Games have a large male audience and many of those males are white. When new games focus on protagonists and issues that do not resonate with white males, this aggravates the audience and it only takes a few vocal few to whip the group into toxic online behavior.
Metaphor is set in a fantasy world populated by Japanese. The characters may seem to be of a multiracial society, but it’s understood that this is not a western game but an eastern one through a western lens. It could have the most radical political discourse but as players we quietly accept that this is a foreign story and not one that reflects on western issues and prejudices.
Ah, yes, of course… It had to be PC Gamer with this take.
Just make good games and and focus on that, the push to shove politics and activism into everything has everyone tired and burned out. It just builds skepticism from the wider gaming audience.
Massive props for Refantazio, honestly a very good game.
Obviously that steam guy was probably coming from a place of bad faith, but the response is maybe imperfect no? This would look pretty bad if the roles were reversed I think. (genuine question I am hoping I am told why this may not be the case; I have nowhere else to ask)
Yeah the history of oppression is definitely reason to dislike those that support it, but it seems ill-fitting to have this affect all people who identify as straight no? (Not just cis straight people who don’t support that oppression but also trans straight people and other exceptions, as another commenter pointed out)
It’s okay to take context into account and not just look at it as a math problem. Targeting a minority isn’t the same as doing it to people who make up 90% of society but are whiny.
I totally agree that an unacceptable proportion of straight people are whiny about any manner of minority representation, but doesn’t this also affect straight people who are normal about this? Maybe it’d be more fitting to give a demeaning title to homophobes, eg. the steam complainer, but provide regular title to everyone else somehow? Thanks for taking the time!
I mean, are straight people who are normal about it clamoring for the title to begin with? This seems like a problem invented basically entirely by the whiners. You could just as easily say it affects gay people who want an ironic title, or straight trans people, but for obvious reasons the whiners don’t really care about that.
All that said I have no idea what the price tag means in terms of gameplay time to acquire it. If it’s unachievable without 10 hours of grinding or something that’s a little mean, but not enough that I really care.
I haven’t played the game for very long, but from what I’ve seen it would take a few hours to get to the point that you can just get a thousand bucks and blow them on a title, but it’s entirely doable. You would have to focus on upgrades anyways to start with just to get a proper income up and running, and then once you can fish with greater speed and with a greater success rate it should be fairly trivial.
Yeah a title in some fishing game definitely seems like a really strange thing to be upset about (and yeah you’re totally right that this doesn’t just affect cis straight people). I’m just saying that the presence of only that title for people who would like a regular version or don’t care about titles and just see it in passing might feel unwelcome through no fault of their own y’know? (Though obviously feeling unwelcome would be a little ironic)
I’m just saying that the presence of only that title for people who would like a regular version or don’t care about titles and just see it in passing might feel unwelcome through no fault of their own y’know?
I completely agree with this. For example, they don’t currently have a gender fluid title. Most gender fluid folks may not be clamoring for them to add the title but if they joined the game and saw that the gender fluid tag was harder to obtain for no discernible reason, was in air quotes, and had the description “mhm” I think they would feel pretty unwelcome. Also - a lot of people won’t know the context that there were people complaining about the lack of the title.
I’m sort of the opposite. Give characters sexualities! Make them people! Give them criteria by which they will or won’t find my character attractive! I feel gross when every NPC is pansexual and aggressively attracted to the main character for no reason. Then again, I’m acespec, so.
If it were me, I’d do something like not really focus on what their actual “real” sexuality is unless it is somehow relevant to the plot. Then if it is so something like make them a 1 or a 5 on the Kinsey scale instead of a 0 or a 6.
I don’t think games should be required to do, I’m not trying to force some sort of universal bi/pan agenda. I’m just saying it personally annoys me when I am locked out of pursuing a character just because of the gender I happen to be playing as because I typically don’t play games multiple times. It also annoys me when games don’t allow you to pursue all characters. Like in BG3, as far as I know, all characters are bi/pan but not all are poly. The game forced me to pick between Astarion and Karlach, for example. I put 100 hours or so into the game before I quit. I’m not willing to put over 100 more hours into it just to see what would’ve been different. It’s just a waste of my time.
An alternative approach is only having “sex scene” type content gated behind gender, but everything else can still be seen by friends. E.g., anything a character would eventually tell a lover they still tell close friends. Which is still sort of annoying but not really as bad because you can easily just look up a sex scene, but experiencing things like dialogue and special quests in game isn’t comparable to looking it up on YouTube.
