Has bad or distasteful narrative/theme/politics ever push you away or ruin the enjoyment of an otherwise fun game?

It's an issue many popular mainstream games have. Austin's talked about how much the mechanics, narratives, themes, and politics conflict and collide w/ each other in The Divison. Other hits like MGSV: GZ/TPP came under fire for the way it handles women and many people criticized how crude and shallow the writing was in GTAV. I'm sure most AAA titles under an analytical microscope will surely be guilty of similar shortcomings.

I'm wondering this 'cause games and the culture around it have matured to the point that these subjects are being analyzed in articles and talked about all the time. I'll read them occasionally and it's cool not only 'cause there are lots of passionate folks out there but hopefully it helps games to continually evolve.

That said, whenever I'm enjoying the loop, I seem to care very little about what a game might convey.

Most games don't have much of note to say in terms of politics or narrative, so not really. In fact, I'd probably be more drawn to a game if it had a point to make, but very few games really make that effort.

I guess stuff like Hatred might count? But that's not even a good game to begin with.

EDIT: The Witness is one of the only games I can think of that tried to produce a cohesive thought, and it's one of my favourite games, so there's that. SOMA as well.

I guess so, I find games with an agenda to usually leave a pretty bad taste in my mouth. They also usually play like shit, which doesn't help matters

Nope. That stuff tends to go over my head anyway. That said games that try to force feed you meta narratives generally suck.

The politics of Gran Turismo are disgusting but I love the game anyway.

The Bioshock games all brought up some interesting political subject matter, then completely chickened out and avoided making a statement, leaving the games' politics as nothing more than a superficial backdrop. If you're going to use your art to venture into politics, the worst thing you can do is be lukewarm and that quality in Bioshock has turned me completely against those games.

I'm honestly having a hard time thinking of any game that has enough of a political statement, especially distasteful or offensive, to warrant me even taking notice.

If the story is bad or executed poorly (writing, acting, etc.) I may stop if I am not getting enjoyment but I usually stick through to see the end. I will play a bad game for a good narrative. I could see a narrative that involves race/politics/etc. that I disagree with and done with poor taste that I would stop however I haven't come across a game like that.

Yes. This may be controversial, but, the optional scene in Hotline Miami crossed a line for me and has so far stopped me from getting it. It is a personal thing and no reason for the game to not exist, but I am uncomfortable with that in a game.

EDI: That should be Hotline Miami 2.

Nope, I'm happy to read, watch, and play media I disagree with politically. I'm happy to talk politics with those I disagree with.

Just nodding along with the chorus is boring. Challenge your opinions, consider other views. It's more interesting and you'll be all the better for it.

Disliking a piece of media purely because you don't agree with its politics is like disliking a ghost story because you don't believe in ghosts.

I think Hatred is a good example. That game looked so tonally juvenile and disgusting....but the game also looked not fun.

So does that extend to stuff like Triumph of the Will and Jud Suss as well? If we were talking about how one evaluates an artistic work from more of an academic perspective, focusing on technical achievement, I would agree that one's own biases should be set aside, but whether or not people derive enjoyment from their experience is immune to logic or sober rationalizations. Disliking something based on how its politics line up with your own seems to me to be as sensible as any other reason I could imagine.

I don't play GTA because I think they're distasteful. Last game to turn me off was Bioshock infinite, I was really hoping they were going for something with their radical take on America and blatant racism. And it doesn't. It drops that thread completely, says "What if both sides are bad?" all of it in favor of their sci-fi magical-time-dimension nonsense. I still finished it but that really soured me on the game.

Nope, never. Would be impossible for that to happen to me as well, since I don't take things not directed specifically to me offensive.

The FFX minigame where you needlessly slaughter a group of friendly cactaur. That was disturbing.

@iamterics: Yep. I thought Infinite was superb, but it was the setting that they didn't go fully on, with the issues in the place being fleshed out, instead favoring the multi-verse twist in the end as well as how the characters are involved. I loved that part, but it took away from the setting of Columbia, and it's the biggest reason why I like the original Bioshock more.

Nope. And that extends to all media. Viewpoints that are opposite to my own or that I find abhorrent don't really bother me when they show up in artistic works. I've read short stories where the viewpoint character is racist as hell and didn't bat an eye. I read an entire trilogy of epic fantasy novels where the protagonist rapes women, lobotomizes priests with rusty nails, kills women and children, and once cut the unborn child out of the belly of his aunt. And it's some of my favorite epic fantasy of all time, lol. Fiction is such a safe place to explore other people's views that I find the idea of putting something down for the sole reason you disagree with its message or find it distasteful to be a little silly. The only reason I ever put something down is from boredom.

Obviously not everyone feels the same though, and that's totally okay. If you can't stomach something it's not like you can intellectualize your way out of it, I just happen not to have those gut emotional reactions for whatever reason. My heart is black and cold, I guess.

I don't play most JRPGs because they're proper creepy towards underage women.

Spec Ops: The Line is good! Pretty much a modern day Heart of Darkness / Apocalypse Now. Wish more shooters were like this one, I'd play'em more often.

