Batou667 said:
The accusation that a resistance to progressive inclusivity must stem from a position of fear or hatred is part of the "party line"
That's not what I said. I said that it's the bigoted resistance to progression that's met with hostility, not that all resistance to progression is bigoted. We've been having a perfectly civil conversation from either end of the debate, have we not? I haven't accused you of fear/hatred, have I?
Batou667 said:
they're making a value judgment about the legitimacy of a viewpoint and using that as the core of their attack. So, yeah, that's why it's precisely a No True Scotsman a lot of the time.
That's not what I was talking about. I was talking about the distinction between "progressive" and "reasonable progressive" and preemptively addressing any argument that would claim I'm using "reasonable progressive" in a no true Scotsman way (i.e. "reasonable progressives are progressives that agree with me.")
Batou667 said:
That's the kind of knee-jerk bullshit I'd like to see less of.
Hear hear.
Batou667 said:
I thought we were talking about people who purchase and play games?
Why would you think that? I was talking about the visibility of gaming in modern culture, and how it appears to anyone outside gaming. I was comparing it to movies/music/books, where even someone that doesn't engage in them as a pastime has an accurate enough understanding of the medium. They wouldn't think pop music is ALL music because many other genres of music are still highly visible in modern culture, but for someone that isn't into gaming it's not just possible, but
likely they have no understanding beyond violent war games, kids toys, Pac Man, Mario and Angry Birds. So where someone new to music might say "I don't like pop, but maybe I'll check out classical/jazz/rock/metal/rap/etc.", someone new to gaming would say "I don't like shooty stuff, so I guess games aren't for me." As wide as you and I know gaming to be, it's only a very narrow slice that has any real public visibility.
Batou667 said:
Perhaps this is a minor distinction but I feel it's an important one: mainstream games aren't tailored to white males because they hold the somehow important qualities of being white and male, they're aimed at white males because they happen to be the mainstream (most people in the Western world are white, males are still typically the breadwinners, more males play games than females, etc).
I don't think the distinction is important at all, nor did I ever claim white males were targeted because white males are somehow "better" than everyone else. White males are targeted because (in the West) blacks and women didn't have the same opportunities to get into computer engineering in the 50's/60's (maybe they would have lacked interest too, but we can't know), which lead to white males making games that
they enjoy, which lead to predominantly other white males becoming interested in gaming (socioeconomic factors also played a role here, as gaming was an expensive pastime and whites often had (and still have, which is why they're still the primary target) more disposable income than blacks), which spawned decades of games being produced primarily for white males.
That is why white males are "mainstream" - because gaming culture was built around building games
for white males. There's no inherent reason a middle-aged black woman would be less interested in gaming than an adolescent white male, it's only that way because the market has done nothing to appeal to anything broader. And that's what progressives are trying to address/accomplish - to get more people interested in gaming and create a medium that serves everybody in the same way movies, music and books do. The young white male market is still likely to be the biggest for some time due to the aforementioned socioeconomic factors and general history of video games, but we still can/should try to include others.
Batou667 said:
We wouldn't call Transformers "a film for white males", would we?
We would.
Batou667 said:
Perhaps the two descriptions are as good as synonymous, but why bring sex and race into the equation gratuitously? A black male isn't going to by default not enjoy it; it's not excluding anyone.
There's nothing gratuitous about the fact the movie was made for/marketed at white adolescent males. There's nothing
wrong with that, but let's call a spade a fucking spade. And it
does "exclude" certain groups by virtue of not appealing to (and occasionally outright insulting) those groups - but again, there's nothing
wrong with this. There are movies made for black adolescent males too, like
Friday or
White Chicks (you'll have to pardon my ignorance - as a white male in a predominantly white country I'm not exposed to a lot of cinema targeted at blacks) and there's nothing wrong with that either. It
would, however, be problematic if
Tranformers and movies like it were the
only movies that got played in cinemas, the
only movies that got aired on tv, and the
only movies you could find in movie stores. Are you starting to see what the problem with gaming's public image is now?
Batou667 said:
Feel free to clarify what the progressive position is, but from what I see, it seems to be a demand that an established industry come together and perform an unprecedented act of collaboration in risking millions of dollars to create games that include elements that are untested and aren't considered to appeal to the bulk of mainstream consumers. The idea that this change could be a gradual process or that progressives could provide proof-of-concept through some indie hits before the AAA-market jumps on board is also regularly rejected as being too little, too late.
Two points:
1) The idea that indies can drive the change isn't rejected at all - in fact it's very much embraced and encouraged. It's not even 'too late'... but it is 'too little' if there's going to be any real change before the distant future. Indies should keep leading the charge but they can't win alone.
2) Something not appealing to the bulk of mainstream consumers isn't necessarily a bad thing. If it's not offensive to them you're not going to lose sales, and if people
outside the mainstream audience find it appealing you could get even
more sales. We're not asking them to sink millions of dollars into a knitting simulator for grandma or something, we're asking for little additions/tweaks that widen the game's target audience a bit more. To use the example of ACU again - they're not going to lose sales by including an optional female character, but they could potentially
gain sales by including one. Yes they're risky and untested, which means publishers aren't going to do it unless they, like you suggested, see it work in an indie game (which is unlikely (but still possible) since, as stated before, even terrible AAA games tend to sell better than even the best indies (bar a handful of exceptions), and the best AAA games tend to do even better so they're just going to model their new games after those instead) or are so scared of the negative publicity for
not doing it that they consider it a worthy investment (which is where whiny, annoying SJWs come into play).
Batou667 said:
I have no idea what Korra is but I'm guessing it's an example of something that breaks the traditional mold of majority characters? OK, great! I'm all in favour of more people taking risks and diversifying the medium, especially if that's what the consumers want. But it has to be a voluntary process. The idea that people feel they can strong-arm the industry into a new direction if they lobby hard enough and shout loud enough is obnoxious.
Obnoxious, perhaps, but effective. And if enough people feel the same way you can start to see the change people want faster than if they took the non-obnoxious route.
