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You know what was surprisingly woke? Smokey & The Bandit.
You'd think the truckers would be all white guys, and they'd be casually racist through the whole thing since it's the 70s. But it wasn't. Truckers of all shapes and sizes. And the main trucker character is friends with black people.
In the 70s. In a trucker movie. Set in The South.
Oh, this Lara Croft chick has to be a strong, independent woman, huh? Tired of shit like this and Metroid. Quit hamfisting women into things and virtue signalling
Never, ever, not in the entire 90's decade I was alive did I even hear anything remotely similar to anything like that. It was unheard of.
No one even thought about it like that, or even had the concept to consider them that way.
...until 2016
They gave Lara depth and humanized her, and this made the horny gamer boys angry cause they just wanted to look at boobies and not think too much.
I'm just going to say that a lot of creative, innovative, or interesting things, regardless if they're physical items, narratives, gameplay mechanics, or even just a new process for handling a particular task, is borne from diversity.
We are different. That difference is a strength. The more different we are, the larger of a gap between how I approach an issue and how you do the same. The Delta between your approach and mine is beautiful. One may be more efficient, one may be easier, one might be less expensive to do.
If we all thought the same, and we were extremely similar in what we knew and how we thought, nothing would ever change. Progress would not be possible.
A great example of this is with the blue LED. Most companies have been able to make blue LEDs for decades. The problem is, they were expensive, and shit. They couldn't brighten up a shoe box.
One guy took a blue LED manufacturing process that everyone else abandoned, and worked with it for the better part of like, 5 years or something. He invented the modern blue LED in all its glory. Bright enough to blind you from across the room, and cheap enough to produce that they ended up in a lot of places they probably shouldn't have been. That experimentation also yielded a near ultraviolet version that with a simply phosphor filter, can be converted to visible light, and white LEDs were born
Yeah, and the guy that invented the blue LED - essentially saving the company - got shit upon because he did so against the orders of the company head. They then went after him legally when he took a job at another company.
He actually won a lawsuit against them later but my understanding is that after legal fees etc didn't really come out ahead. It's a pretty sad story.
Diversity in entertainment is important, and ultimately done right it's also good for profits. Having a game, movie or produce that appeals to a broader audience is good for sales.
At the same time, some entertainment does come with an existing core audience and a bit of a "formula", so altering that too much does risk alienating that core, and frankly some duds get blamed on 'ism when the reality is they're just not that good or changed too much. "The Witcher" flubbed because those writing the scripts were increasingly out of touch with the original material, but if they'd also done something like make a Geralt (or somebody else significant) a different orientation, race, gender or whatever then some would have blamed that failure on the anti-diversity crowd.
Remember when Sierra had to hire an outside company to do King's Quest 8, and they completely ignored Roberta Williams' notes, instructions, and design simply because "You're a woman, you don't know anything about games, shut up and let us work. This is going to be an RPG, not an Adventure game, and you're going to like it little lady!... Who is also the wife of the owner, the co-founder of the company, and the creator+headwriter of the series we're currently working for."
And it kept happening no matter how much she complained, so eventually they had to kick them out, but there wasn't enough time to make a new game so the "Not King's Quest" King's Quest game had to be released to try to make money back..
And it was basically a shitty version of Ultima 9, an already shitty game, and was so bad and tonally out of place with the rest of the series that the King's Quest Collection on Steam only has 1-7 and the Reboot?
Yeah I normally like to root for the underdog game of a franchise and try to defend it, but KQ8: Mask of Eternity can get fucked.
I'm not even a King's Quest fan, but it's one of the most infuriating cases of sexism I've ever had the displeasure of learning about.
Imagine this happening in any other context. Imagine Square Enix hires a bunch of white guys to do Dragon Quest, sends in a higher-up to make sure it stays on brand, and they just tell him "You're asian, what do you know about good games?", and turn in a grimdark first person shooter that just happens to be called Dragon Quest, and Square Enix is in such a dire financial state that they're forced to publish it as a mainline entry.
That's basically what happened.
There’s nothing wrong with calling a bad game woke if they’re trying to cover their blatant flaws by tokenizing minorities and lgbt. See: Concord
Picking a game that was already bad for 700 reasons doesn’t make the idiotic “woke = bad” label okay. The writing in a live service game was never going to be great.
Not that there would be any game that meets their "unwokeness" purity standards.
To be fair, what the OOP is describing is "diversity in the video game industry", not "woke games", per se. While I doubt anyone here has objections to the former, I also doubt that anyone here is a fan of "Dustborn", as an example.
I'm going to come at this from a movie rather than a video game place, but:
Which is more "woke:" Enemy Mine, or She-Hulk?
Enemy Mine is about a human and an alien (played by a white man and a black man) starting the movie as enemies. Actual shooting war "We were in a dogfight and I was trying to kill you with guns" enemies. And when marooned on an inhospitable planet they learn to understand and even love each other.
