sales2099 said:
sundin13 said:
Do you actually believe that though? While "political correctness" may be a buzzword that has lost most of its meaning, at the end of the day, "political correctness" is why nobody seriously does blackface any more and why the n-word is generally avoided. I think we can all acknowledge that racism in media was damaging throughout the 20th century. Political correctness is not a bad thing.
At its heart, political correctness is not doing or saying things that hurt people.
This is an entertainment medium. Good stories shouldn't be predicated upon hurting or attacking segments of the audience for how they were born. If you cannot extract that from the story, there are probably bigger issues with the story. What we are gaining from much of this is an audience who doesn't feel attacked by the art that was created to entertain them. While you may not be offended or you may not agree, I think we can acknowledge objectively that more people enjoying a game is something gained.
Now, that isn't to say that political correctness can't be abused. Of course it can. But to treat the entire idea, as invalid because some people are stupid is falling back on the buzzword that doesn't mean anything and just swinging fists at the evil SJW bogeyman.
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I think that’s the idea, that there is no universally agreed definition of just how much PC injected is good. Some go hard and abuse it and others are more light touch. If one side doesn’t get a standard defined then the other side has no choice but to point out the worst aspects, despite not being representative of everyone’s beliefs.
Personally, in regards to video games, history based games shouldn’t be tampered with and rewritten to give a more left wing idealized version of historical events. History should teach us where we came from so we learn from it.
By all means make new IPs with whatever narrative developers want and let the market decide. But then I draw the line at reworking time tested gaming IPs to shoehorn in PC culture. Letting the market decide gets tricky when you messing with gamers favourite IPs.
As far as real life goes, in case people make unjust comparisons about me, everybody should be respectful and tolerant of the diversity in our society. Say what you want but be mindful of who you are speaking to. If you get offended or offend...it’s not the end of the world. Someone should apologize and that should be the end of it. I don’t believe in policed speech, that just sounds like left-wing fascism.
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In regards to history based video games, it really depends on the intent of the work. Just because something takes place during a certain time in the past, doesn't mean that the intent is to be documentarian. We regularly see changes in historical video games regarding the technology available in that era, however I virtually never see complaint about this, but if you throw a woman into a battle that didn't involve women, all of the sudden everybody loses their minds. I think that provides us with an opportunity to sit back and reflect on our personal biases. Fact is, in almost any adaptation, whether it is adapting a book into a movie, or adapting a historical event into a piece of art, you will see a number of changes for any number of different reasons. Distance from the source material, whether fiction or non-fiction, is not a measure of quality. That is something that must be determined independently.
You also make a comment about how we should leave the change to the new IPs, and keep the old ones how they were, but the phrase "adapt or die" comes to mind. Franchises regularly reinvent themselves, and if they hold true and stay consistent, many will struggle to continue to provide reasons for people to purchase them. We, as gamers, demand change, though we reserve the right to criticize if that change is in a direction that we do not like. Sometimes those changes will be for the worse. Express what you will about the changes, but to turn your back on the very notion of change is to simply be blind to the reality of what people want, and the reality of the industry.
Because it isn't that people don't like when their favorite games change. Look at Breath of the Wild. That was probably the biggest departure in the series since OoT, and it is considered one of the best games of the generation. It is that they are looking at a specific change that they didn't like and trying to use it as a rule even though that doesn't really fit with reality. "PC" changes are no different. Often, they simply take the form of giving a character more depth. Maybe don't just write the female lead as a personality-less titty monster. Give her a character and a motivation, and you've turned a avatar to create porn of into someone that people actually care about.
I would also like to comment quickly on your final comment: "I don't believe in policed speech, that just sounds like left-wing fascism". Again, I will ask you to sit back and examine your biases. The policing of speech is not left-wing. While the right-wing religious outrage and "policing of speech" of the 20th century has largely faded, there are numerous examples of right-wing censorship throughout history, and we still often see demands regarding what can and cannot be said coming from those on the modern right.