According to the classic Political Compass Test, I'm whatever this is:
I like to call that being a left-wing populist, personally. Point being though that I'm not actually the world's most fanatical social justice warrior myself. Anyway, my favorite video game of all time is The Last of Us Part II and yes, it's mainly for the story and narrative and not as much for gunplay and such. Now there is a new Naughty Dog game on the way and I'm seeing some brand it as a "woke" game based on the trailer and it makes me want to clear something up real quick:
No, Intergalactic is not a "woke" game for having a butch woman as its (theoretical) protagonist. Those who follow my posts will know good and well that I'm by no means against mocking wokeness, but what I mean by that term is a political attitude that is a rarity in this medium. The recent pedigree of Naughty Dog has been one that, in terms of social politics, promotes liberal values, yes. That is a fair assessment. There are in fact many games that promote messages of universal empathy, personal freedom, humanism. There aren't so many that revolve around far-left takes on the world and there is a difference. The difference, in storytelling terms, is nuance. Is a sense of social justice prioritized over and above universal empathy, for example? Asking questions like this is how one can get an accurate sense of a game's social politics. The "diverse" demographic composition of a game's cast only makes its developers "woke" in the eyes of bigots. So don't be one of those.
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