Hogwarts Legacy Will Allow For Transgender Characters

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CriticalGaming

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Yes, and I'm certain those homemade YouTube videos make just as much profit and create just as much impact as a theatrical release of a movie.
Fucking duh! Obviously they don't but that wasn't the argument.

If you want to use Hollywood major motion pictures as the only measure of success, then okay. But that difficulty applies to everyone because becoming a Brad Pitt is so fucking rare it's insanity.

However there are many many people who've made and currently make good livings off Youtube, Twitch, etc. So i say again, the barrier to entry into simply putting your creative work out in the world is incredibly low these days.

This is just another example of people moving the goalposts when you prove their initial statements wrong.
 

Dwarvenhobble

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People put there homemade films on youtube all the time. The barrier to create and get your work made and out there is incredibly low these days.

If we only measure this success by saying it only counts if you become a major recording artist, movie star, etc...is just dumb because that is a crazy hard achievement for anyone and there is no way to show any evidence that it is somehow harder if you are gay or trans.
Even with youtube it's a bit weird and tough because of youtube's rather draconian content restrictions on content in some cases. You'd have a better argument saying about Amazon video because at least there they won't just ban your film from the service because your swore too much or something......
 

CriticalGaming

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Even with youtube it's a bit weird and tough because of youtube's rather draconian content restrictions on content in some cases. You'd have a better argument saying about Amazon video because at least there they won't just ban your film from the service because your swore too much or something......
I mean whatever platform. It doesn't matter really because there are options. Put your shit on one or even all of them at the same time. The point is you have a crazy access to the world that never existed before, and people have become plenty successful without ever getting picked up by a major company. Even then there are Youtube stars who've gotten TV deals (like Lily Singh, a lesbian woman of color who now has a nighttime talk show).

On a related note, this video was rather on topic I think
 

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But that's because most people are straight! What is that even supposed to imply?
Did you read the sentence immediately following that one?


There are a lot depending on the sport. Olympic athletes, figure skating, because it's more appealing I guess. But there are a ton of LBGT athletes look at this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LGBT_sportspeople

Whether that's pre or post career I don't know, but it looks like a long list to me and goes back quite a long time and it's probably not even all of them because I'm sure there are people who are just gay and don't announce it to the world because it's none of the world's business.
I can tell you. In football particularly, people come out after their careers. Numerous sportsmen have attested that careers would have been damaged if they'd come out during their active years.
 

Hawki

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Is there some restriction on who can write a book?
Not yet, but there's certainly a strain of thought within literature that you can't (or shouldn't) write outside your "group."

I'm pretty sure all people have the same creative opportunity.
Not really.

It's debatable how much disadvantage is down to inherent traits, but even then, disparities in wealth and circumstance would still exist. The millionaire's playboy son can launch an entertainment business far more easily than the single working mother's daughter, even if that daughter does live in a world where content creation is easier than it's ever been.

Big "it's just a coincidence there are more male CEOs named John than there are female CEOs in the US" energy.
It's getting better, sure, but to pretend we're anywhere close to a meritocracy is hilarious
Okay, but how would you know when there is one? When there's 50/50 in every field in society? Or just CEOs?

This being someone who works in a field dominated by women, where every position of authority is held by women bar one, and who didn't give it much thought until I started to be praised for "helping to break down stereotypes" by entering the field.

Or in other words, are you after equality of opportunity or equality of outcome?

- How ironic is that, considering identity politics is typically thought of as a leftist construct.
Not so much ironic as bizzare.

Of course right wing identity politics exist, only these days, people seem to have forgotten about that.

And for the record, I don't like identity politics coming from either side of the spectrum.
 

CriticalGaming

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Not yet, but there's certainly a strain of thought within literature that you can't (or shouldn't) write outside your "group."
Who says this? And what does it even mean?

Not really.

