17:17 is the perfect example of the willing lack of understanding of the term woke. Just having a woman, or poc, doesn't make the game woke, we all know this, and its disingenuous to pretend otherwise. Idk if its bad faith or ignorance, based on the white western perspective I'm assuming ignorance, but most people don't like woke bs in their games. The U.S. is not the center of the world or the highest populated area, places like India and china also can't stand this crap, and they are far lest tolerant than the average western gamer. The differences is they are in the billions and the western gamer is in the millions and only a few thousand of those actually want this garbage, the super majority just don't.
When people are calling the Witcher 4 trailer "woke," then "woke" is *absolutely* just about women and POC people. The tone and style of that cinematic was the exact same as the original Witcher 3 cinematic, the only difference is that instead of Geralt it features Ciri, and instead of being young she looks aged. If people want to express that they don't want "western ideology" (whatever the hell that means) in their games then they can use their words to do so, rather than pretend that the term "woke" hasn't been co-opted by people who lose their fucking minds the moment there's a female on screen they don't want to fuck.
@@crimsonking6773 yeah,unironicaly is a type of shovinism from the americans.Not all fictional worlds need to reflect multicultural current america. Careful though,not wanting it is like rejecting the existence of minorities,and thats tantamount to genocide.
Exactly this. People aren't opposed to having a PoC or female lead or pronouns or anything like that. We've had it in the past, it was fine. It's just that it's become a so-called "dogwhistle" or a "Red flag". We know, through experience, that if a game in "current year" has these things featured prominently, Then we can assume that the people making the game didn't just stop there, but crammed the game full of these things. We assume that they didn't set out to make a great game, but rather to co-opt an IP to push some socio-political narrative, thus making the game bad (because what do they care about the game? It's only there to serve as a vehicle for their messaging). Does this HAVE to happen? No, of course not. Maybe they actually wrote an amazing story with a Lesbian, disabled, woman of color as the lead. And it's actually very thoughtfully made and relevant to the plot-weaving etc etc. But experience tells us it's not. Experience tells us it's ivory-tower preaching.
@@grumpycup4762 Really? People aren't opposed? I must have missed the part where your kind got so crazy over an OPTION to select the pronouns or gender identity in a character creation screen? And it was fine in the past? No it fucking wasn't. The fact that you say that shows you weren't there or even old enough to undrestand the discourse going around at the time.
I really enjoyed the video. I found it interesting about the woke/nonwoke list and where certain games fell on it. The woke label and outrage are across most of pop culture at the moment but video games are something of a microcosm in that it seems to be more virulent and violent (metaphorically violent I mean) than in other mediums. Personally I am proud to be called woke. I love Veilguard. I love Star Trek. I quite enjoyed Immortals of Aveum, and so forth. I cannot understand how more diversity can make some people feel so attacked. As if the very existence of people who are different is an affront to who they are. I guess I am lucky in that I come from a very tolerant family. My dad was gay, my Grandparents were feminists and members of PFLAG, my Mom is one of those hippy-dippy pinko liberal bleeding hearts, and my Sister is a feminist. With this family it's hard to understand how to hate or fear someone simply because they are different. Honestly I kind of hope I never come to understand that kind of hate. I'm not saint, but I don't think I'm a Nazi. Anyways, I liked your breakdown of the topic and I look forwards to seeing more of your channel.
Thank you! I do have some thoughts about why the conversation around woke games is so virulent and violent, but I don't know how correct I am or if I'd be able to explain them coherently. Maybe someday, but it'd take more than a comment here 😁.
Good games never could be stopped by anyone. Not even when ppl didnt even know it exists in the first place. Problem with "maybe TOO woke" games - so the case what it is about is: no you cant say if the game will be good - but what u can say is that its more likely that it was made with the wrong base. if youre a baker you create bread around the thaught: "does my customer like how it tastes". if you as a baker create breads which taste like nothing but look like god himself would have made them: nobody would buy it. cause a bread is here to taste good and not to look nice. NO - nobody knows now if this game will be good. But if its good nobody will be able to stop it. But as a gamer u still have the risk, that main thaught of the game was not to make a good game. As they said in South Park: make it a chicken, make it gay. some producers seem to feel entitled that ppl HAVE to play their game JUST cause they made it :) thats not the case. Im not getting this bread if it tastes like plastic. and i will wait what players say to it. Since my trust in all others got lost in the last years due to alot of lying game propaganda hypes. and if studios hire ppl not because of their skills anymore but because they are coloured or non binary then its not about creating good games. your thaugth isnt bad ofc. truth will show. but ur thaught ignores behaviour of big studios in the last decade. and no - i wont give money to anyone who insults me. like: lol? how long u think a baker can survive - insulting his biggest customer. thats ridiculous
I'd like to take a brief moment to add my two cents to the "better diversity" argument, and say this is an argument that *could* be done in good faith and which I've seen treated as such in other spaces (e.g. Lindsay Ellis tackling the way feminism and LGBTQ+ is portrayed in Beauty and the Beast), but the key aspect about it is that it should first and foremost be an argument to improve representation and not to justify it. If the alternative parts from the position that a minority should "only be included if" or otherwise suggests "no inclusion is better than bad inclusion" or the likes, then you know that's a bad faith argument. On this subject and the world of Eora, I'd also like to suggest an interesting way one could explore topics like gender dysphoria, namely by taking advantage of the metempsychosis element of the setting and the way Awakenings can play into one's personality and experiences. Of course we've had an experience of a male character with an Awakened female personality in Aloth/Iselmyr, but in this case Iselmyr feels more like an entirely separate split personality that has no effect over Aloth's gender identity per se (that I recall anyway). However, there are other characters that seem to experience Awakenings in different ways: one that especially comes to mind is a Brackenbury patient, a lower-class person who recalled an experience from a past life as a noblewoman and somehow felt her life in Ondra's Gift become stale and horrible as a result; somehow I feel like an experience like this, where an Awakening can have a profound effect in one's perception of a specific aspect of their life instead of a full-fledged split personality, could be a very interesting situation with which to explore someone feeling they are in a body with the wrong gender. Hopefully we might see something like this in Avowed.
Related to your point but related to gaming, there was one thing I watched recently where I was, irritated, by how they handled diversity. Wheel of Time on Prime is based on a huge book series, in those books the world is pretty big with entire countries with unique and well defined cultures and yes, races. When they created the TV show they instead made every nation massively diverse and while most of the actors were good in their roles, it detracted from the uniqueness of the cultures the author created. The Wheel of Time setting (unlike a lot of fantasy from the 80's and 90's) was not predominantly white and what they did just looked like corporate interference rather than wanting true representation. As an example of something they handled well, two characters were HEAVILY hinted to have a lesbian relationship in the books and the show just made it blatant and I loved it, felt true to the characters. Sorry that this wasn't entirely related but it made me think of "good" and "bad" representation
There's definitely some great criticism out there! Even the article I mentioned (the Inverse one written by Robin Bea, pinned in the description) was critical of how games could do trans representation better. I welcome criticism like you mention (and I love Lindsay Ellis!), but I don't think we're getting actual criticism from the anti-woke crowd.
@ really fantastic. You’re good at this style of content. You’re offering something, instead of just regurgitating stuff, like many creators do. Keep it up! People will show up for this. Not that “people showing up” is the right reason to do something. You should do what you’re passionate about. But, when you do, people will notice, and come to hear your thoughts. Cheers! 😊
I'm going to try to put my thoughts here respectfully as I can. To me, whether or not the lgbt representation makes a game woke depends on how it's presented, and whether it makes sense in the world. For example, both Baldur's Gate 3 and Dragon Age: The Veilguard have gay, trans and/or non-binary characters. Gay characters - not my thing, but you do you. Trans characters - in Baldur's Gate 3 I see no problems. It's a high fantasy setting with powerful, trusted magic, and previous games in the series have items which do change a person's gender. In Dragon Age though, I don't see how it could be justified. Magic isn't trusted because it is far too easy to get possessed, so even if it could change someone's gender, would never be used to do so. On the other hand, the world is facing crisis after crisis after apocalypse, where life is cheap and every able body is needed to fend off the threats that come daily. Hormone therapies don't exist, and the medical 'industry' is likely comparable to the practices from around the American Civil War, if not worse. It just doesn't make sense to me. On top of the inclusion of the lgbt characters is the way that they are presented. Baldur's Gate 3 treats it subtly, as just another part of their identity, maybe not even an important part of their identity. Veilguard on the other hand is not subtle at all, almost ham-fisted in it's 'I am non-binary and you will acknowledge me' approach. At times it feels like Veilguard treats their gay/trans/non-binary identity as the only important part of their identity. Does this make sense?
Great video! I remember all the same people all assuming Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was going to be terrible, same as avowed. Even beyond the "woke/anti-woke" arguments gamers at the moment seem addicted to hating things before they are released. Again see the reaction to Witcher 4 or Intergalactic after the Game Awards and people are pre-hating those too.
I think it's part of the strategy. If they're right and a game fails, they can congratulate themselves. If they're wrong, they already have the next thing to complain about.
@@sentegraphs true, they pre-hated the Fallout TV show a whole bunch then had to roll it all back when it was actually good. The other tactic is the Dragon Age: Veilguard one where they just insinuate anyone who liked it was a "paid shill"
You know what? It's very comforting to know that there's full grown-ass adults out there, in positions of power and/or influence, that never passed their high school edgelord arc. BTW, I really like your channel, I recently finished your PoE 1 analysis, now watching PoE 2. I should comment more often.
@hectorrodriguez9382 Thank you! And yeah, it's bad enough when teenagers say this kind of stuff, but if you’re in your 30s or older, that's pretty pathetic and troubling at the same time.
@@sentegraphs Also, ask yourself this. If tomorrow, a dev studio with a clear right-leaning political agenda, releases a game very over the top with ideology (and let's hit that nail very obviously: every alien enemy is black/brownish, they eat cats an dogs all over a peaceful all-white suburban setting, the MC is a Duke Nukem look alike, has an over sexualized woman sidekick that gets constantly ignored in the story, and the player has to impede that the final boss, who looks suspiciously like a trans person, gives estrogen pills to babies), and it's not played as satire, it's played straight, like "drama" straight. Do you think that the same people that yell "don't forced current day politics on my videogames" would say something about it?
all my favourite games are not woke. all the games i dislike or have been told to dislike are woke. and its woke because a billionaire told me its woke!!
Great video, pretty much hits every nail on the head. The fact that they label Pillars of Eternity as "not woke" kind of shows they don't have a drop of media literacy floating around in their heads. The game covers some very loaded topics like colonialism, nationalism, misogyny, war (and the generational trauma it causes), capitalism, personal autonomy, and oppression. But as soon as a studio takes a step to allow choosing pronouns, they start wailing that they "don't want politics in games".
@@strange_trees Thank you! Yeah, it's all just thinly veiled transphobia. It's thinly veiled other things as well, but I think it's mostly transphobia.
@@sentegraphs As a kid from the 1990's, when everything and anything that was slightly off-norm was GAY!, and with how much homosexuality has been socially accepted now (obviously and rightfully so) I always felt that the unhealthy facination some people have with trans-people nowadays is just a shift in hate onto a group that doesn't have the clear social support yet in a new age. Plus I'm pretty sure that for many it's also just a cop-out for homophobia in general, without having to face the social consequences, same thing with how anti-semitism now gets hidden behind hate towards globalism/ george soros ect.
yes because those topics fit in the the setting while the idea of choosing personal pronouns and gender being a social construct you can pick and choose at any time is as modern and tied to current western society as Twitch-streams and monster energy drink. Sure those kinds of people breaking norms always existed but those norms and how others viewed people breaking them did not present as it does now in the west. while "colonialism, nationalism, misogyny, war (and the generational trauma it causes), capitalism, personal autonomy, and oppression" are pretty universal across time and culture.
Hello fellow 90s kid! It can be extremely unsettling to watch some shows I loved as a kid and recognize things that range from misunderstanding to outright offensive. Arrested Development (I know it's an early 2000s show, but I've been rewatching lately so it's on my mind) doesn't seem to understand the difference between homosexuality, transgender identities, and cross-dressing. They're far from the only example of media that does this. And yeah, just like they have new games lined up to yell "woke" at, there's unfortunately always a new type of person to hate.
@@LP-mh6ri I don't think I agree with your first point tbh. Are you saying that even in a fantasy game, when you are playing a bald shark-toothed humanoid for example, gender will always be as black and white as "You have a flat chest and no cloaca. you are a man", otherwise it gets tied too modern culture and monster energy drink? I think you can argue, prefferbly in good faith, wether something like Veilguard and their "I'm non-binary now" is just bad writing in a bad game, bad writing with pandering undertones too capture a LGBTQ-market or bad writing in an well-ment intent too actually be more inclusive but the idea that fantasy games can't have (differing) pronouns is kinda mind blowing to me. Is an Asari Matron in Mass Effect subject too the same standards we live in on boring earth? What if i want too play a high elf that snuck into her dads lab and drank a gender-swap potion when she was young by accident. Feels kinda limiting if those options, and appearantly thousands like em, are off the table.
Representation is stupid on its face. Let the people make the games they want. I'll tell you, if I don't like the characters, I won't play it. "Erasing" people is also stupid. When these guys say the game is gonna be woke based on creative decisions, they're warning their audiences about the content. Boycotting is a legitimate form of social protest. If the boycott works, then the developers failed to reach the people who buy games.
Setting aside the ridiculous offensiveness of stating that "representation is stupid on its face", how can you write both that sentence and then say, "Let the people make the games they want"? They are making the games they want, and then the whiny anti-woke crowd whines about it before the game is even out. I'm not sure which boycott you're talking about that worked, but most of the anti-woke crowd's "victories" are just games that suck so they didn't do well, and then they take credit for it by saying, "see, woke games fail!" (e.g. Concord) And you know what, I'm not going to set aside the ridiculous offensiveness of your first sentence. Marginalized people who are able to see themselves represented in media more often is nothing but a net positive. Yeah, there are things to critique about representation, but the more of it we have, the better it will get. That's what good criticism does. Point out what works and what doesn't so we can try to do better next time. Making blanket statements like yours helps no one.
We already have games that are not considered 'woke' that represented the LGBT really well: Dragon Age Origins, Mass effect series. Choice of playing as male or female. They treated LGBT as something normal to be seen. What annoys me is how in your face it can be (like in Veilguard) when I'm like 'okay good for you can we move on now? No? okay...' Being reminded every 2 seconds this character is gay or trans will annoy anyone inside or outside games. I don't hate Veilguard and I don't think it's as 'woke' as some of the naysayers claim it is, but it's poorly written anyway so it didn't even matter if it was woke or not. All this hate over Avowed is stupid. People need to make up their own minds if they like a game or not. I complain about veilguard but I don't hate it either. And I'm glad I played the game for myself instead of blindly listening to the reviewers, even if I agree with some of their points.
My take on the "right" and "wrong" way to represent. Don't make the person's demographic the core of their identity. A black woman is more than a black woman. Same with non-binary. Same with anybody. "Hi, my name is Jeff. I'm a white male and I'm straight." "Hi, I'm Alex. I'm native american and I'm non-binary and I like women." No writer worth their salt would agree this is good representation. Representation should be tearing down stereotypes by disproving them. Not by preaching or shouting or blaming. Do demonstrate that being a minority doesn't mean that being a minority is the center of your whole personality. Cyberpunk 2077 represented by not making the entire game center around your pronoun or sexual preference. You are simply V, you are simply going about the story without having to ram V's preferences down anyone's ears with a speech. Dragon Quest 11 also did great with Sylvando. Sylvando is a character who literally leaves you knowing more about him as a person, not his sexual orientation or his gender, his race, his ethnicity. He is a knight, a friend, a son, a mentor. Whether you are a minority or whatever, we want to know about you as a person. Not you as a gender. You are not a gender. If your character's gender identity (or whatever you are trying to represent) is the first thing that comes to mind, your attempt at representation sucks.
