I don't even know what wokeness is.

Mostly braindead mongoloids. Apex Legends is the 6th most popular game on Steam by daily player count, despite being the most diverse game ever made. Nobody is arsed, because a) it doesn't attempt any kind of heavy-handed political hectoring and b) it's actually good.

Concord's struggles are probably far more to do with the fact that they're charging $40 for a game that has little to set it apart from many free-to-play rivals.

>>26465
>"woke cancer killing games"
I think people like that should be scooped up in special police raids and disposed of in mass graves.

I'm more inclined to believe that the ideas of "woke" or "anti-woke" are being used simultaneously as an excuse for the failure of mediocre games and as fodder for grifters to make angry content about. It's very similar to the way that "political correctness" was (still is?) used in print media. Drumming up a controversy is a great way to distract from the actual content, and as >>26467 says, what matters to most people is the quality of the game.

Which leads me to think about a bigger point: the global market for computer games has closed in on US$240 billion in the last year. It's been a mainstream hobby arguably since the 16-bit era, perhaps earlier, with home games consoles selling by the tens of millions. The PS2 sold 160 million units worldwide since its release in 2000.

The nasty stereotypes about basement-dwelling nerds or chronic masturbators or racists or whatever else hasn't really tracked with the numbers for thirty years or more, and I think it's only a matter of time before computer games are about as respected as film or literature.

If that sounds silly, it's happened historically with with cheap mass-produced books ("penny dreadfuls") leading into 19th century novels that make up the bulk of the English canon. Film has gone through the cycle multiple times, with vaudeville novelty giving way to high-brow Kammerspiel ("intimate theatre"), and again with film serials to the prestige projects and novel adaptations.

>>26469
>I think it's only a matter of time before computer games are about as respected as film or literature

They've been saying this for at least the last 15 years or so. I remember when The Last Of Us came out, there was a lot of discussion in the media about it being the "first" video game with a story and production value comparable to a high quality film. I think that was hyperbolic, it's a good game but it's just elevated zombie apocalypse schlock. Also when Braid first came out, that was one of the early indie "games as art" thing that had a buzz about it for legitimising the medium. Not to say I don't see games as art, it's just the mainstream respect is coming very slowly.

Acceptance of gaming and gamers is very variable. In my experience, mainstream society views time spent playing games, an interactive medium; as less valuable a use of time as spending the same amount of time binging a TV series or the MCU on Disney+, even though that is a more passive medium that requires less mental engagement. If I went to a random person, a normal Mondeo Man or Worcester Woman, and said "I finally beat Persona 5 last night after 70 hours", or "I finally finished binging the Marvel Cinematic Universe last night" the latter sentence would be more well received. 70 hours of a (now fairly normie) RPG, is less palatable to average people than 70 hours of blockbuster movies. Even if it was a non-cringe game like STALKER it'd still be badly received. CoD, GTA, FIFA, racing games are all fine to normal people though.

>>26470

No argument here, you're basically right, but I believe it will eventually happen. It will take time and maybe more successful cross-pollination between mediums. Games that have a lot of artistic merit will only be given their dues retrospectively, probably by the generation that grew up with them and appreciated them. It's tossers like us that will be writing the thinkpieces into our 50s and 60s about the unsung artistry of our favourite games.

I'm being a bit sarcastic only because perceptions of artistic merit and social acceptability are fickle. My mind is genuinely blown when I go back and look at the artwork, music, and programming that went into things that were essentially given to me like they were children's toys at the time. I could come up with dozens of examples.

As an aside, it's funny that you bring up Marvel films, as comic books have been seen as hideously unfashionable and still are to some extent, yet they've achieved inordinate mainstream success as family theme park rides.

No, but I do try my best to avoid any and all drama around wokeness or the lack thereof.

In theory I might be put off a game if it's too heavy handed with its the shipping forecast (because that's what it is, that's the correct term. You won't persuade me in a million years these companies care about anything other than their bottom line.) But I find that most of the time you'd never actually notice if it wasn't for hearing about it through the outrage online first. And even then, I am convinced most of it is just cynical marketing, the old no publicity is bad publicity chestnut.

I definitely fall on the side of being very skeptical of "wokeness" and "political correctness", when it was still called that, because I do think most of it was always in bad faith. The grassroots of the modern idpol movement grew around wealthy liberal types who wanted to wield the clout of victimhood despite their privileged backgrounds, and in the same manner, big and powerful companies adopt this stance so they can deflect criticism.

With that in mind I feel like a lot of these big companies nowadays, Marvel and the big gaming business, is simply shooting itself in the foot because it's become greedy and doesn't understand the market it is serving. It sees fat black lezzers as a new avenue of untapped income, so it thinks if it forces fat black lezzers in everywhere, the game/movie will therefore become appealing to fat black lezzers, and therefore sell more. It's like how tobacco companies pushed the image of smoking for women in the 50s, the money men don't see why they can't just do the same for every market. Eventually I think they will give it up as a bad job, but the shareholders demand infinite growth, so there will have to be some new brainwave to take hold before then.

But no, TL;DR I don't really care if a game has lezzers in it or whatever it is this week.

