced, by media I consume. Sometimes on a superficial level, sometimes on a deeper, more meaningful way.
I used the examples of shooting and hunting to illustrate not that I'm not gunning people down on the street, but to say that although I like doing it in videogames, I'm against the idea of it in real life.
I didn't see the relation to videogames right away, that's why I posted my comment. I can't recall right now if any world view or way of thinking of mine have been influenced by videogames throughout the years, but they certainly have been shaped by movies, TV and books. So, based on that, videogames probably have influenced me too whether I realized it or not.
As you said, it helps if you know how to choose the media you consume. Media can be harmless at best, or it can be the greatest weapon at hand, be it from government control or capitalism. It's not a coincidence that most dystopian stories criticize media in some way.
Anyway, thank you for making me think. I should have taken more time before posting while on the bus after a long day of work (on a company that makes money on marketing and propaganda nonetheless).
As usual, a beautifully worded comprehensive breakdown of the issues Ubisoft's PR messaging entails. Also, this was literally the first time I had to change over from Dark to Light theme to read (there was a lot).
While, I do not possess your level of nuanced and well thought out itemization/categorizations for a breakdown, I did want to make a thread about their messaging. However, now I feel that I should pose my point here.
From the days of Call of Duty to Battlelfield to Splinter Cell to Dark Souls to Dead Space to Assassin's Creed to Horizon Zero Dawn and all other story based games that pitch players against citizens of other nation or another group of people or entities with differing outlook for governing, we have been playing a lot of games that delve into "Politics".
Wiki definition of Politics:
The pre-existing conditions for what is considered truly political has been enmeshed so deeply within our entertainment society that that frame of references does not even register for many of us until someone else breaks it down for us.
For example- During the ensuing years of Iraq War (shit show still continues) gamers got to kill a lot of brown people garbed, labelled and programmed in as terrorists. While terrorism was and remains a real thread it has never been limited to brown muslims. However, no one in the gaming community, be they players or "journalists" batted an eyelid because they never saw it as political because the devs and publishers never overtly maligned all brown people.
And it is the same today. When publishers like Ubisoft proclaims that their games that deal with aspects like regime changes or grievance against existing governance is apolitical it reinforces the beliefs of people (as in filthy bigots) that it is ONLY, and I can not stress this enough, ONLY politics when it comes to the matter of representation of racial and LGBTQ minority and of women both as playable characters and within the context of game's narrative.
While, I do not possess your level of nuanced and well thought out itemization/categorizations for a breakdown, I did want to make a thread about their messaging. However, now I feel that I should pose my point here.
From the days of Call of Duty to Battlelfield to Splinter Cell to Dark Souls to Dead Space to Assassin's Creed to Horizon Zero Dawn and all other story based games that pitch players against citizens of other nation or another group of people or entities with differing outlook for governing, we have been playing a lot of games that delve into "Politics".
Wiki definition of Politics:
The pre-existing conditions for what is considered truly political has been enmeshed so deeply within our entertainment society that that frame of references does not even register for many of us until someone else breaks it down for us.
For example- During the ensuing years of Iraq War (shit show still continues) gamers got to kill a lot of brown people garbed, labelled and programmed in as terrorists. While terrorism was and remains a real thread it has never been limited to brown muslims. However, no one in the gaming community, be they players or "journalists" batted an eyelid because they never saw it as political because the devs and publishers never overtly maligned all brown people.
And it is the same today. When publishers like Ubisoft proclaims that their games that deal with aspects like regime changes or grievance against existing governance is apolitical it reinforces the beliefs of people (as in filthy bigots) that it is ONLY, and I can not stress this enough, ONLY politics when it comes to the matter of representation of racial and LGBTQ minority and of women both as playable characters and within the context of game's narrative.
This is a fantastic thread Finale, thank you for making it. I absolutely agree with you about the inherent political messages that are within games and art in general. You mention here some questions that people should be asking themselves when they are consuming a piece of media, and while I think they are fantastic questions, how do you feel about situations where someone completely misinterprets a piece of media? I'm not necessarily referring to a difference between the author's intent and the message that media evoked, but more what happens when different groups of people interpret different meanings from a piece of media?
For instance, if we take a look at the movie "Fight Club", there are quite a few people who looked at the character of Tyler Durden and saw him as a role model, or someone to look up to while others saw him as the other end of the extreme that should be avoided. One of these interpretations is the intended interpretation of the character, however it's a piece of media that has a very large split on which side people fall on.
I try my best to be conscious of the media that I consume, but I tend to look towards what the authors of the work have to say about the material because of situations like Fight Club, where I am concerned that I might be pulling the wrong message or political meaning out of a game. Ubisoft's message that their games do not contain any political message is something that I don't believe is true, but how can we be sure that we are pulling the correct message out of media that we consume?
