Is the gaming community too negative?

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You're welcome, it took me a long time to finally understand why the "woke" movement turned me off so much even though I would normally feel more supportive for equal rights. It's not so much the movement itself, it's seeing these very important things become fadish and trendy by the same people who I always knew, at least on some level, never truely gave a damn about my rights and still don't whenever they dismiss my concerns about feeling exploited by the movement by both sides.

I could never quite put my finger on that feeling of doubt about "woke" politics I had for so long but now I at least think understand.

But that said I know from personal experience just how nasty gamers can be with racism, sexism, and homophobia. I even came to realize that one of my favorite animators on YouTube was pretty racist in her criticism of Resident Evil 5 (a game set in Africa)

The ironic thing is when the game was first announced it faced accusations of racism in the media due to being set in Africa, but a team of investigators was called in and they reported that there was nothing actually racist about the game and that it had themes of anti-colonialism.

But that seemed to backfire and it went from angry SJWs complaining of how racist the game was to angry white gamers (like this animator named Shadowleggy) complaining that this game wasn't racist enough.


I heard all these absurd criticisms like the fact that the zombies were not all black people (they didnt want to hear that Africa is a pretty diverse place and that the caucasian and arab-looking zombies weren't THAT far outside the realm of possibility) to the appearance of the leading female character Sheva Alomar and how she "didnt look African enough" because of her flat hair tied in a ponytail or her light brown skin.


There's just no pleasing gamers anymore.

I'll admit, I was always bit confused by this, because it was always clear that you're very egalitarian and sympathetic to much of what gets lumped together as woke, but also deeply critical of wokeism (if such a thing can even be coherently defined).

But, rejecting the pandering and the fairweather allies and worrying about backlash all seem like perfectly valid criticisms, especially once you start unpacking everything that gets lumped together as woke and examining the parts that are genuinely problematic, vs. the ones that probably aren't problems.



There's no pleasing any community that's too big. You start a genre-defining band and get some attention, after a few releases you're going to have people who just want the first album remade over and over again, you have people who want the band to progress in an increasingly polished and accessible direction, you have people who want more experimentation and less accessible releases...

...and no matter what you do with your next album a portion of your fanbase will find reasons to say the new album is crap, including some of the people who expressed the preference you followed.

Yeah that's exactly what happened to the Resident Evil franchise.

I just find the racial issues of the fifth game amusing because I remember the game getting so unfairly critized by both sides and all because somebody at Capcom thought it would be creative to have a horror game set in Africa.

And YET it was one of Capcom's highest selling games for many years. It couldnt have been that horrible if these haters were still playing it for so many years.


Anyways I guess I did come across as a bit of an oxymoron with the way I was ranting about the woke movement even though I support much of what it stands for.

What the movement should have been about isn't what disturbed me about it, and the way the GOP bashes it is I strongly strongly disagree with too. I guess I just wasn't a fan of seeing how aggressive it got or how big corporations were exploiting the fight for equal rights. Like a company seeling both Pride flags and Trump 20/20 flags.

Though I guess I just need to try to understand that it's really all been a reaction to Trumpism which is proving to be just as terrifying of a political movement as fascism was.

We all know the saying about "Lesser of two evils". A hard choice but I'd prefer living in a future where Google censors information and celebrities get their reputations and careers ruined for saying the wrong thing than a world where everyone is forced to accept Donald Trump as "the chosen one" or else.

I think it's fair to have disagreements over tactics with people that share a basic goal. It's always possible that some bloc of people you sorta/mostly agree with on some issues might pursue them in a way that you're skeptical of, and it's reasonable for that to cause one to either hesitate with support, or offer criticism.

In some cases one might accept a diversity of tactics, but in depending on the details one might have to conclude a certain tactic or approach goes too far.

But, at the same time, one's flexibility to associate/not associate sometimes is affected by the stakes. If it's 1940 and scary moustache dude has just invaded, and the Leninists are the only organized resistance, you might need to join the Leninists, even if you see big moustache dude as just the red version of what little moustache dude is bringing.

Or vice-versa, kicking Stalin out might just be a good enough goal that you'll wear some lightning bolts for awhile and tell yourself that you'll take them off and fight against the little moustache who gave you them once Stalin is out of your country.

Obviously, I hate both of those moustaches and would be loath to join either, but I can place myself in the position of someone who both wants to survive and has a specific enemy that they believe has to be priority #1.

But usually the stakes aren't that high, they're not nearly there yet.

That said, I don't see Trumpism going away and I do see a portion of them desiring to raise the stakes quite a bit, so long as they get to wield power. Ironically, they're happy to do most of the things people worry the left will do, in terms of cancel culture and censorship, they'll just have different targets.

Also, from what I've seen very few celebrities who have had their careers 'by wokeism' have stayed genuinely impacted, unless we include abusive criminals who faced significant prison terms related to their actions. At least as far as I know, I'm always open to being corrected. I believe the bigger problem was abusive people having their behaviour excused because they were powerful or a 'creative genius', or both.