It's debatable how much disadvantage is down to inherent traits, but even then, disparities in wealth and circumstance would still exist. The millionaire's playboy son can launch an entertainment business far more easily than the single working mother's daughter, even if that daughter does live in a world where content creation is easier than it's ever been.
Being more rich or less rich does not effect a person's ability to be creative. Poor children can still draw chalk on the sidewalks, sticks through dirt, can sing, invent games. In fact children can draw, color, and do art before they develop any concepts of their financial situations. All it takes to be creative is a mind with creative ideas. Some people are not creative, but that has nothing to do with their social standing.

If you want to say it's harder for poor people to have computer access then....sure ok. But that is an economic problem and not the same thing a phobic problem as we are talking about here.

Poor villages all over the world don't have the same opportunities as the modern Western world. There are people with much bigger problems than people claiming they can't write books because they're too gay for it, if that's the conversation you want to have.

Or in other words, are you after equality of opportunity or equality of outcome?
Most of the arguments from the left I've seen want the outcome, not the opportunity. Hell this very conversation about creativity and the access to the world is that very thing.

"We need more women and people of color in big tech!" Why? What if there aren't a lot of women interested in that field? You going to force them into those roles because the outcome needs to be equal? That's not a good plan either.

Instead the outcry should be, "We should encourage women and people of color to take INTEREST in tech fields." Because then you might actually yield positive results.

And for the record, I don't like identity politics coming from either side of the spectrum.
I agree. But I think there is some strange latching onto these politics that have gotten media attention and the more outrageous the ideal the most headway it seems to gain because one side is watching in disbelief, while the otherside is trying to outdo the crazy.

Remember when they tried to get people to use the term "Theybies" because babies have not told the parents their prefered gender and therefore it was transphobic to refer to your child as their "assigned" sex at birth? No? Check this out. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/jul/08/parent-raising-gender-free-child this is one but just google "theybies" and you'll get all kinds of articles. There's even ones about not assigned gender to your pets, like dogs and cats and goldfish and shit.

Sometimes it's like reading The Onion except it's not satire....or not intentionally satire.
 
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TheMysteriousGX

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Okay, but how would you know when there is one? When there's 50/50 in every field in society? Or just CEOs?

This being someone who works in a field dominated by women, where every position of authority is held by women bar one, and who didn't give it much thought until I started to be praised for "helping to break down stereotypes" by entering the field.

Or in other words, are you after equality of opportunity or equality of outcome?
I'm just shooting for "better". Like, I'm more than willing to accept that statistical outliers *can* exist, but if a group of people who make up half the population make up less than 5% of Fortune 500 CEOs, that's probably not strictly coincidental and would probably point to a lack of equality in opportunity. (or at least some weird cultural artifact that could probably benefit from a good long look)

Port that to any industry with heavily skewed demographics.
 

Hawki

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Who says this?
The most recent example:


The pro side:


The con side:


And my most common example:


Or, to put it in my own words, there's an idea I've seen floating around that writers shouldn't write outside their identity group. How people feel the line should be enforced, if at all, will vary.

Or TL, DR, it's the question of cultural appropriation.

Being more rich or less rich does not effect a person's ability to be creative. Poor children can still draw chalk on the sidewalks, sticks through dirt, can sing, invent games. In fact children can draw, color, and do art before they develop any concepts of their financial situations. All it takes to be creative is a mind with creative ideas. Some people are not creative, but that has nothing to do with their social standing.
It doesn't affect your ability to be creative, but it does affect your ability to put that creativity into process.

Example: Bob and Bill. Bob is a millionaire's son who lives in a nice neighbourhood. Bob is interested in art. Bob's parents get him the best tutors. After graduating from a private school, he goes to college, where he doesn't need to get a job on the side because his parents pay for everything. Bob graduates, and goes to create works of art and is known throughout the world.

Bill lives in a poor neighbourhood with his single mother, who's a recovering drug addict. Bill has great potential for art. However, at night he's kept awake by gunshots and sirens. He's poor, so he's bullied at school, which damages his self-esteem. He graduates with decent grades, but can't get into college due to tuition fees. Furthermore, he needs money to support himself, and his mother. Bill eventually gets a minimum wage job and does doodles on the side as a hobby, because art doesn't pay the rent.

