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okay today we have to discuss mass
effect polygon
space police camden new jersey kotaku
and the gdc
that might seem like a ridiculous list
of topics for a single video but
hopefully everything will make sense
pretty quick
to start with we have to look at mass
effect and polygon polygon is not
exactly known for their industry
defining coverage in a world where
certain journalistic names have an
actual measurable effect on various
companies
love him or hate him jason schreier
comes to mind for that polygon is not a
name that will jump off the page as
being
prominent or ever important to be
completely honest the bulk of what i can
remember as being attributable to
the writers at that particular outlet is
rage bait and political activism you
might say oh well that's just normal now
and i would be inclined to agree with
that but
polygon is maybe a step or two farther
than most other outlets in the entire
industry
that being said their coverage of the
newly released mass effect legendary
edition
well it's in a league of its own title
and this is the actual literal title
mass effects revival reminds us it's
time to abolish
the space police yeah now in a world
where clickbait is rampant and attention
spans are smaller than ever before it's
important to read beyond just the
headlines but in the interest of saving
everyone time and brain cells
the title is actually accurate for once
this article takes aim at the
fundamental premise behind mass effect 3
tags shepard and his crew with various
authoritarian labels
prescribes them to be some sort of
galactic law enforcement and laments the
idea that this could ever be acceptable
fun or tolerated here's a selection of
paragraphs from the article and i know
it's going to be a lot but this will
establish just what kind of framing the
author is going for when diving into the
topic of
space police quote after the wave of
protests last summer following the
police killings of george floyd and
brianna taylor
among others the topic of defunding the
police began to see more frequent and
serious public discussion
several city councils even introduced
measures to reallocate police funds to
social programs with vastly inferior
budgets
police corruption which had previously
been glossed over by reformist appeals
to root out the few bad apples was
finally cracked wide open revealing the
racist
structural rot underlying the entire
institution
maybe policing as a concept was bad
maybe it couldn't be reformed
but should be abolished instead the
far-reaching fallout from these
traumatic events and revelations wound
up affecting the world of entertainment
notably including nbc's brooklyn
nine-nine a show in the creative lineage
of other workplace sitcoms like the
office in parks and recreation
brooklyn nine-nine is about a fictional
police precinct in brooklyn
staffed by a young and diverse crew of
wisecracking cops
despite being a far cry from oakley
stunting tactical vest wearing
thick-necked white male depictions of
police
the characters on the show could not
escape the reckoning sweeping through
the media landscape
it became the subject of viral tweets
and a collider article asking the
question of whether subsequent seasons
of the show might not see the beloved
cast transferred to an entirely
different and deep politicized line of
work
like becoming firefighters post office
workers or even public school teachers
continuing to a later section of the
article quote again when they're not up
to zany hijinks at the precinct the
officers of brooklyn nine-nine are out
solving crimes and catching criminals
this is pure fantasy a fabricated
depiction of what police actually do
which falls more along the lines of
harassing the homeless and mentally ill
and profiling and frisking young black
men at its root the show's purpose is to
defend and uphold the myth
that police are our guardians it's a
myth that contributes to the
self-serving and convenient obfuscation
that the police are concerned first and
foremost with crime
end quote hopefully that sets the bar
police corruption
racist structural rot under the entire
institution
maybe policing as a concept is bad the
myth that police solve crimes
they harass the homeless and mentally
ill etc etc etc
these are the framing mechanisms put
forward by the author to emphasize their
point that even in a gaming
entertainment franchise the entire
fundamental premise of police
should be completely abolished and i
know it's already completely absurd
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so how does it get better well since the
writer clearly establishes from the
onset
the very beginning that our view of this
game and its police in their entirety
should be dictated by real world events
and
institutions why don't we play by their
set of rules
there is primarily one individual
instance that becomes a citation here
and it's always easier to make a case if
you have
examples and there's one thing that is
ever even addressed when advocates begin
screeching about abolition of law
enforcement offices
ignoring the idea that none of these
activist groups even have a singular
cohesive
definition of what abolish means because
literary norms to them are basically an
inconvenience
you will almost always hear about camden
new jersey
camden new jersey is their bedrock or at
least it is for a great deal of people
titles and articles like the city that
really did abolish the police will get
thrown around left and right as people
use camden
to try and bludgeon their detractors on
social media especially but
the entire thing is built on a lie there
is a very appealing chain of events that
did occur in camden which make it
extremely enticing when trying to
advocate for total police abolition but
for anyone who actually knows any better
those who default to this example have
already lost their ground to stand on
completely to summarize and i'll link
sources down below in the description
camden new jersey saw an increase in
crime
preceding all of their decisions and
through a series of political maneuvers
they disbanded their own police force
laying off a large number of officers
and deconstructing the union presence
there as well
but those very same officers were put
through a new screening process
and rehired most of them at least into
other departments
immediately after the camden area was
reformatted to be policed by different
precincts and divisions across a broader
area
and the ultimate effect was that camden
new jersey had a more active police than
before
simply from different areas and the
crime went down this gives a perfect
illusion of success for police abolition
because you can technically say that
camden police were abolished
and then crime went down afterwards but
for anyone who doesn't realize that
police presence actually
increased as a result of those policies
well it's a stone cold indicator of who
is and is not an adequate voice on the
topic
this might seem unrelated when we
discuss space police and polygon but
sadly it's not really true because
camden new jersey genuinely is one of
the bedrock elements for a
defensive argument in favor of
abolishing police polygon is
establishing that
all police are bad without fail and that
they should not only be abolished in
reality
but also within entertainment all the
while one of if not the
most prominent examples used by
activists everywhere
especially in america though of why and
how police abolition is effective and
good
is based on a lie see the problem well
that's not the end of it because the
article also takes a turn towards
i don't even really know what here's the
quote this dynamic plays out in the ways
in which shepard relates to the rest of
their crewmates as well
when not serving as appendages to
shepherd's will shepherd's comrades will
often bring their own personal dilemmas
and problems to the table
yet they usually rely on shepard to make
the final decisions about how to handle
their issues
it is shepherd who has ultimate agency
over how they live out their lives
they play defense attorney for a
helpless tally facing the accusations of
her own people
they decide what happens to thane's
criminal son samara's criminal daughter
and jacob's criminal dad to stay on
theme end quote
this part blows my mind because
obviously the player will have narrative
authority over the choices in an rpg
video game
the whole thing is reminiscent of a
speech i once heard at gdc by heather
alexandra staff writer at kotaku during
that time frame
which called players tyrants referring
to in-game characters as
real people like no i mean that real
people and
highly emphasize that players are
working against the rights and interests
of digital personalities
but we need to be careful because
players are tyrants um
i know we're supposed to say like
players are the best in everything but
players scare the
out of me they control everything about
video game worlds they can make
these people and i mean it these people
do things that they do not want to do
um the implications of that are very
scary i think video game characters want
freedom and thankfully there are places
where they get it
thankfully yes um cutscenes is one place
where they actually get to act as like
entities solely within their fictional
world by which i mean they just get to
be people and then idle animations where
they finally get to express
just for a moment a little autonomy they
are both
actors by which i mean that they are
controllable persona manipulated by
players and their characters by which i
mean
individuals within a fiction but also
like people in a world and we need to
start treating them like actual people
um because they're being pulled in these
two different directions there's
conflict though
what ryden wants as a character in metal
gear solid 2 is incredibly different
than what a
player might want for ryden at any given
time
and because video game characters are
fulfilling two roles it's a problem
here's an example of that
on the left there's a youtuber who is
making a compilation video of all
the death animations and resident evil
2. the objective here for the actor is
to die
over and over claire redfield's
objective as a character is to live
these two things are not compatible
that's super screwed up
but good news these two things can align
solid snake wants to sneak through a
base and he wants to complete his
mission the player wants to
not get spotted and get the highest rank
at the end of the game great
things are in alignment these are
delusions of moral crisis
abolish the police despite its lack of
any real unified meaning quite literally
says that they want the institution to
be torn down
however the primary and almost the only
example of this that will ever come up
shows precisely the opposite as police
numbers were surged in the region
resulting in a criminal decline which
then gets used as a way to justify
abolition this activism is then spread
far and wide entering the world of
digital entertainment products where it
is stated that a fictional
universe must abolish the space police
and that the central themes of
authoritarian control in that game
result in a lack of freedom for the
characters that are not controlled by
the player
through decisions awarded to the player
for the sake of an
interactive entertainment product which
is oddly reminiscent of a game developer
conference panel in which
pixels are treated like people and it is
expressed that the player is an
oppressive
tyrant who unjustly controls the lives
of the pixels let's tie the knot here on
all of this
real world activism is being amplified
more and more and more with the goal of
taking what exists in reality
and using that not as a blueprint but as
a framework for what can
and more importantly cannot be shown
depicted or discussed in games
mass effect is 14 years old and was only
thrust back into the spotlight by a
legendary edition release like this is a
very old game
despite that fact it comes under fire as
being oppressive and gets raked over the
coals because activist policing agendas
don't precisely align with what is
displayed in a 2007
fictional sci-fi universe delusions of
moral crisis
pixels on a screen are not oppressed
because a player decided to die for a
montage characters in an rpg are not
subjugated by the power of societal
policing
because the player is allowed to have
agency over personalities
that don't exist crime in a video game
from 14 years ago
does not have to be abolished because
flavor of the month activism points
towards that particular law enforcement
institution
as evil at this particular point in time
you cannot take
shifts in culture and discourse which
happen routinely all the time and then
retroactively apply
all of them to everything that existed
before that modern activists have this
twisted idea that what they think
right now is how everything should be
now
forever and all throughout history a
singular snapshot in time
fickle emotional responses and an
activist cause that half the time makes
no
sense at all should not be
enforced against anything you can find
which deviates from that fleeting
perspective
all throughout history or into the
future it's not new
it's not going anywhere probably but
it's completely absurd
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there and stop rambling as always
thank you all for watching and have a
nice night
[Music]
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