Politics in Nerd Media Part II: Representation Matters

So what we’ve talked about so far is Representational Politics, which is basically the cornerstone of the War on Diversity or the Scourge of Political Correctness.  Of the avenues of political expression in games that are possible, this is the only one that has really changed or increased, as more game developers pursue more diverse models.  The fact that games are clearly evolving on this front is what prompts the Outrage Junkies to claim that, for example, having a woman in a warzone is shoving politics ‘in your face’.

I’d be lying if I said the motives of game makers were purely about inclusion and social justice. This may drive some individual game makers, but the big corps are all about making money.  The bet is that, for example, making the main Jedi in the new trilogy a woman will add more female fans, and is unlikely to cost many core fans.  In most cases, this bet is correct.

One undercurrent that may be lost on gamers is the importance of emerging marketplaces.  Ever wonder why so many action movies (Transformers, Pacific Rim, Avengers 2) nowadays seem to take a detour into Asia?  That’s because Asia is a dominant movie market nowadays, and the Chinese like seeing Shanghai in film just as much as Americans like to watch the Hollywood sign get incinerated by aliens.  This representation means that the film just RESONATES with these audiences more, and that resonance turns into greater fervor and bigger sales.

And that resonance is what the Outrage Junkies don’t understand.  If you are a straight white male, nearly all American geek culture has that level of resonance to you.  You may not know what it’s like for people who represent you to be rare.  A movie like Black Panther, where your kind is the outsider, is the exception and not the rule.  You don’t know what it’s like to cling to even imperfect representation because you crave validation of your identity. Examples of this abound on the Internet, but my favorite still remains this writeup of an amputee describing the sheer joy that was her witnessing Furiosa kick ass in Fury Road.

That sense of validation is what all this has to do with politics.  When you create a world where minorities are equal in power, where women kick ass, where gender fluid options are represented as no big deal – you create a vision of the world that maximizes the odds that any single individual will feel empowered by your game.
You also create a vision of the world that may be very different than the one that exists today.  And that’s a political statement.

My favorite example is still Far Cry 3.  In this game, the only women were your nagging girlfriend, the exotic sex priestess and…. well, that’s about it.  Oh, the guys you crept up to kill would often talk about the whores that gave them the clap.  All these things add up to a very firm idea of what role women have in this society.  Which is gritty and hardcore – and also somewhat alienating to roughly 50% of the human race.

Far Cry 4 improved on this somewhat, most notably by adding women to the revolutionary groups who fought by your side when you retook outposts.  Far Cry 5 improved it farther by having random women enemies in the NPC enemies you fought.  This is very different than ‘one of the main characters is female’. It made Far Cry’s Montana a world where a woman who kicks ass isn’t an exception, but part of the core rules of how this world works.

Does this mean that game makers can’t or shouldn’t make games where women are rare, where blacks are all slaves, or where gay people don’t exist?  It’s a free country, and free speech means you should be able to make whatever game you want to make.  But game creators need to be aware that how they represent various minorities in their game world SAYS SOMETHING.  Do you want your game to say ‘this game is not for you’?