Discussion Do you think the gaming community has become too toxic?

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Niels

Member
In a perfect world we can have both dragons crown and dream daddy, and everyone picks up whatever game they want to play without getting triggered by the games they don't want to play...

Still sucks that "the last night" is in trouble because the creator tweeted this in 2014: (for which he apologized)
I’m against feminism, because it’s getting more and more skewed,” he tweeted just before that, in July 2014. “I am for egalitariasm [sic]. I don’t care, boy, girl, alien.”
And because there are plenty of assholes in the internet that want to see this guy destroyed (including some game journalist), investors backed out and this game might never be finished...

Game looks cool as hell
 

Roa

Member
Well that exclusively gaming website is ran by that guy from the quartering, which is actually making a living by "OMG look at what the SJW/Feminazi's did this time..." video's, and his whole comments section is all about people yelling NPC/SOYBOi/beta's and other nonsense... So I wouldn't take him as a neutral party in this discussion.
Well, before that he was making a living talking about comics, and playing magic the gathering before the very harpies he complains about tried to ruin his career. He's not even been doing this stuff a year. His comment section isn't like that either. You would know both of those things if you watched him.

It's kinda hard to be neutral when they come for you. And if being anti-that isn't neutral, I wouldn't want to be neutral. Going after your aggressor doesn't make you opposingly politically aligned. It just means your aggressively political opposition is awful and being dealt with.

This is exactly what I was thinking haha. Every, "non-PC" website ends up turning into some Alex Jones type stuff, but gamers won't generally see anything wrong with it.
IE:?

Sort of like how most people still watch South Park and haven't realized that it has gotten super political whilst complaining about Family Guy being super political simply because they only see what's different from their own personal beliefs.

They talk about how they want an unbiased source for gaming, but gamers aren't capable of having that until they're unbiased themselves. All they're going to do with making these, "Unbiased" sites is create the same issue in the opposite direction. I tend to immediately disregard someone's opinion when they repeat political talking points, because you can't have a rational debate with someone who keeps repeatedly calling you an NPC or something for disagreeing with them. NPC is a very irrational and ironic word to use in debates because you can use it to establish fake superiority in nearly any circumstances, it can be used to completely disregard legitimate criticism too. It's ironic because the word has been used so much that people using it have become what the word means haha.
….how can a site that doesn't allow politics to be interjected into things have a bias? Right wing or left wing doesn't matter. Unless you find the very idea that some people simply don't want to hear it when dealing with games is a bias. But that honestly just comes off as more of an entitlement to be heard.

There are no gamer audience run websites with the transparency and honest outreach anymore, so how can they turn into alex jones type stuff?? Do people simply not deserve a space to ask for transparency and setup their own market? I mean, the massively overwhelming success of the Indiegogo kinda says it was something people were starving for. People are sick of the anti-gamer rhetoric for simply wanting to break away from ideology being forced on them. They just want to play their games....

Transparency and credibility will decide who is and isn't worth reading. Not just because they write for the corpse of a once high-profile site and abuse it. It's amazing how meritocracy works.

Also, if the far-left want people to stop using the NPC meme, they should start defending their positions from their own conclusions instead of just shaming people who don't accept them at face value. The NPC meme exist because of the people who spout verbatim arguments that have been debunked or at the least argued against before, and show no signs of changing or adapting their view(its not even their ideas), so you can't even have a real conversation with them. (if they arnt trying to deplatform you in the first place) So why bother to keep trying when you can just piss them off in a pretty accurate slimily? We know they are just going to get angry because everything they do is made from emotional appeal. What's irrational is trying to hold a conversation with people like that, who largely rather not have it in the first place and who's arguments are almost entirely pathos. Everything gets a little watered down when its said too much or gets too mainstream usage, but it's not really any less accurate.
 

Roa

Member
With that said, I always found it kind of funny how a lot of gamers fight social justice warriors by being social justice warriors.
Most old movies and TV shows have tons of homophobia and racism in them, but it's not socially accepted in the gaming community to not be okay with that. There's a lot of bias and double standards for gamers and journalists thinking that gamers simply hate these things isn't far fetched at all in the vast majority of cases especially considering diverse people are almost always bullied out of gaming communities.
If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
The only ones that aren't bullied out of it are the ones that give into the trends and sell themselves out by expressing self hatred.
One example is that a woman saying she supports feminism would be unacceptable to gamers, but a woman saying that she doesn't support feminism would be acceptable despite both being the same social justice statement. Women actually have a name for girks that tear other women down for brownie points, that's how often it happens haha.
Oh goodness! One of the tenants of feminisms is that women can make their own choices; except apparently when a women doesn't want to fall in line with it. Not supporting an ideology that claims to represent all women doesn't mean you are self loathing or tearing other women down. It simply means they have no invested interest in the political droning. And the fact that you would shame women with an "with us or against us" mentality for not partaking is a pretty big part of the problem. Implying all women would or should support it but simply don't for fear is just an insult to them. They don't support feminism because, they probably think its full of 💩💩💩💩, are toxic in world view, and they don't like echo chamber indoctrination tactics. And even the ones that do have genuine egalitarian motive, would never call themselves feminist. Too many dirty things have been done in its name.

Gamers don't complain about women being feminist. They complain about feminism being rammed down their throat at the cost of their medium and culture, and by women that are not there to be invested in the games, but clearly to insert there ideological dominance in a largely male space. Because if males are the majority in anything, its clearly because of sexism and not letting women in :rolleyes:

Everywhere I go, to events and jams, and parties, chicks kick it with the dudes all day long, and its pretty cool. Most guys would like to have their GF be more interested in their hobby lol. Idk where you are getting this world view from unless your idea of a gamer is a 12yo who says he is going to 💩💩💩💩 your mom or something lol

@JeffJ hit on this too it seems, so its not just me.

I try to be as unbiased as I can and I am open to all ideas and debates, but I also try to make others see the other side and not disregard it because that's what causes division and Salem witch trials levels of cognitive dissonance. I just personally don't see much open mindedness in the gaming community, and it's very hard to have reasonable conversations with them outside of a moderated area like this.
A lot of them would say the shoe is on the other foot.
The GM community seems to be fairly open minded, but I haven't been here very long so we'll see haha. Usually groups and forums that are properly moderated tend to be relatively wholesome places where you can have good discussions.
I'm pretty sure its more to do with the fact that you are surrounded by people that have problem solving and logic thinking for a hobby more than moderation lol.



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I remember how angry the gaming community got about that last Wolfenstein game having, "liberal propaganda" for being what the series has been ever since it came out, which is a super patriotic, anti-fascist shooter.
pretty sure that was more because they were associating trump and republicans with Nazis in game with modern talking points, but eves... but it was also largely blown out of proportion and a false flag in most cases. I mean, if you want to go that route, game journalist literally marked points down for Far Cry 5 not making the obvious republicans evil and racist enough to show "the real world".



As for feminism, there is a good bit of confusion surrounding it nowadays because there was a lot of anti feminist propaganda that really distorted the image of it. I remember Fox News specifically doing a lot of articles and stuff about feminism and using isolated incidents and saying that was how all feminists acted. See, the strategy to destroying a movement is pretty simple, you have to find the radicals in the group and show them to the public, then you tell them the buzzwords they're using mean things that they don't actually mean, then you get mass confusion and outrage and the whole movement is dead because the non-radicals also use those buzzwords and are roped in with them. I'm a feminist, but I don't use buzzwords, nor do I believe in inequality.
Uhh, idk if you have been keeping very good tabs on radical progressivism lately, but groups like ANTIFA and BAMN are literal terrorist groups now. You have groups blocking schools, feminist going after everyone's job, and violence non-stop. It's gotten to the point where you can't call them a loud minority anymore. It's completely out of control, and THEY have the mainstream platform, because its trendy and new. THAT is propaganda, when dishonest media sources can defend their actions of actual criminal activity or file targeted DMC on content criticisms.

