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Oh, this Lara Croft chick has to be a strong, independent woman, huh? Tired of shit like this and Metroid. Quit hamfisting women into things and virtue signalling
Never, ever, not in the entire 90ās decade I was alive did I even hear anything remotely similar to anything like that. It was unheard of.
No one even thought about it like that, or even had the concept to consider them that way.
ā¦until 2016
They gave Lara depth and humanized her, and this made the horny gamer boys angry cause they just wanted to look at boobies and not think too much.
You know what was surprisingly woke? Smokey & The Bandit.
Youād think the truckers would be all white guys, and theyād be casually racist through the whole thing since itās the 70s. But it wasnāt. Truckers of all shapes and sizes. And the main trucker character is friends with black people.
In the 70s. In a trucker movie. Set in The South.
Iām just going to say that a lot of creative, innovative, or interesting things, regardless if theyāre physical items, narratives, gameplay mechanics, or even just a new process for handling a particular task, is borne from diversity.
We are different. That difference is a strength. The more different we are, the larger of a gap between how I approach an issue and how you do the same. The Delta between your approach and mine is beautiful. One may be more efficient, one may be easier, one might be less expensive to do.
If we all thought the same, and we were extremely similar in what we knew and how we thought, nothing would ever change. Progress would not be possible.
A great example of this is with the blue LED. Most companies have been able to make blue LEDs for decades. The problem is, they were expensive, and shit. They couldnāt brighten up a shoe box.
One guy took a blue LED manufacturing process that everyone else abandoned, and worked with it for the better part of like, 5 years or something. He invented the modern blue LED in all its glory. Bright enough to blind you from across the room, and cheap enough to produce that they ended up in a lot of places they probably shouldnāt have been. That experimentation also yielded a near ultraviolet version that with a simply phosphor filter, can be converted to visible light, and white LEDs were born
Yeah, and the guy that invented the blue LED - essentially saving the company - got shit upon because he did so against the orders of the company head. They then went after him legally when he took a job at another company.
He actually won a lawsuit against them later but my understanding is that after legal fees etc didnāt really come out ahead. Itās a pretty sad story.
Diversity in entertainment is important, and ultimately done right itās also good for profits. Having a game, movie or produce that appeals to a broader audience is good for sales.
At the same time, some entertainment does come with an existing core audience and a bit of a āformulaā, so altering that too much does risk alienating that core, and frankly some duds get blamed on 'ism when the reality is theyāre just not that good or changed too much. āThe Witcherā flubbed because those writing the scripts were increasingly out of touch with the original material, but if theyād also done something like make a Geralt (or somebody else significant) a different orientation, race, gender or whatever then some would have blamed that failure on the anti-diversity crowd.
Remember when Sierra had to hire an outside company to do Kingās Quest 8, and they completely ignored Roberta Williamsā notes, instructions, and design simply because āYouāre a woman, you donāt know anything about games, shut up and let us work. This is going to be an RPG, not an Adventure game, and youāre going to like it little lady!.. Who is also the wife of the owner, the co-founder of the company, and the creator+headwriter of the series weāre currently working for.ā
And it kept happening no matter how much she complained, so eventually they had to kick them out, but there wasnāt enough time to make a new game so the āNot Kingās Questā Kingās Quest game had to be released to try to make money backā¦
And it was basically a shitty version of Ultima 9, an already shitty game, and was so bad and tonally out of place with the rest of the series that the Kingās Quest Collection on Steam only has 1-7 and the Reboot?
Yeah I normally like to root for the underdog game of a franchise and try to defend it, but KQ8: Mask of Eternity can get fucked.
Iām not even a Kingās Quest fan, but itās one of the most infuriating cases of sexism Iāve ever had the displeasure of learning about.
Imagine this happening in any other context. Imagine Square Enix hires a bunch of white guys to do Dragon Quest, sends in a higher-up to make sure it stays on brand, and they just tell him āYouāre asian, what do you know about good games?ā, and turn in a grimdark first person shooter that just happens to be called Dragon Quest, and Square Enix is in such a dire financial state that theyāre forced to publish it as a mainline entry.
Thatās basically what happened.
Thereās nothing wrong with calling a bad game woke if theyāre trying to cover their blatant flaws by tokenizing minorities and lgbt. See: Concord
Picking a game that was already bad for 700 reasons doesnāt make the idiotic āwoke = badā label okay. The writing in a live service game was never going to be great.
Starfield is another good example.
Some of you may have seen HeelVsBabyfaceās infamous āpronounsā rant video and taken it a bit out of context. Many said he was upset at the sight of a pronouns selection option on the character creation menu. His rant actually came a few hours into playing after a series of quests with incredibly contrived dialogue.
Not that there would be any game that meets their āunwokenessā purity standards.
To be fair, what the OOP is describing is ādiversity in the video game industryā, not āwoke gamesā, per se. While I doubt anyone here has objections to the former, I also doubt that anyone here is a fan of āDustbornā, as an example.
Iām going to come at this from a movie rather than a video game place, but:
Which is more āwoke:ā Enemy Mine, or She-Hulk?
Enemy Mine is about a human and an alien (played by a white man and a black man) starting the movie as enemies. Actual shooting war āWe were in a dogfight and I was trying to kill you with gunsā enemies. And when marooned on an inhospitable planet they learn to understand and even love each other.
