SUPPORT Palette Swap: www.patreon.com/PaletteSwapMag FOLLOW Palette Swap: twitter.com/PaletteSwapMag instagram.com/paletteswapmag/ BEHOLD Palette Swap: paletteswap.site/ Fudj: twitter.com/VideoSealMan www.youtube.com/@NocturnalFudj Adi Robertson on Far Cry 5: www.theverge.com/2018/4/6/17202546/ubisoft-far-cry-5-politics-social-commentary-irrelevance The Obscene Polygon Interview with Terry Spier on The Division 2: www.polygon.com/e3/2018/6/12/17451688/the-division-2-is-not-making-any-political-statements Alex Hutchinson Says Ubisoft Know Their Games Are Political: www.videogameschronicle.com/news/ubisoft-knows-its-games-are-political-says-former-creative-director/
@zgct3648
5 ай бұрын
The most Postmodern game is Mother 3? I mean, c'mon... 3 Mothers? Two is already woke enough
@aturchomicz821
5 ай бұрын
True +2😭😭
@darienb1127
5 ай бұрын
What's hilarious about this comment is that the game is about basically the complete opposite
@AdamDj-ic3kr
5 ай бұрын
@@darienb1127no mothers?
@stm7810
5 ай бұрын
@@darienb1127 negative 3 mothers? 3 anti mothers?
@puresport9
5 ай бұрын
Us anti-woke giga chads only play Father 3.
@PinkNymphetamine22
5 ай бұрын
anything can be political if you think long enough, anything can be apolitical if you were really bad at reading during class though.
@LadyDoomsinger
5 ай бұрын
I'd argue that not just "can" anything be political; Everything "is" political. Any situation in which 2 or more people interact with each other is inherently by necessity political. Because that's what politics are: People having to find a way to coexist with each other in order to form some kind of status quo.
@dillanikobe495
5 ай бұрын
Beautiful and existential
@atmatey
5 ай бұрын
@@LadyDoomsingerIs Puyo Puyo political? Rez? Fantasy Zone? Kula World? Freshly Picked Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland? I’m not saying they couldn’t be, but it would be interesting to hear a convincing argument for those games.
@LordEpos
5 ай бұрын
This video is not political because it does not mention me, the king of the universe.
@keaton5101
5 ай бұрын
i would argue that choosing not to mention the literal most important person in existence is a political act in and of itself.
@danielgrezda3339
5 ай бұрын
This video is an anti-authoritarian statement as it envisions the field of political discussion on video games without the macrocosms paramount legislator.
@theelusivepootisberd7471
5 ай бұрын
@danielgrezda3339 stop using big words my dictionary left me :(
@xilefm-4517
5 ай бұрын
The most postmodernist game is YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG for deconstructing the idea of making a post-modern game by playing it entirely straight and wasting your time.
@MakusinMeringue
5 ай бұрын
As an active member of the YiiK discord, I like how the game does that
@darienb1127
5 ай бұрын
@@MakusinMeringueThis sentence might be one of the most horrifying things I have ever read
@MakusinMeringue
5 ай бұрын
@@darienb1127 I mean, today is the day the steam demo for YiiK: Nameless Psychosis comes out. I have played the entirety of the base game - version 1.25, and I will say all of the reviews can't do the game justice
@aconfusedlacroix3965
5 ай бұрын
Yiik have a fanbase?
@MakusinMeringue
5 ай бұрын
@@aconfusedlacroix3965 Yes. We exist. We aren't "high iq to understand rick and morty" people, we're willing to explain the weird story if you have an open mind
@Gooeyflames77
5 ай бұрын
I know you say Kirby is political based on the evil king trope but there is a game where Kirby single-handedly defeats a planet-conquering mega corporation, and the final boss is an AI that decides to destroy all organic life in the universe because it is the path to infinite prosperity. Great video!
@Duck_ded
5 ай бұрын
Kirby kills literal gods in half his games, I think all of them are slightly political based on that too but that game is especially on the nose with it
@philliptinner6576
5 ай бұрын
The most postmodernist game ever is Donkey Kong 64. I will not elaborate.
@GenericSoda
5 ай бұрын
goddammit it's true i hate that it's true
@klaus.sfc01official30
5 ай бұрын
Lmao
@GrantMooney
5 ай бұрын
You don't have to elaborate. You're right
@utuberz123456789
5 ай бұрын
I wouldn't expect you to. There is no need.
@wanderson4360
5 ай бұрын
wrong, it has an evil king as the villain
@manthief
5 ай бұрын
The most postmodernist game is modern warfare 2. It was released post modern warfare 1. You can't get much more post modern (warfare 1) than that
@coolnifte
5 ай бұрын
i hate you😂
@dillanikobe495
5 ай бұрын
What about MW3?! It's 3 times as postmodern!!🤯
@Demonskunk
5 ай бұрын
I don't think we're considering Modern Warfare 4, thats one more than 3.
@8BitFun
5 ай бұрын
The games you listed that gamers insist "aren't political" are just games that don't punish you for being an asshole. EDIT: also just wanted to say this video is fuckin' baller. the writing is immaculate
@aturchomicz821
5 ай бұрын
FNV?💀💀
@GSBarlev
5 ай бұрын
The _Helldivers_ line reminded me that my surprise that people didn't realize _Starship Troopers_ was satire was only exceeded by finding out that *the original novel* was 💯 earnest.
