I dont know who is the most pathetic group here, if nexus mods for taking down a dumb harmless mod for ridiculous reasons or the moders that made a mod that takes out a dumb harmeles feature for ridiculous reasons. Nexus mods sucks either way and the mod devs suck too.
Magic, thanks for posting this. I’ve been trying to find a good and clear explanation of that been going on since I started reading about people getting upset with unity during the week.
Considering their policy doesn't allow for other stuff like this, yeah I am not surprised.
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Reminds me of the time when a Spiderman mod removed the VERY few instances of a pride flag in a recreation of NEW YORK CITY and a Skyrim mod that removed any potential gay romances that only occur when wearing a very specific amulet (including a single dead skeleton couple off the beaten path.)
Those got booted as well cause.....come on now. Its blatantly targeting a group of people about their sexuality and gender who have BARELY any presence to begin with in these games.
Starfield is even more egregious as its LITERALLY just a menu option and the rare use in dialogue....
Really pathetic and sad people would even feel the need to make them to begin with. Let alone feel the need to upload them to a platform.
This is all fine and well, but am I the only one a bit concerned about how NexusMods is practically a monopoly in the modding scene? Why does literally every modder have to use a rate-limiting host as a platform, especially when Github exists?
Mods uploaded to github does really suck for discoverability though. There’s the roguelike Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. The modding scene exists entirely on Github and you’d basically never find them unless you go searching for mods on their Discord channel.
That's even worse though. Plenty of games (e.g. Stellaris and RimWorld) are also available on platforms like GOG or, ugh, Epic. But if you want to use mods and you bought the game on any platform other than Steam it's fuck you.
I know it is, developers can block downloads unless the user is signed into a Steam account that owns the game. But as an end-user that's distinction without difference.
steamworkshopdownloader.io never gotten this to work myself but I put the least amount of effort in as possible. There may be others as well but I remember when I did my research a couple years ago that it was a real trudge and almost not worth it.
I know there are workarounds, but this is true. There are very little games I buy (at least directly) through steam nowadays, because I didn’t like what it became after the Greenlight/Direct debacle and I didn’t want my library to be that dependent of them anymore.
I have playnite as a unified game library launcher (with GoG, itch.io, humble, Ubi, EA, even Amazon Prime and freaking EGS just for the free games), so where I get my games from doesn’t matter much for me now.
But workshop integration is basically the only thing that makes me want a Steam copy for a game.
Though among the games in that case, there were Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress, and for both if you get a copy directly from the developers, you get DRM-free and a Steam key. So, that’s what I did.
There’s a couple issues with it. I mean, it’s simple for games where you’re not using a bunch of mods, but at some point it just becomes excessive. Not to mention that when a mod updates, the mod will automatically update breaking your game sometimes, or when you’re trying to play a game, a mod just doesn’t update causing it to break the game that way too. There’s just a lack of control that’s often necessary when modding.
For beatsaber (which doesn't use steam workshop), the there's no steam integration and its a pain to deal with.
For terraria (which uses steam workshop), the modloader is smart enough to know which mods don't work with the current version of the game and disables them and steam lets you easily change which version of the game you have by using the "beta" options. Only time I've had issues with updates breaking things since 1.4 release was during beta-builds of 1.4 tmodloader (and those were generally easily fixed by going to the discord and finding the file to fix it). Since then, no needing to find files and paste them over the existing files, etc. No trying to install one mod at a time out of a dozen or two until you find which one breaks it and redoing the whole process over again. Pretty sure it also just uses the version of mods that support the game version you have, deals with dependencies automatically, etc.. The modloader will also direct you to things like the non-steam pages for mods (sometimes forum posts, sometimes discord, etc).
I don't think the steam integration is needed for such a seamless mod experience, but its certainly compatible with it. And terraria is an outlier because the game devs encourage mods and has a huge and dedicated community. For smaller games with devs that don't like mods, simply trying to keeping things working may take so much work, so that time that making a good integrated user experience is probably difficult.
Let’s be real here though, Terraria is an unfair comparison considering it’s modloader is integrated into the game itself and holds significantly greater support than most other mods with Steam Workshop support. (Oh and that the modloader is basically a community made mod manager anyways and is akin to using the community mod managers for the games mentioned below)
Stellaris, Rimworld, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Total War: Warhammer 3, Binding of Isaac, Dwarf Fortress, Space Engineers, Cities: Skylines, all of these very popular games with massive modding support are still plagued by the issues I mentioned above. And you know what? It has the issues you mentioned as well. Did you subscribe to an outdated mod? Oh, well, good luck figuring out which one that is. Forgot to download a dependency? Crash. Did a mod update and Steam just didn’t update the mod? Figure out what mod that was and unsubscribe to it and subscribe to it again. Did a mod just update and Steam updated the mod, even though the update breaks save compatibility? Well, unless the mod author uploaded the older version of the mod, good luck trying to have fun.
I think it’s just the internet being the internet. Or at least how it’s been for awhile. There are big sites that a lot of people crowd to and that becomes the default. Like auctioning things off online. Ebay. That was where everyone went to. Need to order a few different things online? Amazon. Are there other online stores? Plenty. But Amazon is seen as cheap and convenient.
Nexus mods is just the popular site, but the moders have other options.
Yeah, an alternative using git would be good probably, but maybe don’t use github. Preferably though, it’d be agnostic and just target some git repo anywhere. It’d pull from a description file for the page to ensure a uniform appearance preferably, and it’d show and manage versions from some uniformly named folder on the repo.
