Culture Wars General - KiA Diet Coke Edition

[The 1 and only]

I don't understand why the weebs hate Sony or Atlus for making their games for the western market? If you don't like it play the Japanese version. Bitching about it on trash sites like Gematsu or One Angry Gamer won't make Americans change their morals.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I don't understand why the weebs hate Sony or Atlus for making their games for the western market? If you don't like it play the Japanese version. Bitching about it on trash sites like Gematsu or One Angry Gamer won't make Americans change their morals.

I don't mean to sound like a broken record, but people do. This is less than ideal for a number of reasons. In no particular order.

• I can't read Japanese.
• I can't speak Japanese.
• Importing games comes with some amount of inconvenience.
• Importing games comes with some amount of price hike (importers and the tax man like to take their cut).
• People (ie. SJWs) will use connections and smear campaigns against importers who supply "problematic" games.
• SJWs will use connections and smear campaigns to get digital storefronts to pull "problematic" games.
• Depending on the company, making Japanese accounts for digital store fronts can be difficult.
• Japanese companies aren't making their games for "the western market", they are making them for the Japanese market and then censoring based on demands of localization companies, ResetEra, and the game press.
• Console manufacturers (mainly Sony) are censoring games at the source because weebs are playing the Japanese versions.

The last 2 are arguably the most important.

 

[Jaimas]

I don't mean to sound like a broken record, but people do. This is less than ideal for a number of reasons. In no particular order.

• I can't read Japanese.
• I can't speak Japanese.
• Importing games comes with some amount of inconvenience.
• Importing games comes with some amount of price hike (importers and the tax man like to take their cut).
• People (ie. SJWs) will use connections and smear campaigns against importers who supply "problematic" games.
• SJWs will use connections and smear campaigns to get digital storefronts to pull "problematic" games.
• Depending on the company, making Japanese accounts for digital store fronts can be difficult.
• Japanese companies aren't making their games for "the western market", they are making them for the Japanese market and then censoring based on demands of localization companies, ResetEra, and the game press.
• Console manufacturers (mainly Sony) are censoring games at the source because weebs are playing the Japanese versions.

The last 2 are arguably the most important.

A corollary reason is that as gaming's gone more mainstream, they've become much more prone to being willing to axe "unfortunate" content before it can be bitched about, essentially becoming self-censorship. Atlus in particular is infamous for this.

 

[Sir Wesley Tailpipe]

I don't understand why the weebs hate Sony or Atlus for making their games for the western market? If you don't like it play the Japanese version. Bitching about it on trash sites like Gematsu or One Angry Gamer won't make Americans change their morals.

Ah, the classic line from NeoGAF circa 2016. “If you don’t like censorship, and won’t learn a different language just to play games, fuck you!” A true classic of douchebaggery.

 

[ColdOnes]

What's sad is almost all of this culture war crap could have been avoided if SJWs simply had the mindset of wanting to add to rather than take from.

So you want more women to play video games, fair enough, but it should have been done by making all new games designed with a female audience in mind, stuff like Gabriel Knight for example which had a huge female following.

If it resulted in simply more games to play that would have been fine, nothing wrong with variety, but instead the SJW mentality is to take pre-existing things and change them in their image completely, so it's not a matter of having games that appeal to both a male and female audience, it's got to only appeal to females at the cost of actively trying to push males away.

It's just so fucking pointless and stupid, this town is big enough for the both of us, nobody says you can't have a diverse market that appeals to a wide variety of tastes and audiences.

But an actual diverse market is the last thing SJWs want, they want everything that comes out to be something that gets their seal of approval.

Why are people doing this? Why all this fighting when it doesn't have to be this way? What is the appeal?

Why are people this way these days? Just why? Fucking WHY!?

This phenomenon isn't just in video games. It's in the movie industry too. There's this weird mentality among left-wing/liberal Americans which amounts to "I need Hollywood to do my social activism for me." It's the inability to think beyond the box that I find baffling even though alternatives exist. There is a case I know that demonstrate what I mean.

