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Lets talk about 'wokism' or politically charged games

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My issue stems from the fact that I don't actually care who or what the characters color/creed/whatever is BUT, when it is changed because the dev is trying to inject more of something "woke" into a game just for the sake of it, then I have an issue. And I have that issue not only in gaming but in film/tv as well.

Bending the knee to try to get points with a certain group of people is pathetic, pandering bullshit. Stick to your vision. If that includes a black female lead then go for it! I'm all for it! But to change it from a white guy to a black female lead cause you wanted more representation just doesn't work for me. We are living in the more representative age for everyone. The least racist time for everyone! Stop pretending we are living in the racist south USA from 50-100 years ago and realize things are FAR better than they've ever been in all facets of life, and especially issues with race.
See, I think you have it misconstrued (with all due respect of course). As an example, people bitched about BF1 because the inclusion of a woman with a disability in the trailer, however, the game ended up being pretty solid. EA and Dice took the bitching as “they won’t hire women and lgbtq individuals”. So EA and Dice begin to hire with more “equality” in mind, because god forbid they piss the Twitter mob off. Now, with lesser experienced and qualified individuals in dev positions, we are seeing increasingly shittier games. BFV was pretty terrible at launch, and look at BF2042. I personally don’t think it had anything to do with inclusion of some of what people call “wholeness” being included in the game, I think the problem is the inclusion of said things AND a shitty game because unqualified individuals are creating them. 🤷‍♂️
 
To add to my last two posts - I’m not saying any minorities, races or sexes are less qualified, I’m just referring to them getting priority in the hiring pool IF they are less qualified and/or experienced.
 

TintoConCasera

I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
They and them have been singular pronouns for hundreds of years.

You've read (I presume) loads of books that said it and it didn't confuse you.
Actually no, I only started noticing the use of they/them as you did in your Dave example in recent years, and only when describing non-binary people.

Up until them it was either he, she or it.

Mind you, I haven't read many books in english since I'm from Spain. But I've been visiting forums and reading lot of stuff in english since I dunno... 15 years more or less.
 
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Crayon

Member
Out in the world it's causing problems, but that is straying from this topic. Thinking just of games, effects of wokism are a bit of an overcorrection at worst. I can think of one popular trend that even shows how weak it is: Big studios continue to grab the lowest hanging fruit of representation which are female leads and lesbians. Players never really had much problem playing female charactes. There are many more now because it is representation without rocking the boat too much. What male players don't like is their female character being in a relationship with a man, and making the character lesbian is actually the cop-out. A female mc who would let the player pursue a straight relationship would actually be the more progressive thing in a way. And god forbid you get a gay male mc seducing another man. Where is that if they are so woke? Game companies like to post rainbows on their twitter but when it comes to the actual games, woke influences are minor.
 

Ulysses 31

Member
See, I think you have it misconstrued (with all due respect of course). As an example, people bitched about BF1 because the inclusion of a woman with a disability in the trailer, however, the game ended up being pretty solid. EA and Dice took the bitching as “they won’t hire women and lgbtq individuals”. So EA and Dice begin to hire with more “equality” in mind, because god forbid they piss the Twitter mob off. Now, with lesser experienced and qualified individuals in dev positions, we are seeing increasingly shittier games. BFV was pretty terrible at launch, and look at BF2042. I personally don’t think it had anything to do with inclusion of some of what people call “wholeness” being included in the game, I think the problem is the inclusion of said things AND a shitty game because unqualified individuals are creating them. 🤷‍♂️
Not quite true, it was also the arm prosthetic and the face paint that made people call out the woman character in the BF1 trailer. They dialled it back in the final game as a result.
 

Mr Reasonable

Completely Unreasonable
Actually no, I only started noticing the use of they/them as you did in your Dave example in recent years, and only when describing non-binary people.

Up until them it was either he, she or it.

Tell me a book you've read, that is older than "recent years"
 
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TintoConCasera

I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
Tell me a book you've read.
Just edited my previous post. I'll have a hard time remembering a book I've read on english mate, haven't done so since I was in school.

