There are definitely political undertones in many video games made today, either intentionally or unintentionally, mandated by corporate executives or legitimately pushed by the creatives in charge of the games. However, as with any industry, with each new trend that’s become so integral to the contemporary design of video games there will always be those looking to buck the trend, such as the CEO of Saber Interactive Matthew Karch with his comments made in the wake of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2’s massive success under a video by Asmongold:
Hey man. CEO of Saber here. I love your videos. When we signed the deal to make Space Marine 2, all I wanted was a throwback game. We had the chance to work on something which by its nature was “old school”. I can’t even comprehend many of the current games that we play these days. They are too complex and too much of an investment. We worked on Halo back in the day, and that game could be distilled down to the simplest of shooting loops, but it was entirely addicting. That is what we wanted to recapture. I hope that games like Space Marine 2 and Wukong are the start of a reversion to a time when games were simply about fun and immersion. I spent some time as Chief Operating Officer at Embracer and I saw games there that made me want to cry with their overblown attempts at messaging or imposing morals on gamers. We just want to do some glory kills and get the heart rate up a little. For me that is what games should be about.
These comments have stirred some discussion within the gaming community, with some outlets such as IGN trying to frame the above comment as controversial.
Whether or not this comment is controversial is really in the eye of the beholder. Yes, video games can be a great medium for telling a moral or acting as allegory to contemporary topics that effect the world today, but video games are also a great medium for tearing a giant bug monster in half with your bare hands before chopping the pieces up with your chainsaw sword. Which side of the spectrum you fall on is entirely up to the individual, but Space Marine 2’s massive success may be taken as evidence the gaming community is craving more of the latter.