Spoiler: Muh representation

Trans folk have long been hyped for a movie called Rub and Tug to be made as it was one of the first? movies that has a main character who is trans, which they see as a major stride in progress in minority representation. The production decided to cast Scarlet Johansson as the lead role and she dropped out after backlash from trans activists as they see non trans actor playing trans actors the equivalent to blackface. As of now, there is no news concerning the production of the movie and trans activists are still complaining about the lack of representation to this day. What these activists don't realize is that there was a movie that had what they wanted. It's called A Fantastic Woman which had a trans person in a lead role receiving critical praise for her performance. It drew attention and won awards in a few film festivals, including high profile ones like the Berlin International Film Festival. It even won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Yet, the movie is unknown in trans circles. That's because the movie was made by an independent filmmaker in Chile and the movie did not have a high marketing budget. If you really cared about movies that aligned with your social activism, you can't just expect the information to be spoonfed to you. You have to actively seek it out as the subject matter is niche. Word of mouth is probably the most powerful marketing tool out there, and I have no doubt that the movie would've been a lot more well-known had people talk about it. After seeing little reception the movie had among trans activists, I was convinced that they're just lazy fucks who demand other people to do work for them.

There's also the complaints by Asian-Americans about the lack of representation in movies even though countries with less resources than the US have managed to make a name for themselves in world cinema. It never crossed their minds that there's an abundance of equipment and manpower for them to make the movies that they want people to see to understand their culture or ethnicity better. I don't believe that there aren't stories that are specific to Asian-Americans. Independent movies have become a lot easier to make as time passes. they don't have to face government censorship. It's just excuses at this point.

I guess my point is that this whole "diversity" thing that's hip right now seems utterly shallow and farcical to me. Maybe it's because the DIY attitude was drilled into me since I was a kid, but I hate just how so reliant all these "activists" are in regards to their causes and how much they love to stay in their bubbles instead of looking beyond the horizon. I highly doubt diversity would be a large issue if they start watching movies that aren't made in Hollywood or the US.

 

[Wallace]

I guess my point is that this whole "diversity" thing that's hip right now seems utterly shallow and farcical to me. Maybe it's because the DIY attitude was drilled into me since I was a kid, but I hate just how so reliant all these "activists" are in regards to their causes and how much they love to stay in their bubbles instead of looking beyond the horizon. I highly doubt diversity would be a large issue if that start watching movies that aren't made in Hollywood or the US.

Because the goal has never been to advance the cause, it's all about your own self-aggrandizement.

 

[Jaimas]

I guess my point is that this whole "diversity" thing that's hip right now seems utterly shallow and farcical to me. Maybe it's because the DIY attitude was drilled into me since I was a kid, but I hate just how so reliant all these "activists" are in regards to their causes and how much they love to stay in their bubbles instead of looking beyond the horizon. I highly doubt diversity would be a large issue if they start watching movies that aren't made in Hollywood or the US.

The big secret of the "diversity" angle is that it has no victory condition or end point. There is never a point where one of them will say: "When X percent of Y media is Z demographic, then lack of representation is over." Just like the Moral Majority of the 80s and 90s, they don't really want to fix the problems they complain about, because if they did they'd be effectively unnecessary. You can prove this really easily, too: virtually none of them have actual quantifiable metrics for the alleged oppression they're complaining about and they can't point to actual stats calling for the positions they back, only pointing to their political allies on social media and declaring it so.

My favorite example of this in action remains DIGRA. Once a game research think-tank, it got captured by the usual suspects sometime around 2010. From that point onward, it spent years of real time doing studies attempting to find a call for diversity in video gaming, only to find nobody wanted or cared about that because games were already diverse and the gameplay and story mattered more than the race or gender of the characters. That one's especially important because during the infamous "Gamers Are Over" barrage in which 14 allegedly-competing publications went with the same headline over the course of a few days, they all referenced the exact same Tumblr blog, which in turn, cited the exact same article.

Emphasis mine, in orange:

Players do not automatically take on the role of characters/avatars. Playing as a character that is ostensibly “other” to you (in terms of gender, race, or sexuality) is not necessarily transgressive or perspective-altering. Playing as a character that is like you (in terms of demographic categories) does not necessarily engender identification. This calls into question both the educative benefits and the marketing benefits of playing as a main video game character that is a member of a marginalized group. Different gaming contexts also shape the types of choices players make in terms of how they create and play with/as the character/avatar. In addition, playing as, creating or choosing characters in games, whether online or off, cannot be confused with identity play. These data also demonstrate that identification need not only focus on the character/avatar the player actively uses, but that researchers might consider identification with non-player characters (NPCs), as well as the environment and narrative in which the characters are placed. Moreover, identification with characters is not always relevant or a reason for playing video games. Rather than simply critique the availability of the representation of certain identities in video games, researchers must also interrogate how and if players identify with those portrayals.

