There is currently a very funny, kind of sad dust-up over Helldivers 2, in which self-proclaimed “anti-woke” gamers have previously heralded it as a rare game where they believe “politics” does not play a factor. Their faith was been shaken by an Arrowhead community manager they believed they found to be (gasp) progressive who was then subsequently harassed, but their head-scratching reading of Helldivers 2 as a “non-political” game is worth examining.
The only thing that makes sense is that these players have the shallowest of surface-level readings of the game. You are a patriotic soldier serving Super Earth. You must kill bugs and evil robots trying to hurt your brothers-in-arms and innocent citizens. There are no storylines to insert progressive causes into, everyone wears helmets so no “forced diversity.” Therefore, no politics.
Of course, this is…wildly off the mark, as Helldivers 2 is about the most blatantly obvious satire of militaristic fascism since the film that inspired it, Starship Troopers.
Most of the bad guys in Resident Evil 5 were black because of the relevancy to the setting, and people were similarly kicking up.
Is getting up in arms about one of those any different to the other?
(And just to be clear, I’m not taking about the tribal depictions, I’m referring to the reaction to the early trailers)
I mean, a white guy going into a village of black people and shooting up the place is just colonialist history. There’s some potential racism to unpack there, so it’s not surprising that people’s first reaction was “what the fuck.”
This was people freaking out about a white guy shooting up a bunch of other white guys who were part of a Christian extremist militia in South Dakota or something. This was people being angry that the bad guys were white Christians, a group that could never be in the wrong.
Yes, the difference is called historical context and the people mad that other people might be upset by the imagery of a white guy shooting up a town full of black people basically define their views on a willful ignorance of historical context.