The majority of complaints about wokeness in games is not that alternative lifestyles exist…
It’s that the game, story, or environment is being sacrificed to shove a political message down your throat.
What people complain about online doesn’t matter, the only thing that matters is revenue. If the revenue isn’t enough then the discussion about wokeness dominates the discussion… I don’t think making bland/bad game “woke” in order to get more attention will save it. Controversy doesn’t sell that many games, might make more people aware of a product, but if they already didn’t like the product (or were just meh about it) - controversy wont move the needle in a positive direction.
Update: since I’m incapable expressing myself succinctly here. I refer everybody to this nutsa video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJS4JHYgj50 which is my basic position
If the writing sucks, then talk about how the writing sucks. If I see someone crying “woke bs” without backing anything up I’m going to automatically assume that person is a bigoted moron.
As soon as someone calls something “woke”, I know immediately to ignore whatever they’re saying, they’re almost surely incapable of proper critical thinking. If they could form an actual critical opinion they’d be talking about that instead of using a generic political term that equates to “anything I don’t like or understand”.
I think most people lack that level of self awareness.
I think if the most interesting thing about the game is how woke it is, thats a really bad sign.
Consider Cyberpunk 2077 as an example, there was a hot minute where people were getting their transphobic panties in a bunch over the hermaphroditic ingame advertisements, but There was so much MORE to talk about in cyberpunk 2077 that it wasn’t the only discussion about the game (even before it launched).
If I see someone crying “woke bs” without backing anything up I’m going to automatically assume that person is a bigoted moron.
If I see someone downvoting thoughtful comments I’m going to automatically assume that person is a closed minded moron.
Lol.
If someone doesn’t like my unsubstantiated claim of “woke” they’re a moron
Your comments are not thoughtful. They’re the same dull BS that we’ve all heard hundreds of times before. Much like the creators of the “woke” games you’re decrying, you’re trying to write something interesting and simply failing. Perhaps you should empathize with them instead.
These outrage tourists call every “woke” if it fits their narrative.
Zelda: echoes of wisdom features Zelda as a playable character? Woke! Hades 2 having gay gods and Hephaistos being in a wheelchair? Woke! A game having the option to chose your pronouns in the character creator with no change in the actual story/narrative? Believe it or not: woke! /j
Disco Elysium is an actually very political and leftist game, but no one calls it “woke”, because it’s incredibly good and popular (also: these chodes probably wouldn’t even get the game).
Baldur’s Gate 3 has everything they complain about, but it’s not criticized, because it is loved by the community.
I mean, people do call Disco Elysium “woke commie political garbage” because being a fascist in that game is paramount to self harm and they don’t like introspection.
It’s probably the only time they’re right, when they call a game “commie”.
It’s still a phenomenal game and they can’t help but cope.
The fact you consider people being gay, or black, or women political says a lot about what kind of person you are.
I did not say writing a good game about gay, black, or women is political.
It’s that the game, story, or environment is being sacrificed to shove a political message down your throat.
These statements are different.
So if the game is good and centers around those things its a good game.
But if its bad and centers around those things, its woke. Am i understanding you correctly?
What exactly do you think needs to be sacrificed when deciding a character is gay?
Honestly this sort of thing happening is extremely rare. In reality either the story/environment gets sacrificed to pander to some audience to make more money, or the game is from the ground up built to support that political message.
What also happens is devs deciding that they’d rather have diversity than trying to emulate some real historical setting in their unrealistic fantasy world, which for some reason gets people crying too, but has nothing to do with pushing a political message and rather just changing the expectation of white male default in western games (and probably pandering to the sensibilities of the majority of their audience to make more money).
It’s not wrong that the complaints about “woke” are mostly precisely about this perceived lowering of quality for some agenda or pandering, it’s just that that is rarely what’s happening. Like this whole idea that some people like to push that if not every woman in your game is conventionally attractive, it’s “woke” and you’re “ignoring your actual audience”. When usually these games have a ton of hot women (and men) anyway because they’re fully aware many people like playing hot characters, they just have other options too.
It’s that the game, story, or environment is being sacrificed to shove a political message down your throat.
… said by people who only know of this because today we talk about that message. The same people who loved Starship Troopers without realising it’s a tale about the dangers of fascism. Who cheered Fight Club not realising it criticized male stereotypes. And lauded the Fallout video game series even though it on purpose allows same sex relationships since Fallout 2.
Sheep. Led by Russian propaganda filtered through their current favorite “I tell it like it is”-influencers.
said by people who only know of this because today we talk about that message
So what you’re saying is that those games didn’t shove their message down people’s throat while modern games do? That while they did have a political message, they didn’t make it core to the experience and presented it in a way that allowed people who only wanted to play to completely ignore it?
You are validating the above comment’s point.
Controversy does sell games and can drive sales of bad games (GTA, Dark Souls, DND). People are more aware of it. They buy it and play it because “what’s the big deal”. They like it, despite its flaws, then they share it.
The complaints about “wokeness” are only created by bigots. Just because games have a queer or religious character doesn’t mean there’s an agenda to make more money. It’s just a trait that exists in the real world. And more than likely, the character takes traits from someone who made it, or someone they know.
Queer people exist. Being upset about a person existing in a game is a personal problem.
That being said, there are things I personally don’t like in games, so I just don’t play them.
Wait, wait, what was the controversy with Dark Souls? Did I miss something there?