She-Hulk is about Nth-wave feminism talking points. āThey catcalled me in a parking lot and it made me mad.ā
You know that guy who does āhonest movie trailersā on Youtube? He did one for Star Trek TNG, and he says āItās the future, and the Future. Is. Woke!ā And he said this before the word āwokeā was co-opted by the right meaning āanything regressives donāt like.ā
Gene Roddenberry had a vision for the future where we were past it all. Humanity is beyond racism, beyond sexism, beyond classism. Even if he couldnāt live up to it himself (He did put Marina Sirtis in a minidress and in a chair with no console in front of it to make it easy to look at her legs. And there was that really cringey episode where they go to the black people planet where everyone is all tribal and primitive, that was ugly) he aspired to that future. Probably the most powerful to me, he wrote characters who, when confronted on their ideas, would re-evaluate and even change their minds. Data called Picard out in āMeasure of a Manā and Picard changed his stance and fought for what he now realized is the truth. That is the manliest moment ever broadcast on television.
I grew up with that show, I was born in 1987, same year the show premiered, some of my earliest memories is watching TNG on my parentsā Zenith console TV. That idea of āweāre past that now, we put aside our differences and we work together as a team of equals nowā vision is what I thought we were all working toward. That that was the future we all wanted. Couldnāt be farther from the truth. The radical right are actively avoiding it clinging to some weird idea of a white hegemony. Surprised they donāt call the invention of the diesel powered tractor an affront to their heritage because it deprives them of a reason to harm black people.
Most other groups of people are busy fantasizing about having their turn as the despotic rulers. āWhen we come to power, weāll enslave you and see how you like it.ā That type of shit.The people who call themselves āWokeā like the aesthetic of people who arenāt straight and/or white and/or male doing creative things, but the things they create are basically never about everyone learning to get along and building better futures for each other. They make talking point grievance airing revenge porn and dare their targets to dislike it.
Dustborn is a good game that has been incredibly misrepresented. Take the āyou are racistā scene copied and pasted from video to video for example. Itās presented as the gameās Black protagonist just accusing two cops of racism for no reason.
In the actual game, itās one of the multiple dialogue choices that may not even happen if one of the protagonistās friends intervenes. The context that is omitted from the culture war videos is that the protagonist comes out of the bathroom of a diner and sees two Justice officers:
- Talking about arresting her friends for no reason other than being tired of waiting for the waiter.
- Going on a long rant about Anomals (read as mutants of the X-Men, which is one of the inspirations behind the game), saying theyāre monsters whose babies come out damaged, missing body parts, and that they shouldnāt procreate at all so that there are āfewer scourges on the planetā.
- Asking the protagonist questions (which is fine for a police officer) while being disrespectful, like when she says sheās in a band and they ask if sheās the groupie.
- Depending on the playerās actions, the same officers may also ask if the protagonist and āthe Black kidā from her crew are related, then among themselves argue on whether thatās racist, to which the protagonist may reply with the Trigger Vox, which results in the āyouāre racistsā phrase.
Also worth noting that from the very first scenes of the game, the player is discouraged from using the special abilities, Vox, as they force people to do things against their will, so many players would never see that reaction intended to be over the top (as evident from the in-game post-chapter choice stats indicating that the majority donāt use Vox on other occasions).
I hate this kind of comment. A bad game doing poorly that happens to be āwokeā isnāt evidence that being āwokeā made it bad. For example, Dragon Age Origins is pretty āwokeā (especially for its time) but itās recognized as an amazing game by pretty much everyone. If you make a great game thatās written well, itās probably going to be received well. The issue is modern AAA gaming just makes mass audience slop that is devoid of passion and dictated by suits to chase trends. Being āwokeā doesnāt matter. Being good matters.
You are on the right track, but it did not āhappen to be wokeā, some people bring politics into things that should not and the higher ups just want to cash on modern trendsā¦ The only thing everyone should care about is making something good. I very much doubt that the people OP described had an agenda or were annoying and thought the only thing good about them were their gender or color or religionā¦ No! They were trying to be pioneers and make money š¤
Iāve got a few concerns with Chrisā post, particularly the use of logical fallacies that undermine his main argument. Letās break this down:
Straw Man Fallacy #1:
People who complain about wokeness in new video games donāt actually care about the past, just their imagined version of it.
This statement misrepresents the position of those who critique āwokenessā in media. It assumes that everyone in this group shares a simplistic, uniform, and flawed perspective on history, which is neither fair nor accurate.
Isnāt it ironic to advocate for inclusivity while reducing the opposing view to a stereotype? For example, I personally dislike overt āwokenessā in games, yet I donāt fit the imaginary box youāve described. My position isnāt rooted in a denial of history but in the belief that games, music, and films are creative, self-contained domains to be enjoyed on their own meritsānot as platforms for political messaging.
Itās not about rejecting inclusivity or denying the contributions of diverse creators. Rather, itās about questioning why politics should take center stage in these art forms. Why must every creative work be a vehicle for ideological statements? Art can reflect politics naturally when itās intrinsic to the story or setting, but forcing it risks alienating audiences who value the escapism and creativity of the medium.
Straw Man Fallacy #2:
Games we love are created by diverse people [ā¦]. Just because youāre unaware of them doesnāt mean they donāt exist.
Who exactly is denying the existence of diverse creators? This statement uses vague, accusatory language aimed at a generalized āyouā without specifying who or what is being addressed. This lack of specificity makes it difficult to engage with the argument constructively.
If the intent is to highlight the contributions of diverse creators, thatās absolutely valid and worth celebrating. But framing the point as an assumed rebuttal to an undefined group of people not only creates unnecessary division but also fails to advance the discussion meaningfully.
When addressing criticism, itās more effective to engage with specific ideas or individuals rather than casting a wide net over an entire group. Otherwise, this risks becoming the very thing being criticized: stereotyping and marginalizing others based on assumptions.
My position isnāt rooted in a denial of history but in the belief that games, music, and films are creative, self-contained domains to be enjoyed on their own meritsānot as platforms for political messaging.