A ton of really bad stuff has happened under feminism. And supposed "good feminist" never rat them out or disassociate. And because they preach from the same broken core values regardless, the same ideologs that bring about this entire unstable group of people in it supposedly are also shared by good feminist, so its safe to assume they are all in this together regardless of the extremity of a "few" cases, and so the entire group is by its very nature, toxic as 💩💩💩💩.

All people do is record their actions, and make it public, because public knowledge is the only way you will destroy this group who has a corporate and political stranglehold, who is truly using propaganda to destruction society to their liking. That's hardly isolated individuals. Its mob mentality. You can't have propaganda when you are the under dog, and by simply showing what comes of the group. Progressives do all this damage to their public image themselves, and they do it with pride too. Remember punching Nazis? (the word that use so liberally) They aren't really people that feel ashamed of their animalistic behavior. You don't have to manufacture or deceive anyone with their actions. They gave people ammo and plenty of reasons to hate them enough already, and lying/exaggerating the happenings would simply ruin the creditability, so there is not really a reason to do it, and every reason not to.
 
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JeffJ

Member
Oh goodness! One of the tenants of feminisms is that women can make their own choices; except apparently when a women doesn't want to fall in line with it. Not supporting an ideology that claims to represent all women doesn't mean you are self loathing or tearing other women down. It simply means they have no invested interest in the political droning. And the fact that you would shame women with an "with us or against us" mentality for not partaking is a pretty big part of the problem. Implying all women would or should support it but simply don't for fear is just an insult to them. They don't support feminism because, they probably think its full of ****, are toxic in world view, and they don't like echo chamber indoctrination tactics. And even the ones that do have genuine egalitarian motive, would never call themselves feminist. Too many dirty things have been done in its name.

Gamers don't complain about women being feminist. They complain about feminism being rammed down their throat at the cost of their medium and culture, and by women that are not there to be invested in the games, but clearly to insert there ideological dominance in a largely male space. Because if males are the majority in anything, its clearly because of sexism and not letting women in :rolleyes:

Everywhere I go, to events and jams, and parties, chicks kick it with the dudes all day long, and its pretty cool. Most guys would like to have their GF be more interested in their hobby lol. Idk where you are getting this world view from unless your idea of a gamer is a 12yo who says he is going to **** your mom or something lol
Just wanted to say that I agree 100% with all three of these paragraphs. Pretty much exactly my own observations, thoughts and experiences as well. I'm very happy to see it's not just me.
 

MissingNo.

Member
Most guys would like to have their GF be more interested in their hobby lol
100 percent agree.

They complain about feminism being rammed down their throat at the cost of their medium and culture
Completely agree with this as well. It seems some developers feel pressured to include more female protagonists or strong female characters when it was never
part of the original design. I'm all for more strong female characters but when it's forced usually it's noticeable and cringe worthy.

Because if males are the majority in anything, its clearly because of sexism and not letting women in :rolleyes:
Now I will say that video games were historically marketed towards boys, not saying most men that play video games now are sexist but I think the numbers
divide with woman and men who play video games is a result to how they were marketed years ago and even more of a result from the origins of the first
computers. back in the 30's till the 50's when computers were becoming a thing woman were pressured to stay at the house. And those who did get jobs
were commonly paid less than men. Back then even if a woman had the skill to have a high level programming job they would most likely be denied
just because she was a woman. This history is why we have this divide now.

In my opinion things are looking up. More and more people are allowed to have hobbies and jobs without being discriminated against or looked down upon.
Obviously it's not perfect, but the passing of time has had an incredible effect. I just think we got some stigmas left from the old world.
 

Roa

Member
100 percent agree.



Completely agree with this as well. It seems some developers feel pressured to include more female protagonists or strong female characters when it was never
part of the original design. I'm all for more strong female characters but when it's forced usually it's noticeable and cringe worthy.



Now I will say that video games were historically marketed towards boys, not saying most men that play video games now are sexist but I think the numbers
divide with woman and men who play video games is a result to how they were marketed years ago and even more of a result from the origins of the first
computers. back in the 30's till the 50's when computers were becoming a thing woman were pressured to stay at the house. And those who did get jobs
were commonly paid less than men. Back then even if a woman had the skill to have a high level programming job they would most likely be denied
just because she was a woman. This history is why we have this divide now.

In my opinion things are looking up. More and more people are allowed to have hobbies and jobs without being discriminated against or looked down upon.
Obviously it's not perfect, but the passing of time has had an incredible effect. I just think we got some stigmas left from the old world.
That's pretty inaccurate actually. Women were actually highly dominant in large parts of programing/turring operations, because men were at war, and they probably made more money than most women.(You can just google Turing machines and see women everywhere) But aside from that, video games of the 70s and 80s that you are talking about are completely detached from that. And most of that stuff was targeted as family entertainment. That never took off well, but they noticed specifically that young boys were taking interest in programing and playing computer games, so they switched their demographic away from being family entertainment systems, and started a more focused market, and it clearly worked.

and by todays standards, women still make up very little of the core gamer audience.(actually owns a console/pc and full released games. not that candy crush/farmville 50/50 number people pull out the ass.) Women make up very little of the developers too. It just comes down to people's interest. Women are more interested now than before largely due to the massive variety of things out there, its just something guys take to more often.
 
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Sn3akyP1xel

Guest
up until about late 2016 people didn't act this way on the internet, and I was more involved with communities back then than I am now.
Spot on, I'm seeing the same. I can't make the content i used to make now because of political correctness and online laws which have been discreatly passed since 2011. It became so tricky to make content to hold anyones attention that I just gave up, and now I see people asking where has all the good content gone.
My media wasn't even personally offensive (or aimed), just highly entertaining slapstick/stupidity. "Yootoob" in perticular has turned into the same as tv almost, marketing, advertising and a means of controlling the direction of information.
As misty said, 'politics has infected itself into art'. How dare people be happy! GTAs use of stereotypes is just downright hilarious, i can't imagine their game without it.
 
Hello everyone, I trust you're all having a wonderful day/night!

Recently I've been thinking about how often there seems to be controversy in the gaming community. I'm not going to mention anything specific, but it honestly seems like game devs have to work around a lot of bigotry in the gaming community or else they'll end up being accused of making a Mary Sue or something like that.

It's really disheartening to see this outrage almost constantly, (I'm sure most of you know about the most recent one.) I actually am kind of afraid of creating any character outside of social norms without being labeled and mocked for it. :( on the bright side, I'll probably never make anything well known enough for people to be outraged about it. :cool:

Do any of you ever think about these kinds of things? Like, I know that you should definitely be careful about what characters you're creating because you can certainly make a character that is objectively offensive and wrong. There are tons of characters that are completely innocent and the gaming community will often go ape over it because that character helps represent a community.