I was really hoping thunderstore and mod.io would take off more since they seem more platform-agnostic and FOSS-like with their integration with git and versioning (and for some games they have), but people just prefer convenience of nexusmods and steam workshop unfortunately. They just have a bigger community and better discoverability in the end
I don’t think that term really applies here. It’s not like the barrier to entry for a webservice hosting game modification data is all that high. It’s very different from the railway, waterworks and power grid markets.
Also there are at least the competitors Loverslab, Curseforge, ModMD and Modrinth from the top of my head.
Indeed, it applies as much as accusations of monopoly. Two sides of the same coin. Really, it’s not a monopoly situation or any kind at all. It’s just by far the best of its kind and it has no competition.
Network effect creates barriers to new competitors, regardless of quality. Either for the upstarts or the leaders. See: Twitter. Once some choice is the default, anything else faces an uphill battle.
Does any one of those integrate with Mod Organizer or do I have to download the mod (often also with an annoying wait time) and then point Mod Organizer to it. Do they have an API that enables “a new version is out” notifications, or do I have to hunt everything down manually.
It really wouldn’t be that hard, but none of them cares. Nexus kinda has itself positioned well there as they would not have to support any third-party API endpoints in Vortex, but Vortex isn’t even the popular choice for many games.
Well, for one thing, Nexus gives modders a share of ad revenue. Under a different name, I have a mod that’s a backend requirement for a big, popular mod, and that nets me a reliable few bucks a month.
That said, a good portion of the modding community also exists on Gamebanana. If you want BotW, ToTK or Source engine mods, GB is the go-to.
Wait I have a stupid subscription to nexus and idk why I haven’t canceled it (used it for one month for some mod back in the day). I use nexus for all mods. Should I keep my sub then because all I care about is modders getting something.
R2Modman and thunderstore.io has grown it’s catalogue quite a bit as of late, but it’s mostly (don’t know if it’s entirely or not) unity games. It’s my favorite modding platform with features that make sharing modlists for multiplayer a breeze.
There’s stuff like Curseforge, but it’s only for some games, mostly Minecraft. The problem, if someone considers it a problem, is really that communities for games generally centralize around one site for their mods for the most part, and Nexus has garnered a lot of trust and therefore has more pull/inertia for communities working those things out.
As for Github, I believe the vast majority of mods have Github pages, but Github itself doesn’t really have a UI suited for mod downloaders, and no real incentive to implement one. So sites like Nexus and Curseforge are still a necessity.
Nice! Personally I don’t have any particular issue with Nexus, but it’s always nice to see diversity. Monopolies are pretty much never good for end users.
My only issue with Nexus is that I have to create a login to download mods there. I don’t want to sign in to websites just to DL something. Curseforge is good for Minecraft mods and doesn’t hassle me with a login prompt
Nexus has the lions share, but only for some games, I had a premium subscription but still found for like half the games I mod that nexus either didn’t have a modpage for them or that most modders for that game used other sites to host their mods
Not really sure curseforge is better. Its another of those sites with an sketchy bloaty overwolf launcher that makes you jump through hoops to load mods onto a server.
It’s concerningly hard to avoid overwolf in modding
There’s also steam workshop. Neither are shining examples of a free modding community. I think nexus mods starting out better and slowly enshittified but I don’t know the extent of it.
Their rate-limiting isn’t bad at all, their integration into everything is excellent, and for games without much of a community Vortex is often the only mod manager. Their API isn’t closed down, so Mod Organiser can integrate with Nexus just as well, and they probably would also do it with other mod sites if those ever bothered to set up a version check etc. API. They have an excellent search function.
In short: They provide a good service. Like the most annoying part about Nexus as a freeloader is the five or what seconds wait before your mod manager picks up the download.
And, no, their rate limiting really isn’t bad. 1.5MB/s for people with adblock, 3MB/s for people without. How often do you download gigabytes worth of mods it’s not like they’re bullying you into a subscription.
Github has other ways to make money, and Microsoft capital to back up everything. And granted Nexus could use a better bug tracker, but you won’t see them getting into the private repository business any time soon.
Unity is mad that mobile game companies acquire millions of users in a few months as they transition from soft launch to global, and then sell their companies for millions - if not billions - of dollars.
They want a cut of that pie, and in true unity fashion, they chose the most inept way of doing that.
If you have developers of games like Cult of the Lamb feeling scared, you did it wrong.
You protect your indies, you protect the people making art with your product. The people who invested 3 million and are making billions in the mobile ads game? That’s your target.
How they could be this inept is astounding…
Also, I’ll echo the other commenter’s statement in saying the article is very well written. They just weren’t able to really answer the “why” portion very well. John Riccitiello wasn’t wrong when he said this plan wasn’t designed to affect 90% of their customers - but it also doesn’t mention how that remaining 10% makes more than that 90% combined.
They’re wet go, John Riccitiello! That’s why I recognized that assholes smirk in the thumbnail. He used to be president of EA. No surprise he’s brought those scummy tactics over to unity.
Removing the mod is imposing a political viewpoint, and it's also completely performative. Why should NexusMods care if the mod exists? Everybody mods their games at their own consent.
No non-conforming people were protected by this move.
Rejecting bigotry is not supposed to be a political viewpoint.
Addendum: "YourContentSucks" just went through my profile and downvoted everything lol what a cuck A2: Actually now that I think of it the username does kind of check out
Rejecting gender ideology isn't bigotry. Also, like I said, nobody installs mods they don't want. It literally affects zero people who don't want it to affect them.
