The Perfect Apolitical/Politics Free Video.

[happyninja42]

I don't think you understand how stupid people are.

Oh trust me, I'm WELL aware of how stupid people are. I live in Alabama, and listen to racist fuckwads all the time, babbling idiocy left and right.

Can anyone point any game ever that would have been a smash hit if only it hadn't stared some chick or black guy? "Man this game would have been awesome if I didn't have to play as this *racist/sexist slang*." Any game?

You realize that's an idiotic question right? There is no way for anyone to divine what games would/wouldn't sell better if a factor was changed in some alternate reality.

 

[Casual Shinji]

And to be fair, i rarely see people complain about a PoC being the main character of anything. Nobody bitches about Kevin Hart or The Rock being stars in a movie. Denzel Washington?

That's probably because a) the movie watching audience isn't as pissy as gamers are, and b) Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson stay in their lane, sorta speak. And Denzel Washington stays away from geek shit all together where most if not all the toxicity is housed.

It only ever pops up in games and shows that suck for totally different reasons. But stupids will blame the minority star because they dont know how to express anything otherwise.

Except when it popped up in Thor when Idris Alba was revealed to play Heimdal, in Mad Max: Fury Road where Max was preceived as taking orders from a woman in the trailers, in Uncharted: The Lost legacy when it was revealed Chloe was the playable character, and in the third TLoU2 trailer that showed Ellie kissing a girl. All moments where people complained about minority inclusion/pushing agendas/SJWs before the product was even out (or leaked). And those are just off the top of my head. That wasn't people not being able to articulate their displeasure with the quality of the product, it was them being racist/sexist/homophobic. It was them assuming the quality of the product based on the inclusion of minorities in a prominent role. And it makes no difference either way; if someone finds they need to focus their hate on someone's race or sexuality because they hate the story they're no less racist, sexist, homophobic, or transphobic.

 

[BrawlMan]

I don't remember this at all. I remember the Battlefield V thing with the woman on the cover, the one-armed woman. And i remember DICE hyping it up because "women can do anything!" Or whatever the fucking message was, and that annoyed people because it was a woman on the cover for the sole purpose of having a woman there. And people complained in a very stupid way, of course, because they are stupid. But that didn't mean that DICE's reasoning wasn't also stupid. And i can't help but wonder if the outrage would have even existed if they had that woman on the box art and never said a word about it. If they had instead just gone, "Here's Battlefield V, enjoy." and nothing else, then people probably wouldn't have gave a shit. But they hyped it up and made it a ridiculous handicapped woman to boot basically doubling down on as many social justice points as they possibly could. Notice that nobody gave any of the Call of Duty's shit when they let you play as a woman in MP, at least none that I can remember becoming news stories.



I don't think you understand how stupid people are. Expecting someone to be able to understand and convey what was actually bothering them is a harder thing than you might expect. And stupid people will latch onto the superficial or the most memorable thing they can because it's the easiest to recall, and that usually means the characters.

I will stand on the line of this: People do not care about playing women or people of color in a video game, because there is too much evidence of female characters and PoC's (though admittedly fewer than there should be) of being stand out memorable and favorited games. Blaming racism or sexism for your game or show or movie failing is a bullshit cop out misdirection for your project simply being trash.

Can anyone point any game ever that would have been a smash hit if only it hadn't stared some chick or black guy? "Man this game would have been awesome if I didn't have to play as this *racist/sexist slang*." Any game?

You better believe people complained about a black man being on a cover in battlefield 1. And note, Dice didn't say anything or comment at all about the cover. The same applies when those racist jackasses cried claiming no one black or people of color did not serve in World War I or World War II.

Once again I don't care how someone stupid is. Racism is racism. Sexism is sexism, there's no splitting hairs. These assholes make any excuses and move the goal post. If anything your "people are really stupid" excuse is a big cop out argument for such problems. It's more to it than something as pathetic as that. And people do care about what or who they're playing as. Saying people don't care is a lie. You're either ignorant or being willfully oblivious about the situation

 

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[BrawlMan]

These are three distinct events. The first was the teaser/reveal trailer which featured the woman with the prosthetic arm, the Red Beret with a Katana and was generally just a weird mix and match of things that technically existed in WW2 all crammed into one battlefield looking like Arnhem. It caught a lot of flak for not being realistic with people going for the prosthetic, the katana and a bunch of other stuff. A lot of people also specifically went down the route of "Women did not fight for the British in WW2!".

