Atra-Sol on reflections about video games, related culture, and the struggle of proletarian thought

My idea is to take on the role of an ordinary Party member in history, to play as the Bolshevik or Menshevik faction advocate within the internal-line struggle, and then enter different lines. The feeling is that the main purpose is to serve as a warning education, to alert what opportunist lines would lead to. That’s how I think about it.

But isn’t this a kind of historical idealism, where facts in history can be arbitrarily distorted? Furthermore, the occurrence of historical events surely has deep causes and its own historical laws. For example, the Huairen Hall coup was not simply about the capitalist faction sending troops to arrest the central revolutionary faction; it was also because after Chairman Mao’s death, there was no figure who could rally the revolutionaries, among other factors. Therefore, it is meaningless to discuss fancifully what China would look like if the Huairen Hall coup had not occurred. Similarly, imagining that the Menshevik line would take the leading position is also meaningless and impossible.

1 Like

Not falsified history or baseless fantasy, but deduced from the conclusions of historical materialism—the history of class struggle and the history of the people’s commune—what might happen if you follow opportunism and revisionism, so as to serve as a warning with this effect.

What you say also makes sense: the idea that the Mensheviks could succeed, at first glance, is an expansion of a conclusion that has already appeared in the history of the workers’ movement. In fact, it violates the objective laws of historical materialism. History has proven that erroneous things will inevitably be swept into dust by history; dreaming of an incorrect worldline is itself a kind of illusion, not a deepening of the conclusions of historical materialism, and I can’t quite grasp it all at once.

I’m actually guilty of the fantasy I mentioned above: imagining using a computer to simulate a boundless, interconnected world. :joy:

Is Pikapi still addicted to games, which is why you’re so interested in discussing whether the game can be modified?\nAlso I don’t know why you chose this name.

History basically cannot be simulated; when many things change, anything can happen, because no one records all that is happening, and no one can be sure how history will ultimately unfold.

1 Like

There is actually thinking about the boundary between opposing reactionary literature and art and conservatism. If the current new literature and art are all about denying everything, it somehow feels like falling into another extreme. But in fact, the real way to solve this problem might still be to seize power first and develop it in the practice of struggle, just like the past Beijing Opera revolution. Sudden musings always fall into idealism.

What is to be critically absorbed is the culture created by the working people; there is natural no need to absorb the decayed culture of the falling bourgeoisie. Just as with Confucianism, we will not engage in vulgar dialectics to say it has both good and bad, nor talk about overturning the Kong Family Establishment and rescuing Confucius with that reactionary fallacy. Instead, we should critically expose and smear it.

1 Like

Under the conditions of bourgeois totalitarian rule, there is almost no meaningful game literature of the working people, and games created by individuals or small studios are always mixed with various backward and reactionary ideas of petit-bourgeois and bourgeois elements. But just as in Peking Opera revolution, after removing the trash of emperors, officials, talents, beauties, and other content filled with backward decayed elements in Peking Opera, and transforming it with revolutionary content to serve the revolutionary cause and the propaganda struggle in the superstructure, I wonder whether the game revolution and the Peking Opera revolution have something in common, whether MLMism could be used to lead and reform it (of course, even if possible it might require seizing power first, not sure).

I can’t say for sure, but even as a form of promotion, video games don’t seem like a suitable tool for broad publicity. Also, may I ask why you chose this name?

The unity of form and content in two-dimensional (2D) as a concept is reactionary and decayed from the start to the end; it can only be said that purely two-dimensional plane creation can be used as an artistic form, while 2D itself cannot. Novels, films, comics, animation all have successful revolutionary transformations as examples; old-style games (board and card games and some offline, face-to-face mini-games derived from production practices) also have examples. Digital games, as a new form of games born in the information age, whether they will be as utterly reactionary and decayed as 2D culture or, like Peking opera, have possibilities for transformation—this problem perhaps can only be proven in the future through further struggle and practice. But at least for now, all existing digital games are accomplices in promoting bourgeois ideologies and dulling and poisoning workers; we must resolutely oppose and struggle, or we will die.

Regarding the name issue, I explained a bit in the Plants vs. Zombies thread.

I think it is unlikely, and this so-called view of “reforming” video games has already become a fairly widespread notion among petty bourgeois opportunists, whose purpose is to oppose communism under the banner of Marxism; I do not support such claims. Moreover, no one has provided any basis for the idea that video games can be reformed.

1 Like