Video games are basically the absolute best medium for progressive entertainment under capitalism because the user can modify the experience to suit themselves without it impacting marketing.
Like Bioware games rightly have a ton of fans because the games let you create your own character. I really like Lara Croft, Marcus Fenix etc but their whiteness and their gender aren’t necessary elements to their character. There’s no reason that every humanish-character in gaming couldn’t be customised by the player, so women and poc could be properly represented.
And there’s no reason that games couldn’t have trigger warnings. It could just be in the options menu, select if you want a potential trigger in or not, and just replace certain lines of dialogue or environmental details etc if the option is selected.
Capitalism is never going to stop making films and TV shows about white cis males, simply because these are mass-market products and seeking a safe profit necessarily means stifling anything ‘risky’. As producers have more power over the product than the creators, creativity stagnates. That fact that this reinforces white supremacy is eh, neoliberalism.
But video games can very easily side step these issues. Mass Effect 3 marketed itself as the white dude soldier show, as capitalism required, but also fully supported being a black lesbian banging hot alien chicks across the galaxy.
tbh we should regard all bourgeois media critically, regardless of form.
the fact that Mass Effect 3 included the ability to cosmetically alter your character is honestly irrelevant given the reality that not only is Shepard is written as a white person, the games themselves carry heavy militaristic overtones.
I honestly don’t see this perceived liberalism. They seem as reactionary as ever.
Son I could write an essay about how ME3 embraced the Call of Duty demographic, it was jingoistic as fuck.
But you’re missing the point that I’m explicitly talking about AAA media within capitalism. A film can’t tailor any element to specific people, so it follows the easy profit route and has a a cis white male as lead. Same for a TV show. Those mediums lack the deliberate malleability that video games have, and that’s a USP that I want video games to embrace.
and what I’m saying is that the ability to cosmetically edit a character’s skin tone doesn’t equal representation. More non-white characters in games? Sure, why not. But what I want to see is more non-white stories. I think that’s really at the root of the issue.
rikkipoynter