Simple, everyday gamer Davin Andersen reportedly wishes video games would stop pushing unneeded political agendas and instead focus on just being fun. He’d also support…
To me the real problem with political games is that a political game, to be enjoyable, has to be more good than political.
Disco Elysium is extremely political. It is also a very well written game. So I enjoyed playing it.
AAA studios tend to make a game with an LGBT character or a minority character and when people don’t like it, they blame representation. While people are actually mad at a game being a bad game.
They don’t have to justify their existence. But they are often just poorly done characters whose race, orientation or ethnicity is their entire personality.
I agree and a great example is Ellie and Riley in The Last of Us Left Behind. They are very well done characters in a very well done game. They have depth aside from their orientation, gender, race etc. When they explore that it feels natural, not just checking a box.
Very much agree. So much hollow writing for minority characters that make them feel tokenized instead of as real people. I suppose it must start somewhere, but when you see it done well it really points out weaker characters.
Ellie and Riley are wonderful, Bill too.
Key appears to be writers who write a character, who happens to be gay instead of a caricature to check the box as you said.
Loras in the game if thrones tv show is one of the worst examples of a butchering of a gay character. Dudes a young Jaime in the book vs the show where he’s a bloodhound looking for dick.
Dorian in dragon age inquisition is a character I loved. His orientation is a part of his character and identity. Fits into his backstory with his father that meshes with lore of world to make a connection to real events.
“You tried to change me.” Line is one of my favorite deliveries in games.
I honestly agree - these groups deserve to have well-written and compelling characters, instead of hollow shells that barely tick the diversity checkbox while being walking stereotypes. Invest in good writing and create interesting and iconic characters!
there are thousands of games who have a proganist that’s just angry white man, military white man, or protective dad man. Do you get as annoyed by these games?
So you’ve made posts complaining about them right? Asking for more games to be made focusing on coming out of the closet or whatever? About the struggles of a woman to get respect in a man’s world?
Like maybe you’re special but I’ve literally never met someone who complains about minority writing that’s but anywhere near as much effort into complaining about angry white man games being poorly written and derivative.
I have complained about buggy games. I have complained about badly written games. I have never bought an AAA game at full price, because they are extremely expensive. And quite frankly, most of those games cater to a demographic I am no longer a part of, because I am getting too old to fit into.
It’s about well written characters. You can do whatever you want and you don’t have to justify it to have it exist, just do it well.
Not a AAA game but look at Stardew Valley. Their race, gender, orientation is not their characters, it’s a part. They have likes and dislikes, skills and struggles, hobbies, friends etc. The are just little pixel sprites but they have depth that makes them feel way more human.
On the other hand, well animated, voice acted, high res Ubisoft characters feel hollow because they don’t bother to go deeper than “dude with sword and diverse friends that mark your map”
I agree but it doesn’t change the fact that they are very often poorly written or poorly represented in these games.
It’s not that diversity in games itself is bad it’s the way it’s done.
As an example, I really like how it was seamlessly integrated in games like the ones by NomNomNami. Obviously those are more cosy slice of life type games but I’ve seen other games that seamlessly integrate it well too. The trick is the characters need to be well written as real people who happen to be a minority, not simply characters who’s whole purpose is that they are a minority.
inFamous Second Son did this well. Deslin, the main character is from the Akomish tribe and … oh hell I just came in from rebuilding a retaining wall outside and that’s all I got.
Deskin, Akomish, good game, well written character.
Or just make the player character macho idiot with the gun have his gaze linger on the male stripper as long as the female stripper in the cutscene on the gratuitous strip club level, in between cringe dialogue and doom-y gun shit? You really don’t need much. The standard here is low.
You don’t even need good. You don’t even need writing! Only got one 16 bit sprite for each character class? Cool, differentiate similarly equipped classes with skin colors beards and tits. They literally don’t even need names; you just get better DOT spells and debuffs with robes and tits, better AOE damage and teleports with robes and a beard.
This is not hard to do, and if youre fucking it up you’re doing it on purpose. Anybody who doesn’t believe me: hit me up; I’ll write your shit in like twenty minutes.
gay and minority people are not any more or less political than straight white men. representing them in games is not inherently politically motivated. there are plenty of people complaining about good games in these terms, so you’re not really addressing what they’re mocking here.
if you want to talk about rainbow capitalism and diversity marketing bullshit we can go there, but that doesn’t seem to be the point you’re making here.
I think that actually might be where they’re going, it’s just quite difficult to differentiate rainbow capitalism from bad writing.
I know I had a hard time realising why I hated a lot of representation in modern media, despite loving the old Bioware games, Fallout New Vegas and Life is Strange. And newer titles like BG3 and Disco Elysium.
They’re all well written and take time to establish real characters, and all the minority characters would still have a lot of depth to them.
Whereas in these poorly made modern AAA games a diverse cast seems to be used in two ways:
As marketing material
As a crutch for bad writing
Point 1 draws attention to said characters race/gender/sexuality. And the poor writing is likely to draw more.
