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.
The same thing happened with Fallout: New Vegas when chuds realized Joshua Sawyer is a Socialist
And The Boys with Homelander when they realized he’s a caricature.
Most of them still haven’t figured it out as far as I can tell.
Keep in mind, these are the same people who watched the Colbert Report unironically for years. I genuinely believe that there is a certain portion of the population which lacks the cognitive tools to process satire.
1000% There were some sad posts on the subreddit. I thought they were trolling at first but, no.
Do you mean Joshua Graham?
No, Joshua Sawyer, the Project Lead. He wrote characters like Arcade Gannon, told Gonzales to add dialectics to the Legion, etc.
He has shown up on Communist podcasts and is vocally a Socialist on Twitter.
“I don’t enjoy killing, but when done righteously, it’s just a chore, like any other.”