I think most everyone knows it did not used to be this way. It wasn’t even that long ago. There never would’ve been some massive debate on if it’s ok to make Harley Quinn look hot in a video game. It would be expected. A game like Stellar Blade was pretty common and wouldn’t have been anything that noticeable. G4 actually was completely focused on their primary audience and for a good while they thrived. That Frosk rant never ever would’ve happened. I remember when the term “gaming journalism” wasn’t always a total joke and the articles didn’t mindlessly berate you for playing something that doesn’t have enough representation. Not to say there never was any controversy at all, but it’s pure insanity these days. You can’t escape it. Just about every single release big or small has to have some kind of political discourse surrounding it. I really don’t know where everything went off the rails.
Is there any major turning point that can be seen where gaming became so drowned in politics?
DiscussionPlease be right.
My intuition tells me they will double down though. We will need new studios/creators to come up that are not saddled with the DEI nonsense, but all the ones with potential always get bought by the mega corps.
The doubling down seems to be happening right now. Like there are already several examples of this not working. Maybe we’re on the tail end of their Hail Mary.
I guess they figured that blackrock money was better -perhaps safer- than maximizing customer money. Because it's pretty clear that people are so attached to their media that most can't help but give their money away.
For a lot of companies customers are considered the barrier.
Why gamble on selling to people, when a pr firm will pay a few million to cover ddevelopment costs?
Blackrock has absolutely nothing to do with any of this. All they do is funnel money through indexes. Huge misconception
You must know about their DEI and EGS initiatives. They are well known to have a hand in all of this.
No, they aren’t. I work very closely with blackrock and vanguard and all the major money managers. They manage indices, they don’t directly own any of these companies and have no direct line to how they operate.
It's in their own PDFs my guy.
"BlackRock offers interested clients two high-level approaches,
providing a range of choices for these clients to advance their investment objectives:
• Products focused on investing in companies or assets with positive DEI
characteristics; and
• Products focused on investing or directing capital to companies or assets in order to
advance a societal outcome, such as investing in undercapitalized demographics
(some of which are “impact” solutions)."
From this link
https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/literature/fact-sheet/dei-strategy-progress.pdf
Why are you denying what everyone is fully aware of? It's a foregone conclusion that Blackrocks DEI focused investment strategies are a major influence.
Another link to their investment focus
https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/literature/fact-sheet/dei-annual-report.pdf
Finally a video with a timestamp so you can see Lary Fink's own words, stating that they are insistent on forcing change through the strength of their money.
They have funds that “target” ESG. That means nothing. You guys are like “fincels” lol. Incels about finance
That makes no sense. Anyways.
I saw another comment from you saying that they stopped using DEI and ESG because "most money managers have vastly decreased their priority exposure to ESG/DEI because, newsflash, it’s not profitable, which is all they care about."
But that's only because the terms became too hot.
It's clear they still prioritize this stuff.
https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2024/02/29/blackrock-updated-2024-u-s-proxy-voting-guidelines/
Plus their objective on creating "social change" is all over their website.
You're very clearly too close to all this to see how damaging it is.
Plus even if they are abandoning the idea. (doubtful that Fink is changing course, he's a sociopath) The impacts are still being felt and DEI/ESG will continue to have a large influence for years to come.
Yes they do as they dictate where the money is going. Many clips with Fink explaining this at the WEF.
That’s not how it work. I hate this whole stuff more than anyone, but you’re just not correct here. I’m literally in the industry telling you it’s not happening, so clearly nothing I say will sway you.
So the CEO of black rock says it is happening and you say it is not. Ok
Fink literally said they are no longer even using the term ESG lol. And most money managers have vastly decreased their priority exposure to ESG/DEI because, newsflash, it’s not profitable, which is all they care about.
In any case, blackrock is a money manager. Not an investor. Blackrock has a responsibility to their investors, not to companies.