I can't think of anything off the top of my head, but their have been a few games where I never played or stopped playing when they attacked my morals and beliefs.

So recently I played through danganronpa 1 and 2 on Steam. I love visual novels and anime, and can usually live with most of the weird anime treatment of women and stuff. But these games just kind of took it a bit too far for me. I love the hell out of them, don't get me wrong, but their treatment of most of the female characters in those games, at least as far as the main story is concerned, is real bad. It didn't stop me from playing them and enjoying them myself, but while I have no problem recommending the zero escape series (which is guilty of this to a lesser extent) to pretty much all of my friends, I have a hard time recommending danganronpa to people, especially my female friends, because of all the weird fan service stuff, unnecessary dirty jokes, and just general treatment of female characters. I usually don't care much about this stuff, so idk why it bothered me so much in this case, but it did.

i would only stop playing a game if the story was so bad that the badness of the story outweighed the gameplay quality

No, not really. I think GTA 5, for some of the time I played it originally on the Xbox 360, made me think about the satire and it was a bit much considering how many times it's already been done in GTA. I was starting to wonder if Rockstar is just poking fun with its exaggeration, or literally saying what they think. I don't really feel that way about it now, and I like listening to the radio stuff when I play the 'remaster'.

@afabs515: I'm so with you on this. I have a love/hate relationship with Danganronpa:I love piecing together clues and unravelling the mysteries, but I hate the reliance on gross stereotypes and lazy tropes.

Another example for me was MGS V. Everything to do with Quiet left a sour taste in my mouth, even as the stealth gameplay was satisfying.

Nope. Don't even care. If a game is fun or interesting it's subject matter isn't going to bother me. I'm not easily offended.

The only thing I can think of right now is Valkyria Chronicles. I definitely would have preferred more fake WW2 and less anime-ness. I still really enjoyed the game regardless.

I guess so? I mean, a bad or distasteful theme usually isn't the only problem. It's more of a symptom than the root cause. Like, The Division doesn't exactly strike me as an amazing shooter apart from its unfocused politics. I think it's the opposite for me, in that a good use of narrative can hook me into an otherwise uninteresting game. Edit: And, to flip the question in another way, I've also definitely played games with themes/politics that I don't agree with and sitll liked them.

That Battlefield 1 trailer kind of rubbed me the wrong way. Painting WW1 as this big macho shooter thing just seems super weird to me considering what WW1 actually was with the infantry charges into waiting machine guns, sarin gas attacks, creeping artillery barrages and the generally miserable living conditions in the trenches. I have a hard time thinking of WW1 as anything else than a very long, miserable thing that sent just about a generation of men to their death in the name of King George/Kaiser Wilhelm. Seems like just about the worst thing to base your big fancy ooh-rah shooter around.

Not that I can think of? With Quiet in MGS:V it was more 'come on guys, really?' but it didn't stop me playing. I used D-Dog all the time anyway.

Most games individually aren't really distasteful to me, although when you see collective trends like 'macho guy on box art' then it's a bit weird.

Agreed! Gameplay first, always. But contextualize gameplay in fascinating ways and you'll elevate an excellent game to classic status or a mediocre one to a surprisingly entertaining title (see SpecOps: The Line).

Words and deeds. There's a way to handle that subject and Kojima missed the mark in every respect.

That seemed to be the point, though. Art can tell you what the creator thinks, but it can also present an objective perspective and ask you to look at choice and consequence yourself. Sure, BioShock Infinite may not have the deftest hand, but poking the player and shouting "Racism is bad! Class stratification is bad!" (which is what a lot of people apparently wanted) wouldn't have been better.

Yeah, I don't get that sentiment at all. Just show me the bad stuff as objectively as possible and let me be the judge of how bad it is, that is gonna be way more effective than telling me what I should think or feel.

I also don't think Bioshock Infinite showing the brutal side of revolution as well does in any way belittle the awfulness of racism and oppression. First of all it's historically accurate, if you look at stuff like the french revolution. Secondly the game does in no way confuse cause and effect here, so if anything it amplifies the points the game makes about racism/oppression.

Not that I can remember. I've noticed that poor politcal narrative usually goes hand in hand with poor gameplay, so I guess I just don't play many games that'd bother me.

One case of distinct bad writing that I remember each time this topic comes up has been in the latest Tomb Raider reboot.

They portrait Lara at the beginning as this rather innocent girl. Her first lethal encounter (shots getting off being attacked, which leads to her first kill) leaves her in shock.

The cut scene ends, other enemies approach the scene and the game continues with the next tutorial sequence asking you to strangulate the very next opponent with your bow.

Can't think of another narrative disconnect of that level from one second to the next.

That being said I don't expect outstanding storytelling to begin with as I personally think even the better ones are average at best compared to other, more narrative focused media.

To echo a point that has been brought up during on of the Beastcasts, storytelling in games is in most cases still a secondary aspect and more of a tool to move the action from one set piece to the next one. You write around the encounters instead of encounters being the consequence of the story.

