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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsWhy I Want to Fuck Barack Obama
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Author Topic: Why I Want to Fuck Barack Obama  (Read 23587 times)
irishladdie727
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« Reply #80 on: March 24, 2011, 06:07:05 PM »

This Long-ass post is directed towards Quicksand-T, so everyone else feel free to ignore it

In response to what I've bolded, you don't have to be a right-wing polemic, but you kind of do have to be an American.  I'm going to put that on the table and come back to it after I make a lot of clarification as to why I feel that way.

This game looks crazy good (emphasis on the crazy), and I will be playing the hell out of it and likely enjoying it no matter how I feel about your motivations for creating it.  I read the Patrick Dugan review and he hit on what seemed like your "big idea" for this game, albeit an obvious one, that the Messianic Obama head leading the spastic children (we call em' retards here) to their deaths is a thinly veiled metaphor for what's happened to my generation ever since we invested all of our aspirations and political faith in one man and one man alone.  What I think you're missing is that is the fault of the spastic children for being politically naive and expecting a messiah to change the world for them instead of trying to change it themselves, and that perhaps the spastic children deserve to die.  I still firmly believe Obama is a good man is a profession that is not conductive to good men, and that means the more morally flexible elements of the American government get to retain their stranglehold.  It's a much more complex situation than "America Dumb, America Elect Evil Raven King With Big Ears Because He Talk Nice, America Get Screwed, Silly America."  He inherited the end of the worst decade ever and people gave him shit because he couldn't pull off an FDR first 100 days, and then the media and the right wingers called him a communist whenever he actually tried.  America screwed America, Obama is as powerless as the rest of us without real support and trust, and I think people who can't see that are fooling themselves.  It's easy to take that stance when you're not living here, and I know that the whole world, especially the West, has to live with America's politics and culture to some degree, but it's not the same.  I could watch the Canadian news all day and learn about all your Ministers and shit, but I'd never really get to know the voters, would I?  You know what I mean?

And look, THE PRESIDENT, THE ELECTED OFFICIALS, THE CHURCHES, THE BANKS, THE MEDIA, THE JOBS, MULTI-NATIONAL CORPORATIONS, AND THE MILITARY, are not out to get us.  These are all institutions, composed of individuals, and individuals have a right to agendas and opinions just like THE PEOPLE.  By and large the only generalization I'd agree with here is that multinational corporations can can eat giant shit-flavored dick.  But nobody has trusted the sharks since the economy collapsed, and I didn't trust them before.  It doesn't matter if we trust them, they can do whatever the fuck they want.  They hold all the money and all the power in the world, and our inability to trust banks, media, and elected officials stems from their infinite capacity to pay people off. Jobs go away in an economic downturn.  Tough shit.  It's not a conspiracy.  And I don't know why we wouldn't be able to trust the military.  I trust the military to kill people I don't necessarily disagree with in order to end a war I definitely do.  That's their job description.  Sure, there have been some sketchy ass cover-ups, but War is not a perfect science, you made a great game about it.  I'm not trying to justify any of our numerous war crimes, but it's a slippery slope between soldiers losing control of a situation, or their minds, and martial law.  People think the United States is headed towards Fascism.  It's not.  That's the fucking stupidest thing I've ever heard.  The world is headed towards fascism lead by business, but the American people would never let their freedom get taken away.  Spreading conspiratorial thinking just makes people paranoid and they focus on the "What if's?" instead of the numerous "What now's?" the President is trying desperately to answer with no help from... anyone.  The reason for all the secrecy in the government is to maintain the illusion that they have some giant conspiratorial edge on us.  Did you actually read the Cablegate Wikileaks?  The scariest thing in there was that Shell Oil basically owns Nigeria and that has very little to do with the US government.  It actually brings me to my final point, which is that a great deal of the world's problems and without a doubt its inability to solve them can be traced to the "ding ding" reckless arrogance of multinational corporations.  If you want a conspiracy, find the nearest Coke can.

