I think the Half-Life series is actually quite anarchic if you consider the plot, which isn’t shoved in your face in much detail like most other games, but rather lingers around in the background for you to flesh out yourself.
You learn at the end of the first game that the whole resonance cascade disaster was more or less intentionally instigated by the real powers-that-be (represented iconically in the bizarre “g-man” character) to further their own agenda. You learn that the US military had been conducting an invasion of the Xen borderworld long before the incident at Black Mesa, and that the Black Mesa incident may have been intended as a kind of false-flag attack to expand the conflict to Earth itself.
The conduct of the government troops in the first game is revealing. Hours after the disaster, they come in not to rescue anyone or anything, but to make sure that there are no human survivors. No witnesses. Clearly the story they intend to tell the world about Black Mesa is not what really happened there. In the second game, it becomes clear that they’ve somehow managed to blame the disaster entirely on Dr Freeman and his associates. I suspect that they painted Freeman and Co as a bunch of utterly mad Benedict Arnolds who were collaborating with the Xen invaders to bring about the domination of Earth by that giant floating fat thing at the end of the first game, and thereby ensure their own position as viceroys. Exactly what Breen did with the Combine, in effect. Of course the Combine were painted as liberators and protectors against the alien lifeforms rampaging across the countryside during the portal storms. This is what the state does, yes? They pretend to be protecting us from exactly the same things they are perpetrating against us in a different rhetorical guise. The unimaginable genocide committed by the Combine is painted as entirely in humanity’s best interests, and all in the aid of protection against a much greater threat personified by Gordan Freeman and the Resistance. “Anarchy”.
You have to consider that Freeman’s reinsertion into City 17 happens about twenty years after the Black Mesa incident. Everyone who was likely to join the Combine voluntarily has already done so. The soldiers you fight in HL2 are not automatons… Many of them probably have cibernetic modifications, but they are all willing human allies of the Combine, and they greatly outnumber the few civilians and resistance fighters left. If they were complete automatons, you wouldn’t need Dr Breen chastising them periodically for their failures, as you hear him doing throughout the second game. Freeman’s insertion into City 17 by the g-man is probably another attempt by his secret interdimensional cabal to instigate conflict for their own benefit. They insert him precisely when the Combine puppet-state on Earth can no longer use ideology, lies and rhetoric to keep down the masses, because there is basically no one left sitting on the fence… Everyone is either a Combine agent, a resistance fighter or dead.
Half life is a story about LACK of government intervention. FF7 is an example of how corporations can rule the world if GOVERNMENT doesn’t get involved.
“1. It demonstrates the law of association as the main plot device (rinoa and squall fall in love)”
… I’m sorry but I really don’t consider that love is really an example of the law of association unless I misunderstand you here… And there’s thousands of non libertarian stuff which has love anyway. But I agree with the rest of your reasons
“For an MMO, I would have to go with World of Warcraft.”
World of warcraft is inherently nationalistic because of the different sides. You cannot effectivly be on alliance and cooperate with the horde and vice versa… If it weren’t for that though you’d be correct, but a game where in the end everyone wants to go to a foreign country and slaughter enemy civilians doesn’t seem very libertarian to me… More like some odd sort of free market hyper nationalism
WoW is actually quite funny. Fans of the game do have a sort of tribal bias along alliance/horde lines, but it’s not as though anyone takes the conflict very seriously in the actual gameplay.
It’s typical for a noob to run around screaming, “ZOMG! TEH HORDE IS ATTACKING THE CITY!” Everyone just shrugs, and someone tells him that they do it every Thursday morning, it’s nothing to worry about, and that the alliance XP-run is on a Friday.
FF7 is an example of how corporations can rule the world if GOVERNMENT doesn’t get involved.
Sadly some statists probably will see it that way. But really when it comes down to it, Shinra doesnt act like any real corporation, but like a Facist state.
