The Politics of the Video Game 476
illuminata writes "Can the video game industry keep its mittens out of the political slugfest? According to Kevin Parker's article Free Play, they sure can't. In it, he cites Dreamcatcher's Gore and Sega's Legacy Online and Jet Set Radio Future as main offenders. He even goes on to point out how some people want video games to convey their favorite political message in the future. Are there any particular titles or game companies that you think lay on the politics too thick, or is it all just a bunch of foof?"
Politicians in Videogames (Score:5, Funny)
Is this the one where you invent your own Internet?
Re:Politicians in Videogames (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Politicians in Videogames (Score:5, Funny)
"Oh no! The election has been stolen by Republican Ninjas!!! Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the president???"
--Stephen
Re:Politicians in Videogames (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Politicians in Videogames (Score:4, Funny)
Please stand by, someone will be posting shortly to flame you for mildly joking about Al Gore creating the Internet...
Re:Politicians in Videogames (Score:3, Informative)
Most political game ever! (Score:4, Funny)
Go figure... (Score:5, Funny)
The only computer game that makes me think of politics and politicians is Thief [eidosinteractive.com]. Not because of the gameplay...
Re:Go figure... (Score:4, Interesting)
In 1987, Ronald Reagan's message appeared at the start of arcade games.
Along with the words of wisdom from FBI director William Sessions.
Today, the only place you still see the "Just Say No" campaign is on the
plastic urinal cheese holders in public restrooms.
Every game that tries to have PLOT, gets preachy. (Score:5, Interesting)
NARC, same thing.
Deus Ex - politicians.
EVO (back on the SNES) and Ecco the Dolphin = environmental nutjob propaganda.
Most of the Japanese titles have the same stuff going on as well, only they're really big into post-apocalyptic stuff after Hiroshima/Nagasaki took place; lacking an evil-stereotypical-bad-guy for their culture (you know, the one who is merely "Out to Rule the World) they go for the "I'm gonna blow everything up haha I'm insane" bad guy instead. (see: Sephiroth)
Re:Every game that tries to have PLOT, gets preach (Score:5, Funny)
Mods, Politics (Score:5, Interesting)
Doom for Columbine [google.com] is falsely accused of being political, but I think that mods like this may pave the way for better use of balance than more politically engendered titles, with corporate backing and all the politics that goes with that. Keeping it freeware is the key! (Then nobody can mess with it.)
Re:Mods, Politics (Score:2)
Doom ][ was the best political game (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Doom ][ was the best political game (Score:2, Funny)
As a representative of ... (Score:3, Funny)
Now this is exactly what's wrong with Hell-Demons, (Score:3, Funny)
But where are you when your demonic hordes are defiling bleak hungarian villages? Where's your statement urging restraint from fellow demons?
I haven't seen such hypocricy since the great zombie protest on the Washington mall in 97, and we all know how that ended.
fucking racist (Score:5, Funny)
Then they came for the hell demons...
As friggin awsome as it is... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:As friggin awsome as it is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:As friggin awsome as it is... (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, I don't know - maybe training for the military?
It's not exactly true-to-life, but the Army has been using video games as training utilities for possibly 10 years. When they first introduced a Delta Force-type game to their soldiers, they found that the soldiers were voluntarily playing at all hours - voluntarily training.
It was a totally new concept for them. And you know what? It took off. I'd say that counts as another purpose.
This isn't the first time the public has received some of the military's modifications. Some of the modifications made to Operation: Flashpoint for use in the Army made it into O:F's expansion.
It won't be the last time, either. Full Spectrum Warrior is being used for training those commanding troops.
You're comming down really hard on something just based on a assumption.
-lw
FYI (Score:4, Informative)
No real secret.
Re:As friggin awsome as it is... (Score:2, Flamebait)
Re:As friggin awsome as it is... (Score:5, Funny)
True, but it doesn't always work for them. Just look at that OTHER DoD game, America's Navy: Paint Chipper/Latrine Scrubber.
The game they never released (Score:3, Funny)
Re:As friggin awsome as it is... (Score:2)
Think of it as advertising.
