-38 points
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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

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69 points

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.

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-33 points
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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.

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19 points

Lol.

If someone doesn’t like my unsubstantiated claim of “woke” they’re a moron

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9 points
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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.

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39 points

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”.

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34 points

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.

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18 points

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.

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10 points

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.

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14 points

The fact you consider people being gay, or black, or women political says a lot about what kind of person you are.

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-4 points

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.

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22 points

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?

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1 point

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.

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8 points

If the writing sucks, the writing would still suck even if it was pro-oppression.

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3 points

What exactly do you think needs to be sacrificed when deciding a character is gay?

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0 points

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.

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4 points

Wait, wait, what was the controversy with Dark Souls? Did I miss something there?

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5 points

He was likely using controversy on broad topics. For Dark Souls it would be difficulty and lack of an easy mode.

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12 points

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.

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-5 points

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.

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4 points
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Removed by mod
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1 point

“The majority of complaints about wokeness in games is not that alternative lifestyles exist…”

Could not disagree more. That’s exactly what the majority of complaints are about. Existence.

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53 points
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Is that dude waiting for an American Black Woman to invent punctuation marks?

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7 points

Oh, I like you.

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30 points
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To be fair, though the early video game industry was created by and included a diverse group of people, the games themselves were made to sell their niche demographic. At the time that was young white boys. As a result not many games of the early era showcased the positive side of diversity, and often times portrayed it negatively, even if it wasn’t intentional.

The past these people are comparing modern games to isn’t imagined, it’s real. As the gaming industry has grown to the now extremely large range of people it has, and through a shift in social culture over the years, the content, intent, and purpose of the games themselves have drastically changed.

The people who complain about “woke” games main program isn’t an issue with games, but more about their inability to accept the societal and cultural changes happening around them. They refuse to accept that the types of games they loved as a kid had a lot of problematic cultural issues.

So basically they’re mad that the racist and/or homophobic and/or sexist themes that they loved in old in games aren’t acceptable anymore.

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-16 points

And they dont buy the game and vote Trump. (or over here the dutch dude with the weird hair.)

In the end the videogame industry is not about being politically correct. Its about making money.

I for one am very curious how this all will work out.

I do think we all should “chill out” a bit about these “issues”. A lot of people, everyone even, do not care what you do or don’t do. Nobody wants to tell you how to live your life. But that goes both ways. And if you don’t respect that you get a push back, an overreaction. And that is what’s happening now.

People see “gay stuff” (…) everywhere. The sociatal change is too much too fast and like in IT projects, we’re reaching or have already exceeded, the change capability of our society.

So ease back and it all will work out. Give it a few more years. We’ve come so far, maybe it is time to just sit down for a while and smell the flowers.

Or don’t, feed the overreaction some more and see if it implodes. But it can also explode in your face, its 50/50.

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30 points

So ease back and it all will work out. Give it a few more years. We’ve come so far, maybe it is time to just sit down for a while and smell the flowers.

This attitude is acceptable when you’re talking about something that is purely a matter of preference. I could say that to someone who tells me “Oh, it sucks that I can’t eat out at 99% of restaurants, because I only eat biodynamic food, and nobody knows wtf I’m talking about with my weird dietary questions.”

When it comes to something inherent to people, which cannot be changed and causes them to face discrimination, I find this take to be naïve, at best, and entirely ignorant and dangerous, at worst. At every turn, there are people actively trying to strip women, minorities and LGBTQ+ people of their rights in spite of active pushes to ensure they don’t lose their rights and can enjoy equality with everyone else. I find it rather callous to suggest that members of these groups should just chill out and hope for the best in a few years while they face potentially existential threats from complacency.

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4 points

The attitude works out when you’re on the majority side. When you’re a minority, it’s basically just telling you that you don’t get the same privileges as the rest. “You can have a little bit of acceptance for now, as long as you keep quiet in your little corner”

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2 points
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the games themselves were made to sell their niche demographic. At the time that was young white boys

In the beginning, before Nintendo started hammering the idea that video games were for kids, games were often targetted for an older audience. This is particularly true of home computer gaming, the bread and butter for the likes of Sierra and LucasArts. Even after the Nintendo there was still a lot of mature and even adult content being made, as well as content in genres less popular to children such as simulators.

