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Are characters personalities and original writing being replaced by unified political views? Is escapism dying?

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ProtoByte

Weeb Underling
You tried books?
Fiction, particularly the sci-fi and fantasy that people on this forum would tend to be drawn to, is completely overrun with progressive propaganda. In fact, it was probably the first battleground in entertainment for this stuff. There isn't a wave of new releases from traditional publishers without most of it being written by women (who almost all express modern feminist leanings without any subtlety in the text), or almost half of it not using the LBGTQ+ tag on your site of choice.

I get that some don't like heavy handed bad story telling, but that's hardly the fault of the politics and more to do with bad writing.
No, it's both. The writers are bad, and so are their politics. Modern leftism is self-contradictory and ultimately leads to lower quality outcomes when put into practice. If those politics inform your writing, your writing is going to have problems.
 

Generic

Member
Art is also a reflection of the times. As a business, that which is repeatedly rejected by the audience will either stop being made or turn niche.

We are political creatures, and art is political. People who say “keep political views out of my games/movies/art” are looking for stories with no humans in it.
What's the politics of Super Smash Bros?
 

Neo_GAF

Banned
Honestly the issue I have is that there is a major overlap between

People who think that multicultural diverse games are good but hate the games that it is in
And people who think that multiculturalism as a whole is bad and hates seeing it in games

The whole discussion feels muddy and unclear to me here and its not helped by the idiots who unironically think progressive ideology (which has been around for all of human history and has played a major role in shaping the West as a culture) is going to cause the fall of the western empire which has also been one of the most powerful for a major chunk of human history. If the West ever collapses, it will be because of other major issues that you guys are also probably complaining about, or some great catastrophe years into the future no one would have predicted.

but more on topic: I think that there are many valid criticisms to be made of modern gaming's storytelling. But 99% of the time I feel like that's just bad writing.

Forspoken being a bad game wasn't because freya was a black woman, it was because the game was terribly written, generic and looked like dogwater (though i'm sure the OP rofif rofif will be the first to disagree on that part. Trust me as long as you are alive, you will be made fun of for liking that game).

Same for Saints Row, while progressiveness did play a big part the game was ultimately a badly made, mediocre GTA clone with a setting and characters that didn't pay much respect to the original, neither were very interesting.

And there are games which still manage to succeed and be critically acclaimed despite the progressive element such as Spiderman 2, Alan Wake 2 (supposedly because even in this thread people are disputing if it is "woke" or not which also goes to show how meaningless the word is) God of War Ragnarok, And Baldur's Gate 3. A very "woke" game will end up taking the GOTY award this year.

on top of that, I find that the biggest irony in all of this are the people who dislike AAA for wokeness or a myriad of other reasons will jump up to recommend indie games, because once again those games are really good and really fun.... They're also arguably more progressive than AAA. Undertale, Deltarune, Celeste, AHiT, Signalis, Night in the Woods, Disco Elysium, and others have pretty upfront progressive stances in them, and for games that don't outwardly display their politics their developers sure as hell will on Twitter. All 7 of those games are critically acclaimed and beloved... So progressive politics doesn't seem to be the problem at all.

I feel like the biggest takeaway here to prove my point is how the anti woke posts here are more concerned on critiquing the ideology itself than critiquing the games which have the ideology, especially considering many people here actually do like said "super woke" games. Either that or vaguely just pointing to Japanese and indie games as a solution. I feel like if wokeness were really the problem it'd reflect in the sales and critical acclaim.

nileseyy-niles-peace-out.gif
very nicely put into words, i absolutely second this. people crying about anything being woke, cant even explain what that means.
same goes "nO PoLiTcS iN mAh GaEmZ". i do believe gamers(®©) are very simple minded smol people, who already have too much at hands with games such as pong/tetris.
 

Guilty_AI

Member
Fiction, particularly the sci-fi and fantasy that people on this forum would tend to be drawn to, is completely overrun with progressive propaganda. In fact, it was probably the first battleground in entertainment for this stuff. There isn't a wave of new releases from traditional publishers without most of it being written by women (who almost all express modern feminist leanings without any subtlety in the text), or almost half of it not using the LBGTQ+ tag on your site of choice.
Thats the problem. Anyone can publish a book nowadays, you don't have to limit yourself to traditional publishers.

512HZqVOzeL._SY445_SX342_.jpg


☝️this for example is peak male fantasy story.
 
I bet, but does that make Plato an authority to dictate how people/artists should make art? - Or any of the other figures? - Should everyone follow their path? Absolutely not. You might choose to perceive Plato's philosophy as the de facto right approach to art, but its equally fair for artists to diverge.
I was critiquing the idea (which we see in the OP and in other posts) that "political art" is a new development. It's hard to get more original in Western thinking than Plato.

I have no idea what you're responding to here.
 

Hypereides

Gold Member
I was critiquing the idea (which we see in the OP and in other posts) that "political art" is a new development. It's hard to get more original in Western thinking than Plato.

I have no idea what you're responding to here.
My bad, I got a bit caught up in my irritation about the belief that politics must permeate every facet and type of art. Disregard that post.
 

tommib

Gold Member
After all the effort in representation, I’m still waiting for a cool male gay character leading a video game. Only thing that comes to mind is bisexual Curtis from Phantasmagoria 2:

phantasmagoria-a-puzzle-of-flesh_15.png


This is from the mid-90s. I think we went back in some ways.
 
It's full spectrum warfare against the people. The leftists who wormed their way into positions of power in the government and corporate worlds don't want you to have any means of escape, or escapism, from their "progressive" propaganda. It's particularly important for them to infiltrate and poison entertainment industries. They went after sports big time and made it unwatchable for a lot of people. We know what happened in Hollywood. Now video games are targeted. They want you totally subjugated and demoralized until you accept their insane vision for the world.

We are going through one of the darkest times in the history of humanity. Leftist tyranny is enabled more than ever by technology. Now with woke AI being introduced, we have never been in greater danger.

But I am heartened by the fact that so many people obviously hate and reject this. If you are one of those sane people, please do not give in. Mock and reject their tripe, even if it means giving up (for now) things that you love, like certain sports or forms of entertainment. Certainly do not spend money on any woke (filled with leftist propaganda) video games. It's hard, but we have to do it.

Happy Thanksgiving! God bless you all. Stay strong. We will win if we do.
 
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