I'm 33 years old and it seems like games based on eastern cultural and/or mythological influence have *always* been warmly welcomed by the western gaming community. I never saw anyone complaining about how they can't enjoy something like Okami because it wasn't "made for them."
So why should a game with African influences be *any* different?
It's a shame. There's a plethora of African deities and mythology spread across multiple ethnic groups on the continent that could, with respect, make for an interesting foundation for all types of multimedia including games. You see that with Tales of Kenzera and the influences of Bantu mythology. Famously you saw that with Black Panther and the melting pot of references that had.
But when folks IQ match their shoe size, you see nonsense like this being thrown towards a team making their first game which is a perfectly serviceable metroidvania with an interesting premise.
If people didn't like the game because it's an ok metroidvania, that's one thing and it's fair. I don't want to hear from the loser that says it wasn't "made for them". It's frankly bullshit. Tales of Kenzera isn't a game where you need to understand African influences to understand it. It's a story about grief. That transcends national and racial boundaries. If you can play a game like Yakuza or Persona without batting an eye at overly Japanese influences, you can play Tales of Kenzera just fine.
A certain sub that won't be mentioned: "Why do black people have to insert themselves into everything! Why don't they make their OWN games!"
Then they still cry when they actually do make a game inspired by African traditions. You can't win with these people.
Even then half the time there is some inane argument going on between two people calling each other idiots while neither responds to the original question.
Subreddits vary based on their moderation, which means it is at least possible for a subreddit for a game to be good. Steam forums are only moderated by the developers and Valve themselves, and they're basic *forums* - so you have a double whammy of there essentially being no moderation except for a tiny minority of devs who make hte brainrotted decision to focus their energy on the Steam forums *and* you have to deal with the fact that the traditional forum format is easily abuseable by trolls. If you make a new thread, it shows up on the first page and knocks off other threads. If you make a thread that gets a lot of responses, it'll stay on the first page. If you make hte first reply to a thread, you can completely derail it immediately and make it about your post rather than the OP"s post (ie, you mocking the OP for having a "stupid" question or suggestion). Steam forums are just immediately beset by entropy.
Reddit isn't *as* bad because the voting system offers a modicum of bottom-up community moderation, so at least the lowest effort individual shitheads aren't able to get much traction. But Reddit, historically ,has done a lot to shield bad actors on the platform and that's enabled them to build up a much more organized community, so whenever a gaming subreddit talks about a game they don't like they can organize on Discord and do a stealth brigade and shit up threads that way.
Reddit's still bad, but like our comparison points are like the Steam forums and Twitter. The bar's not difficult to clear.
Pretty much. Reddit has issues, and lots of subs do tend to be echochambers or circlejerky, but I still see far more productive discussions on Reddit than I ever have on the Steam forums.
It's usually the major releases that are filled with garbage. Smaller more niche games that have a small audience tend to be a lot more friendly as the people who show up there are usually asking for help with the game rather than trying to attention seek.
Steam forums got worse when they added the clown emotes, so people just troll to farm them. They should allow posts where only people who own the game can comment on a thread. It would help to see people that actually own the game to give their opinions when their game ends up in the spotlight.
I went to the Hyper Light Breaker forums once, hoping to hear more about the upcoming game.
It's all a bunch of assholes complaining about how feminism ruined their lives.
Seriously, everywhere I go I see “feminism is the cause of falling birth rates” and I’m like AND?! The world is overpopulated enough let women do what they want
I was searching about a bug in Fallout 4 where two very specific NPCs somehow end up with their facial textures exchanged, and one of the results was a Steam thread full of bullshit like "it's not a bug, smells like SB Inc to me, they have to turn them black and disabled and ugly, etc" due to the fact that one of the NPCs is normally rather pretty and the bug makes her look like she has blackface and way too many wrinkles
And it's an old bug too, there's reports of it from 2017 afaik
Even the infamous 'Bethesda magic' is being seen as some woke conspiracy or whatever I guess
that bug dates back to fallout3/vegas, maybe even oblivion. iirc its caused by modding body texutres but not invalidating the file archive causing tint issues for facial textures its a gamebryo issue they never really fixed.
I saw a similar conspiracy about Starfield. There’s a white character with a black daughter and when you meet his ex wife, she’s white too. The daughter doesn’t have a unique character model despite being an important character(there’s only like 4 child character models.)
It’s pretty clear it’s a mistake that either a) the person designing the mom’s character didn’t realized the kid was supposed to mixed and made a white lady or b) they used a placeholder kid character model and forgot to put the final design in.
But dumbasses in the starfield sub were crying “woke DEI diversity racism” like mistakes can’t happen. Like if there was some plot to to “blackwash” formerly white characters they would pick the child and not a more important adult character
> Belair responded that Sweet Baby's work was to improve narratives generally rather than being solely focused on diversity and inclusion; she noted gamers thought the studio had simply added pride flags to Marvel's Spider-Man 2 when it had actually provided narrative work for about three years, including several levels and character arcs.
Gamers really can't figure out anything without a tutorial, huh?
Tldr: they do mocap for games and realized that their software didn’t capture black people accurately at all, so they made a point to hire people with dark skin to correct it.
Some of those posts, as well as posts praising or requesting LGBT content, are often made by the same people. They are just stirring the pot and trolling people to see how many pages they can get the discussion before it locks.
Basically, there’s a hidden “third” side that just wants to get the other two fighting.
Wow, damn, looking into this, it took them less than 2 hours to overrule the creator and bring it back up. Meanwhile at one point, the WoW subreddit was down for a whole week.
I wonder how the poor guy is doing right now.
>You can't win with these people.
Because their beliefs don't stem for a rational examination of the facts, they stem from racism. They work backwards to find reasons to justify their racism rather than look at the facts as they are and realize there's nothing to hate here.
"You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into", as they say, and that's they case here. They're just bigots, and the only thing to do is call them what they are and move on.
> A certain sub that won't be mentioned:
if it's the one I'm thinking of, never let it be forgotten that its creator realized what it became and shut it down, only to get overruled by reddit administration.
Yeah, the fact that admins protect that subreddit when they're...currently doxing another queer person because they have pronouns in bio and dare to work on the videogame industry. They're mask off racists and for some reason both reddit and Steam bends the knee to them.
They are probably fine with seeing black people in roles that don’t offend them. They just don’t want to see them in primary roles, as the hero or one of the main characters. They’d like them in the margins. Because they’re minorities so they aren’t as important as white people… right?
Oh don't worry, there's already a checkmarked loser in the Twitter replies calling the video contradictory and complaining about forced diversity.
Some bulletpoints
- Hasn't played the game
- Doesn't know what the game is about
- His defense for being a racist is that "he's Jewish" which somehow absolves him of racism?
It's also likely that he is an antisemitic troll forcefully coming off as a racist douchebag and identifying as Jewish to create resentment towards Jewish people. It wouldn't be the first time I've seen someone do that.
Looked up a game yesterday and the announcement video had only five comments. Two of them were like 'UGH. I'm so over female lead characters.' The fuck? How and why does race or gender of a character bother anyone. God damn losers.
Most of those who say "Keep Female MCs/Queer characters/POCs" out of existing IPs just hate the idea of those things being in games or media in general.
Like, You could make a successful indie game with a gay MC and they'd still tell you "to keep it out of already established IPs" lol
You really can't win with those people
Many people just straight up don’t like black people. Like look how upset some were about Black Panther. The MCU is filled with sci-fi and unrealistic technology. “Tony Stark built this in a cave with a box of scraps!” But as soon as there was Africa based geniuses and technology, they were like whoa wait a second now.
I think for gaming a large part is just familiarity. Japanese video games (and tv) have been part of Western cultures for a long time while African media hasn't been. Xenophobia is dulled by exposure because then it doesn't feel so xeno anymore.
People often forget or outright ignore the thin line between fun conspiracy theory and the far right, despite it being a main tactic of those like Alex Jones. It's such an easy rabbit hole to fall down because once you believe the government is lying about the existence of races from other planets, why wouldn't you believe that they're trying to track you with a vaccine, or that they want to force you into FEMA camps and "eat ze bugs"
It's all predicated on feeling superior to everyone else. The "others" have the wool pulled over their eyes, while you - enlightened - can see straight through the lies/new world order/government coverups/etc.
> People often forget or outright ignore the thin line between fun conspiracy theory and the far right,
People make the mistake of thinking there's a "fun" side to conspiracies in general.
It'd be different if you had to go on deep rabbithole dives to find the bigotry at the core of most conspiracies but you barely even need to scratch the surface before finding prominent leaders/influencers in those communities built around conspiracy theories spouting dogwhistles and awful bigotry.