Part of me also sort of thinks this is a passing trend, but who knows! It was less than 20 years ago that Courage The Cowardly Dog was canceled for representation, so maybe we've just got more work to do. ;)

Hopefully we can have a civil discussion about this, but if mods think this isn't an appropriate topic, or if it gets out of hand then please do your duty. <3
I come from "the art world/ academia" and I can tell you that there has been a real chilling effect regarding notions of freedom of expression, etc... Most of my undergrads worried about the same things. I'm not going to advise that you produce whatever you want under the sun no matter who it offends, perhaps falling on your own sword as a result, but you only have one life. You have a chance to put something into the world.
 
I'm glad this forum is still mostly sane, at least. Half of these innocuous, friendly posts would get you publicly crucified on Twitter, Tumblr, and the like...

Sabrina suggested that our community was good here because of mods, too, but I don't think so at all. I think our community is good because we're all programmers, artists, musicians, or game designers. On average, we're going to trend significantly smarter and more reasonable than the general population, hahah. The mods here are all cool, but being a mod on the GMC is like being a soldier stationed in Hawaii. :')
 
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Sabrina Stoakes

Guest
Okay there is a TON to reply to here so I'll just reply to some specific stuff haha
….how can a site that doesn't allow politics to be interjected into things have a bias? Right wing or left wing doesn't matter. Unless you find the very idea that some people simply don't want to hear it when dealing with games is a bias. But that honestly just comes off as more of an entitlement to be heard.
This I will have to see, I have very little faith in any website that says it's, "anti-PC". One America News is supposedly anti-bias and it's essentially the right wing version of CNN haha. What a lot of people don't understand is that freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences. People will always be the decider in what is socially acceptable and what isn't socially acceptable regardless of what some media site says. So if these people taking, "Anti-PC" stances are being punished by the people for their actions then that's entirely on the people. The reason people tend to listen to news sites is simple, it's because that's human nature, people want to feel connected and fit in, and they will change their opinions and feelings about things to fit their surroundings. That's why gamers feel vastly different about things than some mainstream crowd like casual gamers. I'm not sure if you understand what I'm getting at here, but maybe a question would better sum it up, do you believe that you personally would be against PC culture if you were part of a more mainstream crowd? Btw I agree with a good bit of things you have said here, I just don't trust any news sites to do the right thing hahaha
The NPC meme exist because of the people who spout verbatim arguments that have been debunked or at the least argued against before
The thing about the NPC meme that I personally don't like about it is that everyone I've personally seen use it, do exactly what they complain about. It just feels very absent minded and my anti-mainstream-obscure mentality forces me to not like it. I just like for my debating to be more nuanced than that, and I don't like using buzzwords to make my points. I also don't like it because it's a passing fad and essentially a rehashed version of, "Normie." It could have been a clever thing to use had it not been overused, but maybe I'm just being nit-picky.
Oh goodness! One of the tenants of feminisms is that women can make their own choices; except apparently when a women doesn't want to fall in line with it. Not supporting an ideology that claims to represent all women doesn't mean you are self loathing or tearing other women down. It simply means they have no invested interest in the political droning. And the fact that you would shame women with an "with us or against us" mentality for not partaking is a pretty big part of the problem. Implying all women would or should support it but simply don't for fear is just an insult to them. They don't support feminism because, they probably think its full of ****, are toxic in world view, and they don't like echo chamber indoctrination tactics. And even the ones that do have genuine egalitarian motive, would never call themselves feminist. Too many dirty things have been done in its name.
The word I was referring to was, "pick-me," and to clarify: it doesn't apply to women simply disagreeing with other women. It's usually a term for women that attack, belittle, or get men to gang up on other women with the intention of making men like them more. Women consider this an issue because it isn't authentic at all. Like, if they legitimately believed the things they were saying then that would be fine and no one would care, but you can always tell if someone is doing something because they believe in it, or if they are just doing it because it's trendy by looking at how they are saying it. Generally if someone is repeating tons of buzzwords and sounds identical to literally everyone else in that social clique, they aren't being very honest with who they are and are just simply trying too hard to fit in (Which is something that has become may more of an issue recently.) I have a pretty significant background in Psychology and know factually that the human mind is capable of way more individuality than what I see on the daily basis. This doesn't mean I'm left or right wing though. According to my political compass results I have a right lean and am pretty low into the libertarian area, so if I come off as left-wing it's mostly because I just care a lot about making sure that everyone isn't blindly following trends that make them less of an individual. Honestly, that's a huge part of who I am, and I typically will question why someone believes something even if I agree with them, so I hope you don't take any of this as me vehemently disagreeing with you cause you make a lot of sense haha
A lot of them would say the shoe is on the other foot.
Definitely, but I would say it's on both feet. However, you generally see less willingness to talk about things from mainstream crowds, so I guess there is a degree of validity there. Gamers will absolutely terrorize you for disagreeing with them when they're mad, but I have still had good conversations with them sometimes. I think you make a decent point about them being more of the way they are simply because they're just tired of constantly having to disagree and debate with people, but I think there is still validity to people not liking a lot of the gaming community. Like, I know jokes are jokes, and jokes will always be subjective, but I have been in waaaaaay too many gaming groups on Facebook that post things that are just absolutely disgusting haha. I'm sure it's done simply to be edgy in some cases, but it doesn't help their image much, and I've seen way too many cases where people will harass like trans people and tell them they look like the opposite gender they identify as for literally no reason, like, those people can comment on a post about anything, agreeing with the post, saying nothing that could even remotely be considered offensive and that will happen to them. I just find stuff like that to be so ignorant and unnecessary, it's what has made people think that ALL gamers are like that, and they're the kinds of people that give the rest of us gamers bad names. Go check out any gaming hell group that isn't Kirby Hell (It's way too wholesome) and you'll see what I mean almost immediately. Of course, this doesn't apply to just gamers though, cause Facebook is an absolute cesspool of homophobia, transphobia, and racism. I've seen way too many comment sections where people just fly off the handles about a gay guy wearing makeup or something in a video that has absolutely nothing political in it. It's quite literally hating them because they exist. Which I think is also a trend, because it makes no logical sense to be angry at these people for existing. Maybe it's a loud minority, but what you said about feminism further down in your reply applies here too, and that's simply that I see virtually no one in the gaming community making any effort to not support the way these people treat others and when someone does come up and defend someone being treated poorly, they're mocked and vilified for it, which is a pretty strong indication of how the others feel. If the gaming community wants to distance themselves from being called the things they're called, then they need to focus on games more, and not doing things like I mentioned because it just fuels the fire haha
Uhh, idk if you have been keeping very good tabs on radical progressivism lately, but groups like ANTIFA and BAMN are literal terrorist groups now. You have groups blocking schools, feminist going after everyone's job, and violence non-stop. It's gotten to the point where you can't call them a loud minority anymore. It's completely out of control, and THEY have the mainstream platform, because its trendy and new. THAT is propaganda, when dishonest media sources can defend their actions of actual criminal activity or file targeted DMC on content criticisms.

A ton of really bad stuff has happened under feminism. And supposed "good feminist" never rat them out or disassociate. And because they preach from the same broken core values regardless, the same ideologs that bring about this entire unstable group of people in it supposedly are also shared by good feminist, so its safe to assume they are all in this together regardless of the extremity of a "few" cases, and so the entire group is by its very nature, toxic as ****.

