People who makes games - A very candid interview with an anonymous developer about the current state of the industry

All excellent points.

I think that art isn't inviting to conservative-minded people because their views, like religion beliefs, aren't open to criticism. Politics and echo chambers aside, conservatism is clinging to what you know when everything else feels uncertain even without regard for the validity of what you're holding on to. With conservatives in the modern world, their core values end up compartmentalized into a "lockbox" that they assert is true even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. People who are into art and self-expression can't afford to do this as their work must stand to reason on its own merits. 

Conservatives avoid certain artforms, types of media and mainstream culture as a whole to preserve their beliefs in the same way that many religious groups do. This explains the widening cultural gap between conservatives and everyone else. It's also, like you said, why they see mainstream culture as a kind of liberal conspiracy as it's the only explanation that makes sense besides "we're just wrong about many things". It's obvious they live in their own reality when they're willing to go as far as to reject basic science and even education itself when it conflicts with their core values instead of seeing these things as a reason to re-evaluate themselves and refine their core beliefs. 

With regard to video games, I think they can connect with conservatives in a way that other "liberal media" can't because the medium itself isn't really in a place yet where it can deal with these kinds of topics in the same way that film or music can (film was just a novelty for the first half century of its existence). We haven't really "cracked the code" for games yet and many attempts to do so either fail or don't resonate with people on the level a good film would. Video games are still very black and white, and things that are black and white work a lot better with conservative-minded people than they do with liberally minded people. 

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