Of course they’re moving away from ESG and DEI: those are now commonly known loaded terms so their value as jargon to hide behind has been lost. They tried to make up new fluff words like BRIDGE, but YouTube commentators where keyed to their presence as they rolled out, so they’re quitting the cute acronyms entirely and now just obliquely refer to “promoting acceptance” and “creating a socially progressive future”.
Fink and his ilk literally got on stage and told the world that they want to use the money they have control of to “force behaviors”, and we have seen the kind of behaviors they want to force. No amount of “oh but they are walking back those initiatives now” will erase the ill-will they have generated in the last 12 years, and to say “all they care about is money” is a bald-faced lie given how long they stayed this course and how much capital they burnt trying to propagandize for progressive causes before reaching this current point where they are merely beginning to think of dialing down the market manipulation.
You’re nothing but a fibber and an imbecile pathetically attempting to run damage control. If you even are an actual worker in the financial sector, have fun going the same way as stock brokers post-1929.
I don’t think they care about profits when they can just print money.
Ah you work with Blackrock
Yeah opinion invalidated
Sorry we know better bro
That’s makes no sense
It makes perfect sense. You’re shilling for your company and trying to hide what your own CEO has openly admitted that they’re doing, because your job is all you care about.
This sub is unhinged
If we look at Disney as an example, which is heavily into the woke because of the deep investments by Blackrock and Vanguard, then I worry you are wrong.
They have lost billions over the last few years from their movies, their stock has fallen, and yet they show no indication of changing their direction.
The CEO of Blackrock wants to use his investments to, in his words, change people’s behaviors. And he is willing to lose money to do that.
Literally WHAT behaviors??
Hope you’re right. On the one hand im glad we have so many cool indie games that aren’t drowning in this stuff, but on the other hand I miss the old IPs I loved as a kid that have been woke micro transaction nonsense
Yeah I mean I’d be totally lying if I said I didn’t want a well done AAA game with all the modern bells and whistles. But it’s not worth it right now at all.
The problem is they don’t care if you buy their product. Capitalism is long gone. With the out of control, purposeful money creation and somehow this money trickles into black rock and vanguard, they will ESG and DEI invest to push these narratives in every facet of our lives. It’s disgusting so many people seem to not acknowledge what is happening.
I hope you’re right, but then I see like Disney’s massive string of movie failures and they have no intention of stopping
Depends on how you look at failure. They can have movie failures... like Hollywood studios have for decades... so long as they have other successes to make the money every year. World wide mind you not just America. Something the anti-woke crowd seems to forget. There is a big world outside of the US. As a megacorp Disney owns a huge number of entities.
On the other hand you have further and further entrenched interest goups inside large organizations. Diversity managers etc. These groups tend to enlarge themself through the HR department and "initiatives". Couple that with DEI requirements from financial institutions and I doubt this will get better very soon. At least not at the big corporations that are slow to course correct and where there is already some momentum behind it.
Unfortunately, their financial backers have nearly limitless funds. I believe what might work, though, is ironically their own indifference. These devs are not gamers and do not even like gamers or gamer culture. Once their natural laziness and need for attention overwhelm them, they will hopefully begin to implode. In the meantime, true games can still be found in indies and RPG Maker, and of course we always have an unlimited backlog. I have ps1 rpgs I am still working through.
This makes sense if you look at the issue from a logical financial standpoint. Money does talk.
I remain skeptical though, as I have severe doubts it was injected to make money in the first place. I’m of the firm belief it is politically emphasized by those that have the money to “weather the storm” in its efforts.
The pendulum is already beginning to swing back. People are not happy with anything. The only people happy are far-right people screaming -ist/-phobe.
That's exactly the type of answer I expected on this sub. Most people haven't noticed a "new trend", most people don't expect it to end, and most people are buying these games. It's a ridiculous little echo chamber you've got going on here.
Then why are you here?
Algorithm
You’re an imbecile. It has to be deliberate ingorance. There has been a massive market shift because these games are fuckin tanking. There are entire studios that have been shut down. Thousands and thousands of lay offs. SE is currently PURGING their marketing and HR divisions. Most people are in fact not buying these games.
Which games?
