Yes I know that fascism measurehead is a playable ideology in Disco Elysium, but presenting fascism as with its integral ugly reality, glaring contradictions, and unsustainable death drive is a pretty leftist (and correct) way of portraying it. de-encyclopedia

  • Helmic [he/him]
    ·
    9 months ago

    Sim City and Cities: Skylines are made with very neoliberal assumptions of how cities work, especially the former. Prison Architect applies a lot of the same logic to a dorflike, where the "good" prisons are supposedly reforming people through prison labor and the cops are always on their best behavior - or you can run a brutal death row hellhole to fulfill a chud's radicalized revenge fantasies.

    But iunno if there is really specifically a Disco Elysium of anything, it's like a step removed from a visual novel with light RPG elements. It's such a dense game of text that is very direct about what it is about, and there just aren't many games that are that overtly political and that challenge the player to reflect on their politics. Straight up fascist literature tends to be less thoughtful, basically violent fantasies that double as examples of praxis, calls to do violence. Their games tend to be even less sophisticated - Kingdom Come: Deliverance is an imagined (all white) past, the Postal games are just about killing people, the devs who made Hatred went on to make more bigoted shit. They're mostly just games that have a fascist mentality rather than games that'll sit a chud down and make them really think about fascism.

    Which is good, obviously. The best RPG many critics have ever played is communist, this puts us at a unique position culturally.

    • bigboopballs [he/him]
      ·
      9 months ago

      "good" prisons are supposedly reforming people through prison labor

      yikes

    • UlyssesT [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      9 months ago

      Sim City and Cities: Skylines are made with very neoliberal assumptions of how cities work, especially the former.

      SimCity railroads you into wanting gentrified yuppie McMansions everywhere as some sort of win state.