@Liam @penstroke
I can understand the censorship efforts efforts trying to give comfort. but what comfort are you giving consumers. Could it be seen as patronizing.
the consumers aren't entitled because they PAID for it. Even if they are. they're not being comforted. Such censorship is arguably patronizing.
and the different time excuse... doesnt' work. It's like chewing gum to solve a math problem. consensus is not grounds for legitimacy either.
imagine if everyone is convinced that smoking does no harm to your health? That doesn't make it less dangerous. So... even if everyone is on board with the changes. i ask you "is it still wrong"?
it was either ALWAYS wrong or not. THe passage of time doesn't affect if something is "immoral".
and well that's the reasons you gave. but i think you've been minipulated. all of you. It's a social engineering phenomenon. called "social proof".
"By definition, social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others in an attempt to reflect correct behavior for a given situation. In essence, it's the notion that, since others are doing it, I should be doing it, too."
This may have been taken out of context... but what other good context could this mean?
It is guilt. it's the same thing that Cults do. that everything before X is bad and that things of "this" idea are good. People naturally will rebel when their freedoms are taken away but people are more willing to censor themselves, change if it's sold as Relinquishing responsibility.
You said it was your decision. But how did you give such a laywer esque answer and then draw your line in the sand... hard?
if we were worried about hate groups. why didn't you change in response to the Charlottes's ville affair? why weren't things changed in 2016 when Black Lives Matter formed?
I'm not sure anyone is really buying it . I think a lot of people are ... just afraid of being judged for liking something.
that's... not a thing. i think it's the insidious pressure of "social proof" that make you make a decision that you didn't fully consciously make. In short, it's a social engineering tactic that is like Peer Pressure. "everyone else is doing it".
But that isn't healthy. not for art, not for diversity, not for inclusion and certainly not for respecting women.
Because the companies that caught red handed for whoopie abuse are the ones that censor... trying to win back players. Gamers see right through that smoke and mirror bullcrap. It's not unga bunga "me want boobs" it's that those people can see right through the appeal to "modesty".
No one is entitled to comfort. the consumers aren't entitled because they PAID for it.
you respect a woman no matter what she's wearing. replacing a picture of a woman with a bowl of fruit. IS OBJECTIFICATION. and outlets like kotaku and the like hid stories of sexual assault at Activision Blizzard.
As for allusions to hate groups. the FBI shows they're unable to fill a staidum. that there were more attendees at Comicon when it was smaller than these hate groups. I understand that the fear. but the "previlance" of hate groups... that never really changed, just the media coverage and the sensationalism about it.
I get things are bad but it was and upside down umbrella. i only found ONE person. offended and i could walk them through the apprehension so they can feel ok. and even not that's their thing. Maybe the game isn't their bag... but that's ok. but the idea that art should change for the sensibilities of a few that may be grifters is MOST unwise.
But back on social proof. let's take a look at Blizzard Activision, one of the biggest companies, that censored/ (changed if you still think it isn't censorship) their game.
Here's what one feminst says about the issue on censorship BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT THIS IS. disagree if you like but "changes" if you will. but the fact that something is chagned for these reasons is... well i'll let her speak. :
"We're talking about Blizzard replacing images of women in World of Warcraft with fruit bowls.
This may not seem like a big deal, but hear me out. I
Okay, so I am still not at full strength, so maybe this is why I was just like, "ugh," about this whole thing. Intellectually, I'm pissed off about this, but in my gut, it's just so expected. It's so expected from Blizzard and the gaming industry at this point to confuse something on a wall in a game that is an object with the treatment of actual living, breathing people in the real world.
And this is not just about women. Notice I said people. I think we'd all be doing a lot better in this industry if we recognized that a company that shamelessly mistreats any single group of people is probably mistreating all their employees in some way, shape, or form. Keep that in mind when we talk about this. I wish that was more of a thing, okay? I wish that was more of an understood thing, but it's not. So here we go.
