This may seem conspiratorial and I know gamer chuds will be gamer chudding, but I’m thinking particularly about The Last of Us II and Grand Theft Auto 6. Muh feminazis are ruining muh games, gamergate etc. Abby being the focal point of transphobic and misogynistic jabs, and GTA 6 going “woke” by including a new female playable character. Hear me out: similarly to how the feds love stoking “culture war” tensions and issues to distract from and defang revolutionary movements, unionizing, etc. the misogynistic, racist and transphobic reaction to modern gaming does a hell of a job from distracting left-leaning people from talking about issues like crunch and overwork in games development, sexual harassment and assault in the industry, and more insidious messaging within games themselves – The Last of Us II is thinly veiled Zionist apologia for instance. Leftist media criticism becomes hyperfocused on countering braindead chud arguments rather than on tackling systemic issues within the industry as well as the pro-corporate, pro-military, pro-violence and pro-police themes of many games.
This is not to say that fighting the big -phobias and -isms is not important, it absolutely is. It just seems quite fortuitous for industry “leaders” that leftist critics are preoccupied with dealing with nonsense chuddery. There may be some corporate subterfuge going on, too. GTA 6 had a big data leak that showed pre-alpha footage from the game, and gamers round the web began making absolutely ignorant comments about how “shit” it looks, how poor it seems to run, and nit-picking really dumb stuff. On my mind because Stephanie Sterling dropped a vid on it very recently, and when she was reading off some of the reddit posts bad-mouthing the pre-alpha footage it just read as so absolutely shallow, so grotesquely robotic, that the bot detecting hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Rockstar’s competitors could benefit from people dismissing their new game before it even drops because it “looks like shit”, is what I’m saying.
Like I said, maybe conspiratorial nonsense on my part. Gamers are gamers after all. Something about gamer outrage just feels so plastic and artificial especially recently that I’m not sure how to feel about it.
People shitting on GTA 6 being woke for having a female protaginist because “GTA is about offending as many people as possible” don’t know shit about GTA, Yk GTA 5 story did include a black protagonist escaping the hood, dealing with racism, the feds involving in and making references about torturing scummy stuff manipulating the market and everything else the feds do, and there was the whole speech in the end of the game about capitalism, Hell the entire series is a parody of capitalist America, GTA San Andreas’s first cutscene was about police brutality on black men, the GTA was always “woke” and the new game is just no different than the ones before it, Also, I am not making up Rockstar to be this Marxist Leninist game company since they unironically do the same shit they parody, Like if I remember correctly the studio in the UK had a tax cut thing reduced for “British representation in media”
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Another thing that disgusts me is the horrendous transphobic representation in GTA V, it was removed but it still felt out of place and tasteless, there was no joke other than “Haha he’s a man… DRESSED AS A WOMAN 😱😱😱” it was just a few NPCs and nothing related to the story still bad though.
maybe censor the picture, the transphobia could be triggering.
I can’t believe that was put in the game! Usually libs are better about making their bigotry below the surface.
I’ll censor the pics next time, yeah it makes me uncomfortable like I feel this is how people imagine me whenever I feel comfort wearing what I like, like I feel very nice wearing my dress but this picture appears in my mind and I have to look in the mirror for a long idk but it’s not nice
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GTA has always been targeted towards “hypermasculine” teenage boys. The female and lgbtq representation is awful in those games, idk why anyone would expect otherwise.
There are definitely actual real living non-imaginary unironic humans with ridiculous far-right takes, but at this point, I would be surprised if corporations and/or various three-letter agencies weren’t involved with spreading these extremely reactionary ideas
(The Last of Us 2 is Zionist propaganda? I have basically no idea what the story is except that I think there’s a giraffe in it)
(The Last of Us 2 is Zionist propaganda? I have basically no idea what the story is except that I think there’s a giraffe in it)
What the fuck happened to the game? I played the first one long ago but didn’t finish it and I don’t remember this kind of shit.
A giraffe?!?! God damn. Is there NO END to what crap the sjws wont shove down our hot moist throats?
they just can’t help themselves from putting those long necked abominations everywhere!!1
holy shit its real
welp imma head out
sizable yikes
wow what a shitshow. glad i didn’t get the second game.