Suicide Squad, forspoken, and Alan Wake 2 are three really big ones. Forspoken literally led to the demise of the development studio. SM2 is another one but it was too big to fail and they pulled a bait and switch on their player base. There is an entire curated list on steam. Go on YouTube and watch videos by Cyael, It’s a Gundam, Grums, YellowFlash, Etc. this shit is everywhere dude. Do you live under a rock? It’s literally GamerGate2.
Ah well there's the problem, gamergate was an imaginary event with imaginary consequences, so I'm not too worried about "gamergate 2".
Well that is more ignorance and nonsense from you that isn’t true. You can play pretend with yourself dude I’m not gonna play this game with you.
"Gamergate has been described as a culture war over cultural diversification, artistic recognition, feminism in video games, social criticism in video games, and the social identity of gamers.[27][34][35][36] Supporters stated that it was a social movement. However, as a movement Gamergate had no clearly defined goals, coherent message, or official leaders, making it difficult to define."
This is how the world views Gamergate. It isn't a thing. There were no consequences. It's just something you guys say to each other.
Which games have a plot and characters that were not political?
17 September 2013...
This was the day of release for Grand Theft Auto 5.
Within three days, Gross had exceeded $1B, and made the game the single-fastest selling entertainment product in history; absolutely destroying the records previously long-held by Hollywood Blockbusters.
And when that news came out, the hobby stopped being a target of amused derision - but an ideal target. The grifters smelled money, the Gramsci types realised they had completely overlooked an entire industry, and the old-guard in entertainment desperately tried to bury gaming - which provided enough of a smokescreen for the first wave of problems to move in.
Yeah, it's called Gamergate.
I was looking into the origins of gamer gate the other day and apparently the first incident was gamers opposing Zoe Quinn’s “depression quest”, which wasn’t even political in the traditional sense.
Gamergate didn't start as a "political" movement. People were trying to point out some shitty practices in games journalism. Journalists circled the wagons and said gamers are racist, sexist, etc.
Games “journalism” got slowly infiltrated by a bunch of activist journalism majors over the last 10ish years who honestly don’t care about games and really fancy themselves the next Woodward and Bernstein, only they lack the talent to actually cut it in that sphere. So instead they operate as activists to create drama in the entertainment industry to make political “journalistic” opportunities where none otherwise would exist.
Hit it on the nose, but it goes well outside of just journalists. We now have generations of people who were grifted into a college degree that was only a shadow of what college learning should be. They were programmed to be activists for one side of the traditional western political fence. Not taught to critically think, just manipulated by others that used their insecurities and innocence against them.
I think a lot of people fancy themselves as social justice saviors. The virtue signaling makes them feel good even if they don’t practice what they preach.
Have you heard the Tale of Sarkessian the Grifter? It's not one a Journo would tell you.
This is the answer.
This is where it began. Anita, the game destroyer.
You have to go back before the ascension of the current crop of progressives, which means before 2008 or so
so basically, its obamas fault.
Thanks, Obama.
American "liberals" realized you could win elections based purely off of white people's racial guilt and it's been pretty much non-stop since then.
It is the fault of game "journalists", the putrid feces of humanity. Though obama created the environment for them to rise to power.
I don’t know the answer but I know this all really seemed to start when I actually started enjoying games again. Mostly From Software games which fully ignore all outside drama
FromSoftware games are woke AF. The main deity in Elden Ring is literally trans.
They feature all kinds of marginalized fictional groups that are subject to systematic oppression and bigotry.
They often critique capitalism and patriarchy.
The word is pozzed not woke you boomer, and nobody cares about Elden Rang
I'm 35, and everyone cared about Elden Ring.
My point is that all of their games have left leaning politics. Politics about hierarchy and marginalized groups.
Gamergate
Gamergate. A few retarded gaming journos got together and decided to tell gamers they were all bigots and should change. Other media sided with said journos, gamers sided with themselves.
2016.
Seems like every other week nowadays.