There is a difference between using political themes and settings for your game/universe and using said game to send a political message/statement. Having played most of the more recent Tom Clancy-branded titles, I'm fairly certain Ubisoft's claims are genuine - the games aren't commenting on real-world politics. They're simply using political intrigue to build their own fictional worlds.
They claim that is the case:
However, the point is that these 'political themes and settings for the game universe' are on-brand for Tom Clancy's own political themes visible in his works, which gives them a certain grounding, expectation and depiction. It might be their fictional world, but it's based heavily on the themes of his fictional world. It's not a window for wide-ranging options about 'political intrigue leads to gunplay.' It's the far more focused, TC formula of 'political intrigue leads to gunplay' that is invariably also 'extremely heavily armed small group of US operatives with little oversight show civilian/administrative/strategic oversight of the actions of such armed westerners, who are depicted as heroes by default, is bad'.
Both the former and the latter happen to match up very well with computer games where something big happens, you get a bit of exposition then run around shooting stuff in semi-open worlds. The player likes exploring, the player likes shooting stuff, the player likes having a reason to do both, the player doesn't like endless interruptions from npcs and Ubisoft likes making those games. That's cool, nothing wrong with that, that's relevant to hundreds of great games including various other Ubisoft ones and that's their defence of it, that 'political stuff leading to shots fired' is a good setup for a game. Hell, it's the setup for an awful lot of thrillers too. The issue is more that stories being on-brand with Tom Clancy tend to mean a very particular type of political intrigue leading to very particular types of stories, it's not a blank slate of any kind of political intrigue that can lead to any kind of action the developers could imagine. The Clancy brand has a political message of 'small government good, guns held by lone or small groups of US military-trained personnel are the answer to any problem' baked into it, and to stray from that is heading off-brand, which would then defeat the object of having the brand. It's not a brand that offers creative freedom in the political message included, no matter what Ubisoft claims, because what it means, what people recognise and thus expect from it, in the arena of a shoot 'em up computer game, is leading the developers down a certain path of politics from the start.
Ultimately the Clancy brand isn't 'any politics followed by gunplay', it's 'Tom Clancy's politics and fantasies which are always followed by gunplay'. Stray from that and it isn't TC anymore, so it has a message with a certain political leaning baked in.
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It's especially hilarious when they are using Tom Clancy creations, one of the most political writers in fiction. I think a ghost recon Dev actually cited it being a Tom Clancy game so it was therefore not political, it's insulting to the audience's intelligence. Like you say, everything is political and their pussyfooting around stuff in order to not upset the usual idiots is cowardly, own your shit.
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Yeah this is how I've taken and played games such as The Division 1 and 2 and Ghost Recon Wildlands. To be honest, the "story" in these games is paper thin and is just a starting point and a context in order to give you missions. Most of the times I end up skipping the cutscenes because they're so empty and the characters are forgettable walking clichés that you forget as soon as you put the game away.
So I never actually thought about the "message" or intention behind the game. For example in Ghost Recon Wildlands you are an American force in Bolivia and you're supposed to stop a drug cartel, so I'm sure it could be scene as very imperialist, but when you play it, it doesn't focus on this question, which might be considered as a problem. For me it wasn't, because I wasn't invested in the story and just wanted to shoot bad guys with a friend as fast as we could.
Yup their stance is one of disingenuous cowardice and moral weakness. In denying the obvious reality of the situation they're trying to have their cake and eat it too, which is immensely frustrating for me. And it doesn't just effect games infested with right wing pro military industrial complex themes like the Tom Clancy games, it also cheapens their positive inclusive efforts in games like Watch Dogs and Assassin's Creed Odyssey.
They just make games to get money. Shooters sell well because they are fun, so they make shooters. Games need some minimal plot with characters, so they put something that fits: soldiers, mercenaries, and so on. The game plot and dialogs are something built after all this to pack everything together in a context, to make the experience more fun and cohesive, like giving to a hook to see what happen next, to motivate you to do certain task that the game (maybe an NPC) ask you to do, etc without being too repetitive, generic or boring.
In narrative focused or artsy games like Detroit, Terry Cavanagh games or stuff like that, the story is important and their message can (or not) include a political message. Ubisoft games are just games. More products than art. With no special message, as their creators often said in many interviews, trailers or PR stuff made to sell their games. Not all games need to send a message, and if they have a message it doesn't need to be political. The majority of them are just entertainment products with very limited or no art meaning. Like most movies, books, music albums, etc. And it's fine.
If you want to see political stuff in everything, that is another thing. If you think that even Tetris, Super Mario, a table, a pancake, a stone or a jar have a political message, then you may have an issue.
Most people see games just as games. Fictional fun stuff with (in 99.999% of the cases) cheesy stories that don't have any impact on them, and even less in political topics. You can shoot aliens, zombies, random mercenaries from a fictional country, drug cartel from any real country... doesn't matter, they are all the same: just fictional cartoon guys moving inside a game.
