This is just my take on things. Feel free to agree or disagree.
Woke nowadays has a different meaning depending on where you are on the political spectrum, but I think most gamers think of it as corporate virtue signaling with often counterintuitive “not actually progressiveness” and ends up just stereotyping minorities. For example the DLC character in Kill the Justice League is an old lesbian stereotype and rarely represents what modern lesbians actually look like. In fact lesbians don’t have to “look like” anything, but then you wouldn’t know they’re lesbians, and the companies don’t understand how to do this.
Gamers can tell when a company is trying to “be progressive” while also having no idea how to do it properly, and it all comes off as incredibly cringe (Like DragonAge: The Veilguard) But when the developers are capable of telling a story, and integrate their modernized views into it, while making a great game (like Baldur’s Gate 3) it no longer is “woke”, just great.
Games with progressive views have existed for a very long time, and have generally been well received. But they never really started this “fake progressiveness corporate virtue signaling” until recently and I think gamers really only care about this happening. So it isn’t about and never was about the political messages themselves. And proof of this lies in the fact that the same people who complain about woke games also complain about censorship in other countries (like the Arcane lesbian relationship being erased in the Chinese release, or game companies logos not having rainbows only in middle eastern countries).
I know a lot of people see in black and white, and you’re either pro woke slop, or you’re racist/sexist/transphobic. But reality is that most gamers (even those who complain about wokeness) actually are progressives. They actually don’t care if someone is gay or trans or not. They only care about how that is portrayed, how belittling the message is, and how honest it is.
Personally I’d rather woke slop to straight slop - at least it’s clumsily including different narratives, rather than just clumsily reinforcing the same old narratives.
Obviously I would rather no slop, and I would rather artful représentations of all characters, but writing is hard - even moreso when you’ve got producers, investors, and a committee working as editors.
Also slop meamd the industry is at least not actively hostile to my existence. There are much worse fates than being pandered to and patronized
Absolutely this. I can only speak for myself, and I know that some folks are so starved for representation that they are happy with anything and that’s fine, but for me poor representation is just as bad as none at all.
I’m a guy married to a guy, and I do like to see queer characters and same sex romance options. But playing DA: Origin and crushing on Alastair, only to have the option of Zevran… It kinda feels like the games is telling me “gay men are campy and promiscuous, a sensitive and strong guy like Alistair is clearly heterosexual”. It didn’t make me feel included or represented, quite the opposite.
Obviously, times change, and sometimes these clumsy first steps are how we get to somewhere better. But as well as disappointing me, I understand why awkward ‘woke’ representation rubs people the wrong way. If I as a queer man find the gay character tokenistic, underdeveloped and kinda annoying then it doesn’t surprise me that other folks would too. And being willing to say “this is good representation, but that is shallow box ticking” would help us all get to better place.
Agreed, and I feel like the big issue here is there are two versions of “anti-woke” in gaming.
The first is gamers that want real progressive storylines that tie into the story well, and are critical of corporations trying to shoehorn random aspects of culture to be “woke” which fall flat because it’s just virtue signaling.
But it’s been conflated with the sort of 4chan style mentality of “gamer men” who criticize anything, even historically accurate stories who call a game woke just because it doesn’t fit their favorite narrative of muscular white dude or scantily clad woman being the protagonist.
An example of this is Assassin’s Creed Shadows. The game should by no means be labelled “woke” by anybody. It’s telling a dramatized tale of a real person that existed within feudal Japan who was by all measure a black samurai. However the second group in my description above has taken it upon themselves to criticize the studio for “forcing a narrative” or whatever which simply isn’t true. It’s a real person, from history, and they are telling a video game version of his story.
It’s annoying that the improper “wokeness” criticism there gets conflated with true criticism of studios adding barely fleshed out token elements of “inclusion” that by and large benefit nobody but instead detract from titles.
True that.
I even found it very funny when they accused kingdom come: deliverance of being racist because no black characters were in the game.
The setting is fucking medieval! There were no black people in Europe back then.
On the other hand I only know some Netflix series where they add all characters of the lbqt+ spectrum but give them no story or any meanings to that.
A game is only called “woke” when it’s bad. Balder’s Gate 3 is one of the most “woke” major releases in the last few years but you hardly hear them complain about it.
It’s the same thing with cyberpunk 2077. The anti-woke crowd can’t agree on whether it’s woke because many of them like it.
