Funny events in anti-woke world

[Ag3ma]

However, why is the company trying to get the user that just created a list on Steam banned?

The list has obviously been created by a user hostile to that company as a means to encourage attacks on the company. This potentially has negative implications for sales of games the company has been involved with, and thus also willingness of devs to work with that company in future which could cause it significant harm.

In a wider sense, people can be allowed to campaign and there's lots of internet out there to do so. But in terms of the Steam platform specifically, it should protect both gamers and developers: the company can make a case that this is a form of harassment and an inappropriate use of the platform.

 

[Ag3ma]

It's hard to argue the first group is refusing to accept the artistic freedoms of studios, when what they're doing is informing interested consumers which works use a certain consulting firm.

Please tell me that you didn't write that with a straight face.

 

[Silvanus]

You can't get a felony for merely using a pronoun, which is what the Twitter post said. That is a lie.

You said pronouns weren't even covered. That was a lie.

 

[BrawlMan]

Again, you don't know what those terms mean.

In other words: always you. Glad you're halfway talking about yourself as usual.

On to more important matters now. Here's actual great news.

Florida’s ‘Stop WOKE Act’ commits a ‘First Amendment sin,’ appeals court says in ruling that blocks part of the bill | CNN Politics

A federal appeals court upheld a lower court’s ruling that part of Florida’s anti-“woke” law infringes on the free speech rights of employers.

amp.cnn.com

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

One might argue that they are a) refusing to accept the artistic freedoms of studios and b) engaging in cancel culture by trying to attack a consultancy firm.

Because the reality is that almost no-one gives a shit about artistic freedoms and cancelling. They're just words vapidly hurled into the void whenever someone wants to attack what their opponents do despite being exactly the same tactics they'll employ themselves.

It's all part of the sad, wet, fart of performative political debate, where oh so many try to hide their grubby partisanship under dishonest appeals to values they either don't understand or respect.

a) There is no artistry in getting people in to try and make sure your game offends as few people as possible by making it more bland and less demographically targeted. This is the equivalent of calling by the numbers dreck like Metal Gear Survive works of artistic expression. Arguing what is being done by certain consultancies is art is like arguing the Council of Trent were doing art by adding clothes to paintings and Fig leaves to statues and other paintings.

b) Companies aren't people no matter how much the law might want them to be and if people want to argue it is then it's coming from people who were pro cancelling Hogwarts Legacy so to that I say, don't blame us players, blame the game and rules we were told we had to to play by and learned how to use them.

c) Kind of hilarious how racist and bigoted some of the employees of Sweet Baby Inc can be shown to have been in the past.

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

The list has obviously been created by a user hostile to that company as a means to encourage attacks on the company. This potentially has negative implications for sales of games the company has been involved with, and thus also willingness of devs to work with that company in future which could cause it significant harm.

In a wider sense, people can be allowed to campaign and there's lots of internet out there to do so. But in terms of the Steam platform specifically, it should protect both gamers and developers: the company can make a case that this is a form of harassment and an inappropriate use of the platform.

Oh you mean like companies would immediately then use on curators that say list if a game contains microtransactions or if their games have certain DRM or data collection tools or even run at 30fps not 60fps.

 

[bluegate]

a) There is no artistry in getting people in to try and make sure your game offends as few people as possible

If an artist's wish is to offend as little people as possible with their work....

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

If an artist's wish is to offend as little people as possible with their work....

At this stage, most people who are artists have accepted they will piss off some-one. It's big corpos who are trying to make the ultimate mass appeal slop these days.

 

[Ag3ma]

a) There is no artistry in getting people in to try and make sure your game offends as few people as possible by making it more bland and less demographically targeted. This is the equivalent of calling by the numbers dreck like Metal Gear Survive works of artistic expression. Arguing what is being done by certain consultancies is art is like arguing the Council of Trent were doing art by adding clothes to paintings and Fig leaves to statues and other paintings.

Please tell me that you didn't write that with a straight face.

I'm slightly concerned about what you think art is. Mass-consumption pop music is art. Mass-consumption graphic design is art. Lazy iteration 14 of whatever computer game or movie franchise is art. Creators can do what the fuck they like, and if they want to make derivative junk that will sell an extra 10% or 1000%, they will. They already do. Computer games are a business, and people make and release them because people pay for them. There will be barely a game out there that won't have made sacrifices to some sort of notional ideal because someone told the devs "Yeah, you can do that, but the players will hate it". Even if it's just the difficulty setting or the UI.

You are perhaps confused about how consultancies work. Consultants are brought in by companies to provide guidance. The point being, the consultancy is meeting the creative intent of the creators, who also have the freedom to reject their advice. It ain't censorship, as your analogy so clumsily implies.

b) Companies aren't people no matter how much the law might want them to be and if people want to argue it is then it's coming from people who were pro cancelling Hogwarts Legacy so to that I say, don't blame us players, blame the game and rules we were told we had to to play by and learned how to use them.

