So, I tend to follow a diversity of subreddits with tons of different perspectives, and notice that a gamergate sub I follow (one of the last anti woke right wing holdouts on reddit) is in a tizzy lately over something called "Sweet Baby Inc", which turned out to be a consulting firm that allows corporations make their video games "more woke." Why would corporations do this? Money. They figure it's the current zeitgeist, they dont want to offend anyone as that's a PR nightmare, so they hire these guys to make their video games conform to "woke" ideology.
And honestly....I really have to say....who cares? Like, I don't like moral policing when SJWs come into my fandoms and try to change them to conform to their standards. See how I reacted to the Rammstein situation when the radfems tried to do that last year. But other than that, I just can't be bothered to care all that much about this. Are you really going to boycott like HALF of all video games out there just to be morally pure to some ideology? Jesus christ, that's as bad as the woke people themselves (remember Harry Potter?).
The fact is, a good video game plot is just...a good video game plot. I don't care if it's woke or unwoke. if anything I'm glad woke people are making their own video game franchises rather than trying to ruin old ones that dont conform for the most part. Like Overwatch, everyone screams about overwatch, it's the epitome of woke. You got characters of every race, gender, or sexuality under the sun in that one (Although I admit the third one gets a bit TMI, do we NEED to know this? Leave that crap to the rule 34 people). But you know what? it's a fun game. Or at least it was until they started implementing role queues in OW1, and then discontinued OW1, only to release OW2 which is free to play and infested with microtransactions and is otherwise the same game outside of some balance changes. But that's the thing. When I criticize overwatch, I criticize the game itself. I couldn't care less about how "woke" it is.
Admittedly, there are situations where I do care more. Like Battlefield 5 was kinda cringe. I remember when the battlefield game just prior to BF5 released it's trailer, BF1. It was amazing. Everyone loved it. It was even memed to death vs how "lame" Infinite warfare was in response. Compare this to BF5's trailer. Now....going over the two, what did BF1 do right, which BF5 did wrong? Well, first of all, BF1 was gritty and action fueled. I guess BF5 was actual fueled too, but the color scheme and the like made it look a bit more...fortnite-ish. And it looked less serious. And then there was that odd sniper woman with one arm who NEVER appeared in the game if I recall. People just called it ahistorical. And it was. it didn't even feel like a genuine WWII game, but an AI generated take on a WWII game. It focused on less important and not very iconic battles most people haven't heard of. It had weird historical revisionism like being able to play as a black nazi for the same of inclusivity. And while it wasn't really like, a huge deal, it did break the immersion somewhat. Was this a historical game, or was this a historically revisionist type game? Like compare this to Wolfenstein 2 which came out the year before. Wolfenstein 2 IS an alternative history of WWII where the nazis won and the resistance is still fighting well into the 1960s with fancy sci fi tech that doesnt actually exist. And it does feature some themes that could be considered woke but given we're fighting literal RACISTS (because nazis WERE racist POSes), it kinda worked. Even the somewhat poor taste "punching nazi" jokes kinda worked well given the premise of the game was....killing nazis. Wokeness works when it works, and it doesnt work when it doesn't work. It's all about the narrative, and it's all about the context. But back to BF5. It felt shoehorned in. People wanted a game that was more...historically accurate, and this game did kind of embrace woke elements that were cringe.
Now, at the end of the day, it didnt matter a ton. There was far more I disliked about BF5 than shoehorning "wokeness" into the game. Like...the game play being crap. And them radically changing the formula to make it more like a milsim. And appealing to the weirdo "we need to FORCE people to play as a squad and PUNISH lone wolf players" mentality. And then walking that back as it was understandably unpopular only to be left with a game that had a massive identity conflict and no one knew what it was for (and then 2042 did the opposite thing).
But, the woke elements were still kinda cringe, and the developers responded to criticisms poorly, saying something self righteous like "what am I supposed to tell my daughter?" or something. Uh...how about the truth. That the past was far more racist, sexist, and less inclusive than it is now, but things have changed, yay progress, and btw, this is why the nazis were the bad guys in the first place.But yeah.
or take James Bond. Any time we have someone potentially replacing Daniel Craig, and even replacing Daniel Craig now, we get weird woke people trying to impose their stuff in the franchise. Like what if we had James Bond played by a black guy. I mean, I barely came around to "blonde bond" aka, Daniel Craig despite my hair color naturally being blonde (at least when I was younger, it's a bit darker now), now you wanna change his whole race? Or maybe a gay bond where there's a "bond guy" instead of just bond girls. And it's like....okay, gtfo of here. This is ridiculous. Like, yes, James Bond is NOT the personification of modern 21st century social standards. The dude is very obviously sexist, and this was addressed in goldeneye when the old M retired and we got a woman. And M basically told him straight up "you're a sexist misogynist dinosaur" and "a relic of the cold war". Now, in the craig era, they kinda walked this back somewhat. If anything I kinda think some elements of the craig era bond went in a weird direction that I dont approve of (but mostly, not for "woke" reasons, I just disliked what "no time to die" did to bond's legacy in this wierd alternate revisiting of the old in a new way), and most changes were positive (except for the ones I mentioned). But that said, some changes also weren't. I'm kinda dodging exactly what as it's spoilers of the movie. Although let's face it, the movie is over 2 years old, so I'll just say it.