All people do is record their actions, and make it public, because public knowledge is the only way you will destroy this group who has a corporate and political stranglehold, who is truly using propaganda to destruction society to their liking. That's hardly isolated individuals. Its mob mentality. You can't have propaganda when you are the under dog, and by simply showing what comes of the group. Progressives do all this damage to their public image themselves, and they do it with pride too. Remember punching Nazis? (the word that use so liberally) They aren't really people that feel ashamed of their animalistic behavior. You don't have to manufacture or deceive anyone with their actions. They gave people ammo and plenty of reasons to hate them enough already, and lying/exaggerating the happenings would simply ruin the creditability, so there is not really a reason to do it, and every reason not to.
Most of what I have seen from ANTIFA personally is that they like to get Black Metal shows canceled, but that's mostly because Black Metal has a lot of roots in Nazism (Not the liberal definition of it, I'm talking these people straight up keep the flag in their rooms and worship in LOL.) ANTIFA has been pretty quiet recently so I think they're just not as trendy anymore. They're authoritarian left wingers, more specifically, "Tankies" who believe that America can be changed with a violent revolution. One thing you should probably be aware of is that ANTIFA doesn't like liberals, in fact, Tankies make it an absolute point that they hate liberals and want them dead too. So yeah, they would be a terrorist group, but so are all the incidents we have seen recently of right wingers shooting up schools, gay-bars, and churches. People just need to C H I L L. I don't believe in authoritarianism at all, and I find it so strange that both the authoritarian left and right think they're on the side of revolution. These Tankies and Fascists have no idea what their ideologies have done to the world, the millions of innocent people that have died because of them, and the scary thing is that I see a lot of young people picking between the two as if that's the only two options. I blame the identity politics for this mostly because if you're right wing then you're not allowed to have left wing views, and if you're left wing then you're not allowed to have right wing views. If you do then you don't fit into either side and get shamed for it. Chris Wallace from Fox News is a pretty good example of this, he's right wing, he believes in a lot of right wing opinions, but he doesn't agree with everything right wingers say and gets attacked for it A LOT. I don't agree with him on most things, but I have huge respect for him for not giving into identity politics. Same goes for Shepherd Smith who is also from Fox News, he's a democrat, but he has some right wing opinions about things, and I respect him for it, the rest of Fox News hates him and probably wishes he was dead, but it's still nice to hear a voice of reason from a vehemently biased outlet. My Dad insists on watching Fox News constantly, and I don't watch the news, so I can't say the same for any of the other media outlets because I simply haven't seen them enough to know, but the probability of it tells me that it's probably the case for every other outlet.
In a perfect world we can have both dragons crown and dream daddy
Can I be a feminist and find absolutely nothing wrong with Lollipop Chainsaw or is that against the law? ;Three Thinking Emojis;
Completely agree with this as well. It seems some developers feel pressured to include more female protagonists or strong female characters when it was never
part of the original design. I'm all for more strong female characters but when it's forced usually it's noticeable and cringe worthy.
I honestly kind of miss the days of well written lead characters like Dante from DMC was, I would be definitely open to more female and LGBT characters if they didn't do it in a way that is offensive to women and the LGBT community, as a girl who loves other girls, games like Life Is Strange makes me feel uhhhhh not sure what the word for it is, but the representation is awful like I DO NOT ACT THAT WAY REEEE. I like to use Dante as an example of a well written character though because he's canonically bisexual (albeit he's entirely just talk aside from DmC Dante which we don't speak of.) Tons of people don't know that he's that way because it was never something that was throw directly at you in a way that felt out of place and weird, it makes me happy to see because he acts like a normal cocky son of a legendary demon, as all sons of legendary demons do.
 
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Sabrina Stoakes

Guest
I'm glad this forum is still mostly sane, at least. Half of these innocuous, friendly posts would get you publicly crucified on Twitter, Tumblr, and the like...

Sabrina suggested that our community was good here because of mods, too, but I don't think so at all. I think our community is good because we're all programmers, artists, musicians, or game designers. On average, we're going to trend significantly smarter and more reasonable than the general population, hahah. The mods here are all cool, but being a mod on the GMC is like being a soldier stationed in Hawaii. :')
Yeah I think I said somewhere on here that programmers were sort of like artists and that artists and stuff usually are pretty open minded about stuff. I love you guys, this is one of the only communities that you can disagree with people in and not have a huge mess of a thread haha
 

MissingNo.

Member
That's pretty inaccurate actually. Women were actually highly dominant in large parts of programing/turring operations, because men were at war, and they probably made more money than most women.(You can just google Turing machines and see women everywhere)
Okay I might have had some misinformation but at least some parts of the US what I said was true because my grandparents and great grandparents would frequently mention
how women were denied programming jobs or anything that even remotely required high degrees of intelligence. My great grandfather worked with the government to help
disassemble and reverse engineer enemy rockets. And when he was alive he would say about how women in his line of work were only welcome to do basic assistant type jobs.
So seeing my grandparents speak about these things gave me the perception that it must have been common back then.

video games of the 70s and 80s that you are talking about are completely detached from that. And most of that stuff was targeted as family entertainment.
I can't speak for the rest of the world but as someone in the US who has seen MANY 80's and 90's commercials, video games were clearly marketed towards boys.
In the Atari and before era yes video games were marketed more to families but in the US that all changed once Nintendo came around.

Here is the first US NES commercial:

I once seen a documentary years ago about the NES and how Nintendo early decided on how to market the NES and they decided to target boys.
I can't find this documentary but if I do I will share it with you.

Also just so you know I'm not saying there is anything wrong with marketing towards a certain gender but unfortunately in this case it has lead to some of today's perceptions
about who video gaming is for.

and by todays standards, women still make up very little of the core gamer audience.(actually owns a console/pc and full released games.
Yeah I agree but its still more than it was before.

Women are more interested now than before largely due to the massive variety of things out there
I agree to an extent but I also think it's because of how marketing is different now and how old stigmas are starting to shed. Honestly I think if we give it 30 years
we will see many more woman playing games that meet your criteria, I just think cultural pressures have to ease up more.

its just something guys take to more often.
And your probably are right I just don't think the divide in potential is as much as you think it is. I think given time we will see a lot more.

Heck even nowadays I'm shocked just how much woman seem into gaming, in my circle of friends around my age almost all the girls I know play games like
you specified, a lot of them like to play games like Mario Kart, Final Fantasy and Undertale to name a few and I know several who like to play God of War.
Now for some of them gaming is not their main hobby but they still enjoy games so it still counts.
and the one girl I know has a circle of friends that are mostly girls and they all play games as well. And no not candy crush and such.

I have personally played with several girls in many games such as the Smash Bros series and Destroy all Humans 2 in local multiplayer.
Had I been born earlier and tried to do this in the late 80's or 90's I doubt I would have had as much luck.
 
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but up until about late 2016 people didn't act this way on the internet
Just saw this. I feel like up until 2016 you were just lucky. I've bounced around chat rooms, forums, and communities since the early 00s and one thing I learnt was people have always been garbage. Usually the larger the community or forum, the more garbage there is. Even the smaller ones have one or two bad eggs, but the one or two here are pretry easy to ignore at least.
 

Fanatrick

Member
I'm of an unpopular opinion that nothing really changed in terms of people being toxic since the days of early instant-messaging, it's just people turning to snowflakes and getting offended by pretty much anything these days. It's always easier to play the victim than playing fair. Honestly if you take close to heart what a random person online that you never met before says to you, work on your confidence.
 