The issue here is that every time I see someone complaining that a game is āwokeā is when suddenly there are gay people, or people of colour, or women not looking like a hooters waitress in the game. And the reality here is that this isnāt being woke, itās that the game is being based on reality. Gay people exist, always have, so do people of colour, and women of all types and men too. The people that make it political are the people that donāt want to see the real world and the people in it.
Now, I donāt know what you feel is āwokeā and Iām not saying this is directed at you, but just because there are people that donāt fit some preconceived mold, and they are included in a game, doesnāt make it magically political.
Now, I donāt know what you feel is āwokeā
A combination of: Marxian economicsāspecifically the framework of oppressor and oppressedāapplied to social categories such as gender, race, and sexuality + Critical Theory from the Frankfurt School.
but just because there are people that donāt fit some preconceived mold, and they are included in a game, doesnāt make it magically political.
I know youāre not directing this at me but still, I respectully disagree. This sudden overcompensation of swapping the gender, sexuality or race of characters in movies and games, under the guise of ācelebrating diversity,ā often feels less like a meaningful or thoughtful inclusion and more like a superficial, performative gesture. This trend is widespread and politically charged, driven not by genuine artistic intent but by a desire to align with current cultural trends. Some people call it ātokenismā.
Oh look, the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory.
I think youāve been consuming too much Jordan Petersen.
That whole theory was rooted in anti-semitism and some weird mistrust that Jews were imposing culture on them. Itās the biggest load of baloney.
I believe youāve misunderstood my point. I wasnāt discussing āCultural Marxismā as a conspiracy theory, nor was I making any claims tied to anti-Semitism. What I was explaining is the historical and intellectual roots of certain frameworks, like the oppressor-oppressed dynamic, which can be traced to Marxian economics, Critical Theory, and intersectionality. These are well-documented academic concepts, not fringe ideas.
As for Jordan Peterson, I didnāt reference him or his views, but even if I had, dismissing someoneās argument based solely on perceived influences doesnāt address the substance of what theyāve said. If you disagree, Iād be happy to discuss the specifics of where you think my understanding of these concepts is incorrect.
A combination of: Marxian economicsāspecifically the framework of oppressor and oppressedāapplied to social categories such as gender, race, and sexuality + Critical Theory from the Frankfurt School.
bro who is putting that in video games
Hey, andros. I was replying to the quoted part above. I never said they put this definition into games.
A game thatās got well written characters representing minorities or which includes political theming and executes it well (e.g. Bioshock, Fallout 2 or Disco Elysium) is more woke than any other. That kind of gameās core concept is to make a strong point about structural injustice in society.
Games with token representation or the plot is thin but the main character is a woman so youāre sexist of you donāt buy it are generally not woke at all. Theyāre only pretending to be as a marketing strategy. Theyāre not doing anything to make anyone think about structural injustice in society, and are instead appealing to the common donāt be horrible to groups that it was normal to be horrible to decades ago that their market research team determined were already agreed with by most of their potential customers. Itās just capitalism noticing that mysogynists etc. are no longer the largest demographic and being very unsubtle when signalling that the product thinks women are people.
There are a small number of very vocal people who complain about both kinds of game. They donāt want people to acknowledge that treating women as people is now the default, but even more than that, they donāt want people to play Bioshock as then if theyāre shown anything by Ayn Rand, theyāll be immediately able to spot the flawed logic on her philosophy. Theyāre careful to make sure to present it as if theyāre only complaining about the virtue-signalling-as-marketing kind as everyone recognises that theyāre generally crap, so it makes it look like theyāre making a reasonable argument. It also means people amplify the argument, but by using phrases like woke instead of badly written it makes it easier to correctly label well-written games containing politics they disagree with as woke, too, and have people make the association with being badly written annoying slop by themselves, without having people whoāve played the game point out that it is well-written and someone saying otherwise is an idiot.
Theyāre not doing anything to make anyone think about structural injustice in society,
What does this have to do with enjoying games? At their core, games are meant to entertain, engage, and immerse players in experiences that transcend the everyday. The primary goal is enjoyment.
Injecting external debates, especially contentious ones, into this space often detracts from what makes games special. It shifts the focus from the creativity, storytelling, and fun that unite players to divisive topics that many come to games to escape from.
False dilemma #1:
Itās just capitalism noticing that mysogynists etc. are no longer the largest demographic and being very unsubtle when signalling that the product thinks women are people.
Capitalism itself doesnāt ānoticeā anything; it responds to consumer demand and market trends. The idea of a āmisogynist demographicā is flawed because such a group doesnāt actually exist in any meaningful, targeted way.
Textbook Straw man:
There are a small number of very vocal people who complain about both kinds of game. They donāt want people to acknowledge that treating women as people is now the default,
Who exactly are the āsmall number of very vocal peopleā youāre referring to? Are you speaking about a specific group or just a generalized idea of dissenters? Without evidence or clear examples, this comes across as a vague accusation rather than a meaningful argument.
Moreover, how is it that youāre aware of their intentions? What concrete actions have they taken to actively prevent people from acknowledging that treating women as people is now the default? Are there examples of deliberate efforts to suppress this acknowledgment, or is this an assumption about their motives?
Ironically, the statement itself mirrors the behaviors it criticizes: it paints a reductive, hostile caricature of the opposing view while claiming moral high ground.
Hey buddy, turning every response into a recitation of the āList of Fallaciesā poster you likely have up above your monitor doesnāt mean youāre āwinningā. If you have an actual point to make, just make it and stop debating how people debate.
When a game puts it in your face that this character is is gay/trans/ethnic in a way that feels arbitrary to the setting or effected character, it comes off very much like a political move for sales.
