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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   26468 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 25, 2024

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Do you consider Slay the Spire to be woke? Elden Ring? Bloodborne? Mario? Pokemon? The Persona series?

Where is the line drawn?

You just named 5 Japanese products and one indie title? That's almost an argument in favor of the DEI-ification of western media. Japan hasn't become woke yet.

And even then the international consultants will recommend changing Male/Female to body type A/B. The localizers will further censor it (particularly Nintendo).

Dude I don’t know. I assume none of these games have explicitly anti-woke themes. Correct me if I’m wrong.

"Anti-woke" as criteria is the trouble.

The main game series we can consider "explicitly" anti-woke is the Postal series, and that devolved into cynical, low-complexity slop immediately. If the criteria of "anti-woke" was clearer, it would be easier to find a game that fits.

2016 Doom's main antagonist is a lesbianesque woman, and only the Doomguy can stop her, and Eternal even makes a few digs at hr wokeness with lines akin to "we like to think of the demons destroying earth as mortally challenged".

Relaxing it to 'games conservative white males can enjoy without feeling attacked for existing' widens those horizons dramatically.

"Anti-woke" as criteria is the trouble.

Sure. But the same should apply to woke games. Why are (apparently) some huge percentage of games pushing a failed, corrupt ideology on consumers?

If the games matched the consumer they would be like this:

  • 10% woke
  • 80% non-woke
  • 10% anti-woke

Instead, it's apparently more like this:

  • 50% woke
  • 45% non-woke
  • 5% anti-woke

Seems like an obvious fix right?

Nassim Nicholas Taleb talks about why this happens in Skin in the Game. You can read the relevant chapter here.

Basically, the most intolerant minority tends to win, when there aren't high transaction costs to cater to them. Jews won't drink non-kosher beverages, but gentiles will drink kosher beverages, so most drinks in the United States are kosher. Back when restaurants still had smoking sections, a non-smoker could sit in a smoking section and not smoke, but a smoker couldn't sit in a non-smoking section and smoke. Etc., etc.

Relating this back to woke, anti-woke and non-woke. I suspect most people who are anti-woke will still buy most woke games. They might grumble about female protagonists, unappealing female characters, and every romancable character being Schroedinger's bisexual, but most of them will still buy a triple-A game that has all these features. On the other hand, the woke and non-woke will not buy a game whose explicit purpose is to reinforce anti-woke ideas (anti-trans, anti-cosmopolitan, conservative, trad, anti-LGBT, etc.) As a result, games end up either woke or non-woke, with a vanishingly small contingent of anti-woke games catering to a tiny segment of the market.

They used to buy those games. But increasingly “woke” games are now associated with fundamentally broken or derivative technical/design aspects and are starting to flop. For example:

-Concord: a game you have to pay 60 dollars for that’s worse than a free game that came out 10 years ago

-Star Wars Outlaws: broken AI and particle effects that look like they came out out of a 1996 Tomb Raider game.

-Assassin’s Creed Shadows: the 400th derivative remake of the first Assassin’s Creed game from 2007.

There are exceptions, like Baulder’s Gate which was pretty woke and had solid underlying mechanics, but increasingly AAA games are just a garbage fire of slop.

I would build out the model as something like: If there is a genuinely good woke video game with solid mechanics and few competitors, most anti-woke people will still buy them.

I think most slop isn't bought by non-woke normies, let alone wokies themselves. The question is whether "it's woke" is being advanced as the whole reason for the game's marketability, or is just a big part of the story.

Though arguable, video games are already one of the most gender egalitarian artistic mediums. Plenty of strategy games like XCOM make no distinction between male units or female units, and there's plenty of Amazonian protagonists in the medium.

Yeah, I mentioned this before, but it seems like the best we ever get are games that are accidentally "based". As in, they might have a conventionally attractive woman with a pleasant personality. Or they depict a happy, cis heteronormative family. They might not even be mixed! Maybe they depict men as capable protectors and providers, or wise sovereigns, without some fucking girlboss with zero flaws who's just obviously better than them in every way because woman.

Basically totally ubiquitous shit from before 2012, which is now so atypical and rare people push them up on pedestals as "based" or "anti-woke" just for normal. Meanwhile game journos are praising a game where you get butt fucked by a bear as game of the year.

Note that all of those but Slay the Spire come out of Japan.

Mega crit is An american group (of 2 guys) Anthony Giovannetti and Casey Yano, who live in Seattle.

That's what he said?

yes I was just adding more details as to who they were!

It's consistent with what I said, but adds more details. I think it further weakens the objection to the original post as well: Every game on the list is either Japanese or made by a team small enough not to be infested with entryists.

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