Remember, narcissism feeds on attention and the only way to defeat it is to starve it of that attention, and that as always, capitalism turns out to be behind every single thing wrong with society.

... Okay turns out I have more to say:

Like the otherlads have said, I think most people care about the overall quality of the game most of all, but I think it's also worth considering the extent to which focussing on diversity and inclusion can in and of itself detract from the quality of a product. It's not that the diversity is a bad thing inherently, quite the opposite; but it's harmful if the developers/studio/etc put more of their time and effort into that than they did into the fundamentals of making a good product.

Let's use an example everyone is familiar. So, Skyrim, right? You know how it has one of the best open worlds ever featured in a game, and the environmental design and art direction is all top notch, but the quests and writing are a complete afterthought? They obviously prioritised the world design, and that was their anchor and focus. The quests would always end up weak no matter how goo the writers were, because they just didn't get the same focus.

I can very much imagine the same happening in some corporate meeting room somewhere, where the people in charge of the project spent more time looking at market research and wanking each other off about how strong and black the female lead is, than making her a relatable character, writing a solid story, or coming up with interesting and novel mechanics. There's a lot of recent examples to choose from in movies and TV, where I think it's pretty clear that's exactly what happened, from the most recent series of Doctor Who, that She Hulk TV show that was a disaster, the Amazon Lord of the Rings... You get the idea.

The people who kick off about the "wokeness" itself are just small minded cretins, for the most part, but underneath it all there's a valid point perhaps.

Right I'll go outside now, enough internet for today.

I haven't actively given a shit about video games in at least a decade.

>>26470

I think the problem is trying to judge video games by the criteria of other media. When the mainstream talks about video games as art, they tend to talk about video games that most closely resemble stuff that they understand. They talk about mobile puzzle games with really clean aesthetics or RPGs with "deep" plotlines and cinematic cutscreens, because they don't have the vocabulary to talk about gameplay mechanics and feel. I think a lot of people who write about games don't really understand why some people have racked up thousands of hours in CS:GO or Dwarf Fortress, or why people are still modding the shit out of Skyrim.

>>26473
I would have thought the people in charge of designing and implementing mechanics don't have much influence, or are not much influenced by, the bods who are trying to promote diversity. I could be wrong.

I can definitely see writing and story being massively affected if someone wants to push a particular group. But pushing fat black lezzers to the fat black lezzer market won't affect combat much I reckon (assuming it's a game with combat).

Though I suppose it could be argued that to spend $400k on a consultancy firm like Gamergate 2.0 bogeyman Sweet Baby Inc is detrimental, compared to spending $400k on investing in more important areas of the game.

>>26465

I don't like media that talks down to me. If your definition of woke is something that is expressly pushing an agenda then no as a matter of taste I won't consume that media.

If you are going to hide from criticism of quality behind 'inclusive choices' I am not going to consume that media.

The debate of wokeness was never originally about the right for people to make shitty media I don't like (at least not the main stream arguments, bigots have always existed to co opt these movements). They have the right to enjoy that ship it and flick their bean to it on Tumblr.

What has been lost to time is the fact this fight was actually started by 'wokies' telling people that their favourite franchise was problematic (read: morally wrong) and that they are bad people for consuming it. It basically poluted the online game review space about 10 years ago. Why the Zoe Quinn story exploded in many ways was because it was demonstrative of a moral failing in the people who had been preaching their holier than thou morality, it showed the hypocrisy, they will clutch their pearls about what media a grown adult consume in their free time but they had no problem committing adultery and defending each other for it. No one had a problem telling right wing moralisers to fuck off previously, why it was treated as more valid when the moralising comes from the left is beyond me.


I feel like I'm having a conversation from about 10 years ago as none of this
Feels like it is socially relevant anymore. I like what I like and that is about the point where the thought process usually ends.

>>26476

>Though I suppose it could be argued that to spend $400k on a consultancy firm like Gamergate 2.0 bogeyman Sweet Baby Inc is detrimental, compared to spending $400k on investing in more important areas of the game.

That's what I mean really, obviously I have no idea what the actual production process is like at these types of outfits, or who's responsible for what and how it all filters down the chain. But it seems logical that there's only a finite budget and finite labour, and how those resources are allocated will naturally affect the end result. Because naturally, consultancy companies like that aren't interested in helping out the ethnic disabled LGBT demographic for free, are they.

>>26477

>No one had a problem telling right wing moralisers to fuck off previously, why it was treated as more valid when the moralising comes from the left is beyond me.

The old Christian moralist right never discovered the power of doxxing people on Twitter, in a nutshell.

I still refuse to call these people "the left". They've just cherry picked the bits of leftist philosophy that are useful to them.

