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Next gen is going to be even more woke!

When people dismiss representation as a political fad, as an imposition on the creative process, as a means of ticking off lists, they are almost always doing this from a position of privilege. The argument that it’s not the gender, ethnicity or physical abilities of a character that are important, but whether they’re written well and fun to play, is easier to make if you’re already being comfortably represented. It is easy to assume your experience is universal. But it isn’t.

Wow you really believe that bullshit, do you? Where have you been brainwashed? University/College?
 
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Woopah

Member
Wow you really believe that bullshit, do you? Where have you been brainwashed? University/College?
It makes sense to me. From my experience people who are represented less are more excited about representation than those who are represented more. Its a generalisation but the rarer representation is for you, the more special it is to you.
 

#Phonepunk#

Banned
but just saying "representation" and putting black faces on the screen doesn't fix things or make things better. if there is to be real represntation then they need to be BEHIND the camera, not just in front of it. that's what i get upset with.

im all for more representation, as in, ACTUAL POCs writing/creating/etc. by all means get them in there and creating.

i want to read a story by a black writer.

what i don't like is "REPRESENTAITONTM" which is usually just the same old white people using POCs to cover for their terrible writing and lack of ideas. usually in these cases the content is not the POC experience, it's a white writer's (often racist) idea of pandering to their white allies about what they THINK a POC would say.

i dont need to be scolded on POC issues by a white writer. im white! i could do that myself.
 
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Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
Vote with your wallets. This shit'll be gone soon.
Again I'm asking same question, hows this different than "SJW" wanting games with "sexy design" to be gone? Every fucking time, why people need act if they don't like something it should disappear? Don't like it, then don't fucking buy it. I don't like MP games but it doesn't mean it should disappear.
 

Redlancet

Banned
I still don't give a shit as long as the game is any good. And when the demon's souls remaster lands I'll only play that for a year anyway.

Vote with your wallets, you grandstanding in a gaming forum won't affect business decisions.

Thats the thing, i want more mature games, with different caracters, if the game is good i dont care if its woke, in tired of space marines and dragons in castles
 

MilkyJoe

Member
Again I'm asking same question, hows this different than "SJW" wanting games with "sexy design" to be gone? Every fucking time, why people need act if they don't like something it should disappear? Don't like it, then don't fucking buy it. I don't like MP games but it doesn't mean it should disappear.

I literally just said don't buy it.

Your fucked up movement will still be on it's way out, it's an unsustainable business model.


Psssst... Word on the street is they are going to remake the Star Wars sequel trilogy...
 

killatopak

Member
I don’t particularly mind female, POC or ideologies being present in a game.

I just wish they just make it non-intrusive and not in your face.

For example, Emil in Nier is great at this. He is gay, and has affection for the main character but it does not directly effect how the story unfolds or is it the focus of the game. Although it makes up some of his personal motivations, it does not effect the overall picture. Things like this that normalizes their presence in the story is how I want them to be.

If you want to be black or hispanic or female or a furry and whatever, I can accept it. Just don‘t shove it in my face unless the story has direct correlation to you being that particular race or gender.

Majority of the games we currently have are white men. Why do I, of a different descent from them, can readily accept them as the protagonist or such? It’s because they’re not pushing the fact that they are white in my face. I can just accept that the circumstance of the story made them to be the protagonist.

I want to be able to relate to character even if he or she or they are not of my own race or gender.
 

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
I don’t particularly mind female, POC or ideologies being present in a game.

I just wish they just make it non-intrusive and not in your face.

For example, Emil in Nier is great at this. He is gay, and has affection for the main character but it does not directly effect how the story unfolds or is it the focus of the game. Although it makes up some of his personal motivations, it does not effect the overall picture. Things like this that normalizes their presence in the story is how I want them to be.

If you want to be black or hispanic or female or a furry and whatever, I can accept it. Just don‘t shove it in my face unless the story has direct correlation to you being that particular race or gender.