No, sorry, I'm not willing to play your stupid little word game where you try to semantically differentiate a demographic from the "ideology" that that demographic meaningfully exists and should have the right to pursue happiness in society.
The set of ideas that you refer to includes the ideas that transgender people exist as transgender, and non-binary people exist as non-binary.
The concept of "trans" is part of gender ideology. They are people with an identity disorder. Conceptualizing them as "trans" can only exist if you subscribe to the concept of gender in the first place, and gender only exists as an abstraction in the minds of gender ideologues (and people who don't know any better, who have been duped by gender ideologues).
False. Like, completely and totally wrong. The science is clear, and you are on the side opposite of it. There are experts on one side, and you on the other. It is amazing just how many incorrect statements you are barfing out.
How come you're only defending the people putting this hateful shit on there? You aren't impressing anybody on here by "seeing both sides" if you're only seeing the modders side.
Nexus removed a mod that may be (and has obviously been, because otherwise nobody would be making posts about it) perceived as hateful by others and you're over here defending the modders that put that shit on there because "it's political" from Nexus to take the obviously political mod down.
On the other hand you're probably the type preaching about "Well Twitter is allowed to encourage hate speech on their site because it's their website and they're allowed to do whatever they want, you don't have to use it if you feel attacked by that", but Nexus is not? Nexus' site-wide rules don't count because they're "pushing leftist agenda" by removing mods that were never allowed there to begin with?
"Why should NexusMods care if the mods exist?" why do you care so much if it doesn't exist any longer? If you feel that attacked by the removal of an anti-pronouns mod you can just make a new one yourself or download it from somewhere else. Or just not give a fuck/be happy like every other normal functioning human being.
Would you care as much as to reply to this post, if they had instead instead removed a mod that added pronouns to a game? Would that not be imposing political views as well then? Or would you just not care because you care more about making non-binary people feel excluded rather than included?
You're not making a point here. We are making this network a place that is inclusive to people all over the gender spectrum. Defending those that do not, is not making a point.
I do not care to read any more of your replies as your points are easily dismantled even by someone that's as stupid as I am.
If you do reply, just say yes or no to the following question, that I had posed earlier: Would you care this much if they had removed a mod that added pronouns to a game?
Try to think as hard as you can, I do not want to read any excuse for either answer. Just imagine yourself in that situation and tell me.
It's not hateful shit, and I'm not trying to "see both sides," either. I have no quarter for gender ideologues. However, I do think that any person or business (that doesn't have any kind of monopoly status over critical services) has the freedom to refuse to serve anyone they want for any reason they want, so GN is free to take down whatever they want and they don't really owe any of us an explanation.
And, really, I'm not defending the people who made the mod and put it up. They don't really need a defense. I'm just pointing out that the removal of it makes GN either petty activists, or scared of the left.
Obviously gender ideologues perceive it as hateful, but so what? Gender ideologues perceive literally anything they disagree with, no matter how slightly as hateful. It's their entire brand. Would GN host mods for a game if the game itself was "hateful?" Absolutely not. And if a mod whose only function is to remove the ability to arbitrarily select your pronouns is hateful, then why isn't every single game which is supported on GN that does not offer that functionality considered hateful and have all support for it removed? The answer is simple: GN are petty activists and this is performative.
My views on Twitter (et al) haven't changed even after its ownership changed hands from someone who I don't like to someone who I don't like a little bit less. Not that it's on-topic, but I think platforms like Twitter need to decide if they are publishers or platforms and then play by the rules set forth for those that they decided to be, no mixing and matching. §230 of Title 47 needs an overhaul.
I really don't care that much about the mod and this event, in part because I can't afford the game nor the hardware needed to run it. But, I do have opinions on gender ideology and the behavior of public-facing organizations with respect to gender ideology.
I'll reiterate my point: GN are petty activists (or afraid of the left).
Yes, I would care the exact same amount. It's crummy behavior, no matter where it comes from. I can exist in the presence of ideas I don't agree with. I don't have the urge to stamp out, by fiat or coercion, every trace of any belief that differs from mine.
True, but the act does show everybody that they are political activists. Either that, or they're afraid of the left. Either way, it's worth pointing out. It carves out a space for competition.
Removing the mod doesn't make Nexus decent human beings. It makes them petty activists who can't bear the thought of the existence of people who don't subscribe to the same ideology as they do.
Lmao, bruh we already know you’re an asshole, you don’t have to explicitly say you put your ideology above treating people with dignity and respect, we got it.
It's literally gender ideology politics. Outside of that, there is zero reason to take down the mod. It harms nobody. It doesn't even violate their own TOS.
Gender ideology is literally sexual politics. The inclusion of the ability to select your pronouns (as opposed to what, I don't know, them being fixed according to the sex of the generated character?) is sexual politics. Modding that choice out is sexual politics. Removing the mod is sexual politics. Every action taken by all parties in this story is sexual politics.
Sexual Politics - the principles determining the relationship of the sexes; relations between the sexes regarded in terms of power.
Now, tell me where removing the options for pronouns in a video game fits within that definition.
Apparently you can just add “politics” to the end of anything to try and justify discrimination. My mod that removes all black people from the game is just “race politics”, so it’s okay!
All of gender ideology is sexual politics. It's an attack on the conceptual model of the sexes as they are intuitively understood — an attempt to hijack the language that is used to describe the sexes in an attempt to push gender ideology into the mainstream.