I was quite heavily involved in a very woke community, pretty much from the birth of wokeness. I can't remember when exactly this was, but I think they themselves looked into it once and decided that their first foray into this sort of thing was in 2010. So that's not quite my entire adult life, but it's close. And this means I think I've now heard every possible righteous lecture. I have been inclusive towards everyone I can be by now. Wokeness is, to me, tired and hackneyed and a bit out of date. When someone says, "Look! A WOMAN SOLDIER!!!! Are you shocked? Are you aghast? Are you stunned, astounded, horrified? Do you realise how bigoted you are that you never thought a woman could be a soldier?!?!?!?", then I don't even bat an eyelid any more. It's the same point that was made ten or fifteen years ago. My big problem with wokeness now is that it's so damn lazy. If someone could find a new woke thing that was genuinely surprising, I'd be all for it. Perhaps someone should release Women's Wheelchair Basketball 2K24 to coincide with the Paralympics; I would be very supportive of that. But nobody ever seems to put that much thought into it; videogame wokeness is only ever "make that guy gay and then talk about nothing else for six months." It's not the gays I hate, it's the endless self-righteous using of the gays in every conversation like you volunteered to help them on your gap year that you've just got back from.

As for whether videogames can be seen as art, maybe one day a game will be so artistic that people can no longer deny their artistry. But I don't think that will happen. Because games are interactive, most of the experiences they give you are approximately 50% your own doing. A book or a film is a ride that you go on, and you let the creator do their thing while you sit back and admire it. I don't think games can ever really recreate that, because you need to join in, and without you, there's a massive gap in the final product. I wouldn't think a book was art if I had to write the ending myself. I wouldn't think Terminator 2 was art if I was in it. Meanwhile, the artsiest gaming experiences I have had have been ones where I myself wasn't really doing anything. Cave Johnson's lemons speech in Portal 2 is brilliant writing that I might argue could be art; solving a puzzle in Portal 2 never really felt like art to me.

>>26479

>I still refuse to call these people "the left". They've just cherry picked the bits of leftist philosophy that are useful to them.

The correct term is cultural Marxist. By which I mean it is the principles of dialect materialism (Marxism) applied to cultural signifiers (race, gender, ect). Cultural Marxists of course hate this term and inexplicably will claim the very use of the term is conspiratorial (these are the people that use the term 'wake up people' so unironically they now call them selves 'woke'). Part of this was to throw out actual Marxism. You can be as rich and powerful as you like on an individual level as long as you hit their cultural signifiers, which shows how shit the whole thing is.



The other term I think applies is post modernist/structuralist. Which is to say people who attack the institions of modernism (like the enlightenment) the idea being that modernism was a movement to criticise and throw out all the nonsense of the past and post modernism being that turned on modernism. This has the obvious hurdle that you start attacking scientific facts because you don't like how they make you feel. Like when say people talk about fat phobia and what they really mean is they don't like the way the doctors tell them if they don't cut it out they will die.

>>26481

I avoid that term at all costs, even if yeah, it kind of is a technically accurate description, because there's no faster way to have whoever you are talking to assume you are some frogposting 4chan /pol/ neckbeard who thinks it's all The Jews^TM. You can't say those words together without discrediting yourself.

The thing is, (((They))) I'm doing that ironically, calm down modlad really hate it being framed like a onspiracy too, because deep inside, they know they are part of a conspiracy. It's not the globo-homo Illuminati turn the fish gay with estrogen conspiracy the Alex Jones type of right wing nutter believes in, but nevertheless, they are consciously, deliberately engaging in dishonest politics, to promote a worldview that advantages themselves.

>>26481
>Cultural Marxists of course hate this term and inexplicably will claim the very use of the term is conspiratorial (these are the people that use the term 'wake up people' so unironically they now call them selves 'woke')
When the fuck was the last time someone defined themselves as "woke"? It's been completely toxified as a term for half-a-decade now. It started off as a term, donkey's years ago, used by African-Americans to mean being politically aware. There was never anything conspiratorially minded about it. Once again we have another example of a bunch of morons on here spouting off about things they know nothing about.

You'd done it already with your entirely literal definition of "cultural Marxism". This term is more than the sum of it's parts. It is, in contrast to "stay woke", an entirely conspiritorial term used to imply that not only are the forces of progress marching ever onward in society, but that it was all planned during the Cold War by the hidden and not-so-hidden western pinkos. None of this is true, of course, and what we actually see is the entirely rational push for equal rights amongst groups who have historically suffered from a lack of said rights. You claim "actual Marxism" has been abondoned in favour of meaningless social change. However, for a great many people, women, gays, basically anyone who isn't a white, male, aristocrat, a lot of this social change has been pretty brilliant. You also seem to ignore that social change has always come more easily than any kind of economic equity, meaning this isn't some kind of new tactic the elites tricked the politically active into going along with some time in the last quarter of a century. Even a landless farm labourer in the 1300s had more legal equality with his lordly master than he did economic parity. To explain why we'd probably have to start exploring philosophical ideas around justice going back to the Greek Dark Ages or something, which is some ways above my pay-grade. Regardless, the idea that you might have more rights than you can realistically make use of, owing to your social class, isn't a modern contradiction.

>Like when say people talk about fat phobia
Fuck me sideways, it's still 2016 where you live? And don't link me to some pillock on TikTok still whinging about it for attention, I couldn't care less. That's not a social trend, that's engagement bait. If you can't tell the difference you shouldn't have a computer.

>>26482
>assume you are some frogposting 4chan /pol/ neckbeard who thinks it's all The Jews.
Because it's their term. They don't use it as an honest discriptor with no ulterior motive, you oaf.