I think the 2000's were the turning point in our culture and this spread into gaming, just took longer than other media formats. The first to be affected were probably the news channels and then it spread to television and so on. So in the 2000's I feel is when we really went hard as a society into the concept of Political Correctness. Also, in the 2000's, the concept of hate speech surfaced.
I don't think these things really existed in the 90's and they sure as hell did not exist in the 80's or 70's, but there were other social controls floating around in those days like the Religious Right who pushed to cancel things like Dungeons and Dragons. I remember because I was there. I didn't just get this from watching Stranger Things. Satanic Panic was a thing in the 80's. It was frowned upon to listen to Heavy Metal and to play Dungeons and Dragons.
Facts! We traded the Bible thumpers for the commies. I was a teen in the 90s I also remember only hippies complained about political correctness and censorship, and the complaint was to stop doing it! My how the tables have turned.
Facts! We traded the Bible thumpers for the commies.
Yep. You nailed it man. I'm glad someone else sees this. It's just fucking stupid how humanity repeats itself. I feel like saying "Hey you dipshits, we've been here before. You are not doing anything new!" And in twenty years from now, when I'm old as fuck, there will be a new group of dipshits who will try and control society in some manner, maybe we will be back to Bible Thumpers, who knows? I bet people throughout history have had to deal with this kind of shit. It should be taught in history that there is ALWAYS one group of people seeking to control the others. Never changes. Fucking Clown World man.
And I'm not against Christians, just to be clear. But some of my fellow Christians are bat shit crazy, and need to be checked.
Ya they were not standard Christians. These were the talk in tongues and D&D is conjuring a demon in your basement type.
Yep, the psycho Christians who take things way too far and need mandatory cannabis edibles. Me to them: "Take your body of Christ. <I give them an edible> There you go, Jesus loves you."
It may seem like we’re nearing the end of a dark tunnel of wokeness, but I find that to be unlikely. A lot of these ideology pushers display too many narcissistic traits for me to become convinced they’ll stop this easily. They’re smug, think they’re untouchable, and the backlash against their blatant disregard for…well, bloody anything legal or sensible.
The Nike lady is a great example, only she got caught.
This is why my retro collection is so strong. If they keep pumping out trash it gives me time to catch up on a decades long backlog.
The mid 2010s. A combination of new tech (smartphone + social media) and people that truly are zealous about their social justice causes.
Most of it is traced back to California where most of our media comes from which is, guess what, a blue state. A very very very blue state full of communists and radicals that have made it literally illegal to misgender fools and are pumping hormones into children. It’s a fuckin cesspool of a state and it’s where these decisions get made. This is why we are having this problem. Because the state that has most of the 3% of the population they pander to climbing the ladder in these dev companies and making these stupid decisions that are tanking previously adored IP’s.
Lmfao
Blatantly lying
Am I blatantly lying or do you just not like what I said? I think it’s that you just don’t like what I said. I’m definitely not lying. There are dozens of videos you can look up spelling this all out all over the internet.
Are you fucking kidding me, no one remembers Anita Sarkeesian, or gamergate?
It wasn't the games first, it was the reviewers and their sponsors.
I know EXACTLY where it started. The ODST game being REQUIRED to play certain maps in Halo 3. This was it. This is when the companies knew they could start injecting politics, over-monetizing, and under delivering on their products.
Gamergate.
Probably like 2014 or so is where you started to see a shift. That was the end of the ps3 and Xbox era of new ips or at least creative stories within existing ips.
When the ps4 and Xbox one dropped the business model was completely different. Suddenly there were few new ideas and it was just remaster after remaster. You could say this started with GTA 5 as it came out so late in the console cycle that people wanted it on the new console. So they saw that as a marketing opportunity to start releasing Skyrim and RE4 everywhere they could.
Then gaming "journalism" changed and everything was about political activism where they would tear about games on Twitter. So companies refused to take risks, only releasing remasters/remakes or any new idea had to be sanitized to appeal to everyone possible, meaning they basically appealed to no one. I don't even think games are all that political, they just try to check every box they can now out of fear of offending someone that they feel bland and non-committal. I think from like 2015 to 2022 was a dark time for gaming where there were very few memorable games because of this approach.
