Thoughts on this prototype version? I got bored of resizing halfway through when I realised they were too small and I'd have to redo everything.
Here's what will be added: Title and attribution to me, scores for each game on gameplay and subversiveness (or themes), short blurb on each game, sorted by genre and alphabetically, so yeah, suggestions?
Other urls found in this thread:
youtube.com
colestia.itch.io
twitter.com
You left out Arcanum my boy. I'd go for an easier approach, attribute an index for each game, also sort them by genre and chronological order. Then you can have a part of the picture dedicated to ratings and descriptions.
I don't know what you mean by that. Index?
Wouldn't it be easiest to have the scores next to the games?
What?
also why is dwarf fortress on there twice, im assuming crisis in the kremlin is there twice to differentiate between the old and the new version?
couldn't decide on what cover
and I heard that was a socialist game, the ones im unsure on will just get a ? for rating, i like christine love so im inclined to give the benefit of the doubt
You also forgot that total conversion for Silent Storm where you can play as a rogue KGB agent.
it's right next to it bruh :^/
You should leave only the minimalist cover in, it looks better
Those are just Soviet-themed strategy games for the most part…
There are no such things as "leftist video games" because, as opposed to cinema or popular music, that medium grew to prominence in an era when radical politics had lost their appeal, legitimacy and representatives. For a game to be leftist you'd need to have a development team that's also leftist or at least familiar with its philosophy, science and history — and that simply doesn't exist aside maybe from some obscure niches.
At best there exists game with themes that might be of interest to leftists. Those come to my mind:
• MOTHER3 (history, community, memory, industrialism)
• BioShock (individualism, social-darwinism, inequality)
• Spec Ops: The Line (American imperialism, military fetishism)
• Papers, Please (immigration, bureaucracy, responsibility)
Games like killer7 and Deus Ex also have interesting themes but they're too reliant on conspiracies and too silly overall to be taken that seriously.
Anti capitalist games are getting their own seperate infographic after this one
Also I imagine you already know this if you've played it but Democracy 3 is super deluxe socdem simulator.
Yeaaaahhhh but as the closest to a political simulator (not just elections) and with a clear succdem bias, I think it's worth including. Also there's a socialism mod for it (that is broken right now sadly)
I think all games where the devs understand B A S I C E C O N O M I C S result in being pro-socdem though. Any game that doesn't is usually trash because the economies are artificially powered by pure ideology.
Metal Gear Solid 2?
I thought MGS Peace Walker could represent the whole MGS series cause I can't really remember which ones are and arent class concious yet but yeah good shout
Also can you explain why Arcanum is Marxist? Or is it just anticapitalist?
Magic is bourgeois pseudoscience.
How exactly are the RTS games marxist? Because you play as USSR soldiers?
Brb cumming
Included are ones that portray the Soviets in a positive or at least balanced light, as well as ones that are just great (Wargame). I left out mediocre ones and or ones that are borderline Nazi propaganda (CoH 2)
Saved. Thank you
Man papers please was such a great game.
To me mgs is more anarchist than maxist.
I liked Papers Please a lot too but I don't know if I'd call it pro Marxism, would you?
Definitely not, Artzotka is basically the Soviet Union during the Perestroika.
It's also very Commie-nazi, with the 12 hours work day with no week-end (though that's mostly a detail)
Top kek
Tropico is a socdem wet dream
I thought it was more East Germany but yeah.
All industry is nationalised outside of some rare options, you can eliminate rent, free healthcare, free food, it's hardly succdem. That's what Simcity etc are when you lay down the foundations for industry/commerce to grow. Also you can literally ally with the Soviets.
Ogres are Gnomes hire thugs and serve as bodyguards. Orcs are either workers (whose rights are explicitely terrible and there's a quest about helping them to go on a strike or help the enforcer in the workshop). Capitalism, Imperialism, Rationalism, Modernism, really Arcanum has it all.
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Love you too.
Arcanum is based on the premise "what if a typical fantasy universe goes through through the industrial revolution?".
You have clear class divisions, and there are rich industrialists exploiting ogre labour. Magic and science are opposing forces and there is social conflict between its adherents.
Also, it's simply one of the best RPGs in the late 90s..
Still a capitalistic model of production, just a state one.
Just a welfare state.
The most socialist thing you can do is to make the wage equals for all jobs, but that's unsound.
Paper's please was about combloc Easter europe. It had nothing to fo with mentality ill nazis.
Well obviously it's state socialism not communism but I don't really know what you're expecting here. It's as close to a Cuba simulator (albeit with simplified politics) that I think is really possible.
Not very socialist to make people work from 6am to 6pm, seven days of the week.