>they are consciously, deliberately engaging in dishonest politics
Given the current evidence I don't think you're in any position to gage who is or isn't having you on.

>>26483

>it's been completely toxified as a term for half-a-decade now. It started off as a term, donkey's years ago

I'm sorry is there a shelf life on reality that is shorter than 5 years? Does its origin stop being relevant because people make fun of it. People throw around the term TERF the concept of 'radical' in feminism hasn't been a meaningful distinction for 30 years, longer than the word entered common vernacular.

>African-Americans to mean being politically aware

So African Americans aren't allowed to be conspiratorial minded? That is how it used by every group because they all believe it to be authentic, because it is a conspiratorial term meaning you are now aware of the truth, the truth being their magical thinking interpretation. I don't agree with your interpretation here at all as to its origins, the term concept is far more ubiquitous.

>You'd done it already with your entirely literal definition of "cultural Marxism". This term is more than the sum of its parts

What shall we call it then? Critical theory - that is a term disingenuous in how much it is opinion and rhetoric dressed up in the terminology of the authoritative. I suppose the Frankfurt school is again 'too conspiratorial', even though it is again, correct.

I don't know how to tell you this but people will actively deny a descriptor when their perceived opponent hits the nail on the head, it is cultural marxism, that’s what it is it is dialectics attached to the innate properties of a person. By definition that is Marxism applied to culture.


>However, for a great many people, women, gays, basically anyone who isn't a white, male, aristocrat, a lot of this social change has been pretty brilliant

Yes I'm sure it is really empowering knowing that 50% of the blood suckers have a pair of tits and like a cock up the arse. This entire argument is just libertarianism wet dream wearing a dress, it is for people who like the game because they think they are under the delusion that someday they will win against all odds they will win the lottery and get to be the bully, fuck them.

> That's not a social trend, that's engagement bait. If you can't tell the difference you shouldn't have a computer.

That is literally every social political movement that isn't looking to change the rules of the system in a clear concise way. I don't know if you've noticed but 90% of current feminism in the west is just about having a piss and a moan. The other 10% is about trying to change the law to get perks or short slightly bring about a fascist state because it makes them feel safe.

You just don't like the Fat acceptance movement because it highlights the absurd premise at the route of the arguments that you can see when the argument isn't being made by your particular pet group. You hate it because you think it makes you look bad by association.

>>26483

You're carrying a lot of water in the first half lad. If otherlad has swallowed the 4chan redpill hook line and sinker then you represent his direct opposite counterpart.

>You also seem to ignore that social change has always come more easily than any kind of economic equity, meaning this isn't some kind of new tactic the elites tricked the politically active into going along with some time in the last quarter of a century.

If you want to go on about history then there's lots of issue to take with this statement in particular. But you seem like the sort of chap who has already firmly made up his mind, so there's no point actually getting into it.

I will refer you all to this, the definitive analysis of the arguments surrounding the word "woke".

https://web.archive.org/web/20211108155321/https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/please-just-fucking-tell-me-what

If you ask these people, are you part of a social revolution?, they’ll loudly tell you yes! Yes they are! They’re going to shake society at its very foundations. Well, OK then - what do I call your movement? You reject every name that organically develops! I’ll use the name you pick, but you have to actually pick one. You can’t just bitch on Twitter every time someone tries to describe your political cohort, which again you yourself say intends to change the world. Name yourself or you will be named.

>>26487

Nobody has to pick a name if they don't want to. That's not a meaningful criticism of anything. What a weird hill to die on.

>>26488
>Nobody has to pick a name if they don't want to.

I'm afraid the government gives you a name at birth you have to have one, and for good reason.

It is impossible to discuss a subject without being able to label a subject. Labels exist primarily and historically used for their descriptive qualities not their prescriptive qualities. They aren't for the benefit of the subject of the label to self-identify they are for the benefit of everyone else.

It is a weirder hill to die on to think that it it is wrong to call the fox or the shitehawk the fox and the shitehawk and we should just not refer to them since neither chosen their name, and might protest to having a name.

I miss SJW. You could have hours of fun thinking up other things for those letters to stand for.

>>26487

Oh we're Fredposting now. This place has jumped the shark.

user flair: Continental School Lacanian Marxist-Lysenkoist Schizo ⛷️

>>26488

It's not really; if that's the FDB article I'm thinking of then part of the argument is that refusing and constantly shifting the label is in itself an obfuscation tactic of people who know nobody really likes or agrees with those politics when they actually get into it. You have to keep re-branding so you can pull in new suckers who will make a show of supporting you for a while, and only realise it is corrupt as they get deeper into it, but by then you've shifted again to another name, and claim you have nothing to do with the last one and in fact only alt-right chuds use that word sweetie. Whatever else I think of Freddie, he's right about that.

>>26485
>So African Americans aren't allowed to be conspiratorial minded?
Where the fuck did I say that? Please, point it out to me.

If you're just going to play silly buggers and willfully misrepresent things I say, why should I bother carrying this on? I never made any such claim. It's either that or you've formed such a negative opinion about anyone who points out your bullshit that you can't help but indulge in the most bad-faith reading of anything they say. Again, if that's the case, why should I bother?