I also forgot to add: Theres also an interesting(if extremely subdle) example of the law of unintentended consequences: Shinra’s attempt to create a super soldier resulted in their ‘creation’ going on a rampage, killing their president and attempting to destroy the world…talk about blowback…
I think Mario Bros. is like Hans Hermann-Hoppe: The Game.
Strong emphasis on gold, non-egalitarianism and natural elitism (lots of stomping on little goombas and turtles), individual accomplishment, heterosexual relationships, and monarchs. No diversity; except among the hapless baddies. Plus low time preferences: none of that gold is ever spent on anything. There is no police in the game: just mario entering the market to destroy Bowser’s evil monopoly over women-stealing.
I would like to see more argumentation ethics in a future game, though. Maybe you could argue that by stealing the princess, Bowser seals his fate by putting forward a theory about how one acquires ownership of the princess. Namely that might makes right. Yeah.
I’ll agree that there is a nationalist tone to the game, which is especially present when playing on a player versus player server. It would be more interesting if there were a means of declaring oneself neutral in the game, having no affliliation with either faction (Alliance or Horde).
How about Eve Online? There’s still the nationalism, but it’s not mandatory as one can earn a positive reputation with whichever in-game empire they choose to do so with.
I think any video game that gives you free choice to do as you desire is basically Libertarian in a way… yet not in a way too… depending on where you’re looking at the theme from.
Skyrim’s Stormcloaks stood up for Libertarian ideas one you get past all the bullshit about religion that drove most of them… yet even that bullshit about religion actually is quite Libertarian too.. they were oppressed by people who said they couldn’t worship Talos.
Also, the Nordic desire for Self determination with their rulers can be considered Libertarian… especially from a Minarchist perspective, but not from an Anarcho-Capitalism perspective… as they wnated a small goverment ran by Jarls and the High King in a way that is similar to a republic…yet not really quite a republic yet.
This is just my thinking on it though..don’t want to speak for Bethseda, but that is what I see…
I want to reanimate this thread being that I hold video games to be the new emerging “film.” First-person shooters, regardless of what Roger Ebert thinks, are indeed art, and I think it would be a mistake to disregard them by referring to them as anything else other than that.
Unfortunately there are indeed a lot of statist games - Call of Duty for example. Very fun (Call of Duty 4 especially) yet one could easily interpret it has having statist undertones. You could also interpret it the other way due to it’s allowance for the examination of government corruption, but I really don’t think they had “libertarianism” in mind when making it.
Sadly enough, my favorite game series out there, Halo, is pretty statist. You’re fighting for the “United Nations Space Command,” the pretty-much totalitarian “representative democracy” state, spanning across various Solar Systems. Luckily enough, Bungie (and now 343 Industries) makes you feel, for the most part, like you’re fighting for “humanity” more than anything else, although they do include many elements of military pride and what not. The whole main character, Master Chief, who is the hero, was abducted as a small child by the UNSC in order to fight the over-taxed “Insurrectionists.” He’s the guy who ends up saving humanity.
So like any other kind of media category, I think it’s important that some libertarian opposition to the left is included.
“Call of Duty for example. Very fun (Call of Duty 4 especially) yet one could easily interpret it has having statist undertones.”
Lol you kidding me? MW2 & 3 were neo-con wetdreams/nightmares.It was practically screaming at the player to support military buildup and foreign intervention.
That’s a very libertarain/non-interventionist view of events, and I don’t think there was really much emphasis on blowback. It’s easy to argue that if the government had a greater military buildup and greater presence in other countries to begin with it would have been able to defend America/prevent the rise of ultra-nationalism in Russia more thoroughly.
Generally made irrelevant when Imran Zakhaev’s main reasons for the “Ultranationalist” movement (or whatever the hell it was) was Western imperialism. When looked upon from this standpoint, aswell as citing the atrocities caused by the Ultranationalists, all of the conflict in Call of Duty can be linked to the standard aggressive nature of the state. Like I said though, by saying this I am just utilizing my privelage to construe the storyline in a way that I find acceptable - I really don’t think the producers had libertarianism (or even anti-statism to the lowest degree) in mind when they were forging the game.
