I don’t really have a name or genre but it’s certain games like 40K, Fallout, Civ/HoI/all the other ones.

Am I the only one to notice these weird trends of political distribution? Is it just me?

  • Al-Andalusian
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    2 years ago

    I’ve definitely noticed it with grand strategy games, take this with a grain of salt but I assume that it is because these kind of games let the players live their political fantasies, which I guess it’s more appealing to people who want a different kind of society than the one they live under IRL. This is all just speculation though.

    I personally like these games precisely because of that reason, I like building up socialist countries in Victoria 3 because that’s currently the only way for me to “have a taste” of socialism, even when it’s just a bunch of pixels on screen.

    • CITRUSOP
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      2 years ago

      I think you are right about it with the political fantasy, I just found a trend and wondered if others saw it. Good news is its not just me lol.

    • LemmyLefty@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Pretty much this. Anyone can have daydreams or fantasies about their ideal society, but when yours involved detailed plans about train schedules, economic policies, and realpolitiks, you have some pretty strong Opinions about how things should be run.

    • Moonguide@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Think also that it depends on whether the user gets the humor. Liberty Prime, the Imperium, etc. aren’t things to support what they stand for at face value, yet some do.

      Like, I remember a while ago seeing a thread on reddit where some dude was saying that Fallout was a parody of communism, and not capitalism, and his argument boiled down to “when government does something bad, it’s communism”.

  • Eat_Yo_Vegetables69
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    2 years ago

    Pretty funny that factions in Fallout were supposed to be exaggerated parodies but yet we still have many in the fanbase unironically supporting the Enclave, Legion and the shit that Liberty Prime spews lol.

    • Shrike502
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      2 years ago

      JFC if I had a penny every time some dumbass quoted that goddamn murder robot, I’d be a bourgeoisie by now. It’s layed on so thick, but thanks to the propaganda everywhere else, people look at it, miss the joke and go “Yes, that is cool and makes perfect sense”

    • CITRUSOP
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      2 years ago

      God I’m so sad I haven’t gotten the chance go full in on the fallout universe :(

      Are there any communist factions?

      • PolandIsAStateOfMind
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        2 years ago

        Are there any communist factions?

        It’s a parody of 40’s-50’s USA nuked to the ground, so none whasoever, except PRC as the “great other” live from mccarthist propaganda, and it’s nonplayable, only mentioned actually plus you can find some artifacts of theirs.

      • SovereignState
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        2 years ago

        In FNV there are the Followers of the Apocalypse who are pretty explicitly anarchist. J. Sawyer (one game designer) said they are made up of people from “social democrats to communists”, paraphrased. They’re probably the most based faction in the franchise, bringing knowledge and medicine to every corner of the waste they can. They also may have inadvertently created one of the worst dictators the world has ever seen, depending on your perspective.

        FNV also has the Gun Runners, who are a workers’ coop. They also happen to be equal opportunity arms manufacturers. So.

        Then there’s Westside. Westside proper is shady as hell, but there is some basedness in the community grocery cooperative where people are expected to just “leave some, take some”.

        • CITRUSOP
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          2 years ago

          Oh neat, thanks for the run down!

          Makes sense that they all are flawed or screwed up, can’t be too good in the Apocalypse.

      • Eat_Yo_Vegetables69
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        2 years ago

        Hmm not really, but in Fallout 4 you can download mods such as Sim Settlements which has user made Anarchist/Communist factions. The settlement system plus a bunch of outfit/flag mods pretty much allows you to build them into self sufficient communes lol.

        Otherwise in the games it’s usually…

        spoiler

        PLA remnants who have been ghoulified and are hostile to the player on sight (FO3), except for one friendly submarine captain in FO4 who you can help out and he’ll even let you use some of the small tactical nukes on his sub.

        There’s also a friendly Chinese descendent faction in FO2, but they were pretty much designed as a feudal society lol.