I do think this is changing though. Companies were willing to virtue signal for a while because they thought that's what the markets wanted. A company's sole purpose is to make money and this safe and non committed approach isn't making money. So you might start seeing what happened in the 80s and 90s where these really big companies screwed up by doing usual corporation things and gave way to smaller companies who were willing to take risks. Funny enough, that's how Activision started, now it seems like they have come circle and will eventually give way to someone else.
Gamergate 1.0
Figure out what you consider "political" and what you consider as "apolitical" and then see what is considered an objectively political message. Then go through a list of games and see what falls in that list.
For a list of classic games that very much wear their politics in their sleeves.
-Fallout 1-76 -Final Fantasy 7 -Helldivers 2 -Bioshick 1, 2 and Infinite -The Elder Scrolls -Wolfenstein - Call of Duty franchise (Specifically Modern warfare and Black Ops) - SOCOM
To name a few
Out of curiosity, which politics do the Elder Scrolls engage in?
Skyrim itself deals with a variety of topics.
The entire idea of the Civil War is inherently a political topic. Primarily because war itself is a political topic. But also because it deals with topics of racial and religious suppression. It's not well written, but it is there.
The Dragonborn is, for lack of a better comparison, straight up Jesus. Martin Septim, too, for that matter. A deity-like entity inhabiting the body of a mortal to slave the world.
General racism that exists in the world itself. Khajiit not being allowed in cities, and the Orsimer being in isolationist camps away from the cities too because of the loss of their homeland and wanting to preserve that culture. But also doing so causes a stagnation that leads to their numbers dwindling.
Edit: politics in one form or another always exist in media. Whether or not it is apparent is another topic to focus on, too.
Generally speaking, the political matter of a product isn't noticed for a couple of different reasons.
- it's a topic you agree with, so you don't see it as political
- you weren't looking for it to be political, so you unintentionally blind yourself to it (not an insult, everyone does it)
- and for nostalgic media, you might have been too young to notice the political topics when absorbing the media. Therefore, any subsequent viewership causes you to not notice said politics.
None of what i listed is bad. It's something everyone goes through and it's all just acknowledging that it's there.
But as I mentioned before, the best thing to think about is what is considered "political" in your mind and what isn't considered that?
The Stormcloaks are heavily influenced by rascist, isolationist policies and are being manipulated by an outside, hostile power to increase division within the Empire.
Definitely doesn’t have any real-world equivalents…
When the bore festival that was Gone Home got ridiculously overpraised to virtue signal support for LGBTQ+. This was where I noticed a transition into different focuses in games.
Realistically though I don't think diversity bullshit is running games at all. Games are kinda just sucking these days... better written character inclusions would barely scratch the surface to solving them.
If Biden is elected it will certainly continue and get much worse.
- The answer to all questions is 2016. For some reason, Donald made both sides lose their collective minds.
No. It’s always been this way.
The U.S. department of defense actively funded games like SOCOM during the war on terror. This peaked in the late to mid 2000s. Call of Duty comes to mind.
In the early 2000s after Columbine school shooting, men like Jack Thompson rose to prominence by filing multiple lawsuits against video game companies for promoting violence and in his words, contributing to school shootings.
Eidos’ marketing team repeatedly emphasized Lara Croft’s sexuality against the wishes of her original creators, who repeatedly tried to kill the character off throughout the 90s.
Final Fantasy 7 had a strong anti-corporate environmentalist message in 1997. There was also Metal Gear which had a LOT to say about nuclear arms proliferation and so on.
In 1988, there was debate over whether or not to feature Cyrillic text and a red package for Tetris, a game made in the Soviet Union.
Women’s rights groups protested the game Custer’s Revenge because the objective was to rape a Native American woman in 1982.
And countless things in between these examples.
Never heard of them so you're obviously wrong. Political issues didn't exist 15 years ago when I was in elementary school but now everything has "historical context" and "people advocating for minority groups". Idk why but that stuff just disgusts me🤬
I’m pretty sure the idea that shit was ‘apolitical’ when you were a kid is just due to the fact that we were dumb kids who didn’t understand politics at the time.