Okay, now assuming you knew all that because you're clearly an intelligent person, there's the question of why you started with symbolic imagery and then veered off into nihilistic surrealism (based off screenshots, I could be full of shit). I'm all for edgy acidic political satire, but it seems you started off with with the "big idea" and then just turned the game into your design playground while filling it with incendiary images.  And I call them "incendiary" because there are people getting shot here now for less.  I mean, why is Obama's head on a cock?  It's bizarre and punk and all, but why?  I know your intentions are innocent, but a lot of the Americans playing this game won't understand that, and there's already far too much white noise out there surrounding our President.  I'm not talking about people being offended, I'm talking about people taking all of your game seriously instead of just the parts that ought to be.  I suppose there's some degree of Freudian symbolism in mounting faces on cocks, but I've seen ignorant, not stupid, but ignorant compatriots say scary things because they're surrounded with misleading imagery.  Just realize that you're playing with fire, one, and two, it's not your fire to play with if you make these games out of an eclectic appreciation for "Americana" and not a genuine sense of emotional attachment to a nation on the verge of... something, and a desire to help it get there.

And just to clarify, I fall on the very very socialist, but loves freedom area of the political spectrum, and it took me a while but I really do love my country and I can't bring myself to be too cynical about a place with a spirit like this.  So I'm what you'd call an oddity.  I don't fit any stereotype well, and that's another reason that it just strikes me as odd that a Canadian is satirizing American politics because an outsider's view would be typically defined by those stereotypes and they're less common.  The vast majority of America thinks like Jon Stewart.  They may not have his politics, but they're discerning like him.  Just keep that in mind.  It's the crazy people who get news coverage, on left and right, who I'm worried might play your game (which despite all of my admittedly weird reservations will be awesome) and pervert it somehow.  I really want to play this game though, it looks awesome.  And I'm probably full of shit, I'm kind of having a bad week. Don't change a thing, just don't underestimate how much shit might hit the fan if your game does get really popular.

Other people on the thread, feel free to simply disagree with me, threaten to cut my pinko heart out, accuse me of being a stop-having a fun guy (I totally am) or just ignore me completely.  Gentleman
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eclectocrat
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« Reply #81 on: March 24, 2011, 06:51:24 PM »

...

Yo, straight from the heart. But I'll posit that it's naive to think there are no conspiracies. Conspiracy is the oldest political tool in the world. Many people have this, "it can't happen in America" syndrome, and that is a big obstacle to seeing through the bullshit to the underlying realpolitik. The nazi's did this, the Stalin did that, Pol-Pot did the other, but no American would do any of that, we're not evil. Sorry, but evil does not have a nationality. Don't underestimate the power of racism and fundamentalism. There are powerful people in the world who have political agendas, often they are racist and genocidal. They will lie, cheat, deny and do anything they can to consolidate power. These people exist in America too, and some of them don't want you to have the right to speak out. If you simply throw out a blanket denial of the possibility of these kinds of people manipulating your government, media, and other powerful institutions, that enables them.

But I totally agree that conspiracy theories do lead to paranoia, and it's better to do right in your own community right now. Grassroots power is a game changer. Hell, if you look at any successful tyrant they put a priority on destroying community and reorganizing cultural, family and political bonds. A strong community is the best defence against fascism, so go to a local meeting, organize a trash pickup in a nearby park, setup an event at a town hall or community centre, use the interwebs to get like minded people together. It doesn't have to be politically oriented, just meet the people that live around you.

Peace.
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irishladdie727
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« Reply #82 on: March 25, 2011, 03:09:30 AM »

...

Yo, straight from the heart. But I'll posit that it's naive to think there are no conspiracies. Conspiracy is the oldest political tool in the world. Many people have this, "it can't happen in America" syndrome, and that is a big obstacle to seeing through the bullshit to the underlying realpolitik. The nazi's did this, the Stalin did that, Pol-Pot did the other, but no American would do any of that, we're not evil. Sorry, but evil does not have a nationality. Don't underestimate the power of racism and fundamentalism. There are powerful people in the world who have political agendas, often they are racist and genocidal. They will lie, cheat, deny and do anything they can to consolidate power. These people exist in America too, and some of them don't want you to have the right to speak out. If you simply throw out a blanket denial of the possibility of these kinds of people manipulating your government, media, and other powerful institutions, that enables them.