I think the problem isn’t the wokeness for most people, but the awkward shoehorning of stereotypes and forced messaging that makes everything feel cheap and doesn’t contribute to the experience or story. For example having a lgbtq+ element for the sake of checking a diversity box, instead of it being a random fact of this world or character.
I bought BG3 due to constant negative comments about it. It’s woke, everyone is bi (sign me the fuck up), random misogyny, etc. I figured if they were that mad it had to be good, and 427 hours of gameplay later I am glad I did that.
As much as I despise the “anti-woke” crowd, this is not a good argument and completely misunderstands what they’re angry about.
They are angry about what they perceive as “forced diversity” that destroys modern media and that corporates like Disney are pushing a “woke agenda”.
I disagree with this view. I think representation in media is good. Games and movies usually turn bad for unrelated reasons (like rushed production or poor management).
To be fair, though the early video game industry was created by and included a diverse group of people, the games themselves were made to sell their niche demographic. At the time that was young white boys. As a result not many games of the early era showcased the positive side of diversity, and often times portrayed it negatively, even if it wasn’t intentional.
The past these people are comparing modern games to isn’t imagined, it’s real. As the gaming industry has grown to the now extremely large range of people it has, and through a shift in social culture over the years, the content, intent, and purpose of the games themselves have drastically changed.
The people who complain about “woke” games main program isn’t an issue with games, but more about their inability to accept the societal and cultural changes happening around them. They refuse to accept that the types of games they loved as a kid had a lot of problematic cultural issues.
So basically they’re mad that the racist and/or homophobic and/or sexist themes that they loved in old in games aren’t acceptable anymore.
And they dont buy the game and vote Trump. (or over here the dutch dude with the weird hair.)
In the end the videogame industry is not about being politically correct. Its about making money.
I for one am very curious how this all will work out.
I do think we all should “chill out” a bit about these “issues”. A lot of people, everyone even, do not care what you do or don’t do. Nobody wants to tell you how to live your life. But that goes both ways. And if you don’t respect that you get a push back, an overreaction. And that is what’s happening now.
People see “gay stuff” (…) everywhere. The sociatal change is too much too fast and like in IT projects, we’re reaching or have already exceeded, the change capability of our society.
So ease back and it all will work out. Give it a few more years. We’ve come so far, maybe it is time to just sit down for a while and smell the flowers.
Or don’t, feed the overreaction some more and see if it implodes. But it can also explode in your face, its 50/50.
So ease back and it all will work out. Give it a few more years. We’ve come so far, maybe it is time to just sit down for a while and smell the flowers.
This attitude is acceptable when you’re talking about something that is purely a matter of preference. I could say that to someone who tells me “Oh, it sucks that I can’t eat out at 99% of restaurants, because I only eat biodynamic food, and nobody knows wtf I’m talking about with my weird dietary questions.”
When it comes to something inherent to people, which cannot be changed and causes them to face discrimination, I find this take to be naïve, at best, and entirely ignorant and dangerous, at worst. At every turn, there are people actively trying to strip women, minorities and LGBTQ+ people of their rights in spite of active pushes to ensure they don’t lose their rights and can enjoy equality with everyone else. I find it rather callous to suggest that members of these groups should just chill out and hope for the best in a few years while they face potentially existential threats from complacency.
Is that dude waiting for an American Black Woman invent punctuation marks?
Oh, I like you.
Out of sight out of…
The majority of complaints about wokeness in games is not that alternative lifestyles exist…
It’s that the game, story, or environment is being sacrificed to shove a political message down your throat.
What people complain about online doesn’t matter, the only thing that matters is revenue. If the revenue isn’t enough then the discussion about wokeness dominates the discussion… I don’t think making bland/bad game “woke” in order to get more attention will save it. Controversy doesn’t sell that many games, might make more people aware of a product, but if they already didn’t like the product (or were just meh about it) - controversy wont move the needle in a positive direction.
If the writing sucks, then talk about how the writing sucks. If I see someone crying “woke bs” without backing anything up I’m going to automatically assume that person is a bigoted moron.
As soon as someone calls something “woke”, I know immediately to ignore whatever they’re saying, they’re almost surely incapable of proper critical thinking. If they could form an actual critical opinion they’d be talking about that instead of using a generic political term that equates to “anything I don’t like or understand”.