But as I said, I've been reading forums and web pages for a long time and I'd never met an example that looked like yours with Dave.
 
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ChorizoPicozo

Gold Member
The global market is generally less inclusive though, which is why these things are generally added to games - for instance:
You are not understanding.

If you have a latino character/actor you have more chances to appeal to the latino audience.

4 quadrant/demographics.

Do you call it "localization" when they delete or hide gay/minority characters from movies to sell them in China?
That's what they do. They localise for an specific culture.
 

Soltype

Member
I don't think anybody necessarily has an issue with these topics being discussed or even in games. The problem is the people that are usually introducing these topics are not well adjusted. If you have a chip on your shoulder , whatever you're trying to say is not going to come across properly. A lot of people in the game industry are also not socially adjusted, gay or straight. We've essentially allowed emotionally and socially stunted people access to creating media on a professional level without pause.
 
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People are so wrapped up in their own biased view of the world and constantly on edge of feeling attacked by something that I really doubt most can be self reflective enough to even dicuss this.
 

TintoConCasera

I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
Let’s face it.

In Battlefield V, they replaced a real life mission involving Finnish soldiers with a fictional “mother and daughter Rambo team” who did it instead.
That's quite unrespectful. Games portraying historical stuff should never do this kinda thing.
 
Look no further than COD Vanguard campaign to see how being overtly politically charged can ruin a game.

I think the problem here is that wokism nowadays is basically in the same position conservatism was decades ago. A set of shallow beliefs people don't really think through and that feel generally off-putting, especially in narratives.

Yup. I think a lot of people just don't see it, because a lot of the really bad stuff is in the writing, and most people aren't even able to judge good or bad writing in movies, let alone video games when they're often barely paying attention.

Some of the most common woke tropes are: diverse casting where it doesn't belong; female characters that aren't allowed to display any femininity; white male characters being sidelined, undermined or always being the bad guy; female characters that exist solely to make the uninteresting point that 'women can do anything men can do', and so on.

Is it any wonder so many stories are bad when this is what the writers are concerned with? Scoring cheap political points against imaginary enemies and virtue signaling their shallow race and gender politics?
 

Mr Reasonable

Completely Unreasonable
I've never seen individuals referred to as they or them either in any books I had to read for English class either. Only in the last couple of years have I seen that happen.

The OED says it's been used for about 600 years, as does Wikipedia.

The least woke of Britain's newspapers, the Daily Mail, is using "They" singularly on the top story on the front page right now. (Sad story about a teenager on life support though, so be warned if that might be upsetting and you want to go check).

They aren't words that mean "non-binary" , but even if it did. Who cares if there's a non-binary person in a game you're playing? It'll make no difference whatsoever.
 

mckmas8808

Banned
Be offended. Female or black leads is not the issue. It's pampering some or overly representing some just to pander. I don't care if its a game about a gay bar and 90% of the characters are gay, that would make sense for instance. People need to be equal when it comes to jokes. If you're offended, be offended. The world doesn't revolve around you.

I'm not sure that's how the world should work.....
 

Guilty_AI

Member
They and them have been singular pronouns for hundreds of years.

You've read (I presume) loads of books that said it and it didn't confuse you.
The hundred of years use for singular they/them is when you're refering to a person whose gender you don't know, basically a person you know nothing about and never saw.
"Someone dropped their wallet"

Its also used to refer to a position rather than a specific person
"When you talk to a client, try to get their contact info"

In fact, its is this kind of use that lead people nowadays to adopt it for this non-binary stuff. No one would point a finger at someone at their (lol) side, while speaking to a third party, and say "they", at least it was not a normal thing to do.

Other more uncommon use is for translations (usually fan-translations) where the original language contains more natural gender neutral pronoums, and the neutrality of the gender is relevant for that specific moment, but this is also a more modern trend and would even get pointed out by the translator to not confuse the reader.
 