You're also paying (extremely high prices) for food, medicine, and rent. Not to mention the state monitoring and the injunction to support a healthy and large family.
It's commienazism.
"State socialism" is basically socdem up to 11. Which is why Tropico is a socdem wet dream. Not to mention the fact you can fire and hire at will.
Ok, so you're just a shitposter, I suppose I should have figured from the flag.
I'm not shitposting, I'm stating an opinion. You don't have to agree with it, but I have a right to defend it.
You have to make pretty big rationalisations to consider Tropico anything remotely socialist. It's left-wing politics, yes, but not socialist.
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That's not how ideology works.
I looked up that "Mother Russia Bleeds" game and it looks explicitly anti-communist to me. I don't know what I'm missing.
I've never played it, I have no idea. That's what I was told.
Actually the protesters are being lead by a communist. You beat up gangster thugs and the country is having a massive drug and corruption problem.
Yeah that was kinda the idea I got from how it was described, that's it's more of a criticism of the Russian Federation by proxy
But the ones I haven't played personally I'm just gonna put '?' for scoring.
Maybe if the Russian Federation was taken over by the mafia and the entire thing was set in the Hotline Miami universe.
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No, by the literal, tattoo'd street thug kind.
Actually, rewatching the levels of MRB, among the caricatures of typical mobsters, there is a portrait of one recognizable figure. He suspiciously looks like Gorbachev.
Please enlighten me.
Index means a list number.
That is entirely arbitrary.
How so? Deus Ex was designed as an experiment in over-the-top world-building. The writers basically asked themselves "what if all those wacky conspiracy theories were true" and created a game world around it. Sure, it has some legitimate themes mixed in — and the (optional, easily-missable) conversation with the Morpheus AI is surprisingly good — but overall it's way too deep into Illuminati nonsense to really matter to a leftist.
Dungeons of Dredmor has a communist class (as in RPG class). Otherwise it's a pretty run of the mill dungeon crawler, but you might wanna put it in still.
The Helios ending is transhuman socialism in my opinion, and the NSF are clearly supposed to be 'the good guys', and there are evil corporations and globalists everywhere. Yes it has a dash of right wing conspiracy too but I'd say it's certainly leftist. And the underrated sequel makes that even more explicit.
That's like the humor RPG game right? Fair nuff I'll take a look.
Why do you consider Dwarf Fortress to be Marxist?
That's not my suggestion either but every time I had one of these topics it was suggested, I guess because it's a planned economy and nobles do nothing but cause problems. I'll put a ? For that too.
Last we were told, because implementing money, police and prisons causes more trouble than it solves, also nobility requires frequent culling.
play underrail
How the fuck is this leftist? This is a retarded chart. Not even going to look at the rest of your shit, faggot.
By reddit, maybe.
Seems to me that some lefty grognard just has to have his pet videogame put on the chart
I mean the dwarves literally own the means of production. Production is primarily based on needs and each dwarf literally takes according to their needs and gives according to their ability, and internally there isn't any money involved. So, even if there isn't some revolution it seems pretty Marxist to me.
What criteria do you think a game needs to follow in order to be Marxist?
The Helios ending has got jack shit to do with socialism. The Helios AI wants to rule as a God-like benevolent dictator, that's technocracy if anything.
The NSF describes itself as a "constitutional militia". Basically, they're survivalists who were actually right about FEMA camps. The only thing even remotely left-wing about the NSF is Leo Gold's bit about corporate tax.
… And that's hardly leftist by itself. Nazis hate "evil corporations" and "globalists" too, you know.
A dash? The Illuminati, FEMA camps all feature prominently in the game's setting and plotline. Look, I love Deus Ex but there really is nothing "leftist" about it.
It describes class struggle, displays innocents being murdered out of individual greed and lust for power, while arguing corporations are just as dangerous as states. That's really fucking leftist, more so than any socdem here.
Why?
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I don't see how you don't see it honestly.
No, it doesn't. At best the game touches upon wealth and influence, but never class proper.
Then I guess Game of Thrones or Hunger Games also "leftist" too?
This is the basic setting of anything cyberpunk.
It shows these three things at once, debunking them one by one makes no sense.
Also that's as leftist it's going to get for a commercial non-indie American developer.
wut
In that game you play as a hired mercenary destabilizing and conquering a socialist Neo-Brazil for porky after Great Leader died, it's full-on imperialism and is only somewhat Marxist in its la revuloción aesthetics
This chart as a whole is pretty fucking pointless
That is, not leftist at all — like I said.
There is no such thing as a leftist video game.
[INTEREST INTENSIFIES]
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WELL maybe it argues about corporate taxes being too low, global surveillance, illegitimate governments, capitalism, the police, freedom, corporations getting too big, poverty, wealthy bankers, world governments profiting to the wealthy only, divisions of labour but THAT doesn't make it leftist!!!
