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 -
I can somewhat agree on one case where catering to a lower-skill strata really does take away from the experience of the higher-skill strata.
There are games where everyone, by definition, has to have the same content - the multiplayer games such as Dota 2. Same map, same heroes, same numbers. A complaint that the devs casualized some high-skill-floor hero like Invoker would be perfectly valid here, since the sweaters can't enjoy him afterwards.
Even then, provisions have been made such as Turbo Mode, which makes a match go faster through sped up progression and thus (arguably) less strategically deep.
In singleplayer games, the impulse to exclude the casuls from the game entirely is vastly misplaced, its logical conclusion would be that game completion recordings can't be uploaded to Youtube so that the gamer lords can truly feel like an exclusive elite. I don't buy the justification that "adding difficulty modes takes away from development time that could be used better". It's not that hard. It would take more development time to tweak the only difficulty level just so, in order to maximize sales and player satisfaction (and companies will want to do that because they want money, not a sense of pride and accomplishment).
I do not recall any examples of a non-videogame activity where participants specifically take pride that this activity is hard and impenetrable for casuals even at the lowest stakes where it still counts as the same activity. Sports, crafts, art, puzzles - they all have their little leagues, amateurs and easy modes. Still there is no small amount of pride and renown that is won by engaging into them at the highest level successfully.
Can you provide any examples to the contrary?
More options
Context Copy link