“We make the world what it is by what we do. All of us.”
Bikers vs Zombies may sound like a late night made-for-TV movie, but when it’s a premise that gets paired with a search for reasons to survive in post-apocalyptic Oregon, you might find that the result is a story that’s more engaging than it first appears. Is Days Gone just another zombie apocalypse tale, or is there more to discover in Bend Studio’s 2019 epic? In this issue, find out what Jay, Brian, Rich and Leah have to say about their rides.
Music featured in this podcast:
1. Main Theme by Nathan Whitehead
2. Light One Candle by Nathan Whitehead
Cane and Rinse 415 was edited by Jay Taylor
Don’t forget, you can get an extended Cane and Rinse podcast a week early if you support our Patreon for just $2 a month! Do you have an opinion about a game we’re covering that you’d like read on the podcast? Then venture over to our forum and check out the list of upcoming games we’re covering. Whilst there you can join in the conversations with our friendly community in discussing all things relating to videogames, along with lots of other stuff too. Sound good? Then come and say hello at The Cane and Rinse forum
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This discussion was disappointing. Days Gone is something so rare as an openly right-wing game. A libertarian strong man fantasy where doomsday preppers and militia members enact the type of violent scenarios their real counterparts have been dreaming about and preparing for through decades. John Gavin – the director of the game – is the son of the co-founder of “The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms”, the group that coined the phrase “You may pry this weapon from my cold, dead hands.” You are posting this discussion about a zombie game amidst a global pandemic, and a few weeks after armed protesters – looking like they are straight out of this game – descended on Michigan’s statehouse with their rifles to protest the government lockdown . All of these eerie connections to where we are today, and yet you had nothing to say about the culture of this game and where it fits into our current scenario? Are you craven or clueless…? I understand that you want to be a gaming podcast and perhaps stay away from antagonizing anyone…. But why then did you pick this game when it’s so glaringly in your face? Right when its subject matter is so deeply relevant and so loaded for good or ill. This discussion treated Days Gone as simply a toy or a “game” and not a piece of popular culture, making this podcast seem slight and shying away from saying anything substantial about a title that is not subtle at all about its politics. Why even cover it now if you are going to avoid elephants in the room? Treating it like another Zombie-shooter feels really tone-deaf.
Hi Bill, thanks for the passionate feedback. I wasn’t on this one and I haven’t listened to it yet as I’m still in the process of completing the game. What I will say is that it’s a real change for us to be accused of not being political (or ‘SJW’) enough!
Also, I don’t think anyone who was on this show will mind if I describe each of them as heavily left-leaning. Perhaps (as is my experience with the game so far, 90% of the way through), their reading of the game’s (or its creators’) own politics didn’t tally with your perception.
It’s worth pointing out too that this show was scheduled back in December, ahead of the pandemic – and the podcast was in fact recorded 10 days before the Michigan Courthouse incident.
And we would absolutely have included correspondence around your political perception and opinion of the game in the show. Had you contributed to the forum thread ahead of recording, we could have included a considered (and likely sympathetic) discussion on the matter.
Hello Leon and thanks for the reply. Sorry if I sounded hyperbolic. I really enjoy Cane & Rinse, and I was expecting some kind of discussion on the strange politics of Days Gone, given how thoughtful the hosts usually are. It just came off as somewhat tone-deaf when that discussion didn’t materialize, and at THIS time in particular. There are elements of Days Gone that I find very problematic. Of course it’s not fair to dunk on a game simply because it has a political views one does not agree with. I for example enjoy movies like Dirty Harry and Death Wish because they are well made movies, but all the while fully acknowledging their hardline politics and even troubling racist elements. Obviously a game development team in Oregon has every right to tell stories about their local politics and society at large. But left-right policy differences aside, I believe Days Gone crosses into an an unsavory realm where it starts to sympathize with anti-democratic ideologies and the real-life armed groups that are very much active and dangerous today. The whole base premise of a savage Oregon is exactly the “might is right”, return-to-nature, new world order that real militias are describing and actively pursuing. And the developers are being disingenuous if they claim that “all views” are represented in the game, as the entire setting of Days Gone validates the far-right doomsday scenario to begin with. In that idealogical framing even killing “Freakers” starts to smell bad, as it’s essentially injecting mass violence into a suspect premise without any ethical consequence. Again keeping in mind that the real militias talk of cleansing all the “elites” and “degenerates” that sweet day when society collapses. Just who are these “Freakers” supposed to represent all of a sudden? There is an ideological core to Days Gone that is nasty and that sets it apart from the more humanist parables of a “Mad Max” or a “Last of Us”. It’s not a cautionary tale, but rather a wish fulfillment. Days Gone might pay lip service to some sort of neutrality by calling Alex Jones-style characters “cooky” in-game, but in this world those guys are fully correct ultimately. I don’t know…. It felt strange that the podcast had nothing overarching to say about the story elements. I’ll keep an eye out on the forums going forward, but it’s not like I seek political discourse at Cane & Rinse. It’s just this game that is such an outlier.