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Eurogamer: Assassin's Creed boss discusses "devastating" impact of Shadows' diversity and inclusivity backlash

smh, I'm not going to lie, that shit sounds depressing lol

Thank god I just play games for fun lol

So many complexes exist beyond this its not even funny, from musical artist on games, to clothing brands, to car companies etc If the idea of anything involved with the game is "propaganda" and is stopping you from enjoying the game, you might as well play nothing or something.

I'm not avoiding a game based on anyone's opinion in the work, people are allowed to have opinions and I don't even think I'd be able to game myself if I only played games based on if some developer agreed with all of my views or something lol

Thats just too much Theads. I just want to play games for fun, regardless of the developer's beliefs.

You're indirectly strawmanning my argument.

I enjoy many games. In fact, there are a crap tonne of games I have had so much fun with even this year alone. I don't consider any game including minority representation or any of the politically charged subjects that woke activists value as propaganda.

When I talk about propaganda, I'm talking about literal political propaganda. It's not just about "what the developer believes", it's the intentional warping of the media and structuring it entirely around conveying some political messaging.

Spider-Man 2 is a fantastic example; versus Miles Morales which was far far less propagandistic. In Miles Morales, MM was the lead and the game followed his story as a Spiderverse character and companion to Peter Parker. The writing had a clear goal which was to tell a solid MM story and it delivered whole sale. Whereas with SM2, something awry clearly happened at Insomniac, because the entire game felt like a vehicle for pushing far left values and destroying everything else that went before it. From the absurd side quests, to the complete deconstruction of Peter Parker as a character, to the devs going all in on Mary Jane BS when the audience feedback was clear about them fucking hating those sections in SM1. It was a game clearly made to push what the devs wanted to say to the audience over anything the audience themselves value or care about. And so the game's quality took a massive nose dive because of it.

There are few games like SM2 that release and on review are clear they exist solely as vehicles to push the developer's political agenda. But thankfully there are still massively more games which don't do this. And so as long as we gamers continue to vote with our wallet, we will eventually see the end or at least minimization of woke BS propaganda in the franchises we know and love. We didn't ask for it and we don't fucking want it.
 

TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
When we self-censor in the face of threats, we hand over our power, piece by piece, until freedom and creativity both wither away. We cannot let that happen.
tenor.gif
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
The levels of freedom fighter jargon that person conjured to counter people saying "I'm not buying this game" is truly impressive.

Out of context, this shit sounds like half his village was just shipped off somewhere.
Sounds like he needs to blink twice if he's held hostage to cultural investors.
 
I'd like to point out he invokes diversity by using the lilliest, whitest scholar from Britain with no Japanese heritage to basically sell complete fan fiction about Japan (and was forcibly ejected by the Japanese University he used to work at cause of said inaccurate fan fiction) to not have a Japanese male in a Japanese game advertised to be based in historical accuracy with its fictional elements. And what's up with the Schrodingers "Are we mostly historic and accurate or are we just bullshit" responses? The answer changes depending on the issue, the outlet, and the barometric pressure that day.

So... got to love that selective diversity and we respect cultures. It's almost like it's just PR answers and meaningless....
 
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Japanese people can't catch a break. Hollywood casts a white guy as a "The Last Samurai", then again a white chick as a Japanese android/woman in Ghost in the Shell and now a black dude as a Samurai in a video game. Seeing a pattern for western "creative" freedoms not extending to casting Japanese people as main characters.

Katsumoto was the last Samurai, not Algren.
 

TransTrender

Gold Member
I finally got around to reading this and yikes this dude, and most of the people in the room, are completely delusional and out of touch while respirating on a closed loop of their collective fat gas.
 

rubenburgt

Member
Japanese people can't catch a break. Hollywood casts a white guy as a "The Last Samurai", then again a white chick as a Japanese android/woman in Ghost in the Shell and now a black dude as a Samurai in a video game. Seeing a pattern for western "creative" freedoms not extending to casting Japanese people as main characters.
Not just asian. Gingers as well.

I don't get why they feel the need to target specific groups for race swapping. That's not very inclusive of them.
 

ResurrectedContrarian

Suffers with mild autism
"Assassin's Creed has always been about exploring the full spectrum of human history, and by its very nature, that history is diverse. Staying true to history means embracing the richness of human perspectives - without compromise. For example, in Assassin's Creed Shadows, we highlight figures, both fictional like Naoe, a Japanese woman warrior, and historical, like Yasuke, the African born samurai. While the inclusion of a Black samurai in feudal Japan has sparked questions and even controversy, Naoe, as a fictional character, has also faced scrutiny for her gender.

This is the problem, which we see everywhere now. They think that being "true" to history means: taking whatever the least prominent elements (to them: repressed/hidden) of each era were, and blowing those up as the center of the story.

So by their definition, being true to the past means to focus on and expose its hidden/tertiary/rare elements. That's fidelity to these people. They fundamentally believe the premise that "the truth of a thing (era, even person) is found in its repressed secret."

That's nonsense. It's actually the opposite of being faithful to representing a thing.
  • your grandpa was a kind man who put himself aside and kept up a decent home? Well he probably had some hidden fetish in secret, maybe he dressed up weird in private or made weird drawings or something. If so, that's his truth! Forget his actual life of intentions and ideals, it's his "secret" that matters!

  • World War II saw millions and millions of men die in horrible conditions for their nation? Well okay whatever, but we found that there were a few women in rare situations who stepped up adjacent or close to the front line. So that's the real truth, our movies & games must amplify them up front to the point of great exaggeration, in order to "decenter" the attention on it being specifically men who suffered! Because the repressed part is the sole truth.

  • Going to have an AI researcher character in your game or movie? Even though the major names in AI research are overwhelmingly male (and mildly autistic...), if there are any women at all, you should make sure every casting choice for that is female. Because somehow it's even more "faithful" and true to reality if you take the least element and blow it up centrally, and try to create an impression that ignores the reality of person types and backgrounds.

etc etc I'm so bored of this ideological brain damage that ruins everything. Guess what: the truth of things is their actual truth, on the surface; it's the actual shape of human life, the kinds of people who really did accomplish things, not the rare exceptions. Exceptions are actually exceptions, they are not the hidden truth.
 

EN250

Member
Why it was so difficult for these douches to make a Japanese male the main character?

I'm not asian, not related to one, so this just preference, a game set in Feudal Japan with a Japanese dude with no real ties to the History of that time and place would have been so good, and make Shasuke the Historical link to the game story like Da Vinci was for Ezio

And "but there is a Japanese main character and it's totally the same, she's just a woman you bigot" doesn't really work 🤷‍♂️
 
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