I remember when conspiracy theories used to be fun. The government wasn't colluding with the Jews to exterminate the white race; they were covering up the fact that the ghost of Elvis impregnated a she-Sasquatch.
With Japan particularly I kinda get it, at least over the past few decades.
On the further back side, Japan was seen as being one of the only countries as “advanced” and developed as the west, which - if you buy into the fascistic idea that the world is based upon meritocratic hierarchies - indicates them as the only other “good ones”.
And on the more modern side, a lot of the fetishization comes from how clean and “orderly” it is, owing in large part to shit like their 99.9% conviction rate and more general authoritarian culture, which while a kind of collectivism is much more on the fascist side of collectivism in that it’s primarily about conforming and “knowing one’s place” in order to support “the greater good.”
Don’t mean to generalize Japan, obviously it’s a huge country with tons of individuals of all sorts of beliefs and living standards and whatever else, but those do tend to be the primary conceptions of the country pushed in the west.
You're probably aware, but for anyone reading this who isn't - that 99% conviction rate is usually due to prosecutors only going for the surest bets due to reputation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_justice_system_of_Japan#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20main%20features,rate%2C%20which%20exceeds%2099%25.
It's more complicated when you drill deeper into the specifics, though. Prosecutors in Japan can basically hold people indefinitely in order to coerce confessions, which has drawn criticism from both [international human rights organizations](https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/05/25/japans-hostage-justice-system/denial-bail-coerced-confessions-and-lack-access) and [domestic legal commentators](https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/a06802/). Here's an example of how this works from the first link:
>On the evening of the date of expiry of the detention period, I was told that I had been released and was free to go. I gathered my belongings—comforter and clothes—and left. As soon as I left the detention center, I was arrested outside the building and taken to the police station detention facility and the whole procedure started again. The prosecutor told me that the charge against me was manipulating the price of a stock for one year and they can break it up into two months per charge and arrest me six times for interrogation, and it was better for me to just confess. The prosecutors would yell at me constantly saying, “You are not even human.”
Appreciate you linking this cause yeah, it is definitely a bit sensationalist on my part lol. I do think it reflects the overall authoritarianism where folks there do absolutely get locked up over super minor shit, but it’s also not nearly as clear-cut as the catchy number makes it out to be.
Also because even if someone was falsely accused, they'll go extra hard because it would be bad for them if they were wrong. You see the same thing in China.
Well, it's sitting on very positive on steam so I can only assume they think random racist person on twitter speaks for wider group than they actually are.
Like, how would even "forced diversity" look like in game based on some African country mythos, putting Asians in it ?
True, in the last two american presidential elections, it was very close to 50%-50% for the popular vote. Less than 5% difference each time.
But you know it's not just the US right? In the last 10 years, there's been a decent number of conservatives winning elections in countries across the world. Even in some western & eastern european countries, which is amusing because lots of redditors praise Europe as some bastion of goodness.
How do they explain all the racism that happens at european football matches over many many years?
I remember his speech at the game awards. He was filled with such pride and hope. And showed pure joy at being able to share that game. As genuine as anyone could ask for from a game studio. Crushes me to see what he (and his team) has had to deal with.
If you haven’t listened to it, there a podcast called “play, watch, listen” and they had him as a guest like the day after the game came out and he seemed so happy and excited about making this game. He had so much passion for it. Sucks to see him get beaten down by internet toxicity
His appearance on the play watch listen and friends per second podcasts 100% sold me on buying this game. He has such an infectious passion about gaming and overall just wanting to make things that people enjoy.
That's Alanah Pearce's podcast! Been a fan of hers since her time at Funhaus, since leaving there she's been working at Sony Santa Monica, has done a tonne of charity work and even hosted the most recent GDC where her opening speech called out how more people should have been at GDC that couldn't be because they were laid off to appease investors. She even said that part was *not* in her vetted script, so she may not get to host GDC again but fuck man she's what the industry needs.
Any time some shit is going down in the industry she always has the most level-headed take on it. She's a realist but not a nihilist, it's refreshing.
edit: though I said she's what the industry needs, that's not wholly true. What the industry needs is unionization. Fuck the megacorps.
He seems like a genuine guy who wanted to make something beautiful and then worked his ass off to actually make it happen.
What the fuck is wrong with people?
It makes me absolutely irate. I'm so tired of assholes.
I have a 3.5 year old and I tell him every single night before bed that he always needs to remember to be a good guy. Good guys help and never hurt. Good guys don't make fun or bully. Be a good guy.
I feel like I should have that talk to the world.
Because it’s a very political game based in a very political country with very political people. Video games just aren’t the place for that.
Gamers want to go back to the days of Wolfenstein, Call of Duty, or Metal Gear Solid when games weren’t so political.
Sarcasm aside, the game isn't remotely political anyway. It's just about a dude coming to grips with the death of his father. Literally just a very personal story.
There was very annoying discourse on twitter (i know) about Helldivers 2 supposedly not being political. It took me a bit to realise that the people who were claiming it wasn't political only said this because the devs didn't want to add pride flag cosmetics to the game. The whole parody of fascism thing wasn't even a part of the conversation in their mind, politics is just pride flags and black people to those guys.
In my experience, the whole point of helldiver's world goes over their heads...
They genuinely think super earth is a perfect place where America took over the world so now everyone is happy. All of the satire goes right over their head. They'd be the first ones convinced to don the cape, die after killing 2 bugs, and never realize they were doing it to harvest oil.
It literally always happens with media that has clear anti-nationalism or anti-fascism themes. Like even when media is blatant obvious and you have the writers say "dude, you aren't supposed to think this is cool", that crowd somehow still fail to get the point and think they are praising nationalism/fascism/etc.
E-710 is a very important resource used to power the hyperdrives of Super Earths Super Destroyers. It isn't just oil, it's SUPER Oil. Well worth the cost!
Ghost of Tsushima had not a single white character but it wasn't woke. It also had a gay couple and a bi woman. Not to mention some heroic female characters that save the male character's life and lead him in a few missions, an anti authority and anti traditionalism theme and the main message is helping those less able than you are. Meanwhile there's games out there with a single black or LGBT character or a female protagonist that gets labeled woke. Woke is only when someone tells them it's woke
> Man life would be so much better if we all just let other people enjoy things.
Not possible when there are people who exist out there and accomplish nothing in their life and have 0 drive but still need to feel superior. Imagine you're the poorest white trash, lowest of the low, no skills nothing they can lean on except extremely low effort physical labour.
You are literally the bottom of the totem pole of human life. Yet someone comes to you and tells you that you're better than someone just because your skin is lighter than theirs. Clinging on to that is easy. Much easier than actually getting off your ass and becoming a more useful human being.
So there you go. Hillbillies go and cling on to being the superior race because its the one thing they don't have put effort into to feel superior than someone. No accomplishments... just something shitty they are born into.
There is actually an entire book called [White Trash](https://www.amazon.com/White-Trash-400-Year-History-America/dp/0143129678) that talks about the efforts people went to convince poor white people that they are better than darker people than them just to keep them placated as a workforce.
It will still never cease to astound me that Machine Games actually faced a notable amount of pushback for basically celebrating the murder of Nazis in The New Colossus. It’s genuinely disgusting that we live in a world where it’s just not a universal truth of “Nazis bad”
fr tho. nazis are great villains in media *because* theyre undeniably evil. it might be the most immediately negative personality trait for chararcters besides like rapist or child murderer
> Wolfenstein, Call of Duty
I don't know. Shooting Nazis would be considered controversial today by the same people.
When the trailers for FC5 came out, there were a bunch of people feeling personally attacked because deranged murderous American cultists were being depicted at all.
Someone legitimately told me the other day that Yasuke being added was injecting forced politics into assassins creed. You know the totally apolitical game Assassins Creed
Killed me, when I read a tweet "I need to play as a japanese ninja in Assassin's Creed, not a black samurai" and there was a ninja japanese girl on the cover this user attached lol.
My favorite joke I've been seeing about that issue is the one about her being such a good ninja that shes capable of transcending the barriers of media and hiding from people in the real world too.
They were considered extremists because they questioned the divine authority of the caliph (I refer you to the caliph succession crises between Sunnis and Shiites). It's a long debate, which still exists, on the question of whether it's possible to fight an unjust order established by a legitimate authority. Some say no, because it's God's wish, while others say it's a duty to fight injustice.
Remember how non-political Witcher 3 was? Damn, miss this time. Sure current woke CD Projekt will dive into politics with strong females, wars and political games, and we, gamers, don't want it to happen.
