The Perfect Apolitical/Politics Free Video.

Dwarvenhobble

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I don't know about the circles you travel in, but in my experience, women don't tend to wear lingerie into battle.
Well men don't normally only wear loin cloths either. It's called Swords and Sandals Aesthetic


Firstly, nobody here is complaining about women wearing certain outfits. Women can wear what they want. People will sometimes complain about fictional characters being dressed up in skimpy outfits for the benefit of male viewers/players, though.
No because real women can and will call people out for that. Also do Lesbians not exist now? Also very few people complain about male characters being dressed sexy and before people say "Most male characters are idealised not sexualised" no Swords and Sandals was literally seen as "Porn for women" by Hollywood studios lol

And, well, that kind of covers the part about "slut-shaming", too. That's a discourse surrounding real people taking real actions. When we're talking about creative media, the only people who had made a direct decision is the developers and executives. The pixels sure didn't.
Oh right so it can't possibly be them wanting to do it by proxy lol. Pixels don't make decisions but therefore there are no good female characters either because they have no agency.


How d'you think it would go down if devs responded to complaints about skimpy female outfits by changing the marketing materials to focus away from them, and making them optional and non-default?
Um they already have done sometimes lol. People have still got mad over outfits even being optional in some games and not removed entirely.
 

CriticalGaming

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Ironically, they had to make her less powerful at hand-to-hand when coming in contact with the main villain in Lost Legacy. Making her look weak sauce by comparison. Even in "semi-realistic"/grounded video games, there will always be the DBZ power scaling effect.
Sure usually that is for dramatic effect right? The hero can't be capable of beating the villain at the beginning of the story, the same way they do at the end of the story. Otherwise you don't have a good story.

Which is funny in gun-based games. I always love how the hero can't shoot for shit during key moments because you can't make a bad guy shrug off bullets. Unless you are playing a wolfenstein game.
 

CriticalGaming

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Also very few people complain about male characters being dressed sexy and before people say "Most male characters are idealised not sexualised"
I've always been perplexed by this. Why can men always be the perfect muscled shirtless body type, a peak version of the male physical form, and it's totally fine. But if you do that for women it's solely to sexualize them?

I mean shirtless Ryu in Street Fighter V is literally called "hot Ryu" by the community, even though all it is a shirtless version. Yet you can't have girls in tight tank tops, or short shorts/skirts, because it's just for the male gaze.

Last I checked, girls liked looking at hot guys just as much as men like looking at hot girls. I don't understand why one side of the coin is evil and the other is just ignored.
 

Silvanus

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Well men don't normally only wear loin cloths either. It's called Swords and Sandals Aesthetic
Yep, but it's a good deal rarer to see men in sandals and loincloths going into battle in modern fantasy aesthetics, isn't it?

No because real women can and will call people out for that. Also do Lesbians not exist now? Also very few people complain about male characters being dressed sexy and before people say "Most male characters are idealised not sexualised" no Swords and Sandals was literally seen as "Porn for women" by Hollywood studios lol
I assume you can see why it's a different argument when it concerns actual people making decisions for themselves, and fictional characters being rendered by other people.

And the number of people complaining about Mobius was enough to force a studio U-turn, so there's that.

Oh right so it can't possibly be them wanting to do it by proxy lol. Pixels don't make decisions but therefore there are no good female characters either because they have no agency.
You... believe that developers design female armours to be skimpy and revealing because they want to wear that stuff themselves? That's... just ludicrous.
 

Houseman

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Sure usually that is for dramatic effect right? The hero can't be capable of beating the villain at the beginning of the story, the same way they do at the end of the story. Otherwise you don't have a good story.
Well, "capable" is irrelevant unless, during the course of the game, Nadine gets EVEN BETTER at martial arts, or gains or loses some mindset that she needs in order to prevail.

Drake is only ever capable of winning against his enemies when they expose themselves to him after having discovered the thing they're all after. It's pretty much pride or greed or some personality defect on their end, not any growth or lessons learned on Drakes part that makes him win.
 