I suppose so. Danganronpa is one of those games. Probably a fine game in many respects but it really just leaves me kind of nauseated, wich is not really only because of character-presentations but the whole premise itself. It really depends on if the game relies heavily on narrative or not.

I enjoyed 999 and virtues last reward far more, even though they had their own share of problems.

There are things I've found distasteful in games that I love too though, like persona, but it didn't get to any kind of overbearing proportions there.

to answer the op- no, not really. i read a lot of video game writing and never buy games sight-unseen- so i've never been hoodwinked by a games' politics. also- like many have already mentioned, we're not at a place yet where games have achieved an especially subtle level of commentary- so i usually know what i'm in for.

that said i have avoided things like 'hatred' and a lot of the CoD series- but that has more to do with the way they game-ify purposeless gun violence. so i guess that counts, maybe?

My time is rather limited for games. I'm not going to commit 20+ hours of my life to something that I find not worth it (looking at you creepy boobie games).

For other media I'll consider stuff that actively offends me. There's value in considering opposing views and critiquing ones you agree with. Video game culture writ large doesn't foster that discussion.

The blacksplotation in GTA san andreas rubbed me the wrong way and i never got deep into that game.

Nope. But then again I find it weird to look too deep into "politics" of games or other media and be offended by it. I don't even care about it. Never had a problem with any GTA, MGSV, Tomb Raider, Hatred, Postal or whatever other games people start to dig way too much to find "tropes" and "stereotypes" and what not. The most they can get out of me is something like "well, this is dumb" and continue with it like it's nothing. It's just a game in the end, let's have fun.

But if you ask me if bad narrative (poorly written stories, clichés, plot holes, etc) can ruin my enjoyment, then my answer is closer to a yes.

Eh, not really. That being said, I do find Nathan Drake's capacity for quips and cheeriness even though his body count must at this point rival some small nations to be hilarious.

Yes. I can think of several examples from last year where I really enjoyed playing a game, but certain story elements made me come away a lot more disappointed than I would have.

Fallout 4: Between the game being written with a straight male character in mind, having not great writing in general, and a lousy ending with some bad plot holes/much better options I should have had for the ending, I ended up disappointed. Despite it being a game I played for 90 hours and thought was fun to play.

Mad Max: Despite having almost no expectations for this game story wise, its treatment of women, especially in the same year as Fury Road, was extremely disappointing.

And the original poster mentioned MGSV, and I've certainly said all I need to about how that game treats its women (poorly), never mind the "ending" of that game. I still ended up loving that game overall because there was some story stuff I liked, and the game itself was fantastic to play.

I'd also include BioShock Infinite (not from last year), but my distaste in that game has more to do with disliking the end twist than how that game handles issues like race (very poorly), but that doesn't help either.

EDIT: I wouldn't say it negatively affected the game too much for me, but The Witcher III's rampant sexism was certainly the part of the game I disliked most. But, like MGSV, I think the good parts outweighed the bad.

Not usually no.

But for some reason Luftrausers's art etc evoking the Nazi aesthetic really put me off.

I get what they were going for and weren't going for, but yeah no thanks.

@adequatelyprepared: Nathan Drake is probably wanted for war crimes at this point right? Dude is a human natural disaster.

Nope. But then again I don't think a lot of games are trying to make political statements or I tend to agree with the politics that can be extrapolated. In terms of just material included, the closest I've been to turned away from a game is Danganronpa. Those games are actually just so good that it's disappointing when they do that oogly bullshit.

Also, I think a lot of people tend to completely misinterpret or project things. I get the pressure to try to be progressive all the time, but some claims I've seen are just insane.

@mooseymcman: For example. I'm sure I missed a whole big thing when the game was launched, but how in the world is The Witcher 3 sexist? Not trying to open a whole can of worms, but I can get why people have problems with most things, but this is like Bayonetta levels of not getting it for me.

I don`t think games trying to push political beliefs and morals I disagree with are disttastefull. It can hurt the story and characters though when it`s done in a hamfisted way.

You`re the first person that I have seen that actually share my opinion about this. I think showing the brutal consequences of revolution is a lot more interesting (and something not a lot of games or media in general does) than just saying "racism is bad!" (of course it is!).

Nope. I can get past that stuff if a game is otherwise engaging or interesting. People have opinions that differ from my own. Dismissing someone's opinion because you don't agree with them is the definition of closed-mindedness. I value others' opinions even if I think they're full of shit.

The thing I can't get past is poorly written or overtly clichéd material. The Final Fantasy XIII trilogy comes to mind. I finished all three, but it was an exercise in masochism. The game play is mostly good across all three, but holy fuck is the writing ever some of the most egregiously awful bullshit to ever be put to any medium. Incredibly uninteresting characters, gaping plot holes, illogical character motivation, etc. Something kept me coming back (probably some vague hope that the games would get better, I have very fond memories of the series) but I never really enjoyed my time with them and finished each ultimately feeling disappointed and dissatisfied.