So there was a patch late last week, and it did little changes like taking a portrait that looked like a regal, kind of magical sorceress looking down her nose at somebody and turning it into—I don't know what this is—Mayim Bialik costume reject from Jeopardy. Like, they didn't just cover up the chest area; they changed her face. It goes from something that actually says something about the environment to, like I said, Mayim Bialik hosting Jeopardy.
Okay, but that's not the one everybody went "ugh" over, though. I will maintain that taking an image of an obviously powerful woman and changing her neckline is fine, but they changed her facial expression as well. That says so much. This isn't just about robbing women of cleavage; there's a power issue. There's a discomfort with powerful women going on here. But this is the one that everybody kind of went "ugh" about.
There's a really tame art homage image of a woman lying on her side, and you can kind of see her navel, but not her face and not much of anything else. And they replaced it with a bowl of fruit. A bowl of fruit, because it is so much the same thing. An image of a woman—who is she, how does this connect, what does this say about this room—with a bowl of fruit. Because they're totally the same thing, right? They totally say the exact same thing.
This background stuff, it's not just placeholder stuff. Thought went into this, until it didn't. Now, this isn't the first time World of Warcraft has nerfed something like this. They stupidly changed Jaina's outfit in early 2019. I don't know what happened there; I'm sure there was something that caused panic there. But they actually kind of wrecked this outfit for me.
Okay, I don't find the—first of all, when this is supposed to be armor and it doesn't protect the vital organs around the midsection, it's already stupid. Putting a modesty panel here but not actually offering protection where it matters means that giant-bum pauldron is just going to get in the way. This does absolutely nothing. It destroys the whole line of the outfit, right? Like, no one would wear this. No woman would wear this. If you're going to wear something like this, you're going to go all in, right? You're not going to go, "Oh, when I bend over I show bum crack, but I'm going to totally cover up my cleavage here."
This is the kind of stuff that actually doesn't make things more female-friendly. It actually insults women's intelligence. What I find interesting is that this whole Blizzard thing is causing Kotaku to have this sort of existential crisis. All of a sudden, instead of them being, you know, the Tropes vs. Women PR agency, they're running headlines like this: "Blizzard reduces ***** in World of Warcraft but not sexism at the company."
No, they didn't actually reduce *****, Kotaku. Even when you're trying to get it right, you get it wrong. They didn't remove *****; they removed images of women. Like, there was navel, there was no real cleavage in that fruit bowl thing. *****, not woman. Women have *****. *****, not woman.
This ridiculous clickbaity headline at Kotaku actually accidentally gets to the core of what the problem is here: too many people in the video game industry are still treating ***** and women like they're the same thing. Instead of recognizing that the goal, the idea, the ideal we're supposed to be moving towards is that women—everybody—but in this case, women should be respected regardless of what they're wearing. Even if somebody does something awful, you still respect them as a human being. You do not objectify anybody, which is what you do when you decide, "Oh, why don't we replace this picture of a woman lying on her side with a bowl of fruit? Same thing."
Now granted, it is a picture and a picture. However, holy ****. Repeat after me: women, not *****. Women have titties. Women, not *****. This should be simple for people making decisions at major gaming outlets and video game companies. They are in a lot of trouble right now. They still don't understand this, and this is basic. This is something that gamers who have objected to the nerfing of cleavage, boobs, and butts, let's face it, for a while now, this is what they've been objecting to. We know that we look but don't touch. We know that just because a woman is dressed sexually doesn't mean she's less worthy of respect. In fact, a lot of these women, as I dealt with on Boss Fight, have a lot of respect from gamers because of what they do in the game, and their overt sexuality is a symbol of their power, not an idea that you can treat them like crap.