Dwarvenhobble

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To show you how much the "We don't want politics in my/our games is bullshit." Anyone remember We Riot? Abd the hissy fit some people were throwing on the steam foruns. Navigating for people not to play or to ban the game on Steam. A game about politics and people want to get rid of it or throw a b#tch fit because it doesn't agree with theirs, or feels like it's injecting into their beliefs.





It didn't matter much, cuz the game did fine anyway. Plus it was on steam and the Switch of all places. A brawler combined with an RTS? I got to remind myself to buy that later.
Looks just like people being critical and voicing their opinion to me.

What are people not allowed to have an opinion on the politics presented or be critical of it now?

Tell me what power do these random people have?

What influence do they truly have to change Steam?
 

BrawlMan

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Sure usually that is for dramatic effect right? The hero can't be capable of beating the villain at the beginning of the story, the same way they do at the end of the story. Otherwise you don't have a good story.
Well that, and it was an actual response to the people complaining that she was too powerful. The my main problem with her is that she's a bad guy that does not earn her redemption.

I mean shirtless Ryu in Street Fighter V is literally called "hot Ryu" by the community, even though all it is a shirtless version. Yet you can't have girls in tight tank tops, or short shorts/

Just watch this, it'll make a lot of sense.

Last I checked, girls liked looking at hot guys just as much as men like looking at hot girls. I don't understand why one side of the coin is evil and the other is just ignored.
Double standard gender politics. It's hypocritical and I do not like it.
 

Dwarvenhobble

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Yep, but it's a good deal rarer to see men in sandals and loincloths going into battle in modern fantasy aesthetics, isn't it?
Any Conan Game
Some of the armour options in Tera
Rock in Soul Calibur
Kratos
the Barbarian in Gauntlet games



I assume you can see why it's a different argument when it concerns actual people making decisions for themselves, and fictional characters being rendered by other people.
and who is to say were the characters not real they would not choose to dress that way?

And the number of people complaining about Mobius was enough to force a studio U-turn, so there's that.
Which again make it optional that simple.


You... believe that developers design female armours to be skimpy and revealing because they want to wear that stuff themselves? That's... just ludicrous.
No I meant the people shaming said fictional women are doing so as a proxy way to shame real women.
 

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I'm mistrustful of all sides of these discussions where people argue that people are making things too political or that everything is politics or related to politics or whatever. The whole way it is discussed seems to misplace the actual grievances and leave the whole discussion intractable. 'Politics' is a pretty vague term and most things can be loosely related to politics in some way. The people who complain about injecting politics into games (or whatever else) are often just unwilling to see the obvious politics in a situation, but the counter that everything is always political anyway seems way too general and vague, and just unconvincing. If everything was politics, why do we have the word. Certainly it is meant to mark out something non-trivial which can be lacking or at least present to a lesser degree or just less relevant in certain discussions. Something related to power-relations and policy and the organisation of society.

On the one hand, if people want to discuss politics in relation to something else, let them. Politics is probably relevant in some way, and if you personally don't care, go do something else then inject yourself in the discussion just to say you don't care. Jim Sterling can discuss whatever the hell he wants on his show on his own youtube channel. And in the case of videogames, the way they are made, the way they are funded, the way they present characters and situations and all that is often very political. We are dealing with questions of labor rights, representation/acknowledgement of minorities, consumer rights, the formulation of gambling laws, representations of war and the place of existing countries in it and so on and so forth. Those subjects are obviously political.

On the other hand, the idea that everything is politics strikes me a bit like the idea that everything is chemistry. True, in a way, but the chemical or political aspects of a thing aren't always the most relevant and I've absolutely seen people try to put square pegs in round holes by trying to interpret politics (often very specific politics) into something where it just doesn't work that well. I'm always a fan of analyzing things, especially art, on their own terms first, and sometimes I get the sense that some people have lost the capacity to look at things from any but very specific perspectives. I remember that Bob Chipman tried to argue that halo represented diversity as bad because the one-species UNSC fought the diverse covenant. Thing is, I'm fairly sure the covenant were designed for gameplay purposes first. Analyzing their presence as a political statement just isn't that convincing. In addition, in halo canon the diversity of the covenant is the result of imperialism and domination by the elites and the prophets, not of peaceful co-existence. The analysis itself is wrong, and I don't think it is crazy to suggest that it is the result of somebody applying a certain politics lazily to a series of videogames they didn't really like or understood the appeal of in the first place.

