He's feeling the White Man's Burden far too heavily. Video games became popularized after the Vietnam War, the point at which it became clear that European culture and by extension the white man's United States was not going to save the world. It's no coincidence that this was the point at which REAL LIFE attempts to save the world became VIRTUAL attempts to pretend to save the world, ushered in by Dungeons and Dragons and finding imitation in by now thousands of video games.
This is the core of the frustration that white American males (and other Western males to a lesser extent) feel in their lives. The culture that has largely defined the modern world, THEIR culture, is the very one that's killing it. Instead of dealing with that on an emotional and psychological level the "solution" is instead to create video games that offer the illusion of success. The REAL attempt to save the world is sublimated into a virtual illusion, with the gamer FEELING good by means of "saving the world".
This problematic approach not only lays the groundwork for fascism, that's barely a blip on the radar compared to the far more serious issue of the second part of the ideology of games - saving the world, *one corpse at a time*. In a world projected to have 500 million humans left alive in 2100, and the Western world, that is to say the gaming world being in the best position to comprise most of that 500 million, the vast majority of the rest of the world's population needs to die by 2100. Gaming as it exists now is a *metaphor* for the reality of the 21st century, with the "superpowered and glorified super-special hero" hacking apart "monsters", shotgunning zombies in the head, blowing away enemy soldiers.
The final result of a video game is a world filled with "500 million civilized people" who are alive, and "6.7 billion monsters" who are dead.
When soldiers dominate a country they demonize and dehumanize the population, to ease the cause of domination - after the domination is complete and the soldiers leave the population REVERTS to human.
As Jack Vance wrote The Dying Earth and climate scientists began confirming the approaching death of the species, people began preparing subconsciously - the more powerful humans prepared not to save the world but to make sure they would be the last to die. To make sure they would be among the 500 million.
In video games it often seems like one has entered a kind of nightmare world filled with monsters or a dangerous world filled with enemy soldiers. But rather than despair or check one's psychological or moral condition for psychosis, the gamer is taught to take the game's premise on faith - yep, those are really monsters that need killing and you are really an awesome person who must take on the noble heroic duty of mass murder. One is saving the world, one corpse at a time, never asking just what the hell is going on - there's hardly a need to really know what's going on when the primary purpose of the game is establishing a "save the few, kill the many" ideology for the 21st century.
A few games and game critics have attempted to subvert this by inverting it - the protagonist is actually the villain and the "monsters" are actually just victims. But nobody has yet gotten it right - the protagonist is playing God - deciding who lives and who dies - defining WHO is among the 500 million "noble humans" and WHO is among the 6.7 billion "monsters".
It's not really "Heart of Darkness", is it? It's much more like King of the Hill, Highlander, or Ten Little Indians.
How about a game where everyone begins as human, and the gamer can decide WHO is a monster - as he makes his decision the "monster" is transformed from human to monster *in the eyes of the gamer*. But the game then gives the player a choice - he can transfer his control from the original protagonist into the being that has just been transformed. This being views itself as human, and because of the hostility of the original protagonist toward him he's more likely to transform the original protagonist into a monster.
But there's a further choice given to the gamer - the choice of whether or not to transform anyone. However, just as in the real world of the 21st century, if noone is transformed into a monster it means that the inevitable death of creatures are going to be deaths of human beings, not monsters.
If lots of people are transformed into monsters the game plays out traditionally - monsters vs. hero. But if noone is transformed into a monster the game is completely different - the battle instead is against the death of the world itself, with all human beings uniting to fight to save the world.
Needless to say this makes for a very interesting replay. How does it feel for everyone to fight to save the world but still having 2 billion people die, which because they weren't transformed into monsters have to be lamented as dead humans, compared to the feeling of killing 6.7 billion monsters and allowing the 500 million noble humans to live a little longer, maybe even buy themselves enough time to escape the earth and colonize space?
That could be quite an interesting game. Oh wait... is this a game I'm talking about?
