Nah, it predates that. I think it's more about material reality for them; many gamers are white, typically come from comfortable means (as gaming, especially PC gaming, is not exactly a cheap hobby), and thus occupy a position of relative privilege.
For them, fascism can just be something like "funny inappropriate joke", since it's something that isn't exactly threatening to them or the structure that helps them sit in comfort. Materialism can also at least partially explain why so many of them are rabidly anti-communist/anti-leftist (fear that anything resembling "wealth redistribution" would affect them).
especially PC gaming, is not exactly a cheap hobby
hey, us East Europeans just play CS 1.6 on our banged up machines still running Windows XP, you can PC game for pretty cheap. But yeah, people going on about their fancy liquid nitrogen cooled PCs that light up like a christmas tree definitely have a lot of disposable income
PC gaming is dirt cheap as a hobby if you don't mind playing games from a generation or two behind.
You can get a mini-pc that can play most AAA titles pre-2017 for like ~$350.
as gaming, especially PC gaming, is not exactly a cheap hobby
More then that: this very much applies when you start extrapolating it out to the professional career gamers (whether that means streamer or competitor) because even now the barrier of entry is quite high either to play/stream with the best hardware.
One of my favorite unintentional experiments and case studies that's taken place is within the fighting game community, because unlike every other competitive scene its one of the very few that began and still in many ways resides in the arcades where the barrier of entry is measured in quarters rather then hundreds of dollars. Covid, better net code, and overall increases in internet speeds has changed things up more recently but even up until just a few years ago 'online warrior' was a term used relatively dismissively. Even though the games are generally not played on arcade cabinets anymore...they are still almost universally played and standardized on consoles rather then expensive gaming PCs.
Given that: I think its very interesting to note that young men of color overwhelmingly dominate the competitive scene.
Fighting games, even on consoles are much more social than shooters. Yeah you CAN do a LAN, but the preparation is higher than 2 controllers and 2 or more friends. I know there are also occasionally issues with multiple controllers on some Pc setups.
It's true. This is also one of my go-to pushbacks again Christman's thesis on gaming and it's inherently alienating nature. Fighting games and their community are actually one of the things that finally got me out of my cave.
I miss being scrub at fighting games with friends. Even many online fighting games try to emulate the hanging with friends mode online where players cycle in and out of a group instead of everything 1v1.
It’s neat how games where is about 1v1 can grow a community around the craft that tends to be less rage toxic.
Maybe it’s because in co-op you can blame your allies for losing so you can hate them.
No one to blame but your decisions in guilty gear and you just need to learn and improve.
:farquaad-point:
fascism cannot exist in a feudal economy! fascism is not racism! this entire thread is full of utopian thought and wholly lacking in materialism.
where then, do the politics of Skirim lie? within the primitive conflict of the theocratic feudal and imperial states and the emancipated peasant movement. the bourgoisie are almost non-existant (Belethor and Valerius represent). the socio-economic struggle is therefore constrained to the non evolutionary path of landlords and peasant resistance.
who are these bagaudae? these front line fighters for economic justice? Skirim perjoratively names them "Bandit". the Player is inevitably levied into the institutions waging war against them. Those Pinkertons in Jorrvaskr are a private death-squad who are subcontracted to wipe out squat encampments in vacant tombs, forts, and cave systems on behalf of the State. Every Jarl has the Player collect the scalp of the local People's Commissar in order to proceed--indeed to even become a legal property-owner.
Even the de jure "illegal" organisations of Assassins and Theives, whatdoyouknow, target and destroy revolutionary cadres with no mercy. The fucking COLLEGE has quests wherein the player mercs freedom fighters.
There is a problem, however. the egalitaria of the so-called Bandits are a struggle without end. there can be no liberation from squalor and subsistence until the winds of economic progress enable it. Is the Player merely an instrument of the brutal modern project? Are they the arch-revolutionary of their time, consolidating the economic and magicko-economic forces under a single regime to build the productive forces necessary for the next stage of economic decelopment? After all, is not the player the ideal Bourgeoise Actor? is the tidal wave of production and commerce in their wake not the anvil upon which the systen shall be broken?