I’m sorry man, I wish I could help you. But this… I think you’re in a bit too deep.
Nobody is “hijacking” anything, and nobody is forcefully pushing ideologies on anyone. It’s as simple as groups of people wanting to be treated just as well as anyone else - it’s not any more complicated than that.
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And it is their platform, that's why they care. They can dictate what is and isn't allowed there.
No non-conforming people were protected by this move.
By taking this down, NexusMods communicated that they care about non-conforming people far more than if they had just said it. They are creating an environment where bigotry is removed rather than accepted. Nobody is saying you can’t be a bigot in private with your game, we are saying if you’re going to be a bigot we don’t want you to do it here with us because we care about the people you are excluding/hurting.
Rejecting gender ideology isn't bigotry. Removing it from a game where its present also isn't bigotry. Removing the mod is just performative slacktivism and does nothing to help anyone.
Yall said the same shit about gay people a couple years ago. It was all the same talking points, it’s just slightly modded to fit trans people now. It was bigotry then, it’s bigotry now.
When I say "the alphabet mafia," I'm not talking about gay people, bisexual people, etc. I'm referring to the bully activists who go around stirring shit and spreading lies about society and claim to represent gay and bisexual (etc.) people.
Correct. Because I don't rant against gay people and people telling me to stop are effecting a slander against me. It doesn't help me, and it doesn't help gay people. All they are doing is stirring shit and profiting from it.
I mean, look— I don’t like holier-than-thou activists either, but you need to make a distinction between them, actual activists, and the groups they’re representing. The former is an extreme minority.
Instead of being distrustful of the movement and making yourself look like an ass by preemptively attacking, your energy is better spent not bothering. In the event you encounter a nutjob, go troll them or tell them to pound sand. I promise you, as long as you aren’t on (formerly Twitter) or Tumblr circa 2016, it’s not as common as you think.
There are no "actual activists." There are no causes. The only thing left to fight for is the right to indoctrinate very young school children into gender ideology and show them, graphically, how to be gay.
So no one was homophobic before? The Stonewall Riots just happened because gay people were bored? The big numbers in hate crimes? The government openly saying that they wouldn’t do anything about AIDs because it affected mostly gay people? I’m guessing it was gay people who wrote the laws that got us kicked out of the military. And made it so we couldn’t get married.
I never said that and I don't believe that. But the people who fought for civil rights for gay people aren't today's alphabet mafia.
Oh, and the gay men who fought in the stonewall riots are the reason the G should have always come first, because it was gay men who set the foundation for civil rights for non-straight people. Not the alphabet mafia, and not lesbians.
State interference with and regulation of marriage is, and always was, an abomination. Marriage is a religious and societal institution, and the state only got involved to prevent miscegeny.
The Christian church isn't going to recognize gay weddings, but anyone else is welcome to.
I'd be happy to advocate with you in the pursuit of getting the state out of marriage.
And since the state has been involved for a long time, that means it should be open to anyone. Just as it’s been open to others such as atheists. They weren’t doing it for religious purposes. Nor were kings and queens when they would marry their children to unite kingdoms. Or people who basically married their children in exchange for cattle.
My point isn’t to get the state out of marriage since at this point it is more so a legal document and something that couples do out of love for each other. But the idea that it’s a religious thing is ridiculous. Not to mention its hardly an argument since that means that gay people have even more rights to get married, since some church’s, including Christian ones, will do it. If anything the idea that being gay is a sin has been slowly falling out of Christianity in the same way that interracial marriages were something many Christians were against at one point. So the idea that it’s somehow an argument against same sex marriage is absolutely false, and would only open the doors even more. It doesn’t even have to be religious. Being married is just being married.
“But some church’s wouldn’t count it!” Funny. I was raised Mormon. According to them most straight marriages don’t count either since they weren’t don’t in a Mormon temple. I don’t see others complaining that their church doesn’t recognize it.
Not only was this just moving the goal post, but it also is one that has been discussed many times and has always been torn apart.
I think kinship ties should be and should have always been available to declare or establish at the state level, and calling it a marriage just confuses the issue. I also don't think it should be restricted to couples, either, but it is.
I think the churches should have their business and the state should have its own business. Modern marriage really only serves to invite the state into the bedroom, so I don't even think about it as something that should be fought for. I mean, have at it if you want it, but I think you'll find that it just invites more problems than it solves. I don't recommend anyone ever get married in 2023.
Marriage refers to two things - (1) a legal contract between two people, mediated by the state, and (2) societal and/or religious acceptance of two people as a married couple. Nowadays, in most parts of the world, only the first matters for most purposes. So the state should recognise all marriages, but religions and society are free to have their own conditions as long as they do not harass people they don’t like.
Being black isn’t political, until bigots like you make it political.
Being female isn’t political, until bigots like you make it political.
Being queer isn’t political, until bigots like you make it political.
Every “identity” I’ve ever been given has come through violent conservative oppression. Sometimes I’m the group they like - sometimes I’m the group they hate. But I’ve never fucking asked for the distinction.
Gender, religion, sexuality, ethnicity… these matter as much as hair color, until some asshole decides there’s a right answer. Every flavor of “identity politics” that conservatives screech about is an abuse they invented and hurled at people until those victims stood up and shouted “Motherfucker I am.”
You don’t need pride until someone’s tried to make you feel lesser.
