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"hink what's more damaging is generalizations such as this, not games that attempt to deal with real world political or social problems.
While I agree there is definitely tension between making your game as broadly appealing as possible, and dealing with controversial issues, you completely discount the fact that some games might want to appeal to smaller audiences. You seem to be mainly considering big budget, AAA games.
A strong, diverse medium such as film thrives on having many perspectives and many types and sizes of audience. To say games cannot do the same is both short-sighted, and condemns them to triviality and repetition. How many times will the average gamer, as he or she gets older, really enjoy playing the same super powered space marine?
I also agree that allegory is just as, if not often more, effective at conveying a social message, but there is value in not every work being forced to rely on that. To me, that is one of the many roles of art - to force people to question the world around them. I think games are capable of dealing with serious issues both through allegory and overtly - and it greatly benefit the medium if we had more examples of them dealing with it overtly (that weren't throwaway flash games either). More examples are key to slowly changing people's perceptions of what a "game" is, and any triviality that is associated with that.
Granted, I'm biased because the game I'm working specifically attempts to deal with this by taking place in a real world setting (Iran, during the initial post-election riots) & dealing with politics (albeit through subtext): http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1566255659/video-game-set-in-iran-during-the-post-electio"
Monday, September 28, 2009
