Video games for communists

David L takes a critical look at video games and asks whether there can be a left-wing gaming culture.

…as we have already pointed out, the consciousness of play being ‘only pretend’ does not in any way prevent it from proceeding with the utmost seriousness… (Johann Huizinga)

A recent topic of conversation amongst some rs21 members, sprouting out of the discussion as to what media and culture we are currently engaging with, has been that of games. From the growing popularity of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) and other tabletop games to the multi-million-dollar industry of AAA video games, games are both an extension of cultural practices of play that have existed for a very long time, and an embodiment of capitalist social relations. Companies like Activision make millions off the back of titles like the Modern Warfare series, which work as propaganda for the imperialist war machine precisely through the fact that they are very fun and perhaps even addictive to play. As well, games and the people who make them have been crucial as a rallying point for reactionary movements such as Gamergate, and often you can’t go far on Elon Musk’s Shitter app before you see somebody complaining about the prevalence of women and minorities in video games. So how can communists and socialists engage with these works? Do video games count as art? Can there even be a left-wing gaming culture? I can’t answer all of these questions in space I have, but I want to point towards an alternative way of thinking about games for those unaware, so below is a short list of games to play before the revolution comes. Alongside these titles will be some reading recommendations (both theory and fiction) to go along with them. Best start reading and get playing these games, before the future gets here and we make you wear a paper hat for being a Roblox reactionary or something.

Disco Elysium

It would be difficult to write this list without speaking about the communist elephant in the gaming room, so I thought I’d get it out of the way first. A role-playing game released in 2019, this work of the new weird was made by the Estonian cultural collective/game developer ZA/UM. Set in the Martinaise district of the city of Revachol, 49 years after a failed communist revolution, you awake in a hotel room after an unreal bender on alcohol and drugs, unable to remember your name or who you are, or even the concept of the money. Stumbling about trying to find your clothes and trying not to overexert yourself from getting your necktie off the ceiling fan, you walk downstairs and find you are the lead detective on a homicide investigation. There’s a dead man hanging outside on a tree behind the restaurant/hotel you are staying at. The story progresses and expands from there. In contrast to most role-playing games, and most games in general, the action of the work happens entirely within the dialogue screen, seeming in parts more like a novel than a typical video game. But there are definitely game elements, such as the skills you can put points into, but these are presented with a twist, with the player character’s fragmented psyche meaning these skills will appear in dialogue, intrusive thoughts and impulses pushing you to make certain choices, sometimes useful, sometimes painfully embarrassing. 

You can also use the thought cabinet, where the player character internalises lines of thought (such as your personality, political ideology and whether you want to think about gay men a lot) to give themselves skill bonuses and expand the dialogue. Through the dialogue you encounter the colourful cast of characters, as well as the staggering amount of worldbuilding put in by the writers. Covering a range of topics such as class struggle, addiction, masculinity, racism, fascism, game development, cryptids and more, the game quickly established itself as a modern classic and a prime example of communist art. Unfortunately, the core members of the original cultural collective were forced out under suspect circumstances by capitalists, and many others were let go, killing any possible hope of a sequel and turning the game into memes and mobile apps. If you want to play this game, we recommend picking up a physical copy of the Final Cut edition second hand or just pirating it.

Further reading: Sacred and Terrible Air by Robert Kurvitz, The City and the City by China Miéville.

Planescape: Torment

It would also be hard to speak of Disco Elysium without one of its most important influences, the 1999 video game Planescape: Torment. Developed by Black Isle Studios (the original Fallout developers), the video used the Planescape setting from D&D. Set in the city of Sigil, which lies at the centre of the setting’s multiverse, allowing travel between different planes of reality, you awake in a morgue with no memory of who you are or why you’re here (spot the similarities?). You’re approached by a floating skull who claims to know you and is willing to help you get out of there. It soon becomes clear as well that you cannot die: a long time ago you managed to secure immortality for yourself. Armed only with the knowledge you have been given by reading the tattoos inked into your skin, you set out to find out who you are, and to answer the game’s overriding philosophical question: what can change the nature of a man? 

Whilst not as overtly political as Disco Elysium, the older RPG still manages to engage in impressive worldbuilding, heavy philosophy, and brilliant writing in a much smaller file size. And unlike Elysium, this game includes combat outside the dialogue, sharing an engine with the older Baldur’s Gate games. But in accordance with its setting, the game feels like it subverts many of the usual cliches of fantasy RPGs. No intrepid band of heroes here: you and the companions you recruit are the outcasts of the cosmos, covering the entire range of the alignment chart found in D&D settings. And in contrast to most other games (and this is something it shares with Elysium), the game doesn’t see the setting as a sand box for power fantasies. Actions have consequences, and you find yourself being held responsible for actions you don’t remember and were in a metaphysical sense done by a different version of you. Themes of accountability and atonement start to come to the fore. Rather than build a static dreamworld for you to play in, the aim of the game is how you can play within the conditions and limits placed on you. What can change the nature of a man, the game asks? It’s up to you to answer. 