All this is fine. And there are takes about this type of representation and how to do it well that make good arguments. What this video is concerned with, though, is the people who see a pronoun selection in a game and immediately scream about games being too woke. Nobody knows anything about Avowed or its characters' overall stories yet, so it's impossible to judge at this point. But there's still plenty judgement. There are also people who see single line of dialogue and make the same "wah, games are too woke" arguments without any insight into the game. In Veilguard, Taashe says they're non-binary, yes, but that's not what they lead with. You have to get to know them first. I think there are some players who won't even see that dialogue if they don't ask the right questions (admittedly, I could be wrong about that). The article I share in the video is happy to see non-binary representation, but still takes some issue with some of the specifics. (Link is in the video description - it's the Inverse article). I'm okay with criticism of how representation is done in games. I welcome it, and say as much in the video. But the loudest voices right now are the voices who yell about any type of representation of marginalized characters in games. They're not helping anybody.
Another question: Why insert things into old franchises with an already established fan base and not start something new? Wouldn't that allow the Devs more creative freedom? That checkbox can't stop a good game from succeeding...
Are you suggesting that a pronoun checkbox is "inserting something into an old franchise"? I mean, I guess technically it is, but it doesn't change the series more than it's already being changed by the perspective shift and new story. Game series evolve. You can't just keep making the same game over and over again. Also, in this market, it's much easier to sell an existing IP than it is to sell a new one. New IPs can sell well, but established IPs are a safer bet for publishers.
No. In my opinion too much attention is being placed on the check boxes. I am not even mad about direction change in a story. But with an existing IP with a continuing lore you need to be mind full of said lore, character design and personalities have to evolve. Have to be mindful of how you carry over existing characters, also gameplay has to get better. Get too many aspects wrong and the safety gets ripped away and the project becomes extremely risky.
@@adidokonder6887 All the attention on the pronoun selection in Avowed is from the outrage merchants. Obsidian even asked people who had access to the game to not share screenshots of the character build, since it was an older version of it. And we don't know much about Avowed yet (again, it hasn't been released), but we do know we won't be playing as the Watcher, and so won't be carrying any characters over from the Pillars games. And even if we were, who cares? If your Watcher was a cisgender man, then you just make a cisgender man in Avowed's character creator.
Not going to lie, I agree with your message, but you are falling into the same rethorical trap as the anti woke crowed making you no less of a crusader than they are. I can absolutely have a case of diverse inclusion which detracts from the game and therefor I can have a legit argument as to: I don't mind diversity, I mind the way it is implemented. There are a whole lot of bad faith actors on both sides of this argument who will hide behind argument structures like these, but that doesn't mean that the argument itself is invalid. It is also true that quite a few inclusion elements failed so badly that they have become a marker for "inclusion over quality" - that in turn does >not< mean that these two are opposed to one another. Life is Strange would be a great example of inclusion that worked really well and there are many more in all manner of games and generes. It works, but like any other story element: You have to make it work and if you don't it will detract from your story. If you are just checking a box for inclusion so the manager is happy than chances are that your inclusion element will not be recieved well and this kind of check box development as a whole is a marker for a formularic and generally uninspired game. That's where a whole lot of those complaints are coming from. Inclusion for inclusions sake, barely any tie in into the rest of the narrative or game world just isn't fun. It's generally what people who aren't just raving lunatics refer to as "woke" development. You can't use that word anymore because the far right and incel crowed has thoroughly claimed it for themselfs, but that was the original point of it. That point holds. As to your point "I never seen any one say how to make it (inclusion) work..": Narratives are a good deal of personal taste but also to no small degree simple writing basics. If you have something that is just dangeling losely in the air, if it could be removed from the story without losing anything of value, than you made a mistake and probably should remove it. See to it that there is sense behind it being there, either to depict the world, or a personality or what ever. Making the personality itself the reason for it being there however usually comes across as forced and bad writing. Is that a how to do it? No. It's a how to definitly NOT do it and that is more than I as a consumer / customer am required to provide. I am not writing stories for general consumption, I am not designing games, they are getting paid to figure these things out, not me. I can provide general feedback when I feel like it, but in this particular case that means that my mere act of not praising everything will throw me into the same drawer as the loons mentioned above, so why on earth would I? It's clearly not wanted unless it is praise. TL;DR: Please don't make the same mistake as the anti woke crowed. There are shades to pretty much everything and by just saying "you are against it so you are on the extreme end of it" is distasteful and quite frankly insulting. Ignore the loons and enjoy your games, that's what they are there for.
There are games that do inclusive narratives well, but I take issue with the idea that just because Black or trans characters exist in a game, they also need a reason to exist in that world. It's okay if these characters just are.
@@sentegraphs No, they need a narritive tie in like any other character of any sexual orientation or skin colour. The very same standard applies to >all< characters, the primary problem differentiating what you call a cis character from a diversity character in that regard is that there were years of diversity characters being pushed into the forfront (not a problem what so ever) while failing that simple writing basic (that's the problem). You get the same criticism for bad narratives / badly written white male characters as you do for the diversity ones, it's just that heavy missmanagement of the writers lead to badly written diversity characters becoming an actual indicator for the overall quality of the game. That's on them, not on the customers not enjoying their product. A bad story is a bad story. A bad character is a bad character, visibly try to push an agenda either way resulting in writers not knowing what to do with them leads to bad reactions of your customers. Don't like it, don't do it, or do better. Again: Ignore the crazies, they are beyond help and won't be satisfied unless they get their male power fantasie without any hint of what ever irked them, but the rest? Just write something coherant and it should work. That is what has failed for YEARS by now, and the one thing you can usually point to is: "It feels like a check box, not like a character." But thank you for twisting my words so they may fit your agenda. I thought you to be reasonable but you are just as crazy as the people you complain about, have a good day and a nice life, but maybe think about wether or not it is worth the few bucks you make from feeding the rage engine.
@@sentegraphs I'm sorry but the fact of the matter is african americans are 14% of the US population and should not be 50% of the main characters. Trans people are less than 1% of the population and the struggles they face are boring and out of place in fantasy games, where they seemingly get deposited most often. When you're telling a story, a characters' background should matter in their decision making. If you want to place a black character in feudal europe, their skin color should have a lot to do with the decision making and interactions with the world around them. Instead, studios just pretend everyone in the 1300s would've been like oh yeah Sir Tyrone? He was born and raised here in Scotland, great guy. For example, Assassin's creed shadow, given it's made by Ubisoft, the race will have no impact on the story.
Hey, man solid video.Though the music was a bit too loud compared to your voice. Also, it doesn't matter what size your channel is, plug that kofi bro. One thing I'd comment though, as someone who agrees with some points of what you seem to describe as anti-woke, is that you fall into a similar trap as the whole pro-pedo comment you made. You have spent this video rightfully criticizing the overly aggressive criticism of some of the recent games, and even showed examples of people making such videos, plus naming a few. Yet you never made much of a distinction between the people rightfully criticizing games and those who are rabid for "woke" stuff to criticize. Just saying, people might end up thinking you associate the streamers you mentioned or the owners of the videos you presented with the people writing pro-pedophilia is woke, or making lists of woke games. Another thing I'd mention, and this is very important, no matter how much that Art Director guy might be "correct" or not (I don't like Musk much either), getting into arguments is an incredibly unprofessional thing to do, and when I saw that, I immediately dropped a whole level in my hype for Avowed (Obsidian is my fav studio, played every game of theirs since Neverwinter Nights 2). That, and then the gameplay reveal made me feel that they truly might be heading downhill, considering the Outer Worlds itself was pretty meh compared to their previous work.
>people might end up thinking you associate the streamers you mentioned or the owners of the videos you presented with the people writing pro-pedophilia is woke, or making lists of woke games. I do believe they were asserting there is an association of political ideology between those mentioned videos/streamers who "yell into a mic for 10 minutes" and those who write a list of woke games.
Thanks for the tip on the music. I do generally spend way too much time trying to find the right balance, and in this case I swear the music was softer pre-rendering. I probably just messed it up, though. I thought I made the distinction between the list's curators and the outrage merchants. Though they're of the same mind, they're not the same people. Or did you mean the people I mention that are actually doing good work (i.e. Stephanie Sterling, Robin Bea, Ibram X. Kendi, Aamer Rahman, and Shaun)? Did it sound like I was lumping those people in with people screaming about wokeness? Finally, agree to disagree on Hansen. I don't think it's necessarily "unprofessional" to espouse your politics on social media, but even if it is, the dozens of videos made about his social media posts are making a mountain out of a molehill. He in no way was saying that he "hates gamers" or whatever.
@@sentegraphs I just meant some of the people you listed out. I don't watch any of them but that asmongold guy and Dr Disrespect don't seem like the type to make these kinds of lists. They don't really look like someone who would put that much effort in. It's not unprofessional to showcase your opinion in public settings (digitally or otherwise), but the way one does such things is really important. The idea of an employee of mine going out of their way, announcing that they want to piss off a fellow businessman in Musk (no matter how unlikable said businessman is) is generally seen as undisciplined behaviour, and ought to be curbed. If not by your own self, then by your company. To criticize flaws of a person like Musk is by no means the problem here, in fact I would argue it is a duty to a properly functioning society. It's more that his comments were more focused on putting down and arguing rather than criticizing in a way that would better ones' society. That's what I mean. It is childish, immature and unprofessional. As for whether he hates gamers or not... well, I don't know, but the fact that he works in a gaming development studio might be a clue to figuring out the answer.
"woke" seems to be a keyword nothingburger nowadays. This can mean anything and most of the time means nothing. Most players don't give a rat's ass over something as petty as 'they/them' pronouns being an option in the character creation screen. What they are actually upset about - is that these games consume very large budgets to produce, but most of them are just slop. Repetitive, dull forced live service games that have no business being live service. Corporate greed progressed to a point where they sell you microtransactions in single player narrative-driven games. Or sell you "early access" that is literally 2-3 days - and they charge an insane amount for this! This 3-day "early access" can be $30 more expensive than regular version. Come on, what they are going to do in 3 days? This isn't like POE2 early access where more than half of the game is missing (3/6 acts, 24/36 ascendancy specs, 6/12 classes, crafting, balanced and fun endgame) and this EA will last anywhere between 6 and 18 months. These 3-day early accesses are just corporate greed. They scam you.
I think these are all valid criticisms to make about games before they're released. They have to do with marketing and predatory monetization. 100% legit. This video is concerned with non-criticisms about "wokeness". Concord is actually a great example here. It failed because of all the things you mention here, but the anti-woke crowd point to it as proof that "woke" games don't sell. And there's plenty of people who think that. There's a few in this comments section! I actually toiled over whether I should include Avowed's "early access" preorder shenanigans here. In the end, I thought it was beyond the scope of this video, but it is very disappointing.
Please, woke means inserting political ideology, usually far left into every type of entertainment there is. How do you people not get this? They put ideology and the message over trying to make a good game. They worry about check boxes first. Its not that hard.
@@sentegraphs i believe it's more of a stacking effect, ppl didn't notice the woke stuff as much because these other issues were in the games we play, but they were in these games and becoming more emboldened in each game moving forward, it took 5ish years before ppl really started to take notice, now i saw it nearly a decade earlier in subtle ways, like an example in assassins creed brotherhood, you could get women assassins, which was odd given not only the name of the game but also the time period, as women were never in these roles in history, but Ubisoft kept pushing the envelope further into this direction until they eventually made it cannon even though yet again it was never something in ancient human history recognized and actively shunned on back in those days. so when talking about the more important issues via NFT nonsense to other monetization nonsense going on in these games or releasing broken games at launch to always online games, these companies kept pushing these things they know gamers hate, but the woke stuff was also being pushed constantly but it got worse as each year advanced to the next. i grew up in the 80s and 90s, where this kind of woke stuff wasn't pushed as much, it wasn't in games back then at all, it was only seen in movies and tv shows, but it was far more subtle than it is today, in my opinion they just tried to hard to force this stuff down on ppl and eventually the ppl took notice and started rejecting it, but also with the other issues, now in video games it's easier to push back against this stuff than it is for movies and tv shows, because gaming is a larger investment than any movie or tv show, so we can be more picky to the games we purchase, i mean it can be rejected in movies and tv shows, but that's already happening naturally in some places, ppl aren't going to the theaters as much as they used to and spending time and money on that stuff as much, but i suppose inflation also takes a toll on these activities as well, but also lazyness, i mean i really don't want to go to the movies just to over pay money to watch a movie in a theater anymore, i mean you can't pause the movie to take a piss, it's not like a game when you can pause it and take the piss, anyway i'm sort of getting off topic. i just think it's a stacking issue, where it does matter, but so do all the other reasons.
@@5226-p1e This is fairly accurate. Most people will forgive a certain amount of 'woke' in a game; just like we forgive a certain amount of other social, political or religious messaging. The problem, IMHO, is that the messaging is becoming monotone and obvious; picking up obvious tropes that people will quickly recognise and become bored of. Just like there was only so much 80's action hero flicks we could take, there's only so much 'strong, independent, girlboss' we can watch before it becomes run-of-the-mill.
Im tired about ppl complaining about woke shit, in the end theyre more triggered about that stuff than the so called snowflakes they meme about all the time. Just look at bg3, its full of "woke" stuff, even pronouns and trans characters and its still one of the best games ever released in the last 15 years
lol baldurs gate didn't do shit cutscene that you don't interest to watch. baldurs gate gone woke if only you "want it WOKE". that DA Vailguard "Force you" its crazy people still play that shitty game.
I appreciate your take on the antiwoke critics and their problems. But I think the reason people turn to the antiwoke is because they have stopped trusting gamecritics and game studios not simply because of rasism. Sony bet hundreds of millions of dollars on Concord to only recoop a million before refunding it. Players don't agree with critics that Dragon Age the Veilguard were a 9/10 game. Suicide Squad Kill the justice league is shutting down servers in a few months. People are desperatly looking for patterns of what games and which studios to support and which will dissapoint. Sure "wokeness" is one major factor some critics are trying to map but there are many others. Which publisher is funding a studio and how they will influense the studio. They are tracking individual developers to try and see where original talent that made game that they loved are now, if they are still there or if they have left. If a studio is just chasing trends or making something out of passion. How the studio is treating developers and fans. I don't think "wokeness" is itself a cause of bad games but that kind of messaging can be corelated to some causes of bad games. Currently it is trendy among corporations to be inclusive and pander to every group they can find so a game that is designed by a corporate committee might appear "woke" even if it is only bad because of the sanitized committee design proccess. A gamestudio with a toxic positivity problem where internal critism isn't voiced properly might have strong but badly implemented policy for a safe enviroment that unfortionantly prevent proper feedback could lead to progressive messaging and bad products even if it is the toxic positivity that is the problem not the values of the company. I think both Dragon age and Concord suffered from toxic positivity in their development just like Anthem (we don't have to learn from destiny because we are gonna be better than them) 5 years ago. Also a minor nitpick but Final Fantasy 16 is probably not only european white. It is probably only "fantasy Japanese" with colorful hair. Final fantasy uses a cgi-manga-ish artstyle and the default etnicity of manga style characters if there aren't any tells is usually Japanese since that is the creators etnicity.
Then stop conflating wokeness with why a game fails. There's no proof of that at all. Figure out what's really causing so many games to be lackluster (oversaturated market, live service games, predatory monetization, awful working conditions). The games industry is a mess, but it's not because they're making too many woke games. Also, your assumptions about FF16 are way off.