I think people should know that don't need to wear tin foil hats when playing videogames, there isn't conspirancies everywhere. Tin foil hat guys also should know that Ghost Recon Wildlands and Breakpoints have Ubisoft Paris as lead studio, and that Ubisoft is French.
We most of us the Europeans don't have that tradition with guns like people in the US and have no relationship with the military industry that some talk. Many of us are pacifist, don't like people having guns, left wing, don't like the military stuff but like to shoot stuff in videogames because it's fun.
Fun fact: I'm also a former European Ubisoft employee -CRM depeartment, I was in charge of CM and CS for some games and studio- and even if I didn't work directly in these games I can also tell you that there is no intention behind these games of sending any political message, and we know most players agree (or well at least there isn't a significative amount of them complaing about it or even mentioning the topic in social media, gaming forums, gaming websites comments, etc) that these games don't have any political message.
Regarding the "Ubisoft (or X Ubisoft game) is racist" and similar sentences they are pretty dumb. Ubisoft has a very diverse staff (considering the technology/gaming industry standards, and each country standards) and have many studios across the world who work in better conditions than most gaming studios in western countries. Everyone is equal at Ubi.
Wildlands was a fictional story but was set in Bolivia. They did choose that country maybe because they wanted to get some place with mountains and jungle to fit the gameplay, an maybe around South America to fit the plot because the bad guys were a drug cartel and many important ones are from that region of the world. And did choose Bolivia instead of other ones like Colombia or Mexico to avoid similarities with real world popular cartels. Back then I found a few 'gaming journalists' -who also caused other clickbait/controversy cases of tin foil paranoia segment of the left wing calling certain games sexist/racist/etc. with no real reason- called Wildland fascist, racist and imperialist (traditionally do the same with all Ubisoft Tom Clancy games but not with other ones like Call of Duty, Battlefield, PUBG, Fortnite, etc).
So this time Ubisoft for Breakpoint maybe decided that their next Ghost Recon game happens in a fictional country/island instead, trying to avoid some these political interpretations that these few guys make. Because Ubisoft (same happens with the other companies) doesn't want to be related with controversies and don't want to send any political message: they only want to make an entertainment product enjoyable (as shooting stuff and explore big worlds in games is) by millions of people who will buy it.
For that there is a million important things for their games, and being placed in a real country or to send a political message isn't one of them. So since they just want to make fun games and appeal more players instead of offending people with thing like that, they change/tweak/remove it and problem solved. Or not, because haters will always hate (if it isn't this topic will be another one) and tin foil hat guys will always see conspirancies and hidden illuminati messages everywhere.
In narrative focused or artsy games like Detroit, Terry Cavanagh games or stuff like that, the story is important and their message can (or not) include a political message. Ubisoft games are just games. More products than art. With no special message, as their creators often said in many interviews, trailers or PR stuff made to sell their games. Not all games need to send a message, and if they have a message it doesn't need to be political. The majority of them are just entertainment products with very limited or no art meaning. Like most movies, books, music albums, etc. And it's fine.
If you want to see political stuff in everything, that is another thing. If you think that even Tetris, Super Mario, a table, a pancake, a stone or a jar have a political message, then you may have an issue.
Most people see games just as games. Fictional fun stuff with (in 99.999% of the cases) cheesy stories that don't have any impact on them, and even less in political topics. You can shoot aliens, zombies, random mercenaries from a fictional country, drug cartel from any real country... doesn't matter, they are all the same: just fictional cartoon guys moving inside a game.
I think people should know that don't need to wear tin foil hats when playing videogames, there isn't conspirancies everywhere. Tin foil hat guys also should know that Ghost Recon Wildlands and Breakpoints have Ubisoft Paris as lead studio, and that Ubisoft is French.
We most of us the Europeans don't have that tradition with guns like people in the US and have no relationship with the military industry that some talk. Many of us are pacifist, don't like people having guns, left wing, don't like the military stuff but like to shoot stuff in videogames because it's fun.
Fun fact: I'm also a former European Ubisoft employee -CRM depeartment, I was in charge of CM and CS for some games and studio- and even if I didn't work directly in these games I can also tell you that there is no intention behind these games of sending any political message, and we know most players agree (or well at least there isn't a significative amount of them complaing about it or even mentioning the topic in social media, gaming forums, gaming websites comments, etc) that these games don't have any political message.
Regarding the "Ubisoft (or X Ubisoft game) is racist" and similar sentences they are pretty dumb. Ubisoft has a very diverse staff (considering the technology/gaming industry standards, and each country standards) and have many studios across the world who work in better conditions than most gaming studios in western countries. Everyone is equal at Ubi.
This is another thing that proves what Ubisoft say: they don't try to give any political message.
