Propaganda and Gaming

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Have you ever spread anti-capitalist propaganda while playing an online video game? Ever talked with your online friends, guild-mates, or quest buddies about revolutionary anti-capitalism? Ever deck out your character in, where accessible, custom made outfits; or build revolutionary habitat parodies? Mention that you were a revolutionary in your bio? Offhandedly remark about how event "such and such" is kinda like real-life event "so and so"?

I guess what I am trying to say is how often does your online gaming intersect with your revolutionary activity.

[hetz]

Have you ever spread anti-capitalist propaganda while playing an online video game Better use Youtube comments for that.

[TheRedAnarchist23]

I use practicaly everything as an excusse to talk about anarchism. Last week I went to a livestream where the person was playing Skyrim, and I started a discussion about politics in the chat section.

[hetz]

Why discuss politics there? There are appropriate places on the Internet for that.
Not to mention that most of these players ( at least in "mainstream" games ) are probably 4chan-esque types, will all that comes with that.

[Yuppie Grinder]

Most online gamers from my experience are 13 year old boys who delight iin making excessive use of racial epithets. Why bother?

[TheGodlessUtopian]

I use practicaly everything as an excusse to talk about anarchism. Last week I went to a livestream where the person was playing Skyrim, and I started a discussion about politics in the chat section.

How did that go? Was there an event in the game which sparked you to initiate the discussion?


Why discuss politics there? There are appropriate places on the Internet for that.

I do not simply mean discussion and debate but I mean the whole host of possible methods (see first post). But I am interested to see how many people have a ambition for revolutionary politics which spills over into their hobbies as well.


Most online gamers from my experience are 13 year old boys who delight iin making excessive use of racial epithets. Why bother?

The age of the average gamer is around 30(1) so you must be looking in the wrong areas or have bad luck. I wouldn't say bothering is the correct word as much as engineering the leftist gamers to organize themselves in game for whatever benefits can be had (small or large).
- - - - -
(1) http://www.theesa.com/facts/index.asp

[TheRedAnarchist23]

How did that go? Was there an event in the game which sparked you to initiate the discussion?

I just started talking about it, and caused a discussion about politics on a place where you are not supposed to talk about politics. I think the crisis makes people have more interest in politics. I got banned from the livestream, not because of my politics talk, but because I invented a name for the viewers of the guy who was streaming: the dravers (miss-spelled drivers), and the guy did not like that name.

[Hermes]

The age of the average gamer is around 30(1) so you must be looking in the wrong areas or have bad luck. I wouldn't say bothering is the correct word as much as engineering the leftist gamers to organize themselves in game for whatever benefits can be had (small or large).

How do they come up with that statistic?

More on-topic, only really if the conversation turns towards politics without my help. I don't really feel comfortable/knowledgeable enough to be the focus of a conversation so I just try and insert what I can.

[p0is0n]

I used to play online games more regularly when I was a bit younger, I still do although nowhere near as much as I used to. I let on about my political views many times, but most of the people I spoke to were far too apathetic to give a shit.

I feel like its much easier to not jump into theories and Lenins and Stalins and Marx and this and that, but rather talk about how ridiculously shitty life is, how ridiculous it is that this is considered normal or sane, and how fucking insane it is to wake up at 6 in the morning every fucking day just to go to a shitty job you hate where you make money for someone else, every god damn fucking day over and over and over until you're either fired or die. I found that many people agreed with this view, even though there were a handful of people who genuinely thought they were going to finish their education and get rich and live a happy life.

I did discuss marxism with someone who had recently read a book about the federal reserve in USA controlling society or some shit like that... I did my best to explain to him how class society worked, how the state was an organ of the ruling class and used to impose the hegemony of said class over other classes, etc. He was genuinely interested, and said he would read some Marx. He also mentioned that he had one of those moments when shit just clicks and starts making sense. There are many people whose understanding of marxism is far greater than mine, but I relate to what he said because when I first started reading Marx, no actually, when I first started reading Marx I didn't understand anything, rather: when I first started understanding Marx, I felt a similiar clicking feeling at certain times.

I also once met a leninist, which I found very interesting at the time.

I try to avoid communities centered around a game, especially for example gaming forums. The off-topic/debate sections are usually (I generalize of course, but this is what I personally have run into) filled with one out of two things

1. Less serious ones are filled with racist crap, and the odd libertarian. Essentially the types of attitudes you find on /pol/ e.g.

2. The more serious ones where you are banned for such things are filled with repeating liberal dogma and it just gives me a headache to even attempt to partake in those discussions.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

How do they come up with that statistic?

I think mass-surveys, I am sure their methodology is on the site somewhere. In any case the number I keep hearing from most sources is the average age of gamers is between 25-30.

[Red Commissar]

There are a few people I talk to who like games and are also leftist, but I've never really found a community filled with them. At best you find liberal types who are bearable to me, at worst racists and lolbertarians. So yeah basically if I game with someone who is "leftist", it's because I met them elsewhere and not through the game.