@@sentegraphs As I said "wokenes" might be corelated to games failing just like icecream sales are corelated to drowning. Icecreme doesn't cause drowning but it sells a lot on beaches that do cause drowning. It is stupid to avoid icecreme parlors to avoid drowning but if there is nobody to point out what beaches and rivers are actually dangerous people will restort to superstition like that. Since no game developer want to say or maybe even knows their game is bad they can't be the ones to tell consumers what games to avoid or buy. Game critics are supposed to fill that niche but since they don't acuratly reflect what most consummers enjoy and want people resort to anyone that tries to explain that disparity. Dragon age failed due to bad writing and a huge departure in tone from the previous games. The supposed experts said it was 9/10 and was wrong while the nut job ranting about drowning in icecreme was right about it failing. If the expert is wrong while the nutjob is right even if for the wrong reasons people will stop listening to the expert and give the nutjob a chance. Playing whack a mole with nutjobs and disproving their theories isn't going to work unless you can provide a better more acurate framework for what to avoid and what to try. Game critics, the experts need to improve so people don't ignore them infavour of nutjobs. I'm not excusing the legitimate bigots raving about hating lgbtq people. Just explaining why people "conflate wokeness with why games fail". It's because they don't see a better pattern or trusted source of information for why the games fail.
That's kind of why I even wanted to make this video. I think legitimate games criticism is important. It's a huge medium, and a lot of people play games. But a lot of people are also being confused by the sheer quantity of videos with "FAILED WOKE GAME" in the thumbnail. As for legitimate game critics, that's beyond the scope of this video. Though I will say Metacritic is doing more harm than good. I have a few gaming publications that I go to for reviews, but I could understand that some people might feel let down by the state of criticism.
Woke/DEI etc is useless for telling if something is going to be good or bad because it either bigots moaning about things they dont like because they are bigots or because it's a symptom of the creators just ticking checkboxes etc because they are either lazy or because they are rushing resulting in poorly written characters and story.
Schrödingers woke again? Like with the Mario movie, where anti-woke people suddenly decided its not woke because it was successful? Also does that mean that Baldur's Gate 3 isn't woke? That every FF after 2 wasn't woke? Celeste wasn't woke? Nier Automata wasn't woke? Try applying those woke themes as they a are listed by that curator and you'll find out that most successful works over the last 40 years are woke. As far as I see it you are calling it woke because you think its going to fail, if you didn't you'd just ignore it, or rather the anti-woke creators wouldn't cry about it so publicly.
Using "woke" as a blanket criticism is just another way of saying "I don't like how it looks/feels" and it's so tiresome seeing it being used by annoying grifters.
It's not a blanket criticism or a pejorative. It's a rejection of ideological brow beating. If you want to turn your brain off and let people like Matt, who genuinely hate you, preach down at you, that's your choice. Have fun with that.
You can always spot grifters, they use words like grifters and pretend they don't know what people complaining about, or don't know what words like woke mean. Get fkd, you lose
The art directors rant on Twitter shows us where the priorities lie. Woke means your priorities are not making a good game,at least not the main prioritiy. Bg3 had pronouns but i didnt see the devs going on twitter rants.
But BG3 was also labelled woke. Same with Elden Ring. If a game is a success, they just forget that it was ever labelled woke and move on to the next thing.
Well made, and encouraging video. It's always important to get content like this out. I knew about the "woke" game list but never bothered to look at it. The staggering amount of LGBTQ+ content on that list is indicative of its actual nature. I also REALLY love the fact that you point out a long winded post from an anti-woke commenter in the video, and then anti-woke airheads come to the comment section and leave equally long posts, coming to wild conclusions about things that aren't even mentioned in the video. They're doing an excellent job of proving your point!
@manaburn876 I don't know if the ones you mention are worse, or the comments that assume I didn't mention something that was clearly addressed in the video.
Putting medieval in quotes means "I'm not calling it medieval, they are." Umm, no it doesn't. It signifies that it is not a literal medieval setting because it is fantasy, but the setting comes closest to what in real life would have been the middle ages, mostly in terms of technology. Not saying that I agree that there needs to be an explanation for black characters in a fantasy setting. When it comes to right and wrong ways to put woke themes in your games, I've certainly heard examples of people doing it right. One that comes to mind is FF16, which is regularly mentioned as a good example of how to include gay relationship. You shoot down your own argument. There are examples of games with politics in them that are not proclaimed as "woke shit" as you showed. Because it is not about putting politics in the game. It is about moralizing, lecturing, preaching. Give players moral questions, not the answers that you want them to believe. People should be allowed to make up their own minds about things. How can you applaud Hansen's tweet? No good can come from antagonizing a large group of potential players. If this causes the game to fail, he is responsible for endangering the jobs of everyone on the team. That is inexcusable in my opinion. I'm not a fan of the outrage either, but I also don't care for people who will hate on "white dudes". As a white dude, I have done nothing to them. Games are for everyone. Fine. But you can't make a game for everyone. It just doesn't work. And sadly, games cost a lot of money to make, so you have to target a large audience. Kicking the very largest group of potential buyers in the nuts repeatedly will not end well for a studio. It has been shown. It's fine if you want to make a game approachable for more people, but you can't do so at the cost of a large part of your audience, unless you have found other ways to keep your costs and revenue in balance.
1. If that's what they meant by "medieval", they didn't have to put in quotes. The quotes are deliberate. 2. The main focus of this video is an unreleased game being decried as "woke". No "lecturing", no "moralizing" needed to be labeled "woke" there. Just a choice in character creation. 3. Matt Hansen is also a white dude. He literally says "crusty white dudes like me". It's obviously a joke, and one that's been deleted and dug up by bad faith actors, no less. 4. Nobody is kicking anyone in the nuts. They are just making more inclusive games. If it's "fine you want to make more games approachable", then why do so many videos exists whining about pronoun choice?
Great Video, You earned my sub and like! UA-cam suggestions doing something good for once. For background I am a CisPan white man and for me there is only one type of case where I'd be rather for no inclusion instead of poor inclusion. If for example in a case like Overwatch, not talking about characters like Tracer, Mei, Zarya, Lucio and so forth, but rather the trend of Blizzard to brand characters, long after they have come out, as part of LGBTQI+ community to distract from all the effed up shit going down at the company. That makes the inclusion really seem like a tool and not a action of genuine care and it does leave a bad aftertaste imo.
I think this goes with out but I do think that the inclusion of stereotypical or characters created just meant to be hated is not smth that should be done or played.
Thank you! Someone else brought up Overwatch, too. I played the first for a few months on release, but am unfamiliar with it since then. From what you describe, though, it does seem like a way to pander rather than actually caring about being inclusive. I'm reminded of JK R-----g exclaiming on Twitter how characters were gay or Black long after the books themselves were released...and we all know how that turned out.
If Half-Life 2 was released now, it would have been called woke. It has a biracial woman, a mute autistic-coded protagonist, a black amputee, and a white male villain. Modern gamers are irritating, and I no longer listen to their opinions on ANYTHING.
Just looked it up on the Woke Games list, and it's "Not woke" XD. Not sure how they can justify that. I think it falls under the "it's already a beloved game, so we can't label it 'woke'", kind of like Final Fantasy VI.
This is a really good video and I'm thankful that you talk about this topic I dread for people just being brainwashed from the loud and plentiful posts and videos which really don't have any sense and reason I'm glad that at least the algorithm showed me your video I think the only hope is when people really think, research and help others get informed through videos like yours I hope to be able to make videos, or some form of influential content to inform others one day, but till then I'm glad that there are people like you who do; and I hope for people to really think about it too
The issue more so is the team lead. He has blatantly stated racist stuff against white people. It sucks because I want to get into the game, but I do know his statements will kill the game before it gets started. I have given "woke" games a chance and a lot of the time aside from the gameplay the rest of the game absolutely sucks.
1. He is the art director, not the team lead. 2. He made an obvious joke. You can certainly argue that it was a bad joke, but it was not "blatant racism". 3. It was a 4-year old tweet dug up by bad-faith actors trying to get a man fired or harassed. 4. Like any game, some "woke" games are bad, and some are good. But whether it's good or not has nothing to do with if it's "woke". 5. It's kind of exhausting replying to the same "arguments" repeatedly, especially since they're all topics I addressed in the video.
Very interesting video. I have been seeing a lot more of the anti-woke video types post the DA Veilguard release in my feed. I don't like the game (*admittedly* solely from the limited clips I have seen) due to bad writing and due to how good BG3 was. BG3 has set the bar so high now, any high production game has to be compared. I will say I also really like Kingdom Come: Deliverance, but due to completely different reasons to why I like BG3. I see why people have issues with KCD's "lack of diversity" but it's also meant to be a historical game (ignoring the issues with the Hungarians/Cumans). Historical games and fantasy are different (as you rightfully said!). Maybe it's coming from the TTRPG space, but I have no issue with pronouns or whatever, as long as it makes sense within the story and universe you are telling. Anyway, I am mostly adding this comment to help with the algorithm!
Thank you! KG: D is one that slipped past me. I always wanted to get around to it, but never found the time. I hear great things. I played around 30 hours of Veilguard, and I wasn't a big fan. But the game has garnered so much hate because of its inclusion of a non-binary character that it's hard to find legitimate criticism about it. And yeah, BG3 is going to cast a shadow on fantasy video games for a while, along with Elden Ring probably. Both genre defining games!
@@sentegraphs KCD is always a weird one when it comes to recommendations. If you are willing to learn its combat system, look over the few remaining bugs and have a love for history, its great. But I also know it's not for everyone. I would recommend it, but with said caveats, since there really are some fantastic parts. Same with the Dishonored series. I think it's interesting since BG3 has Karlach. Samantha Béart is non-binary and that doesn't seem to be an issue. Here's hoping more is to come from both studios!
18:30-18:40 Gmod has always been about modding. Anyone can bring anything into the game, they (facepunch/game devs) removed some server running the popular DarkRP but with Nazism themed, where you're encouraged you to play resistance (cus on most servers you're in France, RPing sabotaging the germans). In Gmod you can have the most derranged NSFW stuff available there. It's double standards you know ... Also Garry made the poll to remove this content on twitter... so... Yeah a bunch of these woke communities may have voted to remove it.
Questions: Is the DEI initiative a necessary thing? Are people to be hired because they are of a different race or gender identity and not because they are the best fit for the job? How can we challenge each other to be better. We have alot of arrogance coming from both sides of the divide. It's sad because because everyone just trying to be right and the discord turing into a childish tit for tat. At this point i wish all games offered a demo so I could just try them for myself before i purchase, and won't have to listen to the stupidity that currently goin on.
That makes it sound like people get hired solely due to their race. What's actually happening is when a company has a pool of excellent candidates who would be good for a job, they'll choose the candidate that diversifies their work force. And yeah, demos are nice.
Understood, but I have played some games with some shitty stories and dialog from the 2000's till now, but stories and dialog seem to be getting worse, especially in the AAA industry. Makes me wonder if it's a case of square pegs in round holes. (With or without DEI)
@@adidokonder6887 Yes, there are games like that. But the current anti-woke is not interested in nuanced takes. They just scream about pronoun selection and "forced" diversity. When pushed, they might hide behind the "it just has to be done right" argument, but if they're criticizing a game before it's even released, that's a mighty thin veil they're hiding behind.
Woke means something very specific to me. Just because characters are ugly or the artstyle is bad doesnt make it "woke". Woke means the studio has a very specific idealogy theyre trying to press onto the player and often times at the expense of gameplay or story stuff.
So many people have written this or something like it but don't provide examples. How can "woke" mean that when so many people slap that label on games that aren't released yet? People are claiming Avowed to be woke because of a single character creation choice. How can anyone say they pushing for a very specific ideology at the expense of gameplay or story, when nobody knows the story yet, and early impressions have been largely positive?
@@sentegraphs It is called pattern recognition. There is a whole cluster of things that turn off many gamers, once they have seen one indication it is a good bet - not a certainty - that there will be many more when the full game releases. DA Veilguard was a good example where the early warnings proved correct. I hope Avowed is good, but I will not preorder given the idiotic developer posts. As for early impressions; game journalists are effectively paid lobbyists for the game industry, not to be trusted. Happy New Year!
Okay, so I didn't know this before today, but UA-cam has AI-generated responses to comments. The one for yours was, "Me too!" Which I think means UA-cam is hoping the algorithm favors me as well. But they probably don't even know how the algorithm works xD.
Could you talk about the Fallout: Ashfall controversy? It’s a Fallout: New Vegas mod whose project lead was discovered to be a secret transgender bisexual.
I know this is like beating a dead horse, but I think The Veilguard is a perfect example. I don't like The Veilguard at all, not because there are pro-nouns, and a non-binary character. Bioware has always been pretty inclusive with their games. The writing in Veilguard is some of the worst I've seen. It is so inoffensive it's dull. I mean all of your companions have the same convictions and beliefs so there is absolutely no diversity in character depth. Look to Mass Effect. The krogan hate the solarians because of the genophage, so watching Wrex and Mordin trying to work together was interesting. I mean in The Veilguard Lucanis and Neve are the closest thing we get to that. Lucanis is a "mage killer" and Neve is a "detective mage?" but both are kind of cold and calculating and they both have the same way of thinking (trust enough to get the job done, but not enough to get you killed mentality) That is as interesting as it gets and that in itself is boring. Journalists and Game Devs can call us all racist as much as they want, and that's ok for me anyway I don't mind opinions of people that have no impact on my life what-so-ever but until journalists and game devs reach an understanding with gamers, games will keep flopping, layoffs and closures will happen and nobody wins in that situation. We get it game devs and journalists. You really like representation. Cool, now focus on making gameplay great and writing passable and then work on all the other stuff. "our game is diverse" isn't good enough to sell units. "Our game is fun, impactful, and thought provoking, as well as diverse" sounds better to me anyway. I can't speak for everyone.
That's fine. I didn't really like Veilguard much either. But an overwhelming amount of hate directed at that game was simply because a character is non-binary, and uses that term to describe themself. And when that's the extent of the "discourse" around a game, other criticism becomes secondary; it's more important to counter hate and bigotry than it is acknowledge some people don't like the game for other reasons. Saying something like, "I know a lot of people were upset at the pronouns, but I don't like the game for these reasons" is, in a way, trivializing the actual hate and non-binary erasure. I think it's more important to address that before addressing other concerns about that game. I'm trying to be careful here, but it is perfectly fine to not like Veilguard. Not liking Veilguard does not make a person a transphobe. But there is actually a large amount of transphobic takes on that game, and that's what I (and others) are criticizing. They're not saying that's the only reason to not like Veilguard, but it is the most troubling reason.
I hear ya. For me, having more options in character creation is always going to be a good thing. And having a diverse cast of characters can be immersive which is a good thing. I agree with ya 100%. I think of game development as a sliding scale. The more you put in one aspect the less you can put in the other. We just haven't seen the right balance yet maybe. But yeah being mad because a character is a certain orientation is dumb. At the very least out of all the reasons to not like veilguard not liking it because of Taash is short sided and nonsensical.
Solid video. I think what bothers me the most is their ignorance takes away criticism that i have with pandering when it makes no since. Overwatch turning one of their characters gay and asking my gay friends what they think and the majority of the ansers were 'did it change their DPS?' I was personally annoyed over the pandering in the last of us 2, Lev is curious about their sexuality wheb they dont know if they will eat tomorrow? I think they did focus on winning bownie points and it ruined the writing. 'Hello random strangers this is my name os Joel and this is my brother, about 20 min that way is a compound with all that we love and have.' I was expecting him to tell them when the guard's shift changes
Someone else mentioned Overwatch. I have very limited experience of the game, but it seems to me like this is the exact type of actual criticism I'd like to see more of: inclusion of marginalized groups as pandering rather than actually caring about inclusion. The story should be written with character identity in mind, not thoughtlessly retconned. As for Lev, I don't see why being in post-apocalypse would mean he wouldn't struggle with gender identity. Wasn't he a part of a group that was able to provide a semblance of normal life until they didn't accept him for who he was? I haven't played it since release, though I do know Lev's character, and Abbie's, and Ellie's, were all subject to a lot of hate.
