đJoker"Woke" games
CliveRosfieldI would call a game terrible and woke if theyâre trying to cover their blatant flaws by tokenizing minorities and lgbt. See: Concord
Starfield is another good example.
Some of you may have seen HeelVsBabyfaceâs infamous âpronounsâ rant video and taken it a bit out of context. Many said he was upset at the sight of a pronouns selection option on the character creation menu. His rant actually came a few hours into playing after a series of quests with incredibly contrived dialogue.
I really hate how too many games, and itâs games especially that do this feel the need to pretend that gender doesnât exist.
Picking a game that was already bad for 700 reasons doesnât make the idiotic âwoke = badâ label okay. The writing in a live service game was never going to be great.
I think part of what has happened is a group of people has identified that a lot of modern writing is garbage, but doesnât know exactly whatâs wrong with it. The issue gets blamed on whatever seems like the most obvious change to them. There are some stories with better writing that have a diverse set of characters, and while there are still weirdos on the internet that complain about it, the general market response suggests people are most interested in good media, and good media can represent a diverse range of people.
As for my take on modern writing, I think âdesign by committeeâ, by means of publishers and marketing specialists grasping more control over the creative process is the major culprit in its declining quality.
I realized this when I got into DBD and realized the game is in fact, very âwokeâ, and that itâs a core point of the gameâs identity.
But itâs not a problem because it feels like a geniune effort by the Entity to capture a wide variety of survivors and killers from all walks of life, which translates into a lot of players able to look at the heroes and villains and go âHey, s/heâs like me!â, which translates to putting in small things referencing sexualities and cultures to pander to those individuals.
The writing for all these characters are consistently good, except for when they arenât (Looking at you Skull Merchant)
DBD IS a âWokeâ game by every definition, but it isnât shit and the storyâs actually good because itâs clear the people making it give a shit about what theyâre doing and the âwokeâ aspects simply come from exploring the ramifications of having the kind of cast it does.
I began to suspect it when people were bitching about how âReyâs a giant Mary Sue!â in Star Wars
Because she isnât. She actually LOSES most of the fights sheâs in, canât control her powers well for most of the films, and âHow can she fly the Falcon so well!?!?!â was a common complaint even though she literally breaks the damn thing while doing so, meaning she canât âfly it so wellâ, Rey as a character is clearly not the problem, but people latched onto her because she was something they could point to and say âHEREâS THE PROBLEM!â
So what WAS the problem with the sequels? The problem was they were so scared of doing something new with the Star Wars brand (Due to the fact that the prequels did something new and were lambasted for it) that they largely rehashed IV, V, and VI, without a plan for actually weaving one consistent story (Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker are great movies⌠that feel like they belong in separate trilogies)
And yeah⌠that and I will agree with the bashers in that making Lukeâs Jedi Order fail and killing off all of his students off-screen without introducing any of them was basically Disney throwing money away.
Donât call it âWokeâ though. Call it Faux Woke or Rainbow Capitalism. The term âWokeâ carries specific baggage.
Remember the Dead Rising Remake that removes the erotica category from photos, changes Larry from being asian to being a new yorker (Cause Asians canât be evil, unlike White people!), and removing all reference to the Vietnam War (Because Communists canât be evil?)
Yeah⌠Dead Rising kept getting worse with every entry, but damn the fact that they went back and made the first game seem shitty is an accomplishment (Especially since between the Wii Version and the Remake, they did that twice!)
thatâs horseshit. there is no such term for games that use sex to appeal to young boys to cover their blatant flaws.
plus thatâs not why theyâre doing it. two things can coexist without causing one another. thatâs very disingenuous.