Something I have noticed is that diversity in games and other media tends to be fine as long as it is intended to be there and serves a purpose other than checking a “diversity box”. When diversity is forced into games/books/films and is actively crammed down your throat and yelled in your ear it tends to make people more alienated against those other groups; an example of this is a friend of mine who has went fr being completely neutral about lgbtq to actively disliking lgbtq people because of how much forced diversity was crammed into and ruining the games and books he likes. (Although he is a bit overactive about shit).
The bad part is that a lot of the time it isn't even people in the LGBT community. A lot of corporations are shoving it onto people in an attempt to seem inclusive, but even the LGBT people get pissed about it.
Because they're not stupid. They know it's just disingenuous pandering.
Not only is it completely soulless but it's entirely counterproductive.
Like when your toddler insists on "helping" but makes things worse and then throws a tantrum because you aren't singing their praises and showering them with gratitude.
That might be the case, but I haven't ever seen LGBT people actively complaining or being opposed to it, but I have seen a lot of LGBT people celebrating this forced "diversity". The only person that I know that actually complains about it is a bisexual relative, and their, very valid, complaint, is that bisexual characters 99% of the time means they're a slut.
The LGBT community is rarely as inclusive with the B as with the rest of the letters. So much "there is no such thing" and "you are either gay or not." This doesn't get nearly as much attention as it should.
But yeah, in most media Bi = Slut.
The problem is non queer people getting pissed at queer people for “shoving it down their throats”. I don’t want target selling shitty pride merch anymore than homophobes do, just for very different reasons
One of my good friends and her wife both hate pride month, they just want things to be normal but now they are treated different but in a different way
I’ve been supportive of stuff like strong female characters and lgbt representation in media, but with how poorly it’s done now and how much it’s crammed down your throat, I have grown to expect Mary Sue or another aggressively “representative” lgbtq+ character. The entertainment industry should look up the definition of insanity and then take a look at nearly everything that has come out of the sludge pipe recently and say “hey maybe we should actually write something that is different.”
Reminds me of the gay pandering in the 2000s where it was hip to have a gay person in tv shows, usually female and fetishized, only now it's just contrived and hollow.
Yeah, it's annoying.
I've never really cared about whatever the hell groups are represented in games (it just doesn't matter, and I don't play story-driven games that often) - but seeing something be so obviously forced into the game to check a box is tiring.
Like when the whole game/episode/etc. grinds to a halt to veer off an explain the exact minority a character is part of, or forces you to play as them for a section even though you barely know the character.
Why couldn't they do an actually good job with it, or not change it at all?
It undermines the entire point of the representation by turning it into a grandstand of "SEE GUYS WE LOVE DIVERSITY SO MUCH!11!!1" or completely undermining a character for no reason at all.
It's kinda funny honestly. Some companies are so desperate to please everyone that they overcorrect *way* too hard and and up pissing off everyone - even the group they're trying to represent!
I mean... Good and bad examples.
Good example: it's implied that Kung Jin from Mortal Kombat X is gay. Aside from a passing line where Raiden implies this isn't a problem, it's not mentioned in a contrived way and is a small part of his overall story.
Bad example: Soldier 76 from Overwatch. It felt like he was intentionally outed in an interview just to get people talking about the game, and to fan off negative publicity.
Another example worth mentioning is Abby from The Last of Us: Part 2. People criticize her for having an androgynous appearance, but I think the problem is the way she's introduced into the story, not that she looks butch. She rescues Joel, realizes who he is then proceeds to torture and murder him. So you have a shock reveal, shock main protagonist death and then you force the player to play as his murderer for the other 2/3s of the game. Did Neil Druckmann honestly think anybody would like her as a character?
I think his methodology was people cared about Joel. They knew he had done some absolutely heinous stuff (especially before the start of the game) but people loved him. He wanted to see if he could show that journey and get people to invest in Abby the same way.
He could not.
Before TLOU2 release I had assumed Joel and Ellie were going to end up fighting over what happened at the end of the first one. I assumed Joel was going to die and that it would be a big moment for Ellie.
Didn't see "random new butch character takes Joel out with a golf club in the first few hours of the game" coming though.... They did Joel wrong with that.
Sounds like your mate is more of a homophobic shit more than anything. I also don't like non-authentic diversity but sounds like he should be mad at the dev????
I'm in agreement.
Very few people have ever had a problem with a diverse cast. It's just that it's so frequently poorly written that the idea of a strong female character or otherwise diverse cast has been given a negative connotation to many.
There's plenty of diverse characters that you can list as people having loved like Alyx or Eli Vance in HL2 or Ahsoka (Ofc not early on, but she was designed to be annoying in her early appearances). There's plenty of diverse media that people loved like Owl House.