Going by the rest of your post, I can see you're just an unpleasant, blinkered, egoist with a chip on his shoulder. You've concocted a nonsense-theory whereby the reason no one joins a union or protests for higher capital gains taxes is because of feminism and the LGBT community. You dismiss social changes as because it's not the kind of change you want, while claiming left-wingers (who in all likelihood agree with you damn sight more than any right-winger) are actually dismissing your kind of change, because it's not the kind of change they want. In fact you find the idea so disgraceful you adopt to langauge of your ideological arch-enemies to denigrate other left-wingers, and then procede to run cover for the far-right by explaining why "cultural Marxism" is a fine term, and thoroughly good stick to beat other lefties with. By all means, use the langauge of the right to slander fisherpersons, blacks and queers, but don't come crying to me when your ideas on wealth redistribution land you in the same labour camp as the rest of us when the Bravermans and Farages of this world are in charge.

And for someone who slags off alleged pseudo-lefties for not having "a clear and concise way" to change literally everything, you don't seem to have many ideas of your own. Mostly, it seems as though you just like moaning and whinging, that's why I have had to make several assumptions about what you actually believe. At least I know what the fat acceptance movement stands for, even if free seats on aeroplanes for anyone with a big enough waist is about as hair-brained a scheme as you'll find in the third dimension.


>>26486
>If otherlad has swallowed the 4chan redpill hook line and sinker then you represent his direct opposite counterpart.
No. No, you're wrong and you're an idiot. And I wouldn't even describe otherlad in those terms, I just think he's just a pompous idiot who has thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Far-right 4chan types are basically neo-Nazis so I'm not sure how being the direct counterpart to something like that is meant to be a dig. It's like telling someone they're the opposite of someone who reeks of shit; fine by me!

>>26489

Your brain is polystyrene.

>>26493

>I just think he's just a pompous idiot who has thrown the baby out with the bathwater

You're astonishingly close to self awareness then.

>>26495
At some point one of you will have to have an actual opinion, rather than just roleplaying as some kind of pseudo-Marxist Statler and Waldorf.

>>26496

These two were mine, feel free to dissect them:

>>26472>>26473

I just find the way you are responding towards t'otherlad to be unnecessarily condescending. It's fine to disagree with somebody but you're displaying exactly the behaviours that entrench division by refusing to actually engage with people who might be closer to your views than you think.

>>26475

I stopped caring about non-gaming interpretations of 'games as art' a long time ago.
The best "arty" games don't need validation from some nebulous greater media community. Outer Wilds is one of the most memorable media experiences I've ever had and couldn't be replicated in another medium.
Same with that first playthrough of Portal, which adds a whole experiential level to what amounts to a classic sci-fi short story.
Those two are standouts as they don't just turn the experience into an interactive, cutscene filled movie. You have to figure it all out yourself.

>>26494

how dare you refer to me as two six four eight nine that's not a name I have chosen and you must respect that choice when attempting to talk about me or to me.

>>26498

The funny thing is that I think most actual artists couldn't give a shit about whether their medium gets described as art or not, because that's not the point of creating it. To me the whole discussion around games as art really just smacks of a need for validation from journos who would rather see themselves as highbrow critics than lowbrow pundits.

Games that I would call legitimately masterful works of art, whether by accident or design, include the original Dooms, Wipeout 3: Special Edition, Minecraft, and Pokemon. I won't explain my reasoning in full but it's not uncoincidental those are all games I have huge nostalgia for. They evoke a great deal of feeling from me. What else is art about.

Pic related, the single most important work of art of our age.

>>26500
These things are always dressed in a thick air of pretention.

Art as a term seems to by definition be something "the masses are too unsophisticated to enjoy" being popular and mass consumable at the time seems to actually detract from being 'real art'. Thomas Kinkade probably sold a few hundred thousand pictures. the art world snuffed him. if the people are buying it, why should we care what the high brows actually think?

The games are art crowd has rarely aligned with what most people who buy games like. It is typically a bunch of English majors reapplying their rules to a different medium. And the same way English lit very rarely discusses if the work is actually any good or why it is actually good. The criticism is more concern with seeing things through the political lenses that corrupt that subject. Tetris might be truly universally enjoyable and elegant in it's simplicity but is irrelevant because it defies their criteria for criticism it can't be art (although I'm sure because they know that name historically they would make an exception, insert whatever other puzzle game you like in it's place instead). I think it was better when games were critiqued closer to cars like they were back in the 90s at least then the craft and experience was acknowledged.

>>26501
I beat two indie games this year, which would fall in the possibly pretentious category.

Gone Home I enjoyed the writing, the gameplay was very bare bones and uninteresting though. When it came out it was being fellated for being this amazing watershed game, but it's got no challenge, or skill, or strategy, or excitement. I'm glad I played it, but there is no way it should have got the attention it did.