A while after that EA revealed that yes, character customization would be a big thing and that included being able to choose gender and ethnicity. On cue the not very articulate crowd started harping on about how women didn't fight on the west front and how no black people fought for Germany (some even went down the "no black people fought in the West until the US intervened" and had to shirk back in shame). Around this time someone at EA (I want to say Söderlund but I'm not sure) said in an interview that he wanted his daughters to be able to play the game when they get older and feel like they were represented and welcomed.

And finally the cover art was revealed and there was furor all around because a woman was on the cover and women didn't fight in WW2. At some point, when you keep coming back to gender and race when fighting for "historical realism" and not stuff like wildly unrealistic weapons (including French WW1 prototypes, Swedish semi-auto rifles issued on an awkwardly small scale and improvised one shot "guns" intended for the French and Polish resistance and not frontline combat) or the uniforms that were weird amalgamations of all kinds of WW2, post-war and steampunk often without the choice of actually using an actual standard uniform.

Here's the cover art by the way, nary a prosthetic in sight:




People were given the reveal trailer without EA or DICE saying anything but "We are psyched to bring you this first look at BFV". The haters immediately jumped onto the thing they hated the most and it was the woman. Whatever happened after that is irrelevant, because the haters had jumped in head first with all the misogyny they could muster.



Bigotry should never be excused as idiocy. A person can be stupid and idiotic, but sexism, racism and all that other nasty bigot shit is not stupidity or idiocy. it is hate and contempt and should never be excused as "they don't know better".

Checkmate.

 

[Houseman]

Around this time someone at EA (I want to say Söderlund but I'm not sure) said in an interview that he wanted his daughters to be able to play the game when they get older and feel like they were represented and welcomed.

I've never heard this before. This just seems wrong, to treat WWII as some kind of thing that people would want to be included in and be happy to place themselves into the boots of a soldier and die miserably.

Seems kind of disrespectful to the actual soldiers who fought and died.

It's the height of entitlement to try to glorify yourself by demanding representation in a war you haven't fought in. Like stolen valor.

In contrast, in the opening of BF1, where you played as Harlem Hellfighters, and then when each one of them died you get a overlay of the name and the years that they lived before jumping into the body of another. Yes, it was still a game that people played for fun, but they tried to make an effort to treat it with respect.

 

[Silvanus]

I don't remember this at all. I remember the Battlefield V thing with the woman on the cover, the one-armed woman. And i remember DICE hyping it up because "women can do anything!" Or whatever the fucking message was, and that annoyed people because it was a woman on the cover for the sole purpose of having a woman there. And people complained in a very stupid way, of course, because they are stupid. But that didn't mean that DICE's reasoning wasn't also stupid. And i can't help but wonder if the outrage would have even existed if they had that woman on the box art and never said a word about it. If they had instead just gone, "Here's Battlefield V, enjoy." and nothing else, then people probably wouldn't have gave a shit. But they hyped it up and made it a ridiculous handicapped woman to boot basically doubling down on as many social justice points as they possibly could. Notice that nobody gave any of the Call of Duty's shit when they let you play as a woman in MP, at least none that I can remember becoming news stories.

I definitely, 100% do not believe that the complaints wouldn't have happened if DICE hadn't said anything. The backlash was immediate, and was far more vocal and aggressive than anything DICE came out with.

If people act like tools, I'm going to assume it's toolishness.

 

[Hades]

I think ultimately what people mean when they say they don't want politics in their games is they don't want propaganda.

But who decides what is propaganda and what isn't? And why does a certain group think that decades of American heroes shooting up brown villains in the middle east isn't propaganda, but two girls kissing in a trailer is?

 

[BrawlMan]

But who decides what is propaganda and what isn't? And why does a certain group think that decades of American heroes shooting up brown villains in the middle east isn't propaganda, but two girls kissing in a trailer is?

Selective obliviousness, narcissism, double standards, high ignorance, in the my way or highway attitude. Oh, and they're lonely and miserable and most likely have nothing better to do with their pathetic lives.

 

[Houseman]

But who decides what is propaganda and what isn't? And why does a certain group think that decades of American heroes shooting up brown villains in the middle east isn't propaganda, but two girls kissing in a trailer is?

The good-faith answer: It's subjective, and built upon the backs of what people know to be true.
If you want the bad-faith answer, see BrawlMan's bitter comment

 

[BrawlMan]

The good-faith answer: It's subjective, and built upon the backs of what people know to be true.
If you want the bad-faith answer, see BrawlMan's bitter comment

it's not good or bad faith, just an ugly truth. Whether you choose acknowledge it or not it's up to you. But I already know how you act.

 

[Houseman]

it's not good or bad faith, just an ugly truth. Whether you choose acknowledge it or not it's up to you. But I already know how you act.

If you say so.

 

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[BrawlMan]

If you say so.