I think my take is that there are definitely people who read politics into things where they probably shouldn't or where it is clear that they don't understand the specifics of what they are talking about and approach the thing instead through pre-conceived politics. That being said, the criticism of inserting politics into everything is way overused. This has resulted in an all purpose counter that 'everything is politics' which imo is too trivializing and glib.
 

BrawlMan

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Looks just like people being critical and voicing their opinion to me.

What are people not allowed to have an opinion on the politics presented or be critical of it now?
They're allowed to have their dumbass opinions. I'm not asking for them to be censored, but that does not mean they're immune to criticism or can I be called out on their hypocrisy or bull crap. They demanded and wanted the censorship or removal of a game. Games are art. They are violating the first amendment and in favor of it. Because it's politics they don't agree with. I may not agree with the politics entirely either, but I'm willing to have fun with the game and not remove it from stores. That's the big damn difference.

Tell me what power do these random people have?
if and when given a platform or on a powerful enough platform, they can become dangerous just look at all the white nationalists and KKK groups that started appearing when people let Trump get in the power. Especially those that thought it would be funny to let him in or those that didn't vote for either cuz they thought their choices didn't matter. Look at all the people like the quartering or right wing nuts on YouTube. Assholes like them that encouraged harassment or death threats of women. Or complain about any "forced" diversity. People like that are dangerous, because they don't want those different from them to have a voice and only want people agree about the things they say or their politics. Never once considering the other side and feeling they're always in the right. Like I said with Wolfenstein the New Colossus, you had certain white nationalists show up and start complaining about the game depending Nazis as a villains. They definitely came out of the woodwork when Trump got elected. Thankfully you had a lot of people with investments to call them out and shut them down on their bull crap.

Once again you have a habit of either ignoring or downplaying things. So don't act so oblivious. Either you see it or you don't. if you don't want to see it, that's on you. I will always call out those that try to hurt others for being of a different gender, race, or religion. Fight them anyway I can.
 

BrawlMan

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"extremists... that want to act like they're the only ones in the right and everybody else is wrong or misguided"- BrawlMan
Good to know you admit about yourself.
I'm mistrustful of all sides of these discussions where people argue that people are making things too political or that everything is politics or related to politics or whatever. The whole way it is discussed seems to misplace the actual grievances and leave the whole discussion intractable. 'Politics' is a pretty vague term and most things can be loosely related to politics in some way. The people who complain about injecting politics into games (or whatever else) are often just unwilling to see the obvious politics in a situation, but the counter that everything is always political anyway seems way too general and vague, and just unconvincing. If everything was politics, why do we have the word. Certainly it is meant to mark out something non-trivial which can be lacking or at least present to a lesser degree or just less relevant in certain discussions. Something related to power-relations and policy and the organisation of society.

On the one hand, if people want to discuss politics in relation to something else, let them. Politics is probably relevant in some way, and if you personally don't care, go do something else then inject yourself in the discussion just to say you don't care. Jim Sterling can discuss whatever the hell he wants on his show on his own youtube channel. And in the case of videogames, the way they are made, the way they are funded, the way they present characters and situations and all that is often very political. We are dealing with questions of labor rights, representation/acknowledgement of minorities, consumer rights, the formulation of gambling laws, representations of war and the place of existing countries in it and so on and so forth. Those subjects are obviously political.