Venba is the other, which is basically a visual novel about being first and second gen Indian immigrants in Canada. There is maybe a total of 15 minutes of gameplay, but it's like dumbed down Cooking Mama and much less engaging. Again, I liked the writing, I think it's a cool story to tell, but it could have been told just as well in a graphic novel. It got a 79 on Metacritic, 5.6 user score, and a 2.5 on my spreadsheet.

Journalists try to push this sort of stuff as the proof that games are art, but these are games that could easily not have been games and worked as well or better. Compare it to, as otherlad said, Minecraft, or Hi-Fi Rush for a modern game, things that would not work well, or even at all, in any other medium.

>>26502

I think eventually we will start to see a distinction between games that are properly games in the conventional sense, and those that are less games and more a form of interactive storytelling.

Then again, I tried to actually define "game" and realised it's a very hard thing to narrow down. I started out trying describing it in terms of having a goal or challenge to overcome, but not all games do. I think the broadest definition I can think of is whether there's a fail state or not, ie death or bad ending etc, essentially any form of "game over" screen that makes you start again. I suppose there's edge cases like a few simulators that don't even have that, but still, it's the closest thing I can come up with.

Never mind are games art, are games even games? Bro.

>>26503

We do have the term "walking simulator" to describe artsy games without very much game involved. Unsurprisingly, it has become tied in with idpol:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walking_simulator

>>26505

A lot of walking simulators are still games, though. I was thinking of mentioning it but stuff like The Stanley Parable is definitely a game, even if all you do is wander around, there's still the gameplay loop of trying to get it to show you different things, there's still a fail state (even if that fail state is just one of the many various possible outcomes). Walking similator is sort of a loose slang term like saying Souls-like or Doom-clone back in the day.

Not sure where the idpol comes in, other than it's probably to be expected from the type of wanky middle class degree haver who's likely to make that sort of game.

>>26502

>It got a 79 on Metacritic, 5.6 user score, and a 2.5 on my spreadsheet.

I forgot to say- Tell us more about this spreadsheet.

>>26506
Here's 2023. I've been doing it since 2021. Only games I have finished, and it doesn't matter what year they're released in, only the year I play them in. Substantial DLC I class as a separate experience. Gold, silver, bronze are the top 3 games I played that year. Red is worst game played that year. Since 2021 to present I have finished 104 games/DLCs. I have played countless more but I only feel it fair to rate games I have finished.

>>26507
>knothole island
Oh daddy!

>>26508
It would have been better if it did involve dog cock fucking an arse. Instead it was shit and based around a seasonal change gimmick. Having played all three Fables, I can safely say the best they've ever been is mediocre.

>>26507

I was going to say this is brilliant, but then I saw... Max Payne, only a 4? Laaaaad.

In fairness I haven't played it in years and years, but I would have imagined it holds up. Remedy are famous for their weirdness these days but it was all there already in Max Payne 1 and 2.

>>26509
If there's one thing we need woke for, it's legal knotting in videogames. They apparently got away with it by using bears, but the fight must go on!

>>26510
The gameplay was very punishing in a non-fun way, and the final "boss" was frustrating and I needed to look up a walkthrough. I thought the story and aesthetic were amazing.

>>26512
Here's 21 and 22 for anyone interested.

>>26513
Actually Wonderlands should be red, not Assassin's Creed. I forgot I awarded a 0.

>>26511

Bear is such a weird choice of animal for them to slip soft bestiality in with too. Who wanted to fuck a bear? Not "bear" in gay lingo, not even in a buff bara furry anthro way, but an actual BEAR.

Incidentally some of the most unrestrained prejudice I've faced over being a furry has been from ostensibly "woke" people so. Ehh. Definitely part of the reason I don't buy it. They don't want the wierdo yiff people in their little club, which is fine, I wouldn't either. But you can't say you're all about tolerance and inclusivity and so on if you're going to be like that, it's just hypocrisy.

>>26515

>>26515
>Who wanted to fuck a bear?
As it turned out, lots of people who didn't know they wanted to fuck a bear.

Concord is dead.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y3zw5w7l3o

I read about half the thread, so apologies if anyone's already said this - but Concord didn't fail because of wokeness.

It failed because it's 8 years too late, is generic as fuck, was made to chase the hero shooter fad rather than with any sort of passion or pre-existing vision, and nothing sets it apart.

That said, it's fucking funny that the pronouns appear so prominently and when loading in - like that's just posturing, it's useless information outside of the biographies. Yes, the stuff about the wokeness didn't help, but it would have failed anyway.


Watch some gameplay videos. It's actually just got nothing going for it.

>>26549
Obviously such a big budget title isn't even going to recoup the server fees with 660 players, but there are multiplayer games I still frequent that sustain with a tenth of that. It's a pity that it's been put out to pasture, because I'm sure some folk were loving it.

Anyway, Stop Killing Games.

>>26549
The thing I find funniest is that last night I was looking at Secret Level, the upcoming big budget animated anthology series from the people who did Love Death + Robots. Each episode is based on a different video game world, so there's God of War, WH40K Space Marine 2, Pac-Man, etc. But then there's a Concord episode.

The hubris to get a megabudget, semi-mainstream production team to make a multimillion dollar episode based on a game, that was announced only 4 months ago with zero hype, that got a peak of 2k players in the free open beta, that's not at all entered the cultural zeitgeist except for people shitting on it. It's astounding.