Essentially, the writer of this fucking thing establishes that there is no real call for diversity in games from either a customer or marketing perspective, and that the playerbase doesn't care whether the character is marginalized or not. They care whether or not the character is interesting to play as and/or well-written.

But we aren't done, especially with what this is followed up with:

Building on this, researchers can be critical of the claim that games in which there has been the greatest amount of potential diversity in representation (i.e. games that entail creating or choosing one‟s own character) are also the games in which players do not tend identify with the character/avatar on the screen. Games in which players might identify with their characters are the ones in which there has been less diversity. Game makers have created a system in which, if one so chooses, they can add diversity to their game texts, or if one is marginalized they have the ability to create characters “like them” (within certain limits). This form of pluralism cannot address the broader social goals of media representation. Critics of the representation of marginal groups in video games must begin to address this use of pluralism rather than diversity more directly.

.....And there you have it. The reason, in so many words, why all of this shit started.

Since there's no call for diversity from the customers, the argument became that the entire industry needed to change, and one of the biggest reasons that the industry needed to change was that games in which you create your own character effectively side-step the issue of diversity entirely, meaning that even if there was a call for diversity (which there isn't), that could easily be met by an integral market solution - not something that someone who is banking on selling identity politics wants to hear in the slightest.

 

[Next Task]

This phenomenon isn't just in video games. It's in the movie industry too. There's this weird mentality among left-wing/liberal Americans which amounts to "I need Hollywood to do my social activism for me." It's the inability to think beyond the box that I find baffling even though alternatives exist.

This is what always gets me. The diversity they say they're looking for is already there - but it's not in the most obvious, blatant places, so they don't care. If it's not a Disney princess, then it doesn't count, even though there's numerous sources of entertainment that feature any minority you could name. There are shows devoted to trans people, autistic people, fat people, all of the colours of people, but it's not enough.

When they say representation matters, what they always seem to really mean is 'representation matters when it's in something I already wanted to watch'. They don't give a shit about watching something about troons, as per your example - they just want troons in everything they already want to watch.

It's destroyed any sympathy I had about the idea of representation being important. Because all it seems to mean now is that some people can't empathise with anyone who isn't just like them. Predictably for SJWs, though, they hide that narcissism under the guise of the greater good, when it's actually a personal emotional failing they're taking out on the world.

 

[Judge Dredd]

When they say representation matters, what they always seem to really mean is 'representation matters when it's in something I already wanted to watch'. They don't give a shit about watching something about troons, as per your example - they just want troons in everything they already want to watch.

I think it's more "Representation matters when it's in something you already wanted to watch."

When gamers suggested having a censorship toggle so those who are offended can choose to play the game without seeing the offending content, the answer was that that the offending content shouldn't exist in the first place, or that the inclusion of a toggle would "defeat the purpose of censorship".

 

[Gaymead]

There is controversy concerning leaked comments made by Elias Viglione, CEO of Panic Art Studios (the studio that made Hero Siege), about how "he wanted to kill immigrants". Here are two articles covering the incident:

Article 1 (Archive)

Panic Art Studios CEO apologizes for saying he wants to kill immigrants
PAUL TAMBURROMonday, February 24, 2020

FACEBOOKTWITTERREDDITEMAIL

• RELATED GAMES:
• HERO SIEGE

Panic Art Studios CEO Elias Viglione has apologized after saying that he wanted to kill immigrants, and that his “life goal” was to murder “as many of these animals as possible.” Viglione has now called his comments a “bad moment,” claiming that he had been erroneously accused of trying to drug women while drinking at a bar, which had led to the racist and violent comments he had posted online.

Viglione, whose work includes the hack ‘n’ slash game Hero Siege, posted a series of tweets this past weekend, which began with him calling for people to “f***ing murder all these pieces of s*** who try to invade our countries to bring violence to innocent people’s lifes.” He then went on to say that his taxi driver had told him “that n******* and middle easterns were animals,” adding that he thought this also and that he was going to “personally make sure my every investment kills as many of these animals as possible.”



CONTENT WARNING: Racist and violent language.

