Games about Revolution need the Revolutionary Spirit
By: David Peddicord
Tags: Media Criticism, Revolution, Fascism, Game Design, Games

Twenty years ago, smashing a corporate stranglehold on worker’s rights on a Martian colony was what revolution looked like in “Red Faction” and other video games. These days revolt is the backdrop to dystopian titles albeit with some added xenophobia such as the recent “Far Crys” or “Homefront”. Everything else has remained the same, with the player embodying a singular hero who metes out emancipation through combat.

There is, however, a slow changing of the tide both in the AAA marketplace and on the indie front delivering games that retain the collectivist values of revolution and sidestep deferments to action-first game design. And there’s no time like the present to appeal to a growing revolutionary spirit.

With Americans protesting state violence, and then experiencing more state violence in return this year, the peaceful assembly has little appeal. Let’s look at two games that speak to the climate and place you in the role of an oppressed group fighting for liberation. “1979 Revolution: Black Friday”, set during the Iranian Revolution, focuses on a cross-section of the political groups involved. Meanwhile, “Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus” is set in an alternate history where the Nazis won World War 2 and a multi-ethnic group of rebels plot to overthrow their empire. Both games find success in their goals, showing rebellion in colors other than violence and the many faces that make the whole in solidarity. How they meet these goals, however, are radically different.

A Hero Chooses

“1979 Revolution” is an outlier in stories of revolt, for games or movies. It’s interactivity, limited as it may be, never lets the player feel one hundred percent sure they can make a morally right choice or if there even is one. The moving story of Reza returning to Tehran stayed with me for days after finishing its brief campaign. The emotional peaks also never feel cheap and it balances education and entertainment around Iran’s history with much more nuance than imperialistically minded films like Ben Affleck’s “Argo”.

Right from the start, two things are communicated. One is that “1979 Revolution” was made for a Western, presumably white audience. Reza’s absence from the tumult of the ’70s makes him a traditional cipher for the player whom his childhood friend Babak can fill in. Multiple youth factions form an uneasy alliance protesting the Shah while the exiled cleric Ayatollah Khomeini is expected to return. It’s all at once exciting and terrifying, confidently sold through motion captured performances.

The second thing you notice here is that this is going to be a very Hollywood story with the same adventure game presentation popularized by Telltale Games. This is not inherently bad, but players will immediately pick up on the lack of agency you expect in games. Even if the player had no experience with a Telltale game, this would still be abundantly clear by the game’s framing device with Reza as a political prisoner. All roads will eventually lead you and Reza to an interrogation room from where the story is told in flashback.

Reza ultimately becomes someone whom the lives of many depend upon. Critic Vincent Kinian argues this likely comes from developer iNK Stories emulation of “The Walking Dead” game and it’s questionable whether this individualistic approach is best suited for this story. Reza follows the Campbellian monomyth by first resisting the call to action, and Babak’s pleas to join the revolution. Later he makes the dramatic decision to save the youth group’s leader. He is even designated a “special” due to his gift with the camera (more on that in a moment). But I believe iNK Stories is more aware of the box they’ve put themselves in than they are given credit.

For a game that is rightly criticized for being too Hollywood for its intentions, it’s credibly un-Hollywood to note the socio-economic privilege of it’s POV. Late in the game, you are free to explore Reza’s middle-class family home. There are scattered letters from Reza’s father to his mother describing his activism in the ’50s. The player also discovers Babak is his family’s servant. Finding a projector, you can watch home movies of game director Navid Khonsari’s family. Scenes from the beach, parties, a newlywed couple. As the screen flickers with these artifacts Reza comments on how life used to be simpler, kinder.

After that, you can speak with Babak again. At Gamasutra, Sayam Ghosh explains the scene beautifully:

“…when Babak informs Reza that he intends to leave his parent’s service and home, Reza starts to reminisce about their childhood trip to the seaside. Babak says that some of his most cherished memories are from that trip. When Reza asks what has changed since then Babak replies that nothing has changed, and that’s the problem. With this subtle expression of injury, a complex world of social hierarchy, friendship beyond class barriers, and the limitations of that friendship is evoked masterfully.”

On the other hand, I’m still not entirely sure what the player’s choices were meant to convey. As a meaningful replacement for action gameplay, it functions as an allusion to how one person cannot change the world on their own, making it at odds with the action hero leanings like literally dodging gunfire at the climax. If the player choices are meant to give a variety of consequences then as Kinian argues, they only remove you from the world by placing the player on a pedestal. It is unlikely there were many, if any, on the ground in 1979 that affected the lives of their comrades so directly. This reading makes the game’s intentions feel muddled, something “Wolfenstein 2” never struggles with.

Killing The Past

“Wolfenstein 2” is a wild, violent yet poignant game of hypermasculinity and reconciliation. It’s intoxicating stuff and you may miss what the game does with its mechanics and storytelling so confidently it comes off nearly blind in its assurance that fascism will be defeated. So what kept me hooked in this ultimately optimistic violent shooter was the game’s detours into “walking simulator” territory.

The opening interactive scene of domestic violence is a chilling start. It’s through scenes like this the game forms an idealized picture of resistance to authority and fascism. We see hero BJ Blazkowicz’s abusive childhood here. His racist father berates his Jewish mother for allowing him to play with a black neighbor kid, Billie. Dad beats Mom, and the player is given command of a child-sized BJ to fight off the patriarch. It’s futile though. Dad beats and strangles BJ and all of this occurs in first-person.