One of the features touted for Concord was that every season there'd be a new cinematic released. I can't work out if Sony had too much or too little faith in the game. If they were so sure of it, why release it with only 4 months of marketing (albeit quite heavy marketing). If they had doubts, why did they try push the characters and world and lore as if they're Overwatch-tier.

I think this might be the biggest mainstream mega budget blunder I've ever seen.

>>26553

It's very difficult to turn around a big-budget project. By the time anyone realises that you're working on a pile of cack, you're already committed to a development timetable and a marketing schedule. A huge amount of money and effort has already gone into it before you have anything resembling a playable beta.

Releasing a pile of crap is humiliating, but it's plausibly a better option than risking an expensive detour into development hell. I feel for the people involved, because nobody ever sets out to make a shit game. All credit to CDPR for turning Cyberpunk 2077 into a properly good game - it must have been a complete nightmare.

>>26549

The anti woke whiners won! Look at this innocent game company having to bend over to the demands of neckbeards on YouTube!

>>26554
I was thinking, maybe a bit generously, this could be a Final Fantasy XIV situation. Take it offline because it's fundamentally flawed. Bring it back in a few months/a year or two. FFXIV was panned at launch, they shut it down, and rebuilt it as a 2.0 fixed version and now it's massive. As you say, CDPR had refunds and hate when CP2077 first came out, now it's considered a very good game after lots of work.

But then to talk down my optimism, CP2077 had years of hype backing it up, and goodwill from The Witcher 3. Concord had 4 months of no hype, from an untested studio, in a market which is overcrowded as is. It would be a big risk to try and save a sinking ship, that's already tainted as one of the biggest gaming blunders ever. Not even factoring in the neckbeards on YouTube!

>>26554
>nobody ever sets out to make a shit game

Yes they do. The mobile game sector isn't pure AIDS by accident.

I start my ill advised Games Design course next week, meaning I have access to textbooks and journals.

This is the earliest volume of Games and Culture I could access, the article published in December 2008. There's another article in the same edition, about girls making games for girls. The stuff in articles 16 years ago is the same as today more or less. Where were the anti-woke in 2008?

>>26561

2008 would be round about the time I dropped out of a sociology course because of being made to read absolute gobbledegook bollocks nonsense like this for most of the year. This is the post-modernist waffle otherlad was on about, what they are actually saying is quite simple, but spun out so far as to render it almost entirely meaningless outside the context of roundabout wanking with your fellow self important academics.

>>26561

>The stuff in articles 16 years ago is the same as today more or less. Where were the anti-woke in 2008?

Anti-woke emerged when that stuff started leaking out of academia and entering the mainstream of culture.

>One scene with Abby stands out in this regard. In brief, there is a sex scene between Abby and her ex-boyfriend, one that I would characterise as bordering on violent (although consenting). This scene was met with derision and disgust by many players, who lamented online that they did not want to view a sex scene with a ‘shemale’ – the prevalence of the term ‘sodom-’ in review bombings of TLOU2 being evidence of this (Tomaselli & Cantone, 2021, p. 12). The scene, and the details within it did seem out of place to me – the level of nudity, the way that Abby’s breasts were visible, seemed unnecessarily revealing. I wonder if the game developers placed such emphasis to a) point out that women can have a more ‘masculine’ body type and still be heterosexual, b) communicate to the players that Abby is, indeed, biologically female, or c) ‘verify’ her status as a woman through having sex with a man. I could find little commentary on this topic, other than a post that unpacks how the scene adds depth to Abby and her ex-boyfriend’s characters and narrative.

I'm finding this journal very interesting overall. Some stuff is written for games that nobody in the world gives a fuck about. Some stuff is very pretentious. There's some genuinely decent sounding stuff too. I can be an even more pretentious cunt too if I try hard enough.

>>26561
Huh, I'd never thought about it like that.
keep it coming lad.

>Speaking of proportions, it’s hard not to notice that many of the female characters have been given a physiological upgrade, like the bodacious Taki, who appears to have been reimagined with the gravity-defying Itagaki-san physics from ‘Dead or Alive Xtreme 2’ in mind. Cassandra is a bit more reserved in the bosom department, but hey, she fights in her undies, so we’ll cut her some slack. (Lynch, 2008, p. 20)

>‘Huh? Was that a flash of a pink thong I glimpsed beneath that stern swordmistress’s black skirt? Let me try to make her skirt fly up again, just to make sure.’ And suddenly, your opponent is more fixated on your expertly crafted character’s undies than on beating you to a pulp, and you’ve got an edge in battle (Dun, 2008, p. 90)

>Special attention has been given to the physics impact of unsupported bosoms jiggling and flopping with each leap, slash, and thrust! (Smith, 2008b, p. 22)

Some quotes from 2008 gaming magazines, highlighted in this study. Published a few months after Gamergate so very timely, even mentions GG and Anita in the paper! Not a bad article though, not as bad as the abstract suggests it to be.

>>26567

>using the theory of hegemonic masculinity

Sounds very objective and unbiased.