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Laptop1991

Member
I wish neither were in games personally, the focus isn't on the game as it should be and they just start repeating the same things eventually from game to game.
 

Forsythia

Member
Yes.



Where's Dave?

They went over there.

They've gone to the shop.


Who's that a present for?

It's for Dave, I'm going to give it to them later.

You know my friend Dave? I got him this present as it's his birthday, I'm going to give it to him later on, they've got no idea I bought them anything.
You can't be serious, no sane person talks like this. I can just tell you went out of your way to make these sentences as obnoxious as possible. Why would you use "they/them" when you know it's about a man. It reads like shit.
 

belmarduk

Member
Of course you don’t think playing as a black person in a game about gangs is bad or excessive. It fits your worldview.

I’ve always preferred the multi-racial gangs of the 1980s who would spontaneously preform synchronized dances while menacingly branding their switchblades! Now that’s fun!
 

Ulysses 31

Member
The OED says it's been used for about 600 years, as does Wikipedia.

The least woke of Britain's newspapers, the Daily Mail, is using "They" singularly on the top story on the front page right now. (Sad story about a teenager on life support though, so be warned if that might be upsetting and you want to go check).

They aren't words that mean "non-binary" , but even if it did. Who cares if there's a non-binary person in a game you're playing? It'll make no difference whatsoever.
Let's not pretend those 100s of years old examples are anywhere near mainstream use of the English language, otherwise I'm sure all my English teachers would've brought it up at least once in grammar lessons.

It may be more common now since wokeism also is.
 
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Saber

Gold Member
Yes.



Where's Dave?

They went over there.

They've gone to the shop.


Who's that a present for?

It's for Dave, I'm going to give it to them later.

You know my friend Dave? I got him this present as it's his birthday, I'm going to give it to him later on, they've got no idea I bought them anything.

Try talk like that in real life and you will be on an asylum next day.
 

chromhound

Member
Jonah Hill No GIF by The Taboo Group

oh my bad i thought it was ERAAAAAAAAAAAA
 
Gaming is great right now. I don't really care about the skin color or sexuality of characters in a game, but more about story and gameplay. If either of those is sacrificed for any reason then your game is shit. I am worried that, for example, the story and vibe of the next GTA is going to suck. The pressure to be socially correct can ruin what made games great in the first place
 

ShadowNate

Member
Misguided oversensitivity and conforming to social media raging mobs is I think mostly my issue with "woke" influences on games.

It probably does not completely ruin the game (then again there maybe extreme case I'm unaware of that it does), but it is annoying enough to inform if or when I'll purchase it -- on a huge discount or at a price that supports the developer -- and play it.

What's worse some of the extreme idiotic stuff are bound to look exactly that in a few years. Idiotic. So such story choices feel like they have a short expiration date and will age like milk.

Ok, examples. There was a remaster of TellTale's Sam and Max a few years ago, where the new developers felt that the voice actor for a black character should be black, just because such are the times now (also the terms white-washing was thrown), and while re-recording this character's line they also took the liberty of removing some jokes or changing them to... unfunny because of "modern sensitivities". Now this was not done at a large scale, but... it did feel like someone was testing the waters, and also I don't think I'd ever support a remaster of a beloved title where the devs think it's an improvement to change the original jokes.

Other remasters did that too --but they were also lazy remasters so people perhaps did not focus on that? Like the recent GTA trilogy.

Or when a DLC for Assassin's Creed Odyssey became all about why Kassandra gets married or something, and the devs had to apologize and adjust the content, or when a description somewhere offended someone on behalf of their friend (that had some accident with fire or something) and that resulted again to the devs apologizing and fixing the description. Maybe not a bad or a big thing, but it's a tad scary to see outrage and possibly unhinged people affecting content decisions via twitter mob power.
 

