From triple-A to two-person teams, the developers refusing to shy away from politics in their games

By Jon Bailes

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WHEN GAMES WITH REAL-WORLD PARALLES DON'T MAKE POLITICAL STATEMENTS, IT SEEMS FAIR TO ASK: WHY NOT?

Politics is a dirty word. By now we’re used to publishers distancing their games from any suggestion that they contain political commentary. We’re also used to a vocal sect of players that uses ‘politics’ as a slur, thrown at games that dare to feature diverse characters or touch on the struggles of women and marginalised people. There are, of course, plenty of games that have us oppose dictatorships, fight in real-world conflicts or navigate a future where the extremes of consumer capitalism have been pushed to satirical heights. But few actually use the ‘p’ word Fewer still take committed stances against social ills.

With politics as it is today, not least in Britain, this feels inadequate. Alongside perennial issues such as environmental decline and growing inequality, we’re approaching the sharp end of nationalist populism, the surveillance state, racist policing and a manufactured culture war. Indeed, the toxic conception of politics in games is a victim of this war, a means of repressing dissenting voices. These don’t feel like times for placatory denials or oblique metaphors, so when it’s claimed that games with real-world parallels don’t make political statements, it seems fair to ask: why not?

Clint Hocking, now at Ubisoft Toronto, is a rare triple-A exception among developers. Simply by owning its real-world relevance and naming modern fascism, Watch Dogs: Legion, which he directed, is explicitly political in a way that stands in stark contrast to its peers, including Ubisoft contemporaries Far Cry 5 and The Division 2. For Hocking, a research trip to London in April 2016 –a couple of months before the Brexit vote, around the time of the Panama Papers leak – clarified the worsening social situation. “Seeing protests outside Downing Street, visiting the Reform Club, meeting with cybersecurity experts in the bank of England, having lunch with oligarchs-in-exile, and talking to scores of ordinary Londoners made the breadth and complexity of the socioeconomic disparity in London – and the world – very apparent,” he says. “The huge political shifts that began in 2016 did not come out of nowhere – they are the consequence of trends of rising inequality in wealth, freedom, representation and power that have been drifting this way for decades.” To date, though, Legion is one of few major releases to tackle such issues directly.

Of course, multinationals are rarely at the vanguard of political resistance. Perhaps we should look elsewhere for inspiration, to smaller developers such as Far Few Giants. The two-person firm, currently based in Belfast, has been creating topical interactive stories since 2017, releasing them via Itch.io and Steam for free, or very little. In 2020 it began releasing a series of short visual novels, The Sacrifices, placing players in the shoes of individuals who in some way resist a fascist British state. In The Outcast Lovers, a couple find a young immigrant boy washed ashore. The Night Fisherman depicts an encounter at sea between the titular character and an armed immigrant hunter. In The Change Architect, a remote-protest director makes tactical decisions in the face of aggressive policing. These are punchy, tense vignettes which pull on our senses of urgency and trepidation.