this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2024
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[–] lobut@lemmy.ca 30 points 3 months ago (6 children)

I've had a friend tell me that her stream group (and her) or whatever was happy to see these woke games die. I'm only looking at this superficially but what about this game is woke? I just thought it was shit.

[–] Odo@lemmy.world 41 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I believe the game showed pronouns on the character select screen. That's all it takes to make certain people mad, unfortunately.

[–] overload@sopuli.xyz 31 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Go woke go broke, just like Baldurs Gate 3 /s

[–] neshura 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Baldur's Gate is a prime example for people not actually being bothered by the "woke" stuff all that much. It just gets the blame when the product turns out shit because it's an easy tool to explain why everything else about a game sucks.

The mechanics are bad? They must've spent more time arguing how to include pronouns than how to make the game fun.

Buggy? Obviously revisions to make the game more inclusive had more priority.

Are those speculations true? Idk but stuff like the leaked Sweet Baby Inc. talks about how to include more progressive aspects in a game make it seem believable enough for most people.

[–] overload@sopuli.xyz 9 points 3 months ago

I think the ridiculousness of the argument is that adding pronoun options during character creation is an almost nothing feature to implement. I would get if there was like a bunch of money and time put into making unique "woke questlines" that you could say that there was a large resource allocation. I wouldn't agree that doing that would be a terrible thing though.

Culture war gamers just like to allocate blame to wokeness when things fail. The successes that contradict their biases are ignored.

[–] GammaGames@beehaw.org 27 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

LPT: I t’s usually a safe bet to ignore anyone deriding a game for its “wokeness,” their opinions are reactionary and not based in any reasonable sense of reality

[–] SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee 10 points 3 months ago

Uh...false. TLOU2 was a flop. Horizon 2 was a flop. Checkmate woke boi /s

[–] burgersc12@mander.xyz 6 points 3 months ago

But obviously "WOKE" is when thing I don't like has people I don't like in it!!

[–] MindTraveller@lemmy.ca -3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

There are no reasonable senses of reality. Reality is a social construct enmeshed in patriarchal white supremacy.

[–] Vilian@lemmy.ca 14 points 3 months ago

nah, the game had shit marketing, shit and generic characters design, was 8 years too late, it's basically overwatch but overwatch is free, valve has a hero shooter just around the corner, that's probably as "woke" as it can but it's free and exploding in numbers(even in closed alpha), if the problem was just the woke part, it would have attracted these "woke" people,but no one played it lol

[–] BruceTwarzen@lemm.ee 10 points 3 months ago

The character selector said what characters were he/she or non binary. Which I don't see the point to be honest, but hating a game because if it is laughably stupid. Maybe some people really want to play as non binary characters because that's what they identify as, and more power to them. My new addiction is dethlock and my favorite character is dynamo, a fat robot gravity man. I don't identify as any of these things.

[–] Tattorack@lemmy.world -5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Character design, at first look. Some original concept art was ignored or altered for reasons of inclusivity. For some reason "inclusivity" means making characters ugly, fat, and unappealing.

Essentially, from appearance, it seems someone in their D.E.I. department wanted to force a subversion of beauty standards (and believability) down everyone's throats. Top that off with it being Yet Another Live Service Hero Shooter, and you have the majority of the gaming community taking one look at it... And then looking the other way. With a lot of others making fun of it.

For those who did bought it there seemed to be a completely pointless pronoun element to the game, and people are getting seriously sick and tired of seeing identity politics in everything.

[–] MindTraveller@lemmy.ca 11 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

You mean this?

This doesn't have diddly to do with inclusivity. You're just laser focusing on the lipstick as the source of everything and somehow connecting a woman wearing lipstick to inclusivity. I guess it's because incels think a woman's makeup shouldn't be visible? The original is exactly as inclusive as the new version. The reason the new one sucks, is because they hired crap animators and probably gave them no time to do their jobs and hardly any pay.

Some internet person created this redesign and it's exactly as inclusive as the ingame version, while also being cool.

And here's a redesign where they made a character look less like a straight cisgender human, and it slaps! Diversity is awesome, I want more lizard cowboys.

[–] gedhrel@lemmy.world 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Are you saying that you're in the tribe of people who are sick of identity politics?

[–] Tattorack@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I personally find that identity politics is far too often used as a shield against genuine criticism. Some corporate types create something bland, or just outright terrible, and add a whole lot of tokenism. Someone points out that the story is terrible, the characters are terrible, and that it seems to do nothing but pander, and they're immediately likened to some of the worst people on Earth.

Surely only the most militant alt-right extremist would criticise these committee curated progressive consumable products!

Short answer is "yes", although it's much less of a tribe and more just the average person.

[–] barsquid@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Do you have an example? I'm cynical, I believe companies would add diverse but two-dimensional characters to pander to an audience.

But then I thought only actual bigots were called out, like if they're screeching that some "anachronistic" black character exists in a game that also contains magic spells and dragons. I thought normal complaints like "story is awful and characters have no depth" are generally received without an antagonistic response.

[–] Tattorack@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Oh but that's the fun part; people criticise that a game or a series or a movie prioritises D.E.I. over telling a good story and then they get lumped together with the few who are actual bigots. It's easy to pretend that all the failings of something is because of nasty people rather than it just sucking.

So, examples?

NuTrek, especially Discovery and Picard. The Acolyte. Rings of Power. The Marvels. Black Panther 2. She Hulk. Wish.

[–] Breadhax0r@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I feel like the Ghostbusters reboot was the first big example of this. It was rightly criticized for being an actually bad movie, and Sony dismissed it and doubled down on the misogyny angle.

[–] the_crotch@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 months ago

I so badly wanted that movie to be great and prove the haters wrong. But ugh, it was so fucking bad. Insultingly bad.

[–] Tattorack@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago

Eyup. That was a really big one. Birds of Prey came after. All those outlets crying everyone was a woman hating asshole were mysteriously silent when loads of people liked Wonder Woman.

Remember what the news was all about when Baldur's Gate 3 came out?

[–] Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz 2 points 3 months ago

The issue is not that a good character is black. It’s that “hey, let’s make a token black guy and inject it into this story to show how diverse we are!”

No one care about good characters, but companies are being fed a load of crap that almost feels like sabotage about having “inject this minority” being a lead design principle. It’s not, make a good character first.

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 1 points 2 months ago

Late to the party, but this is super relevant...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJS4JHYgj50

Corporations using political wars as sheilds against criticism is the major issue, totally agreed.