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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.
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.
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.
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.
Have you played the game?
I haven’t.
Do you have to interact with that character? In all the BioWare games I have played, you don’t actually have to interact with any companions at all outside of critpath questlines. Even big blowup moments like the Miranda/Jack fight only trigger once you’ve completed both of their loyalty missions, and you have to choose to talk to them to unlock those in the first place.
And since I’m assuming you’re referring to the Qunari companion, and I’ve watched a couple of critiques of the scenes I believe you’re referencing - it’s not their sexuality that’s being discussed, it’s their gender.
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.
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.
Right, except that 99% of LGBT characters aren’t doing anything special and their mere existence, since we aren’t numb to it, is taken as some political act of tokenism. It’s as simple as being aware that you’re 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? It’s not nearly as much as everyone claims and it all serves to normalize it so get over it. It’s not like there isn’t heaps of absolutely dogshit straight writing that we are fine ignoring for the sake of the rest of the game. Tthe second it’s the same thing but with a gay character every shitstain gets all bent outta shape over it like their problem isn’t 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. 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.
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.
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.
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.
Which games are like that, though?
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 “not actually progressiveness” 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 don’t have to “look like” anything, but then you wouldn’t know they’re lesbians, and the companies don’t understand how to do this.
Gamers can tell when a company is trying to “be progressive” 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 Baldur’s Gate 3) it no longer is “woke”, 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 “fake progressiveness corporate virtue signaling” until recently and I think gamers really only care about this happening. So it isn’t 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 you’re either pro woke slop, or you’re racist/sexist/transphobic. But reality is that most gamers (even those who complain about wokeness) actually are progressives. They actually don’t 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 that’s the case, then they’re just criticizing bad writing, like all of us are.
But it’s 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 they’re not backwards, the protagonist has one gay friend. And, from that alone, the target base complained about the show being “woke”.
So the term is both wrapping a long way around towards the simple term “bad writing” and instantly called upon anytime demographics include minorities. I’d go for the Occam’s Razor explanation. It’s just hate.
If that’s the case, then they’re just criticizing bad writing, like all of us are.
They’re criticising a specific type of bad writing. There are many ways a story can be written poorly. “Bad writing” isn’t 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 that’s not everyone who uses the term, and I agree.
the post you replied to brought up a counter-example… but is it really?
i think it probably is yet another example of “poorly written character exists only to be gay”
so basically just reinforcing the point GP made
This, the kind of gamer who make lists of woke games that you shouldn’t 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 I’m 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 “anti-woke” 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 “woke” which fall flat because it’s just virtue signaling.
But it’s been conflated with the sort of 4chan style mentality of “gamer men” who criticize anything, even historically accurate stories who call a game woke just because it doesn’t fit their favorite narrative of muscular white dude or scantily clad woman being the protagonist.
An example of this is Assassin’s Creed Shadows. The game should by no means be labelled “woke” by anybody. It’s 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 “forcing a narrative” or whatever which simply isn’t true. It’s a real person, from history, and they are telling a video game version of his story.
It’s annoying that the improper “wokeness” criticism there gets conflated with true criticism of studios adding barely fleshed out token elements of “inclusion” 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 that’s fine, but for me poor representation is just as bad as none at all.
I’m 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 “gay men are campy and promiscuous, a sensitive and strong guy like Alistair is clearly heterosexual”. It didn’t 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 ‘woke’ representation rubs people the wrong way. If I as a queer man find the gay character tokenistic, underdeveloped and kinda annoying then it doesn’t surprise me that other folks would too. And being willing to say “this is good representation, but that is shallow box ticking” would help us all get to better place.
Personally I’d rather woke slop to straight slop - at least it’s clumsily including different narratives, rather than just clumsily reinforcing the same old narratives.
Obviously I would rather no slop, and I would rather artful représentations of all characters, but writing is hard - even moreso when you’ve 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 “wokeness” is unwarranted. I don’t know of any video game or movie that has been ruined because of “wokeness”.
Is Suicide Squad a bad video game? Probably. I haven’t played it myself.
Is Suicide Squad bad because the DLC has an old tired lesbian stereotype? No, I don’t think so. Even if it was a good game, I don’t think it would’ve mattered much.
It’s kind of like Jar Jar Binks. People use him as a scapegoat for why Episode I is bad. It’s a character who’s easy to attack, but he’s 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 it’s 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, there’s 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 “no” means “practically none” not like there was some law of physics stopping it
It’s practically wrong, though
Yeah, but that’s not going to stop the anti-woke crowd from Um AkShUaLlY-ing the situation to try to pretend it’s not just some racist dog whistle.
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 “contemporary writers didn’t say there weren’t Africans in Europe *wink*”. It’s 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 “historian” who liked to claim historical figures were black in spite of when evidence to the contrary existed. These folks are colloquially known as “hoteps” 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?
