This article appeared on industry-centric gaming publication GI.biz recently, and it’s fair to say it’s rustled a few jimmies around the Internet.
Not without good reason, it has to be said, because the arguments made therein are, quite frankly, getting into some batshit crazytown conspiracy theory territory — ironically while accusing the gaming community themselves of becoming embroiled in conspiracy theories of their own.
The main thrust of the article — a central, flawed assumption — can be found in the first paragraph. “‘Keep Politics Out Of My Games’ was a snappy rallying cry,” writes author Rob Fahey, “but it was never an option.”
Thing is, very few people are arguing to “keep politics out of games” completely. What people do, however, object to is the injection of politics into gaming criticism when it’s unwarranted, unnecessary, obtrusive and, frankly, rather predictably dull. Mainstream outlet Polygon is perhaps the most egregious example of this; the site’s reviews have become such a joke to many with their over-reliance on so-called “progressive politics” that they’re the subject of frequent parody and satire. This, after all, is the site that complained about The Witcher not having enough black people in it, and a site that previewed Rock Band 4 with an article expressing how bored the author was at the PR event, and how he longed to talk to someone about politics in the Phillipines.
Outside of the more ridiculous examples like this, passionate gamers, particularly those into smaller-scale games from Japan, have also lost patience with games being unfairly derided beneath the bulletproof umbrella that is “feminist criticism”. Series such as Senran Kagura have frequently been lambasted for supposed sexism when in fact all they are is sexual, and that’s not even the main point of their existence. These ill-informed critics that post lengthy screeds deriding the lengths of the characters skirts and the size of their breasts never bother to look any further than the superficial appearance of the game; they never bother to explore the games’ treatment of sexuality, or of teenagers going through their own personal journeys of self-discovery, or of the series’ intriguing and fascinating exploration of the concepts of “good” and “evil”.
The most recent game in the firing line for “feminist” critics is Final Fantasy XV, for two main reasons: firstly, the all-male party of playable characters, and secondly the existence of the character Cindy. The former, these critics argue, are nothing more than a male power fantasy, while the latter, they say, is nothing more than male-gaze sexualisation.
Let’s unpack both of these for a moment, if you’ll forgive the digression from the original point. The main cast of Final Fantasy XV are themselves a diverse group of individuals despite all being male. Noctis is a young man who is attempting to come to terms with new-found responsibility and terrible loss; Prompto is of a similar age, but filled with youthful exuberance; Ignis is calm, mature and very much the “big brother” of the group; Gladio is the closest we get to a “male power fantasy”, though it’s abundantly clear he’s been designed very much with female players in mind, much like his fellow cast members.
The cast spend a lot of time not doing particularly “manly” things. They’re completely incompetent when it comes to maintaining their car, for example — the game’s opening sees them having broken down and having no idea what to do about it save for pushing it to the nearest garage — and in the latter hours of the story they spend an awful lot of time crying and saying how much they love each other. Ignis cooks ostentatious feasts. Prompto takes selfies like a teenage girl. And while Gladio remains stoic for a lot of the time, his obsession with Cup Noodles shows that he has a softer side too.
As for Cindy, well. Firstly, her outfit is provocative, yes, but she lives in an area of the map where characters are constantly complaining how hot it is, so it’s unsurprising she’s chosen to wear something that shows a bit of skin. On top of that, she works in an enclosed space with machinery, which is likely to make things even hotter.
But her outfit isn’t even important, and judging her purely based on her appearance — as a number of self-consciously “progressive” critics have done — is quite literal objectification, failing to take into account any of her reasons for doing so and, more importantly, her importance as a character.
Cindy is an important character in the story, and moreover, she’s one of the most capable characters in the story. As a woman, she dominates the typically “masculine” world of car maintenance, putting the main cast to shame with her technical knowledge and ability to repair, retune and customise the Regalia to their specifications. Despite Prompto in particular being obsessed with her beauty, all of the guys acknowledge that she is married to her work and consequently none of them are likely to get a look in. Indeed, despite a slightly flirtatious manner at times, Cindy is all business for the most part, while the four boys of the main cast are the ones who are more likely to talk about love and their feelings. Doesn’t sound very “male power fantasy” to me.
As I say, I digress, because I don’t want this to turn into a Final Fantasy XV article all of a sudden, but what I’ve just pointed out there hopefully demonstrates the disparity between what the self-described “progressive” types are accusing Final Fantasy XV — and numerous other games like it — of, and what is actually going on.
The clarion call to “get politics out of my games” is not, then, a call to remove progressive themes from games at all. It is, however, a call for virtue-signalling progressive types to actually take a closer look at the media they are attempting to criticise, and acknowledge that more often than not, it’s doing things a lot better than they’d care to admit. And you don’t need a game to effectively go “LOOK, WE HAVE A BLACK GAY TRANSGENDER PROTAGONIST” to be truly progressive; indeed, the very best form of “diversity” is that which you barely notice until you think analytically about it after the fact.