If you're familiar with some of my older topics, you'll know I've always really enjoyed approaching video games as literature. It's perhaps no surprise then that I would get mad online and write 4,000 words about how I think video games are important. But like I've iterated in the past, I'm not really an authority on anything. You are certainly welcome to disagree with me and I will not be so humorless as to take it personally. I am usually just happy that somebody read enough of what I wrote to adequately troll me. So thank you for reading, as always, if you can be bothered. Welcome to my thinkpiece nobody asked for.
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With the recent reveal of Ghost Recon Breakpoint, Ubisoft spoke with GameSpot to clarify that the game is not a political statement:
This sort of run-of-the-mill corporate brand protection isn't uncommon. Companies will often insist something they are selling has no deeper impact or importance beyond its immediate consumption because there is a lot of liability involved with acknowledging your product's consequences. For this reason, companies like Ubisoft always try to walk the line between making their product seem desirable while also discouraging too much thought about the product or content.
This is something Ubisoft tries to do constantly. It is a normal part of the Ubisoft promotional cycle to announce a video game and then discourage any sort of scrutiny of those new games. This isn't just a trend, this is an intentional and transparent party line. Even when faced with an absolute reality, Ubisoft attempts to maintain the veneer of neutrality at all costs because they believe this is better for business.
First and foremost, I don't think Ubisoft believes they aren't getting political with their games. They choose political topics, settings, and stories because these are the sort of vehicles that suit their gameplay and they find the topics marketable. When you look at their repeated PR on the subject, their position seems to be "we didn't make this game with a specific message in mind, therefore it has no specific message."
Ubisoft PR obviously denounces any political intent on behalf of the company, but their video games make political statements on their own behalf anyway. We get articles explaining this almost every time Ubisoft releases a game, but Ubisoft's position remains consistent. You can find articles like this as recently as last week.
I think there are two possibilities here. The first is that Ubisoft knows their PR is deceptive and has no illusions about the political nature of their video games. If this is the case, their claims to the contrary are merely marketing meant to distance their corporate identity from any particular political philosophy. The second possibility is that Ubisoft genuinely thinks they do a good job at not making political statements and therefore don't need to take any responsibility when it comes to the messages their games contain. I think the first possibility is rather sinister and the second possibility is rather dumb.
Ultimately, Ubisoft is a corporation and it doesn't matter very much what they say or what they believe in this respect. But I do think it matters if players believe them. That is what this thread is really about. This thread isn't a takedown of Ubisoft or their games (which I generally like). However, when companies try to profit from politics while also claiming not to participate in political messaging, I think it's worth examining why they're wrong. The most important media to scrutinize is the media that doesn't want you to.
Video games contain messages no matter what. Video games have weight and value beyond their sales potential. Video games have a lot to say regardless of if their creators do. This thread is about why and how, and also why I think it's important to appreciate games for what they really are.
What is art?
This is an unanswerable question. The definition of what constitutes art is entirely relative, fluid, and inconsistent. It varies between time periods, philosophies, and individual critics. It's also, in my opinion, totally irrelevant to this discussion. Rather than seek a definition of art that everyone can agree on, I think it makes sense to suspend the conversation entirely. Justifying art impedes conversations about media. Media is important enough on its own whether you think it is art or not.
Media is the single most influential and powerful human invention. We are uniquely responsible for its creation and, likewise, its consequences. Whether it's a corporate advertisement, a government propaganda campaign, a religious text, an autobiography, a morning news broadcast, a Hollywood movie, or a cup with a picture on it, all media is created to impart on another human a certain image, feeling, or experience. Media takes all kinds of forms and formats but it is grounded by a singular purpose: humans create media to send and receive ideas and messages.
This includes video games.
Where do these messages come from?
Creators imbue their media with messages so that it can carry an idea or a feeling forward independently. It must speak for itself and elicit the intended response. This is true even, or perhaps especially, if the creator's intention is ideological neutrality. Neutrality itself is a lofty goal.
This is the basis for comedy, which wants to make you laugh.
This is the basis for horror, which wants to make you scared.
This is the basis for marketing, which wants you to buy something.
This is the basis for propaganda, which wants you to believe something.
And more.
Video games function the exact same way. They are designed to generate a certain response from their player. Maybe it's to scare them, or challenge them, or relax them, but no video game is designed to make a player think or feel nothing.