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 they’re only selectively included. Of course it feels like it’s only tangentially attached to the content: it is, by design, and you can easily prove it.
That’s what people mean when they say it’s forced.
You want to write a gay character? Do it, but stop half-assing it because it won’t sell in China. Do it right or fuck off.
Is that dude waiting for an American Black Woman to invent punctuation marks?
Oh, I like you.
To be fair, what the OOP is describing is “diversity in the video game industry”, not “woke games”, per se. While I doubt anyone here has objections to the former, I also doubt that anyone here is a fan of “Dustborn”, as an example.
I hate this kind of comment. A bad game doing poorly that happens to be “woke” isn’t evidence that being “woke” made it bad. For example, Dragon Age Origins is pretty “woke” (especially for its time) but it’s recognized as an amazing game by pretty much everyone. If you make a great game that’s written well, it’s 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 “woke” doesn’t matter. Being good matters.
You are on the right track, but it did not “happen to be woke”, some people bring politics into things that should not and the higher ups just want to cash on modern trends… 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 religion… No! They were trying to be pioneers and make money 🤑
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.
Let’s use soldier 76 from overwatch as an example. The way he was written on top of the are they aren’t they thing he had going on with Ana didn’t 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 it’s bad representation, at worst it’s cynical pinkwashing and pandering for profit.
But that’s not a distinction I have ever seen an “anti-woke gamer” 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 Ellie’s sexuality? Honestly I think FNV only escapes a lot of that kind of vitriol because it was released pre-gg.
good characters who happen to be (whatever)
There it is!
I won’t disagree that Soldier’s gayness came pretty much out of the blue, but I don’t think it’s a good example of something that was “put it in our face”. I play Overwatch regularly still with people who have no idea he’s gay - the game itself doesn’t say anything about it, at least not that I’ve seen. The only way you’d 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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”
There’s nothing wrong with calling a bad game woke if they’re trying to cover their blatant flaws by tokenizing minorities and lgbt. See: Concord
Starfield is another good example.
Some of you may have seen HeelVsBabyface’s infamous “pronouns” 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.
Picking a game that was already bad for 700 reasons doesn’t make the idiotic “woke = bad” label okay. The writing in a live service game was never going to be great.
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!
I’m just tired of being lectured in video games. Sorry if that makes me anti woke.
Spiderman 2, veilguard were both worse off because of poorly done DEI. BG3 was fantastic and created characters that weren’t talking about pronouns like I’m a 5 year old. Sorry not sorry.
Spiderman 2… worse off because of poorly done DEI
Played it, loved it, no fucking clue what you’re talking about
The deaf girl?
Woke isn’t being progressive. It’s 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, they’ll do some random black character in a fantasy setting that’s clearly based off Scotland in the 1200s.
- Important character goes on a monologue that feels like a political PSA
- The IP’s understanding of progressive politics and social justice is roughly equivalent to Tumblr circa 2013.
- Absolutely terrible writing. Even if you swapped all the “woke” 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 “woke” 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 “professional” 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 don’t consume this type of IP in their spare time, but actively resent people who do.
- Constant fucking gaslighting. Anyone who doesn’t 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 there’s a reason Star Wars gets more shit for being woke than Spiderverse, or that Arcane hasn’t 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 isn’t being progressive. It’s 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 isn’t even true to be honest, it’s a well strung together list of annoying tropes which doesn’t even happen nearly as much or widely as some would suggest. It’s a neat little “here’s a bad way of caring” package but it ain’t 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 “woke” has been co-opted into meaning something it never really did. Being awake to the injustices present in our lives isn’t 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.
You’re both right, but it’s far too late to take the word back, no point in going on about the origins.
No it isn’t.
I am woke, and that is a good thing, and anyone complaining about that is an idiot.
Woke is acknowledging the systemic racism playing out daily in the United States of America.
If only. But like all of your societal problems, it’s 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. There’s so much well written progressive “woke” stuff that does well, but it’s easy to point at a shitty flop and say it failed because it’s “woke” rather than doing the hard work and actually analyzing why it’s bad. “Woke” content isn’t an issue in media. It’s that we’re getting so much bad and lazy writing in AAA games (and other big media). They aren’t 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 doesn’t mean that the studios still producing games have narrowed their scopes, they just dump more work on the survivors.
And “woke DEI SJW snowflake game dev” is far from the only thing making games worse, it’s 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.
I’d argue that forced diversity is primarily because so many higher ups don’t 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 “hip” to the suits.
Meanwhile the people who give a shit, regardless of their identity, don’t have a voice in the room.
I’m sure there are plenty of minorities that are super pissed about what happened to bioware, but the only way you’d hear from them is by looking at sales figures because they don’t have a bully pulpit.
