Metaphor: ReFantazio's success is further proof that politics are good in videogames, actually—no matter what reactionaries tell you

Politics are irrelevant

Good writing is good and bad writing is bad

Politics is not actual politics, its not normative womans, gays and trans people. Metaphor its ok because don't have any of those (I'm only 20hs in)

I can't explain why no one talks about baldur 3. I suppose its too complex for those people.

Games have a large male audience and many of those males are white. When new games focus on protagonists and issues that do not resonate with white males, this aggravates the audience and it only takes a few vocal few to whip the group into toxic online behavior.

Metaphor is set in a fantasy world populated by Japanese. The characters may seem to be of a multiracial society, but it’s understood that this is not a western game but an eastern one through a western lens. It could have the most radical political discourse but as players we quietly accept that this is a foreign story and not one that reflects on western issues and prejudices.

Well, there's politics... and there's politics.

Ah, yes, of course... It had to be PC Gamer with this take.

Just make good games and and focus on that, the push to shove politics and activism into everything has everyone tired and burned out. It just builds skepticism from the wider gaming audience.

Massive props to Refantazio, honestly a very good game.

No, I don't think it's as simple as that. Politics are good in games when done right, but they can also be nothing more than a distraction when the narrative has huge errors or lacks and depth in general.

Yes politics are great in videogames, if the writers don't share just 1 braincell like with many current AAA(A) games.

You'd think it's common knowledge, yet they still churn out these depthless, one dimensional millenial writing slop.

I understand that half of the world is currently healing psychological trauma from the US election results but Atlus has been commenting on politics in their games for much longer.

Nobody normal complains about politics in games, what people complain about is poor writing and US cultural idiosyncratic defaultism in games. Perhaps if ESA members hadn't laid off the lion's share of adult writers in the room to hire cheap, overwhelmingly ignorant, uneducated and straight out of college dev teams with a superiority complex, we could get good narratives. There's a reason why everyone and their mothers keeps harping about indie games now, that's where the laid off talent went, they make independent games now. But it's cheaper to take "journos" to Disneyland than keeping a roster of devs with 10+ years experience. In the past, there was already a backlash on journos for their habitual prostitution to the companies they cover but that message was quickly erased in favour of "gAmErS aRe MiSoGyNiStIc". Now, most traditional game news outlets are owned by a handful of holding companies, and most of their articles are AI generated drivel by, you guessed it, people not holding journalism degrees. Gaming journalism has become the off ramp of untalented and incompetent language/social science majors who are too inept to actually find a job in their field. That's why we get this level of shitty journalism, because technically, they really don't know what being a journalist is, from the ethics standards to the reporting without inserting personal bias. No self respecting journalist chooses covering hatsune miko's latest release when there are so many conflicts in the world that need covering, so we get Felicity, Mars and Bruno, English major extraordinaires, who end up on a dead end career with wages capping at below 40k pounds per anum that justify their lack of journalistic ethics by "It's the perk of the profession since we don't get well paid".

There were more articles covering game character sexuality than the mass lay offs of the last two years that left entire families without sustenance. Then people are surprised that orange nazi cheeto gets elected by the dumb yanks? The megaphone holders for social issues have room temp level IQ. When was the last time that a "game journo" or major dev from a AAA outlet seriously addressed relevant issues like social inequality or poverty? Do yourself a favour and compare the google interest in the topics "transgender", "hunger", "unionization" and "lay offs" and tell me that it isn't by design that an issue that affects an infinitesimally small percentage of the population has so much air time in comparison to an ongoing genocide and hunger crisis in the global south. I guess rich white teen problems are more serious than brown people dying. The bourgeois left has set back the class struggle for 100 years. Enjoy the hard right turn of modern western society.

Edit: Jason Schreier is a good example of how to conduct yourself, he mostly keeps his private ideas to his social media but his work focuses on more relevant issues to a majority of the population.

The rightwing/gamergate side not contesting this whole issue being called "Politics in videogames" is the biggest blunder. I don't know the best way to call this phenomenon (political preaching?) but surely there is a better phrase. Right now you can't talk about this stuff without getting hit by "Oh, you claim to hate politics in videogames yet you love Bioshock" type retort, when the actual thing people have problems with are californian nutcases pushing their views on US political crap onto the player as if it were gospel.