There is currently a very funny, kind of sad dust-up over Helldivers 2, in which self-proclaimed “anti-woke” gamers have previously heralded it as a rare game where they believe “politics” does not play a factor. Their faith was been shaken by an Arrowhead community manager they believed they found to be (gasp) progressive who was then subsequently harassed, but their head-scratching reading of Helldivers 2 as a “non-political” game is worth examining.
The only thing that makes sense is that these players have the shallowest of surface-level readings of the game. You are a patriotic soldier serving Super Earth. You must kill bugs and evil robots trying to hurt your brothers-in-arms and innocent citizens. There are no storylines to insert progressive causes into, everyone wears helmets so no “forced diversity.” Therefore, no politics.
Of course, this is…wildly off the mark, as Helldivers 2 is about the most blatantly obvious satire of militaristic fascism since the film that inspired it, Starship Troopers.
The game does of course have a political message, but I think there is a slightly different take that could have merit. The “political” part of the game is to make fun of the interventionist foreign policy of the US. This was a major culture war issue from the 80s to the 2000s, but since the 2010s, the culture wars have shifted towards identity politics. The ‘self-proclaimed “anti-woke” gamers’ are right in pointing out that Helldivers avoids these topics.