ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
There Is Always Hope
User ID: 812
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
3d ago
Said it before, will say it again. It's not uniquely Western or even Christian. An Indian Army general echoed the same thing nearly verbatim in 1988. Psychology calls it Martyr complex. I don't think wokeness is anything that sophisticated. It only works specifically for the interests of women, blacks, muslims and LGBT over men, straights and whites. The "oppression" bit is just moral cover for that fact. The biggest beneficiaries of DEI are white women, irregardless of income brackets. Western society and IMO human nature tend to be very gynocentric, that is why we care so much about issues that affect women, and causes that they care about generally.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
6d ago
To add on to @gattsuru's reply, it's much more an issue of networking and reputation than any commitment to wokeness. The Warhorse community mod claimed the MC was straight in KCD1 due to resource constraints. Then Vavra himself admitted they "avoided accusations of sexism" by having the gay scenes, despite posturing as a lifelong chudler himself. But taken into full context, you get a clear picture: not a single creator, even the most accomplished, most influential ones on the planet can escape it anymore. You either pander to the woke, or you don't get to make big budget entertainment. You also get blacklisted from casting agencies, performance capture facilities, award shows, voice acting guilds, and get dropped by your publisher. Not to mention bogus allegations (see Chris Avellone, Alex Afriasiabi, Alec Holowka, Ashraf Ismail, etc etc). All this matters a lot. Above a certain project size, they made sure you can't do woke-free games in the west anymore. Only games developed and/or published by eastern companies can afford it these days. I'm curious to see how the Yakuza 3 Teruyuki Kagawa controversy pans out, the loudest calls for his removal seem to come from the west mostly.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
6d ago
Woke isn't strictly oppression olympics, that would imply they have equitable empathy for all subaltern classes. It's specifically about furthering the interests of women, blacks, muslims and LGBT, at the expense of the male, white, straight, Christian demographics. The "oppression" bit is just a moral cover. Things like sexism and bigotry garner more engagement than the far more impactful class politics. Woke will always favour an upper class black girl over a homeless white man.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
6d ago
Yeah I'd suspect most people who play female characters are straight men as well. The actual "female gamer" demographic is likely much smaller than most would admit.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
6d ago
I've heard that of Expedition 33, but I'm very vary of the sequel syndrome which most "unwoke" western IPs end up becoming. Everyone's excited for Blood of Dawnwalker, which is going to be a saga, and that alone has killed off most of my hope for it.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
6d ago
IIRC wasn't Cyberpunk the first RPG to do the body type shtick? The Chromebooks do mention that tech is fully capable of swapping out male and female sexual organs, but the intent behind that line was to demonstrate the ascent of body mod technology rather than an LGBT allegory. Sure you could rationalise this as appropriate for the setting, but this still reflects real world 21st century politics which was absent in older cyberpunk literature. Now every RPG has done away with male/female binaries.
Re religion, again I agree but honestly, not surprised. Most modern media have been repeating the same screeds about the "evils of religion" for decades. It's a high schooler's understanding of depth. Deus Ex was much more cerebral IMO.
Going OT I don't know if you've heard of the standalone Forgotten City or the Skyrim mod, but I was similarly asking myself how THIS could've won writer's guild awards? It was literally just Dark City. I suspect the social justice rhetoric crowbarred into the dialogues played no small part in that.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
6d ago
Yeah and when it DOES work, I suspect it's usually more MEN bought the game than usual, rather than increased female gamers. I still stand by my point though. I would suspect corporate push to get young boys to play with dolls has a similar angle. But there probably are heaps of people in marketing who do believe gendered preferences are a matter of "socialising".
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
6d ago
Is wokeness really retreating from nerd culture? The political winds may be shifting in the west, but our cultural institutions are still run by woke activists.
Tomb Raider Catalyst looks "safe horny", the new Star Wars game is apparently another female lead.
Witcher 4 is going all in on feminism vs patriarchy, which was already a central theme in the previous titles and books (conveniently ignored by nostalgic "chuds").
Expedition 33 is touted as an industry rebel and yet, suspiciously, it sold 2 million copies in 2 weeks, was hyped up across games journalism, astroturfed online AND locked in a Hollywood film deal before it even launched.... all the makings of an industry plant, funded by an "indie publisher" with a paltry $120M investment from Netease, by a studio of teams and partners from diverse backgrounds, cultures and perspectives, that "suddenly" went woke with the sequel like the bait and switch Sony catalogues.
Where Winds Meet's character creation gives you "body types" in English, but the Chinese version says male and female.
Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 was going to be the chud GOTY made by a pro-GG studio lead, yet it pinkwashes its two male leads and crowbarred an ahistorical Malian man into the main campaign.
GTA 6 is already putting the female lead front and centre, while the male lead looks like the sub. His writing and appearance is oriented to the female gaze, he looks like a billboard model unlike the "average looking" male leads of previous titles.
There's been a concerted effort to create a female fandom for all the male oriented IPs to expand their TAM, especially in gaming where the average budgets keep ballooning every year. The rationale is that male gamers (existing fandom) will remain loyal to the IP and get incalculated into feminism. But females need to be interested. So do away with the fratboy culture! Let HR screen the environment, kick out the milquetoast Gen X techbros and onboard woke millennial women. Accommodate all of their favourite social justice causes (BLM, LGBTQ). Fight the male gaze!
But men consistently remain gaming's biggest consumers. Despite the marketing push for the female leads in RPGs like AC Odyssey, Mass Effect and Cyberpunk heavily pushing the female leads into the marketing, the actual buyer demographic heavily prefer the male lead in all the games. Yet, people's tolerance levels keep going up as games get increasingly woke. In other words, some "tepidly woke" themes are ok because even "beloved classics" like Cyberpunk featured LGBT themes. Anti woke influencers and "trusted friends" promise up and down that condescending Malian and ahistorical synagogue in 15th century Bohemia was totally a creative decision, not ideological corruption. In 20 years, they'll be telling us that black Samurai lead in Japan is also perfectly acceptable.
The structural nature of the industry and investors expectations necessitates an indefinitely expanding fanbase. And the so called anti-wokes silently gaslight themselves so studios realised they can just make them happy by grifting away like Daniel Vavra.
In fact, I believe wokeness had its antecedents decades ago. I'm watching Star Trek DS9 right now. And when it's good, which is far from always, it's not good because it's racially diverse. If Sisko was white, it would not make the show any worse. In fact it would probably save you from bad preachy episodes like "Far Beyond The Stars". Set aside the nostalgia and compare it to the "woke" standards of the time, the "woke" creators of yesteryear fully back the "woke" creators of today.
We might be at least 40 years too late to expect a return to form (whatever that is). Maybe we'll simply just live with it like an amputated limb, occasionally recalling the good old times.
PS: Apologies if my post reads like a brain dump, I'm returning to TheMotte after a long hiatus.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
7d ago
It's true that an income based breakdown of birth rates show a U curve, because middle class families want at least similar levels of economic stability for their kids that they enjoyed when they were kids. But corporate also wants to maximise output per worker despite stagnant salaries.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
7d ago
But this still doesn't address the bread and butter issue. More men than women in Japan don't want kids. What do we do about the high costs and salaryman culture? Aspiring parents need to get on daycare waiting lists ahead of conception. FWIW this is as many people as our planet can take, maybe we finally set up those space colonies?
People only start noticing things from around the time they became politically aware. See how many people think America is especially more polarised now that it's gonna have Civil War 2. The gender pay gap myth has also been explained by economists since at least the 80s, the fact that we're still having that conversation is surreal.
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