Your standards for what qualify as leftist are very low.
There are no leftists video games, get over it.
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According to who? You?
==ANTILIFESTYLISM ==GANG
==DELETE ==THAT ==POST ==LIFESTYLIST
Yes, because I'm not a liberal who believes vague anti-corporate sentiment is somehow revolutionary.
Go be "woke" somewhere else.
Why don't you just go back to Holla Forums and bother them then?
Was junkbot a commentary on how we go out of our way to solve elaborate puzzles and create new paths just to consume garbage?
That's the point nigga, you literally get money for killing civilians and the encyclopedia tells about how much better Great Leader's rule was than what came before it, in case you can't tell you and the corporation are supposed to be the bad guy in that game and the army and the Corvids are the good guys (with the spacers there to represent fascism).
It's interesting in a way that it's sort of an anti-state of emergency (what I'm finishing the video for right now)
Even by the strictest possible standards Red Faction and Hostile Waters are leftist, and taking a more generous approach that acknowledges that of course a game can never be as detailed political as a work of theory I will argue for most of the games on this list. Stop being a fun hating contrarian, it's not cool lad.
Is Deus Ex considered a Marxist game in the sense that it depicts a world destroyed by late-capitalism?
Also, I have a separate list for anti capitalist games, these are games that explicitly portray either socialism or leftist revolution or both. That's why Bioshock isn't on here or Dead Rising.
With regards to Deus Ex, isn't most cyberpunk sci-fi anti-capitalist in its tone and theme?
Being anti capitalist in general gets a game on my other list, Deus Ex is on this list because of the explicit political content and most importantly the fact that you can enact cyber socialism as one of the endings, and the Dark Ages ending is arguably left wing too (though I don't support it). On top of that I personally view the NSF as leftist based on our interaction with their leader (?) In the statue.
is mercenaries 2 really a Marxist game?
i cant really remember.. i only remember playing it as a kid and just enjoying blowing shit up.
It's in there because of the Marxist faction and the Chinese (yeah yeah revisionism etc). Some of these games have elements of Marxism in them rather than being Marxist overall (yeah I'm being pretty generous but what the fuck, I don't want the list to have only two games on it)
Deus ex is a clearly a lolbret game, not a leftist game
We've been over this, it has elements of both.
Why do you have Night in the Woods on there then? I thought it was pretty much just anticapitalist with a little bit of antifascist stuff in it.
I haven't played that myself but I got the impression Mae and her friends are anarkiddie types.
I'm not the one here pretending a game about the Illuminati throwing patriot militias members into FEMA camps should be seriously considered leftist. You fuck off back to where people accommodate your intellectual inconsistency.
pls no
It's a nice chart. Are you the guy who was compiling a list of games with socialist themes?
Why are some covers minuscule and others xboxhueg?
There's a game called Riot that's past its release date, should be out any time now.
Yes that's me. And I loved the trailers for Riot, forgot about it till now though. Not sure if I can call it Marxist when it's not out yet though, might just be liberal, worth keeping an eye out though sure.
Also, it's because I realised halfway through I made everything too small and I just thought I'd put everything on to show my (lack of) progress.
I actually had someone link me a great infographic help image on v but I lost it like an idiot.
Neck yourself.
NECK. YOUR. SELF.
Also, TORRENT EVERYTHING. IP is bullshit. "Ownership" is bullshit. You don't own any video game at all.
the guy who made it is a socialist and pretty nice
dorf fortress is on there.
Twice.
That's pretty cool, does he frequent any leftist community?
dont think so - i know him from a video game forum for dads
If I wrote an email to him do you think he would respond? I might do Brigador in a few videos.
yeah he is pretty psyched when people are interested in the game - go for it
Sweet. I liked it quite a bit overall but I had a few issues with it, mostly being the lack of worldbuilding in the actual game as opposed to the supporting text entries and the music which was pretty 'meh' in my opinion.
what?
I recall threads beyond counting on /tg/ where everybody was bitching about the insane demands of the nobles and how to make their rooms deathtraps. UPHOLD URIST THOUGHT!
The surge, the whole game is about entering the job market competing with other workers who have gone mad from and I quote "being cleared for overtime." Each boss is either mechanized assembly equipment or security forces that attempt to stop you, once you beat them you take their weapon literally seizing the means of production. Even the bourgeois corporate heads are merely slaves to the capitalist system exhibited by the cables that keep them alive. Towards the end of the game human enemies become rare, replaced with strange super robots. The final boss of this capitalist hell is literally automation. 19/17 would destroy capitalist automation
wanna meet that dad
