Microblog Memes

If that’s the case, then they’re just criticizing bad writing, like all of us are.

But it’s not necessarily the case. There was an adult animation that came out endorsed by Ben Shapiro that was meant to be all about conservative values. To show they’re not backwards, the protagonist has one gay friend. And, from that alone, the target base complained about the show being “woke”.

So the term is both wrapping a long way around towards the simple term “bad writing” and instantly called upon anytime demographics include minorities. I’d go for the Occam’s Razor explanation. It’s just hate.

Agreed, and I feel like the big issue here is there are two versions of “anti-woke” in gaming.

The first is gamers that want real progressive storylines that tie into the story well, and are critical of corporations trying to shoehorn random aspects of culture to be “woke” which fall flat because it’s just virtue signaling.

But it’s been conflated with the sort of 4chan style mentality of “gamer men” who criticize anything, even historically accurate stories who call a game woke just because it doesn’t fit their favorite narrative of muscular white dude or scantily clad woman being the protagonist.

An example of this is Assassin’s Creed Shadows. The game should by no means be labelled “woke” by anybody. It’s telling a dramatized tale of a real person that existed within feudal Japan who was by all measure a black samurai. However the second group in my description above has taken it upon themselves to criticize the studio for “forcing a narrative” or whatever which simply isn’t true. It’s a real person, from history, and they are telling a video game version of his story.

It’s annoying that the improper “wokeness” criticism there gets conflated with true criticism of studios adding barely fleshed out token elements of “inclusion” that by and large benefit nobody but instead detract from titles.

Absolutely this. I can only speak for myself, and I know that some folks are so starved for representation that they are happy with anything and that's fine, but for me poor representation is just as bad as none at all.

I'm a guy married to a guy, and I do like to see queer characters and same sex romance options. But playing DA: Origin and crushing on Alastair, only to have the option of Zevran... It kinda feels like the games is telling me "gay men are campy and promiscuous, a sensitive and strong guy like Alistair is clearly heterosexual". It didn't make me feel included or represented, quite the opposite.

Obviously, times change, and sometimes these clumsy first steps are how we get to somewhere better. But as well as disappointing me, I understand why awkward 'woke' representation rubs people the wrong way. If I as a queer man find the gay character tokenistic, underdeveloped and kinda annoying then it doesn't surprise me that other folks would too. And being willing to say "this is good representation, but that is shallow box ticking" would help us all get to better place.

Personally I'd rather woke slop to straight slop - at least it's clumsily including different narratives, rather than just clumsily reinforcing the same old narratives.

Obviously I would rather no slop, and I would rather artful représentations of all characters, but writing is hard - even moreso when you've got producers, investors, and a committee working as editors.

like the Arcane lesbian relationship being erased in the Chinese release, or game companies logos not having rainbows only in middle eastern countries

There was a mod for one of the Spiderman games (that got removed from Nexus Mods lol) because it activated the flags from the Saudi release of the game that override the pride flags in other releases, which got people discussing how serious these companies are about progressive ideals if they're only selectively included. Of course it feels like it's only tangentially attached to the content: it is, by design, and you can easily prove it.

That's what people mean when they say it's forced.

You want to write a gay character? Do it, but stop half-assing it because it won't sell in China. Do it right or fuck off.

I think most of the criticism about “wokeness” is unwarranted. I don’t know of any video game or movie that has been ruined because of “wokeness”.

Is Suicide Squad a bad video game? Probably. I haven’t played it myself.

Is Suicide Squad bad because the DLC has an old tired lesbian stereotype? No, I don’t think so. Even if it was a good game, I don’t think it would’ve mattered much.

It’s kind of like Jar Jar Binks. People use him as a scapegoat for why Episode I is bad. It’s a character who’s easy to attack, but he’s far from the reason why anyone would think Episode I is a bad movie. They would still dislike the movie even if he had been removed.

People are often good at telling when something is bad, but rarely understand why it’s bad.

True that.

I even found it very funny when they accused kingdom come: deliverance of being racist because no black characters were in the game.

The setting is fucking medieval! There were no black people in Europe back then.

On the other hand I only know some Netflix series where they add all characters of the lbqt+ spectrum but give them no story or any meanings to that.