Also, you can become an anarchist and do a side quest to sabotage magical weapons at a temple qua arms factory, so if you want the game to scratch a leftist itch, there you go.

Further reading/watching: Everyman by Anonymous, Stormbringer by Michael Moorcock and Memento (2000, dir. Christopher Nolan)

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

The next item on this list was not a personal choice on my list, but instead was recommended by fellow rs21 member Archie Woodrow. He even shared notes, which I’ll try to summarise here because I felt the argument for it as a standout game was compelling. The Elder Scrolls series are a franchise of role-playing games set on the continent of Tamriel on the planet of Nirn and is the domain of an empire (heavily inspired by the Romans) which has existed in some form or another for centuries, if not millennia. The third game, released in 2002 for Microsoft Windows and Xbox, was set on the island of Vvardenfell in the province of Morrowind, populated by the ashen skinned Dumner, or ‘Dark Elves’. You are a prisoner, ordered by emperor Uriel Septim VII to be released and sent to Morrowind in order to begin fulfilling a prophecy about the reincarnation of a Dark Elf hero. The story itself sounds like it could be a simple hero’s journey, but in truth things quickly get complicated as you have to gain the approval of several of the province’s political institutions and factions in order to complete the prophecy, not an easy feat given Morrowind is quite an traditionalist and isolationist society and the prophecy required you be an ‘outlander’. 

Here, the worldbuilding takes an interesting turn, with the game showing an unusually deft understanding of how different societies and powers can construct ‘race’, with even a Dark Elf character being considered an outsider due to being born outside the province. Furthermore, the lore itself proves to be equally interesting, both in its content and how it’s communicated, with the history and culture of the world communicated through all the books and letters found scattered throughout the world. These texts are short in their length, often implied to be longer works that you see fragments of, but what makes them really interesting is the sheer refusal by them to all fit together into a coherent whole. The books clash and contradict one another, the works influenced by their authors agendas and prejudices. The main religious text of the game, the 36 lessons of Vivec, darts between an in-world ‘bible’ of sorts and a meta commentary on the game. In a world where ‘canon’ has been used as a sacred cow by which complaints can be levied against developers, as if a history could be set in stone, Morrowind’s approach begins to feel like a refreshing alternative. 

As well, there’s a healthy modding community around Morrowind and other Elder Scrolls games, and it is here that a communising of the game can begin to happen, turning an intellectual property into something that belongs to the collective, turning the work into something malleable and forever unfinished.

Further reading: Virconium by M. John Harrison, The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano

Spec ops: The line

It’s time to move away from role-playing games and move onto shooters, a genre which has dominated the market since classics like DOOM and Castle Wolfenstein. Sometimes, the genre has proven politically controversial, with DOOM being blamed for school shootings. More recent works have provoked anger for different, more accurate reasons, with the tendency of developers to use relatively recent conflicts as material for their games. One of the recent Modern Warfare titles came under flak for revising historical war crimes on the Highway of Death in Iraq committed by the US to suggest that Russia had committed them. Is the genre completely lost to militaristic propaganda? Here’s where Spec Ops: The Line comes in. Released in 2012 for multiple consoles, the game focuses on Captain Martin Walker of the US Delta Force, carrying out reconnaissance near the city of Dubai, which has been hit by a sandstorm and suffered societal collapse. Initially only sent to confirm survivors, Walker chooses to disobey orders after he finds an old comrade from Afghanistan, Colonel John Konrad, is leading the 33rd Infantry Battalion and has established martial law.

Initially framed as another run of the mill shooter, third person in the vein of Gears of War, Spec Ops was in fact a postmodern commentary on the shooter genre hiding in cliché trappings. Playing on visual and tonal similarities to the Call of Duty series, the game exposes how military shooters are often a childish power fantasy for their players, and an insidious form of propaganda for military intervention and US imperialism. Using meta commentary and ludonarrative techniques, the game dismantles the way conflicts and soldiers are usually represented in the West, and the way we as video game players are complicit. The result was controversial, to the extent that even today any mention of Spec Ops: The Line is likely to cause passionate and perhaps even angry debate. But it stands out as one of the few titles to have engaged in a ruthless criticism of the form. Unfortunately, due to licensing issues, this game is no longer available online, so you’ll have to find a physical copy. But it’s well worth it, in my opinion.

