So I saw this posted about Cosmic Star Heroine recently:

Yep, it's an adventure game. With a female lead. Who wears pants and everything. Heaven forbid.

Branding such a title "an SJW game" to me is kind of like saying that Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, and Carly Fiorina were feminists because they ran for public office while female. I mean maybe relative to those few people who still believe that women are emotionally unqualified to hold public office perhaps they were, but by no higher standard could you brand them as feminists. Same basic principle applies here. When I think of "SJW games", I think of titles like Gone Home, the Portal games, Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor, Never Alone, and Night in the Woods (all outstanding games IMO, btw!): games that thematically revolve around issues like gender oppression, same-sex relationships, economic exploitation, that sort of thing, not just any game that happens to have a female lead. The latter might have passed for political and specifically left wing 20 or 30 years ago, but today it is no longer truly a novelty just for a game to have a female hero. The feminist and "social justice" monikers typically imply something more specific than that these days in my mind, and I suspect in most people's as well. You see what I'm saying?

This (the above) really seems to be the typical use of the "SJW" label. When the typical use is an abuse, I think that says something about those who throw it around. And it has become perhaps the most common 'insult' that gamers use against other gamers, developers, publishers, writers, etc. in recent years. In this context, can we not say that it is the most abused term in circulation in the gaming community writ large?

I hate hearing the term 'SJW' because I regularly have no clue who the person using the term is referring to.

Since Trump became president, everything has to be labeled. You're either a SJW or a Nazi. No buts.

People hate politics in games or any entertainment. People just want to play a game without the developers trying to "school" us on how we should think. This extreme reaction is just people just trying to tell developers not to put politics in games.

Of course it could be going overboard. I haven't played or seen the game or followed the development process. I am just giving some perspective from a side.

That is the mentality of a 15 year old kid fresh off 4chan. The minute they see a female lead, it's pandering or SJW or feminazis.

The term is thrown around way too much I agree. The case in the OP reminds me of people accusing The Force Awakens of being a SJW movie because of the female and black lead characters. This kind of thinking is so backward it makes my head hurt to try to understand how someone can actually feel this way.

The word has lost it's meaning because it's so overused (just like similar words like libtard, feminazi, nazi, ...).

According to some people on the internet, I'm a libtard alpha male SJW.

Well I am a person and I don't hate games that are actually about something.

In any event though, while I'm not finished with CSH yet, I can relay that, as yet, it is no more directly (i.e. intentionally) political than your average Zelda game. (All games with characters in them are political in one sense or another, whether intentionally or not, though it is conceded that there are certainly different levels of that.)

More overused than a Ferrothorn.

that term is the reason i left the gamefaq boards. and came here. gamefaqs is the absolute worst.