And if you go back to it 10 or 20 years later for a rewatch with your more perceptive adult brain, the political issues surrounding the work are often no longer relevant so it appears ‘apolitical’ on a rewatch.
Nah I was in honors classes so I'm pretty smart. I haven't learned anything new since high-school and I'm not gonna start now
I used to play the shit out of America's army growing up cuz it was a free FPS game.
Games have politics in them in some form or another for a long time. Deus Ex, the original Fallouts, Bioshock, all examples of games that tackled political ideas long before current year. It’s just that race and gender was usually something they didn’t touch on because it wasn’t something that got talked about much until the last decade or so.
Games have always been political. Now it’s just they finally are doing social issues too.
I don't know. I think Bioshock Infinite makes some decent commentary on racism and classism, while still being a great game and a good addition to the franchise. Can we say the same about something like ME Andromeda, seemed to completely miss what made people like the original trilogy.
No that's obviously wrong because I like those games therefore they can't be political. Back in the 50s before anyone cared about race everything was so much better and I could live in peace.
Gaming has always been political, you just started paying attention or got radicalized away from the natural at some point.
1997’s final fantasy 7 feature a black man and a physically strong woman as playable characters, the plot is literally about the environmentalists trying to stop a corporation from destroying the planet and the main character has to deprogram his own toxic masculinity in order to find the strength to defeat the ultimate villain, a manifestation of his male inadequacy.
That’s all TEXT
And that game fucking ROCKED!!!
I was literally just thinking this was the answer to write. They didn’t, people just became idiots.
I think FF7 is the exception rather than the rule. I have a really hard time thinking of any woke political games pre 2013
“Woke” is neo-political nonsense used by the right in their culture wars.
Video games have always been at the forefront of representation.
Ok, then ill rephrase for you, I have a hard time thinking of any games with forced diversity pandering to the far Left pre 2013. I usually just say woke as its easier.
I was 15 when Halo 3 released and i dont recall any games that made changes to characters or made decisions based solely on pandering at all. We played Left 4 Dead, SSX Tricky, Halos, Gears of War, Star Wars, COD, Medal of Honor, Zelda, Metroid, etc etc etc. Many of which were diverse with characters but made sense. Now we have games like Battlefield V, Skull and Bones, and Assassins creed Shadows. You would have to be completely blind or born yesterday to not notice a change
Pretty much any game from Japan is woke.
I remember watching Sargon of Akaad vids on YT and him ranting about Anita Sarkeesian for months, if not longer. Probably a decade ago. That’s the first time I remember it being a thing.
That one "game journalist" lady who said something like "see this is why video games are sick they adhere to the male patriarchy"
Really because I haven't seen anything political at all. Must depend on the games you're playing. I don't remember any controversy like this about Elden ring, Baldur's gate, star wars, helldivers, Red Dead Redemption, cyberpunk.
Cyberpunk has a fair bit from what I remember.
And by starwars, I assume your talking about jedi survivor? I'm guessing you havent read the cannon tie in novel. Be grateful and keep it that way.
Haha, I included Jedi Survivor just because it's one of the games I played recently and not saying at all that it was good. Sounds good. I won't read the graphic novel, I probably wouldn't have anyways, but thanks for the advice.
Tv shows were the turning point for me. Early 2010s you have networks trying to expand their audiences and listening to feedback from pockets of fandoms. Not a bad thing in itself, but you had a few shows where it felt like the audience wanted to control how the story played out especially in political topics.
I think TV has always been more political, but most of these audiences have grown up now and bring the same mentality into games.
it's just that gaming used to be a part of a niche nerd culture and then it became mainstream. Political debates are just one aspect of it but not all of it, for example if you are a fallout fan much of the debates do not revolve around real life politics but how the games have become too casual and how the lore has been screwed up. that's just one example.
