This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
As of right now, the official trailer has 266k upvotes and 597k downvotes. It seems quite a few people are pissed, to put it mildly. Keep in mind there's an extra barrier to downvoting these days in the form of a necessary extension so the actual numbers are certainly much worse than what we can see here.
Overall, I can't see this as anything other than a colossal misstep by Ubisoft. "No such thing as negative advertisement" doesn't apply in this case because Ghost of Tsushima launched for PC at almost the exact time the Shadows trailer released and everywhere I look, I see comments along the lines of "play this for the actual Japanese samurai experience".
Imagine how easy it would have been for them to make Yasuke a kind, intelligent side-character and contrast him with an evil, stupid, warmongering Oda Nobunaga. They would have gotten tons of DEI points and almost nobody would have said anything negative. Instead, they catapulted a direct competitor to success and alienated a huge chunk of what could have been their core audience.
It gets worse, there's a post from a former Ubisoft employee detailing a pretty sick idea for a Japan AC game that was canned.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link