If those Internet duds that get mad about black people in video games spent like half that energy being mad about, like, wage theft, we’d be so much better off.
Therein lies the point of MAGA efforts. If you keep your base punching the left then they won’t remember they’re working class, not really being crushed by the left, and may start to punch up.
They’re already too scared to do in person town halls. Even so, this steered rage is intentional.
You’re not displaced by corporate, but by immigrants, DEI, and non-traditional women.
Maga efforts assisted by Democratic leaders that also focus on everything else but class issues as well.
Depends. That’s the issue though. DEMs is a giant bag of angry cats fighting amongst themselves, gatekeeping one another, and more or less telling one another how they should be while saying it’s all inclusive.
The infighting is real. I’ll give the repubs credit for unity, they’re strangely good at it, just look at Tesla. Ten years of hating Tesla and hazing Tesla drivers. Now, the same people are driving cars into protesters for daring to smear the company. That’s unity. Blind unity. But unity.
We can’t do anything even remotely close to that in party.
Part of the problem there is that it’s transparently obvious that the establishment is complicit, regardless of whether they put D or R beside their name. One of the advantages of MAGA (from their perspective) is that you pretty much can’t call yourself a republican unless you’re on board. They’ve taken enough action and done enough bold and divisive things that they’ve forced everyone to make their allegiances crystal clear.
Dems, on the other hand, are (rn) a pretty loose coalition of “people who oppose Trump.” Dems aren’t really allies, they’re just people with a common enemy. And as we all know, “the enemy of my enemy is my enemy’s enemy, no more and no less.” Those fragile alliances will break the moment anyone tries to challenge the status quo.
There’s a few different ways forward. Some would have been more effective before Trump and his cronies lit the constitution on fire, and some are better suited to the present moment. But we can’t seem to agree on what to do, or to work together to get anything done. Part of the problem is the uncertainty, not knowing where people’s loyalties lie. It’s easy to say in a vacuum that unwillingness to compromise is dumb, but it makes more sense when you realize we’re effectively playing Secret Hitler, and compromise makes you look like the enemy. That doesn’t make it the right call, necessarily, but I understand the impulse.
As for strategies, first and foremost we need to organize. Nothing happens without organization. We should also be reading up on political theory, especially from people we disagree with. (I don’t mean right wing stuff, I mean people with similar goals.) Anarchists should read Lenin. MLs should read Chomsky. Leftists should read liberal stuff and liberals should read leftist stuff. (I know that you think you understand the positions you disagree with. Read it anyways.)
As for strategies, there are several. Some want to reform the Democratic Party. Some want to start a new party. Some believe that insurrection is the only way forward, and that anything less will leave a corrupt system in place, as effective as removing only half of a tumor. All these approaches have drawbacks. All have some merit. Frankly, do whichever you can live with.
The important thing is: support the others whenever you can. Even if you think democracy is dead and there’s no point in voting, do it anyways. Until such time as we think the government will use our voting record against us, it’s only one or two days out of your year. It won’t hurt anything, and there’s a chance it could help.
If you can stomach it, vote tactically. Voting the lesser of two evils might only be slightly reducing harms done, but stalling for time can be really useful sometimes.
Take as much direct action as you can. Remember that while some people can be reasoned with, the people who are actually in power are operating on realpolitik. They will only listen to you if you give them tangible reasons to listen. Might doesn’t make right, but it does shut you up. Or if you’re being suppressed, fighting back will give you the leverage you need to be heard. Don’t let them silence you.
Above all, remember that everyone opposing the establishment (from the left) is your ally. Even if their chosen method is running for office and pushing more progressive legislation. Even if their method is armed resistance. You may not agree, you don’t have to help them, and you might even have to publicly disavow them. But don’t get in their way (as much as you can manage) and don’t rat them out.
Finally, remember what game we are playing. Remember there are traitors. Not everyone who claims to be a Democrat supports democracy. Not everyone who claims to be a Marxist or an Anarchist really is one. Don’t judge people by the labels they wear, watch what they do. If they’re acting in a way that helps you, they’re probably your ally. And if they’re sowing dissent or getting in the way, regardless of how loudly they claim to be on your side, they probably aren’t to be trusted. And definitely don’t draw conclusions about a whole political ideology based on a few people who claim to belong to that ideology, because bad faith actors have every reason to sow dissent in our ranks. Words are easy, don’t trust them.
