“Like all art that arises from culture, games are deeply political,” writes Alfie Down in her Guardian article entitled Video Games are Political. And according to American Psychology Association magazine, 91 % of children in the United States between the age of 2 and 17 play video games and nationally 99% of teenagers play these games. That is why, according to Erika Schickel, who in her article Grand Theft Mommy recounts her love of virtual games, video gaming” is currently framing the argument for the need to tighten restriction on content and rating video games to protect America’s youth from its immoral influences.”
However, the puritan impulses of the society toward sanctifying the field of gaming seems doomed from the start. It appeared not only destined to fail but also headed towards propagating the problem even more. Part of the problem seems to be the fact that “America’s youth” are not a homogeneous group that could be served with “one fits all” protective ruling. This is a challenge mainly because the games are informed by a culture which also lays on the foundations marked according to Sarkisian by favoritism in terms specific gender, color, and class. This makes the “protection of America’s youth” a contested proposition at best. This is to say that the psychology of game designing that relies on narratives of race, culture, and religion can’t be wholly divorced from the implicit and overt biases of the dominant culture.
Although political is not the first thing that comes to mind for the child or the adult player any video games nor are the expressed intentions of the producers, the tacit purposes behind the psychology that informs the designing, the marketing, the promotion and the messaging of games is political in their general sense. Schickel doesn’t subscribe to the ideas that gaming is immoral as she has shown in her story but only that the trapping of gaming is seductive for both adults and the young. Part of it this seduction is attributed to the sense of freedom that the gaming world promises for the child who lives under family sanctions of "dos and don’ts." Through the games introduced to the child wrapped as birthday or holiday gifts, the child draws a ticket for freedom. Because in the gaming world Schickel writes “everyone acts on their impulses, nobody watches their language; nobody has to bring a snack.” This freedom makes gaming perfect escape from the family of rules. Moreover, such relationships of the child playing with the world of the game and the promises of the act of gaming make gaming very complex political tool.
As a result, In the gaming world, the player is not only being political through identification with the already designated characters the storyline, the challenges or opportunities but also personally aggressed or acted upon as an avatar of cultural, religious, economic and political hegemonic voices the game’s politics perpetuates. Like any political tool, games serve the double purpose of offering a pleasurable respite for the player while unconsciously making the player the vessel of the messages the politics would want to impose. This is true for only on adults who feel they have a sense of distinguishing what to take or not but also on the children who are impressionable. Schickel writes, “What is interesting about the games is it forces you to behave in a socially unacceptable manner.” “The unacceptable” behavior, however, doesn’t present itself as such during the game. Because while gaming the individual is transformed. In the process of playing an avatar, the player itself become the avatar for the trapping of the psychology that I find the game designing.
Indeed, there are advantages that gaming brings to the child as Schickel implies in sharpening the child’s mind regarding problem-solving, insistence to complete task and sense of loyalty to peers. In spite of these advantages, Sarkeersian argues that associations made in the games to color, gender, and cultural codes, if they continue to promote the dominant "white good others bad myth," they remain dangerous. Further arguing the politics of games Alfie states games are “often biased – even when their designers intend them to be impartial – towards conservative, patriarchal and imperialist values such as empire, dominion and conquering by force.” For every side one takes, for every solution one searches, for every kill one scores and for every people one is forced to identify as a problem a political decision was made and the player by agreeing to go along with the “rules of the game” is made to condone them. Coercing the player into lending political consent to the popular culture.
As Schickel writes when playing the game, the player is no more partial or objective but subjective avatars acting like “Big Brother trying to mitigate the selfish drive that this game demands.” Everyone becomes a player in the politic of video games. There are works to be done to rid the world of video games of exoticization of women in general and colored women in particular on the one hand and the total misrepresentation or non-representation of diversity on the other.
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