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?
It seems like to me some of their games simply just need another two months in the oven.
There were lots of little bugs in Star Wars Outlaws, but I found that game to be really fun, and largely pretty solid. But then they dropped updates a month out or so that fixed a lot of those little bugs. I wonder if they had just had that extra month to polish it up if it’d have gotten slammed as hard. People may still have wanted different things storywise or whatever, but on a technical level just one extra month could have helped.
Polish isn’t going to help change the Ubisoft reputation of churning same looking games filled with massive bloaty copy-paste open worlds where you do generic fetch quests, collect hundreds of feathers, and watch watered down PG-13 storytelling that’s tamer than a Marvel movie.
Outlaws looked great, and had you go to interesting locations, and fly in space. There were no towers to open up maps. The outlaw system wasn’t super amazing in the end, but it didn’t detract from anything.
I don’t disagree it has a reputation, but Outlaws was a fun break from the super boring Assassin’s Creed games of late.
It had a way of packing a game into a CD/DVD when it launched. I used it all of two times. It was slow as fuck. If it still has it, as another commenter suggests, I don’t know how to access it.
It technically still exists in the game properties -> installed files tab, but it doesn't really work. The backup files you get require you to be online to meaningfully restore and will trigger a patch to the latest game version.
Practically speaking it's better to just make a copy of the game install directory manually, gives you a better chance of things working (even though most games require some kind of external tooling for that).
For current exports, it's some custom .csm/.csd file combo. Not sure if there's any tools for working with it, seems like it'd be more annoying than just using a normal archive format either way.
I’m really starting to worry about steam. There aren’t any good alternatives that seem to be hitting mainstream. Not to mention every now and then the shop gets ever so slightly worse and more spammy looking. Steam was a god send when it first launched and I’d hate to see it become what it replaced
there are alternatives, but when you take shitty games (at least crippled games) and pack them into another client that also requires you to sign up, again, is it worth the effort? the games aren’t worth at that point in my opinion.
Not to mention every now and then the shop gets ever so slightly worse and more spammy looking. Steam was a god send when it first launched and I’d hate to see it become what it replaced
Was it a godsend? I thought everybody hated it initially. And I feel like it’s only got better over the years as they’ve added more features.
Let’s not pretend like Blizz or Bethesda will see the end of this decade anyway. Their fate was sealed when they got bought. Still, unionizing was the best thing employees could hope for. Good for them!
Let’s not pretend like Blizz or Bethesda will see the end of this decade anyway.
So if you’re management, you face a choice: try to dump everyone now in a reorganization on a moment’s notice, while it’s still Biden’s NLRB, or negotiate a CBA that probably bakes in substantial severance and job protections that will be expensive when they do try to reorganize for business reasons?
If it’s true that the workers were likely to get dumped within the decade, then negotiating protections now actually protects them, or forces management to pay a high cost.
pcgamer.com
Ważne