Over the last several months, PCG has run 2 steady moralizing editorial lines - one is that certain big releases are never trans-positive enough, even when they try. The other is that from Lara Croft to Civilization to The Curious Expedition, even ambivalent portrayals of empire make PCG physically ill.
I don’t intend to dispute these stances or begrudge them on their own for anything other than their monotonality.
However it seems incongruent then that the same publication, indeed the very same authors, gleefully celebrates mass murder in games, such as the recent glib feature on how you can murder everyone in a Hitman level and press their blood into wine. In fact PCG reflexively defends the industry’s addiction to hyper-violence from various non-gamer scolds.
I would be interested to hear PCG staff defend the disconnect in their moral preening here. Do they argue in earnest that transphobia and imperialism are morally more objectionable than sociopathic mass murder? Or do they merely accept violence in games because it is so common?
I will be the first to admit I don’t have the answers; I like plenty of games that are, in the end, centered around violence. But it seems fairly unserious for someone to criticize 4x games for promoting “progress” through empire in one breath while glorying in the fun of branding defeated Shadow of War orcs as slaves in another.
I don’t intend to dispute these stances or begrudge them on their own for anything other than their monotonality.
However it seems incongruent then that the same publication, indeed the very same authors, gleefully celebrates mass murder in games, such as the recent glib feature on how you can murder everyone in a Hitman level and press their blood into wine. In fact PCG reflexively defends the industry’s addiction to hyper-violence from various non-gamer scolds.
I would be interested to hear PCG staff defend the disconnect in their moral preening here. Do they argue in earnest that transphobia and imperialism are morally more objectionable than sociopathic mass murder? Or do they merely accept violence in games because it is so common?
I will be the first to admit I don’t have the answers; I like plenty of games that are, in the end, centered around violence. But it seems fairly unserious for someone to criticize 4x games for promoting “progress” through empire in one breath while glorying in the fun of branding defeated Shadow of War orcs as slaves in another.