Hello and welcome to another Side-Quest episode of Talk This! It’s Dangerous to Podcast Alone! This week, we’re talking about America and video games from American exceptionalism to grafting American heads onto Nazi super soldiers.
As always, you can listen to our podcast basically anywhere you want. Check it out on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and Pandora (or head over to our episodes page for even more options). Or just listen below
The Topic
How is America often portrayed in video games? What types of video games even portray America, as a country? Why is it often portrayed the way that it is? How does this play into the attitudes of Gamers towards Video Games and why is that a problem? Talking about Bioshock Infinite and Spec Ops: The Line is required.
The Actual Discussion
We talk about military games and how the video game power fantasy lines up with the American hero trope. The video game industry releases a lot more military shooters than we had ever heard of. We also talk about the more absurdist examples of Bioshock Infinite and Wolfenstein which fall short in their criticisms in different ways. Finally, we also venture outside of games to talk about American Exceptionalism in general, as well as the pronounced effect that 9-11 had on media.
–
Enjoy the episode! Tell us what you think in the comments or on social media. Make sure to check out last week’s episode and look forward to next week’s where we’re talking about NiGHTS into Dreams and Umurangi Generation.
Make an effort this week too, if you can.