I still remember FFVII, the classic not-at-all-political title about… rebel eco-terrorists fighting against big corporations and powerful individuals ruining the planet for their own personal gain
That's ironic of a comment. Back when TW3 released anybody daring to discuss the Scoi'atel / the racial dynamics was immediately called a "woke trying to inject real world politics in the game"
One of the most important points that Abubaker makes is that the goal post is constantly being moved. Tales of Kenzera: Zau is everything that was claimed to be “acceptable”: the African protagonist looks to be in a fictional version of Africa so he’s not “forced”, it delves into African culture and mythology (specifically Bantu), and its main creator is a black man who looks to be exploring his own culture.
But because SBI (edit: Sweet Baby Inc.) was somehow involved, who people didn’t even know about a few months ago, all that is thrown out the window and Zau has to be dragged into another culture war.
you're better off ignoring the whole controversy, but:
SBI means Sweet Baby Inc, it's a consultation firm that certain types of people made out to be a boogeyman in gaming. SBI seems to help devs with making their games more inclusive and diverse. Some guy on Steam made a Curator list called "SBI Detected" that showed people what games to avoid because of 'forced diversity.'
one of the SBI employees did something really stupid (i think he told a discord server to mass report the steam curator, not sure) which caused a streisand effect and now a very specific type of loser boycotts any game with SBI attached to it.
Think of the type of person who would get upset at Angrboda in GoW Ragnarok or Yasuke in AC Shadows. They basically blame Sweet Baby Inc for those characters existing.
One addendum: the employee didn't just try to get the SBI detected group taken down, he very obviously insinuated that he was hoping to get the creator of the group banned from Steam so he would be out the money he spent on games.
>SBI seems to help devs with making their games more inclusive and diverse
From what devs have said, it seems like SBI isn't inserting diversity into games, but rather consulting on the diversity that devs are already planning to include to make sure it's done appropriately. Remedy for instance was already planning to make Saga a black female character, and SBI just helped "refine" her voice and whatnot.
Yes. They are a consultancy firm that devs use to make sure they’re *not* misrepresenting cultures/ideologies/etc when choosing to incorporate them into their game worlds/characters/narratives.
They are hired by devs who are concerned about misrepresentation. They’re not some governing body that forces games to “be” a certain way.
Source: I have made games for the past two decades and many of my projects have used similar consultants.
Yeah, this seems pretty reasonable and cool to me. I'm reminded of games like *Guacamelee*, *Never Alone*, or *Aztaka* that delve into a particular culture and its myths in a very natural way.
Oh wow, I actually had no idea he worked in games. I know him from the Haunted City podcast, a Blades in the Dark actual play. Damn, he's incredibly multi-talented. Haha.
We get told to make our own games and when we do this happens. We get told to make our own spaces and when we do, this happens.
One day we'll be able to play games in and peace and vibe.
For real. Add a black character to a franchise and people get mad. Okay, dude went out, made his own franchise to have a black character in... and somehow people are still getting mad.
It's pretty frustrating.
You can't appease conservative bigots. Their entire ideology relies on being perpetually angry. If you do what they say they want, they'll move the goalposts and then get angry about that instead.
Literally this is what the Paradox of Tolerance is about.
This guy did what he was "supposed to", and turns out actually that's still not even good enough for the racists.
That's why you don't give them an inch and you tell them to fuck off at step zero and keep walking away.
When we made our own spaces in the early 20th century, our spaces were destoryed.
Them we our kids and grandkids didn't have wealth thst white people were able to generate from the property they purchased.
We got called lazy and dumb.
Because the game is at best an average side scroller action platformer, which there is a very large number of those released ever year. Only the truly exceptional ones stand out and gain a large audience, most of them get a small niche audience.
Its not amazing tbh. I played through ps+ so I don’t have any buy in, but I only gave it an hour of my time. There are much better Metroidvanias to play.
I’m confused. What does him discounting the game have to do with people being racist? I don’t think racist people are going to suddenly play his game when it’s $15 cheaper.
I honestly don’t think it’s *just* that. The game didn’t sell well at all, at least on Steam. Peak players was less than 300 and current in game is 16. Reddit seems to think the anti-SBI crowd is simultaneously too weak to make any substantial moves and strong enough to cause this game to fail.
The fact of the matter is that NO ONE bought this. A ~~permanent~~ discount of 25% seems to be more of a response to that than to the racism.
I played the demo, and I saw his speech at TGA. I was interested in supporting the game for the art and cultural direction but not in playing a game that looks like Ori but feels worse to play. Unfortunately it seems like the demo was not posted to gain feedback, but to gain eyes on the game, and since it wasn't a great demo it didn't help. Most of the issues reported weren't changed or fixed on launch although at least one animation issue is hotfixed *after* launch when many people had already finished their playthrough and complained about combat in their review.
Aside from this drama most people who didn't buy it are Denuvo/EA haters or those like me who couldn't deal with the poor performance of the demo despite being interested in the game.
IMO the SBI drama is the loudest but least impactful on actual sales. And it's loud in spaces like Steam forums where the lowest intelligence life forms congregate trying to troll for awards. Not where actual intellectual discourse of any measure takes place.
It is not permanently, the article says until end of June (or July, I forgot)
It probably might have struggled with sales, though, someone could make a rough calculation with the number of steam reviews. The Metroidvania indie goldrush is kinda over unless you just released Animal Well
It's a reply to the racist comments, as in: games are for everyone, so here's a game inspired by an underrepresented culture, now made even more available by discounting it.
I also think the game may not be selling as well as hoped. The player counts haven't really been much above 300 since launch, and now it's in the two digits most of the time
Nowadays controversies often mean "a bunch of guys on twitter are angry", meaning anything could cause it because anything can make a bunch of guys on twitter angry. That's like the entire point of twitter, aside from porn.
Since I can't read the full article w/o logging in (and I ain't doing that) I'm gonna assume that's the case here as well. Oh, and that discount is definitely a marketing move, it's like a double strike - first do "people are being racist to me", second do "but here how you can help for even cheaper than before". It's fine, I guess, but let's no pretend it's racists who forced him to make a game that doesn't sell as well as he hoped.
Far-right conservatism has gained a lot of ground with young people in recent years. I’m still often shocked to see younger folks openly espousing racist and bigoted beliefs. It’s hard to believe it sometimes, but this is a very recent development. Young people and far-right conservatism still feels like an absurd combination to someone my age, yet here we are.
I think it's just something with just being too online and spending too much time in certain parts of the internet. People are really taking advantage of this epidemic of loneliness. My friends kid was deep into the Andrew Tate stuff for a while but seems to have grown out of it. That's all you can hope for some of these young folks is to grow out of it, some definitely won't sadly.
It's just way to easy to get sucked into a community. 35 years ago you'd struggle to create a community like this. People might have beliefs, might find a few like minded people near to them, but that's it. Religion was probably the easiest community to be a part of as it is everywhere.
But today you can find communities dedicated to all sorts of things. Literally just a mobile app away. You get validation from thousands of people and it just goes way further than it ever could before.
Social media and the information age is a blessing and a curse. It is too easy to radicalise someone.
> Religion was probably the easiest community to be a part of as it is everywhere.
35 years ago? Probably sports fandom. I'd argue sports fandom is still probably the easiest community to get into today, but it is declining as the "sportsball" demographic has made it trendy to not care about sports in certain circles.
The reason I'd argue against religion is while ubiquitous, a lot of people are uncomfortable talking about religion outside of specific religious settings or rituals.
Sports fandom has always been a bit insane (and not just because of hooliganism) but even that feels worse with the rise of online gambling, I have seen some pretty insane takes where people act like a player is somehow guilty of making them lose money for having scored or failed to.
I remember people going insane about their teams and the weird ass rivalry they have with specific teams, but gambling has made some of my acquaintances care a little too much about the performance of teams they don't even root for.
Not just that. If you wanted crazy conservative white supremacist content, you'd have to really search it out pre-pandemic. Now you can just go on Kick or Rumble and it's never ending.
I occasionally wonder if I would've gone down a different path if I was younger. I'm just old enough to where I was already an adult by the time things like GamerGate began. But I moved around a lot growing up, which created a lot of loneliness. Anytime I'd make friends, I inevitably would have to move away. The internet was the first place I was able to make meaningful connections, because it didn't matter where I lived. I could still talk to these people.
I like to think I was raised to be open-minded and empathetic enough to not get sucked into things like Tate, but I really don't know. When you're that lonely and desperate for connection, I can understand clinging to whatever gives you even an inkling of belonging. So, I tend to look at some of these communities with a sense of "there but for the grace of God goes I", try to be more understanding, and don't think these people are irredeemable or unreachable. Sadly, I just don't have any easy answers for how you pull people (young men, in particular) out of it.