The tweets can be viewed below:

Nasim Haque@HeyItsNasse
· Feb 22, 2020
The CEO of @panicartstudios just tweeted that he wants to kill immigrants and get rid of all the "n words" in Finland. It's always fun to check your Twitter feed and see stuff like this #esports #esportsfi #elämämnkovakolu #suomisuomalaisille

Nasim Haque@HeyItsNasse

I would also like to share this. This happened some time ago, but it tells you a bit more about the person that we're dealing with.

(It's an old pic so don't mind the timestamps)

460
8:57 AM - Feb 22, 2020
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Viglione deleted his Twitter account, but not before his tweets were screenshotted and reshared online. This saw many calling for Panic Art Studios to take action, and to remove him from his position at the top of the company.

Viglione later tweeted the following statement from Panic Art Studios’ Twitter account:

“On Friday I was at a bar with friends, no negativity just chill and good times. At one point I was getting another beer and was just browsing memes at the counter, this guy came to the bar and walked str8 to me and said ‘could you come outside for a moment?’ I was like ‘Wut? Who are you? sure.’

I went outside calmly walking and following this guy, the dude wanted me to go out of the bar’s premise and at this point I asked ‘What is this thing really about?’ He came to me and whispered to my ear ‘You are drugging and trying to rape girls in here’, his somali friend then walked behind me and started staring me from behind him. I saw 2 additional Iraki and Somali men behind them sitting at the train station stairs watching at me. I for sure was not drugging anyone, or trying to rape anyone nor did I ever see these people before or even talked to them. I am always kind to people even when drunk.

Well now that we had a ‘conflict’ I was afraid for my life as I was against 5 sober men, being pretty drunk my self and the bouncer told me to leave so I had to just go out there and get shanked and robbed by these men. I had a long conversation with the bouncer, and he agreed to take me to the taxi. The 5 men ran away and jumped into the train, which made no sense to me. Who were they? Why were they targeting me from inside the bar?

I got to the taxi, a nice vietnamese guy managed to calm me down a bit as I was in a shock, I tipped him 10 euros since he helped me quite a bit. I went home and something just snapped inside me. I was in absolute anger and fear, and guess I just posted my feelings to Twitter (dont even know why, dont remember doing it). I slept for 48 hours str8 and I am still shaking in fear, pumped with adrenaline and having suicidal thoughts. I’m afraid of going outside, I don’t feel well.

What I said was wrong, people should respect each other and live along with no fear of getting mugged or killed by anyone. I am deeply sorry to every person this personally offended, not the people who are just trying to s*** on a person for having a bad moment.”

Later, in Hero Siege‘s public Discord server, Viglione added that he was “under a very strong ptsd psychosis,” and that he “felt extreme anger and hate towards these robbers and since they were immigrants it came out like that or something.”

He then added that he has “racist tendencies”:

This isn’t the first time that Viglione’s has posted bigoted comments online. Back in July 2018, he said that women “don’t have the interest or the capability” to be CEOs, responding to a female critic of his comments by adding: “This just proves women don’t have the nerves to be a ceo ”

Viglione is still listed as the company’s CEO, alongside team members Jussi Kukkonen and Esko Salonen.

Article 2 (Archive)

ENTERTAINMENT
Panic Artwork Studios Releases Assertion After CEO’s Newest Offensive Rant

Published
18 hours ago
on
February 24, 2020
By
Team BingePost

• • 
    
  • 
    

After CEO Elias Viglione of Finnish indie recreation developer Panic Artwork Studios went on a wildly offensive on-line rant, the small firm launched a press release in a questionable try at harm management. Viglione and his studio have gone utterly darkish since his hateful tirade was discovered, however his phrases cannot be so simply withdrawn now that they are out.
Panic Artwork Studios, finest identified for the pixel artwork roguelike Hero Siege, is a tiny group comprised of simply programmer Jussi Kukkonen, internet developer Esko Salonen, and CEO Elias Viglione. Whatever the views held by the opposite two builders, the small dimension of Panic Artwork Studios signifies that only one worker’s rambling rant in a public discussion board shall be justifiably taken to symbolize a whopping third of the corporate’s total worldview. Viglione clearly did not contemplate this earlier than talking, nor did he weigh the truth that the gaming trade is already broadly perceived to have a racism drawback, with extremely seen players like PewDiePie dropping racial slurs on-stream and main builders like Minecraft‘s Notch ruining his popularity over far-right xenophobic rhetoric on-line.

