A game is only called âwokeâ when itâs bad. Balderâs Gate 3 is one of the most âwokeâ major releases in the last few years but you hardly hear them complain about it.
Itâs the same thing with cyberpunk 2077. The anti-woke crowd canât agree on whether itâs woke because many of them like it.
I think the problem isnât the wokeness for most people, but the awkward shoehorning of stereotypes and forced messaging that makes everything feel cheap and doesnât 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 âwritten for the sake of checking a diversity boxâ, a poorly-written diverse character, and a ârandom fact of the worldâ? Itâs a fictional world. Nothing is random. Itâs all creative decisions made by a team of writers and producers.
I donât 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 donât 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 donât think the result of that will be âbetter representationâ.
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 characterâs 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. Itâs the odd injection of the woke rather than the woke itself.
An LGBTQ person doesnât need âa good reasonâ for being written that way. If they did, then so would the straight person, no? Unless, of course, weâre trying to say that every storyâs default needs to be a straight white man who doesnât 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 hereâs a sticker.
Itâs not about checking a diversity box, itâs about the barest amount of representation. The LGBT people in my life donât exist because they fit some kind of plot-point in my life; they exist because thatâs just how the dice landed and they donât owe me a justification for why they are that way in order to be my friends. That would be absurd, right?
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Sidenote: Everyone complaining about Veilguard(for example) forgets that a) Bioware is famously unclear about what dialogue choices do and b) they just donât, historically, seem to have the capacity to write terribly creative games. Theyâre fine and Iâve enjoyed playing the ones I have but still.
I didnât 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. Itâs 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 doesnât matter to me what the genders involved are, if itâs there I want it to make sense and add something, not just tick a box.
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.
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⌠shouldnât hold corpos responsible for their actions?
Elon Musk doesnât 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.
Iâm going to need you to explain how wanting representation of non cishetero characters is proof of âpeople who actively hate video games and gamersâŚâ
You want to know who hate video games and gamers? âAnti-wokeâ 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, thatâs laughable, and the taunting youâll receive is justified.
There were absolutely people calling that game woke. You didnât hear them because they were drowned out by the good press. Itâs not that game is only called woke when itâs bad, itâs that when a game is good thereâs enough positive publicity to drowned out the negative.
I heard complaints about BG3 characters being romanceable independently of MCâs gender and race, that itâs against lore and statistics. But my guess would be that it wouldâve been the thing devs wanted to do not because of wokeness, but because it seems fairer towards the player.
BG3 doesnât 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 isnât in subject matter, but writing quality. I like retro shooters and considering Build Engine(think Duke Nukem) style games are based on movie genres, Iâd love a blaxploitation game were Iâm 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 âwokenessâ, you signal that youâre just gaming the algorithm for the lowest common denominator of viewer to drive that ad money up.
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 ânot actually progressivenessâ 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 donât have to âlook likeâ anything, but then you wouldnât know theyâre lesbians, and the companies donât understand how to do this.
Gamers can tell when a company is trying to âbe progressiveâ 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 Baldurâs Gate 3) it no longer is âwokeâ, 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 âfake progressiveness corporate virtue signalingâ until recently and I think gamers really only care about this happening. So it isnât 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 youâre either pro woke slop, or youâre racist/sexist/transphobic. But reality is that most gamers (even those who complain about wokeness) actually are progressives. They actually donât 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 thatâs the case, then theyâre just criticizing bad writing, like all of us are.
But itâs 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 theyâre not backwards, the protagonist has one gay friend. And, from that alone, the target base complained about the show being âwokeâ.
So the term is both wrapping a long way around towards the simple term âbad writingâ and instantly called upon anytime demographics include minorities. Iâd go for the Occamâs Razor explanation. Itâs just hate.
If thatâs the case, then theyâre just criticizing bad writing, like all of us are.
Theyâre criticising a specific type of bad writing. There are many ways a story can be written poorly. âBad writingâ isnât 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 thatâs not everyone who uses the term, and I agree.
This, the kind of gamer who make lists of woke games that you shouldnât 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 Iâm sure that the mass layoffs and the fucked up development cycle are a major cause of these problems.
Agreed, and I feel like the big issue here is there are two versions of âanti-wokeâ 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 âwokeâ which fall flat because itâs just virtue signaling.
But itâs been conflated with the sort of 4chan style mentality of âgamer menâ who criticize anything, even historically accurate stories who call a game woke just because it doesnât fit their favorite narrative of muscular white dude or scantily clad woman being the protagonist.
An example of this is Assassinâs Creed Shadows. The game should by no means be labelled âwokeâ by anybody. Itâs 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 âforcing a narrativeâ or whatever which simply isnât true. Itâs a real person, from history, and they are telling a video game version of his story.
Itâs annoying that the improper âwokenessâ criticism there gets conflated with true criticism of studios adding barely fleshed out token elements of âinclusionâ 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 thatâs fine, but for me poor representation is just as bad as none at all.
Iâm 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 Zevran⌠It kinda feels like the games is telling me âgay men are campy and promiscuous, a sensitive and strong guy like Alistair is clearly heterosexualâ. It didnât 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 âwokeâ representation rubs people the wrong way. If I as a queer man find the gay character tokenistic, underdeveloped and kinda annoying then it doesnât surprise me that other folks would too. And being willing to say âthis is good representation, but that is shallow box tickingâ would help us all get to better place.
Personally Iâd rather woke slop to straight slop - at least itâs clumsily including different narratives, rather than just clumsily reinforcing the same old narratives.