@starwarsfan117
5 ай бұрын
Did you read the novel or did you listen to other people who didn't read the novel? Fun fact...Paul verhoeven didn't read the novel either; because of that he ended up doing a lot less to satirize the book than people think. It was a really great fuckin film though, it's just that if it's supposed to be a satire of fascism:it should actually contain fascism. Not a world where race and gender aren't a barrier at all, or where everyone lives well and are attractive; Idk kinda seems like it's doing the exact opposite of satirizing if it does stuff like that. 😊
@quatreraberbawinner2628
5 ай бұрын
He's the one that missed the point though, these people are part of the satire, ya know cause video games are an interactive media
@GSBarlev
5 ай бұрын
@@starwarsfan117Oh, I read the novel. I *loved* the novel-it has mechs! But, it being Baby's First Heinlein (I was definitely a teenager at the time), I was pretty shocked at how earnestly it was in its jingoism. It's honestly a novel I would still recommend to others, to be paired with Haldeman's phenomenal _Forever War._
@GSBarlev
5 ай бұрын
@@quatreraberbawinner2628I mostly agree. This is definitely more Poe's Law than it is Popehat's Rule of Goats.
@staroutofspace4986
5 ай бұрын
Sorry PS Crew, but your conclusion is wrong, as any game which denotes a victor and loser is inherently political, too. Why is it not possible for both participants to win? Our society dictates that there must always be winners and losers, haves and have nots. Any game which declares victory of one party over the other upholds the political status quo.
@CapnNapalm
4 ай бұрын
While I do agree with your point, it unfortunately does not apply here. Both players in pong lose because they're playing pong
@lathalassa
Ай бұрын
@@CapnNapalm LUL
@titojdavis8374
5 ай бұрын
Also, big props for sticking to the "getting game analysis terms wrong enough to enrage people" bit. It might be your best
@ryansheehan7053
5 ай бұрын
Taking the time to sucker punch David Cage 2 mins into the video is enough for me to hit the like button.
@Lord_Ocram
5 ай бұрын
I HATE Postmodernism. Not the movement, that's cool and stuff, but the term itself. Like ok, all these art periods get these cool names and then these mfs are like "Ok, what are we gonna call this new wave of art? yeah, lets just add Post to the front of the last one" It's even worse when someone says something like "Post-Post_Modernism" Like I am going to strangle you just come up with an actual name.
@Chagogo
5 ай бұрын
I had this friend in highschool who was doing some sort of arts study, and if you said Post-Post-Modernism at him you would see the veins popping out of his head.
@Spatu10
5 ай бұрын
“Any game where an evil king is overthrown by a much less privileged hero can be interpreted as a left wing text.” Actual art
@ChaddyFantome
5 ай бұрын
That's not politics unless you are one of those that think everything including the personal is political. Being able to frame something through the filter of politics isn't the same as the thing itself being about or done in service to politics.
@theweirdwaterwizard9648
5 ай бұрын
@@ChaddyFantomeI'm one of those people lol. But, i agree somewhat with the point that not everything is intentionally political, but everything can be interpreted/seen as political because it's created by a person nonethelesss
@ChaddyFantome
5 ай бұрын
@theweirdwaterwizard9648 I find the ideology and mindset very toxic and damaging and endemic of a society that has used politics as a replacement for philosophy and faith, because it seems to be the idea of what people with this mindset think politics is. When someone calls something political, they aren't talking about the actual ideas or elements because elements and ideas in and of themselves are not inherently political. It becomes or is political based on the intent, framing, and hand at play to play the game of politics because politics is about the gaming of the structures of society. When a person changes Ariel to black, this is seen as a political move because it's not exploring ideas or commentating about anything. It's just doing something to satisfy a given political ideology. The decision is divorced from the art, narrative, story, etc. It's why I, as a transgirl can find stories about the trans experience relatable and not inherently political, but find other media that make arbitrary changes or additions to be. A story about the trans experience is just a story. A story that shoves a trans character token somewhere for representation isn't.
@theweirdwaterwizard9648
5 ай бұрын
@@ChaddyFantome I admit that i dind't get everything you're saying. The jist of what i got is that the mindset of "everything is political" is toxic because people misconstrude politics to be something more akin to faith, a way of living or a moral code of sorts (?). That stories and elemts themsleves are somewhat divorced of politics and become political when they are analized in context and becomes not about the work in itself but it's reaction that as caused the real world and it's relationship with it, and it's relationship outside of itslef (?). When a work is analyzed as political it often comes from an decontrusction of it's elements in relation to the real world, losing it's themes and meaning to be a shell of signifcance, a vessel of policts (?).
@i-never-look-at-replies-lol
5 ай бұрын
isn't it *weird* how preoccupied the left is with convincing you the good guy is always them?
@evanrutledge-sz4yo
5 ай бұрын
The problem with the whole “I don’t really want politics in my games” is that that’s an incredibly vague and impossible task, and is often used as a short hand for “I don’t want politics I disagree with in games.” Thing is most stories have inherently political themes and have some sort of agenda behind them, that goes for everything. To ask for no politics period would just make games and stories bland, if you say that you don’t want games to be “preachy” than that’s another topic. Personally I don’t believe games being “woke” is a problem, the problem with recent media is that it just has bad writing period. Of course there are those who just want to kick back and watch a action thriller which is fine, but you really need to clarify what you mean by “don’t want politics in my games” when again, most of the time, you just don’t want something that doesn’t challenge your ideology.
@doggodoggo3000
5 ай бұрын
wtf? Pong is like the most political game ever made. It was the fist game made by atari, which was made by two guys who previously basically reproduced spacewars for the private market and released it under the name Computer space. spacewars was originally developed at MIT. so atari was basically invented by two people who capitalized a program developed by OUR TAX DOLLARS. capitalism hasnt invented much. it just absconds with tech developed through government grants. PONG IS THE POSTERCHILD OF ALL THAT IS WRONG WITH CAPITALISM. DONT BE FOOLED BY ITS SIMPLE STICKS AND BALLS. DONT LOWER YOUR MENTAL DEFNESES!!! stay safe comrades! *i wrote this as a reply on another comment and thought it was pretty good so i made it its own comment. plus i hadnt gotten to the pong part of the video when i wrote it.