@sentegraphs the overwatch character wasn't gay to begin with then they switched it. As for the last of us 2 thing this is something me and a couple of my buddies discuss, not the game but how when a society reaches a point you can explore things that deep with in you. Ok.. (this is my philosophy by the way) when a society reaches a point that everything is taken care of like food, water, shelter, ect you have the ability to actually let you guard down and explore who individuals are. They are in a place that even if you have crops its probably just enough to make it to the next day, what happens when a virus infects the crops, are you going to think what makes your motor run? Abby was such a terrible writer character, hiw did she get that protein/ steroids? Revenge is bad unless your Abby. Kinda wierd how her father was brown in part but they made him white in part 2,just saying. Even Rey was terrible, it annoyed me so much I thought I might be sexist. I realized that I wasn't when I switched the characters with myself and it helped me to relize it was the writing and bot the individual, she learned how to convince people with the force with in 5 min of believing in the force. Dig what you dig, I ain't going to stop you
Alright, I was going to watch the whole thing, but I’m not actually sure that this was made with more effort than those on the opposite side of the aisle. Also, the music you’ve chosen is not well balanced compared to your softer voice. From what I have listened to, I’ll throw in my two cents based on what I’ve gathered from people not flinging poop at each other. It’s not all based on the screenshot, but also the words of someone involved in the game’s development, and the historical trend of other games viewed as ‘woke’ where developers have come out and danced to the whinging sounds of these people. With that being said, the dude is an art director, so I don’t know what actual influence he can have on the game’s writing development. The argument that it’s not actually about being ‘woke’, but the cishet male trying to make every game conform to their preferences isn’t really that great. Of course, people want games which appeal to them, and that are done well. The problem is that the audience these games are now trying to market to is small, and they are often using established IP with an established audience that expects something else. This has been a trend across all media, not just video games, so it has had an accumulative effect. Now, when people say they won’t be consuming it, it is automatically assumed that these people are bigots, and thus you are safe to berate and belittle them to your heart’s content (see Twitter, Reddit, Bluesky, or even some mainstream opinion pieces for example). This has been the trend for a while, so these people have become more radicalized and vindicated in their views when any ‘woke’ media flops, especially if it was one that used established IP where this wasn’t previously the case. Now any sign of ‘woke’ is too much. Using modern terminology in a fantasy setting is immersion breaking and dismissing this argument because of a pre-established notion that anyone who uses it is probably using it in bad faith doesn’t detract from the argument. It just rings hollow from the mouths of those people. I would be fine with Obsidian exploring the ideas of body dysphoria in a setting like Pillars as it is already well set up to do this with things like souls awaking with past lives bleeding into your current life in many ways - this could easily be another way that this partially manifests. That being said, I know that Obsidian has the potential to incorporate this well, as they’ve already explored using their own terminology in past games, especially POE2. So, it kind of sucks to see just a simple pronoun box on the screen, and hopefully it’s actually explored. You then used Steam’s forums for sources of bad faith arguments. Without first acknowledging that the Steam forums are notoriously bad for ‘clown farmers’. If you look at the forums for any new, or upcoming game, you will find examples of both ‘woke’, and ‘anti-woke’ clown bait arguments. Which means if you are trying to find a good faith argument, you will be hard pressed to find it there. In fact, reading the posts of these clown farmers has become, in itself, a genre of video on UA-cam akin to reddit recaps. Though it is relatively small. It is not uncommon to find someone posting ‘woke’ bait, but then scroll through their comments and see ‘anti-woke’ bait as well. They do this to get ‘clown’ reactions from other users. These clown reactions award a point value which you can use for some items on the point shop of Steam. I’m not actually sure why these points matter enough to bait for them as it’s purely cosmetic, but such is the case. Just like people who bait for Reddit upvotes, or Twitter likes, I guess. You also used a tiny steam group of some 2691 users for examples of anti-woke lists which include games with a fairly high review score, so either A) this group is purely capitalizing on the trend to establish a group which can then be sold when it has enough users (as happens often on Steam and other platforms), or B) these people are in the fringes of the whole ‘movement’. So, do I think Avowed will flop? I don’t know. It looks middling and is a completely different direction for the franchise. I, myself, much prefer POE 1 and 2, and the isometric style that supports the combat which I love. Do I think it will flop because of DEI? No. If it flops because of anything, it’ll be the inexperience of the developers in making this kind of game, and the fans lost from the transition of isometric RPG to third person action game. Cheers, and I hope we can enjoy this game!
And to add one final point - I am a massive fan of pillars of eternity and the world of eora. And so, if this game flops in a similar manner to dragon age the veil guard because of similar issues, where focus and attention were deviated from constructing a strong story arch, an immersive environment and fantastic gameplay for the purpose of political messaging, I for one will be heartbroken, because it would essentially mean the end of the world of eora in the video game setting. Avowed must succeed for fans of the Pillars franchise, and I, for one, am willing to look aside pronoun selection if the rest of the game is top-notch, but from previous experiences, the presence of such a feature indicates further deeper problems that will affect the game negatively, and likely threaten the future of the franchise as a whole.
The thing it is woke and it's confirmed by its director just to spite Elon Musk. that's how low your director is , he doesnt care about how good it is he just want it to make people angry. people who said it's gonna fail is not a far fetch idea it is from what can be seen to game with woke agenda fail in this year. we can predict itll fail very hard . people also predicted Veilguard gonna fail. and it fail hard. it fail so hard that the studio didn't bother creating DLC for it they abandon it just like they abandon their Dragon Age long time fans.
Again, it's a tactic. If you make claims a game will fail due to "wokeness" before it's even released, then it's easy to say, "See! We were right!" even if there's a million other reasons why a game could have failed. See Dragon Age (though I think it's a bit early to claim it's a failed game) and Concord. There's a million reason why those games didn't sell well, but the anti-woke crowd claims it's due to wokeness. Definitely no proof of that! I mean, Baldur's Gate 3 and Elden Ring were also considered "woke", and they're two of the most successful games of all time. Wokeness doesn't have anything to do with whether a game is good or sells well.
And no, it's not "confirmed by its director" to be woke "just to spite Elon Musk". Musk complained about the pronouns, and the art director replied that it made him happy to work on a game that pissed off Musk. I don't think the art director is the sole decision maker for a pronoun checkbox in character creation.
@@sentegraphs I was hyped for this game for ages, had it wishlisted ready to buy. I don't care about pronouns being there, I'm trans myself, what I do care about though is an art director that seems to despise half the world. I wont be buying the game because of his actions, not some influencer. And honestly I'm pretty sad about the whole thing, I was looking forward to this game for a long time, but I wont support such hate.
@@Doumu All I got from Matt's tweets is that he wants more inclusion in the gaming industry, and that he hates Musk (why wouldn't you?). Nothing about despising half the world, or gamers
@@EinheriV Why hate anyone? Why put people into camp A and camp B at all. Make a game for people to enjoy and they will enjoy it. Matt's comments made it very clear he alligns himself with one side and personally that's not for me. If the developer was going on about hating left wing people I'd also avoid it. The world is not so black and white as you think, there are many layers of grey.
One of the main problems I have with "wokeness" is when we have an established lore and that is being changed to fit some DEI standards. I also have a problem with "wokeness" when it is obvious that one narrative is being pushed like Taash being non binary and how that should be respected in Dragon Age while the very same Taash is allowed to be a total dick to the Necromancer INSISTING on calling him Death Mage even though he clearly doesn't like that. I didn't need to be able to check a box to identify with Blade in the movie and I'm a white guy, and I'm not a vampire/daywalker either in case you were wondering so checkboxes don't really matter to me, changing lore and being inconsistent with your narrative in stories does though.
people aren't changing preestablished lore to meet "DEI standards." trans people already existed in dragon age, taash being petulant and making fun of emmrich is not the same as outright transphobia. it's rude, and taash IS rude, but it's still basic decency to accept that taash is non-binary and it's part of their story. i am trans and did not love how taash was handled, and i generally disliked how veilguard felt and how it removed all of the stakes of previous games. but that's not a "DEI" issue, it's a consequence of a difficult development timeline. a lot of veilguard suffered because of layoffs and having to restart development multiple times because the type of game they were making changed multiple times. a lot of this stuff people like you are in hysterics about went by with minimal comment 10, 15 years ago. mass effect talked about genocide, racism, and had a race of exclusively bisexual women. you don't understand why other people want to relate to the media they consume because as a white man there has always been someone like you. it doesn't cause you any harm that gay and trans people and black people and god forbid women are visible and do literally anything at all.
@@badletter_ The lore changing example was not related to Veilguard but to another franchise (Warhammer 40k) so even though we might agree when it comes to Veilguard lore (not a huge Dragon Age lore dude myself) that was not the point, the point was that lore IS being changed in movies/games to fit the DEI standards. Why can't we agree that if Taash expects others to call them by their pronouns she should refer to others the way they prefer as well, how is that "just being rude" and not showing the same decency to others that you yourself expect that others show you? I mentioned Blade in the end exactly to prove my point that you can see yourself in other characters even if they are not exactly like you, and I literally don't care if a character is gay, trans, a woman, black, Chinese etc. it is about how a character is written that matters, is it a good character or is it just there to tell me that "hey, I'm trans and you should respect me because I'm trans, and that is why I'm here, because I'm trans".
It's true that most arguments about "woke games" are bs. This video is weak as well, though. Obsession over pronouns is a result of Western hegemony. Throughout history a lot of people didn't fit strictly into male/female groups. Which often wasn't a problem because most cultures didn't bother segregating people like ours did and still does. Just like nobody considers segregating people based on eye or hair colour. These are just social constructs. Putting them in games means that the game world conforms to the world of the author rather than be an independent world with its own history. Which can be jarring. I can see why developers do it and why it appeals to marginalized people, but it's lazy and shouldn't be encouraged or celebrated as some good thing the company did. They did it because they predicted they'll make more money this way. It's not about inclusivity. It's about milking people who care about a social construct for more money.
Inclusion definitely is a moneymaker, and game publishers wouldn't do it if they didn't think it would make money. Also, inclusion in games, especially games where players can choose their own identity, is a good thing, and should be celebrated. It can be both things.
i don't think the anti-woke UA-camrs are saying the game is bad, they are saying that is a red flag that indicates that is might be bad. You are clearly strawmanning arguments.
Mmhmm. Calling the game a "woke disaster", "impending failure", "abandoned by the modern audience", "doomed" etc. are all just claiming it's a red flag. Once again, they can say all these things now and if the game doesn't do well, they can claim they were right all along. If the game is successful, they can forget about it and move on to the next one
I don't think that a game being woke is the problem, I think it's the heavy handed approach of the messaging in some recent games... Games have always included some kind of messaging...
I think it would be better received if it wasn't so celebrated. Treat it as though it's just a matter of fact and stop drawing attention to it. Woke just means progressive and obnoxiously loud about it. Key word being obnoxious, its tired, played out. Thats why you hear gamers saying give us our games back. This is why you see retro being picked up over modern. For your take on Final Fantasy 6, sure those things exist within the story, but they lend to the overall theme of the story instead of being a focal point. What do I know, I've been on the go retro train long before this was a talking point.
No, "woke" does not mean "progressive and obnoxiously loud about it". The pronoun checkbox in Avowed was something someone had to notice and whine about. I don't even think people with access to the game were supposed to share the character creation (it was an old build in the copy they played, which I hear is pretty common). So someone had to go out of their way to point it out. The obnoxiously loud people here were the anti-woke crowd.
While the core message of this essay may be fair enough, structurally the whole thing is a perfect example of how not to engage in a discussion. From strawmanning to false dichotomies, nearly every individual argument presented dishonestly employs some form of fallacy in an attempt to reframe the debate and obfuscate the actual issue.
I'll try to boil down. Since this "woke or not very woke enough" is all about people perspective and not something "theorized" inside a university (like most jargon used in LGBT or DEI or the shit we want out of our games), it's all about how much you're willing to accept. Most gamers that play games don't want to deal with this culture war. Problem is that 2000-2010 era didnt have much or any DEI or these kind of messaging (some people will go after this assuption trying to convey it's not the case because... idk EA in 2001 had a DEI dep). Sometimes games even triggered these folks. Nowadays most game need to have a handcap POC Trans character else there's no enough representation. For these people (pro Woke shit) they don't care, they know our world is made of politic view and they want to change society by any means, destroying the very fabric and foundations. We're striking back. They once demanded for being accepted, now they want to destroy everything and shove their thruth onto us. They have the power, we're now the ostracized people.
You know that cis men are 90 of the rpg market,right? If you want that market you need to pander to it,like with all audiances. As an aside,Mass effect 3 introduce gay relations in 2012,you know how they treated that?! As an off hand remark about his husband, not a cringe comming out party. Im sure its easier to call everyone a bigot,but the truth is 90% of ppl never saw a trans person irl, and dont care about such things,the most that would have happened is ppl woud roll their eyes at the pronouns and moved on. But now they stoked the culture wars fires some more,they played themselves.
Where the hell do these numbers come from? Based on a quick search, the only numbers I saw were around 55% men, 45% women. And even if your numbers are right, I'm a cis man, and would love to see more trans representation in games. I'm not the only one either. Also, please point me to the study where people were asked, "have you ever seen a trans person irl?"
@valipunctro it would seem I didn't make anything up either. Your two comments thus far seem to prove my original reply as accurate. See, this is how we adjust when new information is provided! Science!
I think most people know what woke games are. You losers are purposely trying to make it seem like it is a super complicated thing lol. Remember the days when you could play and enjoy games without in your face agendas?
I believe the "days" you are talking about are the days of childhood ignorance. I'm sure if you tried hard enough, I know that's tough, you could look at any of your favorite childhood games and find an agenda.
"Woke" is really a word like "nazi" or "fascist" or"far right", some people just call that anything or anyone they don't like. And 1) Avowed does not look good, its visuals are very mid-tier for what i've seen at the moment, 2) is directed by a person who hates me, 3) niche political views that i never even wanted to hear IRL is getting injected in a fantasy RPG game, and you're saying it's not more immersion-breaking than UI elements? You ok? 4) Outer Worlds was a huge disappointment, i knew when i played it that Obsidian is not as good anymore. Also, before i've seen what Matt Hansen posted, i would try Avowed if the game turns out to be good. Now i'm not coming close to any of their "games" ever.
No...no it's not. "Woke" as a term has existed for decades, and used to be a term used by Black Americans for people who are aware of issues facing Black Americans. More recently, it was appropriated by liberals to mean a more general sense of awareness of many social issues: race, gender identity, sexuality, etc. Even more recently, it's been appropriated by the right as a demeaning term for media that addresses societal issues. "Nazi" and "fascist" are terms for political movements based on demonizing and often murdering anyone deemed an "other". As for "far right"...well...you're the one who lumped it in with the other two.
17:17 is the perfect example of the willing lack of understanding of the term woke. Just having a woman, or poc, doesn't make the game woke, we all know this, and its disingenuous to pretend otherwise. Idk if its bad faith or ignorance, based on the white western perspective I'm assuming ignorance, but most people don't like woke bs in their games.
The U.S. is not the center of the world or the highest populated area, places like India and china also can't stand this crap, and they are far lest tolerant than the average western gamer. The differences is they are in the billions and the western gamer is in the millions and only a few thousand of those actually want this garbage, the super majority just don't.
When people are calling the Witcher 4 trailer "woke," then "woke" is *absolutely* just about women and POC people.
The tone and style of that cinematic was the exact same as the original Witcher 3 cinematic, the only difference is that instead of Geralt it features Ciri, and instead of being young she looks aged.
If people want to express that they don't want "western ideology" (whatever the hell that means) in their games then they can use their words to do so, rather than pretend that the term "woke" hasn't been co-opted by people who lose their fucking minds the moment there's a female on screen they don't want to fuck.
@@crimsonking6773 yeah,unironicaly is a type of shovinism from the americans.Not all fictional worlds need to reflect multicultural current america. Careful though,not wanting it is like rejecting the existence of minorities,and thats tantamount to genocide.
Exactly this.
People aren't opposed to having a PoC or female lead or pronouns or anything like that. We've had it in the past, it was fine.