But I totally agree that conspiracy theories do lead to paranoia, and it's better to do right in your own community right now. Grassroots power is a game changer. Hell, if you look at any successful tyrant they put a priority on destroying community and reorganizing cultural, family and political bonds. A strong community is the best defence against fascism, so go to a local meeting, organize a trash pickup in a nearby park, setup an event at a town hall or community centre, use the interwebs to get like minded people together. It doesn't have to be politically oriented, just meet the people that live around you.

Peace.

It's not so much that I don't think evil people exist in America.  The arrogant morally bankrupt capitalism I have such a problem with is totally American.  I just think Americans are already so hardwired to protect their "freedom" (see: the completely illogical reaction to health care reform), that if actual Fascism did ever rear its ugly head, there would be fighting in the streets.  I know people are manipulating my government and media, I'm not throwing out a blanket denial of that fact, because it is a fact.  I just don't think that because there are some bad eggs that the entire system is corrupt.  It's just as alarmist to throw out a blanket denial of those institutions ability to continue serving the people.  The government and the media aren't the ones with agendas, the people within them are, and I think there are still just as many good people around too.  It's the only reason something like Wikileaks can work.  

A conspiracy requires at least most of its key members to be complicit in it, and I think the fact that we have two political parties constantly wrestling over the simplest of disagreements, and countless somewhat apolitical special interest groups throwing their hat in as well means our conspiracy is more like a giant Gordian knot half of the conspirators are trying to untie and the other half are looping around in ever more complex patterns.  That's the nature of American government.  It means that change comes very slowly, which is why the messianic expectations of Obama were our fault and not his, but it also means that it's nearly impossible for despotism of any kind to emerge, unless the people have somehow elected a majority congress, there's a majority in the Supreme Court, the Executive gets even more emergency power than it does now, and the CIA, Military, media, and Satanic Walstreet Lobbyists are somehow all peachy with this.  I'm not saying it's impossible, but it was a whole hell of a lot easier in Germany, Russia, China, Vietnam, Spain, etc.

Edit: Actually another major terrorist attack or another cold war would make uniting the country behind one party pretty easy.  If an evil mastermind wanted to do it that would be how.  Nonetheless history has shown us that the party in power tends to get ousted pretty quickly if they mismanage things (Bush, Nixon).
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« Reply #83 on: March 25, 2011, 03:45:18 PM »

There's a lot to unpack here, and we could probably have a long discussion on any one of the points raised (for example I don't think letting Bush have two terms in office counts as ousting him quickly, although I get what you're referring to).

But as for how all this relates to Why I Want To Fuck Barack Obama, I want to address two things. One, the fact that I'm Canadian. Two, my treatment of Obama himself.

Our last game, We Want YOU, could be called a satire of modern war. It was mainly me who came up with the story progression for the game, and all the satirical headlines that float over top of the kill-or-be-killed gameplay.

Thing is, I've never been a soldier. I know only a handful of people who are in the army or have been in the army. One of those people was in the American army, but ran away to Canada as a refugee because she faced discrimination as a lesbian (she claimed they actually refused to discharge her under Don't Ask, Don't Tell). The others are not really notable.

So what makes me qualified to make a game tackling the issue of war? Well, we went into the game knowing our limited perspective, and designed the game around that from day one. In the end We Want YOU is not a game about soldiers at war, but a satire of how we at home see war and the tangled web of abstractions our culture and media have created around the basic idea of people killing each other. It's not about war, it's about the abstract idea of war.

J.G. Ballard said the following quote about his novel Crash. You could say that Crash is about people having sex in and around car crashes, but that's not quite right. Its not about people having sex, its about the abstract idea of sex. Its about the tangled web of abstractions we've created around the basic idea of human procreation.

"I wanted to rub the human face in its own vomit and force it to look in the mirror."