Bob and Bill don't have equality of opportunity. Bill could conceptually rise as high in the world as Bob, but Bill's got hurdles in life that Bob doesn't.

"We need more women and people of color in big tech!" Why? What if there aren't a lot of women interested in that field? You going to force them into those roles because the outcome needs to be equal? That's not a good plan either.

Instead the outcry should be, "We should encourage women and people of color to take INTEREST in tech fields." Because then you might actually yield positive results.
Even then, this seems misguided to me.

We can all agree that no-one should be barred from a career based on inherent traits. But the question remains as to why you want more of Group X in Field A, but not more of Group X in Field B. Are there less women in STEM because of structural barriers, or simply because women, on average, gravitate elsewhere? Are all fields expected to have 50/50, or only some? I mean, IIRC, Sweden is among the most gender-equal countries in the world, but its percentage of women in STEM is less than Iran, where, let's face it, isn't a bastion of women's rights.
 
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MrCalavera

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The game's about the fantasy of being a student of Hogwart's. Not Harry Potter this time, a random student. The students are aged 11-18, which coincides(who would've thunk?) with the target age demographic of the whole series. An age where one usually, to use a tired expression, "discovers self". Another coincidence: People who are aged 11-18 right now belong to a gen that in general is very open about gender expression.

In other words, it'd make less sense to not include those optional ways of customizing a PC if it's possible. The Inclusivity Criqitique Crew might've pick one of the worst hills to die on so far.
 

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And in other news:

I grew up reading Harry Potter & have really good memories of the books, as well as of the first three Harry Potter games (#2 on PC especially... loved finding all the secret stuff in the castle). Legacy looked really good to me.

I'll admit that the idea of supporting both Rowling & Leavitt did make me a good deal less likely to buy it. And this makes me more likely to buy it. So I'm glad.
 

CriticalGaming

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Or TL, DR, it's the question of cultural appropriation.
I seriously hope people on this forum don't think that is a reasonable position to have. That whole cultural appropriation thing has gotten about as out of hand as the "theybies" thing. I swear I think society is trying to become a giant parody of itself at this point.
 

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I seriously hope people on this forum don't think that is a reasonable position to have. That whole cultural appropriation thing has gotten about as out of hand as the "theybies" thing. I swear I think society is trying to become a giant parody of itself at this point.
A handful of people not raising their kid with gender expectations isn't "society becoming a parody of itself". Thinking gender is so important for an infant that you're making colored IEDs to announce it is a parody of society though.
 

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Just to point this out (as it gets brought up a lot) Dr Verma's research is different to the Mosaic model of the brain. To put it in terms that won't span multiple paragraphs the Mosaic model is like examining the size of different areas of a town say entertainment, business, retail, industrial while Dr Verma's research is like examining the road connecting between them.
Do keep in mind that if we're focusing on Dr. Verma's research it's conclusion actually gets debunked in the documentary you posted itself, by her when she claims and I'm paraphrasing (Not rewatching it again to be able to pinpoint the exact moment and quote it verbatim it's around 32:40 minute mark, also what I said is very different from what she says but ultimately doesn't misrepresent what she said.) "These differences do not show up in children, as their results are mostly similar despite gender, it starts showing up around 16-17 years old meaning that it could be an issue of nurture rather than purely biological", the idea repeats itself again at the end of the documentary when Professor Gina Rippon's research is shown, which is actually a direct response to studies examining the connecting pathways in the brains, which means a response to Dr. Verma's research, the conclusion she has is actually very in line with that disclaimer Dr. Verma added to her results, she says the human brain is very plastic and adaptable and studies show that there's actually no such thing as being wired towards maths for example and then cites an experiment in which the test from the beginning of the documentary is repeated but the explanation of what it is is changed, and simply due to this very small change of perspective the results changed drastically and when repeated in different countries the results were consistent, meaning it's not as clear cut and the way the brain acts is actually very much subject to change depending on circumstance.

