Avowed isn't Woke actually

[Crazy Alchemy]

There's nothing Woke about pronouns.
He/Him, She/Her, They/Them, these are normal and accepted every day pronouns we all use in our daily lives.

Having pronouns is the only thing people considered woke about Avowed, but pronouns aren't woke. So Avowed isn't Woke actually.

One of the devs may say Woke stuff but that's all outside the game drama and has nothing to do with whether the game is Woke.

[Vixziค็็็็็n]

I mean, we shall see. For me, pronouns aren't a deal breaker when it's an option but it does worry me that in this climate they decided that something so small was needed in a game that was going to create controversy which then leads me to believe that perhaps they are willing to go out on a limb to focus on other things they shouldn't either.

Matt Hansen is straw #2.

But we shall see.

[Crazy Alchemy]

Why were pronouns even Straw #1 though?

Matt Hansen being Straw #2 is fine but it's Real World drama and has nothing to do with the game itself. He's just an art director it's not like he wrote the script.

[Vixziค็็็็็n]

Originally posted by Crazy Alchemy:

Why were pronouns even Straw #1 though?

Matt Hansen being Straw #2 is fine but it's Real World drama and has nothing to do with the game itself. He's just an art director it's not like he wrote the script.

It's how those things come together. Right now #1 in and of itself, just speaking for me now, isn't an issue. Combined with #2 it starts to paint more of a picture that perhaps there's a pattern of focusing on identity and pandering. Now whether that plays out or not, dunno. But we'll see.

[Chibirion]

I don't understand why people care about Woke or non-woke that much. [Maybe I'm too far away from Western politics]

To be honest, I don't mind playing as a blind black girl who is missing an arm or two as long as the game is good.

The problem is not "woke characters", the problem is "horrible writing characters"

[Jeffer'son Airship]

Originally posted by Chibirion:

The problem is not "woke characters", the problem is "horrible writing characters"

Nail on the head. BG3 definitely has some woke characters (I'll leave the actual game up to debate) but they're written well enough to be accepted.

"Woke" is basically being used as a scapegoat. it's a nice simple shorthand to explain why a game is bad even when it doesn't logically fit. It's also used by fans of some titles to defend the thing they like from criticism too. That's also a trick publishers love to do nowadays too.

It all detracts from most of the problems being good old fashioned corporate greed. It's not JUST people like Mr. Hansen or DEI initiatives causing this. It's the horrible churn and burn out of talented developers in the AAA gaming space.

AAA gaming is just churning through talent. It's hellish working conditions that most are not willing to stick with, causing insanely high turnovers even without publishers loving to fire senior staff to cut down costs.

DEI is a SYMPTOM of a much bigger problem. That being most AAA releases get focused grouped to hell and have so many cooks in the kitchen you'll only ever get a watered down product. Fighting just DEI is not seeing the forest from the trees.

[Vixziค็็็็็n]

Originally posted by Jeffer'son Airship:

DEI is a SYMPTOM of a much bigger problem. That being most AAA releases get focused grouped to hell and have so many cooks in the kitchen you'll only ever get a watered down product.

Corporations are the puppet masters. DEI is the tool that is creating the virus leading to the symptoms found in gaming that are permeating into creative spaces. Either the talent, if you call it that, themselves are not up to task which I would not argue with at all or what talent is there is forced to focus on things outside of what makes a game great. DEI not only insults minorities but it is a diversion from what is important.

Fixed it for you.

[Jeffer'son Airship]

Except no, you are vastly oversimplifying things by trying to paint it solely on DEI.

DEI is one of many issues affecting things. It's one that does need to go, but it also isn't going to be a magic wand that fixes everything if it does.

It's a simple fact that companies are sacrificing senior staff for the sake of saving costs (if the endless crunch burnout doesn't make them quit first.) DEI is a useful tool for them to do so (but not the only reason they use it.)

I'll use Suicide Squad as it's kind of a great example of MANY of the problems with things. It had bad writing, yes, and did seem quite disrespectful of Kevin Conroy except you know he recorded that script when he was expected to recover (and hilariously the final bit of content the game received introduced a pretty obvious planned dumb twist that Batman wasn't actually dead.)

