Why Gamers Can’t Play Politics

The barrier between video games and every other aspect of pop culture, already porous, has collapsed utterly. This is not, to be candid, what my pre-teen self expected to happen, back when I was lavishing untold hours on Super Nintendo classics. Even when these games boasted near-flawless mechanics, as in the case of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, or the sophisticated narrative of Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen, I considered them fairly disreputable diversions. It was generally agreed that they were the sort of mindless entertainments that could only be enjoyed alone in a room by children or adolescents, then kept out of sight.