Majority of the games we currently have are white men. Why do I, of a different descent from them, can readily accept them as the protagonist or such? It’s because they’re not pushing the fact that they are white in my face. I can just accept that the circumstance of the story made them to be the protagonist.

I want to be able to relate to character even if he or she or they are not of my own race or gender.
To me its all about developers freedom of what they want to make, if they developers want have "gay" character as center of the story then by all means, at end of the day I will decide if I like it or not when I play the game myself. Even if I ended up absolutely hating the game it doesn't mean devs are not allowed to make it.

Recently I hate Demon's Souls Remake redesigns of its enemy/bosses but its Bluepoint's choice they can remake the game however they want, I'm still going to give the game fair chance.

The moment developers lose their freedom, then thats the moment gaming dies.
 
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killatopak

Member
To me its all about developers freedom of what they want to make, if they developers want have "gay" character as center of the story then by all means, at end of the day I will decide if I like it or not when I play the game myself. Even if I ended up absolutely hating the game it doesn't mean devs are not allowed to make it.

Recently I hate Demon's Souls Remake redesigns of its enemy/bosses but its Bluepoint's choice they can remake the game however they want, I'm still going to give the game fair chance.

The moment developers lose their freedom, then thats the moment gaming dies.
I agree.

To be completely honest, Their gender or race being the center of the story doesn’t mean I won’t like it. CJ from GTA SA being black and everything he does from the way he speaks to the missions he does is predominantly something that I can’t see a white person do. I can accept it and actually appreciate and like that it is the focus.

What I abhor are token characters that are just meant to be there for a checklist. To be gay or POC and for it alone with no other characteristic, motivation or significance in the overall scheme of things. Like their character being simply defined by being gay, female, POC and nothing else is just lazy writing to me. Give me something else other than a character defined just by their stereotypes.
 

Jigsaah

Gold Member
Funny how so many of you are talking about speak with your wallet. You telling me you're not gonna buy Ratchet and Clank? Kena? Returnal? Is Sackboy your saving grace? Was the UE5 demo less impressive because of the nameless woman?

I don't care. Is the game good? Yea? Why does it matter who's the lead protagonist if the story surrounding that protagonist is good or if the gameplay is still fun?

This whole, woke and unwoke crap is getting out of hand.
 
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nemiroff

Gold Member
Because they were rare exceptions. Heck, you know Alien 3 was originally not going to have Ripley but the studio head insisted they keep her in the story as it offered something unique for audiences as barely any other blockbusters had a strong female as the main focus. It's why pre-2000's, people conveniently seem to think of only three examples of blockbuster films of strong female leads: Ripley, Sarah Conner (who's really only the action lead in T2, in 1 it's clearly Kyle), and Leia (and the final one isn't the best example given the last film kinda just throws in she's Force-sensitive but apparently not as important as Luke as Obi-Wan and Yoda put all their money on him and seemed to barely consider her a factor). It's because these are really the only examples.

Considering 50% of the population is female, forgive me if that don't impress me much. Now, I'm not saying exactly 50% of blockbuster leads have to be women, but the INSANELY low amount is noticeable. Then more and more started showing up and that's when people started getting upset. I have no idea how they're being "shoe-horned" in since again, there's KIND OF A LOT OF WOMEN ON PLANET EARTH LAST TIME I CHECKED. And as for black leads, A) yeah no, there were barely any black leads (as in THE LEAD, so nobody bring up Lando or something) in blockbuster movies pre-2000's and even not that many pre-2010's, and B) I get that people living in certain places don't have many black people in them, but they also need to understand that the U.S. does has plenty and heaven forbid we have fiction coming from U.S. creators reflect that. Hell, when it comes to anime barely anyone goes, "why are there barely any black characters?" as it's understood most anime take place in Japan where IRL virtually everyone is Japanese. BUT then when an upcoming anime was announced called The Great Pretender and it was revealed the main female character was a black woman, OH BOY, certain people on MAL threw a hissy fit screaming about SJWs invading anime, ignoring the fact that A) virtually all anime have zero black characters so having ONE new one is hardly adding to the percentage of their representation, and B) the story synopsis clearly suggests an international cast, several of the characters are from various European countries, yet the main female being black is "an issue" in spite of all this. It's just pathetic behavior.

