Seriously. Every form of entertainment has baked-in political assumptions, and that definitely includes #ttrpg . You might choose not to examine them, but this is an active choice on your part, and you don't get to pretend that your entertainment is "free of politics".
Meanwhile every Ubisoft title, no matter how inoffensive, add the disclaimer:
This game was created by a diverse team of people with different beliefs, sexual orientations, and gender identities
"i don't want politics in my games" is an insane thing to say when the biggest franchises for decades have been games about wars. All art is inherently political, but come on. War being apolotical? Literal babybrain. No, politics is when woman and black and I suppose
Exactly! Almost everything in our lives that matters ultimately is reliant and depends on politics and policy. When people say "I don't really care about politics," what they are really saying is they don't like thinking at all.
Politics in gaming is awesome, ham fisted writing and design wrapped up in an opinion lecturing the player so it breaks the universe ruleset is crap and does more damage to what ever message you were trying to push.
Sadly a lot of socially important messages are pushed as a selling point by people who don't really have the background to fully create a bridge that speaks to People.
This is the same for a lot of creative work our artists are increasingly coming from privileged and protected backgrounds that we're losing the depth and edge of the art. Indie games as usual are the standard games like Star dew address so much about humanity in a beautiful way.
I play crusader kings for the plot not the politics😄
they want something that won't challenge their preconceptions one iota. they don't care about artists crafting a story, they want slop that confirms their biases.
I'm very curious what political message shapez is sending. It's a factory building game that takes place in a seeming void where magical shapes appear out of nowhere and then simply get thrown into what appears to be a black hole there's no particular discernible story or message just a fun puzzle
My thought?
The factory grows. This is good. You must shut up and let the factory grow. The factory grows. The factory must grow.
When I say "I don't want politics in my gaming," I mean it literally.
Like, I don't care for the Star Wars prequels because they spend a lotta time just doing politics instead of space battles.
I don't wanna sit through boring ass senate sessions listening to motions and passing votes. I wanna blow shit up!
So, you want less bureaucracy and more warfare? That's a pretty bold political statement right there. I'm sure there's nothing political about war.
Imagine if you had to file paperwork for every demon killed in Doom. You'd practically never be killing demons after the first level because of all fhe paperwork from all the demons you killed in the first level!
Nah, you'd just write up the first level in an Incident Report covering multiple dead demons. And more to the point, both bureaucracy and warfare are forms of politics, so killing demons is still a form of politics, with or without paperwork.
I think there's a middle ground where the game 'world' can acknowledge there are political maneuverings happening, while not forcing you to track the shipments of food and goods so you can squeeze nobles who depend on certain economic routes into complying with the king's orders to rally troops for a cause.
Bounty orders style campaigns are fun for a short while, but there's only so many 'go here, kill x, biggest change is the layout of the dungeon and enemy vulnerabilities' before the game sessions all bleed into one long blurry dice roll. That's close to warhammer/battletech/etc territory. I want a real story to go with the campaign, and that necessitates a 'politics' somewhere unless you're playing one of the barbarian/end-of-the-world games where there is no civilization or npcs at all aside from enemies.
But I think we can all agree that the "politics" of motions and passing votes is not what was being addressed by OP.
Prequels? You don't think the original Star Wars had tons of politics in it?
"Politics" or "the way one sees the world"?
Because I'm pretty sure there's a language disconnect regarding worldview.
A dev has their game reflect their worldview, and a social curmudgeon experiences political rhetoric cognitive dissonance, illustrating the incongruency and the fact that they are, indeed, a tool. ARRGHHH MUH FREEDOMS
It's a classic case is "What I do is my world view, what you do is politics." Maybe sometimes the more radical variant "What I do is reality, what you do is politics."
You know, like the older version of that, "What I do is religion, what you do is superstition."
When talking to people, especially on the right side of the political spectrum, it's sadly quite common that people cannot separate their opinion from reality.
"faith based"
I mean sometimes I just want to take a break from thinking about it and larp as "The good guys" for a while
Ghost of Tsushima:
A Samurai and several of his battle-ready female companions try to reclaim their island after Mongol invasion.
I remember thinking "did they really have female warriors and lords back then who called the shots and fought alongside the men? I like the message, but a bit of realism would be nice...."
And then our brave stoic rugged Samurai literally prostrates himself in front of his lord/uncle at every opportunity constantly grovelling and professing how unworthy he is and how he seeks only to serve, and then I'm thinking "oh yeah... the stoic Samurai is a trope, they were either small militias or snivelling arms of the state."
So I'm okay with realism being bent if it means I'm not constantly questioning the values of my main character.
I'm not super familiar with either the game or Japanese history, but I found this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onna-musha
It seems that women were regarded more equally prior to confucianism.
The page for the game says:
Jin's samurai armor and katana are not historically accurate, with his armor based on that of the Sengoku period during the 16th and 17th centuries. According to Chris Zimmerman, one of Sucker Punch's cofounders, samurai armor from the 13th century was "jarring looking" and did not align with players' expectations of what samurai armor would look like.
Totally-not-samurai-looking armor:
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