She-Hulk is about Nth-wave feminism talking points. "They catcalled me in a parking lot and it made me mad."
You know that guy who does "honest movie trailers" on Youtube? He did one for Star Trek TNG, and he says "It's the future, and the Future. Is. Woke!" And he said this before the word "woke" was co-opted by the right meaning "anything regressives don't like."
Gene Roddenberry had a vision for the future where we were past it all. Humanity is beyond racism, beyond sexism, beyond classism. Even if he couldn't live up to it himself (He did put Marina Sirtis in a minidress and in a chair with no console in front of it to make it easy to look at her legs. And there was that really cringey episode where they go to the black people planet where everyone is all tribal and primitive, that was ugly) he aspired to that future. Probably the most powerful to me, he wrote characters who, when confronted on their ideas, would re-evaluate and even change their minds. Data called Picard out in "Measure of a Man" and Picard changed his stance and fought for what he now realized is the truth. That is the manliest moment ever broadcast on television.
I grew up with that show, I was born in 1987, same year the show premiered, some of my earliest memories is watching TNG on my parents' Zenith console TV. That idea of "we're past that now, we put aside our differences and we work together as a team of equals now" vision is what I thought we were all working toward. That that was the future we all wanted. Couldn't be farther from the truth. The radical right are actively avoiding it clinging to some weird idea of a white hegemony. Surprised they don't call the invention of the diesel powered tractor an affront to their heritage because it deprives them of a reason to harm black people.
Most other groups of people are busy fantasizing about having their turn as the despotic rulers. "When we come to power, we'll enslave you and see how you like it." That type of shit.
The people who call themselves "Woke" like the aesthetic of people who aren't straight and/or white and/or male doing creative things, but the things they create are basically never about everyone learning to get along and building better futures for each other. They make talking point grievance airing revenge porn and dare their targets to dislike it.
Dustborn is a good game that has been incredibly misrepresented. Take the "you are racist" scene copied and pasted from video to video for example. It's presented as the game's Black protagonist just accusing two cops of racism for no reason.
In the actual game, it's one of the multiple dialogue choices that may not even happen if one of the protagonist's friends intervenes. The context that is omitted from the culture war videos is that the protagonist comes out of the bathroom of a diner and sees two Justice officers:
Also worth noting that from the very first scenes of the game, the player is discouraged from using the special abilities, Vox, as they force people to do things against their will, so many players would never see that reaction intended to be over the top (as evident from the in-game post-chapter choice stats indicating that the majority don't use Vox on other occasions).
I hate this kind of comment. A bad game doing poorly that happens to be "woke" isn't evidence that being "woke" made it bad. For example, Dragon Age Origins is pretty "woke" (especially for its time) but it's recognized as an amazing game by pretty much everyone. If you make a great game that's written well, it's probably going to be received well. The issue is modern AAA gaming just makes mass audience slop that is devoid of passion and dictated by suits to chase trends. Being "woke" doesn't matter. Being good matters.
I’ve got a few concerns with Chris’ post, particularly the use of logical fallacies that undermine his main argument. Let’s break this down:
Straw Man Fallacy #1:
People who complain about wokeness in new video games don’t actually care about the past, just their imagined version of it.
This statement misrepresents the position of those who critique "wokeness" in media. It assumes that everyone in this group shares a simplistic, uniform, and flawed perspective on history, which is neither fair nor accurate.
Isn’t it ironic to advocate for inclusivity while reducing the opposing view to a stereotype? For example, I personally dislike overt "wokeness" in games, yet I don’t fit the imaginary box you’ve described. My position isn’t rooted in a denial of history but in the belief that games, music, and films are creative, self-contained domains to be enjoyed on their own merits—not as platforms for political messaging.
It’s not about rejecting inclusivity or denying the contributions of diverse creators. Rather, it’s about questioning why politics should take center stage in these art forms. Why must every creative work be a vehicle for ideological statements? Art can reflect politics naturally when it’s intrinsic to the story or setting, but forcing it risks alienating audiences who value the escapism and creativity of the medium.
Straw Man Fallacy #2:
Games we love are created by diverse people [...]. Just because you’re unaware of them doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Who exactly is denying the existence of diverse creators? This statement uses vague, accusatory language aimed at a generalized “you” without specifying who or what is being addressed. This lack of specificity makes it difficult to engage with the argument constructively.
If the intent is to highlight the contributions of diverse creators, that’s absolutely valid and worth celebrating. But framing the point as an assumed rebuttal to an undefined group of people not only creates unnecessary division but also fails to advance the discussion meaningfully.
When addressing criticism, it’s more effective to engage with specific ideas or individuals rather than casting a wide net over an entire group. Otherwise, this risks becoming the very thing being criticized: stereotyping and marginalizing others based on assumptions.
Mmm
My position isn’t rooted in a denial of history but in the belief that games, music, and films are creative, self-contained domains to be enjoyed on their own merits—not as platforms for political messaging.