I know so. Thank you.

 

[Houseman]

I can absolutely give this argument some leeway, but not in this context. Because if we take a step back and look at what BFV (and 1942, 2 and 1) does it is all disrespectful stuff. It is, in the most literal way you can imagine, making a fun, play pretend experience out of the worst armed conflict in human history which claimed 70 million lives in total. If you say that you find BFV disrespectful because it makes fun and games of WW2 and the misery, suffering and death of those involved, that's fine. But you don't get to arbitrarily draw that line when someone decides to introduce fantasy aspects, because either it is shitty as fuck to pretend as if WW2 was some cool hero saga or it is not. It doesn't become bad just because the women, gays and black are inserted.

I acknowledge the part about "making a gun, play pretend experience out of the worst armed conflict in human history..." aspect with my last paragraph:

"In contrast, in the opening of BF1, where you played as Harlem Hellfighters, and then when each one of them died you get a overlay of the name and the years that they lived before jumping into the body of another. Yes, it was still a game that people played for fun, but they tried to make an effort to treat it with respect."

You can have both. It is not mutually exclusive to have fun and also do it with respect.
You can show a fictional story of heroism, based on real events. You can make the audience feel the excitement of combat, the sorrow of loss, and the horror of what people are capable of. Not every fiction based on the world wars needs to be absolute misery for it to be considered respectful.

I can see being proud of being represented in WWII. Maybe your ancestors or someone from your culture or ethnicity fought. You might want them to be represented along with the standard white man. That's fine. But if you want someone who wasn't there to be represented, then that's the "fantasy" where I draw the line, as that's just disrespectful to the people that were there.

Having a gun that wasn't used isn't a slap in the face to anybody.
Including a person that wasn't there, is.

Certain groups simply do not have a claim to be represented in either of the world wars. Including them is disrespectful to the groups that do have a claim. That's where I draw the line.

 

[Dreiko]

But who decides what is propaganda and what isn't? And why does a certain group think that decades of American heroes shooting up brown villains in the middle east isn't propaganda, but two girls kissing in a trailer is?

Each of us decides that for themselves and goes on to treat a work accordingly. It's all subjective anyways so I'm not promoting some sort of rule based on this designation, I'm explaining why people ask for apolitical games, cause people seem to not (want to) get it.

As for those movies, I think they were propaganda back upon a time but now have just kinda taken life of their own. Same thing with westerns and the whole cowboys vs indians theme. The origins begun one way but then it kinda took life of its own so now the people who are into it are watching it cause they just like the themes and the people making it grew up with it and wanna make more such content. The sorts of conflicts depicted are not controversial any longer, you see, so we do not have a need for further propaganda. They're made in the same way movies about Rome are made, we are not engaging in pro-roman/anti-Carthage propaganda when we explore those wars and the exploits of Hannibal and co, it's just a cool situation to make a movie about.

If you wanna look for actual right wing propaganda, it'd be like that school shooting movie Shapiro made where this girl becomes Bruce Willis and saves her school cause she would go hunting with her dad so she's equipped to take out armed school shooters. That's the modern debate and this is the movie pushing one side of the argument with all its might. The ones about wars against scary brown people or russians/communists has already run its course and needs no further propaganda assistance to penetrate minds, it's now kinda seen as common sense.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Bigotry should never be excused as idiocy. A person can be stupid and idiotic, but sexism, racism and all that other nasty bigot shit is not stupidity or idiocy. it is hate and contempt and should never be excused as "they don't know better".

I would argue that bigotry and idiocy are often the same thing.

 

[SilentPony]

I would argue that bigotry and idiocy are often the same thing.

Eh? Bigotry often comes from a place of low information, but its entirely possible to be an idiot and not be a bigot. Like a dude shoves a bottlerocket up his ass and lights it, I don't go "Wow, bet he hates gays too."

 

[CriticalGaming]

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I also think it is a bit disegenuious to assume that the shitbags online are the reasoning for low sales and poor performance of a given thing. Ratings for shows, ticket sales, whatever. You still have to look at the fact that a lot of these things that people rage on for whatever flavor of wokeness they disagree with, are also often just bad products in there own rights.

Battlefield V, regardless of the opinions of women in the game, was a bad Battlefield by all accounts. Unfinished, unpolished, and nonsensical.

Soul Plane was a fucking stupid Tyler Perry movie, most of Tyler's movies are dumb come to think of it.

Batwoman was a terrible show last year, and it's even worse somehow this year.

It isn't the vocal minority of anti-wokers that are causing that. It's the fact that the things are bad to begin with. And like I said, they just use the outrage as an excuse. Much like a certain Tropes v. women producer.

 

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