TMLT

Member
Playing as a black main character in GTA:SA didnt feel woke because it wasnt part of an obvious forced trend, nobody had an issue with Vic Vance or Huang either, ditto playing as female main characters in older games. It would have been a bit different if the same year SA came out 90% of games' including established franchises randomly swapped straight white guys for women and/or none white people, and female gaming characters suddenly started being designed to look more masculine and unattractive, and developers started shitting on their own fanbases for not liking it.
 
You are not understanding.

If you have a latino character/actor you have more chances to appeal to the latino audience.

4 quadrant/demographics.
By this "care about money before anything else like a business suit ticking off boxes" logic Crazy Rich Asians should have had more black people in it, and Black Panther should have had more asians in it. And both should have had more latinos!
 

Catphish

Member
Yes.



Where's Dave?

They went over there.

They've gone to the shop.


Who's that a present for?

It's for Dave, I'm going to give it to them later.

You know my friend Dave? I got him this present as it's his birthday, I'm going to give it to him later on, they've got no idea I bought them anything.
The fuck? No one with a basic grasp of English talks like that.
 

Whitecrow

Banned
Its a symptom of the current radicalization and positive discrimination.

Being offended is becoming the wild card for being stupid and getting away with it.

Society is slowly becoming a shitshow where instead of not discriminating gays, the ball is just bouncing to the other side.

And those who speak agains it, being silenced, canceled and those sorts of things.

You wanna separate your hobby from politics? Ok. Politics wont separate you if it turns to shit.
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
I saw the title "workism"... man I work too much recently... or at least stress over work too much.
I need some off time... BUT I CANT BECAUSE I AM ALMOST the last fucking person there
 

ChorizoPicozo

Gold Member
By this "care about money before anything else like a business suit ticking off boxes" logic Crazy Rich Asians should have had more black people in it, and Black Panther should have had more asians in it. And both should have had more latinos!
That is why I said:

That I am talking about the intersection between creators/ business.

Just look at the split in box office:

Black Panther:
Domestic:700 M
International: 636 M

The fate of the furious:
Domestic: 225M
International: 1 B
 

TintoConCasera

I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
... That's a very normal way to use English.
Some people in this very thread seem to be saying otherwise. I'm a dumb ESL so I'll let you guys decide on that.

I saw the title "workism"... man I work too much recently... or at least stress over work too much.
I need some off time... BUT I CANT BECAUSE I AM ALMOST the last fucking person there
Don't be married with your job man, specially if it's not your company/business. You sound like you are being way too responsible even for your own good.

Learn to disconect. Put limits between you and your job, and relax bro. :)
 

ResurrectedContrarian

Suffers with mild autism
Ideally: game creators (*and I mean the actual creators, which does not include any of the PR, HR, or other middle management trying to check various boxes) should make exactly what they want to make, and go all-in on their particular vision.

If that's Gal Gun, then so be it. If it's some woke nonsense, that's fine by me, I won't buy it but I don't care about someone trying to put it on a shop for likeminded buyers.

What I despise, however, is when you can tell that political trends or PR obsesions from above the developers have been imposed upon a game to make it more politically palatable, have better "representation," and so on and so on. Even the slightest PR / trendy political concern like that makes games into mediocre trash.
 
Like the moral censorship campaigns that came before it, wokeness in video games is rarely about what ends up being in a video game, it's about what is intentionally omitted. NES games couldn't include religious symbols, and Nintendo also had a lot of limitations on violence and sex, for example.
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
Woke stuff in Saints Row doesn't bother me half as much as the insinuation that a group of 80 lb. zoomers are the toughest gang around. Talk about fantasy...

But seriously, people will vote with their wallets. What's popular will sell. Gaming isn't dying but it is changing.
 

Guilty_AI

Member
Care to explain because I did not see it?



Notice how many of these inaccuracies, or straight up lunacies, are an direct effect of trying to fill woke checkboxes (diverse casting where it doesn't belong; white male characters being sidelined, undermined; female characters that exist solely to make the uninteresting point that 'women can do anything men can do', etc). Some are straight up disrespectful.
 
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