This must be accomplished without further assistance from the author. Sometimes the creator is unknown, sometimes they are dead, sometimes they are incommunicado, but at the very least they are almost definitely not there by the time you are consuming their media. The work itself stands as the lone arbiter of its own thesis. So while media may communicate a specific message or feeling very clearly, you usually can't be sure it's what the author intended. But whether the author intended a certain response or not usually doesn't matter, either.
Imagine a clocksmith. Somebody puts great time, care, and effort in to constructing an effective timepiece. When it's finished, the clock continues autonomously, carrying out its design, and the creator no longer has any input on its function. When you check to see what time it is, you are aren't asking its creator, you are asking the clock. The clock speaks for itself. We examine media to seek a deeper understanding of the material – not the creator or their intentions.
Ehren Tool is a ceramics artist who understands and expresses this concept well. His work is heavily therapeutic, deeply personal, and a means for him to process his trauma from serving in the American military. Despite this, he doesn't tell other people what his work is supposed to mean and lets his cups do all the talking. The only thing that matters is the consumer take-away:
On the surface, this might not seem much different from the Ubisoft philosophy. Both entities provide their audience with images and ideas and put the burden of interpretation on the consumer. The difference is that Ehren Tool does not believe his work is neutral and inert on creation. When Ehren Tool says he "just makes cups", he is saying this because he believes his work has meaning beyond his own imagination and they are more than capable of delivering complex and personal messages even if they are not his own. He knows his work means something, and makes a statement, but does not hold his audience to his own intention.
Ubisoft, when presented with assessments on their work, says they want to get their audience thinking but claim to not have anything particular in mind. They say they just make "fiction" and "environments" and their work has no purpose or intention behind it. Any meaning it has is entirely incidental. I believe this demonstrates a difference in respect for one's own work. There is no video game ever made that is less complex than a ceramic mug. Every video game has something to say no matter what Ubisoft claims.
If intent doesn't matter, what's the distinction?
Game developers are inspired by all kinds of ideas and images that give their work meaning. Sometimes these influences are conscious and deliberate, like Cory Barlog's reinterpretation of Kratos in 2018:
Other times they are the result of unconscious or innate bias, like the strict depiction of gender roles in The Legend of Zelda:
Media is influenced by the conscious and unconscious alike. This is how media with no intended message can still end up with a specific political and philosophical reception. The feelings and ideas a game tries to communicate will not always match the experience of the player. Likewise, a player may experience or interpret messages the creator did not consciously impart. But video games, like all media, fail and succeed as their own entity once its been shared with the world.
Ubisoft claims they make neutral and apolitical video games. If this is their intention, they routinely fail, and the political response their games receive (positive and negative alike) indicates this quite plainly. Ubisoft claims they want to give players "something to think about", but they also don't have anything in mind. To believe Ubisoft games contain no overt politics or messages or ideas is delusional. If we take their claims as truth, this means Ubisoft isn't conscious or aware of the philosophies and concepts their games reinforce. I like Ubisoft, but I think it is cheap and irresponsible to use political images, ideas, and themes without understanding what they mean and then have the gall to claim you meant nothing by it. At best, I think it's really naive.
What makes games different from other media?
A game doesn't operate without a player. By mandating player participation, video games reinforce your immersion in their ideas. Game developers are aware of this and have challenged players on this subject before. System Shock, Metal Gear Solid, BioShock, Portal, Spec Ops: The Line, The Stanley Parable, Undertale, and other narratively ambitious games have tried to subvert the assumptions players make about interactivity and force a conversation with the player about how they respond to stimulus. In short, what makes video games unique in the world of consumer media is how interactivity changes the way the player relates to the experience as a whole.
The materials that comprise this structure are almost identical to that of an arcade cabinet. You perform a simple mechanical input and receive a reward for doing it. The longer you do it, the greater your reward. There are not many degrees of separation between this machine and a typical arcade game that rewards tickets or a high score for prolonged engagement - other than the fun factor, of course.
This machine is a great example of putting a player in a certain position and letting them come to their own revelations and conclusions through their own input. People perform tasks far more complex and stressful, with far greater wear on their minds and bodies, for the same amount of compensation that this machine dispenses. This machine asks questions about the nature of labor and compensation and it's up to you to think about it. It does this with one mechanic exclusively. This is the philosophy Ubisoft wants to embody, but does not.
Video game mechanics are just presses on buttons and sticks, but these mechanics correspond with actions and these actions produce results in the game world. By casting the player in to the narrative, certain actions and philosophies will be innately endorsed because completing these actions is mandatory for progress. How the game responds to these actions comments on the player's behavior. For example, if a game sends police after players and creates hostile world states if a player kills civilians, this means a player is de-incentivized to perform this action, even if they can, thus affirming the idea that you should not kill innocent people. If a vulnerable unit suddenly appears on the combat map in a strategy game, and saving them nets some sort of reward or recruitment, the game affirms concepts of heroism.