I get what you’re saying, but…
For example, they’ll do some random black character in a fantasy setting that’s clearly based off Scotland in the 1200s.
While I don’t know about 1200s Scotland specifically, the notion that black people didn’t exist in old Europe is a false narrative by racists who seem to believe immigration was invented around the 1700s (like, I’ve seen them claim black people don’t fit into Ancient Greece, which is definitely wrong.)
I mean immigration existed, but it wasn’t 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 it’s perfectly possible for someone of Navajo descent to find themselves in central Africa, it’s 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.
There’s 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, it’s pretty convenient that all these inaccurate claims fit into the narrative pushed by American progressive identity politics.
Great comment, you’ve nailed it.
I think there’s 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. You’ll notice though that the more forced the progressivism is in a given piece of content, the more it sucks. In other words: bad writing doesn’t just fuck the story up, it bakes in messaging that doesn’t even make sense contextually.
Anyone who has ever read the Sword of Truth series and encountered the author’s 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?
To be fair I’m sure if it was stylish to insert overt conservative themes into IPs those would be also too.
I don’t 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.
I disagree with your premise that that “forced progressivism” messes things up. Andor, for example, is the most progressive Star Wars media ever, and it’s amazing for it. (It’s 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 don’t 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 haven’t seen Andor so I can’t comment, but I’ll take the plunge on your advice.
I think corporate “progressivism” is certainly one of the culprits, but sometimes it’s the creatives themselves who ruin things. Some creatives have even intentionally uprooted an IP like The Witcher’s show, and Rings of Power. Sometimes progressive ideals are merely a shield against criticism, other times it’s a creators’ own ideals that made them ruin things, and sometimes it’s just rainbow capitalism. It’s 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. That’s 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.
There’s also the concept of nuance that’s sort of been lost. A lot of the creators will write something in some super reductive black/white way that’s basically guaranteed to turn off everyone who doesn’t 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 doesn’t 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 don’t 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. There’s 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 isn’t trying to say something, what’s 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 can’t think of a single classically well received movie that doesn’t have a message it’s trying to tell.
Nuance, yeah. That’s important. The goal of art is to get someone to feel like the idea you’re trying to give them came from themselves. That’s when it’s effective. It doesn’t really work when you’re 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 isn’t a target. They do it because it’s 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 author’s 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.
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.
As much as I despise the “anti-woke” crowd, this is not a good argument and completely misunderstands what they’re angry about.
They are angry about what they perceive as “forced diversity” that destroys modern media and that corporates like Disney are pushing a “woke agenda”.
I disagree with this view. I think representation in media is good. Games and movies usually turn bad for unrelated reasons (like rushed production or poor management).
Yeah, exactly… no one tries to understand one another anymore… just assumptions and rage. Of course, people believing in forced diversity ought be met with rage, but only after truly understanding it
It’s easy to win arguments against straw men.
People are mad about the weirdest thing.
When I was fully a gamer™, I used to get mad when people said that video games would make people to murderers. Now a bunch of the people, who probably used to get mad with me, are afraid that somehow video games makes you gay. Like dude, you know it is bs. You said it is bs.
“But it is about how the narrative suffers from the woke shit” yup totally true which is why the political right hated the harry Potter game for jk rolling’s wokeness with Dumbledore’s homosexuality and her rewriting of history by lying about what her notes would mean. Because they “hate” when authors don’t respect the story but go for clout. (For those, who don’t know, once jk said in an interview that a David star meant that the character is a wizard, later she claimed the same David star meant the character was a Jew) oh wait, they didn’t boycott the game but hyped it up? Surely not because jk is a terf. No way.
Caper in the Castro came out on BBSs in 1989 to encourage people to donate to AIDS research.
Out of sight out of…
There’s room to split hairs over the first cartridge based console, or the first console with interchangeable games. But no matter what, the Channel F was designed by Mr. Lawson from first principles.
Mrs. Williams’ pet project series remains one of my favorite duologies in gaming - Laura Bow. If you say that she was the cofounder, you also have to point out that Ken & Roberta were a married couple, so no matter what she’d have been involved. It’s more about what she contributed to gaming and her skill with crafting coherent stories both AGI and SCI - and you can see that in KQ4, since it was released in both AGI and SCI!
I have to admit that I never got into the BioWare D&D games - my preference remained with Black Isle’s development (Planescape: Torment); but I respect others like them more than me.
The first person to put together principles on programming was a woman (Ada Lovelace). One of the most influential programming languages in the world, and the origin of the term ‘computer bug’, come from a woman (Captain Grace “Amazing Grace” Hopper). Women programmed the computers that put men on the moon and got them home safely. Dr. Ellis, a black man, was the first black person to get a Computer Science PhD, and (arguably) created the first known GUI.
These are all good people who made our lives better.
