‘In 2017, I Turned to Video Games to Avoid Trump and Conspiracy Twitter’
These alternative histories are false — but thrilling. My playing through them isn’t exactly productive, but I can’t say that my year-long gaming retreat has felt any more wasteful than the supposedly more mature engagement with politics by way of media, including social media. Wolfenstein II is escapism; and so, for the most part, is the ongoing debate about whether classical liberals should punch Nazis: They both induce fantasies about power and choices that most of us are unlikely to prosecute in the real world. Ideally, we organize. We lobby elected officials, we activate our neighbors and whatever followers we have, and we vote. But American progress is a long haul. In the grand scheme of Trump’s presidency, a 100-hour role-playing game is still a much more sensible way for me to squander my downtime than reading viral strains of conspiracy theory, surrendering what little serenity I have left in these dire times. If I want to obsessively watch the world collapse at the hands of a corporatist egomaniac, I’ll replay Horizon: Zero Dawn.