Plenty of messages and ideas are communicated through cinematics and texts in video games, but video games are unique in how they mandate player engagement with the ideas they present. Video games reinforce philosophy by incentivizing you as a player to engage in various concepts and every player becomes a temporary agent of whatever politics or philosophy a game imparts.
While lots of video games are designed with compelling narrative themes from the start, many other video games are designed with mechanics first and stories colored in between the lines. Damsel narratives were often used because they are easy to retrofit on to object-retrieval, for example. Military operations are used as backdrops for gun-based gameplay because it gives the player an excuse to shoot someone. The messages reinforced in these games don't rely on authorial intent to take on meaning.
Ehren Tool just makes cups. Blake Fall-Conroy just made a penny dispenser. Ubisoft just makes video games. But there is more to it than that and it's up to you to think about what this can mean.
Do politics in media even matter?
Media is an unrelenting torrent of influence on your worldview. Sometimes your response to media is conscious and cognitive and you can feel the gears turning in your head as you respond to a new and influential stimulus. But most of the time it isn't. Most of the time people consume media without scrutiny because it is much easier to perceive all things at face value. It takes less time, it takes less practice, and is less individually challenging to just let media flow through you without consideration or reflection.
But the more media you perceive at face value, the more you run risk of taking things for granted. Receiving a constant stream of media stimulus that presents certain ideas to you will build up a frame of reference that makes these ideas feel normal, commonplace, and assumed. These expectations can affect your perceptions of the real world, real people, and what you actually believe.
Some people deny that video games are political as a way of distancing themselves from the rhetoric. Maybe they aren't prepared to think of video games this way, or don't want to, so they insist there is no merit or reason in doing so. Other people who believe video games aren't political simply mistake what they are used to seeing as apolitical neutrality. But reinforcing the status quo through common tropes is equally political to something that challenges regularity. It just isn't as disruptive to people's expectations.
Interpreting the politics of media doesn't always yield some sort of revelatory ideological insight. Sometimes the ideas presented in media are simple and straightforward. Sometimes they're even under-developed or unfocused. But complexity does not preclude presence and quality does not determine existence. Media is both a reflective and transformative force. It takes human perspective and then perpetuates that perspective indefinitely. Understanding the depth of fiction helps us better interpret the real world and make sense of ourselves in turn.
---------
With the recent reveal of Ghost Recon Breakpoint, Ubisoft spoke with GameSpot to clarify that the game is not a political statement:
This sort of run-of-the-mill corporate brand protection isn't uncommon. Companies will often insist something they are selling has no deeper impact or importance beyond its immediate consumption because there is a lot of liability involved with acknowledging your product's consequences. For this reason, companies like Ubisoft always try to walk the line between making their product seem desirable while also discouraging too much thought about the product or content.
This is something Ubisoft tries to do constantly. It is a normal part of the Ubisoft promotional cycle to announce a video game and then discourage any sort of scrutiny of those new games. This isn't just a trend, this is an intentional and transparent party line. Even when faced with an absolute reality, Ubisoft attempts to maintain the veneer of neutrality at all costs because they believe this is better for business.
First and foremost, I don't think Ubisoft believes they aren't getting political with their games. They choose political topics, settings, and stories because these are the sort of vehicles that suit their gameplay and they find the topics marketable. When you look at their repeated PR on the subject, their position seems to be "we didn't make this game with a specific message in mind, therefore it has no specific message."
Ubisoft PR obviously denounces any political intent on behalf of the company, but their video games make political statements on their own behalf anyway. We get articles explaining this almost every time Ubisoft releases a game, but Ubisoft's position remains consistent. You can find articles like this as recently as last week.
I think there are two possibilities here. The first is that Ubisoft knows their PR is deceptive and has no illusions about the political nature of their video games. If this is the case, their claims to the contrary are merely marketing meant to distance their corporate identity from any particular political philosophy. The second possibility is that Ubisoft genuinely thinks they do a good job at not making political statements and therefore don't need to take any responsibility when it comes to the messages their games contain. I think the first possibility is rather sinister and the second possibility is rather dumb.
Ultimately, Ubisoft is a corporation and it doesn't matter very much what they say or what they believe in this respect. But I do think it matters if players believe them. That is what this thread is really about. This thread isn't a takedown of Ubisoft or their games (which I generally like). However, when companies try to profit from politics while also claiming not to participate in political messaging, I think it's worth examining why they're wrong. The most important media to scrutinize is the media that doesn't want you to.
