Runa216 said:
Dude, you need to stop. Seriously. Like, this crusade against 'wokeness' primarily from modern conservatives is a major reason why I just stopped trying to see eye to eye with them. Because 'wokeness' as originally described was a descriptor for those who had been woken up to the social and systemic injustices in the world and wanted to get up and do do something about it. 'woke' is just progressivism. Woke is civil rights. Woke is empathy mixed with education. Woke is, for all intents and purposes, a good thing. And Conservatives LOVE to use it as a derogatory term because they HATE The idea that they're being forced to not be bigoted anymore. All it is, really, is that people who complain about 'wokeness' just HATE diversity, equity, and inclusion. That's why there's all this nonsense complaining about DEI initiatives. That's why it's always MAGA people with the red hats going on about how 'diversity is not out strength' and complaining about non white, non-christian people, and it's always those same people who are all about 'traditional' values and whine about anything that doesn't exist in this very tiny bubble of what they deem appropriate. And in recent years it's gotten particularly insidious because you are all trying your damndest to make this 'anti-woke' nonsense sound palatable to the masses. Because in reality, anti-woke is just code for 'I'm a bigot and I'm sick and tired of all these minorities trying to tell me to stop being bigoted', and they frame it like 'traditional' values are under attack. When in reality, we live in a VASTLY diverse world. With tonnes of variation in terms of culture, race, gender, sexuality, interests, value, religion, and preferences in game genre. Embracing diversity, equity, and inclusion for ALL makes the medium better for more people. It doesn't and never has taken away from whatever you or other 'anti-woke' people seem to deem as the only reasonable limits to what is acceptable in a game. "Oh no! Ellie's a lesbian and I feel like transvestigating Abby!" Piss all the way off with that shit. Gay people and trans people deserve to see themselves represented, too. "Kratos and FEEEEEELINGs now!" GOOD! Showing personal growth and maturing is great fucking character development and his change was an outstanding move in the right direction for the series. Complaining about 'wokeness' in video games like 'they're taking over our spaces' is just petty, ignorant, selfish, and frankly an indicator of you not being a good person. Straight up. Gaming is not YOUR space. And even if it is/was, nobody is trying to take over your space. They're trying to add to it. I don't know how old you are but I was a pretty adamant gamer in the late 80s, all through the 90s, and the early 00s and I have to say, if you were anything other than a straight male (preferably in your teens) Gaming was a fucking nightmare. If you were in any way handicapped or had any sort of mental disorder, just playing a game of fucking Halo was a minefield. You couldn't go 30 seconds without being called faggot, queer, or retarded. And if you were a woman in any of those spaces, holy shit you were given so much shit I'm amazed we got to a world where women gamers even exist. It was nothing but a sea of dicks and rape threats and misogyny. Because back then an overwhelming majority of gamers were straight males in their teenage years or early 20s. And the industry has come a long way because now we embrace all cultures, make games with female, non-white, and non-straight protagonists. We've expanded the medium to include EVERYONE, and as a person who has been around basically since gaming really got big (born in '86, right after the NES was first released in the US...I think), Video Games are better now than they've ever been. Because we cater to a worldwide audience across every spectrum. and it's beautiful. Video games are art. and art is a form of expressionism. Yes, it's a media industry as well, but so is Television and so are movies and so are books and they are all art, too. It's a medium that has an added level of expression since it has user interaction at heart, so I'd argue that video games are the most 'complete' form of art there is. And art is best when you can create with every colour and shade, not be restricted to the boring-assed binary of black and white that these 'anti-woke' clowns seem to think is the only viable option. Video games are better with diversity, with equity, with inclusion, and with 'wokeness'. The fact that you and so many others have a problem with it says so much about the state of the world and WHY forced wokeness still needs to happen. Trust me, I'd prefer a world where every game could just 'be' in accordance to whatever a maker wanted but as long as there continues to be an 'anti-woke' brigade (mostly helmed by MAGA hat conservatives), there will be a need for forced inclusivity. The DEI initiatives will continue until morale improves. I'd like to think that if you anti-woke chodes stopped whining about social progress we could just...exist without you acting like the existence of diversity was a bad thing but it happens every goddamn time. Any time a game comes out with any hint of DEI initiatives or what you percieve as a 'woke' agenda y'all piss your pants and have a rant about it like petulant children. any 'pushing' of an agenda is just imagined by you folks but the fact that you always seem to have a problem with it means that we really should be pushing it more because 'anti-woke' talking points really are just bigotry with the edges shaved off to sound less like blatant -isms and more like concern trolling. So yeah, piss off with your whining about wokeness. Play the games you want but shut all the way up when shit comes out that doesn't appeal to you. Because 90% of the world's population had to exclusively play as cis white men while dealing with the bigotry that came from straight white boys for like 30 years of the medium's existence. Sit down. Shut up. and let other people have fun, too. If you only wanna play 'traditional' style games, that's fine for you; lots of options. Just shut up when something comes out that has a gay person or something in it. Call of Duty comes out this year so you'll still get to 'murica all over the industry when that comes out. I'mma go play my diverse, creative, artistically beautiful games. there's plenty of room in the medium for both ends of the spectrum and everything in between. |
In the topic of "Kratos having feelings now is bad" that some are pushing as you pointed, just want to add to that what I've said about TLoU2, if someone says that, they really had no clue about God of War at all, Kratos was always a complex character, he was constantly forced to be a monster by several layers of unbeliavable fuckery thrown at him, was he a very bad person too? For sure, killed anyone that could help in his selfish revenge, but he was always way more than that... the Greek saga even ends with a sacrifice to release hope for the entire Greek world... and honestly I don't know who could ever took so much betrayal and the kind of horrible shit Kratos took and be a perfectly fine person again... his own skin is forever covered by his dead family ashes that he was played to kill...
Which is why I was asking about Concord, I still don't know if it's any good or bad, it's hard to tell because people decided for it to be bad without even knowing what it was... maybe it really is bad, but who knows, certainly not the people pushing that pathetic agenda, gaming is just one more front for them to try to push it.
I specifically choose your post to quote, even as your reply was not for me, because even as I agree with most of what you said, I feel like the follow up to my original post is getting a little too out of hand.
I certainly am tired too of this "let's fight the woke culture" bravado, even if a lot less than you from the little I saw and see you say about your past here and there in the forums, but my post was to raise a concern about potentially ok or good games completely bombing because this people now seems like to have the power to make that happen, which doesn't paint a good future for gaming at all, really didn't want to stir up potential fights in the thread.
