When I saw the trailer for Tom Clancy’s The Division back at E3 2013, I didn’t get it. Everyone else seemed to be drooling over the game while I couldn’t care less. Year after year, more of The Division would be shown and I just didn’t care. Then came launch date and I heard the positives of the game from the critics. I had a buddy who was getting it so I took a shot and purchased the game on launch day.

More than 300 hours later, I can safely say The Division was my favorite game of 2016. Apparently, that makes me a Donald Trump supporter for some odd reason.

With the release of the game, there was a slew of love coming from gamers and critics. This was before either group had to deal with the lack of an endgame and the rogues of the Dark Zone, but that’s for another post. What followed after the lovefest was the Trumpfest.

Articles like “Why ‘Tom Clancy’s The Division’ is Donald Trump’s Dream Game,” “Welcome to Trump’s America” and “The Perfect Game for Trump’s America” focused on the aspect of an all-powerful elite group of sleeper agents who are, essentially, above the law. Don’t get me wrong, this is a frightening proposition to think of, but these writers’ were focusing too much on real-world politics rather than in-game politics.

What lacked in these articles was the understanding of how terrible life has become of this digital New York City. In the accompanying novel for the game, “Tom Clancy’s The Division: New York Collapse,” you read what are basically journal entries by one woman who is trying to survive in the city that was just hit with an apocalyptic virus. After reading these entries, all you want for her is to be safe and, while the book doesn’t focus on the Division agents, her run-ins with those agents show how they’re the ones trying to help bring some normalcy to a ravaged city. They’re the heroes.

In the case of Andrew Todd’s review, the agents are no heroes:

“You are a government agent assigned to protect property from poor people. You do this by killing the poor people.”

Then again, I’m sure Mr. Todd didn’t read the novel, and for good reason, as reading a novel is hardly part of the job of a game reviewer. That said, there’s a case to be made that Todd and others who view The Division as Trump’s Final Fantasy intentionally misconstrued the game to align with their personal politics.

As mentioned later in that review, your first mission is to “kill some troublemakers.” Actually, it isn’t. You can view the video below and at 8:42, the mission is to find food supplies that the Rioters (the low-level gang in the game) have stolen and are going to try and sell back to the people. Mr. Todd also mentioned how the “troublemakers” were rummaging through a garbage bag, which again, wasn’t true.

In the case of the three articles, they all express a concern for killing people in “hoodies” and blue-collar workers. For the hoodie part, the timing of The Division’s release did not do the game any favors considering the Black Live Matters movement and the killing of Trayvon Martin. That said, as someone who recently moved to New York City and is experiencing his first real winter, there’s a reason why so many people wear hoodies around here. As for the blue-collar workers, known as The Cleaners, they seem to ignore that this particular gang is more akin to a cult. Think Scientologists, but with flamethrowers.

Maybe this lack of understanding of the game’s story and character motives is a knock against the developer, Massive Entertainment. It’s safe to say that Massive has had their share of stumbles since the release of the game, but it’s clear that some writers want to take their shots at Donald Trump even if it means subjecting a game to a bevy of false accusations to satisfy that itch.

As for why I played The Division for 300+ hours, well, frankly, this game scratches an itch. My own need for a co-op game where players team up to complete missions and look for loot. It also helps that the game has a realistic approach to weapons rather than a sci-fi theme like Destiny or fantasy theme like Borderlands.

But what I love the most, and something many have grown to hate, is that lovely Dark Zone. Never in a game have I felt so much tension as when I call for an extraction and see a group of players run my way. Do I see if they’re friendly? Do I run away? Do I wait to see how this plays out? Do I shoot first? These are the kind of decisions that are found in the online survival games like DayZ. But let’s face facts, those games are still kind of a mess.

When it comes down to it, I’m going to keep playing The Division and enjoy the digital New York City where my actions save digital lives, and not the political digital New York City, as written in articles, where I’m a soldier for Trump shooting every poor person I see.