Many people think of video games just as distractions. As a kind of digital opiate of the masses that keeps them from paying attention to the conditions of the real world. However, video games, like any art, can be either frivolous or serious. While many games reinforce conservative ideologies, there has been an increasing trend toward games with a radical perspective on social issues, especially among indie games.
Some of these games promote class-consciousness, while others promote class warfare. There are even games that are allegories of the current struggles of game designers to unionize and seize control of the industry they serve and love.
10 Kentucky Route Zero
Kentucky Route Zero is an as-yet-unfinished indie game that is being released in chapters. The first came out in 2013, inspired by the economic crash of 2008, and the way the modern economy continues to lay waste to rural America. It’s a character-driven story epic set along an underground highway through the caves of the Kentucky mountains. If this makes you think of coal miners, you’re in the right headspace. This game has a strong blue-collar identity, enriched by a soundtrack that includes bluegrass and hymns. It loses points for its long development process, including its unfinished state.
9 Post/Capitalist
This tiny indie game punches way above its weight when it comes to ideology. It’s a mini city simulator that includes more aspects of capitalist infrastructure than many much larger games. The gameplay seems easy: just click repeatedly on an aspect of society to change it. Pick your favorite cause and go to town. Then pick another. It’s that easy.
Except that after a little while, changing one aspect of society causes others to revert to capitalist structures. This is one of the key insights of the game. It reminds us of the hypocrisy of many left-wing movements, which just export the costs of their social victories (think supposedly green products that are more harmful to the environment).
8 Cart Life
Cart Life is a retro game with what seems like a stock capitalist trope: play as a shopkeeper trying to make money. But in this game, the devil is in the details. It’s a very character-driven game, where you delve into the lives of these characters. And the game is set up to show just how much the cards are stacked against small business owners. While the 80s era graphics make it feel very much like trying to make it as a small business owner in Reagan’s America, it also feels very modern, capturing the challenges of a gig economy where everyone owns a small, struggling business.
7 Neo Cab
Almost the mirror image of Cart Life, there’s Neo Cab. It is set in the future, where you play as the last human cab driver in the city of Los Ojos. You are searching for your lost friend through a series of encounters with a colorful array of passengers. And we do mean colorful: the game is like the mirror image of the black-and-white Cart Life. It’s incredibly neon, though its futuristic setting is retro in its own way. It feels a little Cyberpunk and looks a lot like Blade Runner 2049. This game highlights the perils of automation, which many other games on this list hail for their potential to liberate workers.
6 Wilmot’s Warehouse
Not all radical games are story-based. Some build their ideology into the theme of the game and leave it as a subtext. That’s the case with Wilmot’s Warehouse.
5 The Westport Independent
In The Westport Independent, you run a small, private newspaper. Stories come across your desk and you can edit them to be either pro or anti-government. Depending on your spin, your staff might object, but you can keep them in line, though they get unhappy. And you can make money by marketing your paper differently depending on your editorial choices. This is an important game when media gets accused of printing “fake news” whenever it tells unpleasant truths and private media networks can force out a state-approved narrative.
4 To Build A Better Mousetrap
This is a brilliant little game made by the radical rabble-rousers at Molleindustria. You portray a capitalist who tries to make money by selling products. You have to keep developing new products to increase demand and research automation to speed production and keep costs down. At the same time, unemployed people queue at your door, and they can turn into agitators. You can throw the agitators in jail, but the system is increasingly unstable. It’s a very small game, but it’s fast-paced, engaging, and full of fun details. There’s a visceral joy in grabbing workers by the scruff of their necks. However, it also makes you feel guilty.
3 Phone Story
Phone Story is another entry by Molleindustria. It isn’t quite as much fun as the previous one, but it’s more significant. This is actually a series of minigames, each built around one phase in the construction of mobile phones.
One game focuses on the oppressive mining conditions where child workers in Congo toil to harvest raw materials. Another highlights the suicide-inducing conditions at iPhone factories in China. Needless to say, Apple banned the game shortly after it debuted, though it was later released for Android. Again, it’s hard not to feel guilty playing this game.
2 The Stanley Parable
As a spiritual sequel to The Peter Principle (1969), The Stanley Parable is a commentary on modern white-collar “work.” In The Stanley Parable, you control Stanley through a series of choices that take him through the narrative. Part of the twist is that the narrator will tell you what choice you will make before you make it, although you can choose something different. The humor in the game makes it feel very much like Portal, but also like a true version of real life.
1 Oikospiel
Oikospiel probably comments more directly on current issues than any other game on our list. However, it’s also one of the most surreal. In this game, you play a dog who is trying to make a video game dog opera. The working conditions for you and your fellow game developers are terrible, and you have to choose between continuing the work that you love and standing up for better conditions. Or perhaps there’s a way to do the work and get better treatment. It is littered with a blend of video game and real-world references, like a boss named “Donkey Koch.” Oikospiel is surreal, challenging, and it feels like a major tipping point in video game culture.
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