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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28370 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

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I do think there's an assumption that the Blue Ocean audiences being looked for are of a higher socioeconomic class. And I think there's a belief that they tend to be more monogamers, I.E. people more focused on a title or two rather than something much more broad. (My understanding/experience is the people who are upset about the double standards/hypocrisy in Progressive journalism tend to be more Polygamers, people who play a wide variety of gaming experiences...but that means that we don't spend as much on individual titles...although I'd argue there's a higher level of value sensitivity there as well) But more than that, I think they're fishing for the so-called whales. The people who will drop absurd amounts of money on a single game.

This is a really interesting argument, and I can see what you're getting at if I squint, but I'd love for you to flesh out your position here. Is your view that gaming companies believe progressivism appeals to a higher-class subset of the gaming population that is simultaneously more likely to be interested in putting big money into microtransactions? Could you spell out how that works, because I don't necessarily see the straight logic there -- my guess is that progressivism is orthogonal to monogamers/polygamers.

It seems likely to me that polygamers are more concerned about journalism and progressivism in video games because their gaming interests are so broad that they need to follow news and pay attention to new titles in order to learn what they want to play next.

With monogamers, they're just focused on their particular title so whatever new thing is going on in the new story game doesn't matter so much to them. They're more likely to be incensed by a mechanical change to balance in their obsession than the woke story beats in the new blockbuster. The number of people who care about specific balance tweaks in League of Legends are a distinct subset of the population. But the number of people who can quickly scan a character roster for skin color or can develop an opinion about the sexual orientation of NPC romance options is much higher. It might just be bike-shedding.

Someone on an earlier thread about this controversy suggested that the narrative-based games which trigger both the progressive story beats and the backlash have an outsized place in discussion relative to the number of gamers who actually play them. I actually think it's the opposite: the big story games trigger such major discussion because they're the ones played by the largest plurality of the gaming populace. Maybe not a majority, though that wouldn't surprise me, but the largest and most mainstream chunk of committed gamers.

Could you spell out how that works, because I don't necessarily see the straight logic there -- my guess is that progressivism is orthogonal to monogamers/polygamers.

At least what I said is my experience. I feel like people who play a wide variety of games simply are not going to waste the resources picking up expensive DLC/Microtransactions? For what you could pay getting an outfit for your Diablo 4 character (which is stupid expensive), there's a lot of options out there for great experiences you could get. There's simply more competition for the gaming dollar, I think.

But the number of people who can quickly scan a character roster for skin color or can develop an opinion about the sexual orientation of NPC romance options is much higher. It might just be bike-shedding.

I think also, people who are watching a large number of games see trends, even if they're there or not. And one of the big trends people see right now is downplaying the attractiveness of female characters in a way they are NOT doing for male characters. And of course, people tie that (not necessarily incorrectly) into various Progressive theories and models, and you get what you get.

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