Letās use soldier 76 from overwatch as an example. The way he was written on top of the are they arenāt they thing he had going on with Ana didnāt support him being gay at all. The announcement that he is gay came completely randomly and really fealt like a political move to add a little more representation.
On the other hand, we have good characters who happen to be LGBT, Ellie from the last of us, or my personal favorite Veronica from New Vegas.
I agree with you, slapping a veneer of diverse identity on a character post-facto is often just performative bullshit. At best itās bad representation, at worst itās cynical pinkwashing and pandering for profit.
But thatās not a distinction I have ever seen an āanti-woke gamerā railing against.
What I do see them railing against is any representation in games that does not pander to their own personal preferences.
Did you not encounter any of the backlash to Ellieās sexuality? Honestly I think FNV only escapes a lot of that kind of vitriol because it was released pre-gg.
I wonāt disagree that Soldierās gayness came pretty much out of the blue, but I donāt think itās a good example of something that was āput it in our faceā. I play Overwatch regularly still with people who have no idea heās gay - the game itself doesnāt say anything about it, at least not that Iāve seen. The only way youād know originally is if you followed Overwatch social media or read the blog post they announced it in, something that only a small fraction of players actually do.
good characters who happen to be (whatever)
There it is!
A game is only called āwokeā when itās bad. Balderās Gate 3 is one of the most āwokeā major releases in the last few years but you hardly hear them complain about it.
Itās the same thing with cyberpunk 2077. The anti-woke crowd canāt agree on whether itās woke because many of them like it.
I heard complaints about BG3 characters being romanceable independently of MCās gender and race, that itās against lore and statistics. But my guess would be that it wouldāve been the thing devs wanted to do not because of wokeness, but because it seems fairer towards the player.
There were absolutely people calling that game woke. You didnāt hear them because they were drowned out by the good press. Itās not that game is only called woke when itās bad, itās that when a game is good thereās enough positive publicity to drowned out the negative.
I think the problem isnāt the wokeness for most people, but the awkward shoehorning of stereotypes and forced messaging that makes everything feel cheap and doesnāt contribute to the experience or story. For example having a lgbtq+ element for the sake of checking a diversity box, instead of it being a random fact of this world or character.
How do you differentiate between a character āwritten for the sake of checking a diversity boxā, a poorly-written diverse character, and a ārandom fact of the worldā? Itās a fictional world. Nothing is random. Itās all creative decisions made by a team of writers and producers.
I donāt think shoehorning in of diverse identities and character backgrounds is good representation or good art, and I completely agree with your point there.
But I donāt think that the people driving the current backlash bother to make those distinctions.
What I see is a lot of outrage being stoked by people using the (updated) language and tactics of gamergate, and I donāt think the result of that will be ābetter representationā.
I think the result will be devs being harrassed and pushed out of an already brutal industry.
Games like Cyberpunk have characters who are black, gay, etc. but it never impacts the player characterās decisions when interacting with them (besides romance options). Dragon Age The Veilguard has one character walk the player through their sexuality in cutscenes, making it forced and unnecessary information in the moment. Itās the odd injection of the woke rather than the woke itself.
An LGBTQ person doesnāt need āa good reasonā for being written that way. If they did, then so would the straight person, no? Unless, of course, weāre trying to say that every storyās default needs to be a straight white man who doesnāt need to be constantly justifying his existence.
Frankly, these days you better have a damn good reason why we have to deal with the ten-thousandth same old shoe-horned straight relationship that only exists because two main characters happen to be opposite genders and roughly the same age. Like, yeah, who could have seen that coming wow good job hereās a sticker.
Itās not about checking a diversity box, itās about the barest amount of representation. The LGBT people in my life donāt exist because they fit some kind of plot-point in my life; they exist because thatās just how the dice landed and they donāt owe me a justification for why they are that way in order to be my friends. That would be absurd, right?
ā
Sidenote: Everyone complaining about Veilguard(for example) forgets that a) Bioware is famously unclear about what dialogue choices do and b) they just donāt, historically, seem to have the capacity to write terribly creative games. Theyāre fine and Iāve enjoyed playing the ones I have but still.
I didnāt say they need a reason to exist. I said basically the same thing as you. A character is supposed to just exists with their traits and act naturally, instead of making diversity their whole personality. Itās the same thing as the classic token black guy in movies. Only present to serve the quota, not actually contributing to anything. And having a character make their straight-ness and whiteness their whole personality would be just as infuriating.
I dispise forced romance just as much as you seem to, it doesnāt matter to me what the genders involved are, if itās there I want it to make sense and add something, not just tick a box.
Right, except that 99% of LGBT characters arenāt doing anything special and their mere existence, since we arenāt numb to it, is taken as some political act of tokenism. Itās as simple as being aware that youāre going to have biases and letting yourself get used to it instead of complaining about it.
And yes, some of it will be a bit heavy-handed and some will even be an attempt to get more money but like, so what? Itās not nearly as much as everyone claims and it all serves to normalize it so get over it. Itās not like there isnāt heaps of absolutely dogshit straight writing that we are fine ignoring for the sake of the rest of the game. Tthe second itās the same thing but with a gay character every shitstain gets all bent outta shape over it like their problem isnāt their own homophobia.
Woke activists have already said that they are willing to annihilate and scorched-earth and salt-the-fields if DEI ESG woke things arent put front and centre into video games.
So maybe we dont need people who actively hate video games and gamers to be in the video game making industry. The woke can go be part of Hollywood leave the gamers alone.
I bought BG3 due to constant negative comments about it. Itās woke, everyone is bi (sign me the fuck up), random misogyny, etc. I figured if they were that mad it had to be good, and 427 hours of gameplay later I am glad I did that.