The issue here is that every time I see someone complaining that a game is "woke" is when suddenly there are gay people, or people of colour, or women not looking like a hooters waitress in the game. And the reality here is that this isn't being woke, it's that the game is being based on reality. Gay people exist, always have, so do people of colour, and women of all types and men too. The people that make it political are the people that don't want to see the real world and the people in it.
Now, I don't know what you feel is "woke" and I'm not saying this is directed at you, but just because there are people that don't fit some preconceived mold, and they are included in a game, doesn't make it magically political.
A game that's got well written characters representing minorities or which includes political theming and executes it well (e.g. Bioshock, Fallout 2 or Disco Elysium) is more woke than any other. That kind of game's core concept is to make a strong point about structural injustice in society.
Games with token representation or the plot is thin but the main character is a woman so you're sexist of you don't buy it are generally not woke at all. They're only pretending to be as a marketing strategy. They're not doing anything to make anyone think about structural injustice in society, and are instead appealing to the common don't be horrible to groups that it was normal to be horrible to decades ago that their market research team determined were already agreed with by most of their potential customers. It's just capitalism noticing that mysogynists etc. are no longer the largest demographic and being very unsubtle when signalling that the product thinks women are people.
There are a small number of very vocal people who complain about both kinds of game. They don't want people to acknowledge that treating women as people is now the default, but even more than that, they don't want people to play Bioshock as then if they're shown anything by Ayn Rand, they'll be immediately able to spot the flawed logic on her philosophy. They're careful to make sure to present it as if they're only complaining about the virtue-signalling-as-marketing kind as everyone recognises that they're generally crap, so it makes it look like they're making a reasonable argument. It also means people amplify the argument, but by using phrases like woke instead of badly written it makes it easier to correctly label well-written games containing politics they disagree with as woke, too, and have people make the association with being badly written annoying slop by themselves, without having people who've played the game point out that it is well-written and someone saying otherwise is an idiot.
They’re not doing anything to make anyone think about structural injustice in society,
What does this have to do with enjoying games? At their core, games are meant to entertain, engage, and immerse players in experiences that transcend the everyday. The primary goal is enjoyment.
Injecting external debates, especially contentious ones, into this space often detracts from what makes games special. It shifts the focus from the creativity, storytelling, and fun that unite players to divisive topics that many come to games to escape from.
False dilemma #1:
It’s just capitalism noticing that mysogynists etc. are no longer the largest demographic and being very unsubtle when signalling that the product thinks women are people.
Capitalism itself doesn’t "notice" anything; it responds to consumer demand and market trends. The idea of a "misogynist demographic" is flawed because such a group doesn’t actually exist in any meaningful, targeted way.
Textbook Straw man:
There are a small number of very vocal people who complain about both kinds of game. They don’t want people to acknowledge that treating women as people is now the default,
Who exactly are the “small number of very vocal people” you’re referring to? Are you speaking about a specific group or just a generalized idea of dissenters? Without evidence or clear examples, this comes across as a vague accusation rather than a meaningful argument.
Moreover, how is it that you’re aware of their intentions? What concrete actions have they taken to actively prevent people from acknowledging that treating women as people is now the default? Are there examples of deliberate efforts to suppress this acknowledgment, or is this an assumption about their motives?
Ironically, the statement itself mirrors the behaviors it criticizes: it paints a reductive, hostile caricature of the opposing view while claiming moral high ground.
Hey buddy, turning every response into a recitation of the "List of Fallacies" poster you likely have up above your monitor doesn't mean you're "winning". If you have an actual point to make, just make it and stop debating how people debate.
When a game puts it in your face that this character is is gay/trans/ethnic in a way that feels arbitrary to the setting or effected character, it comes off very much like a political move for sales.
Let's use soldier 76 from overwatch as an example. The way he was written on top of the are they aren't they thing he had going on with Ana didn't support him being gay at all. The announcement that he is gay came completely randomly and really fealt like a political move to add a little more representation.
On the other hand, we have good characters who happen to be LGBT, Ellie from the last of us, or my personal favorite Veronica from New Vegas.
I agree with you, slapping a veneer of diverse identity on a character post-facto is often just performative bullshit. At best it's bad representation, at worst it's cynical pinkwashing and pandering for profit.
But that's not a distinction I have ever seen an "anti-woke gamer" railing against.
What I do see them railing against is any representation in games that does not pander to their own personal preferences.
Did you not encounter any of the backlash to Ellie's sexuality? Honestly I think FNV only escapes a lot of that kind of vitriol because it was released pre-gg.
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 heard complaints about BG3 characters being romanceable independently of MC's gender and race, that it's against lore and statistics. But my guess would be that it would've been the thing devs wanted to do not because of wokeness, but because it seems fairer towards the player.
There were absolutely people calling that game woke. You didn't hear them because they were drowned out by the good press. It's not that game is only called woke when it's bad, it's that when a game is good there's enough positive publicity to drowned out the negative.