@wintermute5974
5 ай бұрын
You're arguing that the context in which Pong was _produced_ is political. This doesn't say anything about the text itself.
@lob5645
5 ай бұрын
@@wintermute5974 Pong is a game about competition for a limited resource, there it still could be argued to have political themes or at least influences.
@keaton5101
5 ай бұрын
I know a lot of this is jokes, but Mega Man is my goat, and i won't see his politics reduced down to "Doctors are Bad." The main Mega Man timeline (Classic, X, Zero, ZX, Legends) is a double-apocalyptic story about robots (seen as sub-human workers) fighting for their rights, waging several wars across centuries, and eventually peacefully integrating with humans to the point that it's hard to tell the difference between the two.
@thomasmeldrum6238
5 ай бұрын
Also Dr Wiley is eerily reminiscent of Einstein, who contributed to the bomb, while Dr Light is more akin to Edison, who is associated with electricity.
@goodchicken1785
5 ай бұрын
an utter winner, one of your best ones. the description of pong as "a battle of left and right" made me smile very hard
@LadyDoomsinger
5 ай бұрын
As a passivist I would argue that ANY game that includes any form of violence is inherently political - because it necessarily has to take a stance on whether violence is good or bad, justified in certain circumstances, justified against certain enemies, or never justifiable. Really, any game that includes 2 or more characters interacting with each other is inherently political - because it necessarily has to take a stance on each character's position and choice in how they deal with other characters.
@ThaMxUp
5 ай бұрын
Pong is highly political it's a tale of two lovers seperated by a wall as a result of war between the nation of white paddles on a black background and a black background providing sovereign refuge for white paddles..... I hear if you get all the way up to 99 points each they even have an extremely gay and adorable kiss
@EnvyOmicron
5 ай бұрын
Actually, even Pong is political, because there are only 2 systemically valid outcomes to the game: you win and your opponent loses, or your opponent wins and you lose. There is no third option where you both agree to a draw, not within the game itself anyways. The game is telling you: "you must defeat your enemies. Peace is not an option." Pong, and indeed all competitive games, are a gamified version of war, a contest of power in its most basic form, which is the heart of all politics. So not only is it a political game, from a certain point of view, it's the *most* political game.
@TheTomac
5 ай бұрын
people who want "no politics" in any media can just have no media at all. fuck em. it is nobody's job to cater to their ignorance.
@LadyDoomsinger
5 ай бұрын
When people say they don't want politics in their media, it's really just shorthand for "I don't want politics I disagree with in media." It's a thoroughly dishonest position to take, and anyone who claims to want "apolitical" games or movies can automatically be assumed to be either a liar or an idiot, as far as I'm concerned. They want political games that acknowledge and validate their specific political views. End of story.
@TheTomac
5 ай бұрын
@@LadyDoomsinger frequantly that is correct, but there is a sizable and moronic proportion of any audience that sees things they agree with as the default, as apolitical, because they legitimately have never considered opposing views sincerely. and when you shake these imbeciles awake, they see it as an intrusion. they get *mad* .
@bunnybreaker
5 ай бұрын
@@LadyDoomsingerYuuuuuup The idiocy, ignorance, and/or insecurity are palpable. Like, don't they realise you can enjoy art even when you don't agree with its politics?
@yarpenzigrin1893
5 ай бұрын
In case you don't understand, we don't want LEFTIST politics.
@i-never-look-at-replies-lol
5 ай бұрын
you're all very sad people for needing politics in your media and it just shows your incessant need to politicize everything, which then just goes to show it's almost as if there are no sides, but one "side" that turns everything else into a "side" that just isn't yours.
@smert_ditto
5 ай бұрын
The most postmodernist game is Peggle, it was very brave of them to create an innocent reason to say "pegging" and "balls" in the same sentence.
@PhoTC
5 ай бұрын
Do not let this incredibly high-quality joke fool you. Anything can actually most certainly not get greenlit especially not right now, as the games industry and indie games as a whole have been ravaged by corporate greed and incompetence. It is very hard for indie games to get funded in 2024. That is political. Goodbye. Saved you a pause (also subbed because this video fucking rules)
@bargaintuesday812
5 ай бұрын
🌍👨🚀🔫👨🚀
@jpmx4757
5 ай бұрын
I personally feel that Pokémon was incredibly underrepresented for the things it has had to say throughout its generations, with its comments on how humans interact and affect the environment (main themes of 3rd, 7th and 8th generations), culture and how it defines us (2nd, 4th, 6th, 7th and 8th), how affected or marginalized groups are treated (7th and to a lesser extent 8th), religion (4th and 5th), this added to the fact that the discussion in 5th is quite more complex and deeper than the video makes it seem. All of this is just some of the themes that the main games touch on, you wouldn't see me finishing if I released the spin-offs. and in general almost the entire saga exists on the premise of personal development fostered in your relationships and personal experiences
@aturchomicz821
5 ай бұрын
When the adoptive child gets ripped away from your potentially queer couple "Because youre too incompetent" in the postgame of PMD Sky; Now THATS truly too political, wtf😭😭
@farter555
4 ай бұрын
@@aturchomicz821 It's been a while since I've played pmd sky...which part of the postgame are you referring to? I want to remember. Please help
@leacwm
5 ай бұрын
Interesting that you chose to use the american "wokism" over the british "wokery", is there any reasoning behind this decision?