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Sabrina Stoakes

Guest
I'm of an unpopular opinion that nothing really changed in terms of people being toxic since the days of early instant-messaging, it's just people turning to snowflakes and getting offended by pretty much anything these days. It's always easier to play the victim than playing fair. Honestly if you take close to heart what a random person online that you never met before says to you, work on your confidence.
tbh my confidence is virtually nonexistent :( So you may be on to something there haha
 
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Sabrina Stoakes

Guest
Just saw this. I feel like up until 2016 you were just lucky. I've bounced around chat rooms, forums, and communities since the early 00s and one thing I learnt was people have always been garbage. Usually the larger the community or forum, the more garbage there is. Even the smaller ones have one or two bad eggs, but the one or two here are pretry easy to ignore at least.
This is possible. I was just becoming an adult in 2016 so maybe I just didn't transition into adulthood well haha the world is a very dark place and I've spent pretty much the last few years coping with knowing there's nothing you can do about it.
 
Don't worry, I've technically been an adult for much longer and I still haven't really properly transitioned into it.
The world isn't a dark place, it's just full of idiots. Some are well meaning idiots at least, and most are harmless, but the bad ones are the loudest and that can make things seem worse than they actually are.
I don't pretend to understand all these problems people are having today, part of me does sort of believe that sometimes people are just being a bit sensitive and are demanding respect instead of trying to earn it, making up all these new weird rules to follow and new things to be outraged by. But at the same time I personally know a lot of people going through various things and I know their back stories enough to understand why they are like this. Things were different for me, I had to just learn to deal with things myself and not let things get to me, change my attitude and outlook, frame things more positively. I've met more nice people that 💩💩💩💩 people on and offline, and if the 💩💩💩💩 people were really in the majority like people like to think, then things would be muuuuch much worse than they are(and things are mostly pretty sweet at the moment).
 
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Arconious

Guest
...One that sticks a bit closer to home for me is Baldur's Gate: Dragonspear. As a longterm fan of the game (it being my favorite game of all time since it came out in 1998), I witnessed firsthand how this generation of extremist so called "SJW's" ruin art with their personal views - as in - external to the art itself. A few years ago, a company did a sequel to the original game from 1998, and they hired a new writer. This writer said in an interview how she was in fact a SJW, and proud of it (her own words), and then went on to criticize the original Baldur's Gate for elements of misogyny, and how she was going to "correct" it with this new game. At that point the alarm bells were already at full red alert.
Hey Jeff, I saw this reply of yours and had a few questions/comments to help me understand better.

Among one of the things she ended up doing in the game, was putting in a character who happened to be transgendered. ...the worst part was that there was literally no reason behind it, and how this writer basically boiled the character's entire personality down to "Hi, we've just met, so you should know: I AM TRANSGENDER! YOU GOT A F-CKING PROBLEM WITH THAT, MOTHERF-CKER!?"...
So for posterity's sake, here is an image of the dialogue bit you are discussing:

From what I could research and find, this is the exact dialogue that reveals she is transgender -- and in order to get to it, you had to progress through at least one (maybe two?) prior piece of dialogue that definitely didn't shout out she is transgender. Do you really find this that overt and heavy-handed?

...it was so shoehorned and dumbed down to the point where actual transgender people came out and told how they actually did find this incredibly bluntly handled character offensive.
There were also transgender people coming out and supporting the choice to include the character and the way she was realized:
Katherine Cross said:
Of course, transgender people aren't a monolith, and I recall reading different criticisms of the character -- but many targeted the fact that the character was a mere side character that could be skipped entirely, lamenting a missed opportunity for a fully realized and fleshed out transgender character.

The problem here was not the attempt at diversity per say, but the fact that everyone could tell how it was simply just stuffed in there for diversity's sake - not because it fitted in the story or served any sort of purpose, or had any sort of meaning.
I'm kind of confused at this sentiment. Do you not include things in your game on a whim or a hunch ever? Do you never include easter eggs or references, perhaps ones completely esoteric? Do you not ever have elements that are there strictly to build the world? To fill it with life or visuals?

It wasn't even handled slightly gracefully through dialogue, only managing to offend the people that this writer so ineptly tried to represent.
Again, I'm really not sure why you find the dialogue so egregious. It's a completely innocuous couple of lines.

The point with this little anecdote, is that the problem is never diversity - it's diversity for diversity's sake. We're all nerds and consumers, and at the end of the day, what matters most is an enjoyable, honest piece of art with some level of integrity.
Fun for fun's sake; art for art's sake; diversity for diversity's sake. What's the difference?

You say that what matters most is an "enjoyable, honest piece of art with some level of integrity". What if having "diversity for diversity's sake" helped to make the product an "enjoyable, honest piece of art" for some?

The moment that external viewpoints that has nothing to do with the actual in game (or in-movie or whatever) universe shines through, it not only breaks all immersion, it also serves as a huge disrespect to the consumer.
I can't say I agree with this idea, or at least I don't experience the same. Numerous works have been written by their authors with explicit purpose and ideas in mind that they intended to convey, sometimes overtly and other times more subtly. To recognize where the author's voice lies in the subject matter does not necessarily break the immersion, nor do I feel that the inclusion thereof is tantamount to 'huge disrespect' for the consumer.
 

JeffJ

Member
From what I could research and find, this is the exact dialogue that reveals she is transgender -- and in order to get to it, you had to progress through at least one (maybe two?) prior piece of dialogue that definitely didn't shout out she is transgender. Do you really find this that overt and heavy-handed?
To me, it's not so much the dialogue in itself. It's the combination of all the things wrong with it. Beyond what I already mentioned in my original post, here's another fun little thing;
You're left with nothing but "Thank you, that was so interesting" and "Bye". What if my character happens to be chaotic evil? Clearly an option for such an alignment in a context like this would never exist, because safespace is important, even in a completely fictional fantasy realm.

Of course, transgender people aren't a monolith, and I recall reading different criticisms of the character -- but many targeted the fact that the character was a mere side character that could be skipped entirely, lamenting a missed opportunity for a fully realized and fleshed out transgender character.
What I read here is that, because it's just a side character, it does not matter how poorly it was handled or stuffed in for nothing more than to please the writer's personal socialpolitical viewpoints. That may work for other people, but to me, it messes with the consistency of the world, and it also breaks the immersion because it is handled so poorly that the writer's external views are so vividly clear that you see the writer rather than the character.

I'm kind of confused at this sentiment. Do you not include things in your game on a whim or a hunch ever? Do you never include easter eggs or references, perhaps ones completely esoteric? Do you not ever have elements that are there strictly to build the world? To fill it with life or visuals?
Yes, of course. But again... It has to actually be consistent with the world. Are you familiar with Forgotten Realms? I mentioned in my previous post that the very existence of such a character doesn't even make any sense, since this is a world where you can do so many other things than what we see in our own current world. It does not fit with the setting, established lore or anything else, and that's a problem.

Fun for fun's sake; art for art's sake; diversity for diversity's sake. What's the difference?

You say that what matters most is an "enjoyable, honest piece of art with some level of integrity". What if having "diversity for diversity's sake" helped to make the product an "enjoyable, honest piece of art" for some?
If that's what it did for some, that's great. This was obviously not the case for the majority, however (myself included) as very evident by the hot mess that Overhaul Games landed in. Also, that writer was let go after that project. Anyone who felt that way seems to be very much in the minority, and I completely understand why the majority reacted like it did. I'm repeating myself now, but my overall point is, as I've already mentioned; when socialpolitical viewpoints are shoehorned into a universe where it has absolutely no context, relevance or place in general just to appease the writer, then yes, that does mess with the integrity and honesty of the art - very much so. And people reacted accordingly.

