Gameplay Journal Entry #7: Political Games
The first game that comes to my mind for a game that expresses political and social values is Grand Theft Auto. It’s a game that basically allows the player to experience all the bad parts of humanity that most people wouldn’t normally experience in real life. You can freely commit any crime, explore any social setting, and more. I believe GTA was born from this idea and it’s one of the many reasons it’s so successful still. The freedom for the player to do anything they want, in a world paralleled to the real one, is very inviting to many players.
“Central to the process of creating and understanding such games is an understanding of “procedural rhetoric” — the way that a videogame embodies ideology in its computational structure.”(Bogost) The way GTA was developed and designed was with an understanding of this rhetoric wherein the player can have the freedom to do what they want while still following a main story line, a heist mission, or free-play with friends in the online mode. The game has a commentary on politics in America as well as a social commentary on what people truly want in life and what being free to do those things without consequence might look like.
Bogost,, Ian. “Abstract.” Playing Politics: Videogames for Politics, Activism, and Advocacy, p. 1.