Breitbart's Schilling, Nate Church Discuss Video Games: Tomorrow's Leaders 'Holding Controllers Today'

Breitbart Tech’s Nate Church appeared on Whatever It Takes with Curt Schilling Wednesday to discuss this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) and the cultural influence of video games.

Breitbart Tech journalist Nate Church appeared on Whatever It Takes with Curt Schilling to discuss a number of issues in the gaming world, notably the recent E3 video game conference, the future of gaming, and how one-sided politics in video games often are and that conservatives need to join the discussion.

“I think one of the most remarkable things to come out of E3 was what I am tentatively calling… ‘the relentless pursuit of bland,'” Church said when asked what he saw at the gaming expo. “I felt like I was coming across the same thing from a lot of developers where there was so much wariness to really try something really new, really bold or different because of, I think, the atmosphere right now in the gaming industry.”

“There’s a lot of turmoil because the gaming industry is developing at a ludicrous pace. Every year it is just exponentially increasing,” he explained. “And I think the people who will control our government tomorrow, they’re all holding controllers today. All of the younger generation is defining their interpretation of the world and their experience in pop culture with video games.”

“And so E3 has gone from being a sort of trades show and advertisement just to show off upcoming products, to something that is the epicenter of the new Hollywood, the next evolution of our cultural entertainment experience,” Church noted. “And there’s a lot of developers who are caught right in the middle of that.”

Schilling agreed, noting that while the pace at which the industry is expanding is “breathtaking,” the time and cost required to develop games results in “a very Hollywood reluctance to go into a new franchise because you want to milk the old franchise until you’re done milking it.”

Church pointed out how those risks can also lead to “mixed messages” in how games are marketed, referencing the upcoming Far Cry 5 as an example. “The plot is really sort of like, ‘What if Scientology took over a small town, what if they went militant?’ It’s a weird version of extremism, and you’re actually an American police officer that’s going in and trying to stop that.”

“That’s the experience you get from the game itself, but from the marketing department, you get [the antagonists] standing in a church, playing ‘Amazing Grace,’ holding automatic weapons,” he noted. “The game is actually not really what they’re pushing, but they’re marketing off the division that is in our country right now.”

“I think it’s really important to talk about this, because the Far Cry series sells millions every single launch, and I feel like right now the voice in the game industry is very one-sided,” Church stated. “We need the whole country to have a voice in the industry, especially when there’s a vast majority, and that voice needs to be loud.”

“You won’t find a more liberal place than the game industry, from a developer’s perspective,” Schilling agreed, who previously founded developer 38 Studios, the creators of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. “Having had a studio with over 300… I knew of like 10 percent of our employees might have been conservatives, which definitely has an impact on the content they create.”

In closing the segment, Church stated he was “really happy our readers and our listeners can be a voice in the gaming industry, and I’m really excited that Breitbart understands that to stay relevant, we have to keep our finger to the pulse of this industry and this world.”

“My kids don’t talk about their favorite TV shows, they talk about their favorite YouTubers,” he noted. “My kids don’t worry nearly as much about what movies are coming out as they do what games are coming out. The culture around it is changing, and the fact that Breitbart is one of the news companies that is really pushing into this and leaning into staying relevant — people say maybe, ‘It’s not my thing, maybe someone else is into it,’ but maybe it’s just your kids, or just your niece and nephew, or just your grandkids, or just your friends, but it is a major dominating cultural force.”

Noah Dulis is the Deputy Managing Editor of Breitbart News and Editor of Breitbart Tech. Follow him on Twitter @Marshal_Dov.