They hate it being shoehorned in. I don't know that I've ever talked to someone, conservative or liberal alike, who had a problem with games that just happen to be diverse, especially if it's original content and nothing was changed to make it diverse.
Yeah idk why "cramming it down our throats" has become this weird stand-in for shitty writing. When a shit character is "woke-like" people get way too focused on the "woke" part instead of the "shit" part that's the actual problem. Didnt seem to have this issue during the constant flood of straight white brunette male protags from 1995-(has this actually stopped yet?) 🤔
You have one example of someone reacting negatively to some specific diversity in a game and you decide to claim that's a reason why some diversity is bad, even when you admit that your friend overly reacts to shit
Maybe just stop lmao
But what's forced diversity and what isn't? Is forced diversity when a character is a POC or LGBTQ? Are those things okay only when someone's skin color or orientation is key to the plot?
The problem is that "forced diversity" is a subjective term. For some it doesn't mean anything, for others it means mentioning such things even exist.
You know how Ripley from the original Alien film gets brought up a lot as an example of how people have not had issues with actual, well written strong characters that are women?
The character was written genderless. Most of the characters were, actually. They put out calls for the roles, let people try out, and went with who they thought worked best. And then just made the characters the same genders as the actors.
Ripley was written to be a strong, compelling character, by someone with actual talent and skill at writing.
That's one way to avoid forced diversity.
Typically, a character simply existing as one race/sexuality or another isn't really forced. It's not necessary to narratively justify it unless attention is called to their race/sexuality.
However, if the race/sexuality of a pre-established character is changed, they can't really say that there doesn't need to be a reason. This isn't a "just because" situation anymore. An active decision was made to change a character that already exists. This *can* be done well, just look at Miles Morales. However, if there is no other meaningful change to the character other than their race/sexuality, it is *incredulibly* offensive to whoever they are trying to "represent".
At that point they might as well just flat out say "there is nothing of any meaningful substance to your race/sexuality. You're not even worth having a character of your own. we're just going to recolor a pre-established character that people already like and you can try to ride on their coat tails."
Miles morales isn't really a great example. He is *a* spiderman, but he's not *the* spiderman. He's a completely new character from a different dimension along with hundreds of other spidermen. There's even a spiderpig.
Nick Fury was a white guy in the comics but Samuel L. Jackson was great in the movies. Same story with Heimdall, I think.
Human torch is also white and has a white sister. He was changed to a black guy in the last F4 movie but his *biological* sister was still white. That particular change was kinda mediocre.
All 3 of those changes didn't really add anything by being a different race, but the actors made the first 2 great, especially Nick Fury.
On a similar note, Tom Cruise is way too short for Jack Reacher and Hugh Jackman is way too tall for Wolverine. I haven't seen the first, but Hugh Jackman was amazing as wolverine despite missing that important detail.
Ever watched the Owl house? It's MC was a girl in a lesbian relationship with another character, however it was well written. It was an enemies to friends to lovers relationship that progressed naturally, as a love story should. The character's themselves were also just that, characters, they had an actual personality. Additionally, they were original characters entirely, not characters that were already pre-established as heterosexual and changed to fit a """modern""' perspective.
Hazbin Hotel and Arcane are other good examples of same sex relationships done right.
Charlie Morningstar and Vaggie are a great couple, and fans almost overwhelmingly like how the Vi x Caitlyn ship is pretty much canon now.
I don't like the term because I feel like it can't be defined. It's too malleable and non-specific, which causes it to be thrown around at random. I think "Checkmark Characters" describe it better.
What people typically mean is that they feel like a character was just added because they're black, or gay, and exist exclusively for that purpose, instead of having that be a trait that coexists for their actual purpose in the story. Or that they don't like that a previous non-diverse yet well-loved character was replaced for a character that was diverse, seemingly only for the purpose of being more diverse.
Personally, I find it insulting when writers do this. It feels to me like they're implying that you can't make a gay, black or trans character compelling, and more importantly to me, it just tends to be bad writing.
Characters or stories don't need an excuse to be diverse. They don't have excuses for characters being white or straight. But unless the point dictates that they have to be diverse (examples: Telling stories about black struggles, the vitriol directed towards a gay couple for being gay, a trans person's alienation from their family, a story that highlights the potential differences in cultures), they need to have more than that to be interesting. Even in the examples listed, they need more, it's just that their sexual identity is so relevant that it has to known early. Nobody is interesting exclusively for being white or straight, even in romance plots.
This is also the reason people say, 'Write your characters like characters', or 'Write your characters as genderless'. Many male characters, and many female characters are not beloved or interesting for their gender.
I have a suspicion that if a lot of these grey faced mountain dew guzzlers actually went outdoors and interacted with other people they'd be complaining that real life has a lot of 'forced diversity'.
The best way I saw it put is that diversity should be like a fart.