If we could all coalesce around that basic gameplan, I think we’d have a lot more unity than we do now. You just have to remember we’re playing a social deduction game, and everything becomes an awful lot clearer. At least I think it does.
Don’t forget the church in your metaphor. That way, the punches that keep those MAGATs spitting leftwise are reich crosses.
The culture war is made up to distract from the class war
Same with individuality by consumerism.
Only war is a class war. Ever and always.
It’s hard to overstate how true this statement is
Like of course racism is a huge issue in America and other European countries (not letting them off the hook here a lot of the anti woke commentary resides there) and that is where this comes from, but the outrage this game and others receive isn’t organic.
So much money, effort and planning goes into manufacturing outrage that I don’t believe you can feel strongly about these things and be “normal.” These people are consuming media from ecosystems that are made to keep them mad and to feed them propaganda. It is no different with maga and fake news or really any other ideology that requires people to fully buy in and accept a reality that doesn’t exist.
Game is fine so far.
People get all in their feelings over a game. A story. Would they get this worked up over a book? These people have to bitch about something to feel alive.
I feel alive taking in a game how it was written and designed to be played. I don’t worry about cultural norms or other petty bullshit. Enjoy the gameplay, the world design and a new experience.
Now, give me a Black Flag sequel with a female lead, a revamped ship combat and more pirate comedy. Top it off with some lesbien romance and outfits. Just to piss off the Republican snowflakes.
Sounds like you’re talking about AC: Odyssey 😄
I did live that fantasy through Kassandra and Odyssey, but it wasn’t the Caribbean baby!
What’s wrong with the Aegean?
God, I hated that game. I miss my classic Assassin’s Creed.
AC died with Desmond
I still quite liked Black Flag and Unity (although far from perfect, especially at launch) and even Origins was pretty good. But Ubisoft Quebec just managed to poop on AC lore multiple times, most egregiously with odyssey.
AC was mechanically enjoyable, if overly long and repetitive. But the story was lacking to the point that I don’t even remember what the fuck the game was about in the first place. that’s what you get for making games bigger and longer. it just becomes a
so much so that at first I thought “shame about the story because it had a really strong start with that twist” but I realized was misremembering AC3’s plot twist. so there’s literally nothing that I remember about AC4’s story except for the abysmal modern day parts which proved to me that they stopped giving a shit about the story and caused me to never check out an AC game again.
Also, the only thing that comes from including more people of color, LGBTQ+ people, etc., in media is more variety in characters and possible story lines. How is that ever a bad thing?
it’s bad if you’re a bigot and have been raised to hate and feel disgust when your beliefs are challenged
feel disgust when your beliefs are challenged
I remember feeling this in church as a kid. Know what I did? I asked myself, “why would I react that way? If this is true, then it should be able to withstand challenges, and if it’s not then it is not worth believing.”
Ship Blackbeard and Captain Morgan. That would truly piss them off. A lesbian romance only brings performative anger because they’re hoping for porn.
How many people raging about this probably played the shit outta San Andreas. Oohhhhhh but that’s okay cause it fits their stereotype?
If the bigots are hating Assassin’s Creed and it makes news, then that means it’s officially good. If it was bad, thr bigots don’t make news since they get drowned out by everyone else saying it’s bad. It’s my new metric for whether or not something is worth watching/playing.
I, unironically, use this as a way of finding movies, TV shows and games that I might like.
If you go on RottenTomatoes and look at the critic score vs. the user score, you can really tell a lot.
For example, if a movie has a very low critic score, and a suspiciously high user score, it’s most certainly religious drivel created to push a narrative. If you click on the reviews, it will confirm it. Every time.
Conversely, if a movie or show has a very high critic score, and a suspiciously low user score, it’s going to be because of conservative snowflakes getting triggered. Again, reading the user reviews confirms it every time.
In the case of the latter, it almost always means I will enjoy the content. So I will seek out movies and shows that have that discrepancy.
so… thoughts on the last jedi?