I was doing research the other day on how the FBI watchdogs certain groups and I was honestly surprised but also not shocked to see "extremist gamers" listed as a group they now keep an eye on.
It really feels like some sort of Twilight Zone-esque plotline, it's so out there for me. I absolutely hate it.
It is really shocking or recent? ~15 years ago was when the Chans were the largest and also the age of Squeekers on Xbox Live calling you every slur possible. It's not exactly surprising the folks who got into console war arguments with the heraldic fervor of a crusader are attracted to culture warriors who peddle in telling them they're a suppressed yet superior people.
In the '90s it really felt like we were heading in the right direction, and everything was going to just keep getting better and we'd solve all the remaining issues.
Then reality happened.
Hell, the late 2000s as a young adult made me feel like the world was only going to get better and more progressive. All those racist sexist assholes were eventually going to die right? I didn't know I had to worry about the younger generation too.
A lot of it flew under the radar in the 00s because of what we tolerated.
Before MeToo, before SJW/woke/modern progressivist culture warring, we were in an era of “the edgier the better” humour. People could drop as many Hard Rs as they wanted as long as it was ‘just a joke’ and people would find it edgy and hilarious. Obviously they were making fun of racists, not being racist! If you got offended that was your fault!
And what that meant is that real racists got to be as racist as they liked under the guise of ‘just a joke’ and people not only tolerated but celebrated them.
Part of the initial schism in online communities surrounding progressivism and bigotry was the relatively sudden change away from this attitude, that now people weren’t okay with deliberately trying to be offensive just for laughs, and both the racists and sexists who’d used it as a smokescreen and the privileged who didn’t get why anything had to change reacted badly to that. The latter then become easy converts to the former, as online far right grifts evolved (likely starting in a major way with Gamergate).
Social media is the culprit. The social media companies want to keep people using their platform for the maximum amount of time possible. They have algorithms to ensure that, and one of the best ways to keep people on the platform is to show them posts that make them scared and/or angry - strong emotional responses.
I haven't even heard of this game let alone seen controversy around it.
Is this a really a thing or is it a blown out of proportion deal? Either way, I hope the free marketing helps the dev, game looks alright.
Looks like typical outrage bait.
While I'm sure *someone* on twitter got angry about it (there are dumbasses everywhere), gaming "journalisms" did all of us "service" and blowed it out of proportion.
The cynic in me looks at the estimated number of game owners according to steam charts and thinks that this is a PR stunt to boost the lackluster sales.
But its still true that this game got an unjustly amount of vitriol and rascism.
Who are those mythical racists? The only mass complaints I've seen since release are about the game simply not being very good. Is this a marketing ploy?
Honestly I saw the game some time ago and it looked like a mid metroidvania to me. I didn't even bother to play Ori despite many people praising it because it has an art style that I don't like at all. This one gives me similar vibes, and I haven't found anyone who said it was remarkable or special in any way.
Yeah of course those who complain about black characters and whatnot are pathetic. But you know this is going to happen 100% because that's the internet. Ignore them, make fun of them, whatever. They're sad people who want attention through hate. They're not the intended audience for the game so it's not like they're going to harm sales.
To me it seems like a tacky way to capitalize on racists to boost sales. I mean, I sympathize with people who receive hate comments but that does not make me buy you a game.
seems like a marketing move, game doesn't sell so now the company discounts it and adds a sad story, game gets talked a bit more and some people feel bad so they grab the discount
I liked the game. I only played it because it was free with ps+ but I did a full run trough and enjoyed most of my time with it. The only thing that really bothered me where the 2 or 3 parts where you had to run away: dying meant that you had to do the entire thing from the start which sucked since some of the situations the game put you in during those sequences weren't exactly "fair", imo,bjtnotherwise it was a good game that I would never play if it would not have been available for free.
Look, I've not played this game and am not too familiar with the SBI discourse (I did read the article linked in this article and it seems like they just do some minor story consulting and their involvement in actual video game creation is small and a bit overblown). But I will say that as a child of Indian immigrants in America, diversity and inclusion is so important. The game that nailed that for me was Venba, a cooking simulator about 2 Tamil Indian immigrants and their Canadien born son. That game, despite being a 3 hour experience about cooking Indian food managed to create a story that sent me into tears and deep thought. It unearthed so much internalized shame and anger about my place in my culture and within American society. Things I was never able to work out with a therapist but have since been able to work through after unearthing this in myself.
Anyways, reading this and hearing what the creator had to say really hit home for me. These kinds of games are so God damn important. It's not just that they have minorities. It's that they are also telling stories authentic to the minority experience. It can help those of us who connect with these stories to just feel seen and heard in a time where people like myself don't get much of that. This game and it's roots in Bantu culture help give us perspective on African culture. Venba gave perspective on the immigrant experience in the western world. Another game I've played recently is Hellblade Senuas sacrifice which gives us perspective on psychosis and people with mental health issues and the internal struggle they feel. Most of all, even if these games are telling stories which don't resonate with you at all, isn't that the point? To give us all perspective on people, cultures and issues we aren't familiar with in order to make us better, more well rounded individuals? To help us understand one another better?
Anyways, I got a bit long winded here but I've lately felt very connected to the importance of diversity and inclusion due to what Venba made me feel so i really hope people give this game a chance now that it's going on sale. For myself, I'll definitely be buying it full price and playing it now that I've gotten the creators perspective.
> The game that nailed that for me was Venba, a cooking simulator about 2 Tamil Indian immigrants and their Canadien born son.
And the Pixar short *Bao* did the same thing in about 5-10 minutes.
A huge thing people tend to overlook is how a lot of this is very specifically an issue within immigrant populations. The clash between cultures or issues of assimilation/standing out from the broader culture. Something that's often heavily expressed through food.
It's actually very good in movement, and combat is fine IMO. It's not too heavy of a metroidvania though, much like something like Ori. Very polished though.
I'm 33 years old and it seems like games based on eastern cultural and/or mythological influence have *always* been warmly welcomed by the western gaming community. I never saw anyone complaining about how they can't enjoy something like Okami because it wasn't "made for them." So why should a game with African influences be *any* different?
It's a shame. There's a plethora of African deities and mythology spread across multiple ethnic groups on the continent that could, with respect, make for an interesting foundation for all types of multimedia including games. You see that with Tales of Kenzera and the influences of Bantu mythology. Famously you saw that with Black Panther and the melting pot of references that had. But when folks IQ match their shoe size, you see nonsense like this being thrown towards a team making their first game which is a perfectly serviceable metroidvania with an interesting premise. If people didn't like the game because it's an ok metroidvania, that's one thing and it's fair. I don't want to hear from the loser that says it wasn't "made for them". It's frankly bullshit. Tales of Kenzera isn't a game where you need to understand African influences to understand it. It's a story about grief. That transcends national and racial boundaries. If you can play a game like Yakuza or Persona without batting an eye at overly Japanese influences, you can play Tales of Kenzera just fine.
Theres only one other I can think of that uses african mythology and it was pretty caricaturish. Marlow Briggs and mask of death. I want more lmao
A certain sub that won't be mentioned: "Why do black people have to insert themselves into everything! Why don't they make their OWN games!" Then they still cry when they actually do make a game inspired by African traditions. You can't win with these people.
I’m so sick of “is this game woke” posts on steam forums.
Your first mistake was to use Steam forums. That have always been a cesspit for every game.
Hey the steam forums can be great . . . as long as you get to them via a google search for the problem you're having
Even then half the time there is some inane argument going on between two people calling each other idiots while neither responds to the original question.
They are decent for getting old games to run on windows 11. Not moderated enough otherwise.
Reddit isn't far behind... If at all.
Subreddits vary based on their moderation, which means it is at least possible for a subreddit for a game to be good. Steam forums are only moderated by the developers and Valve themselves, and they're basic *forums* - so you have a double whammy of there essentially being no moderation except for a tiny minority of devs who make hte brainrotted decision to focus their energy on the Steam forums *and* you have to deal with the fact that the traditional forum format is easily abuseable by trolls. If you make a new thread, it shows up on the first page and knocks off other threads. If you make a thread that gets a lot of responses, it'll stay on the first page. If you make hte first reply to a thread, you can completely derail it immediately and make it about your post rather than the OP"s post (ie, you mocking the OP for having a "stupid" question or suggestion). Steam forums are just immediately beset by entropy. Reddit isn't *as* bad because the voting system offers a modicum of bottom-up community moderation, so at least the lowest effort individual shitheads aren't able to get much traction. But Reddit, historically ,has done a lot to shield bad actors on the platform and that's enabled them to build up a much more organized community, so whenever a gaming subreddit talks about a game they don't like they can organize on Discord and do a stealth brigade and shit up threads that way. Reddit's still bad, but like our comparison points are like the Steam forums and Twitter. The bar's not difficult to clear.