BG3 doesnāt lecture you like other games though. There is a difference between having these people live in your world vs being the spokesperson for BLM.
The difference isnāt in subject matter, but writing quality. I like retro shooters and considering Build Engine(think Duke Nukem) style games are based on movie genres, Iād love a blaxploitation game were Iām shooting Nazis and throwing molotov cocktails at clansmen. The subject matter would absolutely be in you face.
Remember, people got offended at how Nazis were portrayed Wolfenstein, a game solely about killing Nazis.
We can critique the writing of games like Dustborn, but the moment you start complaining about āwokenessā, you signal that youāre just gaming the algorithm for the lowest common denominator of viewer to drive that ad money up.
Which games are like that, though?
Please choose body type:
- Body Type 1 (with large shoulders and no ass)
- Body Type 2 (with large ass and boobs)
Ah yes, progressive inclusiveness. So much better!
This is just my take on things. Feel free to agree or disagree.
Woke nowadays has a different meaning depending on where you are on the political spectrum, but I think most gamers think of it as corporate virtue signaling with often counterintuitive ānot actually progressivenessā and ends up just stereotyping minorities. For example the DLC character in Kill the Justice League is an old lesbian stereotype and rarely represents what modern lesbians actually look like. In fact lesbians donāt have to ālook likeā anything, but then you wouldnāt know theyāre lesbians, and the companies donāt understand how to do this.
Gamers can tell when a company is trying to ābe progressiveā while also having no idea how to do it properly, and it all comes off as incredibly cringe (Like DragonAge: The Veilguard) But when the developers are capable of telling a story, and integrate their modernized views into it, while making a great game (like Baldurās Gate 3) it no longer is āwokeā, just great.
Games with progressive views have existed for a very long time, and have generally been well received. But they never really started this āfake progressiveness corporate virtue signalingā until recently and I think gamers really only care about this happening. So it isnāt about and never was about the political messages themselves. And proof of this lies in the fact that the same people who complain about woke games also complain about censorship in other countries (like the Arcane lesbian relationship being erased in the Chinese release, or game companies logos not having rainbows only in middle eastern countries).
I know a lot of people see in black and white, and youāre either pro woke slop, or youāre racist/sexist/transphobic. But reality is that most gamers (even those who complain about wokeness) actually are progressives. They actually donāt care if someone is gay or trans or not. They only care about how that is portrayed, how belittling the message is, and how honest it is.
If thatās the case, then theyāre just criticizing bad writing, like all of us are.
But itās not necessarily the case. There was an adult animation that came out endorsed by Ben Shapiro that was meant to be all about conservative values. To show theyāre not backwards, the protagonist has one gay friend. And, from that alone, the target base complained about the show being āwokeā.
So the term is both wrapping a long way around towards the simple term ābad writingā and instantly called upon anytime demographics include minorities. Iād go for the Occamās Razor explanation. Itās just hate.
If thatās the case, then theyāre just criticizing bad writing, like all of us are.
Theyāre criticising a specific type of bad writing. There are many ways a story can be written poorly. āBad writingā isnāt being honest about why and how the writing is bad.
That said, there are definitely far right people who regard well written minority characters to be woke. I understand the user above to be explaining that thatās not everyone who uses the term, and I agree.
the post you replied to brought up a counter-exampleā¦ but is it really?
i think it probably is yet another example of āpoorly written character exists only to be gayā
so basically just reinforcing the point GP made
This, the kind of gamer who make lists of woke games that you shouldnāt play, or go on review bombing a game for been woke do not have the nuance to criticise the bad writing. They follow the fascist strategy of offering a simple solution to a more complex problem, ignoring the real causes of that problem.
Bad writing can be caused by many things but Iām sure that the mass layoffs and the fucked up development cycle are a major cause of these problems.
like the Arcane lesbian relationship being erased in the Chinese release, or game companies logos not having rainbows only in middle eastern countries
There was a mod for one of the Spiderman games (that got removed from Nexus Mods lol) because it activated the flags from the Saudi release of the game that override the pride flags in other releases, which got people discussing how serious these companies are about progressive ideals if theyāre only selectively included. Of course it feels like itās only tangentially attached to the content: it is, by design, and you can easily prove it.
Thatās what people mean when they say itās forced.
You want to write a gay character? Do it, but stop half-assing it because it wonāt sell in China. Do it right or fuck off.
Agreed, and I feel like the big issue here is there are two versions of āanti-wokeā in gaming.
The first is gamers that want real progressive storylines that tie into the story well, and are critical of corporations trying to shoehorn random aspects of culture to be āwokeā which fall flat because itās just virtue signaling.
But itās been conflated with the sort of 4chan style mentality of āgamer menā who criticize anything, even historically accurate stories who call a game woke just because it doesnāt fit their favorite narrative of muscular white dude or scantily clad woman being the protagonist.
An example of this is Assassinās Creed Shadows. The game should by no means be labelled āwokeā by anybody. Itās telling a dramatized tale of a real person that existed within feudal Japan who was by all measure a black samurai. However the second group in my description above has taken it upon themselves to criticize the studio for āforcing a narrativeā or whatever which simply isnāt true. Itās a real person, from history, and they are telling a video game version of his story.
Itās annoying that the improper āwokenessā criticism there gets conflated with true criticism of studios adding barely fleshed out token elements of āinclusionā that by and large benefit nobody but instead detract from titles.
Absolutely this. I can only speak for myself, and I know that some folks are so starved for representation that they are happy with anything and thatās fine, but for me poor representation is just as bad as none at all.