Sorry for the late response, I knew I had to rewatch that documentary again to respond properly because even though I had watched it years ago I didn't remember it very well and I just didn't want to, that being said even though a lot of it is outdated and it and it has a fundamental flaw of not really discussing anything that isn't gender binary, it's actually a lot better than I remember, it does present everything as if both the argument of the man and the woman are equal, which is weird because Dr. Verma is placed on the side of the guy even though her results disagree with him, I mean it's an entertaining framing device but it does come with the flaw of presenting the research as skewed towards the argument that the interviewer chosen for each segment is arguing in favour of, which is simply not the case.


The thing is even the extent it has been tried seems to suggest things going towards content more people will experience while content for lets say smaller groups has suffered. E.G. Mass Effect Andromeda faced criticism (and very rightly faced it IMHO) because the LGBTQ romance stuff has the scenes end far earlier than how far most of the straight romance options went
But you see that's fine, because mediocre or bad representation is a bit better that no representation at all, otherwise you get cultural alienation and it's better to have the argument of whether it was executed well or not than to have no argument, I think at least.
Well part of that is it kinda of sidelined the previous cast for a part of the game really (maybe 1/3rd to 1/2) to sort of give an analogy it would be in Guardians of the Galaxy 3 advertised itself as "here are the Guardians of the Galaxy you know and love" then half way through the film cut and spent most of the rest of it focussing n the Nova Corps. There are franchises that do do replace their case or bring in new casts but generally that's a "Right we're wiping it clean" kind of thing or the old cast are a small cameo. Or They widen the cast but do it such that they slowly introduce the new character not try to push them too strongly.
Also it's how they're done and if they feel like they fit vs other stuff going on in the franchise too that makes them seem more like a checkbox.
But side-lining the previous main cast isn't necessarily a bad thing, an excellent example of this is the previously mentioned Metal Gear Solid 2 which is considered one of the best games in that franchise, even if general consensus is that 3 is the best, a game that is a prequel and includes none of the main cast BTW, another example would be Devil May Cry 4, which while initially it received a lot of backlash for focusing on Nero and side-lining it's now a beloved game in the franchise and now people really like Nero, they also really like Raiden now.

So anyways, while I get that side-lining the main cast is generally disliked by fans, it's not really reflective of the quality of a product and generally tends to be accepted over time and attitudes towards it tend to change as time goes on, again I haven't played the game being discussed, so I can't really offer an honest opinion of what I think of that particular game, as such I prefer to express nothing as surely everything I have to say cannot be anything but expressing opinions of people that aren't me.
Depends whose ratings you look at as the gaming press have been heaping praise on it but many other commentators who are independent of the press have been slating it (Not just those who would be deem to be against representation)
I'm just looking at the general critical reception, while it's true that it does have a lot of negative reviews, specially by users, even the users tend to have given it more critical praise than panning, which by no means overwhelming as it's closely split, it is overall trending towards good rather than bad, this is what you'll see if you look up the game, that being said, it is a lot more mixed than the average AAA game, what's interesting though that the mixed critical response comes from a large amount of overwhelmingly positive response and overwhelmingly negative response and only a minimal mixed response, meaning that it's a polarizing game, meaning it's probably worth trying out to se if I'll either love it or hate it, thought I guess I could be one of the few that just think it's mediocre instead.
 
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Nick Calandra

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I mean whatever platform. It doesn't matter really because there are options. Put your shit on one or even all of them at the same time. The point is you have a crazy access to the world that never existed before, and people have become plenty successful without ever getting picked up by a major company. Even then there are Youtube stars who've gotten TV deals (like Lily Singh, a lesbian woman of color who now has a nighttime talk show).

On a related note, this video was rather on topic I think
You should really watch better YouTubers than UEG. That guy, as far as I'm aware, has literally no background in the games industry at all. I don't think I've ever seen a developer actually interact with him, he's definitely not speaking with people in the trenches and having any actual information to comment on other than what he's reading on the games media outlets he hates and Twitter.