Interactive empathy is not what comes to mind when a game can be pitched as “The Man in the High Castle” meets “Doom”. In another scene, Billie chastises BJ when he drops a rat in a bucket of water to drown. Then later in the present, on the resistance’s submarine, BJ is tasked with a side mission of finding a rat on board that’s been eating their rations. Once caught, the player can choose to spare the rat, creating cohesion in BJ’s growth.

The walking sequences abroad the sub allow the player to listen in on what his comrades are up to. You can visit BJ’s lover, Anya, heavily pregnant with their twins. You can see Grace, the de facto leader of the resistance working in her quarters, her baby sleeping beside her. Every major and minor member is named and you can watch them carry on their lives as best they can. The simple act of living, loving, plotting or even just painting the walls with murals are acts of resistance in the face of the Nazi empire. Late in the game, the cast comes together to celebrate their recent victories and BJ’s birthday and it’s delightful. It’s honest to god unity, something most games about rebellion pay only lip service to.

Where I have some difficulty giving the game perfect marks is the same place it’s ambition marches headlong into interrogating BJ as a specimen of the great American Melting Pot. Upon meeting Grace, who is black, BJ is reminded that America was a damnable place to live if you weren’t a white man, to begin with. But the game doesn’t seem to fully grasp what it’s motioning towards.

The United States was founded on retaining power among the powerful (originally only white male landowners could vote) and white supremacy (see: the genocide of Native Americans and the economy built on slave labor). There is no restorative effort to be made, only a brutal slog forward towards reparations and progressive dismantlement. No matter the effort made to depict an inclusive resistance (including two bi-racial couples) or portraying America’s roots in fascism with BJ’s parentage, the conflict of “Wolfenstein 2” is painted in moral absolutism.

Worse, the game comes to rely on iconography that betrays the game’s optimism. Many American film studies classes show clips from the Nazi propaganda film “Triumph of the Will”. By showcasing the film’s supposed artistic merits (editing, composition), we continue to broadcast their messaging regardless of how we dissociate ourselves from the content. And Nazis in pop culture reflect this today. Easily “Wolfenstein 2’s” biggest conservative streak is in its portrayal of them as a formidable, yet conquerable foe. They have lasers, cyborgs, zeppelin fortresses, a base on Venus, and the atomic bomb. In truth they used horse-drawn carts for transport, never finished building even one aircraft carrier, and many Nazi-invented weapons underperformed, including the infamous V2 rocket.

So, playing “Wolfenstein 2” with all its frenzied sci-fi action, one can note just how much credit Machine Games is giving the Nazis. For Bullet Points Monty, Ed Smith argues that the game defers to the Nazi’s greatest lie, that of racial superiority. In the closing moments, BJ’s allies stand before a nationwide broadcast and tell the American people that the “blood of revolutionaries” is “in their veins”. To quote Smith,

“…insinuating that by simply being American one has a naturally elevated comprehension of social and political freedoms, an anthropologically handed down cognizance of what goodness is; a genetic imperative to govern, or rule.”

Rising To The Occasion

“1979 Revolution” insists on showing morally grey stories need not make excuses for terrible people and systems and seeing our complicity with them. That in the face of state violence, pacifism is not an option. “Wolfenstein 2” breaks away from power fantasy staples to make time for the heroes of everyday life and argues hope is not for the naive. Resistance can be as subtle as pursuing your hobbies and caring for strangers, rebuking the alienating factors of oppression. We’ve seen the easy way to do revolution in games to the point of exhaustion. All the more refreshing that these two games, while not perfect, opt for quiet dialogue and exploration and find meaningful introspection in the crowded genre.

Together what these games reveal is the myth of choice during upheaval. The faux choices Reza makes show he will either be in the fight or a casualty. Reza is not a perfect specimen of the Greatest Generation like BJ so that he concludes he must join the fight is his victory. For BJ, there was never any alternative as the threat was so immediate and obvious. He curses his countrymen as they enjoy a Nazi military parade instead of taking up arms. Those who sided with the invading forces never saw it as a choice between their country and ideals but as the consolidation of the best of both worlds. It makes the conflict so easy and righteous. In a story that sticks closer to history, Reza’s is one about how an affable person’s first impulse is to ignore the tumult altogether. It’s about finding and then holding yourself to your values. Because in real life, oppression doesn’t always wear a uniform.

Sources

The complicated history of revolutions in video games

https://www.cgmagonline.com/2017/01/07/complicated-history-revolutions-video-games/

Something in the direction of exhibition by Vincent Kinian

https://gameexhibition.wordpress.com/2016/05/26/1979-revolution-black-friday/

Enabling Narrative Intentionality

https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/SayamGhosh/20170728/302639/Enabling_narrative_intentionality__a_design_analysis_of_1979_Revolution_Black_Friday.php

A good argument for games to get political

https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/BryantFrancis/20171030/308635/Wolfenstein_II_a_good_argument_for_games_to_get_political.php

Busting the Myth of Nazi Super-Science

https://v1.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/columns/criticalintel/11703-Busting-the-Myth-of-Nazi-Super-Science

Wolfenstein 2’s fashionable rebellion

https://bulletpointsmonthly.com/2020/01/10/wolfenstein-ii-fashionable-rebellion