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.
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?
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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 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.
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?