Then when a company is bragging about it’s black lesbian lead, then writes an unambiguous pro-diversity storyline that doesn’t explore anything in much depth or provide any nuance, while making heavy use of tell don’t show. Maybe with only evil or incompetent portrayals of white men. You end up with people associating a diverse cast with preachy and ill thought out media. It almost comes across as propaganda. Which is why it gets called political.
But I think it takes a lot of effort to realise that and undo the pattern recognition, so it’s really difficult to explain why you hate “politics in video games”.
Obviously, there are some people who are legitimate bigots and go above and beyond with their hate. But the average person that isn’t passionately hateful seems to fall into what I described above
Well you gave us an example of an “acceptably political” game so why didn’t you include an example of one that you think missed the mark? Surely, that was an innocent, if embarrassing, oversight… Right? “Gee wiz, I forgot to support half my argument! Shucks!”
Hold your horses, the point they were trying to make is “don’t have some fleshed out straight white characters in your game and then add diverse ones as a two dimensional afterthought”
If everyone is a 2D caricature, that’s fine. If the main cast is diverse, that’s great!
The fact that people are downvoting you for speaking an objective fact is a travesty. Diversity is only as political as the writer chooses to make it, and having characters of different races, genders and orientations without putting in the effort to make them feel three-dimensional will not magically make a badly-written game into a good one.
They’re getting downvoted because their real concerns with game writing is getting tangled together with culture war buzz words.
Game writing isn’t bad because it gets political. It’s bad because the writers aren’t very good. Halo 5 doesn’t really do much in the way of topical political commentary, but it’s not better or worse for it. It has bad writing because there’s this weird feeling like all the cutscenes had their opening and closing segments cut. Take this one for instance. It’s like the writers thought the player wouldn’t have the attention span for more then a minute and a half.
Or it’s fully idiotic that existence of girls that likes girls and shit like that has nothing to do with politics?
Is it possible maybe that the only cognitive mistakes possible that lead to uttering something that stupid, or even engaging in the “debate” about if these people should be allowed to live or not, or exist in video games, is the stupidest possible thing to call “political”
It’s not political is just systematic hate, aka fascism, aka so obvious that even the onion has no problem putting out an article like this and everyone understands intuitively who they are making fun of,. and what idea they are making fun of, which happens to be this very fucking stupid ideas uttered
Which we as a society have moved on pretty far away from it, except some very immature people that don’t understand that it doesn’t count as politics to opress people
To me the real problem with political games is that a political game, to be enjoyable, has to be more good than political.
Disco Elysium is extremely political. It is also a very well written game. So I enjoyed playing it.
AAA studios tend to make a game with an LGBT character or a minority character and when people don’t like it, they blame representation. While people are actually mad at a game being a bad game.
Why do minority characters have to justify their existence in a AAA game? Diversity is not political, it’s a fact of life.
They don’t have to justify their existence. But they are often just poorly done characters whose race, orientation or ethnicity is their entire personality.
I agree and a great example is Ellie and Riley in The Last of Us Left Behind. They are very well done characters in a very well done game. They have depth aside from their orientation, gender, race etc. When they explore that it feels natural, not just checking a box.
Very much agree. So much hollow writing for minority characters that make them feel tokenized instead of as real people. I suppose it must start somewhere, but when you see it done well it really points out weaker characters.
Ellie and Riley are wonderful, Bill too.
Key appears to be writers who write a character, who happens to be gay instead of a caricature to check the box as you said.
Loras in the game if thrones tv show is one of the worst examples of a butchering of a gay character. Dudes a young Jaime in the book vs the show where he’s a bloodhound looking for dick.
Dorian in dragon age inquisition is a character I loved. His orientation is a part of his character and identity. Fits into his backstory with his father that meshes with lore of world to make a connection to real events.
“You tried to change me.” Line is one of my favorite deliveries in games.
I honestly agree - these groups deserve to have well-written and compelling characters, instead of hollow shells that barely tick the diversity checkbox while being walking stereotypes. Invest in good writing and create interesting and iconic characters!
there are thousands of games who have a proganist that’s just angry white man, military white man, or protective dad man. Do you get as annoyed by these games?
Yes.
So you’ve made posts complaining about them right? Asking for more games to be made focusing on coming out of the closet or whatever? About the struggles of a woman to get respect in a man’s world?
Like maybe you’re special but I’ve literally never met someone who complains about minority writing that’s but anywhere near as much effort into complaining about angry white man games being poorly written and derivative.
I have complained about buggy games. I have complained about badly written games. I have never bought an AAA game at full price, because they are extremely expensive. And quite frankly, most of those games cater to a demographic I am no longer a part of, because I am getting too old to fit into.
It’s about well written characters. You can do whatever you want and you don’t have to justify it to have it exist, just do it well.
Not a AAA game but look at Stardew Valley. Their race, gender, orientation is not their characters, it’s a part. They have likes and dislikes, skills and struggles, hobbies, friends etc. The are just little pixel sprites but they have depth that makes them feel way more human.