Get our of our goddamn way, and stop imagining you’re the good guy. You are the entire problem. You can stop, at any time.
No. You’re just a bigot who doesn’t like to think they are. You like the ideas, but have a problem when a negative term gets attached to it. It’s like when people weren’t “racist.” They were “race realists.” It was racism with a new logo. Similar to how when people were homophibic, it wasn’t “bigotry”, it was “Think of the children” and “the gay agenda.”
Everybody has an agenda. Gender ideologues are the bigots, not those who reject it. Gender ideologues maintain their fantasy of not being a bigot by accusing everyone around them of not only shit they aren't guilty of, but shit the ideologue, themselves, are guilty of. Gender ideologues are sick people, and everyone around them is not the way they say they are.
Today's gender ideology and race baiting bullshit have nothing to do with actual civil rights. Today's race-baiters are literally, openly calling for segregation.
It’s the exact same. You think trans problems are dumb, you don’t understand why “separate but equal” is problematic, and you spent too much time licking lead paint in your formative years.
Because the mod itself is intended as a form of political grandstanding. So that bigots can download it thousands of times and then hold it up and say 'look how many people are modding the woke out of BG3' in an attempt to discourage inclusive content in other titles.
Well, sure. Lots of people don't want woke garbage in their games. When it tops the download list the number of people who reject gender ideology is revealed. That's the real problem with it. It scares the shit out of the left because it breaks the illusion of social acceptance the left fights so ferociously to maintain by force and fiat.
When you decide at your choosing what they are, instead of by a deterministic set of conditions, they are, by definition, arbitrary. That's what arbitrary means. It means you choose them.
Here's the thing: They are chosen by a deterministic set of conditions. Just because you don't understand what those conditions are does not make the terms arbitrary.
Also, that's not what "arbitrary" means, either. For somebody who seems to be so uptight about the definitions of words, you sure do invent a lot of your own definitions.
No, they are chosen by "I identify as..." and then they make their choice. That is literally arbitrary. I don't know how you have been using the word, but you could look it up in a dictionary to see how people have historically used the word.
So you acknowledge that there are deterministic sets of conditions after all. Great, we're making progress!
Also:
based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system
It's not random choice or personal whim. There is a reason and a system. Again, just because you lack the understanding does not mean the rest of the world is as riddled with brain worms as you are.
Not how it works. Clearly you've never actually met a trans person and actually had a conversation with them and tried to understand their life, have you?
There are a couple of "trans" people in my life. They have one sex but feel as though they are the other sex. I feel sorry for them the discord they feel in their identity, but beyond that I really don't give a shit. One of them works with me and the other slices my lunchmeat at the deli. I don't press them about anything, and I don't talk about it. I actually use their preferred pronouns because I respect them both as individuals, but internally, I believe they are both men who think they feel like women. I'm not even convinced they actually feel like women. I think they've been lied to scummy activists all throughout their public education. Gender is made-up bullshit.
I respect them both as individuals, but internally, I believe they are both men who think they feel like women. I’m not even convinced they actually feel like women.
Clearly, you don’t respect them.
I have more trans friends than you probably have friends, and it’s never once crossed my mind to question their identity. Even if you’re not saying the quiet part out loud, you’re sure as shit thinking bigoted thoughts.
Wow, you are a hateful piece of shit. Do you honestly think that people just decide one day to make an extreme life change, knowing that they’ll endure lifelong ostracism, ridicule, and condescension from brainless bigots like you, all for attention or “ideology”?
I sincerely hope you have trans kids who end up marrying black and brown communists. Hail Satan!
Bigots usually haven’t. It’s easier to spew hate when you’re not standing in front of someone who will happily knock your lights out for being an asshole.
If I feel like eating pizza today, that desire comes from deterministic conditions. Me choosing to have pizza is still an arbitrary choice. If I had a cheeseburger instead of pizza because it's cheeseburger day, even if I want pizza, that's deterministic. You could argue that the schedule is arbitrary, and that's fair, but deciding for yourself what pronouns you are going to have used in your regard regardless of your sex is arbitrary.
I understand better than gender ideologues the difference between sex and gender, and unlike both the left and the right, I meticulously never use them interchangeably.
I can understand that having pronouns or nonbinary or trans characters in games can be a bit of a culture shock. As a culture we're beginning to grow more overall accepting of these people that have been here all along, but never felt comfortable to "be a seen part of society" out of fear. The same sort of thing happened, or is still happening, with homosexuality, though that's further along the acceptance curve than trans/nonbinary.
Eventually it won't be so obviously "woke garbage" that sticks out to you as something noticeable and startling, and it'll be just another feature of the game like anything else, just another NPC like any other, but that one gets called "they" instead of him or her. It takes time for it all to become normalized and not be something you raise eyebrows at and feel upset by. You may always wonder sometimes what gender someone is identifying as when it may not be obvious, but it will become easier to simply ask them, or be okay with not knowing, it's okay to not know.
I'm not going to pretend that mentally working through these things isn't a part of this whole process, but trying to somehow fight back against it by calling it all garbage and refusing to extend the hand to understand where it's all coming from is... inappropriate, we all need to get along, we all live on this planet together and the only way to make it the best it can be is to try and understand each other.
Sure, you may have a point in there about desiring a platform where people can upload any mod they like, and that could totally be a thing, Nexus Mods doesn't want that to be their thing, specifically, and whether you're okay with that or not is your perspective, and I'm okay with that, but you should try and understand why Nexus is taking that stance. Nonbinary and trans people are on the back foot, culturally, so it's clear that many places will take a stand to hard defend their representation because they're so far behind the "biological genders" and could use a helping hand.