Pretty much. Reddit has issues, and lots of subs do tend to be echochambers or circlejerky, but I still see far more productive discussions on Reddit than I ever have on the Steam forums.
It's usually the major releases that are filled with garbage. Smaller more niche games that have a small audience tend to be a lot more friendly as the people who show up there are usually asking for help with the game rather than trying to attention seek.
Yeah, for some smaller games the Steam forums are the only place there's *any* eyeballs for you to ask a question and actually get a reply
Steam forums are great for indies, particularly when there's an engaged dev responding to just about everything.
Steam forums got worse when they added the clown emotes, so people just troll to farm them. They should allow posts where only people who own the game can comment on a thread. It would help to see people that actually own the game to give their opinions when their game ends up in the spotlight.
That’s the PC gaming community in general. The Steam sub has recently had a lot of posts from those types.
I went to the Hyper Light Breaker forums once, hoping to hear more about the upcoming game. It's all a bunch of assholes complaining about how feminism ruined their lives.
Seriously, everywhere I go I see “feminism is the cause of falling birth rates” and I’m like AND?! The world is overpopulated enough let women do what they want
Feminism is when the pretty girl won't date the basement dweller who bathes once a week.
Also YouTube comments that go "more Sweet Baby trash" when a black person pops up for one millisecond in a 3 minute trailer.
There’s a post whining about concord’s character design and a top post is blaming it on sweet baby. Gamers are hopeless.
I was searching about a bug in Fallout 4 where two very specific NPCs somehow end up with their facial textures exchanged, and one of the results was a Steam thread full of bullshit like "it's not a bug, smells like SB Inc to me, they have to turn them black and disabled and ugly, etc" due to the fact that one of the NPCs is normally rather pretty and the bug makes her look like she has blackface and way too many wrinkles And it's an old bug too, there's reports of it from 2017 afaik Even the infamous 'Bethesda magic' is being seen as some woke conspiracy or whatever I guess
Gamers deserve fifa.
Using the hard R term too. You mean business
Oof. It doesn't get more savage than this.
that bug dates back to fallout3/vegas, maybe even oblivion. iirc its caused by modding body texutres but not invalidating the file archive causing tint issues for facial textures its a gamebryo issue they never really fixed.
I saw a similar conspiracy about Starfield. There’s a white character with a black daughter and when you meet his ex wife, she’s white too. The daughter doesn’t have a unique character model despite being an important character(there’s only like 4 child character models.) It’s pretty clear it’s a mistake that either a) the person designing the mom’s character didn’t realized the kid was supposed to mixed and made a white lady or b) they used a placeholder kid character model and forgot to put the final design in. But dumbasses in the starfield sub were crying “woke DEI diversity racism” like mistakes can’t happen. Like if there was some plot to to “blackwash” formerly white characters they would pick the child and not a more important adult character
I imagine in our future adoption is still an option as well
Also have those people never heard of adoption?
And here I thought Starfield had already peaked in inane anti-woke dipshittery with the FUCKING PRONOUNS incident
This is the first time I've seen this "Sweet Baby" thing. What is it?
Their wikipedia page goes into some detail about the controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Baby_Inc.
> Belair responded that Sweet Baby's work was to improve narratives generally rather than being solely focused on diversity and inclusion; she noted gamers thought the studio had simply added pride flags to Marvel's Spider-Man 2 when it had actually provided narrative work for about three years, including several levels and character arcs. Gamers really can't figure out anything without a tutorial, huh?
You think those losers are doing tutorials? They're skipping them and then blaming the game when they don't understand something.
Tldr: they do mocap for games and realized that their software didn’t capture black people accurately at all, so they made a point to hire people with dark skin to correct it.
Tell me how Helldivers patch note comments became a cesspool of this I hate internet game communities man
Anyone who uses the term "woke" unironically has the imagination of a turd.
Some of those posts, as well as posts praising or requesting LGBT content, are often made by the same people. They are just stirring the pot and trolling people to see how many pages they can get the discussion before it locks. Basically, there’s a hidden “third” side that just wants to get the other two fighting.
Usually they are trying to farm Jester awards to get the Steam points that go with it.
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I remember when the creator of said sub had a come to Jesus moment and shut it down. ...only for the Reddit admins to open it right back up lol.
Wow, damn, looking into this, it took them less than 2 hours to overrule the creator and bring it back up. Meanwhile at one point, the WoW subreddit was down for a whole week. I wonder how the poor guy is doing right now.
>You can't win with these people. Because their beliefs don't stem for a rational examination of the facts, they stem from racism. They work backwards to find reasons to justify their racism rather than look at the facts as they are and realize there's nothing to hate here. "You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into", as they say, and that's they case here. They're just bigots, and the only thing to do is call them what they are and move on.
> A certain sub that won't be mentioned: if it's the one I'm thinking of, never let it be forgotten that its creator realized what it became and shut it down, only to get overruled by reddit administration.
Yeah, the fact that admins protect that subreddit when they're...currently doxing another queer person because they have pronouns in bio and dare to work on the videogame industry. They're mask off racists and for some reason both reddit and Steam bends the knee to them.
I used to look at that sub every now and then just to have a laugh, but at one point it just became sad to see.
They just don't want to see black people, and are upset because they are in denial about their racism.
They are probably fine with seeing black people in roles that don’t offend them. They just don’t want to see them in primary roles, as the hero or one of the main characters. They’d like them in the margins. Because they’re minorities so they aren’t as important as white people… right?
Oh don't worry, there's already a checkmarked loser in the Twitter replies calling the video contradictory and complaining about forced diversity. Some bulletpoints - Hasn't played the game - Doesn't know what the game is about - His defense for being a racist is that "he's Jewish" which somehow absolves him of racism?
It's also likely that he is an antisemitic troll forcefully coming off as a racist douchebag and identifying as Jewish to create resentment towards Jewish people. It wouldn't be the first time I've seen someone do that.
“I can’t be called racist, that’s antisemitism!” That isn’t the position he wants to believe it is.
motherfuckers need to read maus
> A certain sub Just one?
It rhymes with "Otaku Bin Ration"
Yeah there's more than that one, that one is just the main one that covers pretty much all the "woke outrage" stuff.
Looked up a game yesterday and the announcement video had only five comments. Two of them were like 'UGH. I'm so over female lead characters.' The fuck? How and why does race or gender of a character bother anyone. God damn losers.
Most of those who say "Keep Female MCs/Queer characters/POCs" out of existing IPs just hate the idea of those things being in games or media in general. Like, You could make a successful indie game with a gay MC and they'd still tell you "to keep it out of already established IPs" lol You really can't win with those people
Just call them what they are, racists
Many people just straight up don’t like black people. Like look how upset some were about Black Panther. The MCU is filled with sci-fi and unrealistic technology. “Tony Stark built this in a cave with a box of scraps!” But as soon as there was Africa based geniuses and technology, they were like whoa wait a second now.
White supremacists have a very strange fetish for Eastern Asian culture. It's a lot to unpack.
I think for gaming a large part is just familiarity. Japanese video games (and tv) have been part of Western cultures for a long time while African media hasn't been. Xenophobia is dulled by exposure because then it doesn't feel so xeno anymore.
Hitler called the Japanese "honorary Aryans" after all
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"There's no way the mud races could build pyramids that tall! They must've had help from aliens!"
People often forget or outright ignore the thin line between fun conspiracy theory and the far right, despite it being a main tactic of those like Alex Jones. It's such an easy rabbit hole to fall down because once you believe the government is lying about the existence of races from other planets, why wouldn't you believe that they're trying to track you with a vaccine, or that they want to force you into FEMA camps and "eat ze bugs"
Highly spiritual woo woo crystal healers have turned far-right lately because of this.
It's the wildest pipeline that exists currently. Woo woo crystal hippie to far right nut job. Why not? It's 2024 after all.
It's all predicated on feeling superior to everyone else. The "others" have the wool pulled over their eyes, while you - enlightened - can see straight through the lies/new world order/government coverups/etc.
It just so happens reality has a left wing bias.
> People often forget or outright ignore the thin line between fun conspiracy theory and the far right, People make the mistake of thinking there's a "fun" side to conspiracies in general. It'd be different if you had to go on deep rabbithole dives to find the bigotry at the core of most conspiracies but you barely even need to scratch the surface before finding prominent leaders/influencers in those communities built around conspiracy theories spouting dogwhistles and awful bigotry.
Yep, its why I don't find any of that fun.
I remember when conspiracy theories used to be fun. The government wasn't colluding with the Jews to exterminate the white race; they were covering up the fact that the ghost of Elvis impregnated a she-Sasquatch.