@PaletteSwapMag
5 ай бұрын
I'm ashamed of my lineage
@jmarvins
5 ай бұрын
is this really a regional dialect difference? i (american) haven't noticed this disticntion and have thought "wokery" was always a bit of a joking way to say it (while "wokism" is usually the currency of paranoiac fascist nutjobs)
@SunniestAutumn
5 ай бұрын
A political reasoning, for sure
@jmarvins
5 ай бұрын
these vids are great, hope the channel can spin up to the speed it algorithmically deserves!
@bardicindecision
5 ай бұрын
Glad to hear my childhood leftist origin story of Money Bags Hatred mirrored here.
@darbywalker1
5 ай бұрын
The dichotomy in the player base of Helldivers 2 is fascinating to me, how most are in on the joke but somehow a large portion are going along with it wholeheartedly.... and it's gd impossible to tell the difference at times
@GSBarlev
5 ай бұрын
That Verhoeven line goes *hard.* But at the same time, I was more than capable of reading Heinlein and thinking both: "Dude, this guy is a literal fascist" and "God, I want to pilot a mech" at the same time.
@DairunCates
5 ай бұрын
I mean... I would say that Pong, as a game that is inherently competitive still has political undertones in that it is literally a game designed around conflict. But yeah. Can't end the video on Color a Dinosaur, I guess. Actually, wait... no. The dinosaurs don't have feathers. Nevermind.
@rho-starmkl4483
5 ай бұрын
Ending on Color a Dinosaur would theoretically be an even bigger joke because there’s almost no point to it being a videogame. If you want to make art, just get some paper & crayons because those would be cheaper.
@GSBarlev
5 ай бұрын
There's also the fact that you're literally battling an AI for dominance of an activity that was once the sole domain of humanity.
@Pretentigon
5 ай бұрын
I’m really glad this video exists I hope it can help a lot of the gaming community
@riotbreaker3506
5 ай бұрын
It's because nothing is written in a vacuum that it is basically impossible to find apolitical story.
@TheJebus26
5 ай бұрын
Fallout New Vegas is the greatest apolitical game of all time 🙌
@dillanikobe495
5 ай бұрын
Until you choose a faction😳
@undercoverduck
5 ай бұрын
This may be my favourite video essay on KZitem. And I need to constrain it to the category of video essays purely because 'The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo' exists and is utterly timeless.
@300IQPrower
5 ай бұрын
i spent way too much time thinking about this but I feel like, given the very definition we're going off of for Postmodermism, the "Most" postmodern game is to a certain degree a subjective matter based on one's own ideas of what conventions are most important/prominent in their given culture, as well as how we weigh various tropes of various subcultures/genres of video game design against one another. I could throw out Disco Elysium, Asura's Wrath, Bastion, and Doom 2016 all as potential candidates for WILDLY different reasons including ones both literal and metatextual. Given one's own personal experiences, the most postmodern game you've ever played could be an obvious candidate like anything Suda51 has made, or it could be OFF or Undertale, or it could be some obscure FMV game that sold like 5.3 copies worldwide. So uh. yeah I basically spent way too much time thinking up the answer of "Yes."
@BertilWAF
5 ай бұрын
The apolitical video game? Pretty sure it's "Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion"
@Weird_One_
5 ай бұрын
This video went insane with how good it is. So much had such great timing, and it isn’t even political!
@beccangavin
5 ай бұрын
Pac-Man IS political though. Wait, maybe it didn’t get political until there was a Ms. Pac-Man…
@keiyakins
5 ай бұрын
The game rewards mindless consumption, which is Pac-Man's only purpose beyond the mere avoidance of death (as represented by the ghosts). Pac-Man is, if you choose to read into it, political as fuck.
@gupdoo3
4 ай бұрын
I love the COD guys saying "Trump has never been in a Call Of Duty game so it's not political" when Reagan, who defined much of the modern political landscape, WAS in a game
@SunniestAutumn
5 ай бұрын
Actually, Tetris is a metaphor for structures that are built from ground up eventually crumbling. That is, in fact, the goal. A failure to bring down the existing systems in a state of overflowing production is a fail state. Your failure is not just mechanical, but a moral one. If you can lose in a video game, if you can fail, it is inherently a judgement on you. The failure is yours, not as a gamer, but as a human being. When you lose a game of pong, you are not losing a simple match of pixel ball. It's your beliefs, your ideology, failing you. Betraying your values. Pong is political, you cowardly mouse.
@GSBarlev
5 ай бұрын
Holy 🐮! Tetris is *solarpunk!*
@ZackThoreson
5 ай бұрын
Everything is political. To be apolitical is to have nothing to say.
@BestgirlJordanfish
5 ай бұрын
Honestly this. To describe a games as apolitical is to strip any form of expression and artistry
@RunicSigils
5 ай бұрын
Story isn't important in games. The best games don't have any to speak of if any at all. Just because FFV has kingdoms and interactions between them doesn't mean politics is the point. Nor does anything they're saying push anything the devs may have been thinking about. Then you get to the trash that is FFVII and that obviously changes and it's one of many reasons it is trash. A game is a vehicle for learning and entertainment not "having something to say". If you believe otherwise get out. This hobby is not for you and never has been. And I don't just mean players but the devs who think they should do this as well. Go make shitty movies no one wants to watch if that's what you want to do. People who play games are there to play games not deal with your hysterics. There's a reason a lot of us laugh at someone like Kojima. He's westaboo Hollyweird trash that even other Hollyweird trash doesn't want to deal with. Imagine spending most of your professional life sucking up to people who still force you to pay to make your own trash because they won't. That's what he's done and he deserves nothing but ridicule as Kojimbo for it.