Not the person you responded to, TLJ is easily my favorite of the three sequel movies. The Force Awakens and Rise of the Skywalker (I think?) both felt like focus group fanfiction slop; TLJ was the only one with anything meaningful to say at the end of the day.
thats pretty much what i think too but at least the force awakens is watchable. rise of skywalker is total junk with about 2 good scenes
You’re asking the wrong person as I stopped caring about Star Wars a couple of decades ago.
i see, i only ask as its a movie that famously had a high critic score and low audience score
Not the person you replied to, but…
When the sequel trilogy first came out, I was upset because it could have been a lot better. Looking back on it, though, I think that was a combination of nostalgia and high expectations. That’s the problem all sequels struggle with, really, and the sequel trilogy didn’t hit the mark.
Of the three, The Last Jedi was actually my favorite. I didn’t particularly like what Abrams had done with the first one, and while I didn’t think switching directors in the middle of a trilogy was a terribly good idea, I felt like I could kind of see where Johnson was going with it.
With Abrams, I felt like he was trying to recreate the original trilogy. Use a tried and true formula that worked and not scare the audience too much. It was bland. Uninspired. Corporate. Johnson seemed like he actually had a story to tell. It might not have sit well with the fans - he might take a big swing and miss - but at least I felt like he was trying to create art instead of merely making money.
Honestly I kind of would like to see Johnson’s take on a full sequel trilogy.
Obviously if I could have picked anyone to take on the chief creative direction on the sequel trilogy I’d pick Dave Filoni, but that’s neither here nor there.
It might not have sit well with the fans - he might take a big swing and miss - but at least I felt like he was trying to create art instead of merely making money.
Same, I actually loved how his story had Rey as a “nobody” whose choices and actions were what made her important, SW has way too many special bloodlines, prophecies, and chosen ones.
Then Abrams does a 180 in the sequel 😑
I still hate that god damned dagger.
i also loved last jedi, and i was excited to see how rise of skywalker was going to continue last jedi, regardless if the fans hated it again or not. then rise of skywalker came out and just ruined everything
IIRC, academy bait also tends to have the high critic score low(er) user score complex.
Even taking hyperbole into account, this is not a great metric and has not been bourne out in my experience.
What’s a suspiciously high and low score?
Maybe they’ve gotten better at filtering that shit out in the past couple of years, but can tell you with certainty that I’ve watched at least a half dozen shows and movies based entirely on this and have enjoyed them. My memory is shit so I can’t seem to think of any off the top of my head right now. If any come to me I will update this comment.
It’s usually media that portray the black experience in America, or that shows US history (particularly slavery and/or Jim Crow) in a negative light. Sometimes it’s just because it’s about strong women. Or, in their minds, it makes men look bad (because portraying the objectively shitty things men do is apparently biased)
For examples of the religious BS, look up anything Jim Caveizal has been in throughout the last decade or so.
Well, it depends on how recently the content has been released. If it’s recent, you can’t use user ratings because it could be review bombed. But if some time has already passed, user reviews with time even out and settle on their true score. For me, user scores are always the most accurate.
If there’s anything I’ve learned in social media over the past few years is that every wrongdoing can be blamed by the opposing political party. It’s just so simple.
There has been a bunch of media that warranted legitimate disdain, however the anti-woke angle was the biggest focus
A lot of the hate was also from trailers showing off completely fucked bugs. Floating and/or frozen characters, unloaded assets, etc technical disasters
Yeah its an ubisoft copy-paste game. It is a bad game cause they don’t make any good games.
But american conservatives are mad that some shitty ass sci fi slop game from a terrible developer is not 100% historically accurate since they want an samurai to be white texan instead of black.
Also I’m pretty sure that the black samurai in the game is an actual real, historical figure. Or at least based on one.
Which makes it all so much stupider. It’s not even about race swapping, it’s literally people upset that the main character of a video game is black.
Sure, but that’s not the hate being addressed here. Those were comments specifically about there being a black guy as a main character.
The fact that it’s a buggy barely playable mess is par for the course for Ubisoft.
Why hate a ubisoft game for having a historically accurate black dude when ubisoft games do plenty of other legitimate things to earn hate?
This is the only way to combat that sort of thing. To keep it from happening in your communities, to call out the people who do it and shame them, and to make it clear that this is stupid online bullshit that no one should care about. Good on him.
I feel like a huge portion of corporate America has adopted the following strategy:
- Half ass a product despite a comically large budget, resulting in a product that ranges in quality from mediocre to downright terrible
- Stick some culture war shit somewhere in the product
- Expect reviewers to give you overwhelmingly positive reviews based off political virtue signaling
- Put a magnifying glass on the vocal minority of genuinely toxic fans, so that you can claim everyone who doesn’t like the mediocre product is toxic
- bullshit about sales numbers
- Obfuscate individual success/failures on earnings reports, and blame overall underperformance on “macroeconomic conditions”
Like at this point it’s on me for engaging with these posts I guess.