From my own experince: Sierra’s Roberta Williams was the designer of the whole King’s Quest series (I believe?), and I remember a lot of discussion about them (and especially hints lol) on my BBS by men and women alike, nearly all working adults. I can’t speak for the entire demographic of King’s Quest players but I mean people logging into BBS’s probably were the main demographic lol.

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1 point

Out of sight out of…

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101 points

A game is only called “woke” when it’s bad. Balder’s Gate 3 is one of the most “woke” major releases in the last few years but you hardly hear them complain about it.

It’s the same thing with cyberpunk 2077. The anti-woke crowd can’t agree on whether it’s woke because many of them like it.

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16 points

I bought BG3 due to constant negative comments about it. It’s 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.

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-5 points

BG3 doesn’t lecture you like other games though. There is a difference between having these people live in your world vs being the spokesperson for BLM.

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11 points
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The difference isn’t in subject matter, but writing quality. I like retro shooters and considering Build Engine(think Duke Nukem) style games are based on movie genres, I’d love a blaxploitation game were I’m 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 “wokeness”, you signal that you’re just gaming the algorithm for the lowest common denominator of viewer to drive that ad money up.

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5 points

Which games are like that, though?

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31 points

I think the problem isn’t the wokeness for most people, but the awkward shoehorning of stereotypes and forced messaging that makes everything feel cheap and doesn’t 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.

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-18 points

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.

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5 points
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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.

What exactly is your problem with ESG, which measures the social and environmental impact of a companies actions? You think we… shouldn’t hold corpos responsible for their actions?

Elon Musk doesn’t want DEI, do you think maybe there might be a good reason the US has it?

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’m going to need you to explain how wanting representation of non cishetero characters is proof of ‘people who actively hate video games and gamers…’

You want to know who hate video games and gamers? ‘Anti-woke’ gamers. All this whining and crying over having a character be bi, or someone being (gasp) non-binary is performative and ridiculous. If your entire day and gaming experience can be ruined by someone making a non-binary character in a fucking single player RPG, that’s laughable, and the taunting you’ll receive is justified.

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14 points

An LGBTQ person doesn’t need “a good reason” for being written that way. If they did, then so would the straight person, no? Unless, of course, we’re trying to say that every story’s default needs to be a straight white man who doesn’t 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 here’s a sticker.

It’s not about checking a diversity box, it’s about the barest amount of representation. The LGBT people in my life don’t exist because they fit some kind of plot-point in my life; they exist because that’s just how the dice landed and they don’t owe me a justification for why they are that way in order to be my friends. That would be absurd, right?

—

Sidenote: Everyone complaining about Veilguard(for example) forgets that a) Bioware is famously unclear about what dialogue choices do and b) they just don’t, historically, seem to have the capacity to write terribly creative games. They’re fine and I’ve enjoyed playing the ones I have but still.

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11 points

I didn’t 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. It’s 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 doesn’t matter to me what the genders involved are, if it’s there I want it to make sense and add something, not just tick a box.

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28 points

How do you differentiate between a character “written for the sake of checking a diversity box”, a poorly-written diverse character, and a “random fact of the world”? It’s a fictional world. Nothing is random. It’s all creative decisions made by a team of writers and producers.

I don’t 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 don’t 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 don’t think the result of that will be “better representation”.

I think the result will be devs being harrassed and pushed out of an already brutal industry.

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2 points

Games like Cyberpunk have characters who are black, gay, etc. but it never impacts the player character’s 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. It’s the odd injection of the woke rather than the woke itself.

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9 points
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There were absolutely people calling that game woke. You didn’t hear them because they were drowned out by the good press. It’s not that game is only called woke when it’s bad, it’s that when a game is good there’s enough positive publicity to drowned out the negative.

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5 points

I heard complaints about BG3 characters being romanceable independently of MC’s gender and race, that it’s against lore and statistics. But my guess would be that it would’ve been the thing devs wanted to do not because of wokeness, but because it seems fairer towards the player.

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