On February 22, Elias Viglione tweeted out the sequence of abhorrent threats seen beneath. He is since deleted his account, however his remarks have been preserved by Nasim Haque. Viglione claims he had a nasty evening and because of this fostered a right away and intense hatred for “far leftists,” “items of sh-t who attempt to invade our international locations,” and others singled out on the idea of pores and skin shade and ethnicity. His handful of tweets had been apparently a rallying cry aimed toward an undefined coalition of equally fragile people, calling for the “f-cking homicide” of these he deems undesirable. After allegedly restraining himself from “killing these 2 guys exterior the membership,” he says a taxi driver expressed sentiments which conveniently lined up exactly along with his personal expressed views. He concludes that his newfound “life purpose” is that his “each funding kills as many of those animals as attainable.”

Nasim Haque@HeyItsNasse
· Feb 22, 2020
The CEO of @panicartstudios just tweeted that he wants to kill immigrants and get rid of all the "n words" in Finland. It's always fun to check your Twitter feed and see stuff like this #esports #esportsfi #elämämnkovakolu #suomisuomalaisille

Nasim Haque@HeyItsNasse

I would also like to share this. This happened some time ago, but it tells you a bit more about the person that we're dealing with.

(It's an old pic so don't mind the timestamps)

460
8:57 AM - Feb 22, 2020
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98 people are talking about this


As soon as Viglione’s vitriolic spew was discovered and shared around by dismayed lookers-on, he launched a press release in a Panic Artwork Studios tweet that inversely labels himself a sufferer. Though the group’s Twitter account has since gone personal, a screenshot of the assertion was shared by Mellow_Online1. The gist of Viglione’s overlapping excuses is that he was purportedly bullied by males he genetically recognized as “Iraki and Somali” earlier than all of them occurred to run away, “which made no sense” to him.
It was a “dangerous second,” certainly. Primarily based on the backhanded tone of his nonetheless very racist apology, what Viglione appears to actually be sorry about is that Twitter is not a platform on which he can scream out his each horrible thought with none penalties. This grows extra obvious when contemplating a previous controversy instigated by Viglione (additionally supplied courtesy of Nasim Haque), through which he said that “most girls simply both haven’t got the curiosity or the aptitude” to be gaming executives, amplifying sexist sentiments that proceed to plague his trade.
Elias Viglione ought to come clean with his detestable phrases and actions, situation an precise apology, and face the music with the related authorities if requested, and he ought to accomplish that ASAP. His studio has the unsavory privilege of being publicly related along with his ear-splitting requires racial killings till he does.
Subsequent: Rockstar is Beginning To Repair Its Work Tradition Downside
Supply: Nasim Haque/Twitter, Panic Art Studios/Twitter, Imgur
Nintendo Is Ruining Its Reputation With A Series Of Bad Decisions

About The Writer

Phillip Tinner has written about all issues movie, TV, and gaming at Display Rant since 2018. A Texas A&M College former scholar and Texas native, he is equally prone to be present in entrance of a plate of Tex-Mex with a facet of craft beer as he’s at his desk sharing his scorching takes on-line.
The topics of his writings at Display Rant are his lifelong passions, and he hopes readers take pleasure in his content material as a lot as he does researching and producing it. Publishers, creators, and readers alike can attain him anytime on Twitter @PhilKimTIn, or they’ll accomplish that in a barely much less enjoyable capability through LinkedIn.
Extra About Phillip Tinner

The incident has caused Panic Art Studios to publish an apology on Twitter before going private, and Elias deleted his Twitter account. the apology can be found here: https://twitter.com/MellowOnline1/status/1231675132420198402 (Archive)

This is not the first time that comments made by Elias have caused controversy; as stated in the articles, in 2018, he responded to Jennifer Scheurle's reply to a tweet about the lack of female CEOs in German game studios, and he basically said that instead of a glass ceiling its because not many women aspire to be CEOs or are not yet capable of being effective CEOs.

Hero Siege Developer Says Women “Don’t Have the Capability” to Be CEOs
PAUL TAMBURROSunday, July 08, 2018

FACEBOOKTWITTERREDDITEMAIL

• RELATED GAMES:
• HERO SIEGE

Hero Siege developer and Panic Art Studios founder Elias Viglione has said that “women don’t have the nerves” and the “interest or the capability” to be CEOs in the gaming industry. In a heated exchange on Twitter, Viglione told game designer Jennifer Scheurle to “Gtfo with that flag waiving feminazism [sic],” tweeting that the gaming is a “male dominant” industry as “geek girls are a really new thing.”
Viglione’s comments were made after Opaque Space’s game design lead Scheurle tweeted about how there is “not a single female CEO” in Germany’s largest game studios:

Jennifer Scheurle
✔@Gaohmee
https://twitter.com/Gaohmee/status/1014483496801218560

Fucking wow, Germany.

