What is a "Woke" Game

[Runa216]

bdbdbd said:

Runa216 said:

But that's just it...if you 'don't want to be lectured about diversity', then...just don't buy the games. If you don't want to deal with that sort of stuff, you have the freedom to avoid it. But people always feel the need to aggressively whine and complain about it.

One of these actions (simply not buying it) is a message to the developers that you don't want a thing.

The other action (Loudly complaining about it) is a message to the world that THESE THINGS ARE NOT TO BE TOLERATED. 

One is a personal choice, the other is bigotry. That's the difference. and that's pretty wholly the difference. One is about personal choice, the other is a political statement that is largely based on ignorance and bigotry. 

I think you're right about "don''t buy the games", but this comes as a problem when you suddenly start switching characters in an established franchise. People don''t even like when a protagonist is switched to a character with similar background, even less when it's changed to a different one.

I've always found this argument to be insanely weak. First of all, it's up to the creators to do what they feel is right for the game and it's up to you to decide if you like it or not, sure....but with Ciri in particular...did you not play the prior games? Did you not read the books? this was always clearly where it was heading. And it wasn't like they just made up a random 'DEI hire' to replace Geralt, it was an important ongoing character in the narrative. The fact that people STILL have a problem with it despite a legacy leading up to this shows they don't care about integrity, it just boils down to 'any excuse to bemoan change/progress'.

Seriously, do you not understand how all of human artistic endeavour works or something? Times change. opinions change. History influences art and art influences history. Resisting it and framing it as bad that change is happening is an inherently political statement, and that statement is 'change is bad'.

You can't even argue that it's just 'changing protagonists' because Intergalactic: The Heretic prophet is also getting a creepily weird amount of hate for...having a non-traditionally feminine female lead. 

You can dance around it all you want, you are free to work backwards from your actual stance with the grace of an Olympic level mental gymnast but we all know exactly why this backlash keeps occurring, and it's always either ignorance or bigotry. Either people are too ignorant to understand that historical context and cultural shifts will inevitably breed change in the medium or they just don't like the idea that they're no longer the primary focus of what was once a strict boys club only. 

I made the mistake of browsing facebook and actually reading comments on random articles relating to these games that are getting online hate, and you know what I discovered? Out of 100 random comments I pulled, 98 of them were from clearly white, hetero males (like 80 of them with weird facial hair and were traditionally unattractively large/chunky). Now, I say this as a thick male myself and I am also not traditionally attractive but it's so telling that dudes who weren't likely to be getting laid in the first place are all the ones bitching about representation.

And ya know what? Every time I See a comment like that I Want to make another Ghostbusters 2016 just to piss these people off. It's so clear that they're insecure and more often than not absurdly pathetic, lashing out at creators that no longer see them as their primary focus. At this point I want the next huge release to FORCE you to chose pronouns that go against your chosen gender just to really piss them off. I want to force people to play as a trans black woman who is pansexual or whatever. I want to make them uncomfortable...because for the vast majority of the medium (And let's be honest, most of human history), most industries have catered to the grizzled white male between the ages of 13-34. Queer people have been forced to play games with blatantly straight main characters. Women have been forced to play as men. Because for so long that was all there was. 

So what, you get a few games where....they give you the OPTION to chose your pronouns and they don't have to match up with the physical body and you throw temper tantrums? Women are half the population and we get a few games with female protagonists and you throw tantrums? IT's never been about what's right, what's fair, or what makes sense, it's always been about maintaining the status quo because the status quo has always catered to you. 

Art has always been and will always be motivated by politics, by challenging the status quo. I want to challenge it, to broaden the horizons instead of restricting growth or limiting change. I want to challenge the 'majority' because that's how we get great art. 

and the fact that so many insecure brats are absolutely crumbling and forming entire personalities around whining about change shows how weak these people are. If these people were strong and masculine as they claim, they wouldn't be so personally offended that Ciri is the next witcher or that the next Naughty Dog game doesn't star the cishettiest, whitest man in existence, NAthan Drake. 

"To those in power, equality feels like oppression." 

And that's what so much of modern culture wars are about (in all categories, not just videogames). The status quo is being challenged and people who are likely to lose some of their power are throwing tantrums over it. They aren't going to be phased out (though they desperately need to convince people they are). the medium will never stop having traditionally masculine characters. The medium will never run out of new ways to cater to more crowds, but because we have women protagonists now, some of y'all have to throw fits and reverse engineer excuses to justify your outrage when in reality you're just scared of...not being the center of attention any more. 

Stop acting like you're oppressed because things change. Especially when that change is just to balance things out appropriately. And heck, even if they over-correct, too fucking bad for you. Minorities had to deal with your nonsense for decades, you can put up with playing as a gender you don't identify with for a bit. IT's only fair. Stop whining about shit. 

Video games will continue to broaden horizons by experimenting with different 'woke' concepts, right? Just because we have non-traditional shit now doesn't mean we won't still have traditional shit, too. We're not going to collectively just...not make games with male protagonists anymore, you know that, right? 

Right? 

You can't honestly think that's where this is headed. 

Right?

Because that's certainly how you and so many others are acting. You're acting like women getting a bit more representation in games means that you no longer will get any and that's just not how things are. That sort of fearmongering is so far from reality that I legitimately don't know how to argue with it except to point and laugh. It's why I don't usually respond to this shit anymore, because the arguments are always asanine nonsense. "Oh, they're changing the main character and that's BAD". How? How is it bad? And why do YOU get to be the arbiter of that? Why do you think YOU Get to decide what these people create? Why do YOU get to decide what people like me want to play? Why do YOU feel that YOUR opinion supercedes that of the rest of the population that DOES want more representation? 

Because you're used to it. and in the end, you just don't want any changes to a status quo that benefitfed you.

And that really is the crux of it all, isn't it?

KLXVER said:

Machiavellian said:

It has no context for me since I have not played the game.  I do not know why they are having this conversation.  I do not have any reference to the characters or the plot of the game or how the game attempts to grow or give context to each of the characters.  If anything its exactly what I see a lot of people do.  They will find some out of context video then make a whole story based on that short bit which is what I feel you are doing.  You have not played the game. You have no real understanding of the characters, how they grow and develop within the RPG or even what lead to that single scene but you make a determination on the whole game based on your perceived bias.  I am sure I could pull a gay scene from the Mass Effect and build a whole scenario from that point but would it be representative of the whole game.

I never felt preached to while playing Mass Effect.

Since when are we supposed to care about your feelings? I thought the whole thing about this culture war was how the liberal lefties are too emotional, not the other way around?