Iām a guy married to a guy, and I do like to see queer characters and same sex romance options. But playing DA: Origin and crushing on Alastair, only to have the option of Zevranā¦ It kinda feels like the games is telling me āgay men are campy and promiscuous, a sensitive and strong guy like Alistair is clearly heterosexualā. It didnāt make me feel included or represented, quite the opposite.
Obviously, times change, and sometimes these clumsy first steps are how we get to somewhere better. But as well as disappointing me, I understand why awkward āwokeā representation rubs people the wrong way. If I as a queer man find the gay character tokenistic, underdeveloped and kinda annoying then it doesnāt surprise me that other folks would too. And being willing to say āthis is good representation, but that is shallow box tickingā would help us all get to better place.
Personally Iād rather woke slop to straight slop - at least itās clumsily including different narratives, rather than just clumsily reinforcing the same old narratives.
Obviously I would rather no slop, and I would rather artful reprĆ©sentations of all characters, but writing is hard - even moreso when youāve got producers, investors, and a committee working as editors.
Also slop meamd the industry is at least not actively hostile to my existence. There are much worse fates than being pandered to and patronized
I think most of the criticism about āwokenessā is unwarranted. I donāt know of any video game or movie that has been ruined because of āwokenessā.
Is Suicide Squad a bad video game? Probably. I havenāt played it myself.
Is Suicide Squad bad because the DLC has an old tired lesbian stereotype? No, I donāt think so. Even if it was a good game, I donāt think it wouldāve mattered much.
Itās kind of like Jar Jar Binks. People use him as a scapegoat for why Episode I is bad. Itās a character whoās easy to attack, but heās far from the reason why anyone would think Episode I is a bad movie. They would still dislike the movie even if he had been removed.
People are often good at telling when something is bad, but rarely understand why itās bad.
True that.
I even found it very funny when they accused kingdom come: deliverance of being racist because no black characters were in the game.
The setting is fucking medieval! There were no black people in Europe back then.
On the other hand I only know some Netflix series where they add all characters of the lbqt+ spectrum but give them no story or any meanings to that.
no black people in medieval Europe
In general, thereās almost always an exception which disproves any such rule. People across history have lived all sorts of lives.
https://www.simon-hartman.com/post/the-presence-of-africans-in-european-history
Your first source is a costume-designer with a very obvious agenda talking about European history. She sources little of her statements, some of them with actual pieces of fiction (including anachronistic art).
Your second source basically amounts to ācontemporary writers didnāt say there werenāt Africans in Europe *wink*ā. Itās written like your typical ancient aliens stuff.
The third describes more the spread of influence than the actual populace, and is written by Runoko Rashidi, an afrocentrist āhistorianā who liked to claim historical figures were black in spite of when evidence to the contrary existed. These folks are colloquially known as āhotepsā in some circles.
Obviously given the nature of humans, cultures, and empires, it is likely some amount of black Africans ended up in Europe. That said, given historical records as understood by actual historians, we have reason to believe there were not many of them. Why does it even matter though? What would black Africans being in Europe even prove?
I disagree that the first source has an agenda, it seems more that sheās just enthusiastically describing her subject matter. She cites other scholars and artwork, which isnāt necessarily anachronistic as it was made at that time. Iād say the same about the second source.
Hereās some more art work being described. The source is approachable and meant to encourage further reading for anyone interested, https://www.thehumanityarchive.com/articles/black-people-medieval-europe
For the last source, maybe that person had a pov to sell so it does make them less reliable, but if other historical artifacts or sources prove them right, then overall point of this remains the same.
The reason I brought it up was because someone said colored POC didnāt make sense in a medieval Europe game setting. I agree that there were probably less of them, but including the presence of such people in a game setting is just reality. Why is that such an issue for people? Those people need to get over it.
Hereās more scholarly resources https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780199730414/obo-9780199730414-0326.xml
And a more approachable one, https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/deconstructing-the-moors-black-presence-the-united-kingdom-and-during-the-tudor-period
in this case i think we can all tell that ānoā means āpractically noneā not like there was some law of physics stopping it
Itās practically wrong, though
Yeah, but thatās not going to stop the anti-woke crowd from Um AkShUaLlY-ing the situation to try to pretend itās not just some racist dog whistle.
Woke isnāt being progressive. Itās being progressive to an extent beyond any sort of logic, virtue signaling constantly, and then calling anyone who disagrees with you morally or intellectually inferior.
In entertainment, that often results in some really annoying elements that I think we can all acknowledge are a thing after almost a decade of this:
- There is a minority protagonist. Said protagonist is disproportionately a straight coded conventionally attractive white women in their 20s.
- The only flaw the protagonist will have is not being confident enough
- There is then a minority side character. Said character will disproportionately be a black woman obviously less attractive than the protagonist, or a upper middle class gay fuckboi.
- If there is not one of these two things, a minority side character will be shoehorned in somewhere. The character will feel visibly out of place, and no explanation will be given. For example, theyāll do some random black character in a fantasy setting thatās clearly based off Scotland in the 1200s.
- Important character goes on a monologue that feels like a political PSA
- The IPās understanding of progressive politics and social justice is roughly equivalent to Tumblr circa 2013.
- Absolutely terrible writing. Even if you swapped all the āwokeā elements for generic entertainment elements, the IP would still be terrible.
- Likewise, the IP itself is often put together in an extremely lazy and mediocre way. If said āwokeā content was not there, it would be universally panned for its low quality.
- Amazing reviews. All aspects of the IP get 10/10 from the āprofessionalā critics. All the reviews are similar enough that the critics either collaborated or read off the press release.
- The critics care more about the social justice aspect than the game itself.
- You get the sense both the creators and the critics of the IP not only donāt consume this type of IP in their spare time, but actively resent people who do.
