Does anyone like politics?
Living in the DC area, we're all too acutely aware of politics. It's hard to get away from it, here. Even if you don't read the papers or watch TV news or somehow manage to avoid it on the Net, unless you live like a hermit and eschew friends and family, politics is going to insinuate itself into your life. Heck, you probably even work on the Hill or know someone who does or know someone who knows someone who does. Even if that's not the case, you or the company you work for probably has some business on the Hill.
It's a simple fact of life in DC: The business of the city is politics. Politics is as much a part of the industry and culture here as movies are to LA.
That doesn't mean we like it, though.
Most of us find politics distasteful. It's no surprise. Politics is the venue of “back room deals,” “pressing the flesh” and “ego stroking.” People use politics to advance their own agenda, usually in less than wholly honest ways. As dictionary.com puts is it, politics is the “use of intrigue or strategy in obtaining any position of power or control.” Ugh. The very definition almost makes you want to take a shower.
Some, more cynical people – also known as people who have lived in DC too long – would have you believe that politics is everywhere, politics is a part of every aspect of our lives. Let's hope not. Sure it might be a fact of life, but, really, let's hope it's not everywhere: If politics is in your love life, that's not much of a love life.
Politics, though, is a part of most aspects of our lives – we've all seen the machinations of sordid, tuchis-kissing coworkers to think otherwise – but that doesn't mean we like it. We deal with it, like we deal with an obnoxious in-law.
So if most of us find politics distasteful, why would we want them in our computer games?
**** Spoiler Alert: If you haven't played Dragon Age, yet, skip the next paragraph. But if you haven't played Dragon Age, yet, what's your problem? Go buy it, now! ****
Dragon Age is rife with politics: The dwarfs bicker with each other about who should be the next king, conducting back room deals with you to advance their cause; Zevran – an assassin who attempts to kill you – tries to smooth talk his way into your good graces, convincingly arguing how he could advance and aid your cause; and Loghain betrays his king and, yet, you still have to convince the nobles to rally to your cause and not side with Loghain.
Sure, the politics help move the plot along; they provide elements essential to good storytelling – strife and conflict. Partly, we put up with the politics in Dragon Age, because we enjoy the story. We deal with, suffer through, tolerate the politics because they help move the story along and we actually like them in the context of the story.
Really, the politics in Dragon Age are interesting. But why? Why is something that's so tedious in real life, actually enjoyable in a computer game?
For one thing, Dragon Age gives you options, the kind of options you don't have in real life. You can play good, evil or somewhere in between. You have control over the way the dialog plays out for the most part. It's up to you to resolve the politics of the situation pretty much as you see fit.
In real life, when your boss comes by your desk and asks your to fill out your TPS report and tells you he's going to need you to come in this weekend, your options are few. You could quit, but that's not much of an option. You know you could play office politics a little more and maybe that would get you off on the weekend, but is it really worth it? So you do what you have to do: suck it up, fill out the TPS report and come into work on Saturday.
Dragon Age, unlike real life, gives you options most of the time. It lets you deal with the in-game politics, pretty much however you like. And best of all... probably the main reason we don't mind the politics in Dragon Age, there's always the lizard-brain option, the option that appeals to that part of the human brain that's been with us since our evolutionary ancestors crawled out of the primordial ooze: If you don't like all the politics, if you get tired of deliberating with the other characters, you can kill them all!
Almost every dialog in Dragon Age will eventually give you an option to just kill them all. Ahhh. How satisfying. No pressing of the flesh. No back room deals. Just action.
Contrary to what some members of Congress who don't play video games might think, letting the lizard beast loose in the context of the video game is therapeutic. Gamers knows this.
There's never a political situation in Dragon Age that can't be solved with the point of a sword. That's why we and our lizard brains don't mind the politics in the game and that's why we love gaming.
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