I can't say I agree with this idea, or at least I don't experience the same. Numerous works have been written by their authors with explicit purpose and ideas in mind that they intended to convey, sometimes overtly and other times more subtly. To recognize where the author's voice lies in the subject matter does not necessarily break the immersion, nor do I feel that the inclusion thereof is tantamount to 'huge disrespect' for the consumer.
There's a huge difference between writing your own stuff for personal amusement, and then being hired to work on a very old and very established setting. In this case, these were long time fans of a very established universe, some for more than 30 years, who found issue with the fact that a completely new writer came in with no experience or personal ties to the universe or the franchise, and who made a mess of things by shoehorning in her own views, which in this case were completely out of context. You can be a writer and inject your own views, but you need to keep in mind what it is you're writing for.
 

Niels

Member
A bigger problem IMO is that old mediums like the news or papers seem to have political agenda too...
 

Ninety

Member
everything has a bias, you're just trained to view stuff that reflects your status quo as "neutral". there is no such thing as neutral.

also it's very interesting to me that there are only certain things that are ever deemed as "pushing politics". you can have games with pro-American, anti-Russian or anti-Middle Eastern viewpoints, games that push imperial propaganda, games that are pro-torture or interventionist. (see every COD-style FPS.) you can have characters openly discussing world events and taking a particular side or interpretation.

but no. black and gay characters even slightly discussing their backstory is the problem.

i suspect for a lot of gamers, and primarily Americans, the stuff i mentioned doesn't register as "pushing politics" because you think it's normal.
 
i suspect for a lot of gamers, and primarily Americans, the stuff i mentioned doesn't register as "pushing politics" because you think it's normal.
I mean...it's easier to see someone pushing politics when they're trying to change the status quo than when they either don't care either way or want the status quo to stay the same.
If a game features a straight white dude, his white girlfriend, and his white friends, you can't tell whether the person making the game is a white supremacist trying to insidiously normalize straight white people as the default in society or just a developer making a game without thinking about it, because straight white people are a huge chunk of America, and it's not unusual to see large groups of them hanging out together. If you have a game from Ubisoft where the group of five friends trying to resist the evil government represents four different ethnicities, two different sexualities, and three different genders, it's a little more obvious what their intentions were.

The other examples you mentioned....well, yeah. The US has been at least semi-enemies with countries in the Middle East and Russia for.....fifty years? More? When you're making a military game, it's not completely outlandish to imagine America going to war with them, which is why is doesn't come off as pushing an agenda. If Treyarch set their next game in Mexico, having you fight back against an evil horde of Mexicans trying to steal America's land, that would be seen as pushing an agenda. :p
 
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Lonewolff

Guest
also it's very interesting to me that there are only certain things that are ever deemed as "pushing politics". you can have games with pro-American, anti-Russian or anti-Middle Eastern viewpoints, games that push imperial propaganda, games that are pro-torture or interventionist. (see every COD-style FPS.) you can have characters openly discussing world events and taking a particular side or interpretation.
I watched Top Gun for the fifty third time recently and I found it interesting that they never mentioned the nationality of the enemies at any time. Often being referred to as 'the other side'. I was amazed at how they handled that without being obvious and being neutral at the same time.

Ask five different people who the enemies were and you could well get five different answers.
 

Ninety

Member
@The Sorcerer Yeah, Dunkirk did that as well, and I really liked it. You never even see German soldiers until the very end, and even then they're out of focus. Gives the movie a very paranoid feel.

@RichHopelessComposer just because you're used to an ideology doesn't make it not ideological, that's the exact point of the post you're replying to
 
@RichHopelessComposer just because you're used to an ideology doesn't make it not ideological, that's the exact point of the post you're replying to
I didn't say it did, lol. You mused that "it was funny that only certain things were viewed as pushing politics," in your last post. My last post explained the (obvious) reason why: when an artist plainly depicts the status quo, his politics become inscrutable, thus unobtrusive to the audience. If I went to Paris and painted exactly what I saw, who would be able to say what my politics were? Nobody, and everyone would be able to enjoy my painting without thinking about what I was thinking when I painted it.

If I did the same painting but replaced all the white Parisians with Muslims, the picture changes. Some political or ideological message has been brought to the surface, and viewers are going to have a harder time just enjoying the painting for its looks. People that enjoy paintings might enjoy thinking about my message. People playing shooting games don't usually want developers trying to preach at them while they're blowing people's heads off with shotguns.
 
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Ninety

Member
Sure, but the way this debate is always framed is that these black/gay/whatever characters are "pushing politics". Again, a character shouting "America first! Let's kill those terrorists!" is incredibly political, and I would say exactly reflects a "developer trying to preach at them while they're blowing people's heads off with shotguns". Anywhere else in the world, the politics of that statement is way more visible, and registers as straight up propaganda. Your assumptions about what constitutes the "true" or "normal" experience are filtered through your cultural context. That's the point from my original post that you're still missing. Do you think I don't understand that when depicting the status quo "politics become inscrutable"? That's the exact point I'm trying to explain to you.

So let's return to the original premise: is it that you people simply don't think that black and gay characters incidentally mentioning their experiences is something that happens in real life? Because let me assure you that these games are 100% reflecting reality when they do. Or are you suggesting that games should just cater to a white, straight, American audience, and that openly political messages that these groups are used to are totally fine?

If you're not okay with "politics" in games, that's fine. But you can't have it both ways.
 
Do you think I don't understand that when depicting the status quo "politics become inscrutable"?
Judging by your last few posts, yes...
is it that you people
Ugh, who are "you people," lol
simply don't think that black and gay characters incidentally mentioning their experiences is something that happens in real life? Because let me assure you that these games are 100% reflecting reality when they do. Or are you suggesting that games should just cater to a white, straight, American audience, and that openly political messages that these groups are used to are totally fine?
Neither? Thank you for assuring me that black and gay people have feelings, lol. I've never met either before!

You're not understanding my points at all. This would be easier if we were talking face to face. We're just going to go in circles here.
 

Ninety

Member
@RichHopelessComposer

No, I understand you just fine.

If you're saying that American military propaganda doesn't register as political to gamers, but black and gay people talking about their experiences does, you're making a very clear statement about who you think gamers are.
 
A

Arconious

Guest
Sorry for coming back to this so late.

To me, it's not so much the dialogue in itself. It's the combination of all the things wrong with it.
I was hoping you would expand on "all of the things wrong with it", hence including the dialogue. I suppose I can be more clear with my response to what you originally said: the character does not speak to me at all like, "Hi, we've just met, so you should know: I AM TRANSGENDER! YOU GOT A F-CKING PROBLEM WITH THAT, MOTHERF-CKER!?" -- and I think it shows a very obvious bias on your part that you continue to see the character and inclusion thereof as exclusively from that angle.

What's even more curious to me, is how you keep referencing things the author said/did *outside of the game*. I bet if you hadn't spent time seeking out the author and articles thereof, when you first approached said character, you'd not have the reaction you seem to be having now. I think it is precisely because you've discovered the intentions that you've decided the end result is now negative. And if your reaction to that character sans knowledge of the creator/author would end up being equivalent... then well, I'll touch on that in a bit.

You're left with nothing but "Thank you, that was so interesting" and "Bye". What if my character happens to be chaotic evil? Clearly an option for such an alignment in a context like this would never exist, because safespace is important, even in a completely fictional fantasy realm.
I guarantee that game does not cover or allow every conceivable "chaotic evil" action. Why are you convinced the lack of completion of the character is absolutely because "safespace is important", instead of myriads of other factors such as scope, time, labor power, etc.?

