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In a more formulaic and low stakes corner of the culture War Ubisoft has announced "assassin's creed Shadow". The series is known for offering open world exploration set in various historical locations and times from the Nordic to ancient Egypt. This installment is appearantly a popular fan request in being set in fuedal Japan.
The culture War angle is that the game has two main characters, a female assassin and a disputed historical black warrior named yasuke. Now I haven't played one of these games in over a decade and am not particularly invested in this title but the response has been a fairly clean case study in marketing by controversy and I think it might be worth dissecting.
In my corner of the web I first learned of the game's existence from the preemptive "man, racists right wingers are going to hate this" posts. And indeed if one looked it was not hard to soon after find right winger racists filling their niche in this tired dance. One can always find bad takes that isn't what is interesting about how this kind of thing develops.
A trap seemed to be set, I don't know which end first broached the topic of "historical accuracy" but because it took the form of what legitimate criticism might look like the culture War quickly fell into a groove of progressives defending the historical existence of yasuke being a real samurai and pointing to other popular media depictions of him as well as pointing out that the assassin's creed series includes other widely disputed historical claims like Benjamin Franklin's possession of a magical golden apple. The anti-progressive backlash is in a hard place because I think there is something legitimate there but the shape of the discussion is not condusive to making the argument.
I think most of the anti-progressive front probably doesn't have an issue with a black sumurai in a game made by people they trust to have making awesome games as their first master. There's something itching in the back of the head of the backlash crowd that the reason we have yasuke isn't because a black guy in Japan makes for interesting segments of blending into crowds but because the people making the game have an anti-majoritarian view. The same thing that gave us yasuke is what motivates someone to put on a "fuck white people" shirt.
This is a feature of the culture War I'm seeing more and more. Proxy battles that few people care deeply about but have features that make them better or worse to do battle on. This game seems like favorable terrain from the woke angle and it's tempting to just give them it but I understand the impulse to fight on the terrain anyways.
I don't buy games with black people in it anymore. Historical exemptions from a previous era, like Barret, get a pass, but if I see a black person (especially that one black bald woman, you know who) on the cover then it a 'never buy, sports-game-tier slop' category.
And I'm not even white.
Don't buy things from people who hate you.
This is pretty much my stance too, now. I saw the Vampyr (which was a solid 7/10 vampire RPG) devs released a new game, then noticed all the marketing was about their cringe interracial coupling. No thanks. And allegedly there's a romance between the (black) male protagonist and the (Japanese) female protagonist in the new AC: I'm sure that'll play well in Japan.
For me, it's just a strong signal that the developers do not care about making a good game on its own merits, and are (in the best case!) cynically playing to the woke gaming press. (If they're true believers, that's even worse.) White leftists writing fiction about black people is basically never going to turn out good, because white leftists worship blacks, and that worship is going to get in the way of any interesting story. In the case of the new AC game, it's even worse -- do you think a white leftist is going to competently write about anti-black Sengoku-era Japanese racism? Or even deal with the subject at all? (Actually, they might -- I think there's an argument to be made that the only people white leftists hate almost as much as other whites, are the Japanese.)
I would have much less of an issue with it all, if any substantial percent of the dev team were actually black, or blacks made up a substantial percentage of their target demographic -- but they aren't, and don't! It's retarded signalling all the way down.
They don't worship blacks, they worship the idea of an underdog achieving victory, and the eternal failure that is blacks in america (and frankly most blacks save for certain hyperperforming subgroups like tswana igbo or maybe tutsi) is moral cocaine for leftists. Ask a leftist what blacks cultural values are and you'd get at BEST some southern baptist flavors on a bog standard secular humanist post-race fairytale. That blacks themselves either just want to be left alone like white normies or are violent assholes is never considered; blacks can shout from the rooftops that yakub is evil and leftists will plug their ears to advance a black narrative that no black ever actually elides. Fuck, even bell hooks doesn't spout the weird shit leftists say about blacks, and she's pretty much the sole 'sane' black leftist intellectual.
I think you're onto something with underdog victory being a guiding principle among progressives. It's why they can't accept any framing that they are actually in power. I think shooting this particular victim complex is also one of the genuinely new things about the Trump right as well, it's a very useful combination of memes to have for motivating a group.
The coopting of leftist language by trump and his toadies is frankly the best part of his presidency. nothing gets me giggling like police going 'did you presume his gender?' when some dangerhair screams defund the police crap at a police officer.
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