This is precisely the sort of godawful bullshit moralising I meant.

You just hate equality, diversity etc. and you want to win. And yet even at the point you try the gambit of accepting this with "Yeah, okay, I'm doing that too" you're still trying to slip in that little moralising "because they did it to me first." Oh god, it's so weak and so funny.

 

[Ag3ma]

Oh you mean like companies would immediately then use on curators that say list if a game contains microtransactions or if their games have certain DRM or data collection tools or even run at 30fps not 60fps.

That's not the same thing, though.

If someone creates a list of games with microtransactions, DRM etc., it's not going to pick on one, specific company (unless by some chance that company is the sole provider of games with that feature). You surely understand how that is going to be different from naming and shaming a specific company.

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

Please tell me that you didn't write that with a straight face.

I'm slightly concerned about what you think art is. Mass-consumption pop music is art. Mass-consumption graphic design is art. Lazy iteration 14 of whatever computer game or movie franchise is art. Creators can do what the fuck they like, and if they want to make derivative junk that will sell an extra 10% or 1000%, they will. They already do. Computer games are a business, and people make and release them because people pay for them. There will be barely a game out there that won't have made sacrifices to some sort of notional ideal because someone told the devs "Yeah, you can do that, but the players will hate it". Even if it's just the difficulty setting or the UI.

You are perhaps confused about how consultancies work. Consultants are brought in by companies to provide guidance. The point being, the consultancy is meeting the creative intent of the creators, who also have the freedom to reject their advice. It ain't censorship, as your analogy so clumsily implies.

So by that logic AI art is still art and has artistic merit and value right?


Or the corpo suits hire them and tell the devs they have to listen and implement their ideas because it will sell better.

This is precisely the sort of godawful bullshit moralising I meant.

You just hate equality, diversity etc. and you want to win. And yet even at the point you try the gambit of accepting this with "Yeah, okay, I'm doing that too" you're still trying to slip in that little moralising "because they did it to me first." Oh god, it's so weak and so funny.

If by equality, diversity etc you mean changing a story about escaped Apartheid rulers who want to recreate said segregation to actually be about a Nazi Scientist keeping his plan to change the world the same with brainwashed clones of himself but then decides "Oh right we need more diversity" so suddenly ends up having among others an evil black woman nazi clone then yes, you are right because that shit is stupid. Also yeh it's pointing out the hypocrisy in people being mad that this is "cancelling people" from people who have for years been trying to have people cancelled, turns out they don't like it back but turnabout is fair play and maybe, just maybe people will learn a lesson from this, though I highly doubt it unfortunately.

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

That's not the same thing, though.

If someone creates a list of games with microtransactions, DRM etc., it's not going to pick on one, specific company (unless by some chance that company is the sole provider of games with that feature). You surely understand how that is going to be different from naming and shaming a specific company.

yes it is. Red Shell is a company.
Denuvo is a company.
So are others lol

 

[Phoenixmgs]

The list has obviously been created by a user hostile to that company as a means to encourage attacks on the company. This potentially has negative implications for sales of games the company has been involved with, and thus also willingness of devs to work with that company in future which could cause it significant harm.

In a wider sense, people can be allowed to campaign and there's lots of internet out there to do so. But in terms of the Steam platform specifically, it should protect both gamers and developers: the company can make a case that this is a form of harassment and an inappropriate use of the platform.

You can make a list of Bethesda games or anything else. But somehow this is encouraging attacks? What attack has happened outside of the company attacking a gamer?

You said pronouns weren't even covered. That was a lie.

USING pronouns is not part of that bill. The person who tweeted a teacher can get a felony for using a pronoun is lying or has zero reading comprehension.

 

[Hades]

You can make a list of Bethesda games or anything else. But somehow this is encouraging attacks? What attack has happened outside of the company attacking a gamer?

Depends on the context. That guy wasn't compiling a list of the games that company worked on as some sort of interesting trivia. Instead the list was compiled to support the argument that it was an eeeevil company with EEEEEVIL designs to ruin gaming for...uh some reason.

Or to keep it in line with your Bethesda example. There's a writer over there who's quite widely disliked. If you made a list of Bethesda games then this wouldn't be encouraging attacks. But if you made a list of Bethesda games specifically that involved this writer and if you accompany it with the argument he's going around maliciously ruining them for uh...some reason then the context changes.

 

[Terminal Blue]

USING pronouns is not part of that bill. The person who tweeted a teacher can get a felony for using a pronoun is lying or has zero reading comprehension.

You either have a very basic misconception about how the law works, or you think that everyone is incredibly stupid.

Statutory law, the law as written by legislative bodies, is one part of the legal system. But there's a whole other part whose job it is to actually interpret that statutory law and apply it to actual cases. Your "reading comprehension" or personal interpretation of the text does not matter, it has as much legal power as my farts. If a judge or jury can interpret the bill to mean that using a child's preferred pronouns is providing material support to their social transition (which is not remotely unreasonable given how extremely vaguely it is worded) then it can absolutely happen. The law does not need to actually say "if you refer to a child using pronouns that do not accord with their assigned sex you are guilty of a felony", it only needs to not contradict that interpretation and leave the implementation of the law to a judge who may be inclined to interpret it that way.