I don't even understand what's "best for the experience" even means. My issue with the other side's argument is that it feels they often look at women and non-white characters as they have to "prove themselves" worthy to be the lead, but white male characters get more of a pass. I've seen it too often in fictional debates, women getting good a little "too quickly" as something will cause some people to cry foul, but men who do it even within the same series/franchise won't cause any fuss.

Maybe actually explain why any of these new games' stories would be better if the lead was a white male (hell, I actually explained why I think the lead of Returnal being a middle-aged woman makes sense, conveniently you gave no counter-argument to the example I provided). Yet the people who say this whole "it's not best for the story!" defense rarely explain why, they just claim it is. Funny, in my experience Spider-verse is definitely the best Spidey film in terms of story and character development, only the original Spidey 2 even comes close, yet I guarantee you when that movie was announced I heard the exact same flimsy noise that I'm hearing when this new Spidey game was announced, people complaining that this "might not be best for the story" without offering any real explanation as to why it might not be (and the few times they did, they showed they were kind of normies when it came to superhero comics given that hero legacies have been a thing since the 1950's). Hey, fun fact, but if I had access to a time travel machine and all the time in the world to do whatever I wanted with it, at no point would I go back in time and ask Stan Lee if Peter Parker, Bruce Banner, Tony Stark, etc. being white males "was best for the story". Because it's what he's creating and I'll wait to experience it in full before sticking my nose up and questioning it based on literally nothing.

Hell, I have zero interest in biker culture, but I still bought Days Gone and while the first 10 hours as I said are a rough start eventually Deacon's story and development did grow on me. I could have just stuck my nose up and been like, "ugh, a biker character, why?" but I gave the storyteller(s) a chance and they did a good enough job in my eyes. Could a female lead or non-white lead have made the story even better? Possibly, but I have no way of knowing, and likewise, you have no way of knowing if a while male lead would make the stories of these upcoming games better. None of these games' trailers called anyone a Nazi. None of these games' trailers seem like "aggressive shoe-horning" to me. It doesn't even make sense to me, the only way that could happen is if most of these developers worked on creating these games TOGETHER and planned this all out and no one who knows game development could actually think that's the case. If anything, I'd say games with leads who aren't white or male selling well has just made more developers and creative minds more willing to "risk" having their leads be that way. It's a far better environment for creative minds in my book than the PS3/360 gen where SO MANY leads were just stern-faced white dude with bald or shaved head (basically, all Infamous 1 lead guy), and the developers of Bioshock Infinite were pressured in removing Elizabeth from the cover art because a survey done with frat guys ([sarcasm]CLEARLY the only people who play video games[/sarcasm]) said they'd be less likely to buy a game if a girl was on the cover and so the actual main focus of the story (Booker is important, but Elizabeth is definitely the most important and grows the most) was removed from the cover. I am SO eternally grateful there's no signs we're going back to those sort of lack of variety in leads that dominated those years of gaming.

You replied to my post, no offence but I'm not going to he able to read through all that text. At a glance though it seems to me that you appear to disregard my main point by "counting" movies. That has nothing to do with what I wrote. Regardless of movie exec's ratios or backstory movie I rarely heard people around mention or complain about a popular movie's character's female gender or black skin color a few years ago (I'm sure at least someone did, but in general it was rare as fuck)
 
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Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
This whole, woke and unwoke crap is getting out of hand.
Its really getting tiring and annoying, I feel like I have same type of argument when people in old GAF complaining about sexy design in games.

It never ends, people always gets outrage over anything and everything, is that fun for people? because I finding it exhausting.
 
