Deus Ex is chud brainworm shit tbh. My friend and I started watching a let's play of it and the narrative is like, 'the illuminate are doing a corporate coup by raising your taxes'. It's anti-corporate, but in a David Ike way
I get that there are apparently certain leftwing themes in Deus Ex, but the underlying explanations that are given for why things are like they are and what motivates the various groups are an incoherent conspiracy theory. Maybe I'm being too serious, but if we are thinking about why chuds look at certain games and take weird, non-leftwing messages from them, I think one of the reasons is because a lot of rightwing conspiracy theories utilise people's latent sense that our world is wrong and they are getting fucked over. They just direct people towards conspiracies instead of socialist critique. If games do that, then they aren't genuinely leftwing imo. Even if they utilise a counter-cultural aesthetic
Lmao, I have played it. And anyway my criticism is one based on content rather than gameplay. When did you last play it? I get why people think it's left wing, because we played it as kids and the story can seem leftwing if you don't remember the dialogue very well. But the actual explanation for why everything is happening and the motivations behind it is an incoherent conspiracy theory with a relatively libertarian position. The question was why do chuds not get the politics in these games and my answer is that most of these games, and Deus Ex in particular, offer critiques of our world that rely not upon a coherent critique of capitalism, but upon conspiracy theories that divert peoples' attention from the actual causes.
My first playthrough was probably 5 or 6 years ago, most recent in the past couple years. And no, I wouldn't really consider it left-wing, because it has no coherent background narrative, but that is part of it's strength. Of course the American terrorist won't have the same view as the Chinese bartender, it is up to the player character to decipher it. Some of the tax related quotes I found are: "Number one: In 1945, corporations paid 50 percent of federal taxes. Now they pay about 5 percent. Number two: in 1900, 90 percent of Americans were self-employed; now it’s about two percent.", and "Big companies pay like two percent tax, while you and me, we pay like fifty. It's the tax code that makes sure big bureaucracy gets bigger and people have no power." Yeah, that could be interpreted as "socialist NWO taking over", but it can just as easily be interpreted as corporate power overtaking governmental and democratic power.
Deus ex isn't a champion of materialistic analysis or anything, but it asks questions and discusses topics that hardly any do, and that is good enough for me. 2000 was a different time, the conspiracy stuff was just popular then, so it made an easy backdrop. Why do you think they put every secret organization they could, from freemasons to aliens to AI?
Deus Ex is chud brainworm shit tbh. My friend and I started watching a let's play of it and the narrative is like, 'the illuminate are doing a corporate coup by raising your taxes'. It's anti-corporate, but in a David Ike way
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I get that there are apparently certain leftwing themes in Deus Ex, but the underlying explanations that are given for why things are like they are and what motivates the various groups are an incoherent conspiracy theory. Maybe I'm being too serious, but if we are thinking about why chuds look at certain games and take weird, non-leftwing messages from them, I think one of the reasons is because a lot of rightwing conspiracy theories utilise people's latent sense that our world is wrong and they are getting fucked over. They just direct people towards conspiracies instead of socialist critique. If games do that, then they aren't genuinely leftwing imo. Even if they utilise a counter-cultural aesthetic
Play the God damned game before you come up with stupid takes like that
Lmao, I have played it. And anyway my criticism is one based on content rather than gameplay. When did you last play it? I get why people think it's left wing, because we played it as kids and the story can seem leftwing if you don't remember the dialogue very well. But the actual explanation for why everything is happening and the motivations behind it is an incoherent conspiracy theory with a relatively libertarian position. The question was why do chuds not get the politics in these games and my answer is that most of these games, and Deus Ex in particular, offer critiques of our world that rely not upon a coherent critique of capitalism, but upon conspiracy theories that divert peoples' attention from the actual causes.
My first playthrough was probably 5 or 6 years ago, most recent in the past couple years. And no, I wouldn't really consider it left-wing, because it has no coherent background narrative, but that is part of it's strength. Of course the American terrorist won't have the same view as the Chinese bartender, it is up to the player character to decipher it. Some of the tax related quotes I found are: "Number one: In 1945, corporations paid 50 percent of federal taxes. Now they pay about 5 percent. Number two: in 1900, 90 percent of Americans were self-employed; now it’s about two percent.", and "Big companies pay like two percent tax, while you and me, we pay like fifty. It's the tax code that makes sure big bureaucracy gets bigger and people have no power." Yeah, that could be interpreted as "socialist NWO taking over", but it can just as easily be interpreted as corporate power overtaking governmental and democratic power.
Deus ex isn't a champion of materialistic analysis or anything, but it asks questions and discusses topics that hardly any do, and that is good enough for me. 2000 was a different time, the conspiracy stuff was just popular then, so it made an easy backdrop. Why do you think they put every secret organization they could, from freemasons to aliens to AI?