Ambient_Malice said:
I hope Escapist can strike a balance with this new apolitical mentality. I like to think that when they say they intend to avoid politics, they're gonna shy away from "IS TRAYVON MARTIN AN NPC IN WATCH DOGS"-grade sensationalism. Heck, if The Escapist could give us solid, fact-based coverage of Ubisoft games compared to the gossipy, speculative stuff that the rest of the scene goes for, it'd be a massive benefit. For the consumers, give solid coverage of new DRM schemes that stick to hard data and avoid "random NeoGAF user cited a Russian forum that claimed it damages SSDs"-style stuff.
Well, I doubt that 'apolitical' is what the Escapist is going for, but I'll reserve my judgement till actual content is confirmed and delivered.
But I also think, imho, that apolitical should focus on gamers being the most important piece of the market dynamic. I don't think it's bad if a game has a poor representatioon of gay people that could affect the enjoyment of a gay gamer of that game, to actual say 'You may not enjoy this game because of this' ... I don't see how that's 'political'. Why should we fork out money on a game that we would never have done so if so forewarned? It's about as political as the basic premise; "buyer beware."
A better example is the movie 'Dealing in Dallas' ... I didn't fork over money to watch it, because Jared Leto in drag is not my idea of a trans woman, and any doubts to my resolve or measure of my tolerance for it certainly went out the window with his actions afterwards. Would I beable to make this judgement if the actors or anyinformation about the movie was kept barred from me? Of course not. Thus I can't exercise my voting with my wallet.
Not that it really mattered because the Academy gave him an award for it, despite his poor portrayal of trans women as anything more than clothes obssessed and him seemingly lying about even seeking consultation with trans women to illuminate how he should play the role. Whilst this may seem trivial to people, just remember that Hattie McDaniel's role in 'Gone with the Wind' (1939) was lauded back in the day, and I doubt most people would support such representation now
Tastes change, and so do sensibilities.
Regardless, the second part of my grievances is political ... the first half isn't so much, unless we consider the basic idea of people being able to vote with their wallets and talk about their purchasing power is considered political. Thing is, I do not like emotivism. I like metaphysics ... metaphysics keeps things real.
There is a way (and indeed I think it would be healthy) to treat gamers as both a culture, yet still make room for the necessary talk about sexuality and identity aspects of games that DO impede the enjoyment of said games by specific gamers. I think we're grown up enough to accept that, and I think we're grown up to discuss how gamers should have the power to determine which games they want to support and not support.
You can only do that with information. And that information should be available. As it is with other artistic mediums. I don't see how we can't have this necessary adult discussion without identity politics and condemnation of either side of the multiplicity of fences that gamers occupy.
The thing is, that it seems only video games sffer this in the gaming world. You don't get such discussions abounding in pen and paper rpgs... certain games are bad, we know to avoid them if we won't enjoy playing them ... but why is an identity heavy gaming genre (like tabletop rpgs) seem so less embattled than videogames in this regards? Certainly there are bad representations of race, sexuality and gender in Rpgs, but as an avid P&P gamer, I've found them far less deleterious to my sanity than videogame discourses.
So I think the natural step forward is to discuss consumer advocacy as it pertains to all gamers. All gamers. Equally. And I think we need to be mature enough to accept that consumer advocacy is something that we should all have equal rights owning.
