There has been an uptick in games overtly talking about capitalism in a more critical manner in recent years and it's interesting to see where they each go with it. It's easy to lump it all together but there are specific viewpoints in there.
Like games have always had things to say about it but we're getting a focus now where sometimes *gasp* the word capitalism will be used. Sometimes. The Outer Worlds does more of the anti-big business thing than anti-capitalism itself. It's Liz Warren.
I think Tacoma is really great because the laser focus on workers trapped (literally) by the sheer ravanous entitlement and power of capital closely shows how it permeates their pasts, presents, and future hopes. And how identities are formed (sometimes literally) by it.
Kentucky Route Zero is a really moving and powerful because it portrays the ruins of capitalism on bodies and landscapes, even as people try to hang on within it. It finds real beauty in people hanging on together, building lives out of repurposed buildings and broken machines.
Diaries Of A Spaceport Janitor explores being literally cursed by the fear stemming from being a very low paid worker with few options to get where you want to be, surrounded by the promise of all of your dreams coming true. If only you worked harder. And lived in privation.
Cartlife is a working poor sim and not to be dramatic but I had to stop playing it because of experiences with it's subject matter. I don't think I've ever played a more harrowing game bc it is directly, brutally about what capitalism does to individual people. And their cats.
Night In The Woods did what it did on the topic. It was funny when it first dropped a lot of people were disappointed it wasn't a furry dating sim nostalgia fest but about a week after launch it seemed people started getting what the game was actually about. That was neat.
Disco Elysium does I think the best job of showing both the horrors of capitalism and also the shortcomings of past attempts to destroy it. And how those attempts were often crushed violently by capital. But it doesn't leave it there. It's not like lazy nihilism you so often get.
Disco Elysium shows a world absolutely screaming for the new to be born. The end of history is all but devouring reality. There's no promise that you can just find individual happiness and call it a day. What's coming is coming for you, and for everyone. It's already here.
It shows the triumph of capitalism as the murder of anything standing in its way that isn't already failing and how that radicalizes people, sometimes in really terrifying ways. In giving you no clean answers it's not complacent or noncommital. It's quietly screaming.
I came out of it hopeful and inspired. I don't know if that was the intent. But goddamn it's good.
I was going to do one tweet a game but Disco Elysium fucked that up. Whoops.
I haven't gotten to Neo Can yet. I need to.
What is distinct about many of these games is that they aren't just about bad bosses or consumerism. They are more interested in production, in labor, in who owns what, and what that does to humans and places. That's a crucial difference.
*Neo Cab