Literally not a single female CEO within the 50 largest games studios in Germany.

Yikes. https://twitter.com/gameswirtschaft/status/1014459293788266496 …
GamesWirtschaft@gameswirtschaft
Der Blick in die Chefetagen der größten deutschen #Games-Unternehmen zeigt: Der #Frauenanteil bei den Führungskräften bleibt auf homöopathischem Niveau. Alle Details: https://www.gameswirtschaft.de/wirtschaft/games-branche-gleichstellung-frauenanteil-2018/ …

899
7:18 AM - Jul 4, 2018
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The Panic Art Studios CEO then chimed in with his own take on the matter. “I think most women just either don’t have the interest or the capability,” he wrote in a now-deleted tweet. “There are some but those are rare cases, but definitely not cus of patriarchy.”
Scheurle then told Viglione to “get out,” to which the Hero Siege dev replied: “I mean, get real. Video games is a male dominant industry, geek girls are a really new thing and most of these companies were formed back in the day. How about you show the way and get into a ceo position? ” After Scheurle stated that she was going to block him, Viglione tweeted: “This just proves women dont have the nerves to be a ceo ”
The exchange was then shared by Twitter user @failnaut, with it retweeted over 11,000 times:

failnaut
✔@failnaut
https://twitter.com/failnaut/status/1014694469805985793

fuck this dude and fuck his game

21.3K
9:16 PM - Jul 4, 2018
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10.6K people are talking about this



Following Viglione’s tweets, an influx of negative reviews appeared on Hero Siege‘s Steam page. After apologizing for his comments, Viglione pleaded with Steam users to stop “review bombing” his game, saying that it was hurting “3 innocent people” who had also worked on the game. Other Hero Siege developers also spoke up on Twitter. In a response to a user who asked if he agreed with Viglione’s comments, lead programmer Jussi Kukkonen tweeted: “I don’t.”
Viglione later noted that English is not his first language and that his “understanding of certain terminology is very bad.” He then went on to share screenshots of positive Hero Siege reviews, including one that told those offended by his comments to “grow up, losers,” and another which stated that “soy-amateurs may have a hard time with its fine, testosterone-packed action.”
Panic Art Studios released Hero Siege back in 2013, with the studio currently working on Eastfound, an RPG in the style of 2D Zelda games. Scheurle addressed Viglione’s apology amid the controversy, tweeting: “Apologies are generally good. But you gotta do it right and you gotta mean it. Elias still has me blocked https://sneed.w.org/images/core/emoji/11/svg/1f642.svg Meaning that he does not care about apologising to me. That’s fine But it also tells you a thing or two. I’m positive this can still work out.”

Here is also another article (or rather think piece) that covers the first incident, and mentions Gamergate for added affect (Archived). this article is rather short so I'm not going to cite it here. Below are some screenshots of tweets with links from some of the persons mentioned in the articles, along with replies.

Spoiler: Screencaps of Tweets and Links

Failnaut:
screencapture-twitter-failnaut-status-1014694469805985793.png
https://twitter.com/failnaut/status/1014694469805985793 (https://archive.is/JI9Oo)

Nasim Haque:
screencapture-twitter-HeyItsNasse-status-1231139328102936576-2020-02-25-03_29_51 - Copy.png
https://twitter.com/HeyItsNasse/status/1231139328102936576 (https://archive.is/oAw4r)

screencapture-twitter-HeyItsNasse-status-1231216331124609024-2020-02-25-03_40_09 - Copy.png
https://twitter.com/HeyItsNasse/status/1231216331124609024 (https://archive.is/8k9Lk)

Jen Scheurle:
screencapture-twitter-gaohmee-status-1231281234107494400-2020-02-25-03_17_49 - Copy.png
https://twitter.com/gaohmee/status/1231281234107494400 (https://archive.is/f0sV4)

*This is as much as could find out as I just found out about this overnight, if anyone has anything more to add, please do. Also, I was wondering if I should make a thread on this, so give feedback would be much appreciated.*

 

[CheezzyMach]

The big secret of the "diversity" angle is that it has no victory condition or end point. There is never a point where one of them will say: "When X percent of Y media is Z demographic, then lack of representation is over." Just like the Moral Majority of the 80s and 90s, they don't really want to fix the problems they complain about, because if they did they'd be effectively unnecessary. You can prove this really easily, too: virtually none of them have actual quantifiable metrics for the alleged oppression they're complaining about and they can't point to actual stats calling for the positions they back, only pointing to their political allies on social media and declaring it so.