- Constant fucking gaslighting. Anyone who doesnāt like this ultimately mediocre IP is either morally and intellectually inferior. This usually comes in the form of accusations of being a bigot, a Nazi, or a Trump supporter.
- Bigots, Nazis, and Trump supporters will then try to recruit people who are pissed about the gaslighting.
- At some point the IP itself fades into the background, and it just becomes yet another culture war battleground.
I think thereās a reason Star Wars gets more shit for being woke than Spiderverse, or that Arcane hasnāt become a culture war battleground in the same way She-Hulk did. The reason being those shows are actually good, and most people are happy to watch good shows.
Woke isnāt being progressive. Itās being progressive to an extent beyond any sort of logic, virtue signaling constantly, and then calling anyone who disagrees with you morally or intellectually inferior
I fucking hate that the idea of being woke was poisoned and turned into this when it very much is not and never was.
Woke is acknowledging the systemic racism playing out daily in the United States of America.
I think most of what you wrote isnāt even true to be honest, itās a well strung together list of annoying tropes which doesnāt even happen nearly as much or widely as some would suggest. Itās a neat little āhereās a bad way of caringā package but it aināt the truth.
I appreciate the effort you went through to write the post and I understand your viewpoint. At the same time, this is a great example of how the term āwokeā has been co-opted into meaning something it never really did. Being awake to the injustices present in our lives isnāt a bad thing. Turning woke into a slur to wrongly characterize and misdirect away from its true original intent has been an effective, and gross, way to get people to automatically reject real critique.
Youāre both right, but itās far too late to take the word back, no point in going on about the origins.
No it isnāt.
I am woke, and that is a good thing, and anyone complaining about that is an idiot.
Iād be described as woke, but Iāve always hated the term. Maybe itās because I was just growing into it right as it became the bogeyman phrase, I donāt know.
Woke is acknowledging the systemic racism playing out daily in the United States of America.
If only. But like all of your societal problems, itās being exported to all kinds of places, often where it has little relevance, but where it can be used for political gain by soulless individuals.
Your last bit is the only part that matters. Good content is good. Thereās so much well written progressive āwokeā stuff that does well, but itās easy to point at a shitty flop and say it failed because itās āwokeā rather than doing the hard work and actually analyzing why itās bad. āWokeā content isnāt an issue in media. Itās that weāre getting so much bad and lazy writing in AAA games (and other big media). They arenāt allowed to be creative, so it ends up being garbage.
Add on top of that that the games industry has laid off TENS OF THOUSANDS of devs in the last three or four years.
I know a lot of talented people who are no longer working as devs, or who have been job searching for months.
Of course this doesnāt mean that the studios still producing games have narrowed their scopes, they just dump more work on the survivors.
And āwoke DEI SJW snowflake game devā is far from the only thing making games worse, itās just what a lot of gamers can easily identify as a problem.
By the time I left, my last industry job had been reduced to what felt like manning the slop hose of mtx store items made by overseas outsource studios producing soulless trash under fuck-knows-what kind of nightmare working conditions.
We started seeing more diversity in games because devs are diverse and wanted to see themselves and their friends in their art.
The problem has never been queer or black characters in games. It is, and always has been, the prioritizing of profit over quality craft.
Iād argue that forced diversity is primarily because so many higher ups donāt give a fuck about gaming or making good content.
The suits just want money, and for some reason corporate thought that weighing in on social and political issues was a huge money maker in the 2020s. The journalists just want to promote their own political agenda and get ragebait clicks. The project director is someone with a corporate background but a progressive flair that makes them seem āhipā to the suits.
Meanwhile the people who give a shit, regardless of their identity, donāt have a voice in the room.
Iām sure there are plenty of minorities that are super pissed about what happened to bioware, but the only way youād hear from them is by looking at sales figures because they donāt have a bully pulpit.
I get what youāre saying, butā¦
For example, theyāll do some random black character in a fantasy setting thatās clearly based off Scotland in the 1200s.
While I donāt know about 1200s Scotland specifically, the notion that black people didnāt exist in old Europe is a false narrative by racists who seem to believe immigration was invented around the 1700s (like, Iāve seen them claim black people donāt fit into Ancient Greece, which is definitely wrong.)
I mean immigration existed, but it wasnāt nearly as common as today. A lot of these IPs just plop a minority in an area where their presence would turn heads, have everyone act super casual about it because they are too lazy for a backstory, and then call everyone a bigot who points out this is sort of silly. On the flip side, there are people who will call creators bigots for not including minorities in some quasi historical setting, even if their presence was rare.
Like pretend someone was making a movie in present day central Africa. Everyone is central African. Except one dude who is pure blooded Navajo. No explanation is ever given, and the only people who seem to even notice his race is the villain.
While itās perfectly possible for someone of Navajo descent to find themselves in central Africa, itās not really that likely. Audiences would want an explanation, and would consider it unrealistic if absolutely nobody commented on it except some over the top villain.
Thereās also an aspect of gaslighting going on here. Over the past decade historians have made a lot of claims about racial compositions of historical groups that were later exposed to be largely inaccurate. While historical inaccuracies are always a thing, itās pretty convenient that all these inaccurate claims fit into the narrative pushed by American progressive identity politics.
While itās perfectly possible for someone of Navajo descent to find themselves in central Africa, itās not really that likely.
What part about literally any story about heroes and adventures is āreally that likelyā? Every story ever told is told because theyāre unique and thrilling and unusual. Pretending like your problem with the āwrongā races mixing in fiction is because itās āunlikelyā belies the fact that everything in these stories is unlikely. Why arenāt you complaining about main characters that are shockingly born from the lost line of monarchs, the last heir able to save the kingdom? Or having a mysterious, ancient weapon literally fall into their hands? Or any other number of preposterously unlikely things that are what make these stories worth telling? You donāt complain about them because they donāt bother you. But a black person in Scotland? THATāS where you draw the line? Come the fuck on.
