Lately I’ve been thinking about WWII games and themes of games in general. Why are there so many WWII games? In a previous post I talked about the fact that I don’t really like them and that it felt kind of odd playing Call of Duty 2 and hearing the enemies talking German.
I think that there’s also the fact that the games whitewash over the tragedies of the war. Which got me thinking, why do so many games avoid the hard topics? Why aren’t there more games that deal with significant issues? I’m not saying that I want games to be meaningful. I don’t want games to be art. I would just like some games to try to touch on these topics.
Have there been any games about slavery? Abe’s Oddysee is the only one I can think of that dealt with it in any significant way. What about civil rights in general? If we need another war game, can we at least have one that features people who aren’t soldiers and who aren’t one man killing machines? Just one. Then I’ll go back to playing Serious Sam or Counter-Strike.