Tangential but Zoe Quinn, the main target of Gamergate harassment, is a comrade. I had the pleasure of being in a comment thread convo with them in a Marxist gaming group on Facebook a while ago. They seemed like they were doing better after the ire dissipated.
i wouldn’t be surprised, but man gamers are some of the shittiest, most reactionary people. you have to keep in mind that, after settler-colonialism whites destroyed or broke off from their own separate european cultures and had to create some soupy culture of superiority to justify settler relations. in the modern day this manifests as “nerd” culture, which itself is a way to paint mostly-white “nerds” as the victims within the broader context of settler-colonialism. nerdiness or being a gamer is honestly part of the white identity at this point, and it’s why virtually any gaming subreddit, twitch stream, and youtube channel is chock full of reactionary bullshit exactly like what you describe. is there some psyop going on? maybe, but it wouldn’t have to be i don’t think.
as far as people shitting on pre-alpha footage, i mean everyone is so used to overblown marketing that makes the game look 3x better than it will at release and often includes gameplay elements not even present in the final game, so again i’m not surprised that a bunch of not-self-aware chuds who fall prey to marketing would experience a big disconnect and not be able to put leaks in the context of a development process. after all, like you said, these people usually don’t care about things like crunch or the development process in general.
how is last of us 2 zionist apologia? never played it before, am curious
https://www.vice.com/en/article/bv8da4/the-not-so-hidden-israeli-politics-of-the-last-of-us-part-ii This is a really good article on TLOU2, it propagates a sort of centrist “violence bad” line with very clear allegorical Palestinian-Israeli ‘conflict’ as a driving theme, with the ultimate point coming out in favor of status quo occupation. It’s not so blatant as to have IDF soldiers save the day or anything, but that’s the insidious thing about a lot of propaganda.
And yeah I definitely see your point. Nerd culture and incel culture are borne of the same settler-bullied-by-other-settlers shit, and it has just become a cesspool of chuds attempting to reclaim and reaffirm the benefits that whiteness grants them
i see, i see. i knew about the major plot points through cultural osmosis, but it makes sense that it mirrors this sort of “there are two sides to every story that are both equal” in relation to settler-colonialism lol. also want to reflect on all the calls for nonviolence (honestly thinking things like undertale, as beloved as it is), despite the fact that relations as they are now are obviously violent in and of themselves. wild, thanks for sharing; did not expect anything like that from vice lol
and yeah, at the same time i see your point too. we all know there’s so much heavy-handedness when it comes to any depiction of western military or intelligence agencies in literally any media, and i’m sure there are “ex-CIA” narrative instructors or some shit for major titles like call of duty and battlefield. i think the important thing is that, even when things are heavy-handed, they play to the already-existing material interests of whiteness rather than playing an entirely new tune.
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You are not wrong. However. It is a combination of deliberate advertising (think of the leaks in gaming and things going viral), and people with a lot of bag to make from cynically crying about wokeness.
There is MILLIONS of dollars to be made by being an agrieved white gamer. So it’s a two pronged kind of advertising. Even progressive advertising is a third prong.
However. The solution is both SIMPLE and likely impossible. Bigots give up their hate. Stop letting diversity in media trigger them into a hissy fit. If the bigot baiting cant work, then corporate wont waste resources using it.
Easy to spell out what must be done. Much harder to make it happen.
However. The solution is both SIMPLE and likely impossible. Bigots give up their hate. Stop letting diversity in media trigger them into a hissy fit. If the bigot baiting cant work, then corporate wont waste resources using it.
Media will always find a couple of idiots yo get outraged about. Or directly use sockpuppet accounts to post bigotry. Its time to ignore media which focuses on this fake conflict.
I mean… I think the conflict IS real. I mean things legislatively HAS happened that was bold faced based on bigotry. But I think that advertising is pumping it up needlessly.
so much of the video game industry has been absolutely captivatedbty far right forces. even steven bannon has had his own roles in this, including funding farright reactionaries and troll farms within video game culture. it’s also important to note that the video game industry is a large usa industry, and has been subject to exploitation by the national security state, i.e. cod being used as a military recruitment tool. seals shooting up armenians in socom games, etc.
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You make an interesting point, it makes a disturbing amount of sense for culture war controversy to be manufactured in order to distract from far more insidious messaging in video games.
While reading that part I couldn’t help but think about how very recently, Insomniac’s Spider-Man game had been released on PC and was getting attention in the media again after a long time. And the big controversy around it was about how PC players were modding pride flags out from the game.
In the end the mods were banned from big file hosting sites and everyone supposedly lives happily ever after. All while Marvel’s Spider-Man gets away scot-free for being a massive copaganda piece that takes the most working class comic book character out there and turns him into a cop buddy.
It’s not just games, movies also, when main character is female or other race than white or LGBT, they foam at mouth about feminism, propaganda etc, they started to hate MCU not for right reasons, because it’s propaganda, but because they make more and more main female characters. Then they go and complain about censoring swastikas in WW2 games, censoring history and claiming that developers ‘‘don’t have balls anymore’’.
Meanwhile nothing about blatant COD propaganda and other bullshit
Gaming is an expensive treat that keeps getting more expensive, ofc most able to do it are fash
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