Great comment, youāve nailed it.
I think thereās a reason Star Wars gets more shit for being woke than Spiderverse
Funny enough even within the Star Wars universe there are good and bad things. Mandalorian and Rogue One? Pretty great. Episode 7+ and Acolyte? Pretty shit. Youāll notice though that the more forced the progressivism is in a given piece of content, the more it sucks. In other words: bad writing doesnāt just fuck the story up, it bakes in messaging that doesnāt even make sense contextually.
Anyone who has ever read the Sword of Truth series and encountered the authorās obsession with hating socialism has seen what happens when right-wing folk do it: it ruins the experience. Why would we excuse it from progressives?
I disagree with your premise that that āforced progressivismā messes things up. Andor, for example, is the most progressive Star Wars media ever, and itās amazing for it. (Itās literally about a leftist, or at least leftist coded, rebellion against Fascists, and wears it proudly.) The reason is because the people making it were allowed to be creative and were passionate about what they were making.
Its the lack of creative freedom and passion that kills things. Most things with a lot of money put into them are directed by suits, not creatives. They donāt want to take risks, so they just follow trends and formulas. This leads to the media not having anything to actually say, and just a veneer of trying to appeal to certain people, without actually doing anything with it.
I havenāt seen Andor so I canāt comment, but Iāll take the plunge on your advice.
I think corporate āprogressivismā is certainly one of the culprits, but sometimes itās the creatives themselves who ruin things. Some creatives have even intentionally uprooted an IP like The Witcherās show, and Rings of Power. Sometimes progressive ideals are merely a shield against criticism, other times itās a creatorsā own ideals that made them ruin things, and sometimes itās just rainbow capitalism. Itās not a simple issue to talk about really.
I generally agree with you, with some caveats.
I think that most IPs have subtext, and a lot of time this is in the form of a deeper political message. I think it would be silly to say progressivism in IPs is always a bad thing. Thatās part of the reason I mentioned Arcane and Spiderverse by name.
The problem comes from the fact that IPs are supposed to be entertainment first, messaging second. A lot of creators make a lazy and mediocre product, and somewhere in there is a ham-fisted political message. Some creators also seem to be making IPs bad on purpose as a fuck you to their target audience, which is an absolutely baffling choice.
Thereās also the concept of nuance thatās sort of been lost. A lot of the creators will write something in some super reductive black/white way thatās basically guaranteed to turn off everyone who doesnāt already emphatically agree with them. This is a huge departure from a lot of older movies. For example Forrest Gump is a Republican movie, but doesnāt just portray republicans as automatically good or liberals as automatically bad. The end result is that there are a lot of liberals who love Forrest Gump.
The part that I strongly disagree on is that you seem to be blaming the corporations. I think ultimately a lot of the problem here is at the fault of the creators. There have been a lot of high profile cases where studios donāt interfere, give the creators a massive budget, and have their backs when controversy hits. The creators will still end up making mediocre culture war content. Todd Philips was allowed to do whatever he wanted in Joker 2. It turns out what Todd Philips wanted was for the Joker to be permanently defeated by the power of prison rape. Thereās no studio head in the world who would have told him to do that.
I disagree with this:
The problem comes from the fact that IPs are supposed to be entertainment first, messaging second.
Maybe you just want entertainment, but the purpose of art has almost always been message-first. If a piece of art isnāt trying to say something, whatās the point? People trying to act like gaming, or any other form of art, should only focus on entertaining, and always has, are not very media-literate. I canāt think of a single classically well received movie that doesnāt have a message itās trying to tell.
Nuance, yeah. Thatās important. The goal of art is to get someone to feel like the idea youāre trying to give them came from themselves. Thatās when itās effective. It doesnāt really work when youāre just telling them how to think. It just annoys people.
Also, of course some garbage will also be made when people are allowed freedom to be creative. The difference is that good things can be made in that situation, not that it always will. It pretty much never will if everything is targeted towards mass appeal. That ensures no one in particular will care because there isnāt a target. They do it because itās a safe bet. This implies the alternative is more risky, meaning more failures (like Joker 2), but also the opportunity for greatness.
Anyone who has ever read the Sword of Truth series and encountered the authorās obsession with hating socialism has seen what happens when right-wing folk do it: it ruins the experience.
And unions. Really drove that home when Richard was in the Old World.
Oh you have definitely read it. I come from a family of union men, and am myself a union executive. Reading that stuff felt surreal lol.
To be fair Iām sure if it was stylish to insert overt conservative themes into IPs those would be also too.
I donāt think progressivism is the problem. I think the problem is mediocre creators either deciding to turn an expensive IP into their own political soapbox, and executives giving it the green light because they either are completely disconnected to what makes a good product or thinks the culture war will allow them to pretend that bad products are good.
The one character that felt shoehorned in to me was Idris Elba as Roland in The Gunslinger. Why?! Handsome, buff, young and black are not adjectives anyone has ever used to describe Roland Deschain. LOL, King might as well come out and say he ripped the description off a 40-something Clint Eastwood.
Is that dude waiting for an American Black Woman to invent punctuation marks?
Oh, I like you.
You donāt get it, they like the women, gays and non whites providing labor, they just want them hidden, so it doesnāt ruins their gamer experience. They are just labor, and there is no place for them in the exclusive gamer space.
Itās like the old days, you want your slaves and servants just to serve you, like machines, you donāt want to acknowledge their existence as human beings. They are not equal to you, they just sustain your life style, because they deserve so. And only that, no humanity for them.