What I read here is that, because it's just a side character, it does not matter how poorly it was handled or stuffed in for nothing more than to please the writer's personal socialpolitical viewpoints.
Again, why are you convinced this is absolute case, that it's solely for the author's sake? Trans people exist, some trans people like to play games -- the inclusion could be for their sake, too, no?

This also ties into what Ninety talked about earlier -- there are instances all throughout that game that were put in place by the writer via the criterion you set ("pleasing the personal socialpolitical viewpoints"), but because they are viewpoints you either agree with or acknowledge exist as the status quo, you refuse to see it as pushing those viewpoints.

That may work for other people, but to me, it messes with the consistency of the world, and it also breaks the immersion because it is handled so poorly that the writer's external views are so vividly clear that you see the writer rather than the character.
Much of your contention with the author lies in external views that you *discovered and sourced from outside the game* -- but you're insisting it's clear as day via the character. We have the dialogue in front of us, which pretty much represents the whole of the character, and I'm not seeing this author touting SJW speak through it -- if "it's not the dialogue", then what exactly was "handled so poorly"? In what ways is the text reflecting the writer more-so than a character, particularly in a way that harms "the integrity and honesty of the art"?

Yes, of course. But again... It has to actually be consistent with the world. Are you familiar with Forgotten Realms? I mentioned in my previous post that the very existence of such a character doesn't even make any sense, since this is a world where you can do so many other things than what we see in our own current world. It does not fit with the setting, established lore or anything else, and that's a problem.
First, Ed Greenwood stated in no uncertain terms that the Forgotten Realms universe has room for transgender people. (Link to Facebook post here)

Second, this is where I'll expand on what I mentioned earlier: Why, exactly, does a trans person not make any sense in a fantasy world? That "magic items like gender-reversing girdles" exist in the universe would not preclude the existence of transgender people.

You're telling me that transgender people, an actual reality of this world, have no possible reason for existing in a high fantasy setting that includes humanity and numerous facets of it's peoples and cultures? I simply do not understand how you can feel unimmersed by seeing a transgender person in a fantasy setting rife with dragons and undead.

---

At the core, it seems you are arguing two things:

1) "when socialpolitical viewpoints are shoehorned into a universe where it has absolutely no context, relevance or place in general just to appease the writer, then yes, that does mess with the integrity and honesty of the art"
2) The scenario with the Dragonspear game represents an example of the first point.

Put simply my questions:
1) How does this character/content specifically have "absolutely no context, relevance or place in general"?
2) Why are you convinced the reason was exclusively "just to appease the writer", instead of attempting to appeal to people who aren't you?
3) How did this character/content mess with the integrity of the game and story, directly?
 
M

Misty

Guest
I unno. I'm not really a fan of longwinded grindy rpgs. So my knowledge about this game is limited to this topic only. But I watched a video and it seemed memey like a troll game. Got nothing against troll games but people were buying this as a serious game.

Trans people were in Smash bros and Mario, and many other games, and noone made a fuss except concerned nannies and parents. Mainly because the Japanese mindset. Either you have it, or you don't. Obvious whoever made this RPG wasn't having the Japan mindset. So there is a fuss. The details were explained, but I will go over again.

its lazy writing. Its just thrown in like a meme. Apparently in the rpg there are gender changing belts. So in that world being trans would be a casual occurence. It wouldn't be a drama or having to announce it to people. Ie if someone was trans, they would just get a belt. There wouldn't be a long drawn out drama about it. So the context of the dialogue doesn't make sense.

The other thing it feels patronizing to trans people. Here is what i mean. Imagine its the special olypmics and regular olympics. And all these bodybuilders are doing basketball. And some kid in a wheelchair is told to be on the sidelines. Then halfway through the game is given a cookie and told to play on the court for 4 seconds. Thats the equivelent of what this is. A hastily thrown together character with no effort or dedication put into it. That is in the game for about 4 seconds. Its like telling trans people they are just on the sidelines not even important characters. Its like being treated like a little kid not allowed to compete with the big people. It would be different if it was Perfect Dark Zero. And Joanna Dark revealed she was born male. Then it would actually be a trans character not just something slapped together thoughtlessly in 2 seconds.
 
I think Misty might have it?

I don't know enough about the game's world to tell. I don't remember there being any outrage over Birdo, Poison, or that trans (I think?) character from Nier everyone loved, though. I don't buy the "gamers are gross bigots" line. I really think it's more "gamers are sick of virtue signaling and preaching."

For this example, I think I would've actually just thought "oh, neat!" I'm not invested in this game's lore, though. If it actually feels out of place, I'd probably notice it too, and wouldn't appreciate it. I wouldn't bother complaining about it, though! It's such a small piece of the game, and developers thoughts and ideas are going to leak into games *sometimes,* hahah! I don't mind a writer going off-brand a *little* for stuff like this. I know I'm not going to make my game as "perfect" as I can by scrubbing out everything I want to say in service of a perfectly cohesive world or whatever. I don't expect other devs to do so, either. We all have to enjoy what we're making.
 
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A

Arconious

Guest
its lazy writing. Its just thrown in like a meme. Apparently in the rpg there are gender changing belts. So in that world being trans would be a casual occurence. It wouldn't be a drama or having to announce it to people. Ie if someone was trans, they would just get a belt. There wouldn't be a long drawn out drama about it. So the context of the dialogue doesn't make sense.
This is equivalent to arguing that because food exists, hunger wouldn't be a thing, no? Just because there existed a gender changing belt in that universe doesn't mean that everyone has access to such items or magic.

The other thing it feels patronizing to trans people.
I acknowledged earlier there were criticisms of the representation as a missed opportunity. The difference between those criticisms and the attitudes reflected here are the conclusions drawn: they weren't saying that because the trans character wasn't perfect that "the integrity and honesty of the art" was harmed or that the author put in "no effort or dedication" and all of the consumers have been "disrespected". Instead, the goal is to offer ways to improve upon the character and how to best represent people going forward -- not to admonish the author or game for even daring to try.
 
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M

Misty

Guest
This is equivalent to arguing that because food exists, hunger wouldn't be a thing, no? Just because there existed a gender changing belt in that universe doesn't mean that everyone has access to such items or magic.
Never played the game so I am not an expert of the belt. Still there are some things that still do not add up. If she was not wearing the belt to get a sex-change...how did she get a sex-change? This is a world where technology doesn't exist and female hormones don't exist. Which means that she must have got a sex-change from a mage. Meaning that sex-changes are probably very painless and also common in that world.

I acknowledged earlier there were criticisms of the representation as a missed opportunity. The difference between those criticisms and the attitudes reflected here are the conclusions drawn: they weren't saying that because the trans character wasn't perfect that "the integrity and honesty of the art" was harmed or that the author put in "no effort or dedication" and all of the consumers have been "disrespected". Instead, the goal is to offer ways to improve upon the character and how to best represent people going forward -- not to admonish the author or game for even daring to try.
Not sure what you mean. But I do know the Japanese mindset. Japan has been putting transgender characters in games since the 90's. And nobody made a fuss about it. Well no gamers made a fuss, only soccer moms and concerned parents made a fuss. Gamers only started making a fuss when Americans started doing it recently. So why do Americans irritate people? Because Team America World Police. America thinks they have the only morality in the world. And they bully everyone to obey their morality. Probably the person who wrote the trans character, probably would have been one of those soccer mom's complaining about transwomen in the 90's. People don't like being bullied around by moral police.

