“VIDEO GAMES, as Robert Cassar recently noted in his Games and Culture essay “Gramsci and Games,” are often “sophisticated texts that can represent not just ideas but entire worlds, which invite players to explore them.””
“Likewise, games (in particular role-playing games like the Elder Scrolls and Final Fantasy titles) deliver “embodied empathy for complex systems” in the words of James Paul Gee, encouraging players to feel as if they are part of the system under analysis and not mere spectators.”
“[T]he process starts with players forming a mental model of the game’s make-believe space by looking at various cues (images, movement, sounds, and so forth) as well as assumptions about the world that they may bring to the table. Once that mental model of the game world is created, the player must decide, either consciously or unconsciously, whether she feels like she’s in that imagined world or in the real one. Of course, it’s worth noting that this isn’t necessarily a conscious decision with the prefrontal cortex’s stamp of approval on it. It can be subconscious, on the sly, slipped into sideways and entered and exited constantly.”
“Many are positioned as alternatives to the neoliberal lives we are all leading — our narratives increasingly dominated by the spiritual, emotional, and existential flattening out of the free market, which has become the dominant organizing force around social and political practices, and citizenship. Others focus on the problem of widespread nuclear proliferation, or inculcate scepticism about state intelligence agencies and the culture of surveillance in which we all live our lives. Within the world of modern gaming, users can seemingly escape, if not downright challenge, these systems.”
“Like Bruce Wayne, CJ ignores the real levers of power — everyday politicians, bankers, and industrialists — and pursues cartoonish villains, petty criminals, and street thugs instead.”
“As Bertrand Russell made clear in his later years, self-annihilation is the only likely option for a world divided by extremist ideologies.”
“Owned by the revered Andrew Ryan, Rapture is an experiment in unregulated capitalism, right-libertarianism, and Rand’s Objectivism, with the heralded genetic modifications and physical enhancements of Rapture leading its citizens to compete with and ultimately feast on each other.”
“The controversial ethical dilemma the player encounters when meeting a Little Sister — to save her or harvest her ADAM — is an appropriately horrific reflection of the wider societal effects of instituting a right-libertarian business culture, in which human life is sacrificed daily in the pursuit of self-enhancement.”
“But if there’s always another lighthouse, always another save point, always another “restart” button, why do games bother offering choice to players at all? The answer revolves around the nature of participation — a defining characteristic and strength of the medium. Replaying a section of Infinite may not alter the narrative, but simply being given the chance to ride along with it in such an engaging and emotionally resonant way makes the reality of Columbia’s racism and imperial power far more disturbing. It follows, as the episode with Elizabeth’s necklace demonstrates, that despite the futility of much of what passes for player (and, we might add, consumer) “choice” today, even the necessarily passive elements of video games can provoke debates over the nature of interaction, decision, and participation — in short, democracy.”
“With Infinite’s multiverse yielding an infinite number of possibilities for action, there is consequently no “hero” or “villain” in the conventional sense (your worst enemy could turn out to be yourself), and the game portrays no single, isolated ideologue as inherently immoral. Instead, it condemns those who blindly follow them without any sympathy for others. What saves Elizabeth from her tower and defends her from Columbia’s militants is not an ideological drive, but rather the emotional and empathetic core of her rescuer — something Comstock and Fitzroy never manage to grasp.”
“As Gonzalo Frasca put it in his 2003 essay “Simulation versus Narrative,” “the potential of games is not to tell a story but to simulate: to create an environment for experimentation.””