The waterfall came when Trevor Noah was used to launch Battlefield V and his jokes, banter and gaming knowledge and the awful rewrite of history landed like a dud in a farmer's field now used to crack open walnuts.
Pretty sure it was around the fez guy who may have rigged a competition with his friends to win, and insult a Japanese dev for clout. You could tell there was an undercurrent of political ideology especially since gaming became bigger than Hollywood, and mainstream.
2014 and the gamergate controversy. despite the efforts of the public the social justice warriors actually won that as all of the gaming outlets and studios ended up agreeing with them and everything else followed from that. much to to everyone's lasting regret.
For movies it was somewhere 2014-2018. You can see significant change in Disneys movies in that timeframe. Just compare Frozen to Frozen 2. Gaming is harder to pinpoint but compare The Last of Us to Last of Us 2. Almost same times as Frozen. Gamergate also lines up. Then look at Days Gone when people were mad that its not woke. Coincidences? I think not
Shortly after it began
The only reason there’s a “political discourse” around these games is because they make you angry. 99% of the world do not give a shit.
Conservative gamers are a fucking plague.
Obama. He was the turning point. The media went into overdrive for him, and now every member of the media would openly allow him to defecate in their mouths. Now Obama and Larry fink are trying to change the worlds attitude on everything
Probably Gamergate and when gaming became more mainstream during the Wii/PS3/360 era. Incel white men were no longer the center of attention, thus they began attacking any game with women, Black people, or LGBT in prominent positions.
I think it started when halo 3 sold 14 million copies. Investors started trying to monetize gaming more than just game and dlc sales. That’s when it really picked up attention from the worst kinds of people
For the thousandth time, art has always been political as hell. You only started noticing when content creators made up shit for you to be mad at so they could rage farm views from rubes they convinced to be upset about literally nothing.
Oblivion horse armor opened the gate
You could always just ignore the political discourse. It used to bother me too until I realized people are gonna bitch about anything lol
The drain is slower than we’d like it to be. Companies like Black Rock pay an inordinate amount of money for meeting their Diversity standards, which is how we get shit games that only seem to pander, despite not one of them making good money.
Enough corporations go down and it will eventually end, but it can’t come soon enough.
Whenever Anita what’s her face got popular and started gettin “media”coverage
Once wokeness entered the chat shit got real bad.
Games have always been political, there a work of art and art usually because it is commenting on life is inheritly political. Since we live in a society the politics of said society impact our lives therefore which art talks about hence political.
New vegas was about a war that was far away where they were nation building. Where their was hit and run strikes (Iraq war)
Call of duty heavily took inspiration from the war on terror. (Litterly anything in the middle east since 9/11)
Red dead redemptions story relied on racism of the time and how the US kinda uses force agaisnt people either as the natives with dutch or Mexico or any of the characters. (American imperialism)
Bioshock is litterly shitting on ayn rands grave. (Criqueing a economic system used in most of the world today)
Games have always been political, like any other form of entertainment. There is no "dumb fun" art form, and simplifying it to that, shows a lack of media literacy. Ironic for a "reviewers" sub reddit.
I think call of duty started it and made it mainstream. “I’m changing the world and making sure everyone can enjoy my game” kinda stuff started being said. I remember in cod ww2 you could play as a female paratrooper that’s when I think it took off.
The turning point never happened. Some people just got worse, CD included.
Gamers will think games like bioshock aren’t political but think the hotness of a video game character is
For me, TLOU2 was the first game I really noticed it
It all went overboard for entertainment in general (including movies & TV) after 2016 election
It's not - you guys are the main ones who politicise it.
You can’t escape it.
I literally do, every single day. Really not that hard. In fact, the only time it catches up to me is people like you whining about it.
fr, helldivers 2 sucks bc of this
What happened with helldivers?
You know Helldivers is a game about political satire right? That game is LITERALLY political.
What the fuck are you even going on about? Helldivers 2 is almost universally loved because it returns to the roots of great gaming, not because it follows trends.
He's probably complaining about the overt political Satire the Helldivers 1 and 2 are. Which is an inherently political idea.