The fact that rank-and-file gamers have been taking crap for this stuff for years, and they've been saying pretty much exactly what you'd like them to say, I maintain, even though people have not figured out how to advocate their position effectively yet, and so sometimes the things some gamers say sound terrible when they're freaking out about nerfing boobs, but if you actually talk to them, they do know how to have a conversation with a woman as an individual and treat her with respect, whether or not she has boobs. I mean, I have a little tiny bit of cleavage here. Does that mean I'm a fruit bowl? Does that mean there's something wrong with me? Does that mean my opinion has no merit? No.
Then why are they removing these images that have been in the games for years? I mean, this was like vanilla WoW content, okay, I think. It's been in the game for a while. So why are you going back? A lot of the vanilla WoW guys are pretty much gone. They've all moved on to other things. So those guys, for the most part, weren't the problem. I've worked with some of those guys; they are great. It's a lot of the issues with Activision that are the people that came in with Blizzard when they were like the ****, they were like the big deal, and they acted like ****, as so many companies do, so many employees at companies do, when they're the big ****. I mean, God, Bungie circa Halo 2, Halo 3 was fucking insufferable to deal with. Everybody has their turn, right?
I will say I've been continually impressed by how gracious the God of War devs have been about everything, no matter what the fortunes of their game were. That matters. And I see that. You know, and that game didn't need game journalists to make up awards so it could be the most awarded game ever. People just legit liked the game.
But yeah, we need new people who are thought leaders about this stuff. We need people who recognize that "Blizzard reduces ***** in World of Warcraft but not sexism at the company" is not helping. It's clickbait. That headline's not helping. It's really not. Not in the context of this story, when they didn't just take out ****, they took out an entire woman. I can't stress this enough. If it's just the cleavage, then you can say they took out *****. But they changed one woman's face and turned another woman into a bowl of fruit. That isn't about boobs anymore. That's about, "Ah, it's a woman! Get it away, get it away, it's bad, it's bad, it's bad." Blizzard's gotten no better.
Now, the interesting little nugget in the Kotaku story that I'm like, "Here, see, I can be objective," but this little thing was buried in the story with ***** in the headline, okay? "Activision Blizzard employees file unfair labor practice charge against the gaming company." Note, this was last week. Workers at Activision Blizzard—for well, Activision King, I guess King Gaming, it's a cross—oh, I guess it owns King now. But the Communication Workers of America filed unfair labor practice charges against the company for worker intimidation and union busting.
Apparently, Activision Blizzard King workers launched a "Better ABK" on July 23rd as a movement to help pressure leadership to improve working conditions. You guys probably have heard me rant about this before, but game companies do this thing where they **** all over their employees in the rank and file, they treat them like crap, and then they put out all this progressive messaging like they are somehow being diverse and progressive by replacing women with fruit bowls.
No, no, no. Because they say they're progressive, you know, there's some sort of left-leaning virtue signaling while they treat their employees like crap. And the very people they claim to care about, they're not treating them very well. It's all window dressing, right? It's all not very practical, not very meaningful. And so now there are charges filed against the company for union busting.
Now, does this make sense? That this is all performative? This is all a smokescreen? We see you, Blizzard. The fact that these employees are brave enough to actually go and file these complaints while Blizzard is on the run like this, mad props to them. We all know this is going on. We all know this is happening. That is where sexism is happening. The pictures on the wall, the cleavage on the woman, that's not hurting anybody. There are paintings in the real world that have some cleavage showing. You know, classic art. It's not hurting anybody.
It's the treatment of the people making these games. That's what's hurting people. And they're acting like they're doing something progressive by doing these things. And in the process, the coverage is like, "they're fixing sexism." NO, because they're doing this crap. When we start hearing people actually write about the people making these games, and these corporate structures, and when are we going to get the like, you know, masterful book that somebody writes about this period of gaming? Not about the games, but about the corporate cultures, because that is the issue. And it's a very complicated issue, and it's a nuanced issue, but it's really interesting.
So once again, the players get the shaft because Blizzard thinks it can pacify players with fruit bowls and faceless women. They think they're doing something progressive. Kotaku actually did something reasonable by calling them out on their crap. I don't even think they meant to; it just sort of fell out of their mouth, but here we are.
