Games have a large male audience and many of those males are white. When new games focus on protagonists and issues that do not resonate with white males, this aggravates the audience and it only takes a few vocal few to whip the group into toxic online behavior.
Metaphor is set in a fantasy world populated by Japanese. The characters may seem to be of a multiracial society, but it’s understood that this is not a western game but an eastern one through a western lens. It could have the most radical political discourse but as players we quietly accept that this is a foreign story and not one that reflects on western issues and prejudices.
Well, there’s politics… and there’s politics.
Politics are irrelevant
Good writing is good and bad writing is bad
Ah, yes, of course… It had to be PC Gamer with this take.
Just make good games and and focus on that, the push to shove politics and activism into everything has everyone tired and burned out. It just builds skepticism from the wider gaming audience.
Massive props to Refantazio, honestly a very good game.
Politics is not actual politics, its not normative womans, gays and trans people. Metaphor its ok because don’t have any of those (I’m only 20hs in)
I can’t explain why no one talks about baldur 3. I suppose its too complex for those people.
its not normative womans, gays and trans people.
Not broad enough. When “gamers” say that something is political, what they mean is that it contains politics they disagree with. The ones you cited just happen to be the things they easily recognize because their favorite right wing grifter is raging about them 24/7.
As you also said, they usually don’t have the media literacy required to recognize more subtle political messages, which can be pretty funny. I remember when Disco Elysium was first released and they were very confused because it contains some actual, pretty deep political reflections