Re:As friggin awsome as it is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:As friggin awsome as it is... (Score:5, Funny)
Stop the "Iraq had WMDs" bullstuff (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's not kid ourselves; if there was real, concrete proof that Saddam Hussein had WMDs and planned to use them against the United States, George W. Bush would have a press conference inside of an hour to trumpet their discovery, and he'd be flogging it in every other sentence on the campaign trail. The fact that Bush-Che
Re:As friggin awsome as it is... (Score:2)
Grand Theft Auto III (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Grand Theft Auto III (Score:5, Funny)
To be fair, I was too busy attacking random passers-by with my M16 to notice.
Re:Grand Theft Auto III (Score:2)
Re:Grand Theft Auto III (Score:5, Interesting)
I've ensured important tax breaks for gun retailers, real estate developers, and I've cut the cost of policing, saving the city 2%, or 25 cents per household, over a six year period.
Re:Grand Theft Auto III (Score:5, Interesting)
Ive been playing GTA3 again lately as a "noble criminal."
I havnt stolen anyone except other criminals' vehicles.
I havnt shot/run over/killed any innocents. (This is TOUGH!)
I follow the missions word-for-word, and make it a point not to harm the citizens that are not involved.
Yes, its more challenging, and you dont get any rewards for doing it, but its a unique perspective in playing the GTA games.
F00F? (Score:3, Funny)
Or was it all just a bunch of foof?"
quote
I thought that was a Pentium bug?http://www.x86.org/errata/dec97/f00fbug.htm
Hollywood (Score:5, Interesting)
It's hard to make something realistic and not weigh in an opinion.
Re:Hollywood (Score:4, Insightful)
E.g.:
- SimCity was already mentioned in the article: it does not try to tell you that this ideology is better, or that other ideology is to blame.
- Capitalism II would sound like an obvious target to pick on, but here's the rub: it doesn't actually tell you that capitalism is better. It just is. You're a capitalist in an ideal capitalist world (i.e., something as inexistant as ideal communism), now go make some money. Nowhere does it say "well, see, if it was communism, everyone would starve now."
Nor does it try to spoon-feed you any particular consequence of your actions, to reinforce some ideology. It does not even attempt to judge social effects of your paying larger salaries, or being more environment friendly, or whatever. It doesn't tell you "greedy republicans have caused a recession" or "bleedin' heart socialists are costing the economy a fortune." It stays neutral.
- Steel Panthers is one of the most realistic turn-based WW2 simulations. It takes more factors into account (e.g., armour slope vs trajectory height) than the whole C&C series combined. You'd think it would be a logical choice for getting preachy, right?
But it doesn't preach anything. It just happens in WW2. We all know what happened, we all know who was evil and who was guilty of what. So the game doesn't need to keep stappling upon your forehead "you're an evil sonofabitch for playing a Wehrmacht officer" nor "you've chosen to play as one of Stalin's minions, you commie traitor". If you want to play with German Tigers or Soviet JS-3 tanks, there you go.
- I'll even say that Jet Set Radio isn't necessarily _that_ guilty. A future in which _someone_ is an oppressive dictator, isn't that hard to imagine. The problem would be if the game force-fed you ideological stuff like _who_ is going to be the evil dictator, or _why_ is your country going to the dogs.
Now contrast it with other games which feel a need to not only preach, but preach total unproven bullshit. They don't even feed you some neutral fact, like "by 2034, computers should be 1 million times faster", they feed you an _ideology_. A _dogma_.
Like that in the next 30 years we're all going to be flooded because we didn't stop global warming. Never mind that not even most meteorologists aggree on that, never mind that only 2% of greenhouse gasses are produced by humans, never mind that the last 20 years have brought a steady global _cooling_, never mind that even before that the grand total warming was 1 degree in a whole bloody century, never mind the evidence that it may just be a change in how much heat the sun sends this way, etc.
I.e., regardless of whether you want to believe in it or in the contrary, it's something still not proven and still not understood. But the game already feeds you one particular political view, and shows you some "consequences" like they're a proven scientiffic fact.
Or like this or that economic approach _will_ bring us all into poverty and oppression. Sorry, as the saying goes, even if you put all the world's economists end to end, they still wouldn't reach a conclusion. There are people who've studied all their life how the economy works, and they _still_ don't fully understand it. If it was that simple, obvious and fully understood, everyone would know exactly what to do to get perpetual growth and never a recession.