@juliancalero8012
5 ай бұрын
To be apolitical is to have the mainstream politics of the day and the privilege to think you have no politics, just common sense like how it's common sense to deny people housing if they can't afford it despite the fact that housing prices have outpaced both wages and inflation, also it's cheaper to house people rather than throw them on the street
@RunicSigils
5 ай бұрын
@@juliancalero8012See what I mean when I say hysterics above? This has absolutely nothing to do with games. There is no reason to ever bring it up as a topic in the vicinity of games unless it specifically relates to a character in the game. Who realistically you should only see the story for in a guide if it doesn't explicitly have anything to do with the role that's happening in the game. If it's just a thing that happens to be true, it is unnecessary information that should not be involved in the game script in any way.
@hi-i-am-atan
5 ай бұрын
@@RunicSigils i think the thing i find most insulting in all of this shlock is how i now i have to live with the cursed knowledge that fake ffv fans exist
@johannesgutenburg9837
5 ай бұрын
The most postmodernist game ever is DARK SOULS TWO BAYBEEEEEEE
@johannesgutenburg9837
5 ай бұрын
but unironically
@JMoore-vo7ii
5 ай бұрын
Finally someone said it lol
@dillanikobe495
5 ай бұрын
But aren't you killing peeps against their will just to be the biggest baddest soul in town? Sure, it's for an important purpose...but still...Sounds monopolistic to me 🧐.
@atmatey
5 ай бұрын
True
@bilskirnir_
5 ай бұрын
Factorio taught me that it is my right, nay duty as a engineer to wield wield wmd's if the native arachnids population is too large. (Physically and numerically)
@spongyoshi
5 ай бұрын
Obviously it is Yiik: A postmodern RPG cuz it's in the title, you silly
@MakusinMeringue
5 ай бұрын
I'm vibrating with motion at this omission.
@theelusivepootisberd7471
5 ай бұрын
@@MakusinMeringuefriiking and ejaculatiing rn
@stevewalker1790
5 ай бұрын
Saying Tetris is political because it "funded the Soviet Union" makes as much sense as saying "pong is political because it funded Americans." By this metric, anything that can be bought, sold, gifted, or traded is political.
@MG-mh8xp
5 ай бұрын
yes. everything is political. that's how politics works. politics affects all areas of life, and all areas of life can and usually will affect politics. Pong is a big part of our culture nowadays for being regarded as one of the first home console videogames (wether that's true or not) and that had a massive affect on a lot of children's lives, which pushed those children to get certain jobs, which affect demographics, which.. affects politics! you really can't escape it. you could say politics IS everything, though I wouldn't say it like that. more like.. politics is AFFECTED by everything, even all of life.
@wintermute5974
5 ай бұрын
@@MG-mh8xp But this conversation is about the text of the games themselves, not about the context of their production. Saying 'all products are poltical because they are produced within a particular political and economic arrangment' is borderline tautological and doesn't add anything meaningful to the conversation.
@SwizzleMix
5 ай бұрын
@@wintermute5974 But it actually isn't about that. Think about Hogwarts Legacy - that game was embroiled in political discourse that had nothing to do with the text itself. As the video says, the art exists with context, and you can ignore it if you'd like but it has a tangible effect on how the art is perceived.
@atmatey
5 ай бұрын
@@MG-mh8xpPolitics is about power, so things that don’t affect power aren’t political. Is two neutron stars colliding in a distant galaxy political? Are the stellations of an icosahedron political?
@MG-mh8xp
5 ай бұрын
@@atmatey I don't think everything is political, i think everything can and usually does affect politics. Two neutron stars colliding in a xistant galaxy might be a good example of something that actually doesn't affect it at all. But say that happened in our galaxy, and scientists saw that. They might be able to drum up some news, get some extra cash from studying it, or even get some increased funding to study it. This increases their power because in our world, money equals power.
@novelyst
5 ай бұрын
I couldn't think of a funny game to declare the "most postmodernist" but I'm answering the call to action in order to drive engagement. The real most postmodernist game was inside me all along.
@androsh9039
5 ай бұрын
New channel and already dropping hard facts.
@arekishi6364
5 ай бұрын
KZitem recommending me your video had me curious, the first jokes had me all smiles, and the David Cage joke had me leaving a like, and commenting already. Hyped for the 52 minutes I have remaining till the end of the video.
@topcatfan
5 ай бұрын
My guess for most post modern game is YIIK: a post-modern RPG
@lolusuck386
5 ай бұрын
Lol that CoD 2019 interview was so embarrassing. Brb, gonna go watch that Jacob Geller video where he thoroughly thrashed that idea for the 10th time.
@koolconnoriskool3406
5 ай бұрын
Lmao I feel like an idiot because I didn't realize it this was april 1st but your whiplash between satire and seriousness almost broke my neck
@melancholyentertainment
5 ай бұрын
Jokes on you, I wasn’t thinking *anything* at all! It’s all elevator music up here, babyyyyyy! 😎
@josephklein9003
5 ай бұрын
Fudj soothes me with his voice making me forget how angry I am that they added politics to videogames
@supremeleaderfrancisco9062
4 ай бұрын
"and occasionally david cage" 💀
@arino4u
5 ай бұрын
this video reminds me a lot of the stuff Tim Rogers was doing back when he was making videos for Kotaku. that's a huge compliment, so keep up the great work!
@hannahh1379
5 ай бұрын
"any game with an evil king who is overthrown by a much less privileged hero can be interpreted as a leftist text" should have changed this to "liberal" tbh
@esbenm6544
5 ай бұрын
no
@hannahh1379
5 ай бұрын
@@esbenm6544 basic math tells me that pretty much every time a king has been overthrown, the country in question has become a liberal capitalist society, not any socialist/communist form of government, ofc with a few notable exceptions.