I think most people lack that level of self awareness.I think if the most interesting thing about the game is how woke it is, thats a really bad sign.Consider Cyberpunk 2077 as an example, there was a hot minute where people were getting their transphobic panties in a bunch over the hermaphroditic ingame advertisements, but There was so much MORE to talk about in cyberpunk 2077 that it wasn’t the only discussion about the game (even before it launched).If I see someone crying “woke bs” without backing anything up I’m going to automatically assume that person is a bigoted moron.
If I see someone downvoting thoughtful comments I’m going to automatically assume that person is a closed minded moron.
Lol.
If someone doesn’t like my unsubstantiated claim of “woke” they’re a moron
I’m happy to talk with people about difficult or sensitive subjects, but throwing around downvotes doesn’t encourage good dialog.
Homie, you want to talk to 16 strangers disagreeing with you? O.o
Be glad that most people just vote and don’t comment.
The subject isnt sensitive when some refers to wokeness.
Its the little bitch that cant handle reality that is sensitive imo.
These outrage tourists call every “woke” if it fits their narrative.
Zelda: echoes of wisdom features Zelda as a playable character? Woke! Hades 2 having gay gods and Hephaistos being in a wheelchair? Woke! A game having the option to chose your pronouns in the character creator with no change in the actual story/narrative? Believe it or not: woke! /j
Disco Elysium is an actually very political and leftist game, but no one calls it “woke”, because it’s incredibly good and popular (also: these chodes probably wouldn’t even get the game).
Baldur’s Gate 3 has everything they complain about, but it’s not criticized, because it is loved by the community.
I mean, people do call Disco Elysium “woke commie political garbage” because being a fascist in that game is paramount to self harm and they don’t like introspection.
It’s probably the only time they’re right, when they call a game “commie”.
It’s still a phenomenal game and they can’t help but cope.
It’s that the game, story, or environment is being sacrificed to shove a political message down your throat.
… said by people who only know of this because today we talk about that message. The same people who loved Starship Troopers without realising it’s a tale about the dangers of fascism. Who cheered Fight Club not realising it criticized male stereotypes. And lauded the Fallout video game series even though it on purpose allows same sex relationships since Fallout 2.
Sheep. Led by Russian propaganda filtered through their current favorite “I tell it like it is”-influencers.
said by people who only know of this because today we talk about that message
So what you’re saying is that those games didn’t shove their message down people’s throat while modern games do? That while they did have a political message, they didn’t make it core to the experience and presented it in a way that allowed people who only wanted to play to completely ignore it?
You are validating the above comment’s point.
The fact you consider people being gay, or black, or women political says a lot about what kind of person you are.
I did not say writing a good game about gay, black, or women is political.
It’s that the game, story, or environment is being sacrificed to shove a political message down your throat.
These statements are different.
Honestly this sort of thing happening is extremely rare. In reality either the story/environment gets sacrificed to pander to some audience to make more money, or the game is from the ground up built to support that political message.
What also happens is devs deciding that they’d rather have diversity than trying to emulate some real historical setting in their unrealistic fantasy world, which for some reason gets people crying too, but has nothing to do with pushing a political message and rather just changing the expectation of white male default in western games (and probably pandering to the sensibilities of the majority of their audience to make more money).
It’s not wrong that the complaints about “woke” are mostly precisely about this perceived lowering of quality for some agenda or pandering, it’s just that that is rarely what’s happening. Like this whole idea that some people like to push that if not every woman in your game is conventionally attractive, it’s “woke” and you’re “ignoring your actual audience”. When usually these games have a ton of hot women (and men) anyway because they’re fully aware many people like playing hot characters, they just have other options too.
So if the game is good and centers around those things its a good game.
But if its bad and centers around those things, its woke. Am i understanding you correctly?
Kinda -
There will always be a background level of online misanthropes labeling everything woke, but that only gets attention if there nothing else remarkable about the game.
So if the only online dialog about a game is how woke it is, the game probably isn’t very good.
When has this happened?
If the writing sucks, the writing would still suck even if it was pro-oppression.
Controversy does sell games and can drive sales of bad games (GTA, Dark Souls, DND). People are more aware of it. They buy it and play it because “what’s the big deal”. They like it, despite its flaws, then they share it.
The complaints about “wokeness” are only created by bigots. Just because games have a queer or religious character doesn’t mean there’s an agenda to make more money. It’s just a trait that exists in the real world. And more than likely, the character takes traits from someone who made it, or someone they know.
Queer people exist. Being upset about a person existing in a game is a personal problem.
That being said, there are things I personally don’t like in games, so I just don’t play them.
Wait, wait, what was the controversy with Dark Souls? Did I miss something there?
