[quote]Uncle Gabby wrote:
ChrisPowers wrote:
A good example of this in an actual game (which probably is reflective of my own inherent “bias,” for lack of a better word) would be Fable II, where raising the rent your character charged for a property resulted in you becoming gradually more “corrupt” every time your rent was collected, and less “pure.” For a game that purported to be ethically nuanced, you were treated as some kind of slumlord for simply charging more rent. They throw away an opportunity to do something TRULY nuanced, like having the going rate for rent vary depending on the neighborhood (giving you the ability to possibly affect that rate), then having high rents result in tenants who MOVE OUT (which they’re perfectly free to do), or making it easier to attract tenants with lower rent, etc. Instead, it’s literally boiled down to: charge people a lot, you’re bad; charge them little, you’re good. In this case, the game designers’ naive anti-capitalist beliefs totally destroy what could have been an actual interesting game within a game (and a chance to actually deliver on what they CLAIMED to provide).
Good point, though it seems to me that the problem is lazy, half-assed design, as much as anti-capitalist bias.[/quote]
I agree. Also, I probably shouldn’t have used the word bias, but I couldn’t think of the more appropriate term. I don’t believe they’re actively sitting there, plotting ways to indoctrinate the player into their anti-wealthy belief system.
It’s just that indoctrination into that way of thinking has gotten so bad in this country–particularly on the coasts, where most of these game companies recruit–that the designers aren’t even aware that there’s a legitimate opposing point of view (or that their own beliefs are inherently anti-capitalist [but that’s clearly my own opinion]). But that’s how I generally feel these things happen.
[quote]At any rate, now that I have that diatribe out of the way, to the question: has anyone who’s played Dragon Age: Origins–and is politically savvy enough to recognize it–noticed just that sort of ideological bullshit? After picking up the game on sale, I checked out the web site, and couldn’t help but notice some typical class warfare “morality” crap in the Origins section, which describes the back story of each character class that you have an option of choosing. Naturally, it is the horrible human “nobles” who are deplorable wealthy snobs, guilty of having enslaved the elves, and now callously subjugate those poor pathetic elves who still stick around to serve them and act as cheap labor. This is the kind of class warfare bullshit that I expect from politicians, not video games that purport to offer complex, ethically nuanced decision-making that results in profound consequences.
I think you’re off on this one. I am tired of humans always being the bad guys who rape the planet and exploit the other races or whatever it is you call an elf. That shit is old.
On the other hand the class warfare you see in a negative light is only bad in a capitalist system. In a feudal system, where the privileges of nobility are inherited, there is no upward mobility what so ever, and anyone who believed in liberty and the natural rights of man would call for “class warfare.” If I lived in such a system I couldn’t wait to hang a nobleman’s head from the city gates.[/quote]
This is a great point that I hadn’t thought of. Probably seeing too much red in anticipation of encountering what my own pre-conceived notions caused me to expect. I guess that might be part of why I even asked the question in the first place, though: is their approach that the wealthy are overprivileged and naturally prone to abuse those “less fortunate,” thinking they’re producing some incredibly poignant metaphor for our modern times, OR is their approach that feudalism is inherently broken for those very reasons, and therefore capitalism is actually a good thing, and the best system to allow for opportunity, etc.?
Wow, I’m probably expecting too much from my video games. But honestly, they’ve been around long enough (and their audience is supposedly now old enough) that I don’t think it’s too absurd to expect some legitimate maturity of thought in games. And no, blood, sex, and rape don’t count (which is another pet peeve of mine, but I digress).