The mid-section of Stellaris isn’t fun, and that’s why I love it. Beyond the sci-fi trappings and Civilization-esque feedback loop waits an embedded critique of late capitalism, of the long and painful transition from a flawed democracy into a resource-obsessed, neoliberal culture overwhelmed by the interests of splinter groups like the Tea Party.
I think video games like pieces of art can find the Waldos that society sometimes cannot, and also, I think maybe the developers want us to think about why they do certain things in video games. I think a way to dismantle these kinds of racial stigmas in games would just be, for starters, to have a main character that is a person of color.
I think Roberta Williams and her team probably did a great job at the time of including so many different representations of women. It just gets back to that issue of representation vs. agency, like in some of the conversations about what’s coming out of Hollywood.
On those weekends, Dad and I would play video games—mostly RPGs. To be honest, a lot of the time, he played and I watched. I was a timid kid, afraid of making a wrong turn in a dungeon or, God forbid, killing the characters in battle.
We think video games are literature, and so why shouldn't there be literature about video games? That's the question we're hoping to answer here. Read more.