But no, a game designer with no clue of the economy, feels like he's more qualified than thousands of economists. Not only he knows what't the One True Way (TM) the economy works, he also can extrapolate and show you an accurate result of what it will be like in 100 years from now. And exactly why.
Laughable.
From Reading the article.... (Score:4, Insightful)
most of the slant seems to be definitely doomsday, environmental, and decidely anti-government..
agan, this is just from reading the article. I haven't played any of the games mentioned.
Re:From Reading the article.... (Score:3)
Not surprising, given the audience. These are features of the target audience for video games, and "geeks" in general. Also unsurprising that such people would develop games and have a desire to spread their political beliefs...
From a personal perspective, I think those are laudable goals, I however disagree with the means to such an end...
There are reasons for this (Score:4, Interesting)
A conservative distopia would be a Communist dictatorship, or a world like 1984. In that the individual cannot do anything, so there is no game. If they could then it is not a conservative distopia, as there is possibility of overthrowing the evil government. Perhaps you could play a nasty enforcer, locating those who dare to speak out against the government and getting rid of them, but it seems people don't want to identify so closely with an evil character.
I would say conversely that all the "good world" games, especially those space-trading ones, present an Ayn Rand fantasy world where everybody seems quite happy despite the absolute freedom to even shoot your competitors.
Re:From Reading the article.... (Score:3, Insightful)
agan, this is just from reading the article.
Yes, just the ones mentioned in the article. You obviously haven't played HippieBlaster 5000!
Seriously, though, remember NARC? How about these Tom-Clancy-novel-based games I keep seeing commercials for? How about America's Army? I'm pretty sure there are such things as right-wing and pro-government slanted video games. Certainly there are patriotic video games.
Games as speach (Score:5, Interesting)
KFG
foof? (Score:2, Funny)
a) The stuff that comes out of your ears when you have a cold.
b) An inane, repetitive joke on /. (see In Soviet Russia...)
c) A totally made up word with no actual meaning.
That's nothing. (Score:5, Funny)
Gore (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Gore (Score:2, Funny)
Like in "The Time Machine" ? (Score:2)
War games (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know if JSRF (Score:2)
It is less political than more of an attitude (authorities are to be distrusted, corporations are greedy, etc.). Unless a game made a specific call to a political item (say Echo the Dolphin and the environme
FreeCIV is the most political game (Score:2)
And with all the names of countries and political personalities.
Not forgetting the overthrowing of governments, and the happy-tax-science corelation, and the drivers towards the behaviour in each government type.
Communism promotes military strength.
Republic promotes sabotage/incite.
Democratic promotes growth.
911 survivor (Score:2)
the project looks dead, though...
Why not? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why not? (Score:3, Funny)
Too crowded.
KOTOR (Score:2, Funny)
How about? (Score:4, Insightful)
Politics and the games designer (Score:5, Interesting)
So in my game I had FARC narcoguerrillas, right-wing death squads and I penalized the player for causing unnessesary collateral damage. There are some who will no doubt think I went to far, as if games on current events can somehow be cosily insulated from politics. But I reckon I did the right thing.
What a bunch of foof! (Score:2)
Re:What a bunch of foof! (Score:2)
Maybe most games you follow are FPS, but since I don't care for the genre, I couldn't name more than a handful of FPS total, though I acknowledge that there are lots out there.
With all the choice we have, it's a great time to be a gamer.
Politics gives to game a new interesting face (Score:3, Interesting)
Then in Ages of Empires and Civilizations, I was a king!
In Starwars Galaxies, I played a mayor for a while. With a bunch of friends, we started a town, it grown big, my friends and some of the folks were reelecting me each week, until someone started to complain about my politics and won the vote against me. :(
Since I had a lot of powerfull artisans still in my camp, we boycotted thier artisans and raised the prices for them... heheheh, we showed those bastards how it was to be Cuban!!! héhéhéh
Politics make some games great!!! But it is not a must, just a good option games can count on.
Games tap into a rich tradition... (Score:4, Insightful)
There are of course very few game plots that approach the beauty of a well-written novel, or even a mediocre one.
