Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus showed a Nazified America.

The DeanBeat: Would politics make video games better?

As I watched my Facebook feed explode about President Donald Trump’s racist comments this week, I couldn’t help but notice that game developers are political creatures, just like everybody else. But if you looked at their games for political messages, you would think that they’re apolitical, concerned only with near-political game environments that don’t take a stand.

This subject flared up ever since Donald Trump was elected as the U.S. president, but his presidential misadventures have not yet inspired a masterful intertwining of art and politics in a video game. Perhaps we should not expect to see that happen because the interests of commerce rule the day. I hope we can overcome those interests because I believe that putting some form of higher meaning into video games is one way to make games as universally recognized as an art as other media.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.