@icarusgaming6269
5 ай бұрын
The most postmodernist game ever made is Minecraft, specifically the very last version before partnerships with other IPs were introduced. Because Minecraft is the world's least structured sandbox game, players can violate whatever conventions they see fit to their hearts' content, and no one can do anything about it (unless maybe it garners enough online notoriety to be acted upon). Official brand partnerships do not make a game postmodernist because they create a new status quo that renders the conventions otherwise violated by player expression the new norm, restricting their rebelliousness by officiating the concept. The Sims, Spore, and Roblox are close competitors, but Fortnite is not because it normalizes the concepts of brand collaboration and game modes outside the established genre so effectively that they can no longer be challenged
@GSBarlev
5 ай бұрын
Minecraft is possible the most neoliberal title in existence! It supports foreign intervention ("free" the End??); the internment, torture and enslavement of pacifists for economic gain (villagers); agribusiness (farms); the violent looting of archeological ruins (ocean monuments and ruins, piglin bastions, end cities); and the destructive extraction of valuable ores from pristine wilds.
@icarusgaming6269
5 ай бұрын
@GSBarlev The way some people play for sure. If we're just looking at the survival half of the game, and excluding exploits, it's very mechanically conservationist. You can easily screw yourself over and ruin your own resource economy by failing to preserve and restore forestry or trade routes with local settlements. Stripping massive quarries renders entire chunks exempt from supporting important livestock like sheep. Even the End poem criticizes an environmentally reckless playstyle, which kind of puts it in the same category of "condemning bad things by making you do them" as Spec Ops: The Line given what you have to do to earn it, but the lack of a clear objective means you could always not do that. I was more referring to the creative half of the game, since it gives you the ability to make maps unrestricted by societal norms like copyright or start an anarcho commune with your friends and charge other players ridiculous levies on diamonds. I suppose you could see the ability to exploit loopholes in the rules of the game, enslave villagers, and automate mega farms as an extension of that sandbox freedom, but that's more in line with the norm than counter to it
@GSBarlev
5 ай бұрын
@@icarusgaming6269 Yeah, to be clear, my comment is 💯 tongue-in-cheek. I truly believe that if there is an afterlife, that heaven looks like Minecraft while Hell looks like developing and maintaining it. Seriously-I hate coding in Java.
@andymcclurg9916
4 ай бұрын
The post-modern-est game is Elec Head. It bends the mind in what you'd expect from the dimensions of a 2D game, laughs at you while you stumble about its vexing puzzles, and subverts expectations by having the answer in front of you the whole time.
@haruhirogrimgar6047
5 ай бұрын
I want to say the most postmodernist game is The Stanley Parable but it is really from only 1 perspective even though it breaks down the perceieved norms and role of a video game. The most post-modernist game I think I have played is SMT Devil Survivor. Where the status quo is questioned, a huge variety of religions are present, the abrahamic god/religions being fiercely interrogated by the characters of the story, and like 8 endings treated as equally valid based on each individual's perception.
@miningglalie
5 ай бұрын
Wittgenstein is a funny case because he went from a more modernist philosophy to a very postmodernist one - I've even seen it claimed that he was a precursor to postmodernism proper. For those not in the know, his first work, the Tractatus Logico Philosophicus was a logic-based analysis of philosophy of language which Wittgenstein himself later rejected in his Philosophical Investigations, a book in which his view of philosophy becomes a lot more pessimistic, seeing many of the "big questions" of metaphysics as mere language-games. He was still religious though. Very interesting guy. Felt the need to specify since he was framed as a modernist in the video
@jmarvins
5 ай бұрын
well, less triumphalist or confident about the possibility of "success" in philosophy, but i wouldn't say "pessimistic" - the other major aspect of Wittgenstein's later thought is the re-envisioning of philosophy's task as "therapeutic," freeing the would-be philosopher from the tyranny of ill-begotten questions and demands for objectivity where there is none, thus enabling a freer and less agonized life - but you're of course totally right that this too is very importantly proto-postmodern a mindset also, tractatus / early W is a lot more subtle in its scientific/positivist/high-modern flavor than it's usually given credit for - although it certainly has a legacy of being read and celebrated by high-modernist / positivist types who see it as a great achievement for their program. especially at the very end of the text, you see hints that Wittgenstein even in his early stage thought that logical analysis of language only goes so far, and that the most important things are not reducible to the logical order (or perhaps even evocable in language at all). even in the tractatus it is pretty clear that the point of thinking through all the complicated formal logic is precisely to give up on it once you see that the project, even if it were as comprehensive and final as it claims to be, is still not the answer to ultimate questions or the last word on the meaning of life - the point is to "kick away the ladder after climbing up" as he memorably says. and of course, the last line/section of the book is "whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" - suggesting that the logical analysis of language can only go so far, and has nothing to say (and indeed, literally no way to say anything) about the "mystical," "ultimate," etc. some scholars go so far as to argue that the whole of the Tractatus is Wittgenstein pulling a trick on all but the most perceptive and patient people among the readership, as there are many places in the text that are most easily interpreted as saying that the whole book is nonsense, in which case the interpretative challenge becomes figuring out what the point of giving us precisely this "nonsense" is supposed to be. look up the "resolute reading" if you're curious about this (source: i am an academic in philosophy, surrounded by many wittgenstein experts and somewhat well studied myself)
@miningglalie
5 ай бұрын
@@jmarvins im actually in the process of reading the investigations and studying philosophy myself! in my attempt to explain how wittgenstein isn't a modernist i simplified things a lot, but you are absolutely right. in fact i'm among those who, even agreeing a lot more with PI Wittgenstein, defend the value of the TLP when understanding him as a philosopher, his trajectory, and in-itself. It's definitely the most skeptical of the descriptivist tradition texts and it goes beyond what previous authors proposed. I even find myself quoting the ladder passage and especially the "whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" one very often. this isnt to say that i think the TLP and PI are somehow totally compatible and parts of a whole, they clearly contradict each other, but I see a clear continuity in intent. as for the "pessimism"- i was referring to what Fudj calls, iirc, "postmodern skepticism". in the sense that Wittgenstein is pessimistic about the possibility for philosophy to discover the answers to its more trascendental questions. you are right that beyond that Wittgenstein still values philosophy, but as more of an activity where you analyze the questions themselves to be rid of the anguish they cause - and in this sense he is definitely pessimistic about answering them.