Wildlands was a fictional story but was set in Bolivia. They did choose that country maybe because they wanted to get some place with mountains and jungle to fit the gameplay, an maybe around South America to fit the plot because the bad guys were a drug cartel and many important ones are from that region of the world. And did choose Bolivia instead of other ones like Colombia or Mexico to avoid similarities with real world popular cartels. Back then I found a few 'gaming journalists' -who also caused other clickbait/controversy cases of tin foil paranoia segment of the left wing calling certain games sexist/racist/etc. with no real reason- called Wildland fascist, racist and imperialist (traditionally do the same with all Ubisoft Tom Clancy games but not with other ones like Call of Duty, Battlefield, PUBG, Fortnite, etc).
So this time Ubisoft for Breakpoint maybe decided that their next Ghost Recon game happens in a fictional country/island instead, trying to avoid some these political interpretations that these few guys make. Because Ubisoft (same happens with the other companies) doesn't want to be related with controversies and don't want to send any political message: they only want to make an entertainment product enjoyable (as shooting stuff and explore big worlds in games is) by millions of people who will buy it.
For that there is a million important things for their games, and being placed in a real country or to send a political message isn't one of them. So since they just want to make fun games and appeal more players instead of offending people with thing like that, they change/tweak/remove it and problem solved. Or not, because haters will always hate (if it isn't this topic will be another one) and tin foil hat guys will always see conspirancies and hidden illuminati messages everywhere.
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I started listening to The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes yesterday, as read by Stephen Fry. In its foreword, Fry spends about 10 minutes explaining exactly how and why Doyle's books very substantially changed his entire life going forward. One example among millions on how media influences and changes people. Art and media are made by people and their aim is to connect and communicate with other people. It's only natural that it does so.
Ubisoft's corporate cowardice is nothing new and i personally don't believe for a second that it's not a conscious business decision, as not to anger those they perceive as their fanbase.
This is another fantastic wall of text Finale. Thanks for the read.
The stories might be thin, but they still don't avoid using language that drives a certain viewpoint. The Division 2 is a great example of this. UBI's argument is that they're just telling fictional stories. But then they use real world ideologies to drive those fictional stories. Here's the intro to TD2, what does this sound like to you
"We took things for granted. We expected coffee in the morning. We expected free Wi-Fi. When those were taken from us. We survived. When communications broke down, the trains stopped and the internet went dark. We survived. But when the pharmacies were looted, and hospitals shut down, asthma became lethal. With no police to protect you, did you own a gun? Did your neighbor? Some survived."
This shit is right out of the NRA guidebook for why everyone needs a gun. As you said, the story in these games is paper thin, so something like that doesn't even need to be there. It wouldn't change anything if it weren't. But it says a lot about political messaging that it is there.
OP
OP
Responding to the bolded part specifically, I think when people say this they're getting a bit caught up on the specificity or commentary. It is rare a video game will ever make specific commentary on a real world issue. Gears of War being an Iraq War allegory is the best example I can think of for that specifically. But most of the time this isn't the case. This also isn't the qualifier for what makes something political, however.
Most ideas and themes are suitably generalized. Ideas about gender and race, or war and violence, or subjects and royalty, or life and death, are naturally philosophical and broadly applicable. Political media usually isn't specifically commenting on a real world event. That's a specific genre of media, the allegory, and is akin to stories like Animal Farm. Most of the time a story simply presents and reinforces concepts and ideas without a particular real-world backbone.
This doesn't stop media from reflecting the real world, though. We can learn from the ideas presented in media, or at least ponder how a game represents a certain kind of issue, and take politics and philosophy from that experience.
For example, Dark Souls is a game about a despondent and desperate lower class that live in such destitution they are literally "hollow." This class is exploited and manipulated by its upper class that seeks to prolong its rule and influence at any cost — even death. Hollows in Dark Souls are literally fuel to prolong the reign of an increasingly desperate King. Even the highest honor and greatest accomplishment a person can perform results in their consumption and destruction in the name of their lord. This relationship between subjects and monarchy, and the exploitation of class, is extremely politicized and is weighty enough for its own lengthy analysis.
But this very political plot doesn't have any specific bearing or comment on a real-world imperial power or its subjects. Rather, we can interpret the themes and messages the games has to understand how Dark Souls represents these concepts. This is perspective we can use and apply to actual events in the real world as well.
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Maybe someone at Ubisoft read this thread, because during the Watch Dogs 3 announcement just now they made some pretty expressly political statements. Seemed like an interesting thing to note in the context of their previous statements about being allegedly apolitical.
Again, trying to be "woke" for sales purposes is no new thing, but it's an intriguing 180 during a conference that will literally also feature the new Ghost Recon.
Again, trying to be "woke" for sales purposes is no new thing, but it's an intriguing 180 during a conference that will literally also feature the new Ghost Recon.