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.

Everyone has their own definition and that's kind of the point. It means whatever you want it to, or more specifically whatever you don't like - particularly if that something is culturally or politically even remotely left of a conservative status quo.

I've seen more than one person call out Intergalactic as having an LGBT or DEI 'agenda' and I'd really like to know what exactly that 'agenda' is supposed to be and what exactly they stand to gain from it...

Well, you likely know better your political orientation, but these political compasses are very bad in telling who's a populist and who isn't. Populism is "democracy inside democracy". If you're not living in country that's far left, then you¨re not likely a populist based on where you're at politically - being a populist is most often being close to the center of your country's political map.

Woke isn't about what kind of characters you have in a game, but why are they there. If you have a butch female in the game, that's not woke, but if she's there because of "diversity" or "representation" then it is woke. If you have a butch female in the game, because people who play the game are butch women, I don't think there's any problems. Although, I'd guess the butch females in games are teenage boys who make fun of the said characters.

Given that people decided Shovel Knight is woke.....honestly its a worthless pursuit. People who want to be angry at a game and are right wing will call it Woke.

This actually made me google it.

Wiki says this:

"since the 1930s or earlier been used to refer to awareness of social and political issues affecting African Americans, often in the construction stay woke. Beginning in the 2010s, it came to be used to refer to a broader awareness of social inequalities such as racial injustice, sexism, and denial of LGBT rights. Woke has also been used as shorthand for some ideas of the American Left involving identity politics and social justice, such as white privilege and reparations for slavery in the United States.<sup>[1][2][3]"

From wiki:</sup>

<sup>So its being aware that life is harder as a africa american, than a white, and accepting that as a fact.
Its being aware of social inequalities  (racial injustice (ei. world isn't fair if your not white), sexism (not fair if your a woman), and denial of LGBT rights.
Its accepting identity politics (like if a person says, I'm a woman, call me Mam!, you do).
Its about accepting that if your white, you owe other races reparations for something 300+ years ago, even if your worse off today than them (you could be), and never profited any from it.

Its about accepting that DEI hire's will ignore you, if your white or CIS. It's not about whos the hardest or best worker... they need to fit a profile to get hired.</sup>

In my opinion, a woke game is when there is no whites in the game.
Only as badguys.... and the protagonist is female, a marrie sue (power character), that belittle or leactures, constantly saves, the male character.
Its when purposefully, the activist devs make ugly looking women, because they don't like the male gaze, even if 80-90% of their target audience is male.
(ei. they take their agenda over things that can sell a game).

Honestly stuff like top scar surgery in a fantasy magic game... when you could just have a button, that allows your character to change from male to female whenever.... with say a spell (isn't that the fantasy for alot of people, that want sex change? for it to magically be good as the real thing?... nope, don't let them live that dream in a video game, add top scar surgery instead).  It's Taash in Dragon Age Veilguard, and that scene about "pulling a barve" ect.

I think dragon age veilguard is a "woke" game.
Rumor has it has now sold about 1,5million after 6-7weeks or so (needs to sell 4-5m to break even).
(it did 1m in like 2weeks... now after 6-7 weeks, its only gone up another 500k. This is never going to sell like Dragon age inquisition did.)

Woke was getting Dylan Mulvaney to make ads for Bud Light.

In BG3 you could do whatever, and no one cared.
I wouldn't call that game woke, and it had tons of representation.
So its about how the devs go about putting LGBTQ+ characters into the games themselves, and if they are trying to fill the game with their veiwpoints, about stuff like identity politics. Like there is obviously a decent way to have these characters in the game, when done right.

I dont know, what about a character claiming shes non-binary in a game set in the middle ages?

"....the phrase non-binary gender was not known until 1999 and not in regular use until 2006."

Yep according to google, that term wasn't used then.


Also why is it that the otherside just ignore the facts, these effects have on games... and resort to name calling?
Like we already have a person posting a picture, naming people that don't agree with him, as dickheads.

Its been like this for a while now. The people preaching about inclusion are usually the most vicious in the way they talk about other people.

Lots to unpack here...

Yes, that's the clinical definition, but it's not how the vast majority of the people who use it today actually use it. Just like Critical Race Theory alongside it, the right co-opted a niche term with a specific meaning and assigned it to literally anything they don't like. You know, like dickheads.

More that black people have structural disadvantages in America due to their minority status and the country's racist history, rather than "all black people have it harder than all white people and that's a fact."

This sounds suspiciously like white male victimhood; as if you're implying that woke ideology believes white men can't be discriminated against.

Not sure what you're getting at here; the right is as obsessed with identity politics as anyone, despite loving to throw the term at the other side.

Where does it say that white people specifically owe black people reparations and not, say, the federal government which deliberately held them down? This isn't something that only happened centuries ago; there are millions of people alive today that lived through segregation and its harmful effects. But if you think white Americans didn't benefit from that, then you don't understand the country's racial history or how generational wealth works. Here's a gaming related tl;dr for you:

Affirmative Action, DEI etc exist in the first place because who gets hired has NEVER been about who works hardest or is the most qualified. Meritocracy is one of the biggest lies that has ever been told. Hiring practices have always been biased (usually in favor of straight white Christian men in America) but as soon as people move to address that systemic inequality THEN the right suddenly cries injustice.

Why did you bother looking up the proper definition in the first place if you weren't even going to use it?

What game ever made even fits this description?

What dev makes ugly women in order to avoid the male gaze? Please cite your sources.

Again, what agenda? To what end? What would furthering that agenda accomplish?

What do you mean 'instead'? Does the game not provide options for both? What's wrong with providing the option to those who appreciate it?

Why is making and sending someone a beer can with their face on it woke? Is it only objectionable when that person is a trans influencer? Why did the right collectively lose their fucking minds over such a simple gesture?

Is this referring to Veilguard? Pretty sure that game is set in a fantasy world; you know, as in not subject to the same rules as the real world. I'm pretty sure we use lots of terms and ideas today that didn't exist in medieval times, even in games about medieval times. I wonder why those anachronisms don't cause such an uproar...

A meme calling people dickheads is a vicious attack, now? What facts am I ignoring, JRPGfan?