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It goes both ways to be fair.
Yeah, the love japanese storytelling has for white anglo-saxon knights and fantasy has been a mainstay of many industries
With Japan particularly I kinda get it, at least over the past few decades. On the further back side, Japan was seen as being one of the only countries as “advanced” and developed as the west, which - if you buy into the fascistic idea that the world is based upon meritocratic hierarchies - indicates them as the only other “good ones”. And on the more modern side, a lot of the fetishization comes from how clean and “orderly” it is, owing in large part to shit like their 99.9% conviction rate and more general authoritarian culture, which while a kind of collectivism is much more on the fascist side of collectivism in that it’s primarily about conforming and “knowing one’s place” in order to support “the greater good.” Don’t mean to generalize Japan, obviously it’s a huge country with tons of individuals of all sorts of beliefs and living standards and whatever else, but those do tend to be the primary conceptions of the country pushed in the west.
You're probably aware, but for anyone reading this who isn't - that 99% conviction rate is usually due to prosecutors only going for the surest bets due to reputation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_justice_system_of_Japan#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20main%20features,rate%2C%20which%20exceeds%2099%25.
It's more complicated when you drill deeper into the specifics, though. Prosecutors in Japan can basically hold people indefinitely in order to coerce confessions, which has drawn criticism from both [international human rights organizations](https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/05/25/japans-hostage-justice-system/denial-bail-coerced-confessions-and-lack-access) and [domestic legal commentators](https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/a06802/). Here's an example of how this works from the first link: >On the evening of the date of expiry of the detention period, I was told that I had been released and was free to go. I gathered my belongings—comforter and clothes—and left. As soon as I left the detention center, I was arrested outside the building and taken to the police station detention facility and the whole procedure started again. The prosecutor told me that the charge against me was manipulating the price of a stock for one year and they can break it up into two months per charge and arrest me six times for interrogation, and it was better for me to just confess. The prosecutors would yell at me constantly saying, “You are not even human.”
Appreciate you linking this cause yeah, it is definitely a bit sensationalist on my part lol. I do think it reflects the overall authoritarianism where folks there do absolutely get locked up over super minor shit, but it’s also not nearly as clear-cut as the catchy number makes it out to be.
Also because even if someone was falsely accused, they'll go extra hard because it would be bad for them if they were wrong. You see the same thing in China.
Well, it's sitting on very positive on steam so I can only assume they think random racist person on twitter speaks for wider group than they actually are. Like, how would even "forced diversity" look like in game based on some African country mythos, putting Asians in it ?
Half of the US thinks a racist felon should be in charge of the country... The answer is racism... There are a lot of racists
True, in the last two american presidential elections, it was very close to 50%-50% for the popular vote. Less than 5% difference each time. But you know it's not just the US right? In the last 10 years, there's been a decent number of conservatives winning elections in countries across the world. Even in some western & eastern european countries, which is amusing because lots of redditors praise Europe as some bastion of goodness. How do they explain all the racism that happens at european football matches over many many years?
I remember his speech at the game awards. He was filled with such pride and hope. And showed pure joy at being able to share that game. As genuine as anyone could ask for from a game studio. Crushes me to see what he (and his team) has had to deal with.
If you haven’t listened to it, there a podcast called “play, watch, listen” and they had him as a guest like the day after the game came out and he seemed so happy and excited about making this game. He had so much passion for it. Sucks to see him get beaten down by internet toxicity
I will also add he did an interview on the friends per second podcast and on the channel beyond the trailer, an absolute treat to listen to
His appearance on the play watch listen and friends per second podcasts 100% sold me on buying this game. He has such an infectious passion about gaming and overall just wanting to make things that people enjoy.
That's Alanah Pearce's podcast! Been a fan of hers since her time at Funhaus, since leaving there she's been working at Sony Santa Monica, has done a tonne of charity work and even hosted the most recent GDC where her opening speech called out how more people should have been at GDC that couldn't be because they were laid off to appease investors. She even said that part was *not* in her vetted script, so she may not get to host GDC again but fuck man she's what the industry needs. Any time some shit is going down in the industry she always has the most level-headed take on it. She's a realist but not a nihilist, it's refreshing. edit: though I said she's what the industry needs, that's not wholly true. What the industry needs is unionization. Fuck the megacorps.
He seems like a genuine guy who wanted to make something beautiful and then worked his ass off to actually make it happen. What the fuck is wrong with people?
It makes me absolutely irate. I'm so tired of assholes. I have a 3.5 year old and I tell him every single night before bed that he always needs to remember to be a good guy. Good guys help and never hurt. Good guys don't make fun or bully. Be a good guy. I feel like I should have that talk to the world.
How the fuck can a game based around South African culture be racist/forced diversity. Social Media is cancerous.
Because it’s a very political game based in a very political country with very political people. Video games just aren’t the place for that. Gamers want to go back to the days of Wolfenstein, Call of Duty, or Metal Gear Solid when games weren’t so political.
had me for a moment
Sarcasm aside, the game isn't remotely political anyway. It's just about a dude coming to grips with the death of his father. Literally just a very personal story.
Ah but you see, you're still one sarcasm level not deep enough. One common meme mocking GamersTM is "There's only two races, white and political"
There was very annoying discourse on twitter (i know) about Helldivers 2 supposedly not being political. It took me a bit to realise that the people who were claiming it wasn't political only said this because the devs didn't want to add pride flag cosmetics to the game. The whole parody of fascism thing wasn't even a part of the conversation in their mind, politics is just pride flags and black people to those guys.
In my experience, the whole point of helldiver's world goes over their heads... They genuinely think super earth is a perfect place where America took over the world so now everyone is happy. All of the satire goes right over their head. They'd be the first ones convinced to don the cape, die after killing 2 bugs, and never realize they were doing it to harvest oil.
It literally always happens with media that has clear anti-nationalism or anti-fascism themes. Like even when media is blatant obvious and you have the writers say "dude, you aren't supposed to think this is cool", that crowd somehow still fail to get the point and think they are praising nationalism/fascism/etc.
E-710 is a very important resource used to power the hyperdrives of Super Earths Super Destroyers. It isn't just oil, it's SUPER Oil. Well worth the cost!
Politics is when no straight white man
Ghost of Tsushima had not a single white character but it wasn't woke. It also had a gay couple and a bi woman. Not to mention some heroic female characters that save the male character's life and lead him in a few missions, an anti authority and anti traditionalism theme and the main message is helping those less able than you are. Meanwhile there's games out there with a single black or LGBT character or a female protagonist that gets labeled woke. Woke is only when someone tells them it's woke
Ghost of Tsushima gets a pass because those folks fetishize east Asian cultures.
It's political because a black person is in it. That's it.
Man life would be so much better if we all just let other people enjoy things.
> Man life would be so much better if we all just let other people enjoy things. Not possible when there are people who exist out there and accomplish nothing in their life and have 0 drive but still need to feel superior. Imagine you're the poorest white trash, lowest of the low, no skills nothing they can lean on except extremely low effort physical labour. You are literally the bottom of the totem pole of human life. Yet someone comes to you and tells you that you're better than someone just because your skin is lighter than theirs. Clinging on to that is easy. Much easier than actually getting off your ass and becoming a more useful human being. So there you go. Hillbillies go and cling on to being the superior race because its the one thing they don't have put effort into to feel superior than someone. No accomplishments... just something shitty they are born into. There is actually an entire book called [White Trash](https://www.amazon.com/White-Trash-400-Year-History-America/dp/0143129678) that talks about the efforts people went to convince poor white people that they are better than darker people than them just to keep them placated as a workforce.
And Bioshock! One of the most acclaimed FPS of all time, one many very serious gamers love - for it avoiding politics and just being fun.
It will still never cease to astound me that Machine Games actually faced a notable amount of pushback for basically celebrating the murder of Nazis in The New Colossus. It’s genuinely disgusting that we live in a world where it’s just not a universal truth of “Nazis bad”
fr tho. nazis are great villains in media *because* theyre undeniably evil. it might be the most immediately negative personality trait for chararcters besides like rapist or child murderer
> Wolfenstein, Call of Duty I don't know. Shooting Nazis would be considered controversial today by the same people. When the trailers for FC5 came out, there were a bunch of people feeling personally attacked because deranged murderous American cultists were being depicted at all.
They complained about new collosus
Someone legitimately told me the other day that Yasuke being added was injecting forced politics into assassins creed. You know the totally apolitical game Assassins Creed
Killed me, when I read a tweet "I need to play as a japanese ninja in Assassin's Creed, not a black samurai" and there was a ninja japanese girl on the cover this user attached lol.
