If you like playing medieval-themed video games, you might not be just some harmless nerd — you might be a nerd who is also kind of a white supremacist.
At least that’s the opinion of Victoria Cooper, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Leeds in England, who presented a paper titled “Playing Politics: Exploring Nationalism and Conservatism in Fantasy Video Games” at the International Medieval Congress earlier this month.
“The Middle Ages is a space where white supremacy is legitimized,” Cooper said, according to an article on Medievalists.net. “The maintenance of white privilege. The gamer community use ‘historical facts’ to legitimize this kind of literacy.”
According to the article, Cooper also added that “medievally-themed video games are a space where whiteness can be anchored, in a ‘happy history’ where a world is free of multiculturalism and white guilt.’”
#related#Now, I don’t play video games. I don’t like any of them, so I don’t know exactly how the people who do like them decide which ones they like. Still, I highly doubt that the people who like medieval games like them because they hate minorities and diversity and the games allow them to escape to a white-power fantasy land “free of multiculturalism.”
I’m also having a hard time imagining how anyone could possibly develop a videogame that met the standards of political correctness. Maybe a game where the character who apologizes the most wins? Then again, any kind of competition just perpetuates the capitalist ideals that we all know are inherently evil.
Perhaps we should just ban video games altogether. After all, it’s not like the people who play them can be expected to separate what’s going on in the game with the way the real world works.