When veteran publisher Ubisoft showed off its tactical online shooter, Tom Clancy’s: The Division 2, at the E3 games expo this month, the political undertones of the game and its narrative seemed obvious. This is the story of a near-future America decimated by a terrorist attack in which a deadly toxin is released into the air over several major cities. In the aftermath, players must join a secret army of highly trained soldiers tasked with restoring the power of the government against gangs of rioters. It’s typical Tom Clancy fare: paranoid, technologically driven and unquestioning in its understanding of the US military as a force for good. It is, in other words, political.

Set in Washington DC, the screenshots and trailers for Division 2 are awash with provocative imagery, including a smoking White House and a downed Air Force One plane. During the E3 presentation of the game, a voiceover declares that a corrupt force within the government is looking to take control of the country, bringing about a new civil war. Given the strife in the US over Donald Trump’s presidency, and the current issues of gun control, immigration and terrorism, it feels like an even more politically charged setup.

And yet during E3, the game’s creative director, Terry Spier, caused controversy and surprise when, in an interview with games site Polygon, he appeared to deny the game had political undertones. “It’s not a political statement,” he said. “No, we are absolutely here to explore a new city” – suggesting that Washington was chosen merely for its interesting environs rather than its symbolic nature as the home of the country’s democracy.

It’s not the first time Ubisoft has run into this issue. Earlier this year, many reviews of Far Cry 5, a shooter set in fictitious area of rural America, criticised the game for superficially tackling the concept of a modern America overtaken by religious militants without exploring the sociopolitical possibilities of its setting. This is a game where a small group of rebels must take on a heavily armed Christian militia, but where issues of race, gender and the meaning of religion in a modern democracy are entirely absent; it’s a game where clearly extremist rightwing characters are used for comic effect, but where their views are never explored.

So what is going on? If Ubisoft is genuinely interested in exploring complex adult themes and ideas, how can it deny that either of these settings and narratives are politically charged? The Guardian put the question to Ubisoft’s CEO Yves Guillemot during an interview at E3 – and to his credit, he didn’t dodge it. Instead, he positioned Ubisoft’s games as thought experiments rather than statements.

“Our goal in all the games we create, is to make people think,” he says. “We want to put them in front of questions that they don’t always ask themselves automatically. We want players to listen to different opinions and to have their own opinions. Our goal is to give all the tools to the player in order for them to think about the subjects, to be able to see things from far enough away.”

In effect then, Ubisoft sees itself as making games that have political themes, but are also politically impartial? “That’s right,” he says. “So [the player is] part of it, you speak with people who have a different opinion from your own, you test different things, so you can improve your vision of that subject – that’s what we want to do. We don’t want to say, ‘Do that, think like this ... ’ our goal is to make sure, after playing, you’re more aware.”

What Guillemot seems to be doing is drawing a distinction between games and other forms of narrative entertainment when it comes to how they explore and present political themes. While movies and novels tend to present a particular viewpoint on a political situation, because they are explicitly authored and structured by a lone visionary (a writer or director), games are interactive and therefore must distance themselves from overt messaging: are they simulations, rather than statements?

Far Cry 5 was criticised for failing to fully explore its politically charged setting, with an armed militia taking over small towns in rural Montana. Photograph: Ubisoft

“Yes, because the player is the actor,” says Guillemot. “The player is the person who is going to take decisions within the game, and our job is to make sure you feel free to go one way or the other, to make actions and to experience the consequences; our job is to make systems available and to make sure those systems work well. For sure, those systems have to be built in a certain way – there are limits … if you’re not punished when you kill people, for example. We can’t enable everything. We do not want to tell players what to think – we want to put you in situations that will make you decide, and understand, and try things.

“The long-term goal is, why not simulate other ways to live and to work and behave together in video games so that people can experiment with them – to see if it works or not. It’s the same with technology. The goal is to test new things because as tech is changing, video games can have a chance to experiment with what will happen in the future. You’ll be able to see it in a video game, so you’re aware of what may happen.”

Guillemot clearly views games as an important medium in debating where culture, society and technology are heading – a way of testing big societal ideas, of preparing us for real-life possibilities. Although controversial in relation to Far Cry 5 and The Division, this idea makes sense when applied to, say, Watch Dogs 2, which presents a high-tech surveillance society in which citizens are viewable and hackable 24 hours a day – a situation we’re edging towards on an hourly basis. It’s conceivable that people who play that game will have a much better idea of where invasive social media systems and technologies may be taking us.

“It’s a huge opportunity,” he says, “but it’s also a big challenge because it comes with responsibility.”