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 -
Also true of music, but arguably not true of videogames. While most AAA games continue to be disappointing, dumbed-down, DEI-addled trash, there have been some spectacular successes in the last few years. BG3, Factorio, Disco Elysium, RDR2, Rimworld, Sekiro, Stellaris, Crusader Kings 2 & 3, Doom 2016 and Eternal, etc.. Nintendo also producing some of their best work on the Switch (Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom, Mario Odyssey).
I generally agree with BurdensomeCount, but I don't think he's trying to say there is literally nothing made after 2012 or 2016 that is worth your time. It's just that so much of it isn't, that the juice isn't worth the squeeze attempting to sift through it. Especially when you can just pick virtually anything that was considered "good" prior to 2012 and not find it offensively ideological. Compared to today where even the "good" games are often full of marxist or gender ideological talking points in degrees from "I can roll my eyes at this and get on with my day" to "My Disappointment Is Immeasurable And My Day Is Ruined".
I actually agree with the fact about great videogames still being made today. Some of the very best video games ever came out not too long ago (of course mixed in with all the usual trash) even if you rule games out for having even a single morel of prog shit.
Even continually updated video games like Dota are hitting it out the park at the moment (the mechanics and content that is, not the bot and win trader addled playerbase) and I'd say have never been better. Dota is miles nicer to play from a mechanics point of view today than it was in 2012.
I attribute this to improving technology. Technologically books today are no different from books of the 1970s but the average PC today is many orders of magnitude more capable than the devices running Pong half a century ago. That on its own opens up huge amounts of design space in video games that was locked off back then. This is not true of either books, television or music though.
More options
Context Copy link
My intuition is that films and TV have dropped off a lot more in the last 8 years than videogames, with some incredibly vivid and memorable successes very recently. While the Sweetbaby stuff has definitely tainted a lot of AAA games, the kind of games most affected are those that were mass-market slop anyway. I can’t think of many titles where it’s true to say “this would be great were it not for the DEI nonsense”.
I would suggest that the reason for this is that the total number of people designing video games is growing much faster than the same number producing TV and film*. If you had mentioned Stardew Valley and Dwarf Fortress, you'd have one- and two- man games, but Rimworld and Factorio are small groups heavily inspired by mods. The newest Factorio expansion came about because they hired a modder who did it for free. The dedicated auteur, working alone, is thriving in video games in a way that is not true for hardly anything else.
*The existence of the youtube professional is the comparable medium. These are episodes of TV, or sometimes movies, and they pay the bills. It isn't exactly high art, but this is where a similar sort of small enterprise is thriving.
I would argue that game devs are worse than ever, even the auteurs.
By way of comparison, I was listening to a podcast Dan Carlin did, talking to some boxing historian. And they mused over the fact that most athletes today are better than they ever were. I mean, just look at the records for any particular sport.
And then there is boxing. Boxers of old had a much higher pace of fights, as well as much more polished defensive capabilities because they didn't want to risk injury and losing their meal ticket. While a champion today might have 20 fights, a champion back in "the day" might have 200. Compare anyone who has competed in 200 events versus 20, and who is superior is usually obvious.
If you don't buy that argument, there is always the story of The Beetles, and how they played tens of thousands of hours of gigs before they emerged as The Beetles and went down in history.
Game devs these days might ship 2 games in 10 years. In the 90's it could be as much as 10 or 20. Look back at id software's pre-Wolfenstein days for Softdisk for instance. For a good chunk of the 80's and 90's, if you weren't on a yearly release schedule or higher, you were struggling. It wasn't until the late 90's that id software and Blizzard took on a "when it's done" attitude, but even that might be 2 or 3 years tops. Concord was supposedly in development for 10 years.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Well, like I said, depends what your threshold for bullshit is. I'm so fucking exhausted by it, I nope out the moment I see "Body Type" instead of male or female, or if a game lets you pick your pronouns. Is that petty? Perhaps. Am I missing out on otherwise good games? Once again, perhaps. I just fucking can't anymore. I'm tired. And yet those are increasingly standard features across AAA and indie games. Even a lot of those Switch games being held up as standout titles in a world of AAA slop are getting that nonsense.