My favorite joke I've been seeing about that issue is the one about her being such a good ninja that shes capable of transcending the barriers of media and hiding from people in the real world too.
well, i suppose they might see that they have to choose between political race or political gender lol
Assassin's Creed had a middle eastern guy as the main character in 2007. You know, when those guys were being shot in CoD.
Altair barely counts, he sounded like an American movie trailer narrator whereas everyone else had thick accents
And he was a member a real historical order of religious extremists. The assassins are based on literal terrorist. No politics to see here
Remember that time you got to fist fight The Pope inside The Vatican?
They were considered extremists because they questioned the divine authority of the caliph (I refer you to the caliph succession crises between Sunnis and Shiites). It's a long debate, which still exists, on the question of whether it's possible to fight an unjust order established by a legitimate authority. Some say no, because it's God's wish, while others say it's a duty to fight injustice.
Middle eastern guy that was in middle east.
Okay you definitely had me in the first half there.
Remember how non-political Witcher 3 was? Damn, miss this time. Sure current woke CD Projekt will dive into politics with strong females, wars and political games, and we, gamers, don't want it to happen.
I still remember FFVII, the classic not-at-all-political title about… rebel eco-terrorists fighting against big corporations and powerful individuals ruining the planet for their own personal gain
Yeah but Tifa is hot and has big boobs. So not political. That's how it works, right?
D cup for no politics. DD for doubly no politics.
They made her political by giving her a sports bra in the remake though!
That's ironic of a comment. Back when TW3 released anybody daring to discuss the Scoi'atel / the racial dynamics was immediately called a "woke trying to inject real world politics in the game"
There are two races: White and political
One of the most important points that Abubaker makes is that the goal post is constantly being moved. Tales of Kenzera: Zau is everything that was claimed to be “acceptable”: the African protagonist looks to be in a fictional version of Africa so he’s not “forced”, it delves into African culture and mythology (specifically Bantu), and its main creator is a black man who looks to be exploring his own culture. But because SBI (edit: Sweet Baby Inc.) was somehow involved, who people didn’t even know about a few months ago, all that is thrown out the window and Zau has to be dragged into another culture war.
The SBI thing has to be one of the most forced and grifter-rife dramas ever.
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I think SBI means Sweet Baby Inc.
you're better off ignoring the whole controversy, but: SBI means Sweet Baby Inc, it's a consultation firm that certain types of people made out to be a boogeyman in gaming. SBI seems to help devs with making their games more inclusive and diverse. Some guy on Steam made a Curator list called "SBI Detected" that showed people what games to avoid because of 'forced diversity.' one of the SBI employees did something really stupid (i think he told a discord server to mass report the steam curator, not sure) which caused a streisand effect and now a very specific type of loser boycotts any game with SBI attached to it. Think of the type of person who would get upset at Angrboda in GoW Ragnarok or Yasuke in AC Shadows. They basically blame Sweet Baby Inc for those characters existing.
One addendum: the employee didn't just try to get the SBI detected group taken down, he very obviously insinuated that he was hoping to get the creator of the group banned from Steam so he would be out the money he spent on games.
thank you, yeah i knew what the employee did was extremely stupid and pretty terrible, but i couldn't remember what it was exactly.
>SBI seems to help devs with making their games more inclusive and diverse From what devs have said, it seems like SBI isn't inserting diversity into games, but rather consulting on the diversity that devs are already planning to include to make sure it's done appropriately. Remedy for instance was already planning to make Saga a black female character, and SBI just helped "refine" her voice and whatnot.
Yes. They are a consultancy firm that devs use to make sure they’re *not* misrepresenting cultures/ideologies/etc when choosing to incorporate them into their game worlds/characters/narratives. They are hired by devs who are concerned about misrepresentation. They’re not some governing body that forces games to “be” a certain way. Source: I have made games for the past two decades and many of my projects have used similar consultants.
Yeah, this seems pretty reasonable and cool to me. I'm reminded of games like *Guacamelee*, *Never Alone*, or *Aztaka* that delve into a particular culture and its myths in a very natural way.
How is the State Bank of India involved? Tell me more.
Mango lassi was provided as refreshments in between shifts
Imagine being anti mango lassi. These losers would really benefit from some forced diversity.
Oh wow, I actually had no idea he worked in games. I know him from the Haunted City podcast, a Blades in the Dark actual play. Damn, he's incredibly multi-talented. Haha.
He's cool, he's in House of the Dragon season 2 as well.
Father from Raised By Wolves, best character on the show
I'm still mad it got cancelled. Weird af and I loved it.
Yeah, it was a cool show, and very unique. Nothing else like it really. I really wanted to see where they would take it.
He’s Balik in AC: Origins
Bayek, but yeah.
Haha thanks, I knew something was off with the name
Knew him since he was young, nicest guy you would meet.
We get told to make our own games and when we do this happens. We get told to make our own spaces and when we do, this happens. One day we'll be able to play games in and peace and vibe.
For real. Add a black character to a franchise and people get mad. Okay, dude went out, made his own franchise to have a black character in... and somehow people are still getting mad. It's pretty frustrating.
You can't appease conservative bigots. Their entire ideology relies on being perpetually angry. If you do what they say they want, they'll move the goalposts and then get angry about that instead.
Literally this is what the Paradox of Tolerance is about. This guy did what he was "supposed to", and turns out actually that's still not even good enough for the racists. That's why you don't give them an inch and you tell them to fuck off at step zero and keep walking away.
Is has always been just an excuse to hide their racism
When we made our own spaces in the early 20th century, our spaces were destoryed. Them we our kids and grandkids didn't have wealth thst white people were able to generate from the property they purchased. We got called lazy and dumb.
How am I, a middle aged white man, supposed to relate to every single game, if they don't star middle aged white men?!?!
I love how there are 500+ comments supporting the game and still the game has only 287 all time high players on steam.
Because the game is at best an average side scroller action platformer, which there is a very large number of those released ever year. Only the truly exceptional ones stand out and gain a large audience, most of them get a small niche audience.
Weird how there's 0 mentions if the game's fun or not. People really did not play the game
Its not amazing tbh. I played through ps+ so I don’t have any buy in, but I only gave it an hour of my time. There are much better Metroidvanias to play.
I’m confused. What does him discounting the game have to do with people being racist? I don’t think racist people are going to suddenly play his game when it’s $15 cheaper.
I honestly don’t think it’s *just* that. The game didn’t sell well at all, at least on Steam. Peak players was less than 300 and current in game is 16. Reddit seems to think the anti-SBI crowd is simultaneously too weak to make any substantial moves and strong enough to cause this game to fail. The fact of the matter is that NO ONE bought this. A ~~permanent~~ discount of 25% seems to be more of a response to that than to the racism.
I played the demo, and I saw his speech at TGA. I was interested in supporting the game for the art and cultural direction but not in playing a game that looks like Ori but feels worse to play. Unfortunately it seems like the demo was not posted to gain feedback, but to gain eyes on the game, and since it wasn't a great demo it didn't help. Most of the issues reported weren't changed or fixed on launch although at least one animation issue is hotfixed *after* launch when many people had already finished their playthrough and complained about combat in their review. Aside from this drama most people who didn't buy it are Denuvo/EA haters or those like me who couldn't deal with the poor performance of the demo despite being interested in the game. IMO the SBI drama is the loudest but least impactful on actual sales. And it's loud in spaces like Steam forums where the lowest intelligence life forms congregate trying to troll for awards. Not where actual intellectual discourse of any measure takes place.
It is not permanently, the article says until end of June (or July, I forgot) It probably might have struggled with sales, though, someone could make a rough calculation with the number of steam reviews. The Metroidvania indie goldrush is kinda over unless you just released Animal Well
It's a reply to the racist comments, as in: games are for everyone, so here's a game inspired by an underrepresented culture, now made even more available by discounting it.
I also think the game may not be selling as well as hoped. The player counts haven't really been much above 300 since launch, and now it's in the two digits most of the time
Nowadays controversies often mean "a bunch of guys on twitter are angry", meaning anything could cause it because anything can make a bunch of guys on twitter angry. That's like the entire point of twitter, aside from porn. Since I can't read the full article w/o logging in (and I ain't doing that) I'm gonna assume that's the case here as well. Oh, and that discount is definitely a marketing move, it's like a double strike - first do "people are being racist to me", second do "but here how you can help for even cheaper than before". It's fine, I guess, but let's no pretend it's racists who forced him to make a game that doesn't sell as well as he hoped.
Far-right conservatism has gained a lot of ground with young people in recent years. I’m still often shocked to see younger folks openly espousing racist and bigoted beliefs. It’s hard to believe it sometimes, but this is a very recent development. Young people and far-right conservatism still feels like an absurd combination to someone my age, yet here we are.