I didn't say that understanding and agreement are the same. What I wanted was for that user to understand where the other side was coming from, and acknowledge that, and if they still had a different opinion, then okay, but I just wanted to try and explain the side I'm on in a less directly hostile way than the other commenters are.
You make some logical points, I won't go into my opinion since it already seems clear, hope you have a nice night, genuinely, people should be able to discuss this stuff maturely.
Hi, woke garbage here. Very trans. Enby too. Just sitting here existing at you. Existing so hard, it probably hurts you just knowing about it. I hope it does, 'cause you're a prick and you deserve it ^.^
Wow, I'm the only person that bellend didn't reply to. I feel special 🤣 Everycritter else gets a fresh pile of horsecrap, I don't even get a downvote. Works fine for me, I guess.
I asked them a yes or no question and they replied with a rant, that I still didn't bother to read (because they didn't reply with either "yes" or "no") and now they're accusing me of actually having read the rant. Very reasonable people 💀👍
Bigotry is a political opinion, but the idea that all political opinions deserve identical respect is really dumb.
Some people’s ideas are bad, actually. It is fine and good to tell them where to shove it.
The kneejerk demand for “civility” confuses polite responses for appropriate responses. Some people are monsters. Some people need to hear, “fuck off.” That is the correct attitude for a worrying number of online interactions, and if moderators won’t step up and proactively remove the bigoted propagandist time-vampires who deserve it, the least they can do is stay out of the way. ‘What you chose to say is fucking awful’ cannot possibly be more of a personal attack than being told ‘everyone like you is inherently broken.’
Humans using past work to improve, iterate, and further contribute themselves is not the same as a program throwing any and all art into the machine learning blender to regurgitate “art” whenever its button is pushed. Not only does it not add anything to the progress of art, it erases the identity of the past it consumed, all for the blind pursuit of profit.
Me not knowing everything doesn’t mean it isn’t known or knowable. Also, there’s a difference between things naturally falling into obscurity over time and context being removed forcefully.
And then there’s when its too difficult to upkeep them, exactly like how you can’t know everything.
We probably ain’t gonna stop innovation, so we mine as well roll with it (especially when its doing a great job redistributing previously expensive assets)
If it’s “too difficult” to manage, that may be a sign it shouldn’t just be let loose without critique. Also, innovation is not inherently good and “rolling with it” is just negligent.
Where did the AI companies get their code from? Is scraped from the likes of stack overflow and GitHub.
They don’t have the proprietary code that is used to run companies because it’s proprietary and it’s never been on a public forum available for download.
Stable Diffusion uses a dataset from Common Crawl, which pulled art from public websites that allowed them to do so. DeviantArt and ArtStation allowed this, without exception, until recently.
Devil's advocate. It means that only large companies will have AI, as they would be the only ones capable of paying such a large number of people. AI is going to come anyway except now the playing field is even more unfair since you've removed the ability for an individual to use the technology.
Instituting these laws would just be the equivalent of companies pulling the ladder up behind them after taking the average artist's work to use as training data.
How would you even go about determining what percentage belongs to the AI vs the training data? You could argue all of the royalties should go to the creators of the training data, meaning no one could afford to do it.
How would you identify text or images generated by AI after they have been edited by a human? Even after that, how would you know what was used as the source for training data? People would simply avoid revealing any information and even if you did pass a law and solved all of those issues, it would still only affect the country in question.
Literally the definition of greed. They dont deserve royalties for being an inspiration and moving a weight a fraction of a percentage in one direction…
If AI art is stolen data, then every artists on earth are thieves too.
Do you think artists just spontaneously conjure up art? No. Through their entire life of looking at other people’s works, they learned how to do stuff, they emulate and they improve. That’s how human artists come to be. Do you think artists go around asking permission from millions of past artists if they can learn from their art? Do artists track down whoever made the fediverse logo if I want to make a similar shaped art with it? Hell no. Consent in general is impossible too because whole lot of them are likely too dead to give consent be honest. Its the exact same way AI is made.
Your argument holds no consistent logic.
Furthermore, you likely have a misunderstanding of how AI is trained and works. AI models do not store nor copy art that it’s trained on. It studies shapes, concepts, styles, etc. It puts these concepts into matrix of vectors. Billions of images and words are turned into mere 2 gigabytes in something like SD fp16. 2GB is virtually nothing. There’s no compression capable of anywhere near that. So unless you actually took very few images and made a 2GB model, it has no capability to store or copy another person’s art. It has no knowledge of any existing copyrighted work anymore. It only knows the concepts and these concepts like a circle, square, etc. are not copyrightable.
If you think I’m just being pro-AI for the sake of it. Well, it doesn’t matter. Because copyright offices all over the world have started releasing their views on AI art. And it’s unanimously in agreement that it’s not stolen. Furthermore, resulting AI artworks can be copyrighted (lot more complexity there, but that’s for another day).
It’s a tool that can be used to replicate other art except it doesn’t replicate art does it.
It creates works based on other works which is exactly what humans do whether or not it’s sapient is irrelevant. My work isn’t valuable because it’s copyrightable. On a sociopath things like that
What gives a human right to learn off of another person without credit? There is no such inherent right.
