http://www.metromagazine.com.au | © ATOM | Metro Magazine 195• 127HITTING THE RIGHT TARGETS
Dan GoldingOne of the most bizarre things about the videogame world today
isthat6NKEDMRSDHM, a game franchise dating back to the 1980s, is
controversial again. If you had separated yourself from the rest of
the planet over the last year or so, that might not seem particularly
surprising – but for different reasons.6NKEDMRSDHMhas always been a
little controversial for its violent imagery, its role in helping to create
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brasher siblings,#NNLand0T@JD. Perhaps, you might think, this
new iteration of the6NKEDMRSDHMfranchise has found yet another
way to take bad taste to the extreme. The groundbreaking 1992
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This has always been a fairly stable element of the series: 2009’s
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the player no choice but to become a rebel. In the early 1990s, this
kind of material would have seemed absurd, even a little gauche, in
its potential trivialisation of horrendous world events. In more recent
times, on the other hand, some sectors of the videogame commu
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liberately political statements, so the fact that6NKEDMRSDHM(( 3GD
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exceptional nature of current events. Yet the developers have, to
their credit, owned this position and happily taken on the role of the
videogame world’s Antifa (and cannily used it as a marketing tool).
Pete Hines, vice president of marketing at6NKEDMRSDHM publisher
Bethesda, told1NKKHMF2SNMD:
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This might seem like a slightly surreal milestone to mark the way
the political sphere has changed in recent times, but there’s more
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like Milo Yiannopoulos (who also recently toured Australia) delib
erately use the outrage, resentment and outsider anxiety common
among young men in the videogame world to recruit political con
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a nexus between disenfranchised young men interested in vide
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them towards politics.
Videogame culture contains a great many normal people who
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actively campaign against it (such as, it now seems,6NKEDMRSDHM’s
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tremists, and that fact is getting more evident by the day.5("$
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who style themselves as jokers and trolls, to authentic white su
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the videogames industry, this is hardly a surprise: Valve, once also
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interest in either social commentary or regulating the platforms and
services it manages. The company has enjoyed immense creative
success by being a workplace with little hierarchy (employees are
often free to work on whatever project they please with no line man
agement), but this has also fostered big problems. Valve does not,
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no problem at all (so the thinking goes).
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need 6 NKEDMRSDHMafter all.- • • • • • •
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NE "HMDL@,Screenhub,Kill Your Darlingsand ACMI. She is a cura-
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Technology Sydney as well as a freelance arts commentator and
journalist.#@M &NKCHMF V@R EQNL SN SGD CHQDBSNQ NE SGD %QDDOK@X
Independent Games Festival, and is a lecturer in media and commu-
nications at Swinburne University of Technology. He is also a freelance
arts and videogames journalist, and the co-author ofGame Changers:
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VHSGŭ+DDM@U@M#DUDMSDQ. mWOLFENSTEIN II: THE NEW COLOSSUS