Progressive video game Saturday mornings
by David Atkins
Video games and progressivism haven't always had a great history. The video game industry has come under assault for sexism, violence, homophobia in the player base, lack of sophistication and a wide variety of other faults.
But what if I told you that several of the best selling and most critically lauded video games were also complex, incredible and very intentional pieces of progressive storytelling that make Avatar seem simpleminded and downright politically moderate? And that they've managed to do it in a way that, due to the lower visibility of video games in general and the prejudiced assumption that they're all mindless festivals of sex and violence, has largely escaped attention on both the left and right? That Youtube comment sections on clips from these videogames quickly turn into arguments about religion, politics and philosophy directly related to the game's content?
On the next several Saturday mornings I'll be exploring one video game/series per week, delving into their sometimes astonishingly subversive storylines and explaining to a non-gamer audience just how rich and morally enlightened are the entertainments being consumed by many teens and young adults. The focus won't be so much on gameplay (that sort of analysis can be found on innumerable other sites) as on storyline and political implications.
This Saturday I'll be covering the Assassin's Creed series, the latest installment of which features a half-Native-American half-British hero at the dawn of the American Revolution, arguing with George Washington while fighting for the Patriots who will ultimately drive his people from their lands. In case that doesn't whet your appetite, this is also a series that features an Arab hero fighting against European invaders during the crusades, imagines all religion as mythmaking, exposes hypocrisies of the Catholic church during a celebration of the Renaissance through the eyes of an Italian hero, and weaves a yarn that ties in Citizens United, the coups against Allende and Mossadegh, and the homophobic persecution of Alan Turing as all part of a conservative conspiratorial propagandistic quest for control of humanity. All this in a videogame?
You bet. See you and your handy joystick controllers this Saturday.
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