But the problems with that game only start with the writing. The game is just a giant poorly designed mess of microtransactions and removed live service features and none of that has to do with DEI or woke.

AAA gaming has the same problem mainstream movies have. They MUST be record breaking blockbusters to recoup costs or they are failures. Every AAA release from most studios is gambling the life of the studio. It's a model that simply cannot continue and encourages companies to play as safe as possible while also being as predatory as they can get away with. And all this comes at the expense of actually telling good stories.

[Crazy Alchemy]

Originally posted by Jeffer'son Airship:

Originally posted by Chibirion:

The problem is not "woke characters", the problem is "horrible writing characters"

Nail on the head. BG3 definitely has some woke characters (I'll leave the actual game up to debate) but they're written well enough to be accepted.

"Woke" is basically being used as a scapegoat. it's a nice simple shorthand to explain why a game is bad even when it doesn't logically fit. It's also used by fans of some titles to defend the thing they like from criticism too. That's also a trick publishers love to do nowadays too.

It all detracts from most of the problems being good old fashioned corporate greed. It's not JUST people like Mr. Hansen or DEI initiatives causing this. It's the horrible churn and burn out of talented developers in the AAA gaming space.

AAA gaming is just churning through talent. It's hellish working conditions that most are not willing to stick with, causing insanely high turnovers even without publishers loving to fire senior staff to cut down costs.

DEI is a SYMPTOM of a much bigger problem. That being most AAA releases get focused grouped to hell and have so many cooks in the kitchen you'll only ever get a watered down product. Fighting just DEI is not seeing the forest from the trees.

This is exactly it, and Obsidian has some great writers.

[Vixziค็็็็็n]

Originally posted by Jeffer'son Airship:

Except no, you are vastly oversimplifying things by trying to paint it solely on DEI.

DEI is one of many issues affecting things. It's one that does need to go, but it also isn't going to be a magic wand that fixes everything if it does.

It's a simple fact that companies are sacrificing senior staff for the sake of saving costs (if the endless crunch burnout doesn't make them quit first.) DEI is a useful tool for them to do so (but not the only reason they use it.)

It doesn't need to be a magic wand, it's a thing that is clearly making things worse. It takes average things and makes them bad, good things and makes them average. It's the low hanging fruit that people keep wanting to grasp onto and hold like a body pillow because it's part of a greater agenda. While the rest of us want to eliminate it and get back to focusing on what matters.

This idea of solving problems that have existed in games before DEI is ridiculous being that those things were, and will continue to be in games forever. Good games vs. bad ones will always exist. But I think everyone would much rather get back to discussions about mechanics and graphics and corporate entities butting into development and that's exactly where we'll all be back to once DEI is done and over with.

[Jeffer'son Airship]

Originally posted by Vixziค็็็็็n:

This idea of solving problems that have existed in games before DEI is ridiculous being that those things were, and will continue to be in games forever. Good games vs. bad ones will always exist. But I think everyone would much rather get back to discussions about mechanics and graphics and corporate entities butting into development and that's exactly where we'll all be back to once DEI is done and over with.

See I just see DEI as part of corporate butting into development. Corporate is just being worse and more obvious about butting into development in general and DEI is part of it.

We both agree that DEI needs to go. I just think it also provides the opportunity to fix some of the other problems along the way too.

[Butcher]

Originally posted by Jeffer'son Airship:

Originally posted by Vixziค็็็็็n:

This idea of solving problems that have existed in games before DEI is ridiculous being that those things were, and will continue to be in games forever. Good games vs. bad ones will always exist. But I think everyone would much rather get back to discussions about mechanics and graphics and corporate entities butting into development and that's exactly where we'll all be back to once DEI is done and over with.

See I just see DEI as part of corporate butting into development. Corporate is just being worse and more obvious about butting into development in general and DEI is part of it.

I think in the world of DEI there is no place for slavery, discrimination, racism, sexism and other things that add an RPG a spice (Arcanum, for instance, had the whole bundle). Even if those things will be depicted as bad, it is still unacceptable to add them. It is censorship (or self-censorship, same end result) of ideas.

[Daedrius]

Originally posted by Crazy Alchemy:

There's nothing Woke about pronouns.
He/Him, She/Her, They/Them, these are normal and accepted every day pronouns we all use in our daily lives.