On the other hand, well animated, voice acted, high res Ubisoft characters feel hollow because they don’t bother to go deeper than “dude with sword and diverse friends that mark your map”
I agree but it doesn’t change the fact that they are very often poorly written or poorly represented in these games. It’s not that diversity in games itself is bad it’s the way it’s done.
As an example, I really like how it was seamlessly integrated in games like the ones by NomNomNami. Obviously those are more cosy slice of life type games but I’ve seen other games that seamlessly integrate it well too. The trick is the characters need to be well written as real people who happen to be a minority, not simply characters who’s whole purpose is that they are a minority.
inFamous Second Son did this well. Deslin, the main character is from the Akomish tribe and … oh hell I just came in from rebuilding a retaining wall outside and that’s all I got.
Deskin, Akomish, good game, well written character.
Or just make the player character macho idiot with the gun have his gaze linger on the male stripper as long as the female stripper in the cutscene on the gratuitous strip club level, in between cringe dialogue and doom-y gun shit? You really don’t need much. The standard here is low.
You don’t even need good. You don’t even need writing! Only got one 16 bit sprite for each character class? Cool, differentiate similarly equipped classes with skin colors beards and tits. They literally don’t even need names; you just get better DOT spells and debuffs with robes and tits, better AOE damage and teleports with robes and a beard.
This is not hard to do, and if youre fucking it up you’re doing it on purpose. Anybody who doesn’t believe me: hit me up; I’ll write your shit in like twenty minutes.
gay and minority people are not any more or less political than straight white men. representing them in games is not inherently politically motivated. there are plenty of people complaining about good games in these terms, so you’re not really addressing what they’re mocking here.
if you want to talk about rainbow capitalism and diversity marketing bullshit we can go there, but that doesn’t seem to be the point you’re making here.
I think that actually might be where they’re going, it’s just quite difficult to differentiate rainbow capitalism from bad writing.
I know I had a hard time realising why I hated a lot of representation in modern media, despite loving the old Bioware games, Fallout New Vegas and Life is Strange. And newer titles like BG3 and Disco Elysium.
They’re all well written and take time to establish real characters, and all the minority characters would still have a lot of depth to them.
Whereas in these poorly made modern AAA games a diverse cast seems to be used in two ways:
As marketing material
As a crutch for bad writing
Point 1 draws attention to said characters race/gender/sexuality. And the poor writing is likely to draw more.
Then when a company is bragging about it’s black lesbian lead, then writes an unambiguous pro-diversity storyline that doesn’t explore anything in much depth or provide any nuance, while making heavy use of tell don’t show. Maybe with only evil or incompetent portrayals of white men. You end up with people associating a diverse cast with preachy and ill thought out media. It almost comes across as propaganda. Which is why it gets called political.
But I think it takes a lot of effort to realise that and undo the pattern recognition, so it’s really difficult to explain why you hate “politics in video games”.
Obviously, there are some people who are legitimate bigots and go above and beyond with their hate. But the average person that isn’t passionately hateful seems to fall into what I described above
Well you gave us an example of an “acceptably political” game so why didn’t you include an example of one that you think missed the mark? Surely, that was an innocent, if embarrassing, oversight… Right? “Gee wiz, I forgot to support half my argument! Shucks!”
Hold your horses, the point they were trying to make is “don’t have some fleshed out straight white characters in your game and then add diverse ones as a two dimensional afterthought”
If everyone is a 2D caricature, that’s fine. If the main cast is diverse, that’s great!
The fact that people are downvoting you for speaking an objective fact is a travesty. Diversity is only as political as the writer chooses to make it, and having characters of different races, genders and orientations without putting in the effort to make them feel three-dimensional will not magically make a badly-written game into a good one.
They’re getting downvoted because their real concerns with game writing is getting tangled together with culture war buzz words.
Game writing isn’t bad because it gets political. It’s bad because the writers aren’t very good. Halo 5 doesn’t really do much in the way of topical political commentary, but it’s not better or worse for it. It has bad writing because there’s this weird feeling like all the cutscenes had their opening and closing segments cut. Take this one for instance. It’s like the writers thought the player wouldn’t have the attention span for more then a minute and a half.
Maybe they think I’m doing a dog whistle of some sort.
Maybe they are mad because I didn’t name AAA games which do that, I found it difficult to name examples because I haven’t played any recently.
Or
Hear me out
Or it’s fully idiotic that existence of girls that likes girls and shit like that has nothing to do with politics?
Is it possible maybe that the only cognitive mistakes possible that lead to uttering something that stupid, or even engaging in the “debate” about if these people should be allowed to live or not, or exist in video games, is the stupidest possible thing to call “political”
It’s not political is just systematic hate, aka fascism, aka so obvious that even the onion has no problem putting out an article like this and everyone understands intuitively who they are making fun of,. and what idea they are making fun of, which happens to be this very fucking stupid ideas uttered
Which we as a society have moved on pretty far away from it, except some very immature people that don’t understand that it doesn’t count as politics to opress people
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