        • CITRUSOP
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          2 years ago

          Aw, everyone needs a friendly neighborhood submarine captain that lets you use his nukes!

          I mean I am a little surprised the communists aren’t that big of a deal in Fallout, given the plot, but honestly a little relieved too so I don’t have anti-com brain rot in one of my favorite game franchises.

  • Munrock ☭
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    2 years ago

    Nazis can’t have an openly Nazi game, so they flock to ones that let them be Nazis under the guise of parodic participation (fallout, 40k) or historical accuracy (Paradox series).

  • 201dberg
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    2 years ago

    I mean, human beings enjoy entertainment and like to indulge in fantasies and stories. Games are fun but also offer an escape from our terrible lives we suffer with under capitalism. Some people like to imagine actually living in the game some just want to take their mind off of reality for a bit.

    You have to realize that a lot of the same people that are Chuds could have, with the proper upbringing have been comrades and vice versa but the basic monkey brain is all the same. Fun things are fun. We crave mental stimulation and these games are good at that. At least that’s my take.

    • CITRUSOP
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      2 years ago

      Of course! What i mean is its very certain games where I find the trend, all good fun, just entertaining myself with a little political analysis of art and media!

      • 201dberg
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        2 years ago

        Well I think games like what you mentioned seem to offer a good deal of personal freedoms in play style and story. You can be whoever you want and do whatever you want. Basically make your own story more or less and that’s pretty enticing to a lot of people.

  • RedCat
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    2 years ago

    As far as 40K is concerned I think it mostly comes down to the main faction of the franchise being a hyper religious, fascist nightmare and GW shitting the bed when it comes to presenting any real alternatives. Every faction is at least a little evil or extremely selfish. This leads to the very fucking evil Imperium coming of as “one of many” or “not THAT bad compared to Chaos”.
    However, I don’t think this was the result of intentionally propping up fascists as cool and good and more the result of corporate ghouls not getting satire and as a result removing those elements from the narrative until we have arrived at the current point in time. Where we are told by GW that the Imperium is a fascist shitshow and is surviving DESPITE being so shitty. While pretty much all of the novels are portraying the Imperium as surviving BECAUSE they are so shitty. If any of the other factions were definitely good this wouldn’t be an issue.

    • ButtigiegMineralMap
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      2 years ago

      Never played 40k but omg hearing the lore and descriptions of the game make it sound kinda fun, but im broke no PC lol

      • Moonguide@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I just started to get into 40k, if you like reading, Dan Abnett’s First and Only is a good introduction to the world. It doesn’t expo dump you, and has a nice enough plot to follow.

      • DamarcusArt
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        1 year ago

        🏴‍☠️ 🏴‍☠️ 🏴‍☠️ 🏴‍☠️ 🏴‍☠️ 🏴‍☠️ 🏴‍☠️ 🏴‍☠️

    • Tar_alcaran@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Where we are told by GW that the Imperium is a fascist shitshow and is surviving DESPITE being so shitty. While pretty much all of the novels are portraying the Imperium as surviving BECAUSE they are so shitty.

      Much of that is because 90% of the novels is written from the perspective of the Imperium. Of course they’re going to say “Our brutal repression and murder of tens of millions was required to prevent billions dying to chaos” instead of “maybe if we offered some minor quality of life improvement instead of death-by-factory, people wouldn’t flock to chaos all the time”.

    • CITRUSOP
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      2 years ago

      Great analysis! It also feeds into the liberal “lesser of two evils” and “human nature”

    • PolandIsAStateOfMind
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      2 years ago

      Also Imperium directly fuels chaos on every level, so lesser evilism is piss poor explanation in this case. Old lore directly blamed chaos rising on humanity as the most chaotic species, and even looking at current setting it’s still true (just not said) because 99% of people and culture of chaos have human origins.

