Viri4thus

As much as I respect that stance I really think people are being trained into this nothing burger by the media. Who cares if they ask for an account? Like, some middle management at sony wants to pump numbers and people need to give an email address. I truly don't understand what's the big deal, granted, I don't buy sony games on PC so I don't have a horse in the race. Like, I can't play Apex or Destiny on Linux because "safety" (lol, hackerman intensifies) but the media's race is bashing a PSN account for "reasons" when we're being forced to use a spyware OS that enforces its monopoly at every turn? Like, it says on the blurb that a PSN account is needed, don't buy the game if that's not kosher, vote with the wallet. I truly am amazed at how the media shifts the narrative away from the actual relevant issues and people just fall for it.

Ai, google trends in english, what else does one need? Even after I gave precise google trends inputs so that the observations are reproducible? Your reply proves my point yet again. Peace.

Both GPT4 and Gemini estimate a 3:2 ratio between articles addressing video game character sexuality and those addressing lay offs and unionization in the games industry.

I won't continue this discussion because "Schreier's politics come out in his writing as well as social media. The drum he's been beating for a long time has been about labor and unionizing." is basically what I wrote on Schreier using more words, which indicates you're more interested in being a confrontational than engaging in an honest discussion on the topic. Enjoy the Cheeto for 4y.

Nobody normal complains about politics in games, what people complain about is poor writing and US cultural idiosyncratic defaultism in games. Perhaps if ESA members hadn't laid off the lion's share of adult writers in the room to hire cheap, overwhelmingly ignorant, uneducated and straight out of college dev teams with a superiority complex, we could get good narratives. There's a reason why everyone and their mothers keeps harping about indie games now, that's where the laid off talent went, they make independent games now. But it's cheaper to take "journos" to Disneyland than keeping a roster of devs with 10+ years experience. In the past, there was already a backlash on journos for their habitual prostitution to the companies they cover but that message was quickly erased in favour of "gAmErS aRe MiSoGyNiStIc". Now, most traditional game news outlets are owned by a handful of holding companies, and most of their articles are AI generated drivel by, you guessed it, people not holding journalism degrees. Gaming journalism has become the off ramp of untalented and incompetent language/social science majors who are too inept to actually find a job in their field. That's why we get this level of shitty journalism, because technically, they really don't know what being a journalist is, from the ethics standards to the reporting without inserting personal bias. No self respecting journalist chooses covering hatsune miko's latest release when there are so many conflicts in the world that need covering, so we get Felicity, Mars and Bruno, English major extraordinaires, who end up on a dead end career with wages capping at below 40k pounds per anum that justify their lack of journalistic ethics by "It's the perk of the profession since we don't get well paid".

There were more articles covering game character sexuality than the mass lay offs of the last two years that left entire families without sustenance. Then people are surprised that orange nazi cheeto gets elected by the dumb yanks? The megaphone holders for social issues have room temp level IQ. When was the last time that a "game journo" or major dev from a AAA outlet seriously addressed relevant issues like social inequality or poverty? Do yourself a favour and compare the google interest in the topics "transgender", "hunger", "unionization" and "lay offs" and tell me that it isn't by design that an issue that affects an infinitesimally small percentage of the population has so much air time in comparison to an ongoing genocide and hunger crisis in the global south. I guess rich white teen problems are more serious than brown people dying. The bourgeois left has set back the class struggle for 100 years. Enjoy the hard right turn of modern western society.

Edit: Jason Schreier is a good example of how to conduct yourself, he mostly keeps his private ideas to his social media but his work focuses on more relevant issues to a majority of the population.