Srry to send you an ask like this cause you get a lot of them but would you mind elaborating on your DOOM 2016 take?
Last month I read a 2017 article talking about how it was anticapitalist, because it featured a company that was so obsessed with their own wealth and possessions, that it did not stop when their interplanetary ransacking for resources starting summoning actual demons from actual hell, and it went on about how your role as player is satirical in and of itself because you're assisting this company, and because of the ambiguous and divining wording the company uses and actually the article is "DOOM como parodia del neoliberalismo y la postverdad" because I'm not sure I can properly explain it, and I wanna know if it was like bullshit or smth idk
first of all dont be sorry about sending an ask asking for my opinions on something (as long as you're being nicey about it). if i didn't want to give any i just wouldn't answer the ask, innit!
anyways i personally have always been uninterested in analyzing the stated, explicit politics of DOOM 2016 because i feel like DOOM 2016 itself is uninterested in that--like, one of the game's most iconic moments is when an NPC is explaining the plot to the player character and mr. doom smashes the screen he's talking to him through to pieces with punches. which i think sends a pretty clear message about how the creators of DOOM 2016 think of their game, as a gameplay experience first and a narrative work second.
but anyways--the answer is that you don't ever have to commit to a metaphysical position that a work definitionally 'is' something and therefore 'is not' something else. readings are lenses of analysis--you can apply them in combination or separately as you see fit. which is not to say that every reading is equally valuable: some readings do not produce any useful analysis and entirely lack explanatory power. but 'DOOM 2016's plot is critical of capitalism' and 'the central genre premise of DOOM 2016 is predicated upon a reactionary fantasy' are not absolute truths that are in conflict with one another, but rather different toolsets that can be used to produce an analysis of the game--and not even ones that i think are mutually exclusive!
