In regard to HD2, it's hilarious that the "not political" crowd on the one hand makes this argument that they don't like "current political issues" in video games/ media and on the other hand are currently going on racist Sinophobic tirades on social media about Chinese players holding the equivalent of Shanghai in-game atm better than any other Mega city on Super Earth because "they're brainwashed CCP propagandists who don't think like us superior free thinking whites".

As always, when they say "not political" what they mean is "not making me forced to recognise my own dogshit politics."

“I’m fine with politics in vidya as long as it’s presented as a metaphor I lack the critical thinking to understand.”

Yeah, I guess you could say I'm really fuckin' good at separating art from the artist.

I’ve gone on long diatribes about this before but what these types of people mean when they say “political” is anything that challenges the status quo in even the most minute way. We already live in a facist militarized society so a hyperbolic parody of that just speaks to them as normal and the way things should be (i.e. not political). Also I don’t play the game so I’m really hoping “bug divers” is a reference to something in a game and unrelated to something else i saw Chinese players defending a certain city

it's barely even an allegory, it's literally just the (space) war on terror (with bugs)