There is currently a very funny, kind of sad dust-up over Helldivers 2, in which self-proclaimed “anti-woke” gamers have previously heralded it as a rare game where they believe “politics” does not play a factor. Their faith was been shaken by an Arrowhead community manager they believed they found to be (gasp) progressive who was then subsequently harassed, but their head-scratching reading of Helldivers 2 as a “non-political” game is worth examining.
The only thing that makes sense is that these players have the shallowest of surface-level readings of the game. You are a patriotic soldier serving Super Earth. You must kill bugs and evil robots trying to hurt your brothers-in-arms and innocent citizens. There are no storylines to insert progressive causes into, everyone wears helmets so no “forced diversity.” Therefore, no politics.
Of course, this is…wildly off the mark, as Helldivers 2 is about the most blatantly obvious satire of militaristic fascism since the film that inspired it, Starship Troopers.
I’m not sure its just that. There seems to be alot of discourse surrounding this game.
Do you have any thoughts about the topic or did you just want to be critical of the article?
Of course there’s a lot of discourse, it’s a popular game, it’s a lot of fun and it’s been a long time since something so high profile was also so over the top in it’s satire.
Now I thought these comments WERE about the article, but if you want thoughts on the topic itself before you’ll be satisfied, sure.
There will always be people who miss the point. There are people who unironically think Starship Troopers is the best thing ever and represents a model society. There are also people who honestly think Fallout doesn’t contain any political commentary. There are people who thought SpecOps: The Line was just an okay modern military shooter. That isn’t a flaw of the media itself, nor is it the problem of people who do understand. Dummies with a complete lack of media literacy or social awareness aren’t a new concept, and the media they fail to understand isn’t responsible for them. It isn’t news that some people didn’t understand a thing, and trying to MAKE it news is just disingenuous and reeks of clickbait and lazy journalism.
Thanks for clarifying your point.
I agree its not a particularly noteworthy occurrence, I thought your comment seemed kinda gatekeepy.
I don’t know much about the game so I value your insight.