Let's talk about 2018's worst game and race allegories and such...(Blog)

..Okay more like the worst game of 2018 I played. It was a toss up of this and Kingdom Come: Deliverance and since I didn't completely finish Kingdom Come, this won the dubious honor. This is going to be controversial like most of the threads I put up are. I don't care, I need to get this off my chest somehow. There's going to be 'some' spoilers to this mess of a game, so if you're on the edge of your seat about that stuff, be warned I guess. Although, I avoid the nitty-gritty for my own sanity.

Let's start off with the one positive I can give this game, technically as a multi-faceted adventure game, I can see why this game got high marks and if this got on your GoTY list, I'm not here to judge you. There was a shit ton of work put into this game and I love choose your own adventure stories. This might be the most impressively put together one of those that might ever be achieved. The game can go into many different directions based off what you do or don't do. But like the longest toenail achievement in the Genesis Book of World records proves, just because's something is 'technically' impressive, doesn't mean that what you made or accomplished is any less questionable or reasonable.

Writing about this game is a struggle for me and it's a minefield to talk about a game that deals with themes that this game...tackles. But if David Cage was so 'bold' as to make allegories to slavery and the civil rights movement without much consideration of what he was doing, than I feel that I at least can't be as shameless...so here goes...

Detroit is a game about a marginalized group of people who are segregated, blamed for the economic downturn, who just so happen happen to be produced by big corporations who then are investigated by the FBI for having freewill... and oh jeez....Help me.

I can't get through the damn plot synopsis. To try and get into the mind of David Cage as best as I can, I can only guess that he wanted to make a sci-fi game about racism without mentioning race overtly, so he instead made PoC into androids fighting for their right to be considered human...but then he wanted to also fit in an allegory of the myth of American economic anxiety in there to sound smart and...

I'm sorry, this doesn't work. I'm a white guy, I'll admit that upfront I can't speak for PoC, but I speak on behalf of white people that neither can David Cage. I can see a decent story told with the growing autonomy of technology taking over the job market and requiring human civilization having to retool society and including topical themes around that. In fact, stories like that do exist.

Again I can't speak for PoC (persons of color, btw), but they are not machinery that were made to improve the human experience, they are human. They didn't become human, they were always human. I don't get a cookie for admitting that and David Cage doesn't get a cookie for his poorly told 'racism is bad' story. Racism is just bad.

So there's an overall TL;DR positve message: I'd like to see more experiences written by people of color. If the industry is willing to make a game of this scope about the experiences of the marginalized, let's hear it from people who have the experience, not from pretentious white 'auteurs'. In fact, it doesn't even have to be about their experiences, just hire more people of color writers. Thanks for reading!

Honestly do we actually need to dogpile on this game anymore? Alex has had multiple rants on the site already. I really enjoyed it as an interactive B movie and it's pretty weird to see people having these huge over reactions. It's a videogame using a very common scifi trope. It's not framed as a solution to racial tension. I mean at this point if you don't like how David Cage games plan out but still bought this one you really have no one to blame but yourself.

1. Yes, I want to talk about this game. I purposefully didn't go into deep detail about /how/ his treatments of themes are harmful simply because I didn't want to get into spoilers, but yes, this game made me mad and I made a thread about it.
2. You like the game as an interactive B movie? Congrats...? You didn't bring rational thought to it or choose to ignore its themes to enjoy it as an adventure game with choices. I talked to you in the first paragraph, I'm glad you enjoy it...I guess. Also, you clicked on a thread that discusses the racial themes of a video game, I mean if you don't like how my thread planned out, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Sorry if I sounded mean spirited, I don't like to be. I understand where you come from to an extent. 'Why can't you like a thing I like, why are you reading into the context.' It's because the game's context is so poorly thought out and IMHO, harmful, that I wanted to discuss it.

@shivermetimbers: I'm someone who's always thought the question, "When is AI truly alive?" is a fascinating one. I loved the first season of Westworld; a story of common sci-fi tropes, sure, but told in a really interesting and compelling way.

Fiction, art, media--whatever you want to call it--holds a mirror to reality. We can see reflections of real human experience in fiction. Science fiction has a special way of telling stories about very human things in different and fantastical ways. When it's good--really, really good and emotional and raw--you get things like The Twilight Zone. Stories that transcend the time and place they were made because they tell human stories that resonate.

Sometimes, a sci-fi story will try to link itself to a real world issue and it will do so in a hamfisted or flawed way. Deus Ex: Human Revolution was very much a story about corporate greed, malpractice, monopoly, and economic upheaval, told through a lens of what the near future of optional cybernetic enhancement might look like. Then Mankind Divided came out and had that--let's just call it tone deaf--marketing and the whole "Aug Lives Matter" thing.

I haven't played Detroit, because frankly everything I've ever heard about David Cage games sounds terribly up-their-own-ass. I think there is value in using stories with fantastical elements to explore human experiences. It sounds like David Cage isn't able to pull that off.

@hayt: Is this a for real question? No amount of Alex railing against this shit heap of a nightmare game would be enough.

@bladeofcreation: Boy I have and let me just say, you aren't missing anything. I think that if anything the GB crew was too easy on it. It's a fucking mess even without taking into consideration how "David Cage realizes racism is a thing" is a part of the whole thing.

I don’t know, I have always found value in exploring topics like racism using non-confrontational avenues. And it has often been said that what would bring every person together is a shared ”others”. Be it aliens or androids. A lot of Detroit seems to be ’on the nose’, haven’t actually played it though, but just as in The Witcher 3’s use of Elves, I think people sometimes underestimate the value of exploring these ideas and potentially exposing them to those that need to see their own bias through a lens they don’t immediately disregard due to that very bias. Not saying Detroit’s implementation is ideal (again, didn’t play it so I cant really comment), but at it’s core I find the concept appealing. But then, as someone that has spent a bunch of time arguing with xenophobic individuals in my surroundings, the easiest way to get them to see my point and how their perspective is narrow is to paint a picture that doesn’t involve the thing they instinctively oppose, but a surrogate that can carry the ideas without the element of shutting the ears of the person I am trying to convert away from that line of thinking.

That being said, as a white dude my take on ”PoC stand ins”-stories are just academic in that way, as they naturally don’t hit me in the same way as they probably do someone that may find their experienced portrayed without them represented. So I don’t think the criticisms of something like Detroit is in any way invalid or unimportant.

Another game I liked