I'm not the kind of user to spam chat box or the voice channels with political things and try to start conversations. I don't go around gaming forums for that purpose either. It's a dead end honestly because from my experience many gamers tend to live well and there's a certain kind of mentality to be expected with that. I mean I come from that setting too, but I'm more the exception to the rule if anything.

[Lord Daedra]

I don't know about propaganda but i have explained things like the stupidity of libertarianism and how the world isn't going to end tommorow. If you want to convert a libertarian gamer bring up Bioshock, to us it's gospel.

[p0is0n]

I don't know about propaganda but i have explained things like the stupidity of libertarianism and how the world isn't going to end tommorow. If you want to convert a libertarian gamer bring up Bioshock, to us it's gospel.
I've never played Bioshock myself, though I hear it is a good game. Elaborate?

[Let's Get Free]

I haven't played video games since I was like, 16.

[#FF0000]

i troll online video games by stating my irl opinions

[Rugged Collectivist]

Sometimes, but I rarely openly say I'm a communist. Mostly I just criticize peoples' shitty views without putting my own forward. One time I was playing a game with a lot of customization, and I gave my character an urban guerrilla style outfit, with a bullet belt and a Castro hat, complete with red star. I didn't do it for "propaganda" or anything, I just thought it looked badass.

I'd also like to point out that I don't really start political discussions, I just participate in them when they happen. As a rule I don't like to talk politics with my clan/guild because that might cause shitty arguments and distract from the actual gameplay.

[TheRedAnarchist23]

I have many accounts with the name TheRedAnarchist23, so it is not very hard for people to understand I am anarchist. I tend to start discussions about politics on gaming forums and livestream chats. Yesterday I was chatting on a gamming livestream and when I found out one of the people in the chat was a german nationalist I expressed my anger, and when I saw that he was not worth the time, I quit the chat because I was so disguted by things he said.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

I've never played Bioshock myself, though I hear it is a good game. Elaborate?

It is essentially a game about what happens when capitalism is left to its own devices and is allowed free reign. Its a FPS set in an underwater city with a plot that has quite the reveal. It is also a game where one can analyze it to the ends of the earth. One of the great games of this generation.

Indeed, I have met people in socialist youth groups who were introduced to radical politics thanks, in part, to games like Bioshock.

[Manic Impressive]

I used to play eRepublik it was good for a while I even came to Revleft due to another member recommending it. I've kept in touch with many of the people who played it years after. We had an alliance of political parties called the Internationale, we ran communes where workers received a portion of their produce instead of wages. The plan was to drive out other businesses by undercutting them, a kind of Proudhonist economic warfare. The best thing about it for me was talking to people from all over the world, attempting to speak Spanish to the Venezuelans and Columbians. The best interactions I had I think was the Indonesians. As communist literature is illegal there I was able to send them the communist manifesto for them to read for the first time and stuff like that.

[Fnord]

On minecraft there is a handful of openly socialist clans, let alone serious and active ones. There is however a single clan of Marxists I am apart of that was quite successful in implementing socialism on multiple servers in the past and in nearly all of them quickly became the richest clan on the server due to the activity, sharing of resources, and communal means of production. Depending on what type of socialism you use to fit the mechanics of the server though, it usually requires a mutual trust of all members not to steal or hoard unless you use different methods.

[bcbm]

when i used to play counter strike source my in game name was 'osama bin laden' and my spray was a picture of the wtc getting hit by a plane with 'owned' written at the bottom.

[Rafiq]

when i used to play counter strike source my in game name was 'osama bin laden' and my spray was a picture of the wtc getting hit by a plane with 'owned' written at the bottom.

Aahhh come on

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[Rugged Collectivist]

I only had Bioshock and Bioshock 2 for a week, and I never finished the first one or started the second, but from what I saw of the first one it was incredible. My favorite character was the crazy doctor that thought he was talking to Aphrodite.

Bioshock infinite looks even better. It takes place on a floating city in the 1910s. All hell has broken loose and there are two factions vying for control. On the left you have the Vox Populi, a group of anarcho-stalinists who are rampaging through the city, throwing rich people down stairs and covering everything in red cloth.

On the right you have nationalist, racist, fascist types who are backed by the cities xenophobic American ruling class. Also they have George Washington robots with Gatling guns.

[Fire]

I do from time to time. I've started to get feed back that I'm an argumentative troll though so I usually don't bring it up unless I see someone else being a jerk. Like being pro-military.

I refuse to play black ops single player any further and have lost interest in the multiplayer too. It's the only call of duty game I have and it is racist and pro-imperialist as fuck. I heard they even got a literal war criminal, Oliver North as a consultant. F that.

[Fire]

Interesting. I liked Bioshock but didn't play the sequel

Whats funny about Bioshock is it shows a lolbertarian objectivist society collapsing under the weight of its ideology but objectivists love the game because they like Andrew Ryan and see it as an endorsement of the society that they want, even though that society failed horribly.

[Rafiq]

I do from time to time. I've started to get feed back that I'm an argumentative troll though so I usually don't bring it up unless I see someone else being a jerk. Like being pro-military.

