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I think one of the big issues is the old core playerbase were nerds who approached fiction from the point of view of External Immersion.
"What is this world? what is it's culture? How would their people approach things? What has the universe made clear is normal and what is abnormal"
This is why Grognards still bring up "Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura"
Or they'll play fantasy mods (Anbennar) of Europa Universalis and not think twice about how every primary human faction is European inspired and fantasy races take up the entire rest of the world, creating and effective all European humanity. All with in universe expalantion of Orc slavery explained as reparations to humans for former Orc invasions. Because "well that's just what this universe is"
And this older nerd playerbase thrives on this. The actual diversity of settings is what's appealing about fiction and then their internal logic is to be followed through on.
But that approach to fiction is actually really rare! Most people are Inserters, not Immersers. They play games in order to insert themselves into a universe. What interests them is the challenge of achieving their mindset in each new circumstance. (sidenote: it's a matter of degree. not an either or.) To these people the setting itself is significantly devalued. There's nothing 'there' about making the Forgotten Realms setting stay in character with previously established lore. No instinct of dissonance. In fact each shift in the setting to better align with their perception of the world around them (and remember, most people have an astoundingly poor sense of what the demographics of any given country are. along with a complete inability to distinguish between what's normal in their local area vs the country as a whole) only makes more sense to these people. It feels more immersive for their insertions because it's more intuitive. And it's more intuitive because it's now more familiar. And that's normal.
Even though, personally speaking, I don't find very interesting.
"Most" people aren't. Women on average are. Also normies on average are. But that's not "most people".
I'm perfectly happy to describe 80%+ of the entire population (aka a large majority of women plus a sizeable majority of men) as "most people".
80%+ seems sufficient to be described as 'Most'
I also believe that women and normie men are 'People'.
this is why I distinguished in the beginning about old core playerbase demographics being a distinct population. They were a skewed population, where a minority approach to matters had a majority control over marketshare. Within that small population the majority culture was different.
is it really your contention that the best way to decribe "Most People" is to exclude the near entirety of one sex and the majority of the other sex?
Yes, he seems to be experiencing what has happened to many in the past: the Cool Thing went Mainstream.
It's always a wonderful experience when you find a corner of the art world that caters to people that think like you. It opens a realm of discussion, building on other's ideas, and just plain having fun that isn't otherwise possible.
But then the space gets invaded by "normies" and it stops being fun. The same rules that exist in the rest of society get implemented there as well, and the whole game is up.
The only solution I can see is to make things, and to join together with others who like to make similar things. You can't rely on others to do it for you.
I mean look at the furry community. It's full of people who self-taught drawn animation because they wanted animated furry content. Now it's a thriving art scene, and if that makes you go "eww" that's just proof of my point.
You want stories with old-school values? Make them. You want videogames with Nazis and hot women? Make them. You're gonna make the normies say "eww," and the only people who will appreciate what you've made are others like you, but that's okay because those people are who it's for.
And as a final note for all those who say "but I don't have an artistic bone in my body,": you can help in other ways. Anything more complex than a text-only work requires a lot of hands, and even text benefits from editors and the like. Provide funding, organize groups, bring in connections, manage projects, etc etc.
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One of the starkest examples of distinction between these two types of fictional world I can think of is the difference between Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II. DA:O built an interesting and complex fantasy world. In DA2 it seemed to be reduced to a stage on which the player character plays with moral puzzles. But I guess the existance of those Inserters is why DA2 was still well received by the gaming press and on gaming forums, reddit, etc... They just didn't feel or cared about how much poorer the worldbuilding felt.
From the writers' perspective, I would expect professionals who write genre fiction (even if it's "just" writing for videogames) to be mostly in the Immersers camp. Almost all great enduring literary classics in fantasy and sci-fi are more works of worldbuilding than character studies. I don't know if the current state of affairs in videogames is deliberately pandering to Inserters over Immersers or the result of a misunderstanding of what made a hit game. Maybe it's game director/designer interference? Make a world interesting and give the player some ability to influence it and some tough decisions along the way. Then player feedback is that people particularly remembered the hard moral decisions, and so the next installements are nothing but hard moral decisions. It's like a director that has one or two popular "twist" movies and then veers into doing just that.
Now that I think about it, it seems like it's a thing Bioware pretty much always ends up doing with their franchises if given enough time.
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Man, that takes me back. Back to a time when I could have engaged with the lore of a fictional universe in good faith. When, at least it felt like, or I was naive enough to believe, the authors of these games were doing honest speculative fiction and not blatant agenda pushing.
The games have certainly changed. But so have I. The trust I had that these entertainment companies weren't pushing weird, fringe, hateful ideologies is broken. There have been enough overt examples, and enough anti-white racist tirades on Twitter by game devs, that I can't help but side eye every narrative choice through my knowledge of the overt racism that is on open display in the industry.
I mean, it's an oldie but a goodie. Manveer Heir.
Here he is making all the right mouth sounds about "inclusivity"
BioWare developer Manveer Heir challenges colleagues to combat prejudice with video games
BioWare's Heir On Sexism, Racism, Homophobia In Games
Mass Effect developer makes emotional plea to eliminate social injustice in games
And here he is just being a fucking anti-white racist.
And so it's just impossible to get around that obvious fact that all the mouth sounds he makes about inclusivity are just cover for his visceral hatred of white people. And, IMHO, this is really representative of the industry these days. It's representative of the entire "inclusivity" movement. Every forum I used to frequent that got taken over by the inclusivity police shifts from "Just trying to be inclusive" when they are the minority, to naked visceral hatred of white people when they get enough positions of power in the community.
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