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Politics is a great bugaboo in the context of RPGs - or any video games,
for that matter. Understandably so, for a mention of politics tends to
throw the player out of the game world and back into an unpleasantly real
world. Aside from an occasional NPC conversation courtesy of a very liberal
translation, politics tends to stay out of the RPG world. Yet there is no
reason for the status quo to remain thus indefinitely, and the option of
including political influences bears the distinct appeal of never having
been tried.
It should be understood what I am NOT suggesting here by treading into the
dangerous ground of political content. An RPG that goes out of its way to
include material of a highly topical nature runs the real risk of becoming
outmoded in a few years, and such a result is to be avoided at all cost.
Direct slurs against specific persons run a different risk, that of legal
action. I also do not espouse one political view only - it is quite
possible with a bit of flexibility in the story to have a player experience
events according to his or her own desires instead of as dictated by The
Almighty Programmers. Political commentary also should not dominate the
proceedings to such a degree as to overshadow all other developments: i.e.
the protagonist should not devote his/her life towards the creation of a
universal pension plan or a way to enact a flat tax. Politics can be a part
of the experience, not the whole.
An RPG with firm political dealings would most likely not be created in
Japan. The Japanese political climate is very different from that which
exists in North America, and North America is itself divided between the
United States and Canada. If Bio Ware is to create an RPG with political
content, will it be directed at Stephen Harper or George W. Bush? A
Japanese-developed title of this sort would most likely exhort or decry
Junichiro Koizumi, until he steps down later within a year. A grave
difficulty awaiting an RPG tied to national political infrastructure is the
parochial nature of its story; can RPGamers in, say, Australia be made to
care overmuch about events dealing intricately with the British Parliament?
This reinforces my earlier observation that politics cannot dominate the
proceedings, for its doing so will limit potential audiences to a specific
nationality. A title trying to incorporate features extant in more than one
country is a possibility, but prone to stretching too far and collapsing.
There is also the chance of politicians seeing visages of themselves in
video games as being the stimulus required for even more virulent
anti-gaming measures than already exist.
The inclusion of political content in an RPG must therefore be carefully
dealt with. How it might be accomplished would vary according to individual
developer preference, but some potential options I will delineate. By far
the most obvious would seem to be the casting of major villains in the mould
of certain real-life political figures; precisely who these figures ought to
be is best left for each reader to determine. This most obvious of avenues
is flanked by other potential methods, however. Using real political
dilemmas without any clouding of the issue in an RPG context seems a good
fit; what of a scenario in which the player must combat a legislature
forever mired in calling its members names instead of actually accomplishing
something? Or a scenario in which the player must deal with a drug-abusing
substratum of the population - possibly because these people are chronic
informants to the enemy in order to garner cash for their addictions, the
precise reason to deal with them can be specified at another time. The
issue of censorship in an RPG context - something such as a government
agency and/or a superior in whatever organization the characters happen to
be associated with trying to shut down potentially harmful information by
claiming it disastrous to the public - and its ramifications could
potentially be quite thought-provoking.
That this is an issue requiring the utmost sensitivity in being dealt with
I cannot refute. Politics by its very nature polarizes, and if a title is
created carelessly it could have the disastrous side effect of polarizing
the interactions between RPGamers in a noxious fashion akin to what takes
place on any given cable channel talking-head 'debate.' The dreaded topic
of religion is treated in RPGs from time to time, however, albeit often in a
fashion obfuscating its controversy by creating a religion that does not
exist on Earth. RPGs are prone to the best storylines in the video game
world, and politics allows for great story possibilities if nothing else.
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