Basically Bond becomes a family man, has a kid, and then sacrifices himself at the end of the movie.
Yeah....it's just so un-Bond-like, right? Yeah.
Anyway, that's why I didn't like that. The fact is, Ian Fleming's Bond has certain characteristics, and I dispute how much he should be changed for modern audiences. Quitting smoking? Not a big deal. Being slightly less sexist, also not a big deal. No one wants Daniel Craig slapping women like Sean Connery did back in the day. So there are some socially acceptable changes. but changing his race? His sexuality? Or other core aspects of his identity like what I censored above? Ugh, can we NOT?!
Or Rammstein. Now, Rammstein is a relatively left wing band. They've classified themselves as leftist before with the song "Links 234", and a lot of their work has a very obvious left wing political bias. Amerika criticizes American foreign policy and cultural hegemony, Deutschland features a black woman playing "germany" itself (including said woman in a nazi uniform when that era was shown, contrast this with BF5), Auslander and Till's solo Entre Dos Tierras has anti colonial themes. Mein Land and Angst criticize nationalism and anti immigration sentiments, etc. They've always been political and are consistently left.
And when it comes from a place of sincerity, it's good work. Like, again, I'm not opposed to wokeness in art when it works. And when they, under their own artistic direction, decide to make a "woke" song or music video, it normally works, and it looks and sounds awesome.
But then when screaming SJWs are canceling them, and Till's solo work, because it's not politically correct enough to their form of feminism....I have issues with that. Because not everything has to conform to wokeness. A lot of art works with wokeness, but some of it doesn't. And that's okay. Not everything has to conform all of the time, but SJWs want to censor it where it does, and that's where my issues come in.
Going back to gaming, video game communities also have issues with wokeness. I know in Halo (and let's face it, I recently saw COD do something similar), they'll just randomly give you BLM or black history month or juneteenth related character customization options. Halo, around the time they did this, also removed a police customization option (which was related to one of the halo games) because some people were using it to virtue signal support for police, ya know, blue lives matter and that crap. Well....at one point I just dropped a comment on a forum saying I wish they'd just keep politics out of the games and they freaking temp banned me for it. When I pushed back with the mods they said self righteous bullcrap like "human rights aren't political". Uh yes, they quite literally are. But yeah. That's the thing about SJWs and "wokeness", they try to portray their stuff as above politics and believe in just freaking silencing anyone who goes against their narratives. And that's a far bigger issue than wokeness in games. SJWs have a right to express themselves and be as woke as they want. They can put whatever woke themes they want in their games or other media. My big issue with them is them banning anyone who disagrees with them as it violates the principles of free speech.
As I see it, woke art and woke media has a right to exist in the marketplace of ideas. And the literal market place for that matter. And the reason a lot of companies go for this stuff is it is the zeitgeist and generally speaking, the cost of not having it is worse than the cost of having it, especially since those who dont have it often come under fire for daring go against the current cultural thing. So a lot of companies play it safe.
Sometimes, it works. Sometimes it's not a bad thing at all. And they're often just responding to what customers seem to want. That's fine. Honestly, I think the market is, on the whole, a good arbiter of deciding what works and what doesn't. I mean remember that cringey ghostbusters movie with an all female cast? Yeah, that bombed if I recall. Because it seemed to push an agenda while being a crappy movie. Or take that "velma" remake where velma from scooby doo was like some sort of black lesbian or something who constantly ripped on white people in the show. it was TERRIBLE. And I never heard about it since. Because no one watched it probably. So yeah, the market does police stuff naturally by punishing people who push bad media, while rewarding good media. And not all woke media is bad. And even when wokeness is a concern, like BF5, it's often so minor it doesnt matter in practice. Are you really looking at the race or gender of the character models you're shooting at? Probably not. They all look the same to me from a distance. As I said, BF5 had a lot more wrong with it than "wokeness". So did Overwatch over time. Really, that game was originally a 10/10 from me (which is rare for me), despite all the "wokeness", because it was just such a good game. And then they botched it from a game play perspective to me.
And at the end of the day, I really have to ask, why do people care all that much about any of this. like, as you can tell, I have opinions, but I still consume a lot of media regardless. Why? Because normally wokeness doesnt have much of an impact on whether something is good or enjoyable. it is a tangental issue at best. What matters is the quality of the game play, or the balance, or the narrative, or if the core feedback loop is fun. Wokeness only becomes a huge issue when it really is so in your face that it gets in the way of the enjoyment otherwise, which for me, it needs to basically be "it's main point". Like, again, velma, or ghostbusters. Because without wokeness you basically don't even have a show there.
While I admit, if I had to choose between the pre 2016 and post 2016 (since this is when "wokeness" really took off it seems) cultural FEEL, I'd take pre any day of the week. I dont really like wokeness at all. But at the end of the day, does it matter? If all wokeness disappeared tomorrow, would your life be any better? Probably not. Quite frankly, to go back to what I wrote last night, being forced to work 40+ hours a week and issues related to work like systemic poverty probably have more impact on your ability to enjoy video games in the first place. because every hour spent working is an hour not spent having fun. So let's face it. I don't know why people get to animated about this stuff. Yes, I was animated enough to write an article on it, but what issues HAVENT i written some sort of article on? Not many that I can recall.
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