Small. Business. Dragonborn. Executes the rival government leaders and installs a regime loyal to themself. Becomes the leader of every organisation in the land--representing all the vectors of social control: Labor Discipline (Companions), Education (College), Political Repression (Dark Brotherhood), and Economic (Thieves Guild-the most business-like and economically manipulative org)
Does Skyrim make you into a Fascist? No. It makes you into JP fucking Morgan
you gotta hand it to bethesda for creating a factional dispute that people still argue about over a decade later
it's glorious, both factions suck so much, just like real life politics!
Hoping the new ESO expansion changes that.
I gotta find out the new and interesting ways these guys are racist.
Also they do team up with the Redguards to genocide the Orcs quite a lot as well. To the point where Orcs are on their fourth Orsinium.
What are stormcloaks? You just run around caves and crash when your mods corrupt save files
Did you download that mod that creates like 100+ new dungeons as well?
I forget the name of it but it vastly expands the playable space and mob variety.
skyrim is a game about flying thomas the tank engines and big booba armor
Did you play the Clockwork mod? Manages to be better than most of the real game. Felt like a return to some of the storywriting in Morrowind tbh
I think I had two separate files with 50+ hours in it. I recently started a new game and decided I'll actually do the story this time. It was the first time I'd done the third mainline quest...
its not so complicated, most Capital G Gamers are young men in the first world and young men in the first world tend to be fashy as fuck
I never got that you are about to be executed by the Empire but then you immediately get a choice between the Imperials and the Stormcloaks.
Like why would you ever choose the people who were about to execute you?
They didn't just try to execute you, but they noticed you weren't on the list to be executed and you were put in the block by mistake... and then decided to try to execute you anyways, and the only reason you're alive is that there was a convenient dragon interruption.
That's the kind of writing you do when you WANT someone to side with the rebels... And I remember that just about everyone I knew sided with the Stormcloaks for that very reason.
Now, the reason they did that was clearly because, at the time, there was that weird trend in games in which there's an intro with a pseudo-cutscene in which you can move the camera but not much else, and you were in the back of a vehicle, often on the way to die or be knocked unconscious.
Far Cry never stopped doing that and it's very tiresome.
"Oh look you're knocked out unavoidably again! Time for another pretentious insane genius speech!"
At least in Far Cry 2 (underrated, problematic, and sometimes a chore to play) you're immobilized because you have malaria, which actually affects the game in the beginning when you're looking for anti-malarial pills.
pseudo-cutscene in which you can move the camera but not much else
That part actually makes some sense for people super new to games to get used to the camera controls.
I sided with the Imperials...but then I'd read the Nu Mantia Intercepts and knew the Thalmor had the Empire over a barrel and were the real threat.
Also, The Prisoner is one of the God-Archetypes of The Elder Scrolls and has to start the game in chains.
Also, The Prisoner is one of the God-Archetypes of The Elder Scrolls and has to start the game in chains.
I'm excited for the day when Bethesda writers realize chains can be metaphorical.
Before even reading the comments to this thread I predict a fair bit of "my entertainment has absolutely zero effect on me" defensiveness.
If entertainment had zero effect on us, advertising would also have no effect. That is clearly not the case.
Now I read the comments, I will say the Stormcloaks aren't directly fascist, not to the same extent as the Thalmor that see Ulfric Stormcloak as an unwitting asset. The Empire is a neoliberal mess in decay (sound familiar?) and it is fairly sus that the only story choices offered are siding with the ethnostate rebellion or the neoliberal status quo that's already crumbling from a war with the fascist Dominion.
If I had to venture a guess, the real entertainment-driven origin of modern fascism (if the fascism wasn't already part of United States cultural character and never left) was a gross misunderstanding of what Verhoven was trying to say in his Starship Troopers movie. I lived through that. I know many former classmates (and family) that took it at face value, as a good thing, that "the failure of democracy!" was both inevitable and a good thing so that the movie's presented government and society could come true.
My lore is a bit rusty, but the Thalmor are not only genocidal fascists but they also want to UNMAKE REALITY right?