@jmarvins
5 ай бұрын
@@miningglalie all correct observations of course and i hope to make clear here retrospectively that i replied for the sake of less-familiar comment readers' edification, not to accuse you pedantically of any errors (indeed, your first comment is all correct, understood correctly :P) TLP and PI are definitely more continuous than they are often given credit for, as the middle period texts evidence quite well, and things like resolute readings render the narrative of his philosophical development even more coherent, in my estimation in any case, enjoy your studies!!
@miningglalie
5 ай бұрын
@@jmarvins yup yup, absolutely agreed, I have the brown and blue notebooks ready for when I'm done with PI, and I've done some digging on the TLP although I haven't faced it yet. Wittgenstein is fascinating and I really want a holistic view of his philosophy and no offense taken! i didnt feel accused of ignorance, i just wanted to clarify that my view of him is not that simplistic and add my two cents lol
@gretchenberry6231
15 сағат бұрын
It’s a common attitude among political scientists and philosophers that anything can and will be political, as politics are at its core, issues of society and governance, which in art and fiction will reflect the reality of the society it is created in and the biases of the creators which can be interpreted as commentary even if commentary is not intended by the creators. And when trying to create specifically with intent to create a piece that is non political, this can be interpreted as a political statement.
@kohemy9437
5 ай бұрын
While I know the last part of the video was partially joking, i do, genuinely, think Pong is a political game. There was an intentional choice in the game to display a score, a numerical value showing how well you're doing, and specifically how well you're against you other player. By doing this, the game signifies that you are both not just playing as friends, doing an activity for fun, but are opponents trying to beat each other. Just by adding two numbers, the game tells you that your goal is to beat an enemy, instead of working together to produce fun. Not only that but the fact that the game puts points representing how well you're doing, says that having fun is not your main goal, but winning is. I know this might sound stupid to analyze this deeply something as a number, but i truly think It's important to look at the unconscious effects that the art we consume makes us value different things, and how the tropes that we have don't exist on their own, but are created because of the values of its creators.
@NestorVass
5 ай бұрын
I'm gonna say it, Hbomber guy vibes. But unique, you earned my sub
@Westile
5 ай бұрын
4th most popular PFP for racists: Huey Freeman
@bunnybreaker
5 ай бұрын
I'm literally playing Helldivers 2 as I listen to this in the background and I'm glad you brought it up. It really is sad that so many people don't get the satire, but even worse I've seen multiple idiots claim the game isn't political. Save your mental health and never visit the Steam forums for this amazing game.
@ClarkWasHere1
5 ай бұрын
Pong is political. It was a game created by those who believed that us vs them, or competing against a "living other", should be the basis of their computer game, the basis of the fun that was to be had with a computer program. We have plenty of examples of modern-day video games that don't have a living "other" that we compete against, things like outer wilds. What is to say that the first video game couldn't have used a different game context? What do you all think that says about the devs that made it? Yes even your KZitem comments can make something as apolitical as pong actually be political by breaking it down in its own context, similar to how tetris was handled in the video by breaking down its context.
@nFyrin
5 ай бұрын
"Games are art" but also "it's just a game"
@Junkyardproduxtions
5 ай бұрын
Doesn't a postmodernist perspective of media necessitate that you divorce the creator's specific intentions and require you analyze factors of their lives that would influence their expression. Or parts of their beliefs?
@taimhilalalbady7783
5 ай бұрын
all games are political, because the idea of "wasting time" on something that's not real rather than spending it on actual problems is political. bong is political.
@TheMarvolousMarv
5 ай бұрын
Easy, the most postmodernist game ever made is YIIK: A Postmodern RPG - it's even in the title!
@jellybelly8672
5 ай бұрын
Holy mackerel, I'm totally YIIKing out rn
@Ribiveer
5 ай бұрын
Fudj, you've activated my trap-card. You say the Kirby series has an evil king? Think again! King Dedede, while serving as the antagonist in the very first game on the Game Boy, has since turned over a new leaf and has become one of Kirby's best friends. Even as early as the second game, where King Dedede was still the semi-final boss, it is revealed that his intentions were pure all this time. King Dedede has been a good(-ish) guy since 1993! But the corporate overlord final boss of _Kirby: Planet Robobot_ is definitely political: his name is Max Profitt Haltmann for crying out loud!
@proto_maver1ck
5 ай бұрын
Apolitical games are impossible because anything can be political if you try hard enough.
@keaton5101
5 ай бұрын
i love hitting up a new channel and recognizing the voice and having to figure out where i know them from. i fear when it's fudj
@hollowhenry04
5 ай бұрын
Good video so far but that Paul Verhoeven quote is probably not real since no one has ever given a source for it.
@dee7352
5 ай бұрын
It was a v cool moment to think about Tetris maybe 10 or so minutes before you brought it up. My thought process was “well the gameplay is pretty devoid of politics, but…not really the game itself.” Great video!