Game is great in both its satire and gameplay
Games have always been political. You just don’t like they don’t represent your politics.
This. How long has art been expressive?!
Oh this is cute, you're one of those special folks who think literature has never been political and art has never been about a person or group of people expressing their opinions.
Games have always been political the difference is the gaming community wasn't full of whiny snowflakes who throw a sissy got everytime a game expresses any belief that doesn't conform to their small minded world view.
Yall are pathetic losers and you know it, downvote me all you want this sub is snowflake central.
"No one can make you feel inferior without your own consent." -Eleanor Roosevelt
Translation: Sticks and stones bitch, sticks and stones
Tell me you don’t actually play good games without telling me you don’t actually play good games.
For me, The Last of Us 2. The stark contrast in quality between it and its predecessor, when both were made by the and guy, can only be attributed to ideological/political capture.
That game is legitimately "political virtue signaling checkbox simulator". It was a solid 3 on metacritic until they forcibly curated the reviews by removing low scores, and still it barely topped a 6. And yet, it still won awards. Meaning that not only was the game compromised by ideologues, but so too was the gaming journalism/awards institution itself as well.
I stopped purchasing any pre orders, mtx, or potentially compromised games after that. Completely. Which has effectively forced me to purchase almost exclusively indie games since then. That's how bad the industry has been.
I loved the last of us part 2. I have played it 3 times. I like the plot, and general violence creates violence vibe.
How could you play through that part where Ellie stabs a pregnant woman in the stomach and be like, "This is mid." That game hits hard on all fronts.
Gameplay is fun, plot is captivating, graphics are beautiful, pacing is perfect...
And it's worse than it's predecessor in every single way.
How was it worse?
For me, The Last of Us 2. The stark contrast in quality between it and its predecessor, when both were made by the and guy, can only be attributed to ideological/political capture.
That game is legitimately "political virtue signaling checkbox simulator". It was a solid 3 on metacritic until they forcibly curated the reviews by removing low scores, and still it barely topped a 6. And yet, it still won awards. Meaning that not only was the game compromised by ideologues, but so too was the gaming journalism/awards institution itself as well.
I stopped purchasing any pre orders, mtx, or potentially compromised games after that. Completely. Which has effectively forced me to purchase almost exclusively indie games since then. That's how bad the industry has been.
So the thing that made it bad is the score other people gave it?
What is an example of virtue signaling? Was it when the pregnant lady was stabbed, or when the dog was murdered?
Is this where "politics" is anything left of "gays and non whites are bad and women belong in the kitchen" beliefs?
Games and many other media have always been political. But either their politics were something right wing chuds agreed with so they didn’t think much of it, or the chuds were too dumb to actually understand it (think right wingers being confused as to why Rage Against The Machine isn’t right wing 😂).
The people that are crying about this now are just insecure babies who can’t handle that some game makers might have different ideas about what they want to put in games. It’s like chuds never think a bad game is just a bad game due to bad writing or bad mechanics. No, it’s always gotta be because of “wokeness” and “having diversity”. What a joke.
Yes, when outrage farmers like critical drinker and the rest found out they can consistently make money on idiots
The rise of angry youtubers who can't handle minorities in their vidya
It's drinkers whole shtick too he just goes around policing how many minorities or gay people are in s franchise then calls it woke trash if it doesn't meet what he thinks the cast should look and be like (aka not black or lgbt)
Yeah this is it.
" Just about every single release big or small has to have some kind of political discourse surrounding it."
You seem to have already realized it's not politics being put into games but instead of how people these days discuss games. This sub tries to put a political spin on literally everything, and yet here you are talking about how that's a bad thing? Stop looking at everything through a political viewpoint if you don't want to think about politics; a woman being 'hot' or not in a game has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with culture you mook.
I’m not exactly sure where it started, but I truly believe it’s about to end. Corporations and companies want to make money, and for that simple fact the pendulum will swing back, because these games are not making money.
Which seems obvious to happen when you start making content for the fans you wish you had, but not the fans you have.