Video games contain messages no matter what. Video games have weight and value beyond their sales potential. Video games have a lot to say regardless of if their creators do. This thread is about why and how, and also why I think it's important to appreciate games for what they really are.
What is art?
This is an unanswerable question. The definition of what constitutes art is entirely relative, fluid, and inconsistent. It varies between time periods, philosophies, and individual critics. It's also, in my opinion, totally irrelevant to this discussion. Rather than seek a definition of art that everyone can agree on, I think it makes sense to suspend the conversation entirely. Justifying art impedes conversations about media. Media is important enough on its own whether you think it is art or not.
Media is the single most influential and powerful human invention. We are uniquely responsible for its creation and, likewise, its consequences. Whether it's a corporate advertisement, a government propaganda campaign, a religious text, an autobiography, a morning news broadcast, a Hollywood movie, or a cup with a picture on it, all media is created to impart on another human a certain image, feeling, or experience. Media takes all kinds of forms and formats but it is grounded by a singular purpose: humans create media to send and receive ideas and messages.
This includes video games.
Where do these messages come from?
Creators imbue their media with messages so that it can carry an idea or a feeling forward independently. It must speak for itself and elicit the intended response. This is true even, or perhaps especially, if the creator's intention is ideological neutrality. Neutrality itself is a lofty goal.
This is the basis for comedy, which wants to make you laugh.
This is the basis for horror, which wants to make you scared.
This is the basis for marketing, which wants you to buy something.
This is the basis for propaganda, which wants you to believe something.
And more.
Video games function the exact same way. They are designed to generate a certain response from their player. Maybe it's to scare them, or challenge them, or relax them, but no video game is designed to make a player think or feel nothing.
This must be accomplished without further assistance from the author. Sometimes the creator is unknown, sometimes they are dead, sometimes they are incommunicado, but at the very least they are almost definitely not there by the time you are consuming their media. The work itself stands as the lone arbiter of its own thesis. So while media may communicate a specific message or feeling very clearly, you usually can't be sure it's what the author intended. But whether the author intended a certain response or not usually doesn't matter, either.
Imagine a clocksmith. Somebody puts great time, care, and effort in to constructing an effective timepiece. When it's finished, the clock continues autonomously, carrying out its design, and the creator no longer has any input on its function. When you check to see what time it is, you are aren't asking its creator, you are asking the clock. The clock speaks for itself. We examine media to seek a deeper understanding of the material – not the creator or their intentions.
Ehren Tool is a ceramics artist who understands and expresses this concept well. His work is heavily therapeutic, deeply personal, and a means for him to process his trauma from serving in the American military. Despite this, he doesn't tell other people what his work is supposed to mean and lets his cups do all the talking. The only thing that matters is the consumer take-away:
On the surface, this might not seem much different from the Ubisoft philosophy. Both entities provide their audience with images and ideas and put the burden of interpretation on the consumer. The difference is that Ehren Tool does not believe his work is neutral and inert on creation. When Ehren Tool says he "just makes cups", he is saying this because he believes his work has meaning beyond his own imagination and they are more than capable of delivering complex and personal messages even if they are not his own. He knows his work means something, and makes a statement, but does not hold his audience to his own intention.
Ubisoft, when presented with assessments on their work, says they want to get their audience thinking but claim to not have anything particular in mind. They say they just make "fiction" and "environments" and their work has no purpose or intention behind it. Any meaning it has is entirely incidental. I believe this demonstrates a difference in respect for one's own work. There is no video game ever made that is less complex than a ceramic mug. Every video game has something to say no matter what Ubisoft claims.
If intent doesn't matter, what's the distinction?
Game developers are inspired by all kinds of ideas and images that give their work meaning. Sometimes these influences are conscious and deliberate, like Cory Barlog's reinterpretation of Kratos in 2018:
Other times they are the result of unconscious or innate bias, like the strict depiction of gender roles in The Legend of Zelda:
Media is influenced by the conscious and unconscious alike. This is how media with no intended message can still end up with a specific political and philosophical reception. The feelings and ideas a game tries to communicate will not always match the experience of the player. Likewise, a player may experience or interpret messages the creator did not consciously impart. But video games, like all media, fail and succeed as their own entity once its been shared with the world.
