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.
I think one of the biggest problems with Helldivers 2 is actually the same one with Star Wars. For a fan that doesn’t really care about thinking through the implications of the lore of a game/movie, and wants to identify themselves with the game/movie franchise what is the coolest looking imagery from that game/movie that they can slap on their car as a bumper sticker and associate themselves with? The fascists.
That is actually a pretty serious problem, and saying “but the text of the art clearly points out the fascists are the baddies” doesn’t matter because fascism is a content devoid political ideology that is obsessed with the superficial aesthetics of power without any desire to examine anything past a surface level.
Great point about the bugs, though I think gamers are really dumb as fuck, and tend to have a hard time examining the political implications of games. Most really can’t understand how saying orcs or bugs are inherently Evil and deserve to die is clearly problematic, even if it is done in a lighthearted way.
The whole concept of space bugs itself is interesting in that they are a creature designed to be so aesthetically repulsive and threatening that we don’t extend empathy to it. Take for example my pet peeve with factorio, the game never examines for even one tiny nano second how fucked up it is to trash an entire planet and slaughter countless wildlife trying to stop you, just so you a single individual can go home. The wildlife are creepy space bugs, ewwww, kill them!!
None of the factory survival genre of games do and it is honestly pretty disturbing in the context of the insane amounts of damage being done in real life to our planet in the name of more and more resource extraction. It is like Helldivers without the layer of self awareness.