It's just that it's become a so-called "dogwhistle" or a "Red flag".
We know, through experience, that if a game in "current year" has these things featured prominently, Then we can assume that the people making the game didn't just stop there, but crammed the game full of these things.
We assume that they didn't set out to make a great game, but rather to co-opt an IP to push some socio-political narrative, thus making the game bad (because what do they care about the game? It's only there to serve as a vehicle for their messaging).
Does this HAVE to happen? No, of course not.
Maybe they actually wrote an amazing story with a Lesbian, disabled, woman of color as the lead. And it's actually very thoughtfully made and relevant to the plot-weaving etc etc.
But experience tells us it's not. Experience tells us it's ivory-tower preaching.
@@grumpycup4762 Really? People aren't opposed? I must have missed the part where your kind got so crazy over an OPTION to select the pronouns or gender identity in a character creation screen? And it was fine in the past? No it fucking wasn't. The fact that you say that shows you weren't there or even old enough to undrestand the discourse going around at the time.
@@grumpycup4762 Exactly. And add to it that this is the universal experience in cinema as well...
I really enjoyed the video. I found it interesting about the woke/nonwoke list and where certain games fell on it. The woke label and outrage are across most of pop culture at the moment but video games are something of a microcosm in that it seems to be more virulent and violent (metaphorically violent I mean) than in other mediums. Personally I am proud to be called woke. I love Veilguard. I love Star Trek. I quite enjoyed Immortals of Aveum, and so forth. I cannot understand how more diversity can make some people feel so attacked. As if the very existence of people who are different is an affront to who they are. I guess I am lucky in that I come from a very tolerant family. My dad was gay, my Grandparents were feminists and members of PFLAG, my Mom is one of those hippy-dippy pinko liberal bleeding hearts, and my Sister is a feminist. With this family it's hard to understand how to hate or fear someone simply because they are different. Honestly I kind of hope I never come to understand that kind of hate. I'm not saint, but I don't think I'm a Nazi.
Anyways, I liked your breakdown of the topic and I look forwards to seeing more of your channel.
Thank you! I do have some thoughts about why the conversation around woke games is so virulent and violent, but I don't know how correct I am or if I'd be able to explain them coherently. Maybe someday, but it'd take more than a comment here 😁.
Good games never could be stopped by anyone. Not even when ppl didnt even know it exists in the first place. Problem with "maybe TOO woke" games - so the case what it is about is: no you cant say if the game will be good - but what u can say is that its more likely that it was made with the wrong base. if youre a baker you create bread around the thaught: "does my customer like how it tastes". if you as a baker create breads which taste like nothing but look like god himself would have made them: nobody would buy it. cause a bread is here to taste good and not to look nice.
NO - nobody knows now if this game will be good. But if its good nobody will be able to stop it. But as a gamer u still have the risk, that main thaught of the game was not to make a good game. As they said in South Park: make it a chicken, make it gay. some producers seem to feel entitled that ppl HAVE to play their game JUST cause they made it :) thats not the case. Im not getting this bread if it tastes like plastic. and i will wait what players say to it. Since my trust in all others got lost in the last years due to alot of lying game propaganda hypes. and if studios hire ppl not because of their skills anymore but because they are coloured or non binary then its not about creating good games. your thaugth isnt bad ofc. truth will show. but ur thaught ignores behaviour of big studios in the last decade. and no - i wont give money to anyone who insults me. like: lol? how long u think a baker can survive - insulting his biggest customer. thats ridiculous
I'd like to take a brief moment to add my two cents to the "better diversity" argument, and say this is an argument that *could* be done in good faith and which I've seen treated as such in other spaces (e.g. Lindsay Ellis tackling the way feminism and LGBTQ+ is portrayed in Beauty and the Beast), but the key aspect about it is that it should first and foremost be an argument to improve representation and not to justify it. If the alternative parts from the position that a minority should "only be included if" or otherwise suggests "no inclusion is better than bad inclusion" or the likes, then you know that's a bad faith argument.
On this subject and the world of Eora, I'd also like to suggest an interesting way one could explore topics like gender dysphoria, namely by taking advantage of the metempsychosis element of the setting and the way Awakenings can play into one's personality and experiences. Of course we've had an experience of a male character with an Awakened female personality in Aloth/Iselmyr, but in this case Iselmyr feels more like an entirely separate split personality that has no effect over Aloth's gender identity per se (that I recall anyway). However, there are other characters that seem to experience Awakenings in different ways: one that especially comes to mind is a Brackenbury patient, a lower-class person who recalled an experience from a past life as a noblewoman and somehow felt her life in Ondra's Gift become stale and horrible as a result; somehow I feel like an experience like this, where an Awakening can have a profound effect in one's perception of a specific aspect of their life instead of a full-fledged split personality, could be a very interesting situation with which to explore someone feeling they are in a body with the wrong gender. Hopefully we might see something like this in Avowed.
Related to your point but related to gaming, there was one thing I watched recently where I was, irritated, by how they handled diversity. Wheel of Time on Prime is based on a huge book series, in those books the world is pretty big with entire countries with unique and well defined cultures and yes, races. When they created the TV show they instead made every nation massively diverse and while most of the actors were good in their roles, it detracted from the uniqueness of the cultures the author created. The Wheel of Time setting (unlike a lot of fantasy from the 80's and 90's) was not predominantly white and what they did just looked like corporate interference rather than wanting true representation. As an example of something they handled well, two characters were HEAVILY hinted to have a lesbian relationship in the books and the show just made it blatant and I loved it, felt true to the characters.
Sorry that this wasn't entirely related but it made me think of "good" and "bad" representation
There's definitely some great criticism out there! Even the article I mentioned (the Inverse one written by Robin Bea, pinned in the description) was critical of how games could do trans representation better. I welcome criticism like you mention (and I love Lindsay Ellis!), but I don't think we're getting actual criticism from the anti-woke crowd.
Really really great, thoughtful content! Subbed. 😊
@@asaviklund9414 Thanks! Don't always do videos like this, but I definitely want to do more.
@ really fantastic. You’re good at this style of content. You’re offering something, instead of just regurgitating stuff, like many creators do. Keep it up! People will show up for this. Not that “people showing up” is the right reason to do something. You should do what you’re passionate about. But, when you do, people will notice, and come to hear your thoughts. Cheers! 😊
I'm going to try to put my thoughts here respectfully as I can. To me, whether or not the lgbt representation makes a game woke depends on how it's presented, and whether it makes sense in the world.
For example, both Baldur's Gate 3 and Dragon Age: The Veilguard have gay, trans and/or non-binary characters. Gay characters - not my thing, but you do you.
Trans characters - in Baldur's Gate 3 I see no problems. It's a high fantasy setting with powerful, trusted magic, and previous games in the series have items which do change a person's gender. In Dragon Age though, I don't see how it could be justified. Magic isn't trusted because it is far too easy to get possessed, so even if it could change someone's gender, would never be used to do so. On the other hand, the world is facing crisis after crisis after apocalypse, where life is cheap and every able body is needed to fend off the threats that come daily. Hormone therapies don't exist, and the medical 'industry' is likely comparable to the practices from around the American Civil War, if not worse. It just doesn't make sense to me.
On top of the inclusion of the lgbt characters is the way that they are presented. Baldur's Gate 3 treats it subtly, as just another part of their identity, maybe not even an important part of their identity. Veilguard on the other hand is not subtle at all, almost ham-fisted in it's 'I am non-binary and you will acknowledge me' approach. At times it feels like Veilguard treats their gay/trans/non-binary identity as the only important part of their identity.
Does this make sense?
Great video! I remember all the same people all assuming Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was going to be terrible, same as avowed. Even beyond the "woke/anti-woke" arguments gamers at the moment seem addicted to hating things before they are released. Again see the reaction to Witcher 4 or Intergalactic after the Game Awards and people are pre-hating those too.
I think it's part of the strategy. If they're right and a game fails, they can congratulate themselves. If they're wrong, they already have the next thing to complain about.
@@sentegraphs true, they pre-hated the Fallout TV show a whole bunch then had to roll it all back when it was actually good. The other tactic is the Dragon Age: Veilguard one where they just insinuate anyone who liked it was a "paid shill"
You know what? It's very comforting to know that there's full grown-ass adults out there, in positions of power and/or influence, that never passed their high school edgelord arc.
BTW, I really like your channel, I recently finished your PoE 1 analysis, now watching PoE 2. I should comment more often.
@hectorrodriguez9382 Thank you! And yeah, it's bad enough when teenagers say this kind of stuff, but if you’re in your 30s or older, that's pretty pathetic and troubling at the same time.
@@sentegraphs Also, ask yourself this. If tomorrow, a dev studio with a clear right-leaning political agenda, releases a game very over the top with ideology (and let's hit that nail very obviously: every alien enemy is black/brownish, they eat cats an dogs all over a peaceful all-white suburban setting, the MC is a Duke Nukem look alike, has an over sexualized woman sidekick that gets constantly ignored in the story, and the player has to impede that the final boss, who looks suspiciously like a trans person, gives estrogen pills to babies), and it's not played as satire, it's played straight, like "drama" straight.
Do you think that the same people that yell "don't forced current day politics on my videogames" would say something about it?
all my favourite games are not woke. all the games i dislike or have been told to dislike are woke. and its woke because a billionaire told me its woke!!
Great video, pretty much hits every nail on the head.
The fact that they label Pillars of Eternity as "not woke" kind of shows they don't have a drop of media literacy floating around in their heads.
The game covers some very loaded topics like colonialism, nationalism, misogyny, war (and the generational trauma it causes), capitalism, personal autonomy, and oppression. But as soon as a studio takes a step to allow choosing pronouns, they start wailing that they "don't want politics in games".
@@strange_trees Thank you! Yeah, it's all just thinly veiled transphobia. It's thinly veiled other things as well, but I think it's mostly transphobia.
@@sentegraphs As a kid from the 1990's, when everything and anything that was slightly off-norm was GAY!, and with how much homosexuality has been socially accepted now (obviously and rightfully so) I always felt that the unhealthy facination some people have with trans-people nowadays is just a shift in hate onto a group that doesn't have the clear social support yet in a new age. Plus I'm pretty sure that for many it's also just a cop-out for homophobia in general, without having to face the social consequences, same thing with how anti-semitism now gets hidden behind hate towards globalism/ george soros ect.
yes because those topics fit in the the setting while the idea of choosing personal pronouns and gender being a social construct you can pick and choose at any time is as modern and tied to current western society as Twitch-streams and monster energy drink. Sure those kinds of people breaking norms always existed but those norms and how others viewed people breaking them did not present as it does now in the west.
while "colonialism, nationalism, misogyny, war (and the generational trauma it causes), capitalism, personal autonomy, and oppression" are pretty universal across time and culture.
Hello fellow 90s kid! It can be extremely unsettling to watch some shows I loved as a kid and recognize things that range from misunderstanding to outright offensive. Arrested Development (I know it's an early 2000s show, but I've been rewatching lately so it's on my mind) doesn't seem to understand the difference between homosexuality, transgender identities, and cross-dressing. They're far from the only example of media that does this. And yeah, just like they have new games lined up to yell "woke" at, there's unfortunately always a new type of person to hate.
@@LP-mh6ri I don't think I agree with your first point tbh. Are you saying that even in a fantasy game, when you are playing a bald shark-toothed humanoid for example, gender will always be as black and white as "You have a flat chest and no cloaca. you are a man", otherwise it gets tied too modern culture and monster energy drink?
I think you can argue, prefferbly in good faith, wether something like Veilguard and their "I'm non-binary now" is just bad writing in a bad game, bad writing with pandering undertones too capture a LGBTQ-market or bad writing in an well-ment intent too actually be more inclusive but the idea that fantasy games can't have (differing) pronouns is kinda mind blowing to me.
Is an Asari Matron in Mass Effect subject too the same standards we live in on boring earth? What if i want too play a high elf that snuck into her dads lab and drank a gender-swap potion when she was young by accident. Feels kinda limiting if those options, and appearantly thousands like em, are off the table.
It was in style between 2008-2016 then fell out of favor from 2017-present
Representation is stupid on its face. Let the people make the games they want. I'll tell you, if I don't like the characters, I won't play it. "Erasing" people is also stupid. When these guys say the game is gonna be woke based on creative decisions, they're warning their audiences about the content. Boycotting is a legitimate form of social protest. If the boycott works, then the developers failed to reach the people who buy games.
Setting aside the ridiculous offensiveness of stating that "representation is stupid on its face", how can you write both that sentence and then say, "Let the people make the games they want"? They are making the games they want, and then the whiny anti-woke crowd whines about it before the game is even out.
I'm not sure which boycott you're talking about that worked, but most of the anti-woke crowd's "victories" are just games that suck so they didn't do well, and then they take credit for it by saying, "see, woke games fail!" (e.g. Concord)
And you know what, I'm not going to set aside the ridiculous offensiveness of your first sentence. Marginalized people who are able to see themselves represented in media more often is nothing but a net positive. Yeah, there are things to critique about representation, but the more of it we have, the better it will get. That's what good criticism does. Point out what works and what doesn't so we can try to do better next time. Making blanket statements like yours helps no one.
Do they want just Duke nukem and Doom?
Apparently!
We already have games that are not considered 'woke' that represented the LGBT really well: Dragon Age Origins, Mass effect series. Choice of playing as male or female. They treated LGBT as something normal to be seen. What annoys me is how in your face it can be (like in Veilguard) when I'm like 'okay good for you can we move on now? No? okay...' Being reminded every 2 seconds this character is gay or trans will annoy anyone inside or outside games. I don't hate Veilguard and I don't think it's as 'woke' as some of the naysayers claim it is, but it's poorly written anyway so it didn't even matter if it was woke or not. All this hate over Avowed is stupid. People need to make up their own minds if they like a game or not. I complain about veilguard but I don't hate it either. And I'm glad I played the game for myself instead of blindly listening to the reviewers, even if I agree with some of their points.
My take on the "right" and "wrong" way to represent.
Don't make the person's demographic the core of their identity. A black woman is more than a black woman. Same with non-binary. Same with anybody.
"Hi, my name is Jeff. I'm a white male and I'm straight."
"Hi, I'm Alex. I'm native american and I'm non-binary and I like women."
No writer worth their salt would agree this is good representation.
Representation should be tearing down stereotypes by disproving them. Not by preaching or shouting or blaming.
Do demonstrate that being a minority doesn't mean that being a minority is the center of your whole personality.
Cyberpunk 2077 represented by not making the entire game center around your pronoun or sexual preference. You are simply V, you are simply going about the story without having to ram V's preferences down anyone's ears with a speech.
Dragon Quest 11 also did great with Sylvando. Sylvando is a character who literally leaves you knowing more about him as a person, not his sexual orientation or his gender, his race, his ethnicity.
He is a knight, a friend, a son, a mentor.
Whether you are a minority or whatever, we want to know about you as a person. Not you as a gender. You are not a gender.
If your character's gender identity (or whatever you are trying to represent) is the first thing that comes to mind, your attempt at representation sucks.
All this is fine. And there are takes about this type of representation and how to do it well that make good arguments.
What this video is concerned with, though, is the people who see a pronoun selection in a game and immediately scream about games being too woke. Nobody knows anything about Avowed or its characters' overall stories yet, so it's impossible to judge at this point. But there's still plenty judgement.
There are also people who see single line of dialogue and make the same "wah, games are too woke" arguments without any insight into the game. In Veilguard, Taashe says they're non-binary, yes, but that's not what they lead with. You have to get to know them first. I think there are some players who won't even see that dialogue if they don't ask the right questions (admittedly, I could be wrong about that). The article I share in the video is happy to see non-binary representation, but still takes some issue with some of the specifics. (Link is in the video description - it's the Inverse article).
I'm okay with criticism of how representation is done in games. I welcome it, and say as much in the video. But the loudest voices right now are the voices who yell about any type of representation of marginalized characters in games. They're not helping anybody.
