I try to actively avoid observing video games exclusively through my ideological lens for a variety of reasons. I like Freedom Fighters, and that game's brain is fucking stupid. But I really can't talk about this game without bringing up the labor theory of value, and this simulation's fundamental failure. For such an in depth and frankly well made business simulator, the game's stark lack of focus on labor is understandable but leaves the game feeling incomplete.
Profit comes from what the capitalist is able to extract from surplus labor. Their ability to extract more profit (and by that extension, the ability to squeeze labor further) is determined by environmental and political circumstances, as well as the workforce's ability (or lack thereof) to claw back the fruits of their labor. These are not factors that this DOS game probably could have or had any interest in dealing with outside of a few minor factors, which is disappointing because the rest of the game rules (for what it is). The presentation is a corporate mid-90's look, if you insert the face icons of this game into anything else like Bauldr's Gate, it would be hilarious. Lots of balding men. The need to develop supply lines (from raw materials to distribution to the storefront) and keep on top of price trends is really fun once you get past the unreasonable learning curve. There's even a fairly competent stock simulation. The UI, for the time, does a good enough job to where I never felt like I had to fight against the game to do what I wanted. The scenarios provide a reasonable challenge, and the AI is much more competent than a lot of its 4x contemporaries like Master of Orion II or Ascendancy. There's even a solid voiced tutorial, although the game is still on the Dwarf Fortress end of accessibility.
I still haven't played the sequel, and I hope that it placed more of a focus on the labor aspect of running a conglomerate. Capitalism Plus, within its limitations, is still an interesting simulation that does what it sets out to to well.
Profit comes from what the capitalist is able to extract from surplus labor. Their ability to extract more profit (and by that extension, the ability to squeeze labor further) is determined by environmental and political circumstances, as well as the workforce's ability (or lack thereof) to claw back the fruits of their labor. These are not factors that this DOS game probably could have or had any interest in dealing with outside of a few minor factors, which is disappointing because the rest of the game rules (for what it is). The presentation is a corporate mid-90's look, if you insert the face icons of this game into anything else like Bauldr's Gate, it would be hilarious. Lots of balding men. The need to develop supply lines (from raw materials to distribution to the storefront) and keep on top of price trends is really fun once you get past the unreasonable learning curve. There's even a fairly competent stock simulation. The UI, for the time, does a good enough job to where I never felt like I had to fight against the game to do what I wanted. The scenarios provide a reasonable challenge, and the AI is much more competent than a lot of its 4x contemporaries like Master of Orion II or Ascendancy. There's even a solid voiced tutorial, although the game is still on the Dwarf Fortress end of accessibility.
I still haven't played the sequel, and I hope that it placed more of a focus on the labor aspect of running a conglomerate. Capitalism Plus, within its limitations, is still an interesting simulation that does what it sets out to to well.
2 Comments
@casey_ sorry about the delay
by ""untying that knot would require dealing with the same propaganda as COD" , I meant that there's been a conscious decision by elements of the American military state to promote anti-communist left ideologies, and to paint already existing socialism as this despotic criminal project. There's no amount of art or promotion that you can do to oppose that viewpoint in a meaningful way, so it would either require confronting the state directly (which I do not condone nor can I elaborate on please don't ban me) or waiting until the state withers under its own corruption that the propaganda pipeline gets backed up.
by ""untying that knot would require dealing with the same propaganda as COD" , I meant that there's been a conscious decision by elements of the American military state to promote anti-communist left ideologies, and to paint already existing socialism as this despotic criminal project. There's no amount of art or promotion that you can do to oppose that viewpoint in a meaningful way, so it would either require confronting the state directly (which I do not condone nor can I elaborate on please don't ban me) or waiting until the state withers under its own corruption that the propaganda pipeline gets backed up.
cyanplaza
8 months ago
Not a bad question, I used to have similar hangups. There are a few points that in combination make the slop go down easy:
1) There is no consumption of media that has any revolutionary potential. Disco's been out for years, Mother 3 has a character in Smash Bros, Fallout 2 ends with calling the president a euphemism for "boogeyman". I'm very pessimistic on the idea that any positive anti-capitalist message will have real world gains or radicalization that someone's class position wouldn't have brought about on its own. I appreciate when games like Night in the Woods come out and have a view that I share, but putting that sort of weight onto a video game at best does nothing but reinforce preexisting views and usually has a ideologically incoherent view stemming from the western left's non-existence (see: Anarcute, The Outer Worlds).
2) The industry behind the medium compromises a game's potential revolutionary impact. I'm privileged in a way most people on the planet aren't in that, by living in Burgerland, I have high enough wages to have access to tens of thousands of games and the equipment to play it. I don't know if someone making less than I do or with higher debt obligations is going to be able to dump a ton of cash into a gaming setup, or even have the leisure time to game. A revolutionary gaming industry, to me, would be one that's accessible to all and gives voice to the working class (which, as the rate of profit continues to lower and the strain on the worker increases, is increasingly cut out of creative professions in general), while also ideally being an avenue to recreate a sense of community and connection to other people.
3) I don't think most reactionary games have political sway are that interesting in the first place. For example:
- 2044 AD might be the most self-consciously reactionary game I've ever played. It's also fucking awful and hilarious, filled with robot feminazis.
- Freedom Fighters is just Red Dawn, long after any coherent red scare has popular support. Or, at least at the time, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were more the political battleground than any arguments over AES. The Russians in that game might as well be Khador from Warmachine.
- There's the "contrarian reactionary" subgenre, with games like Postal or Bad Rats, but they're not trying to make any sort of argument for hierarchy, it's shock shlock. If you're radicalized by Hatred, you would have been radicalized by Nelson Muntz's "nuke the whales" poster.
- The right-wing appeal of the 40K series relies on a Napoleonic figure in the Emperor of Mankind that's attached to IRL figures post-hoc (see: the Trump 40k memes). The most sincere right wing political message (racial purity) is again, one of those that you were either already on board with if it resonates with you, and the setting doesn't provide sufficient plan of action because magic isn't real and tyranids probably don't exist. (To tie it in with earlier messages, the earlier sarcastic lampooning of how shitty everything is in the 40k universe has been gone from official media for so long that I don't even really like to bring it up anymore).
- Detroit: Become Human is a game that you should be upset with and is one that is far right in its viewpoints. It's also made by a very stupid french sex pest that's been a known problem for decades at his point. The funniest part about that game is it was released like, a couple of months before the Floyd riots, aged like milk instantly.
The most successful propaganda that I've seen in the medium of video games is like, COD. The military was pumping cash into creating some sort of propaganda game before it (see: America's Army) and if that franchise went away, they'd be working with someone else. Also, as selfish as this is, I've had a lot of fun with COD after turning up my nose to it when I was in middle school. The most frustrating games to me, the ones that really stick in my craw at this point are either games suffering from terminal capitalist realism (Devil Survivor 2) or infantile left anti-communism (The Outer Worlds, Papers Please), and untying that knot would require dealing with the same propaganda as COD.
tl;dr