Yes.
I won't say Pelinal Whitestrake did nothing wrong, but... :side-eye-1: :side-eye-2:
The Middle Dawn as allegory for the SU breaking capitalist realism for a moment.
That theory is mostly conjecture but canonically they do believe their mortality to be a curse inflicted upon them when the Aedra were tricked/convinced/decided to create Mundus and humanity/beast races.
Aedra and Daedra meaning "ancestors" and "not ancestors" respectively, in Aldmeris. Hence the reverence of Lorkhan/Shor/SEP/Shezzar within human societies and hatred or indifference without.
High Elf and Dark Elf culture differs here where they both view him as someone who cast Elves down from "heaven" but the Altmer see this as a curse that must be rectified, the Dunmer see it as a test that must be overcome for true enlightenment.
Dunmer got it in one tbh. I'd much rather become an immortal hyperdeity within the dream than have the dream change under me
Both "sides" were garbage because Bethesda are a bunch of hacks who can't write shit.
I have a distinct memory of naively talking with a gamer chud in 2007 right when Europa Universalis III came out. He was talking about challenge runs he wanted to do, including forming Germany and committing acts of imperial aggression everywhere. He then compared himself positively to the Nazis. I tried to haha at him and said he was being silly, then he replied he was serious and imagine teenage me like :shocked-pikachu:
First time I had ever encountered fascists so openly
fuck it, ill bite
the empire is actively collaborating with turbo-fascist ethno-supremacists, and allowing these ethno-supremacists to send roving death squads through their lands to purge people based on racial-religious beliefs. the treaty was supposedly to buy more time to build resistance or some shit, but what kind of spineless shitheads agree to a treaty that allows roving racial-religious death squads throughout their lands? and theres no sign that theyre actually building their strength at all, also evidenced by them pissing away their resources trying to hang on to a rebellious imperial holding instead. like theyre some sort of sad as fuck combination of vichy france and the democrats, "its okay that were collaborating with purges cos we secretly oppose them, and any day now were gonna fight back, yeah any day now!". oh yeah, and theyre a bunch of imperialists and the game even opens with them doing warcrimes.
the atmorans were a bunch of genocidal settler-colonialists, but theyre also now vassals of this shitty as fuck fascist-collaborationist empire that seems to be fine with them getting purged, so theres definitely real justification for rebellion. that seems like a much more potent driver than "we want an ethnostate". theres also a lore tidbit that hammerfell already rebelled against the empire and then beat the shit out of the aldmeri, so its also justifiable on pragmatic grounds.
ulfric is a dude who got played by the thalmor, and now hes figured it out and hes pissed. the thalmor like the civil war but they really dont want ulfric to win, they just want it to continue and bleed resources from both sides. hes still a shithead for the racism and the markarth incident, but theres no indication that hes an active aldmeri pawn (especially since they tortured the fuck out of him). and the racism of the stormcloaks sucks (although in the actual game it mostly seems to be that one guy in windhelm), but its limited to khajiit/argonians not allowed in windhelm proper (and fucking everyone in this world is super racist against them) and dunmer stuck in the shitty quarter, which is shitty as fuck but far lower on the racism scale than racially-motivated death squads.
anyway in conclusion the true correct side is supporting the falmer rising from the depths and doing night of tears 2 on all of skkkyrim
I haven’t played in so long. Why were Stormcloaks fascists again? I thought like the Altmer or those elves or whatever were supposed to be that
Uh, you could describe the stormcloaks as an ethno-ultranationalists revolt being stoked within a
prisonempire of Nations (cyrodillic empire) by ethno-supremacists (those high elf dweebs) in order to destabilize and possibly balkanize the only hegemonic power capable of combating their growing state.Ok gotcha so the high-elves are the US, the stormcloaks are Ukranian neo-nazis, and the Empire is Russia
Yeah, in fact its more the Thalmor are actual Nazis who want to kill the Nord Nazi subhumans but need to crush the Empire first.
That said the Empire is also really shit in it's own way. Just not in the way Skyrim says on the surface.