Another question: Why insert things into old franchises with an already established fan base and not start something new? Wouldn't that allow the Devs more creative freedom? That checkbox can't stop a good game from succeeding...
Are you suggesting that a pronoun checkbox is "inserting something into an old franchise"? I mean, I guess technically it is, but it doesn't change the series more than it's already being changed by the perspective shift and new story. Game series evolve. You can't just keep making the same game over and over again. Also, in this market, it's much easier to sell an existing IP than it is to sell a new one. New IPs can sell well, but established IPs are a safer bet for publishers.
No. In my opinion too much attention is being placed on the check boxes. I am not even mad about direction change in a story. But with an existing IP with a continuing lore you need to be mind full of said lore, character design and personalities have to evolve. Have to be mindful of how you carry over existing characters, also gameplay has to get better. Get too many aspects wrong and the safety gets ripped away and the project becomes extremely risky.
@@adidokonder6887 All the attention on the pronoun selection in Avowed is from the outrage merchants. Obsidian even asked people who had access to the game to not share screenshots of the character build, since it was an older version of it.
And we don't know much about Avowed yet (again, it hasn't been released), but we do know we won't be playing as the Watcher, and so won't be carrying any characters over from the Pillars games. And even if we were, who cares? If your Watcher was a cisgender man, then you just make a cisgender man in Avowed's character creator.
Not going to lie, I agree with your message, but you are falling into the same rethorical trap as the anti woke crowed making you no less of a crusader than they are.
I can absolutely have a case of diverse inclusion which detracts from the game and therefor I can have a legit argument as to: I don't mind diversity, I mind the way it is implemented.
There are a whole lot of bad faith actors on both sides of this argument who will hide behind argument structures like these, but that doesn't mean that the argument itself is invalid.
It is also true that quite a few inclusion elements failed so badly that they have become a marker for "inclusion over quality" - that in turn does >not< mean that these two are opposed to one another. Life is Strange would be a great example of inclusion that worked really well and there are many more in all manner of games and generes.
It works, but like any other story element: You have to make it work and if you don't it will detract from your story.
If you are just checking a box for inclusion so the manager is happy than chances are that your inclusion element will not be recieved well and this kind of check box development as a whole is a marker for a formularic and generally uninspired game. That's where a whole lot of those complaints are coming from. Inclusion for inclusions sake, barely any tie in into the rest of the narrative or game world just isn't fun. It's generally what people who aren't just raving lunatics refer to as "woke" development. You can't use that word anymore because the far right and incel crowed has thoroughly claimed it for themselfs, but that was the original point of it. That point holds.
As to your point "I never seen any one say how to make it (inclusion) work..":
Narratives are a good deal of personal taste but also to no small degree simple writing basics. If you have something that is just dangeling losely in the air, if it could be removed from the story without losing anything of value, than you made a mistake and probably should remove it. See to it that there is sense behind it being there, either to depict the world, or a personality or what ever. Making the personality itself the reason for it being there however usually comes across as forced and bad writing.
Is that a how to do it? No. It's a how to definitly NOT do it and that is more than I as a consumer / customer am required to provide. I am not writing stories for general consumption, I am not designing games, they are getting paid to figure these things out, not me. I can provide general feedback when I feel like it, but in this particular case that means that my mere act of not praising everything will throw me into the same drawer as the loons mentioned above, so why on earth would I? It's clearly not wanted unless it is praise.
TL;DR: Please don't make the same mistake as the anti woke crowed. There are shades to pretty much everything and by just saying "you are against it so you are on the extreme end of it" is distasteful and quite frankly insulting. Ignore the loons and enjoy your games, that's what they are there for.
There are games that do inclusive narratives well, but I take issue with the idea that just because Black or trans characters exist in a game, they also need a reason to exist in that world. It's okay if these characters just are.
@@sentegraphs No, they need a narritive tie in like any other character of any sexual orientation or skin colour.
The very same standard applies to >all< characters, the primary problem differentiating what you call a cis character from a diversity character in that regard is that there were years of diversity characters being pushed into the forfront (not a problem what so ever) while failing that simple writing basic (that's the problem).
You get the same criticism for bad narratives / badly written white male characters as you do for the diversity ones, it's just that heavy missmanagement of the writers lead to badly written diversity characters becoming an actual indicator for the overall quality of the game.
That's on them, not on the customers not enjoying their product.
A bad story is a bad story. A bad character is a bad character, visibly try to push an agenda either way resulting in writers not knowing what to do with them leads to bad reactions of your customers. Don't like it, don't do it, or do better.
Again: Ignore the crazies, they are beyond help and won't be satisfied unless they get their male power fantasie without any hint of what ever irked them, but the rest? Just write something coherant and it should work. That is what has failed for YEARS by now, and the one thing you can usually point to is: "It feels like a check box, not like a character."
But thank you for twisting my words so they may fit your agenda. I thought you to be reasonable but you are just as crazy as the people you complain about, have a good day and a nice life, but maybe think about wether or not it is worth the few bucks you make from feeding the rage engine.
@@sentegraphs I'm sorry but the fact of the matter is african americans are 14% of the US population and should not be 50% of the main characters. Trans people are less than 1% of the population and the struggles they face are boring and out of place in fantasy games, where they seemingly get deposited most often. When you're telling a story, a characters' background should matter in their decision making. If you want to place a black character in feudal europe, their skin color should have a lot to do with the decision making and interactions with the world around them. Instead, studios just pretend everyone in the 1300s would've been like oh yeah Sir Tyrone? He was born and raised here in Scotland, great guy. For example, Assassin's creed shadow, given it's made by Ubisoft, the race will have no impact on the story.
Hey, man solid video.Though the music was a bit too loud compared to your voice. Also, it doesn't matter what size your channel is, plug that kofi bro.
One thing I'd comment though, as someone who agrees with some points of what you seem to describe as anti-woke, is that you fall into a similar trap as the whole pro-pedo comment you made. You have spent this video rightfully criticizing the overly aggressive criticism of some of the recent games, and even showed examples of people making such videos, plus naming a few. Yet you never made much of a distinction between the people rightfully criticizing games and those who are rabid for "woke" stuff to criticize. Just saying, people might end up thinking you associate the streamers you mentioned or the owners of the videos you presented with the people writing pro-pedophilia is woke, or making lists of woke games.
Another thing I'd mention, and this is very important, no matter how much that Art Director guy might be "correct" or not (I don't like Musk much either), getting into arguments is an incredibly unprofessional thing to do, and when I saw that, I immediately dropped a whole level in my hype for Avowed (Obsidian is my fav studio, played every game of theirs since Neverwinter Nights 2). That, and then the gameplay reveal made me feel that they truly might be heading downhill, considering the Outer Worlds itself was pretty meh compared to their previous work.
>people might end up thinking you associate the streamers you mentioned or the owners of the videos you presented with the people writing pro-pedophilia is woke, or making lists of woke games.
I do believe they were asserting there is an association of political ideology between those mentioned videos/streamers who "yell into a mic for 10 minutes" and those who write a list of woke games.
Thanks for the tip on the music. I do generally spend way too much time trying to find the right balance, and in this case I swear the music was softer pre-rendering. I probably just messed it up, though.
I thought I made the distinction between the list's curators and the outrage merchants. Though they're of the same mind, they're not the same people. Or did you mean the people I mention that are actually doing good work (i.e. Stephanie Sterling, Robin Bea, Ibram X. Kendi, Aamer Rahman, and Shaun)? Did it sound like I was lumping those people in with people screaming about wokeness?
Finally, agree to disagree on Hansen. I don't think it's necessarily "unprofessional" to espouse your politics on social media, but even if it is, the dozens of videos made about his social media posts are making a mountain out of a molehill. He in no way was saying that he "hates gamers" or whatever.
@@sentegraphs I just meant some of the people you listed out. I don't watch any of them but that asmongold guy and Dr Disrespect don't seem like the type to make these kinds of lists. They don't really look like someone who would put that much effort in.
It's not unprofessional to showcase your opinion in public settings (digitally or otherwise), but the way one does such things is really important. The idea of an employee of mine going out of their way, announcing that they want to piss off a fellow businessman in Musk (no matter how unlikable said businessman is) is generally seen as undisciplined behaviour, and ought to be curbed.
If not by your own self, then by your company. To criticize flaws of a person like Musk is by no means the problem here, in fact I would argue it is a duty to a properly functioning society. It's more that his comments were more focused on putting down and arguing rather than criticizing in a way that would better ones' society. That's what I mean. It is childish, immature and unprofessional. As for whether he hates gamers or not... well, I don't know, but the fact that he works in a gaming development studio might be a clue to figuring out the answer.
"woke" seems to be a keyword nothingburger nowadays. This can mean anything and most of the time means nothing.
Most players don't give a rat's ass over something as petty as 'they/them' pronouns being an option in the character creation screen.
What they are actually upset about - is that these games consume very large budgets to produce, but most of them are just slop. Repetitive, dull forced live service games that have no business being live service. Corporate greed progressed to a point where they sell you microtransactions in single player narrative-driven games. Or sell you "early access" that is literally 2-3 days - and they charge an insane amount for this! This 3-day "early access" can be $30 more expensive than regular version. Come on, what they are going to do in 3 days? This isn't like POE2 early access where more than half of the game is missing (3/6 acts, 24/36 ascendancy specs, 6/12 classes, crafting, balanced and fun endgame) and this EA will last anywhere between 6 and 18 months. These 3-day early accesses are just corporate greed. They scam you.
I think these are all valid criticisms to make about games before they're released. They have to do with marketing and predatory monetization. 100% legit. This video is concerned with non-criticisms about "wokeness". Concord is actually a great example here. It failed because of all the things you mention here, but the anti-woke crowd point to it as proof that "woke" games don't sell. And there's plenty of people who think that. There's a few in this comments section!
I actually toiled over whether I should include Avowed's "early access" preorder shenanigans here. In the end, I thought it was beyond the scope of this video, but it is very disappointing.
Please, woke means inserting political ideology, usually far left into every type of entertainment there is. How do you people not get this? They put ideology and the message over trying to make a good game. They worry about check boxes first. Its not that hard.
@@sentegraphs
i believe it's more of a stacking effect, ppl didn't notice the woke stuff as much because these other issues were in the games we play, but they were in these games and becoming more emboldened in each game moving forward, it took 5ish years before ppl really started to take notice, now i saw it nearly a decade earlier in subtle ways, like an example in assassins creed brotherhood, you could get women assassins, which was odd given not only the name of the game but also the time period, as women were never in these roles in history, but Ubisoft kept pushing the envelope further into this direction until they eventually made it cannon even though yet again it was never something in ancient human history recognized and actively shunned on back in those days.
so when talking about the more important issues via NFT nonsense to other monetization nonsense going on in these games or releasing broken games at launch to always online games, these companies kept pushing these things they know gamers hate, but the woke stuff was also being pushed constantly but it got worse as each year advanced to the next.
i grew up in the 80s and 90s, where this kind of woke stuff wasn't pushed as much, it wasn't in games back then at all, it was only seen in movies and tv shows, but it was far more subtle than it is today, in my opinion they just tried to hard to force this stuff down on ppl and eventually the ppl took notice and started rejecting it, but also with the other issues, now in video games it's easier to push back against this stuff than it is for movies and tv shows, because gaming is a larger investment than any movie or tv show, so we can be more picky to the games we purchase, i mean it can be rejected in movies and tv shows, but that's already happening naturally in some places, ppl aren't going to the theaters as much as they used to and spending time and money on that stuff as much, but i suppose inflation also takes a toll on these activities as well, but also lazyness, i mean i really don't want to go to the movies just to over pay money to watch a movie in a theater anymore, i mean you can't pause the movie to take a piss, it's not like a game when you can pause it and take the piss, anyway i'm sort of getting off topic.
i just think it's a stacking issue, where it does matter, but so do all the other reasons.
@@5226-p1e This is fairly accurate. Most people will forgive a certain amount of 'woke' in a game; just like we forgive a certain amount of other social, political or religious messaging. The problem, IMHO, is that the messaging is becoming monotone and obvious; picking up obvious tropes that people will quickly recognise and become bored of. Just like there was only so much 80's action hero flicks we could take, there's only so much 'strong, independent, girlboss' we can watch before it becomes run-of-the-mill.
Im tired about ppl complaining about woke shit, in the end theyre more triggered about that stuff than the so called snowflakes they meme about all the time. Just look at bg3, its full of "woke" stuff, even pronouns and trans characters and its still one of the best games ever released in the last 15 years
lol baldurs gate didn't do shit cutscene that you don't interest to watch. baldurs gate gone woke if only you "want it WOKE". that DA Vailguard "Force you" its crazy people still play that shitty game.
I appreciate your take on the antiwoke critics and their problems. But I think the reason people turn to the antiwoke is because they have stopped trusting gamecritics and game studios not simply because of rasism. Sony bet hundreds of millions of dollars on Concord to only recoop a million before refunding it. Players don't agree with critics that Dragon Age the Veilguard were a 9/10 game. Suicide Squad Kill the justice league is shutting down servers in a few months. People are desperatly looking for patterns of what games and which studios to support and which will dissapoint.
Sure "wokeness" is one major factor some critics are trying to map but there are many others. Which publisher is funding a studio and how they will influense the studio. They are tracking individual developers to try and see where original talent that made game that they loved are now, if they are still there or if they have left. If a studio is just chasing trends or making something out of passion. How the studio is treating developers and fans.
I don't think "wokeness" is itself a cause of bad games but that kind of messaging can be corelated to some causes of bad games. Currently it is trendy among corporations to be inclusive and pander to every group they can find so a game that is designed by a corporate committee might appear "woke" even if it is only bad because of the sanitized committee design proccess. A gamestudio with a toxic positivity problem where internal critism isn't voiced properly might have strong but badly implemented policy for a safe enviroment that unfortionantly prevent proper feedback could lead to progressive messaging and bad products even if it is the toxic positivity that is the problem not the values of the company.
I think both Dragon age and Concord suffered from toxic positivity in their development just like Anthem (we don't have to learn from destiny because we are gonna be better than them) 5 years ago.
Also a minor nitpick but Final Fantasy 16 is probably not only european white. It is probably only "fantasy Japanese" with colorful hair. Final fantasy uses a cgi-manga-ish artstyle and the default etnicity of manga style characters if there aren't any tells is usually Japanese since that is the creators etnicity.
Then stop conflating wokeness with why a game fails. There's no proof of that at all. Figure out what's really causing so many games to be lackluster (oversaturated market, live service games, predatory monetization, awful working conditions). The games industry is a mess, but it's not because they're making too many woke games.
Also, your assumptions about FF16 are way off.
@@sentegraphs As I said "wokenes" might be corelated to games failing just like icecream sales are corelated to drowning. Icecreme doesn't cause drowning but it sells a lot on beaches that do cause drowning. It is stupid to avoid icecreme parlors to avoid drowning but if there is nobody to point out what beaches and rivers are actually dangerous people will restort to superstition like that.
Since no game developer want to say or maybe even knows their game is bad they can't be the ones to tell consumers what games to avoid or buy.
Game critics are supposed to fill that niche but since they don't acuratly reflect what most consummers enjoy and want people resort to anyone that tries to explain that disparity.
Dragon age failed due to bad writing and a huge departure in tone from the previous games. The supposed experts said it was 9/10 and was wrong while the nut job ranting about drowning in icecreme was right about it failing.
If the expert is wrong while the nutjob is right even if for the wrong reasons people will stop listening to the expert and give the nutjob a chance.
Playing whack a mole with nutjobs and disproving their theories isn't going to work unless you can provide a better more acurate framework for what to avoid and what to try.
Game critics, the experts need to improve so people don't ignore them infavour of nutjobs.
I'm not excusing the legitimate bigots raving about hating lgbtq people. Just explaining why people "conflate wokeness with why games fail". It's because they don't see a better pattern or trusted source of information for why the games fail.