I understand your perspective but I guess I just fundamentally disagree. I’d be annoyed, in the same vein as you, if every character was poly (unless they were actually poly and they had other lovers and referenced your other lovers and it was genuinely part of their identity) or if a relationship with them wasn’t different from a close friendship, besides having sex (because sex isn’t the only thing separating a close friendship from a relationship).
I guess, the way I approach the kind of game that we’re both talking about is just different. I’m not interested in exploring 100% of all the content possible, but rather having a rich experience in the content that I do explore. I’ll take an authentically written gay man and an authentically written straight girl who both won’t explore a relationship with me, over the opportunity to have more content that’s shallower. But yeah, again, thats just a different approach we both have to games.
I’m not interested in exploring 100% of content either, but I hate when games artificially block content off. For narrative reasons, I don’t care. I don’t mind the idea of mutually exclusive companions based on choices in game. But something as minor as gender at character creation? Come on now!
Obviously that steam guy was probably coming from a place of bad faith
The Steam forums actively encourage this kind of bad faith behavior:
when a post gets a new reply it’s moved to the top of the forums. So as long as people are engaging with a post, even if it’s just to make fun of a bigot, it keeps getting pushed back to the top.
Users can “award” posts for various things (helpfull, cool, funny, etc) and users have taken to giving ‘Clown’ awards as a way of making fun of posts. Whenever one of your posts gets an award, you are given Steampoints you can use in the Steam cosmetics store.
This results in every game having bad faith posts “complaining” about wokeness so that people will make fun of them with Clown awards as a way to farm Steampoints. The developer bringing attention to it just helps them get more.
Brooo you can get the title of shithead? Why would you wana be labeled as straight when you could be shithead instead? lol. That’s what I would go for haha
I don’t know if this is a hot take, but I think allowing straight and cis people to identify as such is appropriate, because the alternative assumes that we live in a state of default heteronormativity.
If anything, I want to live in a world where homophobes get mad that if they want to be assumed to be straight online they have to identify like anyone else. No one gets assumed to be straight any more. That’s better imo.
No shade to my Ace friends intended. Totally possible to be horny for art or rock collecting or whatever. Doesn’t have to be a sexy thing. I’m horny for none of the above is totally valid.
heh, this totally reminds me of Terry Pratchett’s dwarves, that spend a lot of time trying to find out what’s under the beard of the other first without asking that akward question xD
as an almost maximally privileged person (cis straight etc), i want my whining fellows to shut the fuck up. Just stop. Stop taking up all the god damn space. Just be quiet. It’s okay not to be included in every scene all the time.
Your point about not assuming people are straight by default is valid. But I mostly just want some cis-het folks to stop embarrassing me by being fucking insufferable.
Then you should probably leave every game, because you can probably find some dumbfucks that argue about this everywhere. There are less than 30 people posting on this Steam discussion linked.
Honestly then… it probably didn’t warrant a response that will only bring more attention to their whining and more people rushing in to “support the cause”
I don’t think it’s inherently a “straight” issue to think the topic of sexuality can be out of place at times. I don’t think the topic of sexuality should be taboo like it has been historically but, like many topics, I think there’s a time and place for it. In my eye, the only time I need to know a person’s orientation is when I find someone I wish to pursue something with since it’s a key aspect of my chance of success. I believe what someone does and is into is a closed doors affair; it’s their business, not mine. Plenty of times someone’s sexuality is held above someone’s head, quite literally in the case of this casual fishing game where I feel it doesn’t even slightly belong. In these situations, I find myself made uncomfortable because the topic is very mismatched for the context. We’re standing here fishing, so why are you bringing who you like to bang - or not, as the case may be - into the conversation?
And huh, would you look at that, I didn’t bring my own orientation into the mix because it’s not needed.
Plenty of times someone’s sexuality is held above someone’s head, quite literally in the case of this casual fishing game where I feel it doesn’t even slightly belong
As a gay dude with a rainbow hat IRL this made me lol. I’m not wearing it to pick people up, I’m wearing it because I’m not ashamed of who I am. It’s not any different from wearing a wedding ring, couples shirts, or any of the million other displays of heterosexuality that you see and don’t think anything about.
PS: even if you are gay, internalized homophobia is a thing. Feeling that it’s super inappropriate to mention that you’re gay unless you want to fuck someone falls under that.
You may not believe it, but most of our behavior is motivated by sex and appealing to our desired mates. Even if you rationally say you don’t want to pick up anyone with your rainbow hat, the original impetus to do it at all comes from a biological mind that is designed to reproduce. Being confident in who you are is a desirable trait in a partner, thus making you more attractive, thus contributing to your biological goal of reproduction. Yes, you have more rational reasons for it than just that, but it’s extremely likely that the wearing of the rainbow hat feels good to you because of million years of evolution to optimize reproductive success.
