Games with agendas and propaganda games

[nyaatrap]

I don't see any reason to ban them if they're not fraud. Just add them a content warning like violence/porn games have.

WARNING: Exposure to propaganda video games has been linked to unsocial behavior

(It's an only phrase I remember in English )

[gekiganwing]

If the story is entirely about conveying the creator's message to the audience, that's an author tract. If a story is interrupted by a message which the creator endorses, that's an author filibuster. There's other examples, but these are the two most obvious ones.

I will usually ignore a piece of fiction if it's clearly and only about the author's cause. If it's a more general story that is not a (barely disguised) rant, and has offers content beyond the author's agenda, then I will be much more likely to get into it.

[Lishy]

Well considering the people I knew in high school, they use to say "I wanna join the army so I can shoot people!"

So I guess Call of Duty works on them?

[Taleweaver]

Well considering the people I knew in high school, they use to say "I wanna join the army so I can shoot people!"

So I guess Call of Duty works on them?

I think that's the target group of "America's Army", another propaganda game.

[Ramidel]

One necessary but slightly irritating meme in a dating sim or ren'ai game is that having a relationship is good, and by extension, non-relationship is bad. In the majority of such games, ending up with no one is a Bad End.

Unfortunately necessary to the medium, but it still reinforces a somewhat ugly attitude (from my perspective).

[Auro-Cyanide]

One necessary but slightly irritating meme in a dating sim or ren'ai game is that having a relationship is good, and by extension, non-relationship is bad. In the majority of such games, ending up with no one is a Bad End.

Unfortunately necessary to the medium, but it still reinforces a somewhat ugly attitude (from my perspective).

That is the thing with EVERYTHING having an agenda, even if it is just supporting the status quo. I remember studying in university (I can't remember what the topic was about, modernism, semiotics, hyperreality, something like that) that human's have a tendency to think that the way they think is 'natural' and is at the top end of the evolutionary cycle. For many people democracy is 'natural', patriarchy is 'natural', commercialism is 'natural', because it is the world they live in and it is what they are most comfortable with. We also have a tendency to believe that the way we think is 'logical' and 'natural' and can often presume this extends to other people. We get upset when other people don't 'get it'. So even when you aren't intentionally embedding messages and agendas in your work, what you will be doing is filling that space with your status quo because that is what is 'natural' to you. There are a whole heap of themes you could pick out that are extremely common in most media that on the surface may appear natural are actually just a reflection of current societal thinking, the need for a relationship to have a whole and fulfilling life being one of them. It's difficult for us to see something and analyse it if we are surrounded by it every day. You have to look at it hard and ask a lot of questions. It's very easy to do with historical pieces, and modern pieces can be deconstructed in the same way, with a little bit of effort. And you can bet people in the future will look back at our current work and wonder what the hell we were thinking.

[papillon]

One necessary but slightly irritating meme in a dating sim or ren'ai game is that having a relationship is good, and by extension, non-relationship is bad. In the majority of such games, ending up with no one is a Bad End.

Unfortunately necessary to the medium, but it still reinforces a somewhat ugly attitude (from my perspective).

That was one of the motivations behind trying to make the Friendship outcomes in Magical Diary fulfilling ends in themselves and not a "failure" to reach a romance. Of course, the flip side of that is that some people complain that the friendship and the romance are too similar because they WANT the romance to get lots more special stuff and feel more successful than the friendship>