ABSTRACT

Developers of AAA videogames which feature recognizable military forces, governmental law enforcement agencies, and geopolitical conflicts routinely make claims that their works do not make “political statements.” This article takes seriously the claims made by several developers, revealing their attempts to radically narrow the definition of the term “political.” Through a critical discourse analysis, this article will articulate several key theses held forth by the developers regarding systemic media and expressivity, the responsibility of the player, and the inevitable constraints of production and technology. These points are deployed by the developers to build an argument for a reduced scope of the term “political,” as well as to propose an ideological framing of videogames as an expressive medium, which ultimately serve to obscure the role that ideology plays in the production of videogames.

摘要

以可识别的军队、政府执法机构和地缘政治冲突为特色的 AAA 视频游戏的开发者经常声称他们的作品没有做出“政治声明”。本文认真对待几位开发人员的主张，揭示了他们试图从根本上缩小“政治”一词定义的范围。通过批判性话语分析，本文将阐述开发者就系统媒体和表现力、玩家的责任以及不可避免的生产和技术约束提出的几个关键论点。开发人员部署这些观点是为了缩小“政治”一词的范围，并提出将视频游戏作为一种表达媒介的意识形态框架，