Seriously. Every form of entertainment has baked-in political assumptions, and that definitely includes #ttrpg . You might choose not to examine them, but this is an active choice on your part, and you don’t get to pretend that your entertainment is “free of politics”.
What’s the political assumption of pong?
I mean I don’t disagree with the sentiment, the moment something has world building or a story or goals that relate to real life non-abstractly, there’s at least a political assumption, potentially an intentional statement. And people just don’t notice when it conforms to their world view. But politics free entertainment can exist, even if being able to engage in that entertainment necessarily requires some sort of engagement with real politic systems.
Though the most memorable games tend to be the ones very intentionally making statements anyway.
Glancing at Wikipedia for any Pong discourse. Found a likely example. Turns out Pong had a bug (read: feature) that contributed to its place as the first commercial success in video games. Quote,
So, Pong established the concept of video games systematically favouring the rich. Are we there yet, is that political enough?
There is still no political assumption in the game itself. Of course the moment you consider the means of acquiring it, everything touches on politics, even going to the forest and throwing a random stick, because forests existing is politics, them being accessible is politics, and you being allowed (or not) to throw a random stick is politics. That doesn’t make the concept of “throw stick at target for fun” political.
Alright yes, if you deliberately draw a circle around a portion of your entertainment and say “this is the part I like because it’s not political!” that’s still a political choice, which is the entire point OP is making, ICYMI.
Everything is political, even the choice to isolate one thing as non-political. The fact is that politics are only escapable if you’re privileged to be the kind of person who gets to say “shut up about politics, I’m trying to play Pong!”
Yeah generally when talking about a thing you draw a circle around the thing, that’s how that works. My glass from ikea isn’t making any political statement or assumption in its design as a finished product (unless you consider presumed size requirement for a beverage container to be political, though inherently nothing about it even states its purpose, so even that is doubtful) the process behind its design, manufacturing, and sale very much is political as fuck though.
You slightly moved the goalposts there. The assertion is not “Everything is making a political statement” it’s “Everything is political.” Your ikea glass reflects your social class, the international relations between where you are and where it was made. It may have been made by an oppressed person in some third world shithole (or even sweden!) It may even be a political statement, like a designer somewhere made it curvy because he thinks people are more likely to buy something with a “feminine” silhouette.
Okay, well I’m drawing a circle around how much more interesting it is to talk about politics than whatever this was.
Closest I’ve got, which I’m surprised nobody has mentioned, is the very concept that entertainment is a worthwhile pursuit, and that we aren’t made solely to work. Pong serves no functional utility, which is a statement unto itself.
That said, it feels a bit like a cop out to me, from what that quote is supposed to mean. I’d be content to rephrase it to “any sufficiently complex entertainment has politics in it”. For example, I feel like this could almost certainly be said about stories in general, but I’d struggle to find the politics in many simple children’s books, besides “children should be read to”. Although the more I think about it, teaching all children to read was once quite political.
Children’s stories have tons of politics. They’re almost always intentionally pushing a message of some kind, like “Be nice to ugly people because they might turn out to be really hot and/or magical later.”
We are trying to indoctrinate children though
Pong is competitive rather than cooperative, and I find that very meaningful.
Pong represents the slow but inevitable march towards socialism
That’s a false argument your are making here.
First : it’s a TTRPG group. You can’t have TTRPG without world building, story goals, etc.
Second : Pong is not a TTRPG. AFAIK.
Third : In case you don’t know, people who tend to say “no politics in my gaming” (like gamergaters) actually do a very political statement as for them “being black” or “being gay” or “being a woman” etc. is often seen as “politics in [their] gaming”.
Sure, you can try to argue with the words, but it’s not just words, they exists in a context and the context is that it’s a fascist dog whistle.
The statement was “every form of entertainment”. Tbh tho yea i didnt really notice it being rpgmemes so it wasnt super relevant, that statement was surely not just meant for ttrpgs tho.
I fully agree you can’t have a ttrpg without political assumptions