Off the top of my head... (Score:5, Interesting)
Even as far back as Frogger, we were witness to the environmental impacts that industrialization has on nature. The brave but fragile frog's futile attempts to cross a busy highway to get back home only show the producer's bias -- they never show the poor truck driver, driving for 20 hours straight just to earn a living, fighting exhaustion but alert enough to avoid swerving his big white truck into oncoming traffic, just to avoid a frog too stupid to stay off the road, as more of a hero.
In my opinion, it's unavoidable that for the most part, serious issues will always be portrayed in games with some bias. It's up to the player, then, to decide for themselves whether the game reflects a viewpoint that can be carried into the real world. Games such as Deus Ex explored a lot of the political ramifications of conspiracy theory, but let the player decide for themselves which was the best path.
Re:Off the top of my head... (Score:3, Informative)
That one was called Night Driver [klov.com].
Re:Off the top of my head... (Score:3, Funny)
I have it on good authority that Frogger is set in the year 2012, by which time almost all trucking, driving and piloting jobs had been replaced by more productive robotic systems. :)
--
Re:Off the top of my head... (Score:4, Interesting)
State of Emergency (Score:2)
...was pretty outwardly anti-Globalization.
It also got boring pretty quickly. Hopefully you bought it after it flopped and the sticker price was halved.
Jet Set Radio? (Score:5, Insightful)
The one that ends (depending on the game in the series) in either a skyscraper rooftop battle on a giant spinning record against an evil dj booth, or a battle with a three story disco mind-control robot?
Is Kevin Parker seriously trying to say that game has an overtly political message? This just goes to show; some people have a vivid imagination, but little common sense.
*holy fucking shit, Slashdot posters, what's with all the high mod posts with the mis-spelling of this word as 'rediculous' lately? Buy a damn dictionary.
Tom Clancy Games etc... (Score:2, Insightful)
Hezbollah video game (Score:3, Interesting)
Market vs. Command Economy (Score:2, Interesting)
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe I'm just a liberal hippie communist, but I always thought the basis of free government was a willingness to follow the rule of law, not brainwashing children into military service.
Re:Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (Score:3, Insightful)
In the real world, you've got the hawks who think that the only way to deal with terrorists is to hunt them down and shoot them in the face, and you've got the doves who think we should "identify the root causes" and that if we feed and make nice with terrorists, they'll s
Re:Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (Score:3, Insightful)
This is only accurate to the degree that everyone else is willing to follow the rule of law. When that is not the case, as seems inevitable, society must have organizations which operate outside the usual limits in order to enforce said laws. There are things the police do that an average citizen cannot. SC portrays the
Re:Just to stir up a hornet's nest... (Score:3, Informative)
The Gov't/Corporate corruption has gone over the top, and the people are in a state of half-revolution. Mostly this manifests in their simply running around the mall/downtown area/etc, with occassional looting, and various street gangs laying claim to random turf. And naturally the gov't gestapo-esque enforcers.
The camera/controls for that game are more than a little amaturish, and the gameplay pretty repeptitive and dry.
Overall it's not a very go
Re:Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (Score:3, Interesting)
1) My generation (the 30 and under crowd) has never, until very recently, had any concept of the notion of "Fighting for Liberty." We were all raised by the Children of the 60's dreams of Peace and Love, but never in 3000 years of human history has that *ever* been a successful method of international politics. Teaching our children that our freedoms are worth fighting for and dying for is an important lesson for
Going back as early as Pong (Score:5, Funny)
In the game, the waste is represented by a tiny dot with the major political players tossing it back and forth until one slips up, thereby accepting the waste within their district. Defeat comes to the player that proves they are unable to protect their constituants, with 21 being the threshold required to lose re-election.
You didn't really think it was a simple game of table tennis, did you?
Tux racer (Score:2)
"unbiased" is a disguise (Score:3, Insightful)
SimCity is pretty leftist (Score:3, Insightful)
It always bothered me that the SimCity manual editorializes that Reaganomics doesn't work. (Somewhere toward the back, in the section on economic srategies I think -- it's been a while.) I think the game is even set up to demonstrate that 'fact' for you under one of the pre-configured scenarios.
Now, that said, SimCity does a pretty decent job of teaching you firsthand that taxes are necessary and that overtaxation hurts as much or worse than undertaxation, so the political commentary isn't fatal, just annoying.
