So? That doesn't mean it doesn't have a place in the medium. 

That's the glorious part about any art, it's as much about expression as it is about the industry. I don't want to be reminded of mental health problems as a person who suffers through them but that doesn't mean Senua's Sacrifice isn't a beautiful piece of art. There's room for everything in the medium, there's room for violence, there's room for messages, there's room for diversity, there's room for so many things and the correct thing to do when you see something you're not into or don't feel appeals to you is to simply be quiet and move on. 

Not loudly decry its existence.

Because when you (Not YOU in particular, the royal you; I'm not following the intricacies of your particular arguments close enough to know if it applies to you) do nothing but complain about wokeness or DEI or whatever, you're not actually saying 'I think this is forced', you're saying 'this is bad and I'd like to stop it from happening'. 

There's absolutely room for a discussion about when diversity and progress gets in the way of making a good game. There's a mature discussion to be had around the concept of compromising the art in order to focus test and hit a broader audience...but that's almost never what these discussions are actually about. They're never mature. They're never nuanced and always devoid of appropriate historical context. Sure, the people screaming 'woke' always pretend that it's about that but the actual discussions never are and the fact that so many people are complaining about 'bawwww, I don't want to play as this minority' or 'this is just DEI and it's ruining the game' before games even come out shows it's just not about the actual concerns.

IT's just a hard-coded message of 'I don't believe these minorities deserve to be represented'. Again, y'all will bend over backwards to try to pretend it's about not compromising the art but it's always mindless bitching about an over-representation or overcompensation of some sort. I Can't actually think of a whole lot of examples of times when a product was ACTUALLY compromised to force diversity and the handful of examples that do come up are pretty big failures. They're just also a small minority since a lot of games (and all media, really) with messages are among the most successful. Because art is often inspired by the politics and progressive values of any given time. 

That's why I am physically, emotionally, and mentally incapable of taking people who bitch about 'wokeness' seriously. Because I've seen where the discussions always go and it's never to a place of mature debate, it's just whiny people pre-emptively hating anything that shows even the slightest sliver of diversity then working backwards from their place of ignorance to justify it. Always. I would LOVE to be presented with a decent argument as to why 'wokeness' is bad or ruining the medium but in my 30+ years of gaming I just don't see that being the case. I do not see any patterns that support that theory and in fact find that games (And other forms of media) have been getting better the more we let artists speak through their art. I might not like it all, but the more we let the artistic people do their job, the better the medium gets. 

And if you (Again, not necessarily YOU in particular, the royal 'you' encapsulating the majority of the arguments here) actually cared about the integrity of the medium you'd at the very least wait until a game comes out to start bitching about wokeness and DEI. But that's never how it goes. And I never see any arguments worth directly contesting. 

Which is a shame because I'd love to have a discussion on the matter with someone who's not a complete chode. Like I said, there's a very good discussion to be had on this topic but I don't see any points on the anti-woke side that are more substantive than 'I hate all diversity unless it is approved by me and my kin and will work backwards from that place of ignorance to justify my bigotry'. Because in all my time watching these debates, that is what all of the debates boil down to. 

And sorry, but that's not how art works. IF you cared or genuinely just wanted to maintain integrity you'd keep your mouth shut and let your wallet do the talking but instead so many people chose to make 'progress is bad' their entire identity and scream about it every chance they get. Behaviour speaks, and the behaviour makes it clear that these anti-woke chodes actively don't want progress to exist unless it's approved by them. They want to stop it, to halt it, and to reverse it to a time when only their narrow views were catered to. 

There's a whole spectrum of possibility in so many areas of life, I just don't understand the 'no there's just this small bundle of approved content and anything else will be disparaged until it leaves us alone' mentality. It happens in politics, it happens in art, it happens in life, and I'm just so sick of it. I'm sick of this idea that what one person likes gets to dictate what others get to enjoy. IF you don't like the bald woman in the space game, go play starfield (And then bitch that there's options to chose your pronouns.) There's so many options out there that there's no way you can't find anything to tickle your taint just right. 

IF you're too busy complaining about wokeness/DEI/progress then you don't care about the integrity of the medium, you just hate representation that doesn't appeal to you.

And no, being gay (or any minority) while also having these views doesn't magically exclude you. 

Well that is usually how it goes though. People say they dont want to be lectured by developers about woke/DEI stuff in games and you are branded as intolerate and not liking diversity in games. I think thats where some of the conversations ends, because one side gets blamed for not wanting diversity at all and the other side dont want to talk to people they think are bigots. Its all about how you tell a story. Some have said that Elden Ring contains trans characters and I can see that, but I never felt like it was lecturing me about how I should feel about that. They just told a story and let me decide how I feel about it. When people say they dont want DEI in games, that usually doesnt mean they only want white people, they just dont want to be talked down to and told how they should feel about every situation containing that character. Its the same in movies. People hate preachy characters in film.

I do think people have a tendency to overact when they see what they consider "red flags" like a developer having said something on social media in the past or a female character looks a bit buff or whatever. Then theres people who make a living out of calling out "woke" developers and that can be a problem as well. Because they constantly need new "targets" to keep their views.

I dont think its as one sided as you do, but I can see where you are coming from. I think both gamers and developers/publishers need to let the game speak for itself. Not attack each other based on a trailer. At least not a trailer like The Witcher 4 or Intergalactic that doesnt really show much of what they are about.

Veilguard is the definition of what a woke game is, if you try to act like it isn't otherwise, you are some kind of weirdo, on the other hand, the anti woke crowd needs to calm the fuck down on some things, like Ghost of Yotei, screaming woke because it has a woman, insane. People need to wait for these games to release.

I think I addressed this already a few pages back: there's so much DEI policies in place that it's impossible to know if someone was hired for the role because of his or her otherness or was he or she just the best available pick for the role. This is why people cry woke when a game or a movie is bad and don't when it's good, because when it's good, it's a sign that the actor was the right pick for the role. This is why I used the new SW movies as examples that actually all do the same thing, but one is good and the others are not.

The DEI policies are put in place so that everyone can point out that they're not discriminating against minorities or women - so yes, you're right that people are fearful of the backlash for not having them if someone complains about discrimination. 

If you swap Cruise for Washington or the other way around, people complain if the movie is bad and don't complain if it's good. Some people will always complain no matter what, but the "go woke, go broke" didn't really come out of thin air, i.e. few pundits from internet forums.