Ubisoft claims they make neutral and apolitical video games. If this is their intention, they routinely fail, and the political response their games receive (positive and negative alike) indicates this quite plainly. Ubisoft claims they want to give players "something to think about", but they also don't have anything in mind. To believe Ubisoft games contain no overt politics or messages or ideas is delusional. If we take their claims as truth, this means Ubisoft isn't conscious or aware of the philosophies and concepts their games reinforce. I like Ubisoft, but I think it is cheap and irresponsible to use political images, ideas, and themes without understanding what they mean and then have the gall to claim you meant nothing by it. At best, I think it's really naive.
What makes games different from other media?
A game doesn't operate without a player. By mandating player participation, video games reinforce your immersion in their ideas. Game developers are aware of this and have challenged players on this subject before. System Shock, Metal Gear Solid, BioShock, Portal, Spec Ops: The Line, The Stanley Parable, Undertale, and other narratively ambitious games have tried to subvert the assumptions players make about interactivity and force a conversation with the player about how they respond to stimulus. In short, what makes video games unique in the world of consumer media is how interactivity changes the way the player relates to the experience as a whole.
The materials that comprise this structure are almost identical to that of an arcade cabinet. You perform a simple mechanical input and receive a reward for doing it. The longer you do it, the greater your reward. There are not many degrees of separation between this machine and a typical arcade game that rewards tickets or a high score for prolonged engagement - other than the fun factor, of course.
This machine is a great example of putting a player in a certain position and letting them come to their own revelations and conclusions through their own input. People perform tasks far more complex and stressful, with far greater wear on their minds and bodies, for the same amount of compensation that this machine dispenses. This machine asks questions about the nature of labor and compensation and it's up to you to think about it. It does this with one mechanic exclusively. This is the philosophy Ubisoft wants to embody, but does not.
Video game mechanics are just presses on buttons and sticks, but these mechanics correspond with actions and these actions produce results in the game world. By casting the player in to the narrative, certain actions and philosophies will be innately endorsed because completing these actions is mandatory for progress. How the game responds to these actions comments on the player's behavior. For example, if a game sends police after players and creates hostile world states if a player kills civilians, this means a player is de-incentivized to perform this action, even if they can, thus affirming the idea that you should not kill innocent people. If a vulnerable unit suddenly appears on the combat map in a strategy game, and saving them nets some sort of reward or recruitment, the game affirms concepts of heroism.
Plenty of messages and ideas are communicated through cinematics and texts in video games, but video games are unique in how they mandate player engagement with the ideas they present. Video games reinforce philosophy by incentivizing you as a player to engage in various concepts and every player becomes a temporary agent of whatever politics or philosophy a game imparts.
While lots of video games are designed with compelling narrative themes from the start, many other video games are designed with mechanics first and stories colored in between the lines. Damsel narratives were often used because they are easy to retrofit on to object-retrieval, for example. Military operations are used as backdrops for gun-based gameplay because it gives the player an excuse to shoot someone. The messages reinforced in these games don't rely on authorial intent to take on meaning.
Ehren Tool just makes cups. Blake Fall-Conroy just made a penny dispenser. Ubisoft just makes video games. But there is more to it than that and it's up to you to think about what this can mean.
Do politics in media even matter?
Media is an unrelenting torrent of influence on your worldview. Sometimes your response to media is conscious and cognitive and you can feel the gears turning in your head as you respond to a new and influential stimulus. But most of the time it isn't. Most of the time people consume media without scrutiny because it is much easier to perceive all things at face value. It takes less time, it takes less practice, and is less individually challenging to just let media flow through you without consideration or reflection.
But the more media you perceive at face value, the more you run risk of taking things for granted. Receiving a constant stream of media stimulus that presents certain ideas to you will build up a frame of reference that makes these ideas feel normal, commonplace, and assumed. These expectations can affect your perceptions of the real world, real people, and what you actually believe.
Some people deny that video games are political as a way of distancing themselves from the rhetoric. Maybe they aren't prepared to think of video games this way, or don't want to, so they insist there is no merit or reason in doing so. Other people who believe video games aren't political simply mistake what they are used to seeing as apolitical neutrality. But reinforcing the status quo through common tropes is equally political to something that challenges regularity. It just isn't as disruptive to people's expectations.
Interpreting the politics of media doesn't always yield some sort of revelatory ideological insight. Sometimes the ideas presented in media are simple and straightforward. Sometimes they're even under-developed or unfocused. But complexity does not preclude presence and quality does not determine existence. Media is both a reflective and transformative force. It takes human perspective and then perpetuates that perspective indefinitely. Understanding the depth of fiction helps us better interpret the real world and make sense of ourselves in turn.
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