And yes, even homosexual people are subject to that, even though they technically can’t reproduce. Which I think is pretty funny honestly xD
It’s also interesting that you bring all the heterosexual signals up as some kind of counterpoint… but they serve the same goal.
Friend, I am trans, I could reproduce if I wanted to with a dude (I absolutely do not want to). I’m also already married to a gay man, so my rainbow hat is not to pick people up, it’s to cover up my balding head. :p
Friend, keeping a partner is also necessary for reproductive success. A child historically had a higher survival rate when parents stayed together. I didn’t say that you actually want to pick anyone up with your conscious mind, I’m just saying that the decisions you make are motivated by reproductive success.
Why do you think you even feel the need to cover up your balding head. It’s the same reason, just suddenly even more obvious.
I think the decades of family and social pressure telling me that my appearance defined my self worth which I experienced when I was raised as a girl is the reason I wear a hat to cover my balding head, thanks for asking!
Not broad enough. When “gamers” say that something is political, what they mean is that it contains politics they disagree with. The ones you cited just happen to be the things they easily recognize because their favorite right wing grifter is raging about them 24/7. As you also said, they usually don’t have the media literacy required to recognize more subtle political messages, which can be pretty funny. I remember when Disco Elysium was first released and they were very confused because it contains some actual, pretty deep political reflections
The rightwing/gamergate side not contesting this whole issue being called “Politics in videogames” is the biggest blunder. I don’t know the best way to call this phenomenon (political preaching?) but surely there is a better phrase. Right now you can’t talk about this stuff without getting hit by “Oh, you claim to hate politics in videogames yet you love Bioshock” type retort, when the actual thing people have problems with are californian nutcases pushing their views on US political crap onto the player as if it were gospel.
What is wrong with Californian views on identity politics, when it’s not just bad writing? Is it the acknowledgement of people that are gender nonbinary?
I just dislike a lot of the studios based there (Insomniac, naughty dog, ubisoft) for how hard they try to push POC/minority representation in their games. Especially when it doesn’t make sense (black samurai)
The lead developer of Assassin’s Creed: Shadows is in Quebec. And does it not matter that it’s based on a historical figure? Consider also that in California, you’re just more likely to encounter a diverse group of people, so wouldn’t that just be representing the world around them?
Yeah fair enough, this stuff isn’t unique to Californian developers, they are just the first that come to mind.
And does it not matter that it’s based on a historical figure?
Yasuke existed in Japan but I think they went too far in making him a protagonist. As I understand it he was a curiosity that Nobunaga kept around, not a full fledged samurai. I think it’s also important to consider the current gaming landscape. There’s titles like Dragon age Veilguard, Concord, Dustborn, Forspoken, Fintlock and others coming out these days that put heavy focus on inclusion/diversity over quality (as evidenced by poor sales numbers). It’s hard to then look at an upcoming game set in historial Japan that somehow features a black protagonist and not think that they’re trying to push some weirdo agenda rather than tell a cool story.
It seems you’re the one who’s focusing more on avoiding inclusivity than in if the games are good our not.
Every year, we have a LOT of bad games, some pure thrash. You only seem concerned about those who don’t conform to your seemingly low acceptance for diversity. Sure, Concord failed because a playable character was overweight. Not a mediocre hero shooter for 40 dollars when great ones are free. Veilguard has been positively received outside of 4 Chan.
And dustborn. The fact that to are dragging an indie game already aiming to a very specific demographic shows how little you understand that not every game is made for you.
I guess this is what being a closeted bigot looks like.
Indicators are showing that Dragon Age is selling just fine. And it’s not like they get to their planning meeting and ask, “Can we spend some more time on the game design? It’s got real problems,” only to be met with, “No, we’ve got to really focus on diversity this quarter.” They’re not related. While I hardly trust Ubisoft to wow audiences with a cool story, it’s not hard to imagine the related struggles that a foreigner and a woman might have to bond over in that setting.
Naughty Dog’s most famous games (containing humans) are based around white male leads. It’s basically just Uncharted Lost Legacy and TLOU2 that have diverged from that, and not by very much.
Literally the only game of Insomniac’s I can find (outside of anthropomorphic games like Ratchet&Clank) that even leans to minorities is Spider-Man: Miles Morales, which is based on a comic character that was already popular. Even the games based around Peter were going to acknowledge he’s the type of person to work at food banks and embrace New York’s diversity; that’s the pre-existing character.