That's kind of why I even wanted to make this video. I think legitimate games criticism is important. It's a huge medium, and a lot of people play games. But a lot of people are also being confused by the sheer quantity of videos with "FAILED WOKE GAME" in the thumbnail.
As for legitimate game critics, that's beyond the scope of this video. Though I will say Metacritic is doing more harm than good. I have a few gaming publications that I go to for reviews, but I could understand that some people might feel let down by the state of criticism.
Woke/DEI etc is useless for telling if something is going to be good or bad because it either bigots moaning about things they dont like because they are bigots or because it's a symptom of the creators just ticking checkboxes etc because they are either lazy or because they are rushing resulting in poorly written characters and story.
It really only matters how much the game sells to see if it's "good" or not. We'll see how it sells when it comes out. So far, not looking good.
I don't know how you can tell how it's selling "so far" when it's not even out yet.
Schrödingers woke again? Like with the Mario movie, where anti-woke people suddenly decided its not woke because it was successful? Also does that mean that Baldur's Gate 3 isn't woke? That every FF after 2 wasn't woke? Celeste wasn't woke? Nier Automata wasn't woke? Try applying those woke themes as they a are listed by that curator and you'll find out that most successful works over the last 40 years are woke. As far as I see it you are calling it woke because you think its going to fail, if you didn't you'd just ignore it, or rather the anti-woke creators wouldn't cry about it so publicly.
Using "woke" as a blanket criticism is just another way of saying "I don't like how it looks/feels" and it's so tiresome seeing it being used by annoying grifters.
Not only that, but "woke" almost always means "trans characters exist" when the grifters use the word.
It's not a blanket criticism or a pejorative. It's a rejection of ideological brow beating. If you want to turn your brain off and let people like Matt, who genuinely hate you, preach down at you, that's your choice. Have fun with that.
You can always spot grifters, they use words like grifters and pretend they don't know what people complaining about, or don't know what words like woke mean.
Get fkd, you lose
The art directors rant on Twitter shows us where the priorities lie. Woke means your priorities are not making a good game,at least not the main prioritiy. Bg3 had pronouns but i didnt see the devs going on twitter rants.
But BG3 was also labelled woke. Same with Elden Ring. If a game is a success, they just forget that it was ever labelled woke and move on to the next thing.
Well made, and encouraging video. It's always important to get content like this out. I knew about the "woke" game list but never bothered to look at it. The staggering amount of LGBTQ+ content on that list is indicative of its actual nature.
I also REALLY love the fact that you point out a long winded post from an anti-woke commenter in the video, and then anti-woke airheads come to the comment section and leave equally long posts, coming to wild conclusions about things that aren't even mentioned in the video. They're doing an excellent job of proving your point!
@manaburn876 I don't know if the ones you mention are worse, or the comments that assume I didn't mention something that was clearly addressed in the video.
Thank you for this video! I'm really happy sane people still exist
Thank you!
Putting medieval in quotes means "I'm not calling it medieval, they are." Umm, no it doesn't. It signifies that it is not a literal medieval setting because it is fantasy, but the setting comes closest to what in real life would have been the middle ages, mostly in terms of technology. Not saying that I agree that there needs to be an explanation for black characters in a fantasy setting.
When it comes to right and wrong ways to put woke themes in your games, I've certainly heard examples of people doing it right. One that comes to mind is FF16, which is regularly mentioned as a good example of how to include gay relationship.
You shoot down your own argument. There are examples of games with politics in them that are not proclaimed as "woke shit" as you showed. Because it is not about putting politics in the game. It is about moralizing, lecturing, preaching. Give players moral questions, not the answers that you want them to believe. People should be allowed to make up their own minds about things.
How can you applaud Hansen's tweet? No good can come from antagonizing a large group of potential players. If this causes the game to fail, he is responsible for endangering the jobs of everyone on the team. That is inexcusable in my opinion.
I'm not a fan of the outrage either, but I also don't care for people who will hate on "white dudes". As a white dude, I have done nothing to them. Games are for everyone. Fine. But you can't make a game for everyone. It just doesn't work. And sadly, games cost a lot of money to make, so you have to target a large audience. Kicking the very largest group of potential buyers in the nuts repeatedly will not end well for a studio. It has been shown. It's fine if you want to make a game approachable for more people, but you can't do so at the cost of a large part of your audience, unless you have found other ways to keep your costs and revenue in balance.
1. If that's what they meant by "medieval", they didn't have to put in quotes. The quotes are deliberate.
2. The main focus of this video is an unreleased game being decried as "woke". No "lecturing", no "moralizing" needed to be labeled "woke" there. Just a choice in character creation.
3. Matt Hansen is also a white dude. He literally says "crusty white dudes like me". It's obviously a joke, and one that's been deleted and dug up by bad faith actors, no less.
4. Nobody is kicking anyone in the nuts. They are just making more inclusive games. If it's "fine you want to make more games approachable", then why do so many videos exists whining about pronoun choice?
Nice video man! Gonna watch your lore playthrough next!
@33_Pebbles Thanks! Hope you enjoy the lorethrough.
Great Video, You earned my sub and like! UA-cam suggestions doing something good for once. For background I am a CisPan white man and for me there is only one type of case where I'd be rather for no inclusion instead of poor inclusion. If for example in a case like Overwatch, not talking about characters like Tracer, Mei, Zarya, Lucio and so forth, but rather the trend of Blizzard to brand characters, long after they have come out, as part of LGBTQI+ community to distract from all the effed up shit going down at the company. That makes the inclusion really seem like a tool and not a action of genuine care and it does leave a bad aftertaste imo.
I think this goes with out but I do think that the inclusion of stereotypical or characters created just meant to be hated is not smth that should be done or played.
Thank you!
Someone else brought up Overwatch, too. I played the first for a few months on release, but am unfamiliar with it since then. From what you describe, though, it does seem like a way to pander rather than actually caring about being inclusive. I'm reminded of JK R-----g exclaiming on Twitter how characters were gay or Black long after the books themselves were released...and we all know how that turned out.
If Half-Life 2 was released now, it would have been called woke. It has a biracial woman, a mute autistic-coded protagonist, a black amputee, and a white male villain. Modern gamers are irritating, and I no longer listen to their opinions on ANYTHING.
So you saw the reddit meme too. Nice opinion you got from reddit there, man.
Just looked it up on the Woke Games list, and it's "Not woke" XD. Not sure how they can justify that. I think it falls under the "it's already a beloved game, so we can't label it 'woke'", kind of like Final Fantasy VI.
This is a really good video and I'm thankful that you talk about this topic
I dread for people just being brainwashed from the loud and plentiful posts and videos which really don't have any sense and reason
I'm glad that at least the algorithm showed me your video
I think the only hope is when people really think, research and help others get informed through videos like yours
I hope to be able to make videos, or some form of influential content to inform others one day, but till then I'm glad that there are people like you who do; and I hope for people to really think about it too
@arya_a_m Wow, thank you. Really encouraging reading this. I appreciate you.
The issue more so is the team lead. He has blatantly stated racist stuff against white people. It sucks because I want to get into the game, but I do know his statements will kill the game before it gets started. I have given "woke" games a chance and a lot of the time aside from the gameplay the rest of the game absolutely sucks.
1. He is the art director, not the team lead.
2. He made an obvious joke. You can certainly argue that it was a bad joke, but it was not "blatant racism".
3. It was a 4-year old tweet dug up by bad-faith actors trying to get a man fired or harassed.
4. Like any game, some "woke" games are bad, and some are good. But whether it's good or not has nothing to do with if it's "woke".
5. It's kind of exhausting replying to the same "arguments" repeatedly, especially since they're all topics I addressed in the video.
Very interesting video. I have been seeing a lot more of the anti-woke video types post the DA Veilguard release in my feed. I don't like the game (*admittedly* solely from the limited clips I have seen) due to bad writing and due to how good BG3 was. BG3 has set the bar so high now, any high production game has to be compared.
I will say I also really like Kingdom Come: Deliverance, but due to completely different reasons to why I like BG3. I see why people have issues with KCD's "lack of diversity" but it's also meant to be a historical game (ignoring the issues with the Hungarians/Cumans). Historical games and fantasy are different (as you rightfully said!). Maybe it's coming from the TTRPG space, but I have no issue with pronouns or whatever, as long as it makes sense within the story and universe you are telling.
Anyway, I am mostly adding this comment to help with the algorithm!
Thank you! KG: D is one that slipped past me. I always wanted to get around to it, but never found the time. I hear great things.
I played around 30 hours of Veilguard, and I wasn't a big fan. But the game has garnered so much hate because of its inclusion of a non-binary character that it's hard to find legitimate criticism about it.
And yeah, BG3 is going to cast a shadow on fantasy video games for a while, along with Elden Ring probably. Both genre defining games!
@@sentegraphs KCD is always a weird one when it comes to recommendations. If you are willing to learn its combat system, look over the few remaining bugs and have a love for history, its great. But I also know it's not for everyone. I would recommend it, but with said caveats, since there really are some fantastic parts. Same with the Dishonored series.
I think it's interesting since BG3 has Karlach. Samantha Béart is non-binary and that doesn't seem to be an issue.
Here's hoping more is to come from both studios!
Belfetto. Agracima.
@@kindergarten6263 Bon piaco
@@sentegraphscores, aimicos.
18:30-18:40 Gmod has always been about modding. Anyone can bring anything into the game, they (facepunch/game devs) removed some server running the popular DarkRP but with Nazism themed, where you're encouraged you to play resistance (cus on most servers you're in France, RPing sabotaging the germans). In Gmod you can have the most derranged NSFW stuff available there. It's double standards you know ... Also Garry made the poll to remove this content on twitter... so... Yeah a bunch of these woke communities may have voted to remove it.
Questions: Is the DEI initiative a necessary thing? Are people to be hired because they are of a different race or gender identity and not because they are the best fit for the job? How can we challenge each other to be better. We have alot of arrogance coming from both sides of the divide. It's sad because because everyone just trying to be right and the discord turing into a childish tit for tat. At this point i wish all games offered a demo so I could just try them for myself before i purchase, and won't have to listen to the stupidity that currently goin on.
That makes it sound like people get hired solely due to their race. What's actually happening is when a company has a pool of excellent candidates who would be good for a job, they'll choose the candidate that diversifies their work force.
And yeah, demos are nice.
Understood, but I have played some games with some shitty stories and dialog from the 2000's till now, but stories and dialog seem to be getting worse, especially in the AAA industry. Makes me wonder if it's a case of square pegs in round holes. (With or without DEI)
@@adidokonder6887 Yes, there are games like that. But the current anti-woke is not interested in nuanced takes. They just scream about pronoun selection and "forced" diversity. When pushed, they might hide behind the "it just has to be done right" argument, but if they're criticizing a game before it's even released, that's a mighty thin veil they're hiding behind.
Woke means something very specific to me. Just because characters are ugly or the artstyle is bad doesnt make it "woke". Woke means the studio has a very specific idealogy theyre trying to press onto the player and often times at the expense of gameplay or story stuff.
So many people have written this or something like it but don't provide examples. How can "woke" mean that when so many people slap that label on games that aren't released yet? People are claiming Avowed to be woke because of a single character creation choice. How can anyone say they pushing for a very specific ideology at the expense of gameplay or story, when nobody knows the story yet, and early impressions have been largely positive?
@@sentegraphs It is called pattern recognition. There is a whole cluster of things that turn off many gamers, once they have seen one indication it is a good bet - not a certainty - that there will be many more when the full game releases. DA Veilguard was a good example where the early warnings proved correct. I hope Avowed is good, but I will not preorder given the idiotic developer posts. As for early impressions; game journalists are effectively paid lobbyists for the game industry, not to be trusted. Happy New Year!
Nice video. May UA-cam Algorithm favour you~!
Okay, so I didn't know this before today, but UA-cam has AI-generated responses to comments. The one for yours was, "Me too!" Which I think means UA-cam is hoping the algorithm favors me as well. But they probably don't even know how the algorithm works xD.
Everything I don't like is woke.
Could you talk about the Fallout: Ashfall controversy? It’s a Fallout: New Vegas mod whose project lead was discovered to be a secret transgender bisexual.
I'm unfamiliar, but a quick search makes it seem pretty messed up. I might look more into it.
I know this is like beating a dead horse, but I think The Veilguard is a perfect example. I don't like The Veilguard at all, not because there are pro-nouns, and a non-binary character. Bioware has always been pretty inclusive with their games. The writing in Veilguard is some of the worst I've seen. It is so inoffensive it's dull. I mean all of your companions have the same convictions and beliefs so there is absolutely no diversity in character depth. Look to Mass Effect. The krogan hate the solarians because of the genophage, so watching Wrex and Mordin trying to work together was interesting. I mean in The Veilguard Lucanis and Neve are the closest thing we get to that. Lucanis is a "mage killer" and Neve is a "detective mage?" but both are kind of cold and calculating and they both have the same way of thinking (trust enough to get the job done, but not enough to get you killed mentality) That is as interesting as it gets and that in itself is boring. Journalists and Game Devs can call us all racist as much as they want, and that's ok for me anyway I don't mind opinions of people that have no impact on my life what-so-ever but until journalists and game devs reach an understanding with gamers, games will keep flopping, layoffs and closures will happen and nobody wins in that situation. We get it game devs and journalists. You really like representation. Cool, now focus on making gameplay great and writing passable and then work on all the other stuff. "our game is diverse" isn't good enough to sell units. "Our game is fun, impactful, and thought provoking, as well as diverse" sounds better to me anyway. I can't speak for everyone.
That's fine. I didn't really like Veilguard much either. But an overwhelming amount of hate directed at that game was simply because a character is non-binary, and uses that term to describe themself. And when that's the extent of the "discourse" around a game, other criticism becomes secondary; it's more important to counter hate and bigotry than it is acknowledge some people don't like the game for other reasons. Saying something like, "I know a lot of people were upset at the pronouns, but I don't like the game for these reasons" is, in a way, trivializing the actual hate and non-binary erasure. I think it's more important to address that before addressing other concerns about that game.
I'm trying to be careful here, but it is perfectly fine to not like Veilguard. Not liking Veilguard does not make a person a transphobe. But there is actually a large amount of transphobic takes on that game, and that's what I (and others) are criticizing. They're not saying that's the only reason to not like Veilguard, but it is the most troubling reason.
I hear ya. For me, having more options in character creation is always going to be a good thing. And having a diverse cast of characters can be immersive which is a good thing. I agree with ya 100%. I think of game development as a sliding scale. The more you put in one aspect the less you can put in the other. We just haven't seen the right balance yet maybe. But yeah being mad because a character is a certain orientation is dumb. At the very least out of all the reasons to not like veilguard not liking it because of Taash is short sided and nonsensical.
Solid video. I think what bothers me the most is their ignorance takes away criticism that i have with pandering when it makes no since. Overwatch turning one of their characters gay and asking my gay friends what they think and the majority of the ansers were 'did it change their DPS?' I was personally annoyed over the pandering in the last of us 2, Lev is curious about their sexuality wheb they dont know if they will eat tomorrow? I think they did focus on winning bownie points and it ruined the writing. 'Hello random strangers this is my name os Joel and this is my brother, about 20 min that way is a compound with all that we love and have.' I was expecting him to tell them when the guard's shift changes
Someone else mentioned Overwatch. I have very limited experience of the game, but it seems to me like this is the exact type of actual criticism I'd like to see more of: inclusion of marginalized groups as pandering rather than actually caring about inclusion. The story should be written with character identity in mind, not thoughtlessly retconned.
As for Lev, I don't see why being in post-apocalypse would mean he wouldn't struggle with gender identity. Wasn't he a part of a group that was able to provide a semblance of normal life until they didn't accept him for who he was? I haven't played it since release, though I do know Lev's character, and Abbie's, and Ellie's, were all subject to a lot of hate.
