Turns out games really have always been political. Alright, maybe Peggle 2 never served as an allegory for the Cold War or anything like that, but behind the scenes some massive franchises have had pressure put on them to depict certain real-world nations as enemy factions.
Following The White House posting a clip of a Call of Duty character calling in a kill streak, which then leads to footage of real-world bombings taking place. Infinity Ward co-founder and Call of Duty developer Chance Glasco responded with a post on his own account (caught by Eurogamer), saying that this use of the video game franchise to promote real-world violence doesn't surprise him.
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"I remember after Activision took over post-Respawn formation there was a very awkward pressure from Activision for us to make the next CoD about Iran attacking Israel. Luckily the vast majority of our devs were disgusted by the idea and it got shot down," Glasco explained.
"A lot of us devs were appalled because it felt like political propaganda being pushed by Activision," Glasco continued. "My entire time at Infinity Ward (CoD1 through CoD:Ghosts) none of our story choices were motivated by the desire to create any type of propaganda to promote any conflicts."
The Trump administration has taken quite a liking to using video games, edits, and more on social media to try and promote the current government and its decisions. While this often leads to a divisive response to say the least, it seems the only purpose of these posts is to attract attention, no matter what form it arrives in.