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"Woke" games (sh.itjust.works)
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Woke isn't being progressive. It's being progressive to an extent beyond any sort of logic, virtue signaling constantly, and then calling anyone who disagrees with you morally or intellectually inferior.

In entertainment, that often results in some really annoying elements that I think we can all acknowledge are a thing after almost a decade of this:

  • There is a minority protagonist. Said protagonist is disproportionately a straight coded conventionally attractive white women in their 20s.
  • The only flaw the protagonist will have is not being confident enough
  • There is then a minority side character. Said character will disproportionately be a black woman obviously less attractive than the protagonist, or a upper middle class gay fuckboi.
  • If there is not one of these two things, a minority side character will be shoehorned in somewhere. The character will feel visibly out of place, and no explanation will be given. For example, they'll do some random black character in a fantasy setting that's clearly based off Scotland in the 1200s.
  • Important character goes on a monologue that feels like a political PSA
  • The IP's understanding of progressive politics and social justice is roughly equivalent to Tumblr circa 2013.
  • Absolutely terrible writing. Even if you swapped all the "woke" elements for generic entertainment elements, the IP would still be terrible.
  • Likewise, the IP itself is often put together in an extremely lazy and mediocre way. If said "woke" content was not there, it would be universally panned for its low quality.
  • Amazing reviews. All aspects of the IP get 10/10 from the "professional" critics. All the reviews are similar enough that the critics either collaborated or read off the press release.
  • The critics care more about the social justice aspect than the game itself.
  • You get the sense both the creators and the critics of the IP not only don't consume this type of IP in their spare time, but actively resent people who do.
  • Constant fucking gaslighting. Anyone who doesn't like this ultimately mediocre IP is either morally and intellectually inferior. This usually comes in the form of accusations of being a bigot, a Nazi, or a Trump supporter.
  • Bigots, Nazis, and Trump supporters will then try to recruit people who are pissed about the gaslighting.
  • At some point the IP itself fades into the background, and it just becomes yet another culture war battleground.

I think there's a reason Star Wars gets more shit for being woke than Spiderverse, or that Arcane hasn't become a culture war battleground in the same way She-Hulk did. The reason being those shows are actually good, and most people are happy to watch good shows.

[-] Cethin@lemmy.zip 20 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Your last bit is the only part that matters. Good content is good. There's so much well written progressive "woke" stuff that does well, but it's easy to point at a shitty flop and say it failed because it's "woke" rather than doing the hard work and actually analyzing why it's bad. "Woke" content isn't an issue in media. It's that we're getting so much bad and lazy writing in AAA games (and other big media). They aren't allowed to be creative, so it ends up being garbage.

[-] unbanshee@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Add on top of that that the games industry has laid off TENS OF THOUSANDS of devs in the last three or four years.

I know a lot of talented people who are no longer working as devs, or who have been job searching for months.

Of course this doesn't mean that the studios still producing games have narrowed their scopes, they just dump more work on the survivors.

And "woke DEI SJW snowflake game dev" is far from the only thing making games worse, it's just what a lot of gamers can easily identify as a problem.

By the time I left, my last industry job had been reduced to what felt like manning the slop hose of mtx store items made by overseas outsource studios producing soulless trash under fuck-knows-what kind of nightmare working conditions.

We started seeing more diversity in games because devs are diverse and wanted to see themselves and their friends in their art.

The problem has never been queer or black characters in games. It is, and always has been, the prioritizing of profit over quality craft.

I'd argue that forced diversity is primarily because so many higher ups don't give a fuck about gaming or making good content.

The suits just want money, and for some reason corporate thought that weighing in on social and political issues was a huge money maker in the 2020s. The journalists just want to promote their own political agenda and get ragebait clicks. The project director is someone with a corporate background but a progressive flair that makes them seem "hip" to the suits.

Meanwhile the people who give a shit, regardless of their identity, don't have a voice in the room.

I'm sure there are plenty of minorities that are super pissed about what happened to bioware, but the only way you'd hear from them is by looking at sales figures because they don't have a bully pulpit.

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this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2024
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