@sentegraphs the overwatch character wasn't gay to begin with then they switched it. As for the last of us 2 thing this is something me and a couple of my buddies discuss, not the game but how when a society reaches a point you can explore things that deep with in you. Ok.. (this is my philosophy by the way) when a society reaches a point that everything is taken care of like food, water, shelter, ect you have the ability to actually let you guard down and explore who individuals are. They are in a place that even if you have crops its probably just enough to make it to the next day, what happens when a virus infects the crops, are you going to think what makes your motor run? Abby was such a terrible writer character, hiw did she get that protein/ steroids? Revenge is bad unless your Abby. Kinda wierd how her father was brown in part but they made him white in part 2,just saying. Even Rey was terrible, it annoyed me so much I thought I might be sexist. I realized that I wasn't when I switched the characters with myself and it helped me to relize it was the writing and bot the individual, she learned how to convince people with the force with in 5 min of believing in the force. Dig what you dig, I ain't going to stop you
@@sentegraphs BTW I really enjoy these conversations. I start every proposition with 'I'm dumb' and I start from there
@@sentegraphs if you want to read a great story about revenge with a female lead check out 'best served cold' by Joe Abercrombie
@@sentegraphs why did you delete my comment?
Alright, I was going to watch the whole thing, but I’m not actually sure that this was made with more effort than those on the opposite side of the aisle. Also, the music you’ve chosen is not well balanced compared to your softer voice. From what I have listened to, I’ll throw in my two cents based on what I’ve gathered from people not flinging poop at each other.
It’s not all based on the screenshot, but also the words of someone involved in the game’s development, and the historical trend of other games viewed as ‘woke’ where developers have come out and danced to the whinging sounds of these people. With that being said, the dude is an art director, so I don’t know what actual influence he can have on the game’s writing development.
The argument that it’s not actually about being ‘woke’, but the cishet male trying to make every game conform to their preferences isn’t really that great. Of course, people want games which appeal to them, and that are done well. The problem is that the audience these games are now trying to market to is small, and they are often using established IP with an established audience that expects something else. This has been a trend across all media, not just video games, so it has had an accumulative effect. Now, when people say they won’t be consuming it, it is automatically assumed that these people are bigots, and thus you are safe to berate and belittle them to your heart’s content (see Twitter, Reddit, Bluesky, or even some mainstream opinion pieces for example). This has been the trend for a while, so these people have become more radicalized and vindicated in their views when any ‘woke’ media flops, especially if it was one that used established IP where this wasn’t previously the case. Now any sign of ‘woke’ is too much.
Using modern terminology in a fantasy setting is immersion breaking and dismissing this argument because of a pre-established notion that anyone who uses it is probably using it in bad faith doesn’t detract from the argument. It just rings hollow from the mouths of those people. I would be fine with Obsidian exploring the ideas of body dysphoria in a setting like Pillars as it is already well set up to do this with things like souls awaking with past lives bleeding into your current life in many ways - this could easily be another way that this partially manifests. That being said, I know that Obsidian has the potential to incorporate this well, as they’ve already explored using their own terminology in past games, especially POE2. So, it kind of sucks to see just a simple pronoun box on the screen, and hopefully it’s actually explored.
You then used Steam’s forums for sources of bad faith arguments. Without first acknowledging that the Steam forums are notoriously bad for ‘clown farmers’. If you look at the forums for any new, or upcoming game, you will find examples of both ‘woke’, and ‘anti-woke’ clown bait arguments. Which means if you are trying to find a good faith argument, you will be hard pressed to find it there. In fact, reading the posts of these clown farmers has become, in itself, a genre of video on UA-cam akin to reddit recaps. Though it is relatively small. It is not uncommon to find someone posting ‘woke’ bait, but then scroll through their comments and see ‘anti-woke’ bait as well. They do this to get ‘clown’ reactions from other users. These clown reactions award a point value which you can use for some items on the point shop of Steam. I’m not actually sure why these points matter enough to bait for them as it’s purely cosmetic, but such is the case. Just like people who bait for Reddit upvotes, or Twitter likes, I guess.
You also used a tiny steam group of some 2691 users for examples of anti-woke lists which include games with a fairly high review score, so either A) this group is purely capitalizing on the trend to establish a group which can then be sold when it has enough users (as happens often on Steam and other platforms), or B) these people are in the fringes of the whole ‘movement’.
So, do I think Avowed will flop? I don’t know. It looks middling and is a completely different direction for the franchise. I, myself, much prefer POE 1 and 2, and the isometric style that supports the combat which I love. Do I think it will flop because of DEI? No. If it flops because of anything, it’ll be the inexperience of the developers in making this kind of game, and the fans lost from the transition of isometric RPG to third person action game.
Cheers, and I hope we can enjoy this game!
And to add one final point - I am a massive fan of pillars of eternity and the world of eora. And so, if this game flops in a similar manner to dragon age the veil guard because of similar issues, where focus and attention were deviated from constructing a strong story arch, an immersive environment and fantastic gameplay for the purpose of political messaging, I for one will be heartbroken, because it would essentially mean the end of the world of eora in the video game setting. Avowed must succeed for fans of the Pillars franchise, and I, for one, am willing to look aside pronoun selection if the rest of the game is top-notch, but from previous experiences, the presence of such a feature indicates further deeper problems that will affect the game negatively, and likely threaten the future of the franchise as a whole.
The thing it is woke and it's confirmed by its director just to spite Elon Musk. that's how low your director is , he doesnt care about how good it is he just want it to make people angry. people who said it's gonna fail is not a far fetch idea it is from what can be seen to game with woke agenda fail in this year. we can predict itll fail very hard . people also predicted Veilguard gonna fail. and it fail hard. it fail so hard that the studio didn't bother creating DLC for it they abandon it just like they abandon their Dragon Age long time fans.
Again, it's a tactic. If you make claims a game will fail due to "wokeness" before it's even released, then it's easy to say, "See! We were right!" even if there's a million other reasons why a game could have failed. See Dragon Age (though I think it's a bit early to claim it's a failed game) and Concord. There's a million reason why those games didn't sell well, but the anti-woke crowd claims it's due to wokeness. Definitely no proof of that! I mean, Baldur's Gate 3 and Elden Ring were also considered "woke", and they're two of the most successful games of all time. Wokeness doesn't have anything to do with whether a game is good or sells well.
And no, it's not "confirmed by its director" to be woke "just to spite Elon Musk". Musk complained about the pronouns, and the art director replied that it made him happy to work on a game that pissed off Musk. I don't think the art director is the sole decision maker for a pronoun checkbox in character creation.
@@sentegraphs I was hyped for this game for ages, had it wishlisted ready to buy. I don't care about pronouns being there, I'm trans myself, what I do care about though is an art director that seems to despise half the world. I wont be buying the game because of his actions, not some influencer. And honestly I'm pretty sad about the whole thing, I was looking forward to this game for a long time, but I wont support such hate.
@@Doumu All I got from Matt's tweets is that he wants more inclusion in the gaming industry, and that he hates Musk (why wouldn't you?). Nothing about despising half the world, or gamers
@@EinheriV Why hate anyone? Why put people into camp A and camp B at all. Make a game for people to enjoy and they will enjoy it. Matt's comments made it very clear he alligns himself with one side and personally that's not for me. If the developer was going on about hating left wing people I'd also avoid it. The world is not so black and white as you think, there are many layers of grey.
One of the main problems I have with "wokeness" is when we have an established lore and that is being changed to fit some DEI standards. I also have a problem with "wokeness" when it is obvious that one narrative is being pushed like Taash being non binary and how that should be respected in Dragon Age while the very same Taash is allowed to be a total dick to the Necromancer INSISTING on calling him Death Mage even though he clearly doesn't like that. I didn't need to be able to check a box to identify with Blade in the movie and I'm a white guy, and I'm not a vampire/daywalker either in case you were wondering so checkboxes don't really matter to me, changing lore and being inconsistent with your narrative in stories does though.
people aren't changing preestablished lore to meet "DEI standards." trans people already existed in dragon age, taash being petulant and making fun of emmrich is not the same as outright transphobia. it's rude, and taash IS rude, but it's still basic decency to accept that taash is non-binary and it's part of their story. i am trans and did not love how taash was handled, and i generally disliked how veilguard felt and how it removed all of the stakes of previous games. but that's not a "DEI" issue, it's a consequence of a difficult development timeline. a lot of veilguard suffered because of layoffs and having to restart development multiple times because the type of game they were making changed multiple times. a lot of this stuff people like you are in hysterics about went by with minimal comment 10, 15 years ago. mass effect talked about genocide, racism, and had a race of exclusively bisexual women. you don't understand why other people want to relate to the media they consume because as a white man there has always been someone like you. it doesn't cause you any harm that gay and trans people and black people and god forbid women are visible and do literally anything at all.
@@badletter_ The lore changing example was not related to Veilguard but to another franchise (Warhammer 40k) so even though we might agree when it comes to Veilguard lore (not a huge Dragon Age lore dude myself) that was not the point, the point was that lore IS being changed in movies/games to fit the DEI standards. Why can't we agree that if Taash expects others to call them by their pronouns she should refer to others the way they prefer as well, how is that "just being rude" and not showing the same decency to others that you yourself expect that others show you? I mentioned Blade in the end exactly to prove my point that you can see yourself in other characters even if they are not exactly like you, and I literally don't care if a character is gay, trans, a woman, black, Chinese etc. it is about how a character is written that matters, is it a good character or is it just there to tell me that "hey, I'm trans and you should respect me because I'm trans, and that is why I'm here, because I'm trans".
It's true that most arguments about "woke games" are bs. This video is weak as well, though.
Obsession over pronouns is a result of Western hegemony. Throughout history a lot of people didn't fit strictly into male/female groups. Which often wasn't a problem because most cultures didn't bother segregating people like ours did and still does. Just like nobody considers segregating people based on eye or hair colour. These are just social constructs. Putting them in games means that the game world conforms to the world of the author rather than be an independent world with its own history. Which can be jarring. I can see why developers do it and why it appeals to marginalized people, but it's lazy and shouldn't be encouraged or celebrated as some good thing the company did. They did it because they predicted they'll make more money this way. It's not about inclusivity. It's about milking people who care about a social construct for more money.
Inclusion definitely is a moneymaker, and game publishers wouldn't do it if they didn't think it would make money. Also, inclusion in games, especially games where players can choose their own identity, is a good thing, and should be celebrated.
It can be both things.
i don't think the anti-woke UA-camrs are saying the game is bad, they are saying that is a red flag that indicates that is might be bad. You are clearly strawmanning arguments.
Mmhmm. Calling the game a "woke disaster", "impending failure", "abandoned by the modern audience", "doomed" etc. are all just claiming it's a red flag. Once again, they can say all these things now and if the game doesn't do well, they can claim they were right all along. If the game is successful, they can forget about it and move on to the next one
I don't think that a game being woke is the problem, I think it's the heavy handed approach of the messaging in some recent games... Games have always included some kind of messaging...
Let’s all be real we are all waiting for asmongold to react to it
People need to stop paying attention that that garbage pail kid.
I think it would be better received if it wasn't so celebrated. Treat it as though it's just a matter of fact and stop drawing attention to it. Woke just means progressive and obnoxiously loud about it. Key word being obnoxious, its tired, played out. Thats why you hear gamers saying give us our games back. This is why you see retro being picked up over modern. For your take on Final Fantasy 6, sure those things exist within the story, but they lend to the overall theme of the story instead of being a focal point. What do I know, I've been on the go retro train long before this was a talking point.
No, "woke" does not mean "progressive and obnoxiously loud about it". The pronoun checkbox in Avowed was something someone had to notice and whine about. I don't even think people with access to the game were supposed to share the character creation (it was an old build in the copy they played, which I hear is pretty common). So someone had to go out of their way to point it out. The obnoxiously loud people here were the anti-woke crowd.
@@sentegraphs Hey man, it is an opinion, and one that's shared among much larger audiences than yours. want to address my other talking points?
if a game is overtly woke ignore it, Stay away from triple A games. Anti woke is just Normal people
While the core message of this essay may be fair enough, structurally the whole thing is a perfect example of how not to engage in a discussion. From strawmanning to false dichotomies, nearly every individual argument presented dishonestly employs some form of fallacy in an attempt to reframe the debate and obfuscate the actual issue.
What's the actual issue? Is it that your feelings are hurt and you don't like people who are different then you?
Found the reddit moderator.
Sick burn dude, you extra grouchy cause mom overcooked your nuggies?
I'll try to boil down. Since this "woke or not very woke enough" is all about people perspective and not something "theorized" inside a university (like most jargon used in LGBT or DEI or the shit we want out of our games), it's all about how much you're willing to accept. Most gamers that play games don't want to deal with this culture war. Problem is that 2000-2010 era didnt have much or any DEI or these kind of messaging (some people will go after this assuption trying to convey it's not the case because... idk EA in 2001 had a DEI dep). Sometimes games even triggered these folks. Nowadays most game need to have a handcap POC Trans character else there's no enough representation.
For these people (pro Woke shit) they don't care, they know our world is made of politic view and they want to change society by any means, destroying the very fabric and foundations. We're striking back. They once demanded for being accepted, now they want to destroy everything and shove their thruth onto us. They have the power, we're now the ostracized people.
dude what are you talking about
bro is yapping jesus christ
You know that cis men are 90 of the rpg market,right? If you want that market you need to pander to it,like with all audiances.
As an aside,Mass effect 3 introduce gay relations in 2012,you know how they treated that?! As an off hand remark about his husband, not a cringe comming out party.
Im sure its easier to call everyone a bigot,but the truth is 90% of ppl never saw a trans person irl, and dont care about such things,the most that would have happened is ppl woud roll their eyes at the pronouns and moved on. But now they stoked the culture wars fires some more,they played themselves.
Where the hell do these numbers come from? Based on a quick search, the only numbers I saw were around 55% men, 45% women. And even if your numbers are right, I'm a cis man, and would love to see more trans representation in games. I'm not the only one either.
Also, please point me to the study where people were asked, "have you ever seen a trans person irl?"
I can make up numbers too! 1, that's how many brain cells you have!
@@manaburn876 i didnt make up anything,its common knowledge that a overwhelming majority of players of hardcore games men.
@valipunctro it would seem I didn't make anything up either. Your two comments thus far seem to prove my original reply as accurate. See, this is how we adjust when new information is provided! Science!
I think most people know what woke games are. You losers are purposely trying to make it seem like it is a super complicated thing lol. Remember the days when you could play and enjoy games without in your face agendas?
I believe the "days" you are talking about are the days of childhood ignorance. I'm sure if you tried hard enough, I know that's tough, you could look at any of your favorite childhood games and find an agenda.
so true, we need to go back to the days when games weren't political, like metal gear solid 2 and bioshock
"Woke" is really a word like "nazi" or "fascist" or"far right", some people just call that anything or anyone they don't like. And 1) Avowed does not look good, its visuals are very mid-tier for what i've seen at the moment, 2) is directed by a person who hates me, 3) niche political views that i never even wanted to hear IRL is getting injected in a fantasy RPG game, and you're saying it's not more immersion-breaking than UI elements? You ok? 4) Outer Worlds was a huge disappointment, i knew when i played it that Obsidian is not as good anymore.
Also, before i've seen what Matt Hansen posted, i would try Avowed if the game turns out to be good. Now i'm not coming close to any of their "games" ever.
No...no it's not. "Woke" as a term has existed for decades, and used to be a term used by Black Americans for people who are aware of issues facing Black Americans. More recently, it was appropriated by liberals to mean a more general sense of awareness of many social issues: race, gender identity, sexuality, etc. Even more recently, it's been appropriated by the right as a demeaning term for media that addresses societal issues.
"Nazi" and "fascist" are terms for political movements based on demonizing and often murdering anyone deemed an "other". As for "far right"...well...you're the one who lumped it in with the other two.
@@sentegraphs don't see how all these terms explained change how they are used by people.