What is a "Woke" Game

[Shadow1980]

"Woke" was a term created by African Americans like a century ago, but was appropriated (i.e., stolen) by American right-wingers as a generalized political slur to mean "Whatever we don't like." It's just one of many examples of weaponized language by the right, where they redefine terms as they see fit for propaganda purposes. It's like they don't care what terms like "socialism" or "Marxism" actually mean, but rather they only care that they're useful terms to throw around as slurs because red-baiting still works in American political discourse (most voters are still old enough to remember the Cold War).

Second, the fact that this is even a discussion is goddamn embarrassing, and is an indictment of American culture and "Western" society more broadly. The right is convinced they're fighting some "culture war" that must be won at any cost. These are people who get apoplectic over anyone other than white cishet males getting treated as equals in both law and in practice. Much of the modern American conservative movement originated as a backlash to the Civil Rights, women's liberation, and LGBTQ+ rights movements, after all. They are tyrants, who, despite all their rhetoric about how they support "individual rights" and "small government," want to use the full power of every level of government to create a de facto Christian theocracy where everything offensive to their religious and cultural views is flat-out banned by law (see Trump's announcement that he'll sign an anti-trans executive order on day one as a recent high-profile example).

Right-wingers care about their freedom and their freedom alone, which also apparently includes the "freedom" to have unchecked power to dictate to anyone they deem "The Other." Right-wing politics was, is, and always will be little more than a negative reaction towards emancipatory movements. That's because those movements upset long-standing social hierarchies and political/economic power structures that have no justification for their existence besides "Well, that's just how we've always done things" or "God said so" or whatever ever bullshit excuse conservatives invent just so they can continue not believing in universal human rights.

And as that pertains to gaming, this simple hobby was turned into another front in the "culture war," because apparently everything must be a part of it these days. It dovetails with the same asinine cottage industry that is "anti-woke" media criticism we see with films & TV. Right-wing gamers are little more than whiny man-babies who do nothing but moan and complain about absolute non-issues. They get angry when video game protagonists don't conform to their incredibly narrow parameters of what a video game protagonist should be. As far as they're concerned, there's no place for LGBTQ+ or POC protagonists in video games, and if we must have women in games, they should be little more than fap fodder.

So, they'll give games like Stellar Blade a pass but act like it's a personal affront to them that Intergalactic has a female protagonist that supposedly isn't conventionally attractive. "Oh no! An average-looking non-white woman with a buzzcut in my vidya gamez! It's the end of Western civilization as we know it!" Or they'll have idiotic freakouts over pronouns. Pronouns! A part of speech that we learned about in grade school! "But I don't want to be preached to!" Bullshit. You just don't want to have to acknowledge the existence of people different from you, much less treat them with basic human dignity.

These incel losers somehow think that their hobby belongs exclusively to them. The view themselves as gatekeepers of an entire industry, and believe that any game that does anything that might brush against their comforting little bubble is an existential threat to the medium. It's a reflection of their overall worldview, where they view anyone who doesn't look, love, or believe like them as an existential threat to society as a whole. Movements like Gamergate from a decade ago or the "anti-woke" crusade of the past few years are just a symptom of a larger problem, that being a resurgent fascism in our politics. These are people who think all aspects of society, from our entertainment to our government, should cater to them and them alone, and that everyone else should be treated at best like third-class citizens.

Oddly enough, there's plenty of things that are decades old that they would deem "woke" if they were released today, but they give those things a free nostalgia pass, and will twist themselves in knots to pretend that their favorite childhood shows or movies or games weren't "woke." It also helps that they often have zero media literacy and don't "get it" unless the message is as subtle as a brick to the face (see how long it took them to realize that The Boys was ridiculing them). Turns out that subtlety and nuance don't come natural to chuds. Who'd've thunk it?

Last edited by Shadow1980 - 13 hours ago