It doesn't seem petty to me at least. I have much the same reaction. It's often not even because things are obnoxious in and of themselves, but because I know (given the current climate) that they are likely to be deliberate inclusions of politics. Like, 20 years ago I wouldn't have thought much about "body type A/B", but these days the odds are very high that someone made the game that way as a deliberate reflection of their culture war beliefs. And like you, I have very little patience for it because games (and other entertainment) are my escape from all the unpleasantness of the world. So when they push it back in my face, it's so much more annoying.
More options
Context Copy link
I'll be frank, this does look like deliberately seeking to be offended by woke, given that phrasing "male/female" as "body type" is about one of the least intrusive things ever. Are you "exhausted", or are you hypersensitive?
One side of this political debate believes in consciousness-raising uber alles. They deliberately seek opportunities to shoehorn (and then brag about shoehorning) their values. They want people more aware that they do this sort of stuff.
It works. People become "hypersensitive" as a result. Some people appreciate it and go along, some won't. But they don't get to pretend it isn't a result of their actions.
More options
Context Copy link
I don’t think so. It’s just that after a certain saturation point of woke, you just get tired of picking up a game that you just want to turn off the world for a while and play in another universe. Except you don’t ge5 to escape because the designer insisted that he can’t keep away from real world politics for 10 minutes.
I feel the same way, I’m rewatching old sci-fi movies from the 1980s because honestly it’s absolutely refreshing to jus5 see a story that doesn’t have to preach at you.
More options
Context Copy link
Hypersensitive, perhaps. Deliberate seeking, certainly not. I can assure you that the reaction (to the aforementioned video game features) is as spontaneous and vigorous as the left’s reaction to, say, confederate flags and statues.
More options
Context Copy link
You ever have the same argument with a family member over and over again for decades? To the point where the moment they slip in an oblique reference to your deep seated differences in world view, all those negative feelings come rushing back in. Especially because they give you a look when they do it that says they know exactly what they are doing? And yeah, the people who don't know might look at your (possibly restrained) anger towards what you know is a direct provocation like you are being over sensitive. But your antagonist knows exactly what they are doing.
It's like that.
Horse!
Mule!
Horse!!
Mule!!!
HORSE!!!!
MULE!!!!!
(Fiddler on the Roof, referenced by Slate Star Codex, March 2016.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is just the "what does it matter to you that we support Basic Human Decency, seems like you're the problem" gaslighting trick everyone's seen a billion times. It's manipulative and vile, and weird to keep using on someone who's immune to it.
"Our world-view is Basic Human Decency/Objectively Correct Reality; therefore, explicitly acknowledging it as true is un-remarkable, while disagreeing with it, or even not explicitly affirming it, is Shoving Your Politics In My Face."
More options
Context Copy link
What do you have against basic human decency? What it looks like is exactly the same as wokes getting triggered by a nonmixed heterosexual family because it's a dogwhistle for fascist racism or something.
And if I were, in fact, aiming to manipulate, it's not like I would be cowed by you declaring that you're immune to my manipulations.
Who gets to decide what basic human decency constitutes. Your basic human decency many be "enabling the delusions and fetishes of mentally ill people" for others.
More options
Context Copy link
"Basic human decency" is an appeal to shared values. When the values are not shared, the term loses all meaning. Making an appeal to shared values when values are not shared is straightforward deception. Attempting to change the definition of "basic human decency" to point to some novel, bespoke value set you invented five minutes ago and which have no buy-in from even a significant plurality of the public is an extremely central example of dishonest rhetoric.
The history of the Culture War over the last several years has essentially been a case study in the long-term downsides of such a strategy. The strategy burns scarce trust that cannot be replaced, with woeful effects for the community in question long-term.
More options
Context Copy link
Yes, that's the party line I'm talking about, thank you. It's an effective consensus enforcer, I'll give it that.
We're on the motte, if anyone of the two of us is enforcing consensus it's you and your plentiful ideological allies with the "party line" and "manipulative trick" dismissals.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Show me an example of a woke person advocating for "basic human decency" for someone who they consider privileged.
No, I don't think you'll be convinced by any example of people I'd assume are "woke" advocating for what I consider "basic human decency", since you ask for such an example as if it's supposed to be vanishingly rare.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
See I care less than I did a few years ago. My politics haven’t changed, but I think I’m probably less afraid of these people than I was, so I’m more willing to accept it in the “weird quirks of a foreign culture” way.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link