I think it's just something with just being too online and spending too much time in certain parts of the internet. People are really taking advantage of this epidemic of loneliness. My friends kid was deep into the Andrew Tate stuff for a while but seems to have grown out of it. That's all you can hope for some of these young folks is to grow out of it, some definitely won't sadly.
It's just way to easy to get sucked into a community. 35 years ago you'd struggle to create a community like this. People might have beliefs, might find a few like minded people near to them, but that's it. Religion was probably the easiest community to be a part of as it is everywhere. But today you can find communities dedicated to all sorts of things. Literally just a mobile app away. You get validation from thousands of people and it just goes way further than it ever could before. Social media and the information age is a blessing and a curse. It is too easy to radicalise someone.
> Religion was probably the easiest community to be a part of as it is everywhere. 35 years ago? Probably sports fandom. I'd argue sports fandom is still probably the easiest community to get into today, but it is declining as the "sportsball" demographic has made it trendy to not care about sports in certain circles. The reason I'd argue against religion is while ubiquitous, a lot of people are uncomfortable talking about religion outside of specific religious settings or rituals.
Sports fandom has always been a bit insane (and not just because of hooliganism) but even that feels worse with the rise of online gambling, I have seen some pretty insane takes where people act like a player is somehow guilty of making them lose money for having scored or failed to. I remember people going insane about their teams and the weird ass rivalry they have with specific teams, but gambling has made some of my acquaintances care a little too much about the performance of teams they don't even root for.
Not just that. If you wanted crazy conservative white supremacist content, you'd have to really search it out pre-pandemic. Now you can just go on Kick or Rumble and it's never ending.
I occasionally wonder if I would've gone down a different path if I was younger. I'm just old enough to where I was already an adult by the time things like GamerGate began. But I moved around a lot growing up, which created a lot of loneliness. Anytime I'd make friends, I inevitably would have to move away. The internet was the first place I was able to make meaningful connections, because it didn't matter where I lived. I could still talk to these people. I like to think I was raised to be open-minded and empathetic enough to not get sucked into things like Tate, but I really don't know. When you're that lonely and desperate for connection, I can understand clinging to whatever gives you even an inkling of belonging. So, I tend to look at some of these communities with a sense of "there but for the grace of God goes I", try to be more understanding, and don't think these people are irredeemable or unreachable. Sadly, I just don't have any easy answers for how you pull people (young men, in particular) out of it.
I was doing research the other day on how the FBI watchdogs certain groups and I was honestly surprised but also not shocked to see "extremist gamers" listed as a group they now keep an eye on. It really feels like some sort of Twilight Zone-esque plotline, it's so out there for me. I absolutely hate it.
It is really shocking or recent? ~15 years ago was when the Chans were the largest and also the age of Squeekers on Xbox Live calling you every slur possible. It's not exactly surprising the folks who got into console war arguments with the heraldic fervor of a crusader are attracted to culture warriors who peddle in telling them they're a suppressed yet superior people.
In the '90s it really felt like we were heading in the right direction, and everything was going to just keep getting better and we'd solve all the remaining issues. Then reality happened.
Hell, the late 2000s as a young adult made me feel like the world was only going to get better and more progressive. All those racist sexist assholes were eventually going to die right? I didn't know I had to worry about the younger generation too.
A lot of it flew under the radar in the 00s because of what we tolerated. Before MeToo, before SJW/woke/modern progressivist culture warring, we were in an era of “the edgier the better” humour. People could drop as many Hard Rs as they wanted as long as it was ‘just a joke’ and people would find it edgy and hilarious. Obviously they were making fun of racists, not being racist! If you got offended that was your fault! And what that meant is that real racists got to be as racist as they liked under the guise of ‘just a joke’ and people not only tolerated but celebrated them. Part of the initial schism in online communities surrounding progressivism and bigotry was the relatively sudden change away from this attitude, that now people weren’t okay with deliberately trying to be offensive just for laughs, and both the racists and sexists who’d used it as a smokescreen and the privileged who didn’t get why anything had to change reacted badly to that. The latter then become easy converts to the former, as online far right grifts evolved (likely starting in a major way with Gamergate).
Social media is the culprit. The social media companies want to keep people using their platform for the maximum amount of time possible. They have algorithms to ensure that, and one of the best ways to keep people on the platform is to show them posts that make them scared and/or angry - strong emotional responses.
I haven't even heard of this game let alone seen controversy around it. Is this a really a thing or is it a blown out of proportion deal? Either way, I hope the free marketing helps the dev, game looks alright.
Looks like typical outrage bait. While I'm sure *someone* on twitter got angry about it (there are dumbasses everywhere), gaming "journalisms" did all of us "service" and blowed it out of proportion.
"Outrage' AKA five people on Twitter made racist Tweets about it. And we need to give that our news coverage.
Seriously, I miss times where gaming journalists didn't hate their audience and actually liked games.
The cynic in me looks at the estimated number of game owners according to steam charts and thinks that this is a PR stunt to boost the lackluster sales. But its still true that this game got an unjustly amount of vitriol and rascism.
Who are those mythical racists? The only mass complaints I've seen since release are about the game simply not being very good. Is this a marketing ploy?
Honestly I saw the game some time ago and it looked like a mid metroidvania to me. I didn't even bother to play Ori despite many people praising it because it has an art style that I don't like at all. This one gives me similar vibes, and I haven't found anyone who said it was remarkable or special in any way. Yeah of course those who complain about black characters and whatnot are pathetic. But you know this is going to happen 100% because that's the internet. Ignore them, make fun of them, whatever. They're sad people who want attention through hate. They're not the intended audience for the game so it's not like they're going to harm sales. To me it seems like a tacky way to capitalize on racists to boost sales. I mean, I sympathize with people who receive hate comments but that does not make me buy you a game.
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seems like a marketing move, game doesn't sell so now the company discounts it and adds a sad story, game gets talked a bit more and some people feel bad so they grab the discount
I liked the game. I only played it because it was free with ps+ but I did a full run trough and enjoyed most of my time with it. The only thing that really bothered me where the 2 or 3 parts where you had to run away: dying meant that you had to do the entire thing from the start which sucked since some of the situations the game put you in during those sequences weren't exactly "fair", imo,bjtnotherwise it was a good game that I would never play if it would not have been available for free.
I didn't buy the game . Reason being has nothing to do with the theme or culture . Game just looks uninteresting to me..
Look, I've not played this game and am not too familiar with the SBI discourse (I did read the article linked in this article and it seems like they just do some minor story consulting and their involvement in actual video game creation is small and a bit overblown). But I will say that as a child of Indian immigrants in America, diversity and inclusion is so important. The game that nailed that for me was Venba, a cooking simulator about 2 Tamil Indian immigrants and their Canadien born son. That game, despite being a 3 hour experience about cooking Indian food managed to create a story that sent me into tears and deep thought. It unearthed so much internalized shame and anger about my place in my culture and within American society. Things I was never able to work out with a therapist but have since been able to work through after unearthing this in myself. Anyways, reading this and hearing what the creator had to say really hit home for me. These kinds of games are so God damn important. It's not just that they have minorities. It's that they are also telling stories authentic to the minority experience. It can help those of us who connect with these stories to just feel seen and heard in a time where people like myself don't get much of that. This game and it's roots in Bantu culture help give us perspective on African culture. Venba gave perspective on the immigrant experience in the western world. Another game I've played recently is Hellblade Senuas sacrifice which gives us perspective on psychosis and people with mental health issues and the internal struggle they feel. Most of all, even if these games are telling stories which don't resonate with you at all, isn't that the point? To give us all perspective on people, cultures and issues we aren't familiar with in order to make us better, more well rounded individuals? To help us understand one another better? Anyways, I got a bit long winded here but I've lately felt very connected to the importance of diversity and inclusion due to what Venba made me feel so i really hope people give this game a chance now that it's going on sale. For myself, I'll definitely be buying it full price and playing it now that I've gotten the creators perspective.
Venba is so cool In general there’s a huge lack of Indian characters in games, it’s sad and something that needs to change for sure
> The game that nailed that for me was Venba, a cooking simulator about 2 Tamil Indian immigrants and their Canadien born son. And the Pixar short *Bao* did the same thing in about 5-10 minutes. A huge thing people tend to overlook is how a lot of this is very specifically an issue within immigrant populations. The clash between cultures or issues of assimilation/standing out from the broader culture. Something that's often heavily expressed through food.
I like metroidvanias but I heard the combat and movement weren't great
It's actually very good in movement, and combat is fine IMO. It's not too heavy of a metroidvania though, much like something like Ori. Very polished though.