And their depiction of transwomen is shallow and patronizing to trans people. They don't put a trans character as a main character. But a side character that most people won't even notice. It's like a little kid being told they can't even play special Olympics. Told they are not even worthy of being a major character. And the dialogue is fourth wall breaking. It seems ripped out of an SJW lecture. Not like an actual geniune medieval setting. If I was the writer and wanted to put a trans character. I would have put a bounty hunter that was on an epic quest to get the girdle of gender. And that they were a rogue or bounty hunter that would stop at nothing to get the girdle. It would feel like a believable medieval character. Instead they just put in a character that feels like reading an SJW lecture and 4th wall breaking not part of the game. Like that they didn't take any time to flesh out a character but just wrote some sjw memes as part of the ingame text. Again, nothing wrong with troll games. But if you have a merchant in the game who says "shrek is love shrek is life" you are making a meme game and breaking suspension of disbelief.
 
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Ninety

Member
you're saying this like most gamers wouldn't completely melt down at the prospect of a mainstream JRPG about a transgender bounty hunter on a quest to get a sex change. i mean have you been on youtube
 
A

Arconious

Guest
Never played the game so I am not an expert of the belt. Still there are some things that still do not add up. If she was not wearing the belt to get a sex-change...how did she get a sex-change? This is a world where technology doesn't exist and female hormones don't exist. Which means that she must have got a sex-change from a mage. Meaning that sex-changes are probably very painless and also common in that world.
You've admitted your knowledge of this game is limited to this topic, but you're asserting things about its characters and universe as if they were fact. Who said the character received a sex-change? What do you mean female hormones don't exist, as well as technology? It's baffling to me that you are inventing contexts in order to satisfy your point.

And their depiction of transwomen is shallow and patronizing to trans people. They don't put a trans character as a main character. But a side character that most people won't even notice. It's like a little kid being told they can't even play special Olympics. Told they are not even worthy of being a major character.
Via your logic here, a side character can never be trans or else they are somehow disrespecting the whole of the trans community by implying "they are not even worthy of being a major character".

And the dialogue is fourth wall breaking. It seems ripped out of an SJW lecture. Not like an actual geniune medieval setting. If I was the writer and wanted to put a trans character. I would have put a bounty hunter that was on an epic quest to get the girdle of gender. And that they were a rogue or bounty hunter that would stop at nothing to get the girdle. It would feel like a believable medieval character. Instead they just put in a character that feels like reading an SJW lecture and 4th wall breaking not part of the game.
We have the dialogue right in front of us -- please, which parts are wall-breaking and ripped straight out of a "SJW lecture"?

Like that they didn't take any time to flesh out a character but just wrote some sjw memes as part of the ingame text. Again, nothing wrong with troll games. But if you have a merchant in the game who says "shrek is love shrek is life" you are making a meme game and breaking suspension of disbelief.
That you relate that rather plain dialogue that includes a character revealing themselves to be trans as equivalent to 'memeing' and "shrek is love shrek is life" is part of the problem.
 
M

Misty

Guest
You've admitted your knowledge of this game is limited to this topic, but you're asserting things about its characters and universe as if they were fact. Who said the character received a sex-change? What do you mean female hormones don't exist, as well as technology? It's baffling to me that you are inventing contexts in order to satisfy your point.
It's medieval fantasy. Never heard of even basic medical technology back then. Booze was basically what they used. It was primitive times. There wasn't advil or things like that.



Via your logic here, a side character can never be trans or else they are somehow disrespecting the whole of the trans community by implying "they are not even worthy of being a major character".
They weren't even a side character. They were just a npc. A side character is like Yoshi or Toad. They weren't even that. It seems like you are arguing just to argue. Like a character who barely has a few lines of dialogue and is hardly even in the game for more than 2 seconds...you are arguing that they are a serious character. The sad part is you are defending lazy no effort writing. If you want to actually help the trans community maybe you should not praise them for making 1 dimensional trans characters. But tell them to give trans people an actual personality.



We have the dialogue right in front of us -- please, which parts are wall-breaking and ripped straight out of a "SJW lecture"?
I read the dialogue and its obvious.

That you relate that rather plain dialogue that includes a character revealing themselves to be trans as equivalent to 'memeing' and "shrek is love shrek is life" is part of the problem.
It is memeing. Its like the author is interjecting modern social commentary, rather than writing. No attempt was made to make a trans character that was authentic in any sense of the word. You are defending a character they put about 2 seconds of effort into. And it's already confirmed the person who did it is an SJW. Who was trying to send a political message. Instead of trying to make the character interesting or authentic. This is what they did with Rey in star wars. Bare minimum zero effort characters. No care or attention was put into the character at all. All it is is some sjw putting her political views down and making up a character as a vessel to send the message. The character is essentially just an email or letter.
 
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you're saying this like most gamers wouldn't completely melt down at the prospect of a mainstream JRPG about a transgender bounty hunter on a quest to get a sex change. i mean have you been on youtube
Again, I don't think most gamers would care, as long as it didn't come off as preachy. My game's main character is a girl and is going to have a gay villain... I guarantee you nobody will ever complain or start a riot about it, because they'll feel like actual characters instead of cheap tokens to earn me progressive street cred. Here's a thread on NeoGaf celebrating LGBT+ characters. Most (everyone?) there is geeking out about the characters they love, not melting down: https://www.neogaf.com/threads/your-favorite-lgbt-characters-in-game.1071326/page-3

*shrug* Human trash bigots exist, obviously, but I honestly think the gaming community is better than most.
 

Niels

Member
I was reading a interview with the maker of "the final station" and the interviewer asked this question:
Q: There is one potentially controversial question I would like to ask. Based on the trailer, all survivors seems to be white, are you going to include a more diverse cast in your game?
A: —
The gamedev didn't answer the question, but this kinda triggered me for 2 reasons:
1. The whole question was just a "O look at me pointing out a non-inclusief dev!"
2. When the Dev (obviously) didn't want to answer this question, the interviewer could as well leave the question out of the published interview, but instead he still published it just to bait reactions/shares…

I think the same happened with the witcher 3, where some reviewer just stated that there were no colored people in the game to bait people to read and share the review...
 

Smiechu

Member
I think the same happened with the witcher 3, where some reviewer just stated that there were no colored people in the game to bait people to read and share the review...
Witcher 3 is made by a Polish crew and the landscapes, locations, atmosphere, NPC's, design of weapons, armors etc... extremely strongly refer/copy the medieval Poland/middle Europe. There ware only white peaople! Putting peaple of other skin colour in this background would be like replacing half of the Leonidas's squad in movie 300 with women!

Sorry world, wake up! Forcing artists and creators to dump their (sub)cultural identity or historical facts in order to fit some sick PC ideology is an abuse to them.
 
M

Misty

Guest
I'm sorry, but based on your replies, it doesn't really seem like you're actually reading/understanding what I'm writing or even attempting to respond in good faith.

Mostly:



I hope you realize the irony in being the one to say this.
Everybody in this thread agrees with me.

Also the trans community literally agrees with me so i'm right ur wrong lol.
 
S

snowstorm

Guest
As for me, there are fans and critics. Always, just no matter what you do.
Fans will appreciate the things developers create. They may give constructive critics and they sure know that development is not so easy.
Critics are usually toxic. They try to find bugs in your game, features of Mary Sue in your characters. Usually, critics are not developers at all and that is a pity.
And that's a common problem, not for gaming only. Toxic people exist, they don't like anything and it's better to ignore them.
 
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