this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2024
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A game is only called "woke" when it's bad. Balder's Gate 3 is one of the most "woke" major releases in the last few years but you hardly hear them complain about it.
It's the same thing with cyberpunk 2077. The anti-woke crowd can't agree on whether it's woke because many of them like it.
I think the problem isn't the wokeness for most people, but the awkward shoehorning of stereotypes and forced messaging that makes everything feel cheap and doesn't contribute to the experience or story. For example having a lgbtq+ element for the sake of checking a diversity box, instead of it being a random fact of this world or character.
How do you differentiate between a character "written for the sake of checking a diversity box", a poorly-written diverse character, and a "random fact of the world"? It's a fictional world. Nothing is random. It's all creative decisions made by a team of writers and producers.
I don't think shoehorning in of diverse identities and character backgrounds is good representation or good art, and I completely agree with your point there.
But I don't think that the people driving the current backlash bother to make those distinctions.
What I see is a lot of outrage being stoked by people using the (updated) language and tactics of gamergate, and I don't think the result of that will be "better representation".
I think the result will be devs being harrassed and pushed out of an already brutal industry.
Games like Cyberpunk have characters who are black, gay, etc. but it never impacts the player character’s decisions when interacting with them (besides romance options). Dragon Age The Veilguard has one character walk the player through their sexuality in cutscenes, making it forced and unnecessary information in the moment. It’s the odd injection of the woke rather than the woke itself.