My favorite example of this in action remains DIGRA. Once a game research think-tank, it got captured by the usual suspects sometime around 2010. From that point onward, it spent years of real time doing studies attempting to find a call for diversity in video gaming, only to find nobody wanted or cared about that because games were already diverse and the gameplay and story mattered more than the race or gender of the characters. That one's especially important because during the infamous "Gamers Are Over" barrage in which 14 allegedly-competing publications went with the same headline over the course of a few days, they all referenced the exact same Tumblr blog, which in turn, cited the exact same article.

Emphasis mine, in orange:



Essentially, the writer of this fucking thing establishes that there is no real call for diversity in games from either a customer or marketing perspective, and that the playerbase doesn't care whether the character is marginalized or not. They care whether or not the character is interesting to play as and/or well-written.

But we aren't done, especially with what this is followed up with:



.....And there you have it. The reason, in so many words, why all of this shit started.

Since there's no call for diversity from the customers, the argument became that the entire industry needed to change, and one of the biggest reasons that the industry needed to change was that games in which you create your own character effectively side-step the issue of diversity entirely, meaning that even if there was a call for diversity (which there isn't), that could easily be met by an integral market solution - not something that someone who is banking on selling identity politics wants to hear in the slightest.

Basically the Wokies needed to justify their existence and when they found that the problem they complained about didn't exist they created one.

Will this house of lies and pyramid scheme collapse though?

 

[Jaimas]

Basically the Wokies needed to justify their existence and when they found that the problem they complained about didn't exist they created one.

Will this house of lies and pyramid scheme collapse though?

It already is collapsing, but the damage they've done already and are going to continue to inflict is deep indeed.

 

[ultimate_racoon]

I had a teacher tell me the best thing I could do to improve my quality of life was to put a brick through my TV. I don't know what teachers say these days and I don't know where kids get the idea diversity and representation in video games, movies, or TV matters. No matter the representation you're better off turning it off and practicing at a marketable skill.

 

[Jaimas]

I had a teacher tell me the best thing I could do to improve my quality of life was to put a brick through my TV. I don't know what teachers say these days and I don't know where kids get the idea diversity and representation in video games, movies, or TV matters. No matter the representation you're better off turning it off and practicing at a marketable skill.

It's entertainment. It's like any other hobby, only a problem when indulged excessively.

But to answer your question: It doesn't matter at all. Not only for the reasons I listed a few posts ago, but because ultimately a game is entertainment. Relatedly, during the Gamers Are Over barrage, this fucking article on Gamasutra was one of the more ridiculous ones to make the rounds. It has some premium quality 'tism in it, since it's a demand that we need to demand games "grow up" immediately, force identity politics into them, push indie crap by their friends, decry all games with violence and/or sexism (as they define it), and that's just the first half-a-dozen items in Devin Wilson's psychopathic manifesto. And we're not even to the part where he openly white knights Anita in this article.

It's the entry directly preceding his white knighting, however, that perfectly establishes why these people are fucking insane.
Emphasis mine, as ever, in orange:

11. We stop upholding “fun” as the universal, ultimate criterion for a game’s relevance.
It’s a meaningless ideal at best and a poisonous priority at worst. Fun is a neurological trick. Plenty of categorically unhealthy things are “fun”. Let’s try for something more. Many of the alternatives will have similarly fuzzy definitions, but let’s aspire to qualities like “edifying”, “healing”, “pro-social”, or even “enlightening”. I encourage you to decide upon your own alternatives to “fun” in games (while avoiding terms like “cool” and “awesome” and any other word that simply caters to existing, unexamined biases).

Let me make absolutely clear what Devin is demanding with this statement: He wants all games going forward to completely leave out whether or not a game is fun - or even good - in their coverage, despite that literally being his fucking job description. And all for that almighty diversity and inclusion sacred pony.