I thought this might as well going here, seeing as this is essentially now the general "them wokies hurr!" thread.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7PA_kshZh0

This film is probably going to make a lot of people very angry because it very precisely shows them up for the charlatans they are. It's only a shame it's made by people who are themselves expressly conservative, because that makes it too easy to dismiss and discredit. I don't want the right to tell these grifters to fuck off, I want the left to do it.

Anyway the funny part causing drama at the moment is they got Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility, in a Brass Eye style sting interview, where she has to give a black crew member money on the spot cash as "reparations". Her response is telling.

https://www.robindiangelo.com/about-that-film/

>>26579

Equally telling that the website "debunkingAmIracist.com" is pure ad hominem.

https://debunkingamiracist.com/

>>26580

All too easy to do, because as far as I can tell, this Matt Walsh character is something of a bellend. But a bellend can still be right about things now and again I suppose.

>>26579

It's fantastic that this film perfectly vindicates all your beliefs. Did you get into a pre-release screening or something? It's not out yet and hasn't been leaked.

>>26582

>is probably going to

Read, wokelad.

The trailer more than likely shows the best bits anyway, and I doubt I will be arsed to watch the full thing. I am predicting the reaction it will get.

>>26583
>This film is probably going to make a lot of people very angry because it very precisely shows them up for the charlatans they are.
Did you mean to add a second "probably" in that sentence?

>>26581
He wasn't particularly right with "What Is A Woman?" so I don't see why anyone would think he'd be right with this one either.

>>26585

He's right by virtue of the fact that the kind of anti-racism activists he's targeting here absolutely are grifters, he was wrong about the trans one because they're not. Well, some of them are, but not nearly to the same extent as the race lot.

Stuck clock innit.

(Source: 5 minutes scanning the wikipedia article. I hadn't even heard of this cunt until today, so you don't get the idea I am some kind of biased supporter.)

>>26587

The thing about 'trans arguments' is that they were never really argument in the semantics sense to begin with. All trans arguments are begging the question because they know the conclusion, people who are Trans will say anything and everything to reach the conclusion trans is fine and normal, because ultimately everything else of how they get there is actually irrelevant to them as long as they get there.

There are arguments put forward for transitioning that the premises are actually completely contradictory with other ones yet both will be adopted because really it was never about if those arguments were accurate in the first place.

The real argument always is 'should it matter what someone chooses to do with themselves.'

>>26590

>The real argument always is 'should it matter what someone chooses to do with themselves.'

You can generally tell the ones who are grifters in the trans/LGBT spheres because they will vehemently deny this line of reasoning. They have their own agenda to push for whatever reason, their arguments about trans rights are not actually about trans rights but pushing whatever that agenda is. I'm largely referring to the TERF lot by that- to them it's just a scapegoat they can use to boost the declining relevance of their own ideology. But there's just not nearly so much money in that as there has been in race grifting over the last few years.

It's funny how we had a pretty big scandal over here in this country over the charity War Hero Major Tom set up and paid herself a fortune from. People who were outraged by that ought to have a look at what the founders of BLM did with the money.

I got the new Dragon Age, but I don't think I'm engaging in good faith.

The vitiligo slider and the top surgery scar toggles are quite prominent in the character creator, which is fine. But also it's kind of weird that those niche disorders get their own section. You can't meaningfully change eye shape, and hair and skin colour options are surprisingly limited. I think more people would get enjoyment out of green skin or neon pink hair, over lopped off tits scars. There is a body scar category, but top surgery scars are their own category.

If there wasn't this discourse online, would I have even noticed these features? Why am I having issues with an extra option being available? Maybe I'm a chud.

>>26632

Seems cynical to me, frankly.

I can't help see it as a bit of a hypocrisy that when a game makes you play as an ugly lass they're all up in arms because you're a chud if you don't want to play as an ugly lass, but at the same time it's vital to make these features to enable more people to feel included. That's fair enough, but they contradict each other. Which one is it, are you supposed to suck it up and play as a character you don't like, or do you have a right to expect games have characters that represent you?

I for one certainly feel anthropomorphic foxes with big thick cocks are under-represented in modern videogames.

[Simpsons Grandpa "it'll happen to you too" meme but about being a chud]

>>26632
I think the word you're looking for is "performative". I've always felt this way about asking people for their preferred gender pronouns. For a tiny number of people, that question is very important. And you don't want to single them out by only asking them, so let's ask everyone. But imagine if I asked every single person I ever met how many legs they have, just on the off-chance I might meet someone with a wooden leg. It's the right thing to do, in theory, but it's just not practical in any way.

>>26632
Vitiligo is a funny one to me because in visual media ofcourse it had to be the only clearly visible disability (or whatever it's considered). Couldn't well have a person in an powered fucking wheelchair, dribbling with impacted food stuck to the roof of their gaping mouth, right? I've worked with that dude and he was pretty cool but hewas a mentally handicapped flid - literally.

Why do we need representation in games, anyway? What is it with the need for self-inserts? You don't see it in films. Even oldschool RPGs had you play a character, even the ones you scratched up on a character sheet had defining characters in their choice of voice and what was expected of them in the setting/story.

/shittake