Stick some culture war shit somewhere in the product
you mean minorities?
Look if you can’t tell the difference between actually well designed games with a diverse cast and Ubisoft crap number 12 then that’s on you.
who said anything about any other thing in the games or their origin? All I meantioned was your idea that having minorities involved in anything was “culture war”
Okay so explain to me why things like Spiderverse and Baldur’s Gate receive nearly ubiquitous acclaim in ways Snow White and Assassins Creed doesn’t.
No.
Explain what “culture war” is, and how it isn’t just incorporating minorities into a work.
The difference between actual diversity revolves around tokenization, flanderization, homogenization, and of course gaslighting.
“culture war” minority characters are often inserted into narratives where they don’t quite fit, are often one dimensional characters, and often all act in a certain way based off their race/gender/sexuality combo, and are often inserted to gaslight anyone who has an issue with the low quality of the underlying product into thinking all criticism is bigoted.
It’s the last point that both you and Ubisoft are leveraging right now. If they replaced Yasuke with some burly Japanese dude, the entire discourse would be centered around how this game is a mid-at-best title for way too much money.
Instead asshole stans like you come out of the woodwork to push a narrative that most negative criticism centered around bigotry.
There are plenty of IPs with minority characters that don’t get shit on, because both the IP and the characters are actually good.
Enjoy your $70 mid-fest.
Oh lord someone get this chud out of the thread! And fer fucks sake y’all never ask chuds a got damn thing. Cuz they’ll tell you, and it will be the dumbest shit you read today
Tbf any women or minorities in a game seem to be a trigger and somehow overtly political for the reactionary right wing snowflakes anymore.
Bad take. You started from the assumption that normal people care about this shit. They categorically do not.
Watch cowboys video that /u/[email protected] posted in this thread. He explains far better than i can that if there’s a grift, it’s from the people who make money manufacturing outrage.
PS i never knew cowboy was fucking jacked holy shit lol
It couldn’t possibly be that making video games at that level is immensely complex and that normal people don’t care about your “culture war”.
Nope. Never. It’s all a giant scam just to make racists angry.
It’s a giant scam to get people to defend low effort mediocre content.
It worked for a while, because there was 100 percent a subset of people who just bought games because of social media hype. The combination of the changing media landscape and economic environment has resulted in this falling apart.
French Companies: Now American!
I mean yeah honestly a huge part of European national identities seems to be getting subsumed by philosophies that originated and primarily exist in the US.
I’d imagine that Trump serves as a wake up call in regards to that stuff, but at the end of the day I’m not French.
“Why did you put transgender people in this thing? Why did you make it divisive?”
“Wait. Walk that back. Why do you think that adding transgender people makes something divisive?”The bigotry is hidden in the questions, but they’re not hiding so successfully anymore.
Honestly? I kind of see it.
Not to be confused with art where the “culture war shit” (as you put it) is central to the project. See: the new She-ra. Celeste. The Owl House. In these projects, the story is actually about marginalized people.
But other times? It’s pretty easy to make your movie, show, game, whatever and then add in some token representation at the end. Rainbow capitalism at its finest. And then people will take sides, not based on the merits of the thing itself, but based on what “team” it looks like they’re on when they defend or criticize the thing. See: Starbucks. Disney. Target.
Or, on the other side of the aisle: Christian music. Christian movies. Literally all of the Trump merch. Black Rifle Coffee. Chick-fil-A. Every Christian college ever founded. Whatever fucking show Tim Allen is in this year, they’re basically all the same. Any cop show.
… still racist to review bomb something just because a black person is in it. But I do see your point - capitalism be pandering. To both sides, usually in different ways.
Sure, but the vast majority of people realize what’s going on if an IP starts rambling on about freedom, Jesus, or the thin blue line. You can make comments about those things being transparent pandering and the overwhelming majority of people will just believe you.
Meanwhile up until recently that wasn’t really true with liberal pandering, and it still isn’t in a lot of spaces.