Because they were rare exceptions. Heck, you know Alien 3 was originally not going to have Ripley but the studio head insisted they keep her in the story as it offered something unique for audiences as barely any other blockbusters had a strong female as the main focus. It's why pre-2000's, people conveniently seem to think of only three examples of blockbuster films of strong female leads: Ripley, Sarah Conner (who's really only the action lead in T2, in 1 it's clearly Kyle), and Leia (and the final one isn't the best example given the last film kinda just throws in she's Force-sensitive but apparently not as important as Luke as Obi-Wan and Yoda put all their money on him and seemed to barely consider her a factor). It's because these are really the only examples.
Honestly, after I watched Terminator 2, Alien, Aliens 2, Tomb Raider, Kill Bill Vol. 1/2, Charlie's Angels(2000), Mad Max, Wonder Woman, Hanna, Resident Evil(1-13), I was like "fuck that, no more female action movies, females are the worst."
 

Woopah

Member
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I don’t particularly mind female, POC or ideologies being present in a game.

I just wish they just make it non-intrusive and not in your face.

For example, Emil in Nier is great at this. He is gay, and has affection for the main character but it does not directly effect how the story unfolds or is it the focus of the game. Although it makes up some of his personal motivations, it does not effect the overall picture. Things like this that normalizes their presence in the story is how I want them to be.

If you want to be black or hispanic or female or a furry and whatever, I can accept it. Just don‘t shove it in my face unless the story has direct correlation to you being that particular race or gender.

Majority of the games we currently have are white men. Why do I, of a different descent from them, can readily accept them as the protagonist or such? It’s because they’re not pushing the fact that they are white in my face. I can just accept that the circumstance of the story made them to be the protagonist.

I want to be able to relate to character even if he or she or they are not of my own race or gender.

What are some examples where it was shoved in your face? Its not something I've come across myself but then I haven't played every game.
 
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killatopak

Member
What would say is a game you played where


What are some examples where it was shoved in your face? Its not something I've come across myself but then I haven't played every game.

Mad Jack from Heavy Rain is one of the most stereotypical characters I’ve ever seen with no other discernible qualities.

A complete opposite of him is Barret in FF7. He is also very stereotypical especially in the beginning with the angry black man trope but he does redeem it with his character motivation that show he is more than that, willing to change and learn. His character in the remake also makes it a lot better showing that he is more that what he shows normally. He is very smart and astute. Knowing a lot of things about the cause he is fighting for, being a charismatic leader and having an actual motivation for the things that he is doing.
 

KAL2006

Banned
They failed the woke test, if PlayStation will be manufactured in concentration camps in China they failed the woke test.
 

tassletine

Member
I think it’s more a case of games becoming sophisticated enough to convey messages in a way that now actually reaches us whereas it had scant chance before.
In the past we’ve had games like Duke Nukem, which clearly uses right wing tropes, Manhunt or something like Russian Attack on the NES — But these games didn’t really get to you because they were fairly simple, they were still political in some sense though.
Now however, we have a medium that is almost on a par with films as far as actually getting emotions over to the viewer realistically, and it just so happens that the media’s politics are like this at the time the hardware matured.
Politics isn’t going away, it was always here, but it could soon shift.

But, It’s also a fairly small portion of games that are getting this treatment, mainly AAA titles. Games do have to move with the times but there are many that reject politics or mock it (GTA) — And lots of Japanese games have been doing this for some time.
Saying Animal Crossing is woke is somewhat bizarre as it’s changed so, so little — so reality has caught up with IT not the other way around. I’m aware that they’ve added some features but complaining about that title is silly as AC is almost a satire of society in it’s self.

The only thing that‘s really annoying is marking a game up or down because of the politics of it’s plot. That’s like marking down chess because the white pieces get to go first. Stories are usually the worst part of any video game so maybe should be reviewed separately from the gameplay anyway as realistically they usually stink.

