So I was late, arriving after Prof. Clover let us out of English 167 at 6pm, but I caught the last hour of presentations and discussions.
Not gunna lie, I was so done with last week at that point, so I was feeling just a little salty and difficult to control. I’m so fed up with the current state of affairs in this country and the world because I know how it is all connected to the struggles everyone and I have to overcome to get through our daily lives.
First of all, this image really annoyed me cuz I’m so sick of the sexualization of femme’s pain in video games–it just encourages and contributes to this rape culture that we live in that fetishizes and sexualizes femmes in pain.
One of the speakers, Anne-Marie Schleiner (^Pictured above), mentioned that she’s a video game activist and talked about her new book, The Player’s Power to Change the Game, which is about the gameification of war, and the power that games hold over the player, and the player’s ability to change the game. At first I was hella stoked that she’s also an activist. So I asked her, “How can video games actually aid a revolution? Not reformist “revolution” but an actual revolution that abolishes capitalism. Like can we make games that simulate a militant revolution by the means necessary for an anticapitalist revolution that actually results in the eradication of classism, racism, sexism, homoantagonism, ableism, and other forms of systemic oppression?”
And she responded saying that she believes in non-violence.
What a privelaged thing to say; like of course that shit sounds good in theory but in actual practive non-violence doesn’t work when you’re going up against a capitalist military state system that is the most powerful in the world. I responded by asking her if she knows of any successful revolution in history has ever not been militant (rehtorical question; none have). I’m not advocating violence perse, I advocate for militancy and revolution by the means necessary, which is probably going to come off as violent to some (ignorant) people.
I hope I wasn’t too disrespectful, I wasn’t trying to be, I was just confused and trying to figure out if, and if so, then how video games can aid an anti-capitalist revolution, and if it would be worth it to dedicate my time to developing games like that. It sounds like a good thing to do potentially, if it’s worth the effort. This was an interesting talk and I’m glad I went.