{"id":55699,"date":"2018-10-17T21:29:00","date_gmt":"2018-10-17T21:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/328874"},"modified":"2018-10-17T21:29:00","modified_gmt":"2018-10-17T21:29:00","slug":"the-division-developer-politics-in-games-are-bad-for-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2018\/10\/17\/the-division-developer-politics-in-games-are-bad-for-business\/","title":{"rendered":"The Division developer: Politics in games are &#8216;bad for business&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to\u00a0Ubisoft Massive COO Alf Condelius\u200b, the decision to avoid taking\u00a0any concrete, political stance in video games like\u00a0<em>The<\/em><em> Division <\/em>is purely a monetary one, as politics are &#8220;bad for business.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Speaking earlier\u00a0today at the\u00a0Sweden Game Conference in Sk\u00f6vde, Condelius explained how\u00a0Ubisoft\u00a0Massive attempts to distance itself from any political interpretations players may have.<\/p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamesindustry.biz\/articles\/2018-10-17-ubisoft-massive-coo-we-dont-want-to-take-a-stance-in-current-politics\">GamesIndustry.biz<\/a>, He goes\u00a0on to\u00a0justify\u00a0why developers and publishers may choose not to include politically\u00a0charged messages\u00a0in their work.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a balance because we cannot be openly political in our games,&#8221; Condelius said. &#8220;So for example in<em> The Division<\/em>, it&#8217;s a dystopian future and there&#8217;s a lot of interpretations that it&#8217;s something that we see the current society moving towards, but it&#8217;s not &#8211; it&#8217;s a fantasy.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#013;<br \/>\n&#013;<\/p>\n<p>In addition to politics potentially ruining sales, Condelius\u00a0goes on to say that he doesn&#8217;t want to risk alienating players with a political message, hoping to create a narrative of their own.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#013;<br \/>\n&#013;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s also bad for business, unfortunately, if you want the honest truth&#8230;&#8221; Condelius continued, &#8220;but it is interesting and it is a discussion that we have, and it&#8217;s an ongoing discussion we have with our users, of course, because people want to put an interpretation into the universe that we create and they want to see their own reality in the fantasies that we give them, and the stories that the games are.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#013;<br \/>\n&#013;<\/p>\n<p>The statements almost serve as a contradiction since\u00a0<em>The Division\u00a02<\/em>\u00a0is set in Washington DC, a global hub for political activity.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#013;<br \/>\n<\/aside>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to\u00a0Ubisoft Massive COO Alf Condelius\u200b, the decision to avoid taking\u00a0any concrete, political stance in video games like\u00a0The Division is purely a monetary one, as politics are &#8220;bad for business.&#8221;\u00a0 Speaking earlier\u00a0today at the\u00a0Sweden Game Conference in Sk\u00f6vde, Condelius explained how\u00a0Ubisoft\u00a0Massive attempts to distance itself from any political interpretations players may have. According to GamesIndustry.biz, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55700,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}