The guys who claim the woke agenda is why corporations are ruining games... how do they explain the overwhelming high quality and popularity of queer indie games? These games are not made by corporations, they're made by small teams (some times just one or two people) of passionate and dedicated people who love games. They typically have long development cycles and sell for low prices despite being high quality and beloved classics that are defining gaming this generation.

Celeste: Trans main character

Undertale and Deltarune: Unabashedly queer. Non-binary lead. Butch Lesbians that aren't male gazey, etc etc.

Webfishing: Do I even need to say anything? This game was made by one person When this game was accused of being too queer, they doubled down and became even more queer.

Lisa: It's about misogyny and toxic masculinity.

Shovel Knight: Has a gender swap option and strong non sexualised female characters.

There are many more that have positive non-white cis-male characters.

All without the "scary Chinese" or "Sweet Baby" or "DEI mandates".

These are what actual fans of video games are making. It seems that the deciding factor of the difference in quality of AAA games seems to be capitalism, not inclusiveness.

Are the anti-woke crowd so out of touch that they can't see this? Or maybe they're so infested in gifting reactionaries that they turn a blind eye.

  • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
    ·
    13 days ago

    The anti-woke crowd is largely a bunch of grifters who want to stir up attention over the latest AAA game because it gets them more attention. Indie games get less attention and are very unabashedly queer, whereas AAA games might do something more subtle like add pronouns. It's a lot harder to claim there's a conspiracy or looming threat when the supposed threat is right there in the open and not mysterious.

    They have to make the supposed woke agenda all mysterious, otherwise they can't make a video or series of tweets. They can't say "Celeste is normalizing being transgender" because that's just true, it's a sweet game made by trans people and has a trans main character. They have to instead hook gullible dipshits on some ominous looming threat that will someday change all video games, including the ones made with millions of dollars and huge teams. And they can't have specific enemies, otherwise they'd have to talk on the terms of whoever they're supposedly fighting. They can't ever get specific because otherwise people might start agreeing with whatever "woke" stuff the games have.

    The woke agenda can't ever be specific individuals with specific goals. It has to always be a shadowy cabal with nefarious intentions who have literally no reason to be woke. Another reason is they can't just outright state what they mean, because they'd all instantly get banned from whatever platform they're on. They can't say "trans people, gays, and brown people shouldn't be represented in games" because that's simply hate speech that'll get them banned instantly. Instead they have to say "there's an occluded group of interlopers who are making games worse for monetary gain and their own sick pleasure." Because that sentence on its own is true, but they rely upon transphobic/bigoted context for their gullible audience to fill in the gaps

    I don't think they even like video games that much, they like attention or whatever meager amounts of money they get

    • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
      ·
      13 days ago

      Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.

      Umberto Eco, Ur-Fascism