One thing to note is that I disagree with you on using Chick-fil-A as an example. They are true believers when it comes to this stuff, and half their claim to fame is being good to such an extent that liberals eat there anyway.
the vast majority of people realize what’s going on if an IP starts rambling on about freedom, Jesus, or the thin blue line.
The less subtle ones, yeah. There are more subtle ones, too.
Meanwhile up until recently that wasn’t really true with liberal pandering, and it still isn’t in a lot of spaces.
Maybe we’re just in different spaces then. There’s a reason “bury your gays” is a trope, and it’s not because the lgbt community ate it up. (For the unaware, it’s similar to “the black guy always dies first” but for gay people.)
The only time I’ve heard of “bury your gays” was Voltron, which IMO was a good series that was murdered by a fandom that resented it for not being their personal self insert fan fiction.
I recommend you read up on it then. You might find it interesting.
He’s fucking right. Normal people don’t get their blood pressure up about “black people and women?! IN MY GAMES??”
“Normal” people mindlessly buy AC whenever they release a new one, despite most of them being the same mediocrity each time. One or two get mentioned as people’s favorite and the only games they can even recommend in the series, again, despite there being numerous games. People also shouldn’t be upset when an objective mediocrity is noted. A small release window between games is one such factor. But this is what people want. So, enjoy!
read the article before you type out a comment under it maybe. hint: you missed the point entirely.
I figured I might have. I just wanted to note the past of the AC series.
I mean, yeah, apparently it is what people want. It isn’t what I want, and so I just go and do something else. What I don’t do is go off and get mad at Assassin’s Creed, or at the very concept of Assassin’s Creed. Just let people like what they like, I dunno, sounds good to me
I’ve been watching him for a while now for his Souls-like playlists. He doesn’t really like playing Assassin’s Creed type games but he’ll do it out of popularity. Funny that this is the game he’s going viral for.
soon as you said soulslike I knew it would be cowboy before I clicked the article lol.
Cowboy is the GOAT. He is pretty much the only streamer I watch occasionally. He even had an overall positive opinion on Veilguard and it matches my experience fairly well.
Yeah he’s one of the few that’s around my age and doesn’t cater to a younger audience.
cant wait for elder scrolls 6 to come out and have people mad because its based in hammerfell 😂
Can you imagine the outrage if they simply remade Morrowind?
“Bethesda has gone woke! Not only did they make the elves dark, but they made those same dark elves the slave owners! Literally unplayable!” Even Vivec having two different skin colors would melt their minds.
You think they’d be paying attention to the multi-toned skin, and not the fact that Vivec is a non-binary hermaphroditic god?
Don’t worry, they are plenty capable of being mad at both
There is an old man in my building, who got into video games about 10 years ago, when his wife died. When I first moved in I played games with him fairly often. After I knew him about a year, he exposed himself as racist. So I just faded away from interacting with him, too old to bother lecturing, so I just stopped socializing with him. I do see him around, and we make small talk, in the halls, elevator, etc.
Anyway, now that you have context, I ran into him in the elevator when Shadows first came out. He said he had been playing it, and asked if I had. I said I didn’t then told him I was a little surprised he bothered with it. He said “Cause you play a colored samurai?” I said that I figured it wouldn’t be his thing, a lot of people didn’t like the idea. He replied “He was a real person, though” I told him a lot of people were mad about it, he said “it’s just a game”. So, if a racist, 83 year old, man didn’t see the issue here, these people have to be seeking things to be mad about. He doesn’t do much online though. Only social media he does is look at FB when his kids tell him they posted new pics of the grand kids, or whatever. This is purely a symptom of being terminally online.
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Everything that isnt about a straight white male plowing his sister is woke
You havent played the new AC because its woke.
I havent played it because its 70± dollars.
We are not the same.
I’ve played every one except for Mirage, paid like 10€ for every single one.
patientgamers ftw
Only day 1 game I’ve purchased in like 2 decades is Elden Ring lol. Patient gaming is where it’s at
Mirage was yhe first since Ezio that I finished
Was it any good? It kinda just disappeared from the zeitgeist. Don’t even know the main characters name.
Yeah worth playing reminded me a lot of 2
I haven’t played because I quit ALL video games 7 years ago. Picked up board games because instead of being “liked” playing with other people, it actually is.
Dedicated to the person complaining about racism against Japanese people under a post about how nice trees and hills look in AC: Shadows.
Thanks, that wasn’t the place at all for that <3
