You now live in a Fascist country. Concentration camps are being built, ICE raids are disappearing people, oligarchs are looting the government, Christian Nationalists are taking away womens rights and demonizing trans people, and the media and corporations are falling in line. Making games feels like ignoring all of these issues. Making games feels wrong, right now.
Fascists want you to be demoralized. They want to replace truth and reason with power and loyalty. They want you to be cynical, and filled with existential dread because then you are more likely to give in to their authoritarianism.
By your acquiescence, the Fascists solidify power.
In 1937, Pablo Picasso painted what was to become one of the most famous paintings of the twentieth century, Guernica, named for the town which was bombed by the Nazi Luftwaffe that same year.
At the same time, Mario Mafai, an Italian artist living under Mussolini's government, painted his series Le Fantasie, depicting several scenes of people suffering in concentration camps.
In 1935, two lesbian avante garde artists, Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore helped found a communist anti-fascist group called Contre Attaque, in direct response to Hitler's rise, which "advocated an aggressive universal revolution, a new social order for workers and peasants in a union of Marxists and non-Marxists, and a class struggle against nationalism and capitalism." (Lichtenstein, 1992) Cahun and Moore would later use their artistry to great effect against the Nazi occupiers of their home, the island of Jersey, creating small anti-Nazi leaflets which they would slip into the pockets of German solider's uniforms, or into the cabs of vehicles around the island to sew discord and generate distrust amongst the ranks of the occupying force.
Or take the story of Freddy Johnson, an American Jazz musician who went on tour through Nazi-occupied Europe playing Jazz, until his arrest and internment at a POW camp in Bavaria. On a related note, lots of music was made in concentration camps as a means of maintaining some semblance of hope.
For more contemporary examples, consider the protest art created by people in support of the Arab Spring, or the Free Hong Kong movement, Black Lives Matter, or Palestine. Or consider that game developers just like you contributed even their most "innocent" projects to Itch.io's Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality, and raised over $8 million for the NAACP and Community Bail Fund. There's also forms of resistance in online multiplayer games, like Animal Crossing or Minecraft, which saw people create messages or architecture in support of various causes.
I mention these stories because they are all examples of artists using their art to resist or resisting merely by practicing their art. You can do the same.
Fascists recognize the power of art, and will attempt to wield that power in service to their specific nationalism. So it is now more important than ever for you to continue making games. You don't have to make the next Disco Elysium or This War of Mine. Your games don't need to have explicitly political messaging. You can make that game about clicking a duck or shooting asteroids. Making the game you want to make can be an act of resistance in itself.
With that said, it is incumbent on you and all of us to proceed in our creative ventures armed with a knowledge of current events, history, and with a sensitivity for those most impacted by the oppression wrought by the Fascists. To make games without such knowledge or sensitivity is to risk serving the Fascist regime.
It is also more important than ever to find allies, maintain friendships, and strengthen the bonds you have to your local community. Do not work alone.
Sources:
Video Games as Infrastructures of Resistance