FUCK APOLITICAL VIDEOGAMES

successful games are fun games; they’re polished and play well; they deserve their success. interface with game media at any juncture, and that’s the message. we busy ourselves writing about retrospective success. whether the game comes from nintendo, or the next boutique indie game developer, the message is the same: here’s why this already successful game is worth your time.

time being the most anxious quotient. the worst thing a game can do is take up our time unearned. the worst thing a game can do is take us out of the present. the worst thing a game can do is make us uncomfortable. the frequency that which this occurs leads many of us to make broad, sweeping generalizations about videogames that don’t break into the mainstream. is this a problem with the games? or a problem with us?

— > the issue is what we attach ourselves to as critics and developers. if we put all of our care and effort into fame and success, either justifying it, or explaining how to get it, then we reproduce normative structures. and unequivocally, USA hegemony is patriarchal, cisnormative, and white supremacist.

the game has swept us up. “the game” — connections, power struggles, expos, lectures. the goal is the product. all of us pouring downstream to sell, sell, sell. “How keep people playing!” “How to keep people reading!” development and critical culture in games has enshrined the market. it’s the market that ultimately decides who is worth listening to; it’s the market that decides what games to fondly remember; it’s the market that lets the cream rise to the top. it’s the market that is unequivocally patriarchal, cisnormative, and white supremacist.

HAVE YOU EVER FUCKING NOTICED THAT ALL THE NOTED WAYS TO SUCCEED AT MAKING GAMES REQUIRE DEPERSONALIZATION

• MAKE YOUR GAME LOOP BETTER. (THE FUCK IS A GAME LOOP) — HERE’S THE SPECIFIC PRECEDENT FROM OLD GAMES YOU HAVEN’T PLAYED
• “JUICE” UP YOUR GAME — STUDY AND RECREATE WHAT’S ALREADY WORKED
• HAVE A DISTINCT, ACCESSIBLE ART STYLE (IT LOOKS DIFFERENT BUT NOT TOO DIFFERENT) — MAKE IT LOOK LIKE THE GAMES WE ALREADY LIKE
• DETAIL! DETAIL! DETAIL! DETAIL… DETAIL… DETAIL… MORE NATURALISTIC, MORE CONVINCING, MORE REAL (LESS PERSONAL)
• FIND A FORGOTTEN NICHE — MAKE PAPER MARIO 3 — KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE PAST
• JUST GO FUCKING VIRAL. WHAT GAME PROVOKES A STREAMER’S AUDIENCE? MAKE THAT. BECOME THE ALGORITHM
• MAKE SURE THE GAME SELLS ITSELF — IT SHOULD MAKE SENSE AT A GLANCE. IT CAN’T BE MORE COMPLICATED THAN A GLANCE
• A GREAT GAME IDEA CAN BE COMMUNICATED IN ONE SENTENCE — MAYBE THAT IS TRUE OF ALL IDEAS (IF YOU’RE A CON ARTIST)

After most of these things are done, roll a d20 and see if a publisher feels like your game is a hit based on their own biases. Even better, rub elbows and make that shit happen. Biases are open to be changed and influenced.

None of the above are guarantees. They’re modifiers. All a developer can do is “increase visibility.” Angle yourself toward the market and become forgotten anyway.

Why the fuck are we making games like this?

This is all NIMBY shit — property values!

This is rich people stuff — every “real’ indie dev moonlighting as a venture capitalist.

Might as well play the lottery or buy stocks. Game developers cosplay as capitalists while ensuring platform holders and storefront owners have a cashflow.

— >here’s an open secret… depersonalization is white privilege. you know the best way to avoid getting arrested? don’t get profiled. do you know how to avoid being profiled? don’t act suspicious or irregular. the politics of white supremacy leverages depersonalization. it is never suspicious for a white person to take their lack of awareness for granted.

it’s like lead to repeat, but in the USA, cops treat every black and brown person as suspicious or irregular. depersonalization isn’t an option.

Words like “professional,” “broad appeal,” “polish,” are traded freely and without scrutiny in videogames. They’re dogwhistles! Maybe you haven’t throught about them this way before, but

American game history, our “celebrity developers,” are conspicuously white. Our game history is also divided across class lines. Videogames’ continuous present is expensive and always has been. Gamergate can be understood through materialism in this way, a preservation of racism and classism that was implicitly enforced through a meritocratic smokescreen. When game-development is self-referential, it continues to reaffirm some common identity of a “gamer.”

So who can afford to depersonalize themselves? Who can afford to divorce their identity from the work they do?

Don’t play their fucking respectability games!

(there are exceptions to these broad strokes. at the same time, dismantling white supremacy, cisnormativity, and patriarchy is active work. i’m asking if we want exceptions, or if we want a wholesale transformation)

Do we want a wholesale transformation?

— — I don’t hear this anymore, but I remember “There Is No Ethical Consumption Under Capitalism” as a refrain, a defining meme, a rallying cry, to be able to buy more corporate shit, more apoliticized shit, more depersonalized shit.

When hearing that there is no ethical consumption, why did we take that as a license to consume more, instead of thinking about how to consume less?

it’s a given, but creating games through depersonalization makes them ready made to be consumed. capitalism and white supremacy cannot be decoupled in our post-colonial societies. mass consumption is depersonalization; it normalizes white supremacy. it doesn’t come down to an isolated lack of representation here or there. the lack of diversity and representation is the end point. it is a generative property of post-colonial capitalism. and tons of people in games are still trying to change it “from the inside.”

reformation is co-option. it’s time to abolish capitalism. it’s the time to start imagining how we could do that. it’s the time to imagine what an arts culture without capitalism could look like. it’s the time to swim upstream against “the game” that dehumanizes us through depersonalization. it’s time to find our voices.

our ability to express ourselves and advocate for our experiences is diminished by expectations and contortions put upon us when we act like the market is a benevolent passive agent, or worse, when we actively try to impress an audience that, generally speaking, fucking hates me, and most of us, for existing. when mainstream videogames come in already defined, market-approved archetypes, we all lose.

transphobes and racists are going to be goofy motherfuckers regardless what i do, but i’m not going to actively court them. bland, depersonalized game development that preys on mass appeal refuses to draw that line. like we’re pretending there isn’t a massive bloc of “gamers” who demand games to be apolitical for blatantly evil reasons!

i have bit my tongue on these critiques for so long. i’ve been trying to phrase them in ways that were indirect and non-confrontational. it’s not enough to have diverse npcs in overwatch or whatever the fuck. the process of uplifting BIPOC developers is also the work of de-legitimizing an industry that profits off of white supremacist capitalism.

— >a way forward is to personalize game development

twine-like games can’t be a fad that comes and goes

personalizing games also politicizes them

this movement has already been occurring, has always been occurring

what I’m advocating is the inverse pressure

to also de-legitimize depersonalized game development

there is obviously a current imbalance

games that have no discernible stake or identity in the world beyond being a product, besides being capitalist residue, get inordinate attention

as they gesture at nothing in particular

their place in the attention economy legitimizes empty development practices

empty development practices which choose to represent “gamers” before, or instead of, representing the oppressed and marginalized <—