Even if such a right existed, I as a person who can make AI training, would then have the right to create a tool to assist me in learning, because I’m a person with same rights as anyone else. If it’s just a tool, which it is, then it is not the AI which has the right to learn, I have the right to learn, which I used to make the tool.
I can use photoshop to replicate art a lot more easily than with AI. None of us are going around saying Photoshop is wrong. (Though we did say that before) The AI won’t know any specific art unless it’s an extremely repeated pattern like “mona lisa”. It literally do not have the capacity to contain other people’s art, and therefore it cannot replicate others art. I have already proven that mathematically.
Tbh I don’t even know why the option even exists. I have 2 days worth of playtime and not once does it go on about pronouns or anything like that. So to me the menu seems completely pointless. If i can recall i also don’t think the NPCs have even referred to me as male or he/him. Maybe Bethesda added it last minute or something to try to appeal to a larger group of people idk. I’m just enjoying my spaceship man.
I’m not super far in, but I have heard it. The first time I remember hearing it is in the opening act when Lin is telling Barrett about you. Also when Sam talks to the marshal about you in Akila City. I suppose there are only so many opportunities for other characters to talk about you while you’re standing right there, but it does pop up, so it’s nice to have the option for those moments.
Do people really care what gender the MC is? I just role play as whatever gender the character is.
If I’m playing Tomb Raider, I am Laura Croft. If I play GTA, I’m CJ or Trevor or whatever. If I’m given a choice, I’ll sometimes look up if the gender matters (e.g. in Mount and Blade it can impact relations), and otherwise just pick randomly. When there’s a character creation screen, I usually randomize it a few times and get into the game.
I wouldn’t mind role playing as a gay or trans person, though I’d be a little worried about the content because I’m not looking for anything with relationships, I want to wreck monsters and solve puzzles.
Depends on if the character's supposed to be a self insert. In a game with deep customization you may be trying to make yourself, and not playing as Lara Croft or Geralt, so being able to choose your pronouns helps immersion, and immersion's a big deal to many players who'll take it anywhere they can get it in a game, whether it's pronouns, or being able to see your torso and feet when you look down.
Huh, I guess I never want to insert myself because I’m not that interesting. :) I play games to escape myself, and I really hate seeing my own name show up in games.
But that’s probably more my personality (I hate being publicly praised) than anything else.
But that’s probably more my personality (I hate being publicly praised) than anything else.
Revisit this thought whenever you consider if other people “really care” about something that you don’t instead of questioning whether inclusion is ever “necessary”.
It’s just not something I have experience with. Even my wife, who likes public validation, also prefers to role play in games.
But that’s the great thing about most RPGs, they have options to get whatever character model you want. So whether I understand people wanting to play as themselves or not is irrelevant. You can make your character look like yourself, I can make my character look random, and a trans person can make their character look like they see themselves. How I choose to make my character look has no impact on anyone else’s experience.
How I choose to make my character look has no impact on anyone else’s experience.
Tell that to the idiots making mods like this. Not that it changes anything for anyone but themselves, but it does promote bullshit bigotry over a menu selection of all things and fully deserves to be shut down.
And none of this is about “public validation”. It’s about having even just one more avenue for people that don’t happen to be cis white males to make a character for themselves that’s more relatable. More options should always be welcome. It hurts nobody and lifts up many.
Most guys choose to be guys when given the choice, for example. Apparently a lot of people do care. Gender fluid, agender people, casgender people, etc may not care or vary more.
Idk. Why would someone want to have a man's ass and voice? Seems weird to me. Yet about half of the world seem to want to be guys. And most of those are happy to be a choose to be a guy when customization is an option. I can't answer why so many guys consistently and choose to be guys in game (and sometimes have pride in their characters appearance and try to brag about their it) or some tease other people they perceived as guys for choosing to be a girl in-game when I can't understand why they want to be guys in the first place.
For me, I relate more to those who make fun of themselves for using that excuse because they were in denial. I've definitely been there. Of course there are guys (cis or trans) who like playing as girls too; I just can't relate (aro-ace spec).
Or one of the many, many people involved with development suggested it because it applied to them or someone they knew and the decision was made to include it out of respect for the people involved.
Or, maybe, inclusivity is never a bad thing, regardless of your personal level of cynicism. Hate the world all you want, but there are people out there that appreciate and deserve things like this.
When you meet Sam & Cora they'll refer to you by your pronoun while they talk about you.
The whole thing is just to make the character generation non binary, that's it. I don't see why this is such a big deal for some people. I'm a cis male, I select a masculine body type and go with he / him, or maybe they / them, and be done with it. It does nothing but help others feel more included.
Ohhhh. Wow i never noticed that tbh. I was so focused on trying to win sarah over. Never met a more picky person in my life. Now she resides on europa because she bitches every time i steal or a innocent sounding dialog option makes her mad. Sam is cool every ounce and a while he says something about me stealing but it’s not as annoying. I’ve yet to come across cora. I spend so much time in the ship builder.
You might've missed their initial dialog in the lodge, which happened in that garden area. You can find her typically in the basement where she has her room and she will be on board of your ship if you assign Sam onto it. The kids in Starfield are actually pretty cute and wholesome, unlike the literal spawns of Satan from Skyrim.
Ohhh that kid! I completely ignored that little stinker. I remember her trying to con me out of 50 creds for books. I’m too greedy for that i got ships to build.
Good interview. They didn’t let them off the hook, but weren’t pushing an agenda either.
This is going to be a moving target that someone is going to pay big bucks to figure out in court. International laws are not up to speed on what is or isn’t ok here, and the ethical discussion is interesting to watch unfold.