I refuse to play black ops single player any further and have lost interest in the multiplayer too. It's the only call of duty game I have and it is racist and pro-imperialist as fuck. I heard they even got a literal war criminal, Oliver North as a consultant. F that.

But don't you want to play as Aparthied backed UNITA thugs????

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[Althusser]

I play Playstation Home sometimes with my soviet uniform on (promo costume from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) and spew leftist rhetoric. I've actually had some meaningful conversations there surprisingly.

[Red Commissar]

I refuse to play black ops single player any further and have lost interest in the multiplayer too. It's the only call of duty game I have and it is racist and pro-imperialist as fuck. I heard they even got a literal war criminal, Oliver North as a consultant. F that.

Yeah, Oliver North was brought on as a consultant and he was also used in some of their promotional campaigns to emphasize the game was authentic in its treatment of real world conflicts. This was a big enough deal for Battlefield 3 to say they were doing the same, and more recently that bad game MoH: Warfighter actually had input from some guys with seal team six (game sucks as far as reviews show). I think it's an acknowledgement by the military of the potential uses of video games to try and get their viewpoints out, much as they've been doing helping out movies (like Transformers). So there is another sort of propaganda going, but it's questionable how much this has repead for them. Most I can see that is appreciably different is I think there is more gun love, at worst a childish conception of war as a humanitarian endeavor.

I guess this could also make for a discussion elsewhere how Ollie North, after being so thoroughly torn apart in the 80s and left out to dry by the Reagan administration to dodge the bullet from Iran-Contra, nowadays has his own gig going on Fox TV and got on board with a AAA video game title.

An odd inversion of common shooter mechanics can be seen in Spec Ops: The Line. The game play is not spectacular in that game, but some of the things shown in it break with conventional shooter mechanics. In a way it makes you dislike what you are doing and even the ending could be read as a meta-commentary about the shooter genre.

[Fourth Internationalist]

I play an MMORPG and on their forums I met a conservative Christian. Pro-life, anti-gay marriage, creationist, etc. We first met on a thread about evolution, then that turned into religion and aliens. We met in-game and discussed Christianity and he tried to convert me, understand what happened to make me atheist. He said how because I used to Catholic so that's why I stopped believing in it and that Lutheranism is the true one etc. We began talking again after he began playing again. He was now a Constitution loving Ron Paul libertarian. We discussed the falseness of politicians and the growing police state we live in. I had become a communist while he was gone and he was talking about Ron Paul and so I told him we should have a Marxist as president. He gave the typical communism doesn't work, human nature, etc. He's quit recently because a few years ago some investment company or whatever now owns 55% of the company that started in a nerd's house so now the game is all about making more money. Grrrr!

[nativeabuse]

Most online gamers from my experience are 13 year old boys who delight iin making excessive use of racial epithets. Why bother?


You have to target the youth, most adults are already set in their ways and you will do nothing but waste time talking to people who are never going to change their views.

[Red Commissar]

I play an MMORPG and on their forums I met a conservative Christian. Pro-life, anti-gay marriage, creationist, etc. We first met on a thread about evolution, then that turned into religion and aliens. We met in-game and discussed Christianity and he tried to convert me, understand what happened to make me atheist. He said how because I used to Catholic so that's why I stopped believing in it and that Lutheranism is the true one etc. We began talking again after he began playing again. He was now a Constitution loving Ron Paul libertarian. We discussed the falseness of politicians and the growing police state we live in. I had become a communist while he was gone and he was talking about Ron Paul and so I told him we should have a Marxist as president. He gave the typical communism doesn't work, human nature, etc. He's quit recently because a few years ago some investment company or whatever now owns 55% of the company that started in a nerd's house so now the game is all about making more money. Grrrr!

I had a case like that, except in the opposite. My friend was the more radical minded one and I was the more "moderate" as far as American politics are concerned back when we were younger. We used to do a lot of gaming on Unreal Tournament together, and I think we had some common ideas on social liberty and such, except the guy was the activist-type with some strong dislike towards corporations and the like. We avoided talking politics because I got ruffled with the kind of things he'd go on about.

Oddly, in the past four years I became more radical and he ended up swinging to Ron Paul lolbertarian. In a way we traded places, though he can't tolerate me like I tolerated him.

[Questionable]

I'm really good at the Heavy Weapons Guy in TF2 so I made my name "Man of Steel" and I have a picture of Joseph Stalin so every time I kill someone they see the picture (The game zooms in on whoever kills you).

I doubt that turned anyone into a socialist thought.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

I'm really good at the Heavy Weapons Guy in TF2 so I made my name "Man of Steel" and I have a picture of Joseph Stalin so every time I kill someone they see the picture (The game zooms in on whoever kills you).

I doubt that turned anyone into a socialist thought.

I had a hammer and sickle spray when I played Day of Defeat semi-professionally. Ah, those were the days. Probably the only time I have been good at anything and belonged to anything approaching a community in any deeper way. Ah, I miss those days.

[Philosophos]

sometimes for a joke... the thing is that people now know about capitales (capitalists), resist, freedom and other revolutionary stuff. At least they learned through dota 2 some things :lol: