These next two pieces have a lot in common. Both are fairly serious criticisms of the ludic and narrative handling of some elements of the game. These pieces call out the game’s allusions to political Realism, the problem of the absence of civilians, and its handling of imperialist and colonialist tropes. These criticisms are tough, given how hard we tried to challenge problematic ideas. But it’s not the purpose of these posts to defend the game, so I’m promoting these pieces in the spirit of embracing well-reasoned criticism - especially criticism that challenges.
#4 - The Politics of Far Cry 2
Jorge Albor’s two part discussion of Far Cry 2’s depiction of politics is framed as ‘not a criticism’. I think this was a common tactic in early games criticism (between about 2006 and 2009). I similarly committed the sin of disclaiming my criticism when I first wrote about Ludonarrative Dissonance in Bioshock. I was wrong when I suggested that piece was not criticism, and I think Albor is wrong here. This piece is absolutely criticism - and ten years later, that’s something I think we can celebrate, and not sweep under the rug.
Among other things, Albor’s piece criticizes the absence of civilians as a missed opportunity to make the player’s decisions more impactful and consequential. This is a common and fair criticism of the game, and I am not sure whether the game would have been better or worse with a robust simulation of civilian presence. I think the argument can be made that the inclusion of civilians might not only create a bunch of thematic noise were the player to needlessly engage in murder, but might also undermine the central framing of the background conflict being depicted as pointless and futile. Other people (including one in an upcoming piece) have discussed this idea at length, so I won’t here, but regardless, Albor’s article remains one of the best and broadest criticisms of the game. Definitely worth a read.
#3 - Unintended Consequences: Malaria and Orientalist Discourse in Far Cry 2(pdf)
The ongoing game writing anthology Well Played, published out of Carnegie Mellon University's ETC Press, consistently brings out some of the very best writing about games, and I was thrilled to discover a piece in Volume 5, Number 1 (page 85), related to Far Cry 2. (Disclaimer: my own piece on Ludonarrative Dissonance was reprinted in the first book in the series).
This excellent piece by Marcus Hensel is much narrower in focus than Albor’s. It examines the game’s depiction of malaria, and its relationship to centuries of imperialist and colonialist discourse related to Africa. This piece was a gut-punch when I read it back in 2016. I think some of the details of his analysis (such as his suggestion that the visual filters used during malaria attacks explicitly reference miasma) are a bit overreaching, but it’s hard not to accept the core of his argument; that elements of the game evoke the Africa of Stanley or Burton.
A key goal for us was to make a game with a deeper physical connection between the land, the objects in the world, and especially the avatar, in order to forge a psychosomatic bond between the player and the avatar that we could then pay off in climactic moments with the buddies. In hindsight, I wish we could have done better at delivering on the aesthetic ambitions of the game without perpetuating some of the very ideas we were trying to challenge. But escaping your cultural biases is difficult - even when you try very hard to examine them.
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