Jay Cee games were propaganda all this time masquerading as a video game.
(media.communities.win)
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It's a game about regime change, but I wouldn't assume it is written as propaganda. It is a premise that supports the gameplay - a target-rich, open world sandbox - that doesn't even use real-world countries like Mercenaries did.
El Comandante banned Mercenaries for this reason in Venezuela.
More importantly, its kind of missing the point. There is not a single person who takes the Just Cause story seriously. EVERYONE plays it because of the fun and wacky ways it gives you to blow shit up. If you are focusing on the story, you are doing it wrong.
Yeah, I mean, this is literally the point of all of these open world games. It's the point of The Godfather game, and Red Faction, and Watch Dogs, and Prototype, and Crackdown, and even Arkham City.
Instead of having strict levels, you "free" sections by defeating enemy keypoints and the game rewards you with changes to the environments you've been in.
This is just basic gameplay mechanics.
Sometimes something is obviously propaganda like TLOU2, sometimes it's just context to justify the gameplay like Just Cause. If the games are more than 5-8 years old I wouldn't be looking for propaganda in them, otherwise you risk turning into one of those Harry Potter is witchcraft propaganda people.
I wouldn't put a time limitation on propaganda. At the very least, you should recognize the strict philosophical perspectives that some games may take in their story, but many games don't do this. The worst thing they may do is effectively swim in the ether of a perspective.
Stardew Valley is awesome as a farming game, and is clearly swimming in the Left-wing moral ether, but it doesn't take any hard political or philosophical stances.
As such, it doesn't need to be aggressively opposed as propaganda. It's just coming from a developer who is immersed in that perspective already, but isn't building a game around the philosophy.
Meanwhile, you can bet your ass that "The Day The Earth Stood Still" is absolutely Leftist propaganda, and is a good example why you don't put a time limit on propaganda. In fact, it might be important to double-check the stuff you think isn't propaganda that you grew up with.
It's just that when you're still fighting the uphill battle, the propaganda has to be genuinely entertaining/tell a good story/be a bit subtle or understated.
Once you've won, well, you can be bludgeony about it, to make sure the people remember what is and is not politically correct orthodoxy.
Not really, witchcraft is superstition and has no real power.
I'm not saying Just Cause is guilty of being predictive programming, cause I think it's too puerile for that, but it's subject matter is not magic.
Purile?!!
I don't see how strapping a bungee cord to a guy's nuts on one end, and a burning/flying propane tank on the other until they both explode is purile.
What a shit take. Just Cause literally exists to mock America's regime change bullshit, and you don't see that?
Not only that, but it's one of the few games that literally (usually) has the message: Communist dictators are bad. Communism is bad. Communism oppresses the people. Kill the Communist dictator.
Just Cause 3 literally scatters tapes all throughout the world of the main antagonist explaining how he uses Machiavellian tactics to usurp control and utilize false flags and fake enemies in order to install a Communist regime.
If there's one game where the propaganda should be lauded for making Communism look bad, it's the Just Cause series.
Right, I mean if you think about it, Rico is severely fucking up every nation he "liberates". Every power plant, factory, and piece of infrastructure gets annihilated. What's left for the citizens once the dictator is out? A ruined nation that can barely function and a massive repair bill for an impoverished people.
That's why the game strongly encourages you not to think about it too hard. Blowing stuff up is fun. Don't worry about it
You looked very old as a teenager.
I think the story is too hamfisted to possibly be taken seriously. I couldn't get behind any faction or character in the whole thing. I don't know anyone among my friends that has played the series that doesn't just skip every cutscene because Just Cause is all about the gameplay. If it's propaganda then it's rather ineffective.