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According to the results of a search right now, there has been no discussion here of the Pragmata controversy so far.
Wikipedia talk page
(There is no Wikipedia article on it, at least not yet.)
Summary on Know Your Meme
Shoeonhead's video
Forbes review
Slant Magazine review
I’d put forth the following arguments:
It seems the Blue Tribe generally views Gamergate as a propaganda defeat because they see it as a long-term contributor to the MAGA/alt-right phenomenon but at the same time I don’t think they concluded that they themselves are even partially to blame. Therefore they are looking for opportunities to fight back, and are now including the pedophilia accusation in their attacks on evil gamers. As far as I can say, this was generally not yet the case back in 2014.
I’m also noticing something that eluded me so far, namely that the probable reason why both the original Gamergate (the Zoe Quinn controversy) and the current controversy proved to be effective ragebait to the Blue Tribe is that they are fueling two of their grievances at once.
One: they generally believe that toxic loser men are aiming to police women's sex lives out of resentment and hatred. I don’t think they have anything specific in mind. (I once asked here what this stuff is even supposed to be. I only received one answer: ‘compelling or aggressively encouraging women to not be floozies.’) It’s just a general vibe that makes them feel the ick. It’s why they think Quinn was unjustly attacked.
Regarding Pragmata I think their train of thought is the following: this sleazy game feeds into the typical male fantasy of being the protector and patriarch of a nuclear family where he is supposedly owed sex, affection, food, services etc. His subjugated wife is the idealized woman who is virtuous and yet hot, basically a personal slut. And it’s not like these dudebros are making any effort to be the supportive, emotionally intelligent, suave etc. male ally that is worthy of a relationship, instead they want to realize their fantasies by curbing women’s freedoms. It’s just terribly gross.
Their other usual grievance, of course, is that toxic males want to appropriate hobbies and cordon them off for women, turning them into their own toxic ghettoized playgrounds.
I don't see the connection between this and Gamergate. At best, you could say "this game causes gamers to be attacked as pedophiles" which fits with the Gamergate narrative ("gamers attacked").
My only exposure to controversy about the game was people calling it sexualized, creepy, and pedophilic. The people who call this game perverted are themselves gooners. They are kind of like woke people who call DnD racist for having low-intelligence orcs. It is a kind of self-report. "Strong man protects little child" is completely normal and wholesome in media. It does not therefore become un-wholesome because the child is loli-coded.
Pedophile is becoming more common attack de jour among the Extremely Online. I expect it will follow a similar path of the word "racist." Concretely, I expect within the next decade, a new round of MeToo/cancel culture to include cancelling men for being "pedophiles" but this will not involve any legal proceedings. The "pedophilia" in question will just be age gap relationships (not harassment!).
If this prediction is true, then it would be unsurprising to see the newest term of derision applied early to an easy target like gamers.
In short, I think the controversy is caused by:
I'll probably regret asking, but how is the robot daughter in the game 'loli-coded'?
The admin of Kiwi Farms claims that she looks too good, with lip gloss, makeup, and a ridiculously fancy hair style, which implies intentional sexualization.
I haven't seen all the images so maybe there's one where she does have her hair done, but God damn, if "long hair not tied back or up" is considered ridiculously fancy, I better not show anyone that photo of me when I was nine and hadn't even brushed my glossy, long, tresses when the photo was taken!
Here's the full quote of his opinion.
The website's users seem to be more or less evenly split on whether they agree with him.
Or, to paraphrase:
This isn't really that difficult to understand.
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I'll take "telling on myself" for 500, Alex.
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