Nobody complained when Assassin’s Creed had Leonardo da Vinci hand you a tank or a glider, or a female Spartan mysthios fight mythical gods, or have London gang runners that fight in hoods from rooftops. Assassin’s Creed has always ventured into the unrealistically cinematic extensions of common historical myths, and they’re not even the first to turn Yasuke into a samurai. Netflix put out an animated series on that a while back and it was awesome.
I do not expect an answer, but I genuinely think you should quietly ask yourself the question: Are you a racist?
I’m thinking of three games specifically from these studios, TLOU2 basing the whole narrative around a woman hulk, spiderman 2 with the long story segments as Mary jane and the whole debacle on Yasuke. But yeah it’s not just these three california studios that are putting out games with this stuff, they are just the first that come to mind.
Nobody complained when Assassin’s Creed had Leonardo da Vinci hand you a tank or a glider
Yeah fair enough, people will have different lines in the sand for this stuff. I get that this series has time travel and aliens and whatever, but I think everyone can agree that if they randomly put, for example, modern sportscars into a historical setting it would be too unbelievable and ruin immersion. A massive black samurai slaughtering asians in feudal japan (and then seeing them bow down to him in another scene) has that effect for me.
(For the record I did look up on primary sources from japanese historians and everything points to the man being just Nobunaga’s pet curiosity. It helps that here’s all the shady stuff going on where the english and japanese versions of Thomas Lockley’s books say different things)
Are you a racist?
I am not. I just dislike when developers sacrifice the game’s story, quality or whatever in order to put in representation. I don’t understand why the story can’t just have a diverse cast and be done with it, right now it feels like all these studios are focusing on diversity first and foremost as a major selling point when it should be just a normal thing that doesn’t need to be highlighted
No matter how many times I reread this comment, I don’t see how this reasoning would convince anyone - including yourself - of its position. The point about translation, for instance, not only feels like a non-sequitor but ignores the wealth of subjectivity that inherently goes into translating text to other languages.
I’m not trying to reject you just out of spite; I genuinely don’t think internet arguments like this are ever “winnable” for anyone. If you come up with a better description for what it is you oppose, feel free to mention it, but otherwise, I’d say do some self-reflecting.
I want to touch up on this. The reason I didn’t write much about my claim about for Yasuke not being a proper samurai is because it is my understanding that it is the default position and thus doesn’t need to be proven by evidence. But if I was asked to provide evidence, I would link the comparison of his translated and untranslated book in this post. Since Thomas Lockley is the main source behind the myth, I think discrediting his book should be enough to also discredit Yasuke’s role as a proper samurai.
We acknowledge that the game is a work of fiction. Historical fiction, but fiction none-the-less.
If every fifth character is also black, I think there is a point that can be made about verisimilitude and taking liberties; but since we know he really existed and that there has been debate on what he did, having a work of fiction that portrays him as a samurai under Nobunga doesn’t seem unreasonable.
To compare, we know that Leonardo Di Vinci didn’t hand out guns to people or build functional flying machines - but we know he designed all sorts of stuff ahead of its time, so it kinda fits in a fictional story with him in.
But only one of those seems to draw huge amounts of complaints online… And it’s actually the less historically accurate one.
I just think it’s bizarre to have a black dude protagonist in a historical japanese setting. I’ve read through the sources on Yasuke and I think it’s a stretch to say he was like a full fledged samurai. Especially given that the biggest proponent of that theory, Thomas Lockley, made some sketchy edits between the Japanese and English version of his book on him.
I just think it’s bizarre to have a black dude protagonist in a historical japanese setting.
Why? He is a historical figure. Why does a historical figure in his historical setting feel bizarre?
I’ve read through the sources on Yasuke and I think it’s a stretch to say he was like a full fledged samurai.
Potato potato. Why him being a “full fledged samurai” even matters? The series is known to take creative liberties with history.
Seriously ask yourself why having ONE SINGULAR black protagonist in a series where protagonists have so far been overwhelmingly white feels like “black people getting pushed into games”.
Because to me, it sounds like you have seen too many opinions of people getting outraged and because of that you internalized their views without asking yourself why they (and now you) feel the way they do.
Why? He is a historical figure. Why does a historical figure in his historical setting feel bizarre?
Why him being a “full fledged samurai” even matters?
This is just difference in opinion. For you it’s OK. I get that this series is only very vaguely based on history but this is a step too far for me.
Seriously ask yourself why having ONE SINGULAR black protagonist in a series where protagonists have so far been overwhelmingly white
Why MUST they make the main character in a 1580’s japanese setting black? The series hasn’t had a single asian protagonist. Couldn’t they have chosen a black history setting if this is what they wanted?
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