What is a "Woke" Game

[bdbdbd]

the-pi-guy said:

bdbdbd said:

Ok, after reading the thread this far: yes, the term woke doesn't make sense at all, because it largely refers to "social justice" policies you see the "left" wing in the USA supporting. However, the policies or rhetoric demanding the policies are often self-contradicting: people say they want sexism to end and demand equality, but at the same time "historical wrongness" needs to be corrected, so as long as there's been more men than women in positions of power, we need to choose only women to positions of power. Women are oppressed in the muslim world, so western women need privileges to combat global inequality. Minorities aren't represented as much as the majority, so we need DEI hires to have equal representations. Society needs atheism, but it's islamophobia. And so on.

It seems to me that some of your "contradictions" are either made up or are misunderstandings. 

I don't know anyone who is arguing "only women should be in power".

"Women are oppressed in the muslim world, so western women need privileges to combat global inequality" - like what privileges? 

"so we need DEI hires to have equal representations" - I don't think anyone has this expectation of "equal representation for everyone" 

"Society needs atheism, but it's islamophobia" 

This sentence is super vague, and could be talking about different things. But in general the difference is personal choice, and that's not a contradiction. 

If you want to personally be a Muslim or Christian, that's your freedom and you shouldn't be harassed or penalized for that. But if you want to try forcing someone else to be Muslim or Christian, that's a problem. That's not contradictive. I am personally opposed to smoking, but I'm not going to push for smoking to be illegal.

bdbdbd said:

Someone mentioned that people don''t complain about woke when a game (or a movie) is good, and I agree on that one. That's largely because good games and movies tend not to make a number about it's character's otherness.

You say that and yet people commonly criticize games/movie/etc for having "otherness" that they feel isn't justified. 

The apparent contradiction is that a movie has to justify a character being different in order to make sense, but if they do that, then it becomes a bad one.

Frankly I think a lot of these complaints are manufactured. People are more likely to make a bigger deal out of something when it is brought to their attention. 

bdbdbd said:

In the end, If you want to see Europeans in movies, you need to watch European movies, If you want to see Africans in movies, you need to watch African movies, If you want to see Asians in movies, you need to watch Asian movies, If you want to see Americans on movies, tough luck; there's DEI hires with Asians, Africans and Europeans, with the occasional jew in them.

How does this work? 
Can a white person make a movie about World War 2 where they show different scenes that include Japanese actors? Or is that getting too far into Asian movie territory? 

If I wanted to make a movie where an American moves to Japan and falls in love with a Japanese woman, am I allowed to do that? Am I allowed to write the woman's lines myself? Do I have to find a Japanese woman to write with to write her lines? 

The bizarre segregation is starting to feel kind of woke. 

Or are we arguing for censorship here, where we aren't allowed to tell these kinds of stories? 

I know you're not trying to argue for those things. But we live in a very globally connected world, people both want to write all kinds of different stories, and people want to consume different kinds of stories. Even on the individual level, most people don't want to consume 30 varieties of the same story. So people are going to want to write diverse things. People are also going to want to ask for diverse things, and buy diverse things, which incentivizes companies to make diverse things. Sometimes that means different stories, different characters, different gameplay mechanics, etc.

I've met a lot of people who argue only women should be in positions of power because of historical wrongness needs to corrected. Apparently the "future is female" is some kind if a subset of this attitude.

Actually you ARE being harassed for being a religious person and you're expected to be an atheist, but at the same time calling out religions for their bullshit is islamophobia, according to the excact same people who think religions are bullsit. And I'm not even exaggarating.

30 years ago nobody cared who played who and wrote the story as long as the movie was good. Today it's "blackface" or "cultural appropriation" if some characted doesn't play some certain bracket reserved for his or her otherness. Squid Game is being criticized because there's a dude playing a trans, instead of trans playing trans. 

It's a good question whether you can write a story about someone that someone else think you can't identify as/with. I would guess it's not appropriate - if it's not now, it soon might be.