The same thing goes for this project, Why I Want To Fuck Barack Obama. It doesn't matter that I'm not American. WIWTFBO is not about America, its about the idea of America, which is something we are all familiar with. WIWTFBO is not (primarily) meant to be a reasoned criticism of Barack Obama as a person or as a president, its about Obama as a symbol of great hope and even greater disappointment. He is both Woodstock and Altamonte.

As a Canadian I can only sit and watch, helpless, as America seems to run itself into the ground (and when that happens, make no mistake, Canada will inevitably go with it). I think many people in America share that same frustration. The real issues here are bigger than me, bigger than anyone can understand or make sense of, let alone make a difference in. So frustration is all that is left for us.

That frustration is the core of this whole thing, and the only way I have to express it is through what you call nihilistic surrealism, or what could be called political dadaism. I've dived into the vomit and brought back this imagery, the trailer, the website.

So after we've rubbed our faces in America's vomit, we look in the mirror. And what do we see then?




You'll have to play the game to find out.

« Last Edit: March 25, 2011, 04:28:56 PM by Quicksand-T » Logged

irishladdie727
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« Reply #84 on: March 25, 2011, 04:58:44 PM »

......

I'm behind that.  And I think you really are hitting on how that frustration feels.  It's just the driving force behind our downward spiral right now is everyone's fundamental disagreement on what exactly "the idea of America" is.  Take a poll and no two answers will be the same.  The founding fathers didn't even seem to know for sure. Some people think it's all about the right to individuality, some the nation where immigrants can start anew and prosper, some people think it's "God's country", some people apparently think it's about the ability to live above the laws of other men once your salary has a certain number of zeros, and I personally think America's charm lies in the way that somehow all of these ideas seem to exist at once and we can accommodate any vision of the American dream, no matter how crazy, even Charlie Sheen crazy. It's a nation of ideals, nobody's quite sure what they are, but everybody certainly has them.  And it's a nation of hundreds of millions of people loudly expressing their individuality... together. E Pluribus Unum? I just don't think a country this absolutely beautifully fucking crazy can ever really hit rock bottom.  Somebody round these parts will always be able to step up to the plate. 

I brought up the Canadian issue because there's a real sense here that rather than plummeting towards our demise, we're plummeting towards a new period of social and political reinvention.  A time where some of the uglier "ideas of America" get drowned out by more constructive ones. The whole world is due for big changes coming in hot, and for some reason America has kind of become seen as a place where change can't happen.  But the reality is politicians have never changed anything and rather than shoegazing, people here are realizing that Obama's burden was on our shoulders all along. Some people frankly want terrifying changes, but that's neither here nor there, and most of them will be dead within twenty years anyway. 

All that said, I don't think it matters much as far as your game is concerned.  And I didn't think you were ever smearing Obama. I'm sorry if it came off that way. Even if you were I'd be willing to hear you out.  I think he's mostly hogtied but there have been numerous instances of wet noodle leadership because he's afraid to express opinions in public, which I suppose I can't blame him for since apparently trying to fix unemployment and provide healthcare for everyone makes you a Nazi. And yes, a country like this has a lot of vomit.  It comes mostly from high places, and I'm excited to have my face rubbed in it.  Make sure you capture the idea that a country like the United States, a country that encourages narcissism, we would relish in the chance to taste our own vomit... metaphorically speaking.

As far as that first bit, Bush's re-election had a lot more to do with John Kerry being a hollow shell of a cardboard cutout of a man and a pitifully flaccid candidate.  Kerry's 2008 would have looked more or less the same as Bush's, because the man would have been as indecisive as a teenage girl picking a Sadie Hawkins date (you may or may not get that reference).  We did give congress to the democrats however, and they've had the majority ever since, and you also forget that we elected Gore in the first place.  With regards to Nixon, who was the other one I talked about, he was less representative of his party, and more embodied the long string of 50's politicians who did everything in their power to exacerbate the cold war and prolong Vietnam, and as he ended up proving, were fundamentally irrational and paranoid human beings.  Then Carter came in and wasn't able to accomplish too much, but bless his heart he tried, so we got Reagan, and... just... don't even get me started.  The eighties sucked for a reason.  Best of luck and sorry for the digression.
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