@dee7352
5 ай бұрын
Reflecting on Tetris does make me think of the act of game optimization, like the ideologies that inform pushing a game to its limits (and according to some, taking the fun out of a game experience) and one could flesh out an argument about the political implications of that. But I’m choosing to leave that there
@dodish1225
5 ай бұрын
Pong is political because economics is political. If you buy pong, that's political. If you play it for free instead of buying it, that's also political. Also it's a sports game, so it carries the burden of tennis history on its shoulders. The idea of competition is also political. There is no world where both sides win in this game, no chance to negotiate, only combat. Games themselves are inherently political due to the historical demonization of the medium. The video game violence debate makes the whole medium a basis for political platforms and groups.
@flamingscar5263
5 ай бұрын
as a COD fan I want to say it wouldn't shock me at all if everything that infinity ward dev said came from his own mouth and not corporate, because infinity ward in the past 10 years has consistently had their devs say and do dumbass shit that the other 2 major COD studios (treyarch and sledgehammer) say and do the exact opposite of, hell while infinity ward is trying to claim modern warfare isn't political treyarch was bragging about how in black ops cold war they showcase what is in all but direct name you being a victim of the MKultra program going as far as to let the west lose the war once you learn you are a brain washed USSR solider so long story short, infinity ward are clowns and you can disregard anything an infinity ward employee has said in the past 10 years
@parkj0hns0n
5 ай бұрын
the man of the hour
@TheCausticFan
5 ай бұрын
Other than the fact that pong is supposed to be table tennis, which is a sport. And as you said, sports don’t qualify. Therefore there are no apolitical games
@techformsmaster930
5 ай бұрын
PONGs backstory involves a court case, so... that's probably political
@WokioWolfy
5 ай бұрын
To me, I believe, is that in these games you have shown. Yes, there is politics all over those games, yet most, if not all the politics in these games seem to be from the setting and the world it takes place in. Whereas, from what I heard from the more recent AAA western games, the politics of it aren't meshed in the world's setting, rather, it is brought straight from the real world into the product as a means of activism. That is what I heard though.
@keiyakins
5 ай бұрын
Wow, just because I'm not familiar with Metro doesn't mean I can't appreciate the deep philosophical thoughts of Eric Carle.
@keiyakins
5 ай бұрын
(that said from the cover it looks like it's about war, so that's kinda enough yeah.)
@Weird_One_
5 ай бұрын
Pong is named after ping pong though and that is sport and sport is political.
@Tacom4ster
5 ай бұрын
Great essay, I hope this gets bigger
@jacktwelve1710
5 ай бұрын
I think the most postmodernist game is spec ops the line
@lued123
5 ай бұрын
Pong is based on Ping Pong/Table Tennis, and you already disqualified sports games.
@undercoverduck
5 ай бұрын
I'd say the most post modernist game is The Stanley Parable. The entirety of the game is a meta critique of video games as a whole, with societal and political doom and gloom about.
@maybesaadkhan
5 ай бұрын
26:00 Honored to have my smelly gamer article immortalized in a Fudj video 👍
@adamgrogory
5 ай бұрын
Most postmodern game surely has to to be Minecraft, because the only thing that decides where anything goes in that game is you and your perception of fun.
@pauldaulby260
5 ай бұрын
i believe the most post modernist game is viva piniata
@scratch7971
5 ай бұрын
13:06 - 13:17 Foolish post-post modernist, I’ll have you know the hungry caterpillar 🐛 had taught me that though we humans may be different shades of green (as depicted by the caterpillar in question) is an allegory for how though we all are different shades of human, we are all in this together in the human existence, whether we need to be stitched or not. Edit: Also I will reject modernity and not fix any grammatical errors.
@mrpissed
5 ай бұрын
How is Mario left-wing?? He restores the rightful monarchy
@mistermamamia
5 ай бұрын
I think the most post-modernist game ever made is sim city on the snes because the meaning of a functioning city, according to my perception, is to be destroyed by bowser koopa, and therefore we as a society are failing.
@fabi6688
5 ай бұрын
The most postmodern game is Luigi's Mansion 3
@Jogurtonelle
5 ай бұрын
Capitalism may be the biggest evil in the history of evils, but it gave us the YT algorithm, which chose this channel for me. Thank you capitalism!
@JuanPablo-su6vw
5 ай бұрын
Fnaf is apolitical, right? Just robots in a pizzeria.
@jellybelly8672
5 ай бұрын
Fnaf could be interpreted as a lot of things, honestly. Scott Cawthon is a right-winger, but one could interpret Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria as a critique of businesses, literally killing children to continue their work and harming the workers at the bottom such as security guards making below minimum wage along the way. Fnaf 3 could definitely be a critique of how people mythologize horrific events, though.
@JuanPablo-su6vw
5 ай бұрын
@@jellybelly8672Oh god
@evanrutledge-sz4yo
5 ай бұрын
@@JuanPablo-su6vwEverything is political, welcome to society, box of tissues cost 7 bucks.
@RPG_Fangirl
Ай бұрын
Roughly 4% [This comment is for my own purposes of making a playlist, and is not a judgement of quality.]
@PlentyofFodder
5 ай бұрын
I love the idea that the depiction of sport is political, and yet an actual game of sport, Pong, would not count.
@Enceladeans
5 ай бұрын
Also, being made in and funding the Soviet Union is political, but being made in and funding the United States (not directly, but I'll assume for my sanity's sake Atari paid taxes) is not.
@melancholyentertainment
5 ай бұрын
@@Enceladeans That’s a good point to be honest. I guess after all, the video is art, and art is going to be affected even subconsciously by the politics of its creator. And so the creator in this case seems to subconsciously have decided that a game made in a very alien political climate that is gone now is political, while a game made in a more familiar climate is the “default”, and therefore not political. I’d love to hear his thoughts on this. 🤔
@moebialstudios5659
5 ай бұрын
This video has officially radicalized me; I am now a paid supporter of Palette Swap. More, please!
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