 

[CheezzyMach]

It's entertainment. It's like any other hobby, only a problem when indulged excessively.

But to answer your question: It doesn't matter at all. Not only for the reasons I listed a few posts ago, but because ultimately a game is entertainment. Relatedly, during the Gamers Are Over barrage, this fucking article on Gamasutra was one of the more ridiculous ones to make the rounds. It has some premium quality 'tism in it, since it's a demand that we need to demand games "grow up" immediately, force identity politics into them, push indie crap by their friends, decry all games with violence and/or sexism (as they define it), and that's just the first half-a-dozen items in Devin Wilson's psychopathic manifesto. And we're not even to the part where he openly white knights Anita in this article.

It's the entry directly preceding his white knighting, however, that perfectly establishes why these people are fucking insane.
Emphasis mine, as ever, in orange:



Let me make absolutely clear what Devin is demanding with this statement: He wants all games going forward to completely leave out whether or not a game is fun - or even good - in their coverage, despite that literally being his fucking job description. And all for that almighty diversity and inclusion sacred pony.

It still amazes me these are the exact same people who grew up hating the Moral Majority.

 

[Judge Dredd]

But to answer your question: It doesn't matter at all. Not only for the reasons I listed a few posts ago, but because ultimately a game is entertainment. Relatedly, during the Gamers Are Over barrage, this fucking article on Gamasutra was one of the more ridiculous ones to make the rounds. It has some premium quality 'tism in it, since it's a demand that we need to demand games "grow up" immediately, force identity politics into them, push indie crap by their friends, decry all games with violence and/or sexism (as they define it), and that's just the first half-a-dozen items in Devin Wilson's psychopathic manifesto. And we're not even to the part where he openly white knights Anita in this article.

Now that I think about it, I don't think I've read the gamers are dead articles outside of the usual few that are passed around.

9 and 10 are funny in hindsight.

9. We let the industry’s tentpoles fall to the ground more often. We stop allowing ourselves to be told which games we need to play. We’re smarter than that. We abandon any skepticism any of us have towards underrepresented people’s deep concerns about the medium, and we are instead skeptical of game publishers’ interests in our well-being. (Drug dealers want their customers to have fun too, you know.)
10. We always remember that we don’t need to buy new things in order to legitimately appreciate games. We play old games until they’ve revealed all of their secrets, and then we play them some more. We stop implicitly accepting the idea that games are meant to be disposable. We dissect gaming’s recent and ancient past (and everything in between) instead of just perpetually flailing around in its cacophonous, slippery, and overwhelming present (and future).

If only they knew.

 

[Jaimas]

Now that I think about it, I don't think I've read the gamers are dead articles outside of the usual few that are passed around.

9 and 10 are funny in hindsight.

If only they knew.

If you've read one, you've literally read all of them, because they all touch upon the same things, cite the same sources, and address the same talking points. Because it isn't at all suspicious when 14 publications do that at the exact same time, no sir.

 

[Gar For Archer]

It still amazes me these are the exact same people who grew up hating the Moral Majority.

Not really. They hated the moral majority not because they pushed unwanted morals on everyone else, but because they pushed morals that they personally did not agree with.

They’re just mad that they weren’t in power.

 

[Megaroad 2012]

Now that I think about it, I don't think I've read the gamers are dead articles outside of the usual few that are passed around.

9 and 10 are funny in hindsight.

If only they knew.

I'm randomly jumping in but... Has anyone told whoever wrote this video games are just electronic toys and not to take them so fucking seriously?

Like, I get being passionate about your favorite series and stuff but jfc, this is so a first world problem. I can't imagine the mentality to be so absorbed in this stupid dogma and not see the bigger picture and just enjoy life while you're living in a nice, cozy first world country with all your needs met.

 

[BrokenWokenBespoken]

I don't understand why the weebs hate Sony or Atlus for making their games for the western market? If you don't like it play the Japanese version. Bitching about it on trash sites like Gematsu or One Angry Gamer won't make Americans change their morals.

Because it has seeped into the Japanese side as well. Especially after Harukaze's bitchfit over Noraneko. But the damage to the trust between weebs and Sony is done. The hardcore weebs believe Sony will censor anything remotely sexual in ther games while the press puts out the pedophile argument as a moral take, never mind there were other arguments that the press could use.