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If it came out today by a "woke" studio she wouldn't be blonde, attractive, or white, and she would use shitty popculture references.
Also, the gameplay wouldn't be good because the studio would blow the entire budget on paying celebrities to be voice actors, and culture experts.
Why do you think The WokesTM don't like hot women? Why do you think we're all prudish? At most, we all want different types of beautiful women.
You also conflate us with corporate shittyness, even though we're doing more to push back against it than anyone. We form unions to challenge these suits that are only good at squeezing money.
You think getting mad at woke games will challenge the forced references or overpriced celebrities? If anything, you're only ensuring the industry gets more soulless and creatively bankrupt. Game devs become "woke" after exploitation awakens them.
I used "woke" in quotes because the definition of woke is debatable. You clearly identify with a different type of "woke" than what I see as "woke".
To me "woke" means taking an established franchise that has a core audience that is mostly white male, then change that franchise to target a minority that probably doesn't like the franchise to begin with. This includes taking away the ability to self-insert for the majority, or making a character less attractive so that someone else can self-insert or be less offended about seeing beautiful characters.
Samus is a strong female protagonist with little personality, and you also barely see Samus outside of her armor. She is therefore a good self-insert for anyone. The reason she was made a woman and not just a mystery is because of the sex appeal, which clearly paid off if you ever search her rule34.
Viewing her sex appeal as problematic and removing it to promote body diversity is a "woke" thing to do, but also incredibly stupid, because of how important that sex appeal is to the franchise. A "woke" company would make this stupid decision, and the core demographic would be rightfully infuriated, because their beloved character was ruined.
I don't see for example Forspoken as problematic or even "woke" on a franchise level, because they made a new franchise with a new character, rather than ruining an existing one. It is maybe woke on an industry level because they target an almost non-existing demographic (people who can self-insert into the insufferable main character), but in my opinion, the only problematic part about that franchise is the way gamers were shamed for not liking it.
Now where do celebrity voice actors come in, you may ask. And to be honest, it is less about "wokeness" and more of a recent pattern seen in games that tend to be "woke" but it is a weak correlation, and more of a thing I said to highlight these studios inability to prioritize the important parts of games (making the gameplay good). A better example would probability have been only hiring voice actors of the same ethnicity as the character, thereby limiting the available high quality voice actors, and ending up with lower quality as a result. This is a "woke" move because it prioritizes DEI over quality.
About that thing you said about unions. I'm not really sure what wokeness has to do with it. Are you saying the main driving force behind these unions is wokeness? I only see unions as something that improves the quality of the workers rights and life, not the product itself. Not that I would know much about it. The japanese game industry that I'm part of has no unions as far as I know.
Are you saying the main driving force behind these unions is wokeness?
Yes. This is because "woke" is a term that originated from the African American community to describe being "awake" to the racism and unfairness in the system. It's about not taking society at face value, understanding that words are just words and popular narratives often conceal exploitation. Unions are woke because you need to know you're being exploited to stand up against the owners.
The reason unions make games better is that they empower workers to do better quality work. People are actually more productive when they aren't overworked, especially for a job like game development. Crunched employees make more mistakes, think less creatively about problem solving, and take longer to do a task.
If you want to get something done more quickly, it's better to not overwork your employees, instead hiring more if you need more work done. The business people don't see it that way, assuming they can have their cake and eat it too. They push long hours and tight deadlines, which lowers the quality of the work while risking employee burnout.
Crunch weakens the entire product. A common truth in writing is that the first draft will suck, with most good ideas coming after you sleep on the idea, get feedback, and critique it through multiple iterations. The same is true for making things look high quality. It takes time to make a virtual world look good, so if that time isn't given, it will suck. Time is necessary for quality. There aren't any magical workarounds.
Additionally, when the owners have so much control over their employees, they listen more to the marketing team on what boxes to tick to make the most money. This is often why we see poorly done minority characters and plot lines. They exist to reach a demographic and weren't given the resources needed to be good. The DEI department isn't responsible. In fact, the DEI workers often quit because they have no influence.
Being anti-woke is choosing to be asleep to the truth. The things you're mad about aren't a result of us woke minorities, but the uncreative executives who only understand money. We're textbook scapegoats, and things only get worse when people waste their energy on us.
Those games would have been shit with more... traditional characters as well.
It's like with comic books. The writing has never been great, but incels only had a problem with it when they can't self insert into a power fantasy.
I recently learned there's at least one writer who has worked on both Halo 5 and Forspoken. A lot of people have issues with the writing quality of Halo 5. One issue I personally have is how many scenes don't really start or end. The scenes often open with the conversations already having started and don't seem to conclude by the time it ends. The lines I've heard of Forspoken are also awkward, but there's way more vitriol for Forspoken. Now why could there be so much more negative attention for that game?
It's like with comic books. The writing has never been great, but incels only had a problem with it when they can't self insert into a power fantasy.
The writing was great if you're into comic books, also self insertion in power fantasies is the purpose in these comic books. Complaining about this is like complaining about gambling at a casino.
The lines I've heard of Forspoken are also awkward, but there's way more vitriol for Forspoken. Now why could there be so much more negative attention for that game?
The difference between halo 5 and forspoken is that the main protagonist in halo 5 isn't insufferable. Of course people aren't going to like the game if they can't relate with the main protagonist. Forspoken seemed to target an audience that doesn't exist in the video game industry or at least is very underrepresented, so you're going to have mostly incompatible players trying it and disliking it. On top of that the protagonist is so full of herself it pisses off players who aren't this core demographic (that probably don't play video games to begin with).
You think comic book writing is great 🤣
I don't read comic books, but I can assure you that hardcore fans will think the writing is great. The fact that there are hardcore fans to begin with is proof of that.
Proof of fans isn't proof of quality.
Honestly, the biggest condemnation of comic books I have is meeting comic book fans.
Permanently Deleted
Twilight Saga
A masterpiece. Just not to me and you.
Popularity has never had anything to do with quality. Popularity is more related to marketing that anything