And this is why gamers push back against this stuff. It's not because they're all "Unga Bunga, me want boobs." That's not what it is. It's that they recognize this stuff is all smoke and mirrors. They recognize that, in a sense, this is objectifying women more. This is treating women as if there's something inherently wrong with being a woman. "Oh, you can make her less sexual, but women are fine." No, you still can't leave a woman on the wall. It's still a bowl of fruit, okay?
This is the frustrating part of this stuff, that the players are getting treated like crap because the players are savvy enough to see through this bullshit and are willing to talk about it. So, yay, Kotaku, for actually doing something right, but you still had to **** it up. Okay, you can tell I'm getting into this. So I'm going to leave it there. Be a good person."
We’ve got that corporate push to make everything like milquetoast, safe, and then we have, on the other side, the extreme culture warriors from the right and the left saying it’s bad because it’s too far. When you’ve got both extremes saying the same thing about a product, chances are that product is probably somewhere in the middle.
That’s the thing about gaming, and that’s why I wanted to talk about the Saints Row reboot. This sort of wraps up the stuff I was talking about yesterday, so I guess this is part two of that. The things I just don’t like about the Saints Row reboot — my biggest thing is not necessarily the content, it’s that they took the soul of what the Saints Row games were and made them generic.
That’s what a lot of corporate overlords in gaming are trying to sell us: that modern young people want boring. They don’t. I don’t know a single modern young person that thinks, “Oh, I don’t want anything that’s funny or spicy or larger than life. I want everything to be as bland and safe and homogenized as possible.” Nobody thinks that way. They want interesting characters, they want interesting stories, they want stuff that pushes boundaries. Maybe it’s a little bit weird and not their thing, but they can go find something that is their thing. The idea that we’re going to limit what creators can do because we’re so worried about a small number of people getting offended is ridiculous.
Then you look at stuff like the Saints Row reboot, and it just makes you sad. It makes you sad because you look at what it was and what it is now, and you just think, “Who is this for? Who is this made for?” It’s certainly not for the fans of the original games. It’s not even for new fans, because new fans aren’t going to look at that and think, “Oh wow, that looks really cool and edgy and interesting.” They’re going to look at it and think, “Oh, that looks like everything else. That looks like every other game out there. Why would I play that?”
And that’s the problem. We’re just making everything the same, making everything safe and boring and uninteresting, and we’re losing what made games special. We’re losing what made games an art form.
This is where I want to tie in something that has been bugging me about what’s been happening with the Lollipop Chainsaw remake. Now, if you’re not familiar with Lollipop Chainsaw, it was this really weird, really funny, really edgy game that came out a while back. It was kind of a cult classic, right? It was made by Suda 51 and James Gunn, two guys who are known for their really unique, really out-there sense of humor and style.
And now they’re doing a remake, and there’s all this talk about how they’re going to tone it down, how they’re going to make it more appropriate for modern audiences. And it’s just depressing, because Lollipop Chainsaw was one of those games that was unapologetically itself. It was weird, it was funny, it was edgy, it was controversial, and it didn’t care. That’s what made it special.
Now they’re talking about making it more appropriate, and it’s like, no, don’t do that. Don’t take what made it special and unique and water it down for the sake of modern sensibilities. Modern sensibilities are killing creativity. They’re killing what makes things interesting and unique and special.
So, in conclusion, let’s stop trying to sanitize and homogenize everything. Let’s stop trying to make everything safe and boring and uninteresting. Let’s embrace what makes games special, what makes them unique, what makes them an art form. Let’s embrace the weird, the funny, the edgy, the controversial. Let’s embrace the creativity and the innovation and the uniqueness, because that’s what makes games great. That’s what makes games worth playing.
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let's also consider the kind of vileness that people do in the name of good.
I dont' care who the victim is. but death threats are not ok. i dont' care what side you are on this or any other issue.