Dace Chappelle's gotten an entire extra phase of his career complaining about how he's been cancelled. Cancelled by whom exactly? It's often a promotional technique for right wing provocateurs, to claim they've been cancelled. In particular, with big names, they're often given extra leeway on platforms compared to a regular user.

I feel like a lot of our shared concerns about the right don't go away in the foreseeable future, even if Trump dies Trumpism or whatever we might call it will be a problem, meanwhile I feel like censorship among liberals and the left is an ongoing discussion and one where we're constantly learning and reevaluating based on what we see. The pendulum swung in one direction as a reaction to social changes, but it will swing back in the other over time, especially if there's identifiable negative consequences.

I hope these times become less interesting.

You know something? I think you are absolutely correct about the cancel culture thing. The celebrities who were subjected to it are still famous and still raking in more wealth than they deserve. Even rapists and pedophiles like Bill Cosby and Kevin Spacey (they aren't even in prison).

And you are also right that Trumpism is not going away, even if Trump goes to prison for the rest of his life or drops tomorrow the damage to our society is done. And it's probably going to get a lot worse too.

But I stand by my opinion that the problems in the US started long before Trump was ever president. One could argue that this country has been in a steady downhill decline since 9/11 or even the Vietnam War. In a way Trump is used like a scapegoat even though much of this turmoil really is his fault.

For a long time I really hated my country and felt angry and disillusioned (it started when I first saw the photos of what our soldiers were doing to Iraqi POWs online.)

But now I just feel despair and sad for the direction we are headed in. It feels like a weird repeat of Germany in the 1930's. What always made me feel relatable sympathy for the Germans in that time was realizing that they really weren't that different from us or the British even though we like to paint them as these inhumane monsters for what the Nazis did. But the Germans were basically just angry at the world for the mess they were in after losing World War 1 and all it took was one megalomaniac with a weird mustache to feed into their anger.


It's the same sort of thing the US is repeating now, minus the mustache. I'm not saying its going to be exactly like the Nazis but whatever it is will be scary.

There are some issues in society about politics or whatever. I also support their criticism
This devastated atmosphere is a victim of moderate reforms, which I deplore but cannot imagine in a less costly way.
I used to be a supporter of the radical revolution. But I'm getting lost now.
Maybe you can try teaming up with veteran players to wrestle with those guys。
The wheels of history will destroy everything old, and I have nowhere to run

Many people whom we assumed were "canceled" still have careers. Look at Sia, for example. People think she was canceled after Music, but she still has a career and she's still producing music. A lot of the people who did genuinely lose their careers were people who deserved it (like Harvey Weinstein for example).

As for video games...I feel like by and large, Gamergate really only affected the Western gaming community in the long-term. It was rather minor in Japan and didn't really lead to long-term changes. The closest I could find to a Japanese game being affected was Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 not being released in the West - the developers cited "cultural differences". Sexualized female characters are definitely still a thing in Japan, but they seem to be fast going extinct (or at least becoming much less prominent) in the West. I also feel like in terms of Western games, indie games tend to be less divisive among gamers because there's less "pandering".

Honestly, I don't get why gamers get so agitated when they see a non-sexualized female character, a black character, or an LGBT character in video games. It's not like those things only started appearing in video games because of Gamergate. Even now, I feel like they exaggerate the alleged "wokeness". I mean, it's not like every female video game character looks like Abby from The Last of Us 2.

I actually agree. Although LGBTQ characters were a rarity back in the day there were plenty of video games that had both leading female characters and people of color. Going back to the Sega Genesis days even with games like Streets of Rage.

I don't really get the big deal about it. I get that some gamers themselves are nasty pieces of work but the developers who make most of these games don't seem Trump-loving bigots. I've played plenty of video games with strong leading ladies who weren't overly sexualized like Heather Mason from Silent Hill 3 or Jennifer from Remothered: Broken Porcelain.

Also even if a character is slightly sexualized or stereotyped I would still prefer a flawed character to one who is "perfect".

I mean, outside of the political side of things, toxicity is really prevalent in just about every competitive multiplayer game. I play overwatch and some of the playerbase says its starting to resemble siege, which is known for its toxicity.

Probably, that is why I stick to one player RPG's and any games that do not involve interacting so much with actual other people. Cause video games is me time and I don't want to actually have to interact with real people, just want to play my game in peace and enjoy it. So yeah I am not so much into multiplayer games, though I did play league of legends for a while. but idk it has changed and I sliced one of my fingers on accident(middle finger on my right hand) and since then and it still has like numb scarred part after healing up that makes it hard to play that game, but I was losing interest in it even before f*****g up my finger so I am not that upset about it.

I remember when I was part of a gaming forum - nearly two decades ago now, and people used to complain how the games they were playing were boring, but then they'd buy the latest releases brand new and assumedly at retail price.

There were a lot of complainers on that forum.

Nintendo? Yes.