Quote:
Originally Posted by Grungebob
Quote:
Originally Posted by foofoofun
I always find the idea of wanting apolitical things hilarious.
There’s no such thing as apolitical, everything has political value small or large. Changing a name is political, as is choosing to not change the name, or just making it have no official name somehow. Any choice made or not made is inherently political because we live in a connected world.
It’s also funny that people desire apolitical things so badly. It’s like having masochism as a religion. I haven’t met a single person who thought the world couldn’t be improved, and yet so many people who think that being apolitical is some kind of virtue. “Oh I don’t want to rock the boat, what if I accidentally make things better?”
Of course this is ignoring the people who claim to be apolitical to avoid having to admit that they just don’t like the politics that’s being shown, but that’s hilarious in it’s own way.
Whatever lets people survive day to day I guess.
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I absolutely disagree. Everything is NOT political. The definition of political is: relating to the government or the public affairs of a country.
Discussing a game’s terminology, which is how this has even popped up in this thread, is not indicative of any political position or political party affiliation, nor is discussing the merits of various names a form of virtue positioning.
Although I find your post compelling, you must be operating under some other definition of “political”.
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My definition of political is anything that derives from a choice made or not made, by a person. The key factor is that we live in a heavily connected world where any decision no matter how small affects people whether it’s meant to or not.
So lets consider choosing names for games. So for example lets say that we’re designing a brand new game, and you have a field zone and a graveyard. Now graveyard implies death for whatever is in the graveyard. You can change the name of the graveyard to just about anything to imply different meanings to the same mechanic.
If we go over a few options we can see how this choice can have many implications.
Let’s say you call it the retirement zone. Your implying with this decision that death is too harsh for you, that you believe value is gained by the censorship of violence.
Let’s say you call it the hellzone. Your implying that not only do your characters die they go to some version of hell. This change implies that you are drawing on the common associations of hell in yourself and your audience. Depending on the rest of the terms you use this could imply a pro or anti religious stance. You can get similar results by calling the graveyard heaven.
Now let’s say that you decide to just leave it as graveyard. You may think you’re not taking a stance, but actually you are. You’re choosing to not censor it to retirement nor are you choosing a more vivid approach. You’re choosing to not make a choice.
Where this fully becomes political is that assumedly your planning on selling your new game. Those choices you made are going to be presented to the public for them to interact with. This is where your choices will impact people and it’s also where people can make the choice to buy and support your game and consequently your decisions when making that game. Any choice you made will be judged and reflected on by other people, and their choice to buy or influence others to buy your game is also how people will express support of your choices.
It’s the combination of choices and living in a connected world where things get political. It’s unavoidable.