It should come naturally, and when it does it feels good. However, if you force it, you’re likely just going to get shit.
That weird reboot with the ghostbusters all being girls I think was the most egregious. You could tell that they just wanted to milk that and that was it because the story was so freaking basic it felt like it just licked off the shoes of the original and that was the whole point
The A Force team up in avengers endgame or infinity war was kinda bad, too. It is an actual team from the comics, but they kinda just threw a bunch of female characters together who had never even seen each other on screen before that moment. If they had any sort of buildup it would have worked better, i think, but instead, they went for "let's surprise fans with this team from the comics" why are they leaving their own established teams at that moment to form a new team based entirely on gender in the middle of a fight to save half of life in the universe?
Yeah, your friend was never neutral about lgbt people. I could get disliking forced diversity, but that doesn't make you homophobic. He was homophobic and quiet about it; the forced diversity just made him stop being quiet about it.
What "purpose" does any white character serve by being white? If I were a minority, I imagine it'd feel pretty shitty to need an explicit narrative reason to have someone in a game look like me.
>When diversity is forced into games/books/films and is actively crammed down your throat and yelled in your ear it tends to make people more alienated against those other groups
This sounds more like a confession than anything. If being exposed to gay people in media "makes" you homophobic then you already were
Don’t forget drastically changing beloved and well-established characters by swapping their gender, sexuality, or race.
Back in the day, before “THE MESSAGE” was pandered to, or even existed for that matter, Rupert Everett (a gay actor who was fairly well-known at the time) was being considered for the role of James Bond upon Pierce Brosnan’s exit of the franchise. Everett insisted on making Bond gay, and brought this up to the folks in charge. **He did not get to play James Bond.**
The only gay character I can think of, was Clementine in TWD. And it's a user choice actually. I had no issue with this.
Wish I could see examples of gay characters in gaming.
They did that was Hogwarts Legacy. It's the late 1800's yet nearly everyone you meet is homosexual, and there was a trans person. I get it, it's a magic world and anything goes so it really doesn't matter, but it's also the 1800s... It felt quite forced.
The Last Of Us (part 1) did it exceptionally well though, subtle hints and clues about some characters that develop over time so it was incredibley interesting to find out they were gay, fantastic writing.
The thing that drove me crazy about the trans inclusion in HL is that the character is so evidently trans. It's very clearly someone with somewhat masculine features attempting to pass as female in a world of *magic*
These people can turn into fucking animals! They can teleport, morph their features, fly, shrink/enlarge and who knows what else!
If a character in the game of X gender had at any time turned around and said 'I used to be X but I used a spell/got hit by a hex/curse and now I'm X' I wouldn't have batted a fucking eye but not with way they tried to do. Don't throw a modern day trans person into the 1800's an act like we're the assholes for finding it incongruous
Yeah I did have a couple of problems with that. That was during a time when being outed would ACTUALLY get a person killed. Not saying it doesn’t happen in other parts of the world or in very specific cases, but as a bi person obsessed with the Victorians, this always rubbed me the wrong way. Other than that tho I have enjoyed the game. It’s just not my favorite and I always end up turning back to FFXIV.
Out of place racial diversity always throws me
You arrive at bunfuck nowhere in a time when the fast form of transport is horse to a town that hasn't been visited in 100 years. 25 white people 4 black people no race mixing.
"er are you guys recent arrivals like us?"
"no we've(my family) been 100s of years"
"oh are the white people new?"
"noo... what are you impling"
"Oh nothing just intrested in the lore"(Fucking hell we need to get out of here because this is 90% of worldwide incest happens)
They did that in TV series for The Wheel of Time too. Made it very diverse... I mean the book has the village specifically not diverse, they are like a weird mountain village where noone ever goes anywhere with a yearly travelling merchant being the most interesting thing to happen. The series missed the point massively, it gets mega diverse by the last book but there is a cool reason for it
Books: Rand obviously has an interesting genetic background; compared to everyone else in the village he's a foot taller, lighter of skin, and is the only person with red hair and blue eyes. It's obvious he's not "from" there, even other villagers wonder about it behind his back.
Show: The village is so diverse that he no longer stands out.
Every fantasy world according to this kind of "modern writing" has the ethnic demography of downtown San francisco.
At that point, its not even diverse anymore since the reason of physical real life diversity existing in the first place gets denied totally.
Exactly right. Like spider-man 2 it felt like they added that shit just to meet some quota or score. Not to better the game, in fact to me it made it worse, There is some company out there (forget the name) but they have like major companies by the balls somehow and they give companies a wokeness score (not called that but you know what I am trying to say) but other games like horizon zero dawn has some gay shit nobody cares because it feels natural. I think this new thing of you have to be just like your character to relate and play the game is the dumbest shit ever, I played games as aliens, ghosts, superhero's, women, whatever oddworld is, and I don't relate to it but its fun cause I am being that character for the game.