On the other hand, the idea that everything is politics strikes me a bit like the idea that everything is chemistry. True, in a way, but the chemical or political aspects of a thing aren't always the most relevant and I've absolutely seen people try to put square pegs in round holes by trying to interpret politics (often very specific politics) into something where it just doesn't work that well. I'm always a fan of analyzing things, especially art, on their own terms first, and sometimes I get the sense that some people have lost the capacity to look at things from any but very specific perspectives. I remember that Bob Chipman tried to argue that halo represented diversity as bad because the one-species UNSC fought the diverse covenant. Thing is, I'm fairly sure the covenant were designed for gameplay purposes first. Analyzing their presence as a political statement just isn't that convincing. In addition, in halo canon the diversity of the covenant is the result of imperialism and domination by the elites and the prophets, not of peaceful co-existence. The analysis itself is wrong, and I don't think it is crazy to suggest that it is the result of somebody applying a certain politics lazily to a series of videogames they didn't really like or understood the appeal of in the first place.

I think my take is that there are definitely people who read politics into things where they probably shouldn't or where it is clear that they don't understand the specifics of what they are talking about and approach the thing instead through pre-conceived politics. That being said, the criticism of inserting politics into everything is way overused. This has resulted in an all purpose counter that 'everything is politics' which imo is too trivializing and glib.
I said this before, not every single thing is going to have politics, but you're going to have people that find politics and everything or something regardless of those intentional or not. I'm glad we agree on that.
 

Dwarvenhobble

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I'm mistrustful of all sides of these discussions where people argue that people are making things too political or that everything is politics or related to politics or whatever. The whole way it is discussed seems to misplace the actual grievances and leave the whole discussion intractable. 'Politics' is a pretty vague term and most things can be loosely related to politics in some way. The people who complain about injecting politics into games (or whatever else) are often just unwilling to see the obvious politics in a situation, but the counter that everything is always political anyway seems way too general and vague, and just unconvincing. If everything was politics, why do we have the word. Certainly it is meant to mark out something non-trivial which can be lacking or at least present to a lesser degree or just less relevant in certain discussions. Something related to power-relations and policy and the organisation of society.


On the one hand, if people want to discuss politics in relation to something else, let them. Politics is probably relevant in some way, and if you personally don't care, go do something else then inject yourself in the discussion just to say you don't care. Jim Sterling can discuss whatever the hell he wants on his show on his own youtube channel. And in the case of videogames, the way they are made, the way they are funded, the way they present characters and situations and all that is often very political. We are dealing with questions of labor rights, representation/acknowledgement of minorities, consumer rights, the formulation of gambling laws, representations of war and the place of existing countries in it and so on and so forth. Those subjects are obviously political.

On the other hand, the idea that everything is politics strikes me a bit like the idea that everything is chemistry. True, in a way, but the chemical or political aspects of a thing aren't always the most relevant and I've absolutely seen people try to put square pegs in round holes by trying to interpret politics (often very specific politics) into something where it just doesn't work that well. I'm always a fan of analyzing things, especially art, on their own terms first, and sometimes I get the sense that some people have lost the capacity to look at things from any but very specific perspectives. I remember that Bob Chipman tried to argue that halo represented diversity as bad because the one-species UNSC fought the diverse covenant. Thing is, I'm fairly sure the covenant were designed for gameplay purposes first. Analyzing their presence as a political statement just isn't that convincing. In addition, in halo canon the diversity of the covenant is the result of imperialism and domination by the elites and the prophets, not of peaceful co-existence. The analysis itself is wrong, and I don't think it is crazy to suggest that it is the result of somebody applying a certain politics lazily to a series of videogames they didn't really like or understood the appeal of in the first place.

I think my take is that there are definitely people who read politics into things where they probably shouldn't or where it is clear that they don't understand the specifics of what they are talking about and approach the thing instead through pre-conceived politics. That being said, the criticism of inserting politics into everything is way overused. This has resulted in an all purpose counter that 'everything is politics' which imo is too trivializing and glib.
Part of my issue is the "Everything is political" group tend to want everyone to see everything from a political angle. Every action is a political statement from what films you see to anything in pieces of media. It's often a case of them wanting to push their political view and talk about politics they want to and using things as an excuse then getting upset when people essentially go "Yeh shut up we don't want to hear about it right now". Especially when it's a political interpretation of a work and they won't accept alternative takes on it or views but assert their view is absolute truth. Part of art critique and interpretation is the idea you could be wrong and other interpretations could be equally valid.