      And just chaos was not to make Imperium look good, so Tyranids arrived, purest devouring swarm trope possible (predictable radlib reaction - stan Genestealer Cults, still will eat and kill everything, but with revolutionary aesthetics please ignore literal cult and brainwashing). Plus Orks despite all shenanigans are nothing but organic von Neumann machines. Plus Necrons, thankfully somewhat retocnned to not be just zombie apocalypse crossed with terminator but still very close to it.

  • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    So the given examples tend to involve heavy critiques of nationalism and fascism but fascists think that shit’s cool. Liberty prime from fallout is a beloved meme for fascists but also is literally talking about how they’d rather be dead than communist in a post nuclear hellscape that once was the capital of a superpower at the end of a game where the plot revolves around getting access to clean water. Caesar from new vegas is a fascist depicted as a loser who couldn’t cut it in the new California republic so he turned to banditry and pretending to be a Roman, but he’s misogynistic and kills a bunch of people and that’s how fascists want to be seen.

    For civ, it’s a game about colonialism, but also all sorts of cultures are treated as special and as having their own things of value.

    • Tar_alcaran@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      but fascists think that shit’s cool.

      Because they’re morons, but we’re just repeating ourselves

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It’s not even idiocy it’s that that’s what they value. To them an uninhabitable wasteland filled with hierarchy is preferable to communism. Some weirdo misogynist crucifying his enemies is someone they actually think is more badass than a society of equals.

        That’s honestly why in order to mock fascists in a way they don’t like you have to go low and weird. It’s not enough to call them evil, you have to call them the pathetic losers they are.

  • JJROKCZ@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Most of those are satires of fascists meant to point out how stupid they are, but the fascists are too fucking stupid to ever realize it.

    Games Workshop (warhammer and warhammer 40k) even put out a short comic where the space marine protagonist kills a bunch of literal nazis and tells them they aren’t welcome anywhere to get the point across and the irl nazis only barely caught on

  • Munrock ☭
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    2 years ago

    Wasteland 3 has an amusing sub-plot involving some fanatics that have revived Reagan as an AI.

    There’s also a community of sentient robots that have liberated themselves from humans and have collectivised everything.

    You can download (kidnap) AI Reagan and hand him into the custody of the communist robots where they promise to deprogram him.

  • ButtigiegMineralMap
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    2 years ago

    Fallout I can see both sides. Right wingers just think about how badass Amurica is and admiring the landscape and homages to American architecture and culture. Obv they also enjoy the combat and survival elements too. I think Lefties can enjoy the gameplay just as anyone else can(they’re just great games lol) and the fact that the US government is like the worst bad guys in the game and the anti-comm propaganda is pretty obvious as a throwback to McCarthyist era 1950s(the whole Fallout Theme is kinda 50s/early 60s). Also the good/bad karma dynamic and plethora of dialogue options probably prompts lots of political people on both sides to want to project their own beliefs onto that of the Lone Wanderer

    • CITRUSOP
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      2 years ago

      Oh Man, hundred percent agree. The anti-com prop is so purposefully campy that its more cathartic than triggering, honestly I wish there were more outlets with campy anti-com prop just for the lols.

      • ButtigiegMineralMap
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        2 years ago

        Yea lol when I was younger I was like why do they think China is communist in this game lmao. Also forgot to mention that Vault-Tec, a private enterprise that relies on millions of innocent people dying as incentive for buying space in their vaults,literally doesn’t give a shit about their “customers” and would rather experiment on people instead while raking in money. If that company ain’t an analogy for what Capitalism entails idk what is

        • CITRUSOP
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          2 years ago

          I love the Fallout universe so much!

  • Nepoleon@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    EFT, escape from Tarkov. Its a detailed gun modification and shooter game. It has a lot of gun fantasy and mercenary like Wagner fantasy with a lot of looting. Its a right extremist heaven.

    But it is also very delusional about its hardcore and realism. The gun shooting is one of the worst in fps gaming, intentionally designed to even the field for bad fps players bc the Boss of the company sucks at fps games. Being delusional attracts people

    And its a russian game which attracts far left people. With a lot of AKs.