The point of laws like this is, and the reason why they are universally vague and obtuse, is to deliberately make it difficult to determine what is or is not legally permissible so that people will be frightened to do anything at all. This has been a tactic in anti-LGBT legislation for decades now, and we can absolutely recognize it.

The fact that you can read the law and argue that it would only apply in a limited range of situations (and even that is pushing it, this one is exceptionally unsubtle) is completely meaningless because in practice very few people are going to be willing to risk their careers trying to establish the boundaries of what they are and are not allowed to say. The purpose is to deliberately create confusion and fear in order to stifle discussion or support. We have seen it enough times, at this point, that there is not really any room for debate. I grew up under a law like this.

I don't know if you're incredibly naive or just faking being incredibly naive and to be honest I don't really care. Do better.

 

[Elijin]

Here is the specific section of 566.400

8 (2) "Social transition", the process by which an individual adopts the name,
9 pronouns, and gender expression, such as clothing or haircuts, that match the
10 individual's gender identity and not the gender assumed by the individual's sex at birth;

45 589.407. Tier I sexual offenders include:
71 (p) Contributing to social transition under section 566.400;



In before the clown specifies that using pronouns isn't a crime under this, using the wrong pronouns is, so like, just don't use them.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

Here is the specific section of 566.400

8 (2) "Social transition", the process by which an individual adopts the name,
9 pronouns, and gender expression, such as clothing or haircuts, that match the
10 individual's gender identity and not the gender assumed by the individual's sex at birth;

45 589.407. Tier I sexual offenders include:
71 (p) Contributing to social transition under section 566.400;



In before the clown specifies that using pronouns isn't a crime under this, using the wrong pronouns is, so like, just don't use them.

Well Crimson does like speaking in the third person, so it should work out.

 

[Satinavian]

That's not the same thing, though.

If someone creates a list of games with microtransactions, DRM etc., it's not going to pick on one, specific company (unless by some chance that company is the sole provider of games with that feature). You surely understand how that is going to be different from naming and shaming a specific company.

And if it were a specific tool and company like Denovu ? Or if it were Tencent and potential chinese influence ?

I honestly don't see an issue with listing all the games a specific company is involved in. People not caring about the company won't care about the list and those that do can better make an informed decision.

I certainly don't care about Sweet baby Inc. But i do think that customers who do care should have an easy time to get that information. The whole review/curator/recommendation feature of steam is for providing potential buyers with the information they want and this particular curator seems to not work against this intent.


Also normaly such a company should be proud to be named as contributor to a game, not try to play it down. Or do they themself think that their reputation is that bad ?

 

[Trunkage]

a) There is no artistry in getting people in to try and make sure your game offends as few people as possible by making it more bland and less demographically targeted. This is the equivalent of calling by the numbers dreck like Metal Gear Survive works of artistic expression. Arguing what is being done by certain consultancies is art is like arguing the Council of Trent were doing art by adding clothes to paintings and Fig leaves to statues and other paintings.

b) Companies aren't people no matter how much the law might want them to be and if people want to argue it is then it's coming from people who were pro cancelling Hogwarts Legacy so to that I say, don't blame us players, blame the game and rules we were told we had to to play by and learned how to use them.

c) Kind of hilarious how racist and bigoted some of the employees of Sweet Baby Inc can be shown to have been in the past.

A) There is no artistry in just making offensive material. You aren't making art, you just wasting people's time. (This might be because I've been reading Captain Underpants which is meant to be offensive, in a kid way, but is absolute trash because it's just trying to be offend and nothing else. They are a bore and a chore to read.)

If a person makes a piece of art that happens to offend people, that's different.

Now, to your point. Most art is pleasing and less demographically targeted by design. Mona Lisa, Girl with the Pearl Earring, American Gothic, Mario... Most of Nintendo's catalogue for that matter, Lion King, Harry Potter,...

I can't imagine anyone calling Dune an offense. And it's smashing it at the box office right now.

Most art goes out of its way not to be offensive and is not aimed at a demographic.

B) Publishers have always had the power to cancel people. They have been doing it for centuries. They didn't need to be people to do that. It's inherent in their nature, by design.

You can, of course, want to take away that power. But you don't actually want to take away that power. You just want them to go back to when they only used that power on lefties. When you grow up, I can join you. But you have to realise that this means that you have to make all publications done by the government. You cant force a company to invest in everything. That's not how capitalism works.

C) I mean, Musk, Bezos, Koch, The Zuck, Dorsey and Shapiro have all said very similar things about forcing their ideas onto others and cancelling people. But then, that's not really what this is about

 

[Trunkage]

Well Crimson does like speaking in the third person, so it should work out.

I feel like we should all start speaking in the third person person to protect ourselves