As a recent example did we need discussion of how Joe Biden is problematic because he's a white guy and talk of the coronavirus pandemic and impact on society in Kotaku's Ps5 review?
No not really, not to the extent of it being multiple paragraphs anyway.
 

Dwarvenhobble

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They're allowed to have their dumbass opinions. I'm not asking for them to be censored, but that does not mean they're immune to criticism or can I be called out on their hypocrisy or bull crap. They demanded and wanted the censorship or removal of a game. Games are art. They are violating the first amendment and in favor of it. Because it's politics they don't agree with. I may not agree with the politics entirely either, but I'm willing to have fun with the game and not remove it from stores. That's the big damn difference.
Only if they're actually calling for it to be censored not merely stating their opinion


if and when given a platform or on a powerful enough platform, they can become dangerous just look at all the white nationalists and KKK groups that started appearing when people let Trump get in the power.
Or people just started noticing them and paying more attention to them.

I mean I'm pretty sure they've been about for a long time it's just mostly people thought they were irrelevant fools and ignored them.

Especially those that thought it would be funny to let him in or those that didn't vote for either cuz they thought their choices didn't matter. Look at all the people like the quartering or right wing nuts on YouTube. Assholes like them that encouraged harassment or death threats of women.
Is that why so many of them specifically say don't engage with the people they talk about and they do not condone harassment or abuse...............But on the other side there's never such statements just claiming people are monsters or are a threat to them. People will tend to lets say be a bit zealous in defending a person claiming to be attacked. E.G. When TB said the claims of DMCA abuse by a certain indie developer should be investigated and suddenly a number of developers were claiming that if he covered their game they'd abuse the DMCA against TB and when he responded with basically "My Lawyer would be happy with the work" some others then pushed on various sites to have TB blacklisted.


Or complain about any "forced" diversity. People like that are dangerous, because they don't want those different from them to have a voice and only want people agree about the things they say or their politics.
Ah but feeling the need to try and make Alex Rider the series more diverse ended up with the kind of silly moment of having a Black girl Nazi while actually making a role previously that of a black woman into a white woman instead too Their pushes for diversity ended up coming off as more problematic

Never once considering the other side and feeling they're always in the right. Like I said with Wolfenstein the New Colossus, you had certain white nationalists show up and start complaining about the game depending Nazis as a villains. They definitely came out of the woodwork when Trump got elected. Thankfully you had a lot of people with investments to call them out and shut them down on their bull crap.
And everyone laughed the people upset the Nazis were the villains out of the room at the time lol. Everyone.

Once again you have a habit of either ignoring or downplaying things. So don't act so oblivious. Either you see it or you don't. if you don't want to see it, that's on you. I will always call out those that try to hurt others for being of a different gender, race, or religion. Fight them anyway I can.
Be careful your desire to do good isn't used to get you to attack people who actually may have a point but are being claimed to be attacking people for some secret ulterior motive of evil.
 

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As a recent example did we need discussion of how Joe Biden is problematic because he's a white guy and talk of the coronavirus pandemic and impact on society in Kotaku's Ps5 review?
No not really, not to the extent of it being multiple paragraphs anyway.
Well, that review was entertaining. A humorous merger of a guys personal and political crisis with a PS5 review. Probably it should have been written by somebody who cared more about reviewing a console, but I kind of liked this end result as well. It actually did go pretty in depth about quite a few different aspects, though at times slightly undercut by the fact that the author clearly wasn't very tech-savvy. This can be a strength: a review from the perspective of somebody like that can shed light on how accessible the system is but that wasn't really capitalized on enough either.

But yeah, the last couple of paragraphs did have a 'sir this a wendy's' vibe, where I wasn't sure why this was written here. It also read very American. Like Sony is a Japanese company releasing their product for the entire world. The American elections are probably not as important to them as they are to this author, and his failure to recognize this is even more American.