So I really think it’s a matter of perception. I’m all for a game which has a lesbian acting out her own fascistic revenge by stabbing people in the face as much as was up for a green beret stabbing Russians in the face on the NES. As long as the stabbing is good stabbin‘ and it’s fun.
 

The_Mike

I cry about SonyGaf from my chair in Redmond, WA
Oh you must have missed the mass backlash, probably too busy deciding what to find offensive that day 👀

What do you mean? From what I can see it's gonna sell massive even tho it's heavily sjw infested.
 

Woopah

Member
Mad Jack from Heavy Rain is one of the most stereotypical characters I’ve ever seen with no other discernible qualities.

A complete opposite of him is Barret in FF7. He is also very stereotypical especially in the beginning with the angry black man trope but he does redeem it with his character motivation that show he is more than that, willing to change and learn. His character in the remake also makes it a lot better showing that he is more that what he shows normally. He is very smart and astute. Knowing a lot of things about the cause he is fighting for, being a charismatic leader and having an actual motivation for the things that he is doing.

That makes a lot of sense to me. Fleshed out characters are definitely better.
 
I don’t particularly mind female, POC or ideologies being present in a game.

I just wish they just make it non-intrusive and not in your face.

For example, Emil in Nier is great at this. He is gay, and has affection for the main character but it does not directly effect how the story unfolds or is it the focus of the game. Although it makes up some of his personal motivations, it does not effect the overall picture. Things like this that normalizes their presence in the story is how I want them to be.

If you want to be black or hispanic or female or a furry and whatever, I can accept it. Just don‘t shove it in my face unless the story has direct correlation to you being that particular race or gender.

Majority of the games we currently have are white men. Why do I, of a different descent from them, can readily accept them as the protagonist or such? It’s because they’re not pushing the fact that they are white in my face. I can just accept that the circumstance of the story made them to be the protagonist.

I want to be able to relate to character even if he or she or they are not of my own race or gender.
Not only this, but also noticed woke characters/ideology quickly become the only acceptable kind in games. All females are strong, none can be sexy. PoC always good guys, white people bad guys. Would be nice to have some balance. Don't mind this stuff, but there's more to true diversity than following a certain ideology. Like you said, any character of any background can and should be any role, anything else is just pushing a social agenda.
 

Gamer79

Predicts the worst decade for Sony starting 2022
I mean, I've not played the first game yet, but it's a post-apocalypse, right? Full baths/showers with shampoo and soap are presumably a thing of the past. You can either put up with some smell, or just not get laid. I think I know the option most would go with.....
Might make you appreciate a tuna sandwich.
 

Woopah

Member
Not only this, but also noticed woke characters/ideology quickly become the only acceptable kind in games. All females are strong, none can be sexy. PoC always good guys, white people bad guys. Would be nice to have some balance. Don't mind this stuff, but there's more to true diversity than following a certain ideology. Like you said, any character of any background can and should be any role, anything else is just pushing a social agenda.

I don't think that's true. Fallen Order had a white guy as the protagonist and a woman of colour as the main antagonist. Deathloop has a woman of colour as the antagonist too. Just at Sony's conference we had Returnal, Hitman and Horizon 2 announced all with white people as the good guys. Seems like there is a balance.
 
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supernova8

Banned
I mean we haven't quite reached the all-female Ghostbusters level of bollocks in gaming yet. That movie was absolute trash, not funny at all and yet they still put it out.

We'll see what happens with Goodbye Volcano High. Looks like a load of shit but we'll see.
 
I have a big problem with agendas, i.e. namely the fact those doing the moralizing, the lecturing, the preaching & pushing the woke agenda in this instance are in absolutely no shape or form qualified to give us a life lesson. Why should I allow Neil Druckmann (for example) to preach to me in my living room with his woke narrative? He's just some weird guy writing LGBT sex fantasies. The same applies to the media as well. None of them are my betters, none. They're not even subtle with their messaging, no, they're militant activists beating us over the head with this stuff.

So they can take their neo religion & politely GTFO.

Easy way to fix your problem is don't play the game.
 
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