Obviously I would rather no slop, and I would rather artful reprĂŠsentations of all characters, but writing is hard - even moreso when youâve got producers, investors, and a committee working as editors.
I think most of the criticism about âwokenessâ is unwarranted. I donât know of any video game or movie that has been ruined because of âwokenessâ.
Is Suicide Squad a bad video game? Probably. I havenât played it myself.
Is Suicide Squad bad because the DLC has an old tired lesbian stereotype? No, I donât think so. Even if it was a good game, I donât think it wouldâve mattered much.
Itâs kind of like Jar Jar Binks. People use him as a scapegoat for why Episode I is bad. Itâs a character whoâs easy to attack, but heâs 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 itâs bad.
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 theyâre only selectively included. Of course it feels like itâs only tangentially attached to the content: it is, by design, and you can easily prove it.
Thatâs what people mean when they say itâs forced.
You want to write a gay character? Do it, but stop half-assing it because it wonât sell in China. Do it right or fuck off.
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, thereâs 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
in this case i think we can all tell that ânoâ means âpractically noneâ not like there was some law of physics stopping it
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 âcontemporary writers didnât say there werenât Africans in Europe *wink*â. Itâs 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 âhistorianâ who liked to claim historical figures were black in spite of when evidence to the contrary existed. These folks are colloquially known as âhotepsâ 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?
Wow, so nobody traveled across the Mediterranean until the modern era? Gosh!
Is that dude waiting for an American Black Woman to invent punctuation marks?
To be fair, what the OOP is describing is âdiversity in the video game industryâ, not âwoke gamesâ, per se. While I doubt anyone here has objections to the former, I also doubt that anyone here is a fan of âDustbornâ, as an example.
I hate this kind of comment. A bad game doing poorly that happens to be âwokeâ isnât evidence that being âwokeâ made it bad. For example, Dragon Age Origins is pretty âwokeâ (especially for its time) but itâs recognized as an amazing game by pretty much everyone. If you make a great game thatâs written well, itâs 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 âwokeâ doesnât matter. Being good matters.
I thought the hamfisted shit was what most meant when they talk about âwokeâ.
They tell you they only mean the ham-fisted stuff to get âreasonableâ people to agree with them, then they move the goalposts and start calling everything else woke, regardless of âham-fistedness,â to get âreasonableâ people to expand their definition of âwokeâ in a pejorative sense and associate a wider range of media as being âwoke and therefore bad.â Just like they did in past decades with âpolitical correctness.â
Dustborn is a good game that has been incredibly misrepresented. Take the âyou are racistâ scene copied and pasted from video to video for example. Itâs presented as the gameâs Black protagonist just accusing two cops of racism for no reason.
In the actual game, itâs one of the multiple dialogue choices that may not even happen if one of the protagonistâs 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 theyâre monsters whose babies come out damaged, missing body parts, and that they shouldnât procreate at all so that there are âfewer scourges on the planetâ.
- Asking the protagonist questions (which is fine for a police officer) while being disrespectful, like when she says sheâs in a band and they ask if sheâs the groupie.
- Depending on the playerâs actions, the same officers may also ask if the protagonist and âthe Black kidâ from her crew are related, then among themselves argue on whether thatâs racist, to which the protagonist may reply with the Trigger Vox, which results in the âyouâre racistsâ 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 donât use Vox on other occasions).
Iâm going to come at this from a movie rather than a video game place, but:
Which is more âwoke:â 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 âWe were in a dogfight and I was trying to kill you with gunsâ 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. âThey catcalled me in a parking lot and it made me mad.â
You know that guy who does âhonest movie trailersâ on Youtube? He did one for Star Trek TNG, and he says âItâs the future, and the Future. Is. Woke!â And he said this before the word âwokeâ was co-opted by the right meaning âanything regressives donât like.â
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 couldnât 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 âMeasure of a Manâ 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 parentsâ Zenith console TV. That idea of âweâre past that now, we put aside our differences and we work together as a team of equals nowâ vision is what I thought we were all working toward. That that was the future we all wanted. Couldnât be farther from the truth. The radical right are actively avoiding it clinging to some weird idea of a white hegemony. Surprised they donât 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. âWhen we come to power, weâll enslave you and see how you like it.â That type of shit.
The people who call themselves âWokeâ like the aesthetic of people who arenât 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.
That idea of âweâre past that now, we put aside our differences and we work together as a team of equals nowâ vision is what I thought we were all working toward. That that was the future we all wanted. Couldnât be farther from the truth. The radical right are actively avoiding it clinging to some weird idea of a white hegemony
This is true about Star Trek, and the TNG era in particular. No way you could watch those shows and not come away with the understanding that people struggled to be the better human being and had achieved significant gains in the fictional universe.
I wonder what TV shows the racists preferred.
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.
Letâs use soldier 76 from overwatch as an example. The way he was written on top of the are they arenât they thing he had going on with Ana didnât 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 itâs bad representation, at worst itâs cynical pinkwashing and pandering for profit.
But thatâs not a distinction I have ever seen an âanti-woke gamerâ 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 Ellieâs sexuality? Honestly I think FNV only escapes a lot of that kind of vitriol because it was released pre-gg.
I wonât disagree that Soldierâs gayness came pretty much out of the blue, but I donât think itâs a good example of something that was âput it in our faceâ. I play Overwatch regularly still with people who have no idea heâs gay - the game itself doesnât say anything about it, at least not that Iâve seen. The only way youâd 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.