Really not a good source of information for anything worthwhile.


On the topic of this Hogwarts situation with Troy Leavitt. I probably have the unpopular opinion that this guy was treated VERY unfairly by the press. I've watched the videos they've linked and he's definitely got some choice opinions, but the fact that outlets have given him every label from "alt-right" to "bigot" without much of any quotes or evidence from co-workers or anything is demonstrably terrible reporting. Especially given that I've seen multiple people in media comment on this, and in the next tweet admit they hadn't even watched the videos...

The journalism made a TON of assumptions about this guy on how he acts at work too. His cringy clickbait videos aside, he definitely didn't direct hate or harassment at anyone that I saw in any of his stuff. In fact, his videos were about as level-headed as you can get on the topics he was covering which surprised me based on how it was initially reported.

I think this whole situation was handled extremely poorly by both WB Games and the media and the lack of any sort of research or critical thought on this was a bit much to stomach as a member of the media.
 

Dirty Hipsters

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You should really watch better YouTubers than UEG. That guy, as far as I'm aware, has literally no background in the games industry at all. I don't think I've ever seen a developer actually interact with him, he's definitely not speaking with people in the trenches and having any actual information to comment on other than what he's reading on the games media outlets he hates and Twitter.

Really not a good source of information for anything worthwhile.


On the topic of this Hogwarts situation with Troy Leavitt. I probably have the unpopular opinion that this guy was treated VERY unfairly by the press. I've watched the videos they've linked and he's definitely got some choice opinions, but the fact that outlets have given him every label from "alt-right" to "bigot" without much of any quotes or evidence from co-workers or anything is demonstrably terrible reporting. Especially given that I've seen multiple people in media comment on this, and in the next tweet admit they hadn't even watched the videos...

The journalism made a TON of assumptions about this guy on how he acts at work too. His cringy clickbait videos aside, he definitely didn't direct hate or harassment at anyone that I saw in any of his stuff. In fact, his videos were about as level-headed as you can get on the topics he was covering which surprised me based on how it was initially reported.

I think this whole situation was handled extremely poorly by both WB Games and the media and the lack of any sort of research or critical thought on this was a bit much to stomach as a member of the media.
Something something GG...something something ethics in game journalism...
 

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Media ethics doesn't have to be tied to that stupid and dead movement. Let it stay dead. If you wanna discuss media ethics, discuss media ethics.
The only GGs I like are Game Gear, Guilty Gear, Gungrave, and G.G Shinobi. I always hated the gamergate/anti-gamergate bullshit. It caused nothing, but colossal pain and emptiness. I don't kno why certain gamers (the ones on YouTube mainly) and journalists are still obsessed with; more so the former. To me, that is not what gaming is all about, nor should it be. I play games to have fun, not being biatch and acting like a douche because of some corrupt assholes in the journalism industry. Call out questionable behavior, if you must, but never take to a new low and you're just another monster or opinionated jerk-off attacking others for not having the same opinion. I 100& agree with you.
 
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Hawki

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I seriously hope people on this forum don't think that is a reasonable position to have.
Obsidian Jones and I have had disagreements on the subject.

A handful of people not raising their kid with gender expectations isn't "society becoming a parody of itself". Thinking gender is so important for an infant that you're making colored IEDs to announce it is a parody of society though.
Going by the article itself, I don't care overmuch, but there's a difference between not raising a child with gendered expectations (a good thing IMO) and refusing to tell them what their biological sex is.

But side-lining the previous main cast isn't necessarily a bad thing, an excellent example of this is the previously mentioned Metal Gear Solid 2 which is considered one of the best games in that franchise,
It is?

Definitely not the worst, and you're right that 3 is generally considered the best, but I've found perception of MGS2 to be all over the place.

hey also really like Raiden now.
They do?

I dunno, maybe I'm out of the loop, but I never got the sense that Raiden ever became that popular, even if MGS4 and Rising might have done him some good as far as fan perception went.

The only GGs I like are Game Gear,
Holy shit, a Game Gear fan. 0_0
 
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