Further reading: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Culture and Imperialism by Edward Said

The Thief series

Sometimes, certain games utilise certain mechanics or concepts so well that they become a defining example of a genre or form, a before or after point by which everything is compared to. The Thief games were this for the stealth video game genre. Released in the late 90s/early 2000s, with a remake in 2014, these dark fantasy games invented or popularised many of the genre’s staples, such as light and sound mechanics, deliberately poor combat on the part of the player character to incentivise stealth, and open level layouts which encouraged multiple approaches and solutions. Set in a sprawling, Medieval Steampunk metropolis known only as ‘The City’, the series focuses on a master thief known as Garrett, a cynical loner often drawn into events despite his best efforts and forced to put a stop to megalomaniacs and evil spirits, depending upon the game. The series was a unique mixture of fantasy and noir, but in contrast to most other attempts to blend the two together, which often tried to create a police/detective equivalent, at best creating a fantasy version of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and at worst making fantastical copaganda, the stealth series instead chose a criminal as its protagonist. In doing so, it created something more anti-authoritarian than what usually exists in either genre. Whilst Garrett is not a Robin Hood by any means, there’s a certain joy to be had in robbing the rich and powerful and evading the law.

Most stealth games today have you play as an assassin, using stealth to inflict extreme violence on unsuspecting victims. There’s a fair argument in saying this is just another power fantasy. Whilst the Thief games allow for killing, the gameplay doesn’t actually require it, and on higher difficulties, prohibit it. When people think of left-wing stealth games, Metal Gear Solid is usually what comes to mind, but I wanted to highlight the Thief series as an example of games with a similar spirit. Break into mansions, enact prison breaks, plunge into quarantined sections of the city, save the city. The gameplay holds up incredibly well, and each of the first three games has an avid modding community like Morrowind which means you can create your own works out of the originals.

Further reading: The Borribles Trilogy by Michael de Larrabeiti, You Can’t Win by Jack Black, Abolition Revolution by Aviah Day and Shanice McBean

Amnesia: A machine for pigs

Despite coming out in the first year of the decade, the 2010 PC horror Amnesia: The Dark Descent became a critical and commercial success and effectively changed horror games for a good while after. A sequel was always going to fall short of expectations, and the immediate follow up, developed by The Chinese Room, certainly divided opinion with its apparent regression in terms of mechanics. But where it certainly built on the original, outside of the haunting soundtrack by Jessica Curry, was the story. Shifting the setting from a Gothic inspired 19th century Prussia to Victorian London just before the turn of the century, the player finds themselves in the shoes of industrialist and butcher Oswald Mandus, awaking in his mansion with no memory of the past few months, having previously taken a trip to Mexico with his sons.

What follows this premise is a relatively short story, clocking in at about 4-5 hours. But in that short space of time The Chinese Room explored a range of topics and events, and in doing so produced a game which was considerably more political than the original. Through its worldbuilding and exceptional voice acting, A Machine for Pigs plumbs the depths of the 20th century and how it expanded the phrase ‘industrial slaughter’ beyond the cruelties of the abattoir. The visuals feel like they could have been taken from Marx’s Capital Volume 1, the way in which the language around ‘monsters’ is dehumanising taken to its logical end. Here the titular amnesia, a story device which appears in every entry of the series, feels like it is less to do with the hidden backstory of the player character, and more a commentary on the cultural amnesia society creates around the horrific violence it takes to maintain the current state of affairs.

Further reading: Late Victorian Holocausts by Mike Davis, The Age of Empires: 1875-1914 and The Age of Extremes: 1914-1991 by Eric Hobsbawm, Capitalism: A Horror Story by Jon Greenaway

The great game of revolution

Whilst it’s nice to have fun, and the works of culture we engage with can be useful for ours and others consciousness, I’d be remiss if this article argued for just staying in our rooms and playing games. We need to, as the saying goes, go outside and touch the grassroots. I haven’t mentioned any co-op games in this article, so here’s one that doesn’t require a good internet connection. In our workplaces and communities, we need to get organised. There’s a rising far right presence, many workers rights are still restricted and outlawed affecting the capacity of unions to work effectively, and the state represses us and prevents us from protesting safely. Resisting all that will require creative solutions, which requires a sense of play which will let us think of new ways of practising the revolution. 

And if you like any of the games on this list, or like games in general, it’s important to remember that these were collective efforts made possible only through the effort made by workers. The gaming industry is still under-unionised, and recent years have led to exposés of toxic working culture in many of the biggest names in the industry. These workers need our solidarity in order to get organised safely and securely, and that requires a capacity to see the world in a Marxist way and act accordingly. Only by taking an avid interest in these workers and the things they create can we start to move games away from high-profile propaganda, into a collective experience beyond market competition, something which belongs to all of us. 

Let’s play a game: name five people in your workplace who might be interested in joining a union. If you’ve done, you’ve already begun to do a basic bit of organising known as mapping. You should get talking to those people. Like now.

If you can’t then, then the answer is sort of the same: go and talk to them, find out who is interested, and get organising with them. In this game, there’s hundreds of hours of playtime, a world to win, and nothing to lose but your chains.