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Frostpunk 2 set off a personal and ideological storm in my head
Frostpunk 2, 11 Bit Studios' magnum opus, is proof that video games are at their most interesting when they engage with politics and ideology head on.
The spectre of a centrally planned economy hangs uneasy over my coal-stained city and dredges up ghosts of past conversations: collective disgust at the shock therapy economics of 90s Russia; my grandad arguing that the rot went back to the 20s, when Lenin had made free market concessions to ease collectivisation efforts. Really, Frostpunk often felt like I was running a Kolyma prison camp: overtime shifts, reduced rations, poor heating, disease, workplace injuries, the option to force citizens back to work at the point of a gun, all in a climate that frequently saw hundreds freeze to death. Labour unions, subsidised living quarters, equal pay, machine assistance, chemical fertilisation, fracking, immigration, quarantine, radicalisation, surveillance, propaganda and many other considerations cross my desk as Steward of the city.
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