Yes I know that fascism measurehead is a playable ideology in Disco Elysium, but presenting fascism as with its integral ugly reality, glaring contradictions, and unsustainable death drive is a pretty leftist (and correct) way of portraying it. de-encyclopedia

  • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Someone else already said Postal 2, which is probably the best example here. That one is a game made by white nihilistic reactionaries for teenagers of a similar mindset.

    The only other socially conservative game I can think of are most city builders, if that counts. They’re kind of both lib and chud at the same time. Their entire operation is premised on there’s a single, correct way to plan a society that is stable in perpetuity. And it’s premised on most people being a permanent consumer class who mostly drive cars and only complain when they don’t have public utilities. Also everything’s assumed to work around car infrastructure. Also police stations have to exist or society collapses.

    I’ve never seen a city planner game directly involve issues like systemic racism. It’s assumed to not exist. The Tropico games kind of have class revolt, but it’s really simplistic and more of a function of how low/high wages are. I guess not all city builders are conservative. Tropico and Frostpunk are kinda different

    • Helmic [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Sim City and Cities: Skylines are made with very neoliberal assumptions of how cities work, especially the former. Prison Architect applies a lot of the same logic to a dorflike, where the “good” prisons are supposedly reforming people through prison labor and the cops are always on their best behavior - or you can run a brutal death row hellhole to fulfill a chud’s radicalized revenge fantasies.

      But iunno if there is really specifically a Disco Elysium of anything, it’s like a step removed from a visual novel with light RPG elements. It’s such a dense game of text that is very direct about what it is about, and there just aren’t many games that are that overtly political and that challenge the player to reflect on their politics. Straight up fascist literature tends to be less thoughtful, basically violent fantasies that double as examples of praxis, calls to do violence. Their games tend to be even less sophisticated - Kingdom Come: Deliverance is an imagined (all white) past, the Postal games are just about killing people, the devs who made Hatred went on to make more bigoted shit. They’re mostly just games that have a fascist mentality rather than games that’ll sit a chud down and make them really think about fascism.

      Which is good, obviously. The best RPG many critics have ever played is communist, this puts us at a unique position culturally.

      • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.netOP
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        1 year ago

        Sim City and Cities: Skylines are made with very neoliberal assumptions of how cities work, especially the former.

        SimCity railroads you into wanting gentrified yuppie McMansions everywhere as some sort of win state.

    • SkeletorJesus [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Also everything’s assumed to work around car infrastructure.

      Wasn’t it City: Skylines that had an extremely realistic simulation of traffic flow that showed what a fucking shitshow car infrastructure is? IIRC they had to add a mechanic where cars magically disappeared if they got stuck for too long because making a car-centric city was miserable and inefficient.