They finally give you something that controls how people refer to you in their games, and dipshits wanna remove it? This is as close as you’re going to get to having characters refer to you as a choice you’ve taken other than Codsworth and Vasco having like 1000 generic names recorded to use.
I mean, I sorta get it. Identity politics are political and often divisive, and some people don't want it in their escapism.
It's not a perfect analogy, but if a role-playing game had a mandatory character-selection choice to choose if my character was pro-choice or pro-life, I could see myself mildly resenting it.
Not really a good example. A more apt example is if these people were getting angry that the character creator allowed a player to create a woman, or a person of colour. The game offering you a choice of pronouns is not asking you for a political opinion, it's literally just an option to create a type of character that these people don't think should exist.
And that's the crux of it, they aren't angry about pronouns, they're angry about trans and non-binary people becoming normalised.
I dunno, being a man, woman, or black person isn't political. Trans, non-binary, etc is, and normalizing it is political, regardless of if it's right or wrong. I think that you're correct and that it seems like something done as ammunition in the Culture War; normalizing identity politics rather than a design decision done out of a necessity to improve the quality of the game apart from that.
My earlier analogy was about having a pro-life/pro-choice option forced on you, but I guess to make it more accurate it would be more like the game just telling you that you're pro-life as part of your character settings? Because it's not just putting the politics in the game, it's taking a strong side. Again, rightly or wrongly, I can see why some people would resent that in their escapism.
I dunno, being a man, woman, or black person isn't political.
I agree, they should not be, but people still try and make them political.
Trans, non-binary, etc is
No. Absolutely not. Trans people and non-binary people are types of people who exist. Exactly the same as men, women, people of colour, and so forth. They are no more or less political than those other types of people. People still make them political, but that's exactly the same thing as with other groups.
My earlier analogy was about having a pro-life/pro-choice option forced on you, but I guess to make it more accurate it would be more like the game just telling you that you're pro-life as part of your character settings? Because it's not just putting the politics in the game, it's taking a strong side. Again, rightly or wrongly, I can see why some people would reset that in their escapism.
You are mistaken. There is no political opinion here. None is being asked for, and none is being assigned. The character creator having additional options is just allowing players to make trans or non-binary characters. This isn't asking you for a political opinion, it's simply adding options to create more types of characters.
Which is why the bigots are upset. Because they don't think those types of characters should be allowed to be made.
Your previous comments implied that there was a difference in type between the inclusion of women or people of colour, and the inclusion of trans of non-binary people.
There is a difference in magnitude of the controversy. But not a difference in type. Something can be more or less controversial, but it's still the same type of controversy.
Yeah, it seems we agree. My stance was only ever that I can understand why some people would've wanted to remove political controversy from their escapism if it made them uncomfortable and added nothing to the gameplay itself.
If everything is political then it’s impossible to make a game that isn’t political. This is no more valid than someone complaining that including an option for skin tone is political.
I guess my existence is “political” then, I guess I can’t exist in a space without having something “forced” on people.
We were male/female, now were women/men/other, that’s it. It’s a personal matter that we go through and we want to simply exist. That’s only “political” when your dealing with people who actively want to harm our rights. I cannot stress enough that these people shouldn’t be treated with respect as if they’re not trying to destroy people for a simple personal choice.
Aside from you being transphobic, you should realize that the people complaining about pronouns are also the people who complain about the "replaced white people" and "female leaders" in the game. So I guess black people and women are also political, by your logic?
being a man, woman, or black person isn't political
Being a woman isn't political... until I do it? Kinda seems like there's no actually valid (sound? I forget the terminology) argument for how our existence is a problem, nor for how supporting or acknowledging our existence is a problem.
I don't actually quite understand what you're on about but it kinda seems like you're arguing that allowing people to play characters that don't match your preferences exactly is some kind of forced political thing and that's kinda horsecrap, y'know?
Anyway I'm gonna go exist at that bigot up there now. Byeee ö/
I dunno, being a man, woman, or black person isn't political. Trans, non-binary, etc is, and normalizing it is political, regardless of if it's right or wrong.
Women and black people getting the right to vote and be treated equally has always been "political" you fucking jackass.
I wouldn’t. I mean, I hate Nazis but I don’t mind a game where I can choose to play as one (so long as the context makes sense like it’s a multiplayer WW2 game or Diso Elysium). It’s a fuckin’ choice. If you don’t like one of the options: Choose a different one.
Terrible analogy. It's just turning the binary male / female into non binary body types & pronouns to be more inclusive for those who fall outside the norm on the spectrum of things.
They definitely use your pronouns a lot. It’s all they refer to you as, aside from cute nicknames like “Dusty,” or “rook” or “renegade.” Probably doesn’t stand out if you chose your normal pronouns, since they’d just be say he/him or she/her or they/them.
We can’t be far from text-to-speech tweaking a ton of voice acting. Might have to pronounce or IPA your custom name, to get an AI voice to nail it… but maybe it’s better-off being wrong. There’s disarming verisimilitude in schmaltzy NPCs confidently fumbling your character’s name. Or if some characters heard it, but haven’t seen it, and you catch some mutter ‘so that’s how it’s spelled.’
I am just picturing the orc noble who uses words incorrectly/mispronounces shit. Forgot what those are called, but they have similar characters in most of their games. In Starfield, they even called him “Dumbrosky.” Dumb Bro ski.
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