Yeah, I know. I usually refer to it, as it, as It puts the lotion on its skin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1U1c5hdKGU

[Jeffer'son Airship]

Originally posted by Butcher:

I think in the world of DEI there is no place for slavery, discrimination, racism, sexism and other things that add an RPG a spice (Arcanum, for instance, had the whole bundle). Even if those things will be depicted as bad, it is still unacceptable to add them. It is censorship (or self-censorship, same end result) of ideas.

That stuff was already getting whitewashed in AAA products before DEI though due to focus groups. DEI can certainly contribute to it being watered down but it already was happening in mainstream products. Prime example being basically the entire Assassin's Creed series from the start was toning down controversial bits of history.

Arcanum is from a time where RPGs were much more niche so it got away with more.

I think a good idea of how things have progressed for the worse that doesn't require DEI is looking at the entire Fallout series. Fallout 4 still has slavery but it's kinda treated like a weird joke if you turn evil instead of feeling like it has any weight. Starfield then is even more watered down (and likely did have some DEI involvement but it was continuing Bethesda's already existing trajectory.)

[Vixziค็็็็็n]

Originally posted by Jeffer'son Airship:

I think a good idea of how things have progressed for the worse that doesn't require DEI is looking at the entire Fallout series. Fallout 4 still has slavery but it's kinda treated like a weird joke if you turn evil instead of feeling like it has any weight. Starfield then is even more watered down (and likely did have some DEI involvement but it was continuing Bethesda's already existing trajectory.)

We can agree to disagree on whether the chicken comes before the egg or vice versa but at the end of the day the people have spoken. And just like in a corporation when making a decision, everyone can have input, but at some point everyone needs to get on board with the direction that leadership has made regarding that direction.

The people want DEI gone and they have a great case as to why they want it gone. It does not make entertainment better. No one is going to watch a show or play a game because so and so stood up to claim he was non-binary. If it doesn't add value then it shouldn't be there and I'm not sure who can argue with that and we've heard the leaders at Larian say that very thing... now of course they did add those things but they also made such an astounding game that it didn't matter and we know that these studios do not like the idea of living up to the standards that Larian has set out and they've been vocal about that.

So yeah get rid of DEI because it puts minorities at the forefront of bad entertainment and unless you're going to turn that around suddenly and all entertainment is going to showcase minorites in the most bad ass way possible, cool. Let's see it. But until we see a pattern of that...No, it needs to stop because for every failure is more pattern recognition where people now associate minority=bad. So now a self fulfilling prophecy is happening where the very thing people claimed was happening but was happening by an extremely small group of extremists is now being more broadly adopted through pattern recognition. Thanks DEI.

And DEI also, from the vantage point of a great many, takes away the focus that is needed to make a game great.

So this whole thing about "Please pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" thing isn't doing anyone any good.

[Butcher]

Originally posted by Jeffer'son Airship:

Originally posted by Butcher:

I think in the world of DEI there is no place for slavery, discrimination, racism, sexism and other things that add an RPG a spice (Arcanum, for instance, had the whole bundle). Even if those things will be depicted as bad, it is still unacceptable to add them. It is censorship (or self-censorship, same end result) of ideas.

That stuff was already getting whitewashed in AAA products before DEI though due to focus groups. DEI can certainly contribute to it being watered down but it already was happening in mainstream products. Prime example being basically the entire Assassin's Creed series from the start was toning down controversial bits of history.

Arcanum is from a time where RPGs were much more niche so it got away with more.

I think a good idea of how things have progressed for the worse that doesn't require DEI is looking at the entire Fallout series. Fallout 4 still has slavery but it's kinda treated like a weird joke if you turn evil instead of feeling like it has any weight. Starfield then is even more watered down (and likely did have some DEI involvement but it was continuing Bethesda's already existing trajectory.)

I mean, the very first Dragon Age (Origins) had it all too with Stens sexism, human-elf racism, dwarf caste system and overall depressive tone.

In comparison, Veilguard is softer than saturday-morning cartoon: heroes apologise for misgendering, act "hehe so quirky" and overall seem happy about end of the world.