The Dad Fascist Power Fantasy

I don’t know about you but I am kinda used to the image of dads through videogames being someone who is going to go out and do all the things that videogames already let you do and encourage you to do, but with the noble overtone of doing it for your little girl or sometimes, sometimes for your son. And the thing is, I’ve met a dad or two in my time, and the thing that seems universal amongst them is that when you become a dad, there are actually fewer things you can do. I assume there’s a chance the dads I know who are heavily involved in dadding are just so used to going on chainsaw rampages across motorbikes that they fight I dunno, dinosaur gangsters, that they’re bored and won’t mention them.

In most videogames we borrow from a fairly simple power fantasy structure often shorthanded as the fascist power fantasy. That power fantasy is one where your enemy is incommunicable, unreasonable, and an absolute monolith, a faceless entity of monstrous connected creatures that can only respond to violence. Violence is something we sort of know is at odds with civilised standards, it’s something we’re pretty used to realising is the worst option, not just because of how it endangers us. Now, there are videogames that don’t stick with this – many games try to deliberately push against that narrative, and they are pretty good about that, too. They humanise your opponents, they introduce the idea that even if you are on one side of a conflict, there are elements to your opposition that you disagree with enough to involve violence. Heck, there are a number of games which even go so far as to give you the option of mercy – something that doesn’t fit well into these power fantasies, where you can exert your power and be morally absolved of the consequence.

Here’s the weird thing I noticed: Most Dad Games, the games where you play a dad, you can’t. You don’t. Bioshock, Bioshock 2 and Bioshock Infinite, or Shitty Dads 1, 2, 3, are games where you can meter out tiny drops of highly specific kindness and mercy, but for the most part, just indulge that very rudimentary, very specific power fantasy. There aren’t moments of compromise. There aren’t moments where you share with your child, moments where you listen to their problems. They are power fantasies… which legitimise violence in the name of being a dad.

And the more I think about it, the more this creeps me out.