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"Woke" games
(sh.itjust.works)
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this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2024
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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
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 downvoting thoughtful comments I'm going to automatically assume that person is a closed minded moron.
Lol.
I'm happy to talk with people about difficult or sensitive subjects, but throwing around downvotes doesn't encourage good dialog.
Homie, you want to talk to 16 strangers disagreeing with you? O.o
Be glad that most people just vote and don't comment.
The subject isnt sensitive when some refers to wokeness.
Its the little bitch that cant handle reality that is sensitive imo.
Guarantee your last 2 comments are getting it because yu whined about your vote ratio
Self fulfilling prophecy ya butthurt turd
i want lemmy to be a constructive place where people are not chased away. The habit of the downvote culture here is not helping lemmy grow.
Don't post stupid shit and you won't get downvoted, it's simple
Engagement is engagement, if you don't like that your opinions aren't agreed with: tough titties, learn to deal with it or stop posting
Your position implies that only people you agree with are able to have a civil discussion, and it's impossible to discuss anything that there is any disagreement on.
These attitudes slow the growth of lemmy.
Nope, you can have civil conversation AND downvote someone, I do it all the time
Not with you, though, cuz you get butthurt when the number isn't positive. That's a you problem, turn off votes if you can't handle them
Most of Lemmy is far left and very sensitive. You'd have a better time having a meaningful discussion on /r/Politics than here.
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.
I have not decried a single game as woke.
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.
Yeah, every ideology gets mocked in the game. But I feel like while fascists are shown as pitiful weiners, the commies' plight is shown like a tragedy. Also, the writers thanked Marx and Engels when accepting an award for the game, so... yeah. 😅
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.
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?
Kinda -
There will always be a background level of online misanthropes labeling everything woke, but that only gets attention if there nothing else remarkable about the game.
So if the only online dialog about a game is how woke it is, the game probably isn't very good.
When has this happened?
Edit: yeah, i figured you wouldnt be able to come up with an example.
I can probably find dozens of games in my library that had mediocre, unremarkable stories. If we change their white male protagonists to someone black or gay, suddenly it’s “bad because it’s woke”. Doesn’t that make perfect sense???10&@?
If the writing sucks, the writing would still suck even if it was pro-oppression.
What exactly do you think needs to be sacrificed when deciding a character is gay?
I dont think that.
I'm not sure how else to interpret your own quote
It's a fine video, but doesn't have anything to do with sacrificing story or content. It's about adding something to an already shit product. Maybe I misinterpreted your original post?
People love good stories.
Taking a good story written by one person, and then having other people shoehorn a political agenda into it, makes the story less good usually, perhaps even bad.
Or, taking a bad story, and trying to save it by shoving a political agenda into it does not make it a good story either.
I think a lot of the complaints, online, are really about bad stories being presented as good because they have a political agenda attached to them. Hence the pushback we've been discussing in this thread
Again, please provide an example of what youre talking about so we can all engage in discussion.
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.
... 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.
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.
No, learn to read
They clearly said that it's just a new message they the people actually see now that it's in the societal eye, the people whining about woke are the same people who missed the point of other media, too
They mentioned Fight Club. If you think the political message isn't core to that movie then, well, you're one of the dipshits being discussed
And fucking starship troopers. Anyone who doesn't see the politics of that movie is either completely media illiterate or isn't able to actually see messages that aren't pointed out to them. I'm not sure they could have been more overt without NPH throwing the Nazi salute.
No need to be rude.
I didn't watch fight club. I have no idea what it's about. If it is intended to educate people on political issues, great. If it is intended to entertain and only discusses political issues subtly in the background, great. If it is intended to entertain, but fails at doing so because of presenting a political message in a manner that hinders entertainment, not great.
Just leaving this Shaun video here
"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.
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?
He was likely using controversy on broad topics. For Dark Souls it would be difficulty and lack of an easy mode.