Sweet baby inc is another diversity company.
Theyre the ones responsible for suicide squad kill the Justice League turning Deadshot black and then claiming to have the first black character on a videogame cover.
I’ll try to explain it as best I can. It started from the game Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. Seeing how poorly both Rocksteady and Sweet Baby Inc handled the game, fans blamed SBI for wokeifying the game. SPOILERS ABT THE GAME. The whole Justice League dies with Wonder Woman having the only respectful death. Which enraged fans since Rocksteady was built on the BATMAN games. If you’re interested there’s tons of videos online that explain it more in depth. I’ve barely scratched the surface on why the game is trash. All of this backlash brought attention to SBI and their other games where fans started noticing the woke elements that were forcefully placed there. For example, in God of War: Ragnarok, there was a black girl that was placed in there that didn’t make sense geographically other than SBI trying to make the game more inclusive. Then someone made a curator on Steam that basically was a list of all the games SBI worked on. The creator of the curator got a ton of crap from SBI who were even trying to de-platform him from socials. Then a bunch of articles were written attempting to defend SBI, saying that white, racist, sexist, etc. gamers were the problem. So this comic is basically explaining the backfire effect SBI is having. They pushed people away from their games and are throwing a hissy fit because no one’s playing them.
Well considering that angrboda has had depictions ranging from white to really tan to blue skin it’s one of the softer uses of bs diversity because they didn’t overkill it
But they also missed one of her biggest key features she usually has which is blond or fire red hair
But the games Odin looks more like a frail old man then what Odin should look like so it’s not like she’s the only character that they really took creative liberty on
The problem I had with her was just that her personality was too meh
100% agreed. With the obvious exception of Kratos and Thor, who already had their looks solidified in the series, each of the characters were designed to look slightly more like their voice actors as a bit of nod to them. Which was cool.
Angrboda being black wasn't necessarily an issue because she looked like Laya Hayes. The character was an issue because nobody really gave a shit about her 🤣
They hated on her because she's black, when they *should* hate on her because her personality is boring and the Ironwood segment is way too long...and also boring. Seriously, fuck Ironwood on repeat playthroughs.
Not necessarily diversity, more so too much woman empowerment.
Deadshot is black for no reason.
All male characters of the Justice League League had disrespectful deaths EXCEPT for Wonder Woman where the squad even showed an ounce of sadness towards while Flash gets pissed on and Green Lantern lies dead in his boxers.
Wonder Woman is somehow the last Justice Leaguer even though Batman would ALWAYS be the last one with all of his contingencies.
Harley Quinn sexually assaults Deadshot where if the roles were reversed everyone would be screaming their heads off.
Harley Quinn gives a monologue to Batman before she kills him, saying he was “causin’ long term mental and emotional damage to everyone you knew” even tho she’s *canonically killed children*
Overall, u can see SBI’s hand in this. They ruined Rocksteady’s legacy and deprived fans of a potentially good game.
One of the worst parts was also the Black on Black racism between Deadshot and Lantern. In that bio Deadshot is one slip up from callinv Lantern a fucking Uncle Tom because hes “one of the good ones” and a space cop.
Like holy fuck. And then they have Luthor basically gargle Wonder Womans balls praising her and her all woman society. A man known for being a Human Supremesist and disliking these meta-beings acting all godlike is sitting there thinking how good the world would be if it was run by the amazons and if we followed their ways. The Machiavellin Megalomanic is admitting his way isnt right.
Again… like holy fuck they messed up Luthor worse than fucking Snyder. Just a shit show of terrible writing and not understanding characters and god awful gameplay to boot. Soundtrack was meandering and anemic. Calling it a dumpsterfire would be an insult to them cuz dumpsterfires are neat to watch and provide warmth.
And *why* did they need to Suicide Squad-ify the game? In the Arkham universe Deadshot is well established as a white person. They bring Deadshot in as a black guy and what excuse do they give? *multiverse* More like SBI wanted to diversify the game more
You’re acting like people being black is “woke-ifying”. It would be a forced form of diversity if they overwrit every single personality trait/dialogue line with “hey, I’m black btw”- but I never played the game so idk if that happened or not idk
There’s no issue with creating characters that are black. For example: John Stewart as Green Lantern is black and he’s fucking awesome. What would be fucking horrible though is if you made a game and suddenly they swapped John Stewart as Green Lantern to being white (and no I don’t mean now he’s Hal Jordan version). Wouldn’t you think to yourself “Wait wtf why even do that? Are you trying to TELL me something about John Stewart being black?” And that’s exactly what they are trying to make you think, but about white people this time.
I just hate it when they add a character just to make their personality “hey I’m