BTW, to all the Reagan-haters out there (and there are a lot of you) that are getting ready to click the "moderate" button: please consider that disagreeing is not same as flamebaiting or trolling. This is a discussion, not a war.
It did work, very well (Score:2, Insightful)
What Ronnie did wrong was increase spending greater than the increase in revenue (thus the increase in the debt).
Re:It did work, very well (Score:3, Insightful)
No, what Ronnie did wrong was accept the promise of Congress to make unspecified cuts in spending at a later date. They didn't. Coupled with the subsequent increases in spending (for both military and domestic programs), the deficit exploded.
The interesting part is that the deficit finally became a politically viable issue. Perot's support showed that people were willing to vote for someo
Re:SimCity is pretty leftist (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought it didn't?
Either way, that's the sort of thing that economists should figure out. It actually kind of bugs me that this is considered to be a "political" issue, as though peoples' belief or lack of b
Re:SimCity is pretty leftist (Score:4, Funny)
There's also something in the premise of the game that's unavoidable -- the assumption that a planning body should dictate the zoning of the land.
A question... (Score:5, Interesting)
Has technology really changed so much to make this difference, or has the view just been given a shady light in the events of the past 5 years?
I guess what im trying to say....in the words of David Cross, "What were the video games that hitler played?"
the popularity of videogames (Score:3, Insightful)
Witness "The Passion", which was an enormous success largely because it got people out to movies that normally can't stomach them. I think videogames tap into some of that.
As an example, I find SNL and the Daily Show irritating because lately they try to make lame political statements. So I just don't watch them anymore ... instead I stick to Chapelle Show, South Park, and adult swim.
I've kind of moved away from most movies, tv and music and towards videogames for similar reasons. They don't have a sophomoric political message to irritate me. I hope that doesn't change.
Re:the popularity of videogames (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't think South Park is political? To me, it's one of the clearest examples of political views being baked into entertainment out there today.
Re:the popularity of videogames (Score:3, Insightful)
Let me get this straight: you watch South Park because it doesn't try to make political statements?
Re:the popularity of videogames (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone who can stomach the ultraviolent Passion, but not The Daily Show, has more serious problems than just being politically offended.
Planetarion (Score:5, Insightful)
The entire game was a "strategy" game but it really involved simple uot and out politics. There were two kinds of successfull players.
1. Players that were good at the game, and good at the politics (the top tier)
2. Players that were bad at the game, but good at the politics.
Being Good at the game, that involves management of resources, being on till 3 am and getting up every 2 hours via an alarm clock.
Being good at politics was to find a lot of friends to help you.
When I started in round 3 of the game, you simply did not have to be good. All that you required was that you had friends that would CRUSH ANYONE THAT FOUGHT YOU.
I was a "good" player, which means I stayed up way to late, and got up way to early to monitor my fleet. I got crushed several times because I was picking on players who were not as good players but had better political connections.
The next round I actually got a couple friends together and we constantly were sending messages/e-mails/sitting in chat to constantly improve our political situation. My goal for that round was to get my galaxy (which i controlled a group of 25 people) to get into the top 800, instead we got into the top 400, mostly because of strong strategic alliances.
The game was pure rampant capatilism, except all companies had the same product and a few got a relative monopoly (the top 400 galaxies controled well over 90% of all resources)...
The game always reminds me as the best argument for government controls on large companies.
Planetarion sucked later on, but it really was exciting during that time.
Doom (Score:2)
Game designers responsibility (Score:2, Insightful)
It's about the culture, stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the author of the article has conflated "politics" with "economics" in the first few paragraphs. While I appreciate that Parker is critical that recreational pastimes like gaming may be taking themselves too seriously, I'm not sure what the hell his point is.
Is he also critical of Monopoly, with it's trvialized depiction of pre-tax-reform US industry and culture? Are fat little men in top hats really in charge of all public utilities, and able to charge whatever they want for rental of their slums? Shocking!
Singling out the so-called massively multiplayer games like Asheron's Call for being too "real" because the players are demanding a certain level of reality in their game play is a pretty weak argument that games, in general, are getting too political. Microsoft is in the business of selling software and subscriptions. Whether or not they are "scrambling" to offer what their subscribers want is hardly relevant.
People who design software and systems know that how the software is used in the wild is often very different than the your own idea of how it should be used. It's not surprising that people who pay good money to play Asheron's Call and Star Wars Galaxies want to create simulated economies, culture and history. As far as I'm concerned, this is just a more sophisticated versions of old BBS culture.
People grow culture. It's what we do.
I'm not convinced that any of this has anything to do with his other contention, that the software manufacturers themselves are getting over-political. Which is it? Are the customers demanding more immersive worlds, or the designers injecting overwrought politics into gaming? Are these really the same thing?
The other games he mentions seem to fall easily into the post-apocalyptic near-future scenarios that share dystopic fictions with a whole range of popular culture. Comics, anime and (of course) science fiction stories have mined this vein for decades. Placing your otherwise undemanding first-person shooter in some kind of science fiction setting to explain why you happen to be a hyper-muscled uber-soldier tearing holes in the "bad guys" seems perfectly reasonable to me.
How is this different from, say, Escape from New York or even "Buffy"?
While the author brings up some interesting points, he seems to miss the mark on every target he aims at. Maybe he needs to just relax and play some Unreal Tournament.
Metal Gear Solid (Score:3, Interesting)
Was Kojima trying to get a political message out? I think so. Did it affect the game in a negative way? Not really.
You're missing the real ones. (Score:5, Interesting)
The Civilization (including Alpha Centauri) series. These games make certain political ideologies inherent in the game, as well as allowing players to make their own political choices. Alpha Centauri makes (implicitly) the point that a Fundamentalist religious government is a viable form of government, while on the other hand, implying that certain losses of liberty would take place. This is a very political statement. It lets you choose between horribly oppressing your citizens and letting them run free and happy -- (and lets you win either way) a VERY political choice.
The SimCity series is a perfect example of implicit rules -- it assumes that unless you, the Mayor (the government), do it, nothing will happen in your city. While fun for gameplay, does this send the right message? You can agree or disagree.
Does anyone remember Privateer 2? The finale of the game was you taking over your dead brother's interstellar crime ring that you'd been fighting the whole game. There's definitely some serious debate here, or with Jedi Knight, where if you make the "bad" choices, you become the Evil Emperor yourself. But if you look at the "choice" you make, it's certainly up to debate about whether it was right or wrong.
Someone above mentioned Splinter Cell:Pandora Tomorrow. The makers of the game have very specific political beliefs, but they're pretty subtle in the game.
At any rate, I found this article to be very interesting, and expanded on some of the points it mentioned.
http://reason.com/0404/fe.kp.free.shtml
Final Politics.. (Score:3, Informative)
In VII, the pro-enviromentalism aspect of the story is basically impossible to avoid. The large power reactors are killing the planet, and the party is trying to stop them.
VIII and IX really relaxed the political aspects of it all I think, going for a more basic love and fantasy story respectivly..
X really brought it back with a vengence however. It's basically a cautionary tale on the dangers of religious devotion and conservative acting. (Why do we do it? Because we always have). Won't spoil it for anybody who hasn't played it, but everything gets turned upside down on its ear near the end.
Two Words: (Score:3, Interesting)
I do not understand the point.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Example:
"Bruce Wayne's parents were shot in the alley one night." OMG ANTI GUN AGENDA!
"Your parents were poor and sick, and being unable to afford medical help died when you were at a young age..." OMG SOCIALIST MEDICINE AGENDA!
Both of these are fairly standard boiler-plate backgrounds, but fall under the article's scope of questioning.
Vice City (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't get away from politics (Score:3, Insightful)
There are two basic categories for evaluating a games politics.
- How well does the simulation match reality. This applies even for fantasy games, because while the physics may be fantasy or hightly simplified, there are still elements that symbolize abstract features of real things.
- The second is what moral framework the game provides for its simulation. This is no different from a novel, whether realistic or fantasy.
For instance, you are blowing up other ships/people who are presumably sentient beings. Hopefully there is a good reason for this. If the reason is "it's fun", that is politics. If the reason is "to stop them from destroying me first", that is a different kind of politics.Re:Politicical Gaming? (Score:2)