Woke Culture

[Christmas]

Think this has affected gaming for a couple of years.

What are your thoughts?

[Del Murder]

I haven’t noticed anything, anything detrimental anyway.

[Christmas]

Concord? Dun think it is the main reason for its downfall but the characters are really colourful.

[Fynn]

Yeah I sure hope it does

[Wolf Kanno]

It certainly has shifted things in the last few years. On the one hand, we've open up more avenues for creative expression, but on the other hand, we've also seen a very toxic elements take a foot hole in the gaming community. It's honestly a bit exhausting having to deal with all the whining and bickering between different groups on the subject matter when the truth is that it really shouldn't have created this level of hostility if people simply didn't feel the need to bring their personal politics into smurfing everything.

I imagine it will calm down eventually, but not bloody soon enough for me.

[Mr Gashtacular]

Honestly, I've mostly found it easy to avoid by simply not reading steam reviews or reddit threads and keeping my gaming social circles pretty tight. I think any changes regarding the "direction" of gaming have been good, and much more minimal than detractors like to imply. As WK says it will go away in terms of discussion pretty soon.

[Shauna]

the grifters just need to stop bouncing from game to game riling up outrage for their clicks

[Christmas]

I missed the good old days which all these aren't part of the design considerations.

[Psychotic]

If I was chief exec of a gaming studio, I'd acquire a beloved IP like, say, Tomb Raider. Completely shred the development budget, cutting as much costs as I could and hiring an inexperienced team, and make the poor smurfers crunch because who cares? There's plenty more suckers wanting to make games we can exploit when this lot burn out. Let them do whatever they want with the game. It's probably going to be a mediocre piece of trout that's full of bugs but that's not important. The one creative decision I'd insist upon is easy: Make Lara Croft have a trans voice actress.

Anyway, launch happens (DAUNTLESS™ EDITION with low quality Lara Croft statuette and no actual copy of the game can be yours for $200 btw) and out come the mouth breathing pieces of trout who lose their utter smurfing minds about a trans actress being cast. We get meta bombed. The voice actress is taking endless harassment, and to a lesser extent so are my social media team but see my comments on the dev team - I can easily replace them. But don't worry guys, I'm not being harassed, I'm far too busy taking pictures of me hiking with my dog for Insta because I'm a cool and relatable CEO.

The anti-woke backlash gets a lot of coverage in media, both in your traditional gaming media outlets and on social media. The backlash to the backlash begins, people rush out to defend the game against the troutheads and a lot of people feel angry, hurt, frustrated and upset. They probably feel like Wolf Kanno seems to, but that's his problem.

My mediocre piece of trout game gets a lot more attention than it normally would, and by extension sells more copies than a mediocre piece of trout game should. Given my low investment in the production of this thing, I've made the company a tidy profit and the board approve my bonus. The game itself is largely forgotten after a couple of months or so.

Unfortunately because all the money went on my bonus, we can't afford to finish the Season Pass content (spoiler: it was never in the budget to begin with lol) sorry to all 6 of our loyal fans who are still playing this piece of trout but as Tomb Raider is out of the news cycle now, nobody is going to talk about this anyway.

I then claim another bonus after laying off the studio or having us be bought out by some other large multinational publisher. Because of my great track record of making money in the creative industries I go on to get the gig as CEO of DC comics, where what if we made a movie where Bruce Wayne was black and also a woman?

tl;dr: anger = $$$

anyway for more of this please join my late stage capitalism discord RP server

[Christmas]

Just found out there are gaming consultancies that specialized in this. One of them is this Sweet Baby or something.

[Shauna]

sweet baby inc did nothing wrong (unironic)

[sharkythesharkdogg]

I love a game with a fixed character design that the narrative is designed around (something like Life is Strange or one of the Silent Hills), or a game with a very open and varied character creation mechanic that offers options for every is also wonderful when it makes sense for the game.

I'll never be able to wrap my head around people who can't accept other options or better representation for other people simply because it's not what they identify with. Other people exist. Other ways of living exist. If it's not a way of thinking that actively seeks to oppress or otherwise harm another person, then there's a high chance that you're an asshole for not being able to accept it just because it's different.

It doesn't speak to the strong morals and views you think it does. It speaks to how weak your mindset is and weak you are in general that you're so easily threatened simply because they exist.

[*Peter*]

"Woke" technically means "aware of the problems with discrimination and other unfair societal attitudes", which of course typically implies that people are determined to do something against those injustices.
When it comes to movies and video games, this could be presented by doing things such as presenting women as stronger characters that aren't just there as eye candy (and actually talk to other female characters about something that doesn't have anything to do with men), and also to present ethnic groups in ways that aren't racist.

However, if this is overdone, then it can come off as a bit preachy, and this is typically what some people call "woke" by its more pejorative meaning;
for example, a female character might be presented as a Mary Sue who is always super-strong and never makes any mistakes
(and this then also makes it hard to develop that character throughout the storyline).
This would of course also be a problem for male characters, but that is exactly why it shouldn't also be done with female characters.

Another common mistake is to present homosexual characters as essentially "the homosexual characters", with very little depth apart from that;
the way I see it, the proper way to present a homosexual character in a way that will be well-received by viewers and players is to start with developing that character without focusing so much on his or her orientation, and then, once that foundation has been developed, they can add the orientation as well, maybe along with the struggles that homosexual characters can experience in real life, such as disapproving looks from other people, harassment, and so on.

[Rydia of Mist]

"Woke Culture" is a dogwhistle for those people who can't stand the fact that a diverse cast of characters is being included in something. Non-white skintones, non-straight orientations, and the like. Much of this diversity has been included in video games for decades, and only recently have anyone had any issue with them being "shoved down our throats". Current political climate is pushing hard back against progress that has been made for equality and representation within the past 20-30 years, and this is just another aspect of that. Black elves? Woke. Gay romance options? Woke. Woman in a command role? Woke. The very possibility that a minor character may be trans? Woke. Woke woke woke.

And why is it a problem? What's the issue with (not very) suddenly having characters in a game that don't fit your particular demographic? "The characters are really colorful." GOOD! We like colorful! I'd be side-eyeing someone who didn't want a "colorful" cast of characters to begin with, and doubly so if the person says they're against "woke culture" because that phrase is really only used in ​particular circles.

[Christmas]

Been reading and watching some videos on the recent happenings on this (Ubisoft's Assassin Creed, SweetBaby employee wanna burn the gaming industry to the ground, Dragon Age IV having Ugly characters..etc). Would be enraged if i still game that much. But now, dun think i can care that much.

But I agreed with something the Square Enix dude once said, "Why would anyone wants to be ugly and replusive in a game?". Which is true as I have the real me for that.