Politics and political movements have been a huge part of everyone’s life. Whether you like it or not, no one can escape the grasp of politics. Last week in class, we explored how political games and coding in general can be. I was fascinated to learn that there have been many programming languages created as more of a political statement rather than for more practical uses. In addition to this, it was interesting to explore how some elements of games also have more of a political aspect to them.

One of the articles that was discussed during class was a Vice article by Julianne Tveten called “Code is Political.” In the article, Tveten goes over several codes that were created for an ulterior motive. One of the more obvious example that the author used was TrumpScript a “satirical Python-based programming language targeting the eponymous presidential candidate” (Tveten). I also thought programming languages all had more of a practical purpose but I was clearly wrong. Unlike most programming languages, TrumpScript doesn’t run in China and Mexico and have several other quirks. Surprisingly, TrumpScript isn’t the only programming language made for a more political purpose. In fact, a number of “esoteric” languages exist such as LOLCODE and the 4Chan anti-feminist language C+=.

When it comes to programming languages, I never realized anglocentric most of them are. I was surprised to learn that major programming languages a lot of them are written in American English. In the same Vice article, Tveten talks about the programming language Alb which is entirely written in Arabic in 2013 by Lebanese computer scientist Ramsey Nasser (Tveten). The goal of this programming language was to begin the conversation of why there aren’t programming languages in other languages.

In addition to politics in programming languages, politics also exists in the many video games. One of the more extreme examples of this was explored in class when we discussed the “Feminist Whore Purna” chapter by Robert Yang. In the game Dead Island, an open world zombie shooter, there was a scandal over a development error. On September 8, 2011 players of Dead Island were surprised to find that a data file in the game contained a skill power named FeministWhorePurna (Yang 97). This skill was unique to one of the female character Purna. The skill allowed Purna to “increase [her] damage when killing an enemy of the opposite sex” (Yang 97). The developer quickly released a statement addressing the inappropriate character skill but this still lead to a huge scandal. Many people wondered why the file was named that way as well as comments about how this shouldn’t have happened in the first place.

It’s obvious that politics and political statements will be part of every aspect of our lives. Despite how scary this may sound; it is interesting to see how these statements are made. To me, I feel like it’s a double edged sword. On one hand, it can lead to meaningful discussions such as with the programming language Alb. On the other hand, it can lead to hurtful or harmful messages such as the Dead Island incident. No matter what, the way these political statements are made are all “works of art.”

Works Cited

Ruberg, B., et al. Queer Game Studies. University of Minnesota Press, 2017.

Tveten, Julianne. “Code Is Political.” Vice, 1 Mar. 2016, http://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3dak5w/code-is-political.