Hitting the streets with Total Refusal.
But when it takes place in Tom Clancy’s: The Division, avoiding violence is difficult.
Next, they pause to watch an NPC endlessly beat something that looks suspiciously like a human corpse.
Jane Walk captures the twin themes that underlie much of their work.
Firstly, it explores how games so often reproduce an uncritical, capitalist, imperialist political perspective.
And secondly, it reveals that they’re actually completely absurd.
One key to this is that what Total Refusal do is still play.
Stumpf first approached Mullner following a seminar the latter was giving at his previous university.
“I could tell [he was] a gamer,” Stumpf says.
He was an actual gamer."
“We enjoy playing games a lot,” says Klengel.
“Playing is important to us.
And we all share great amazement for video games.
[They] make us very happy.
But games make us very angry as well.”
The trio laughs as he says it.
From how Klengel describes the initial idea, the twin basis of Total Refusal was already in place.
The key to both of these things was “counterplay” - using the game in unintended ways.
But they’ve also found themselves returning to another theme over and over again: capitalism.
“It’s unavoidable the more you look into these tropes,” Stumpf says.
“They’re all connected to our economic system.”
Take, for instance, the NPCs inRed Dead Redemption 2.
“We try not to be too pedagogical,” says Klengel.
“I mean, it happens,” he immediately admits.
The trio laugh again.
Actually, the humour is already in those worlds.
There’s meaning to be explored in these moments, but they’re also inherently funny.
“That’s our basic trick,” Klengel says.
“That’s the magic of the collective.”
The conversation meanders back to the serious.
But also, says Stumpf, “where else?”
When I ask about their goals, Mullner replies first.
…It has an enormous potential to question ideology and it doesn’t fulfil this potential at all."
In this and other ways, “these stories are very obedient to authority,” says Mullner.
But there’s no reason that they have to be.
“We live in a democracy.”
“Well…” says Stumpf, and we all laugh.
“A market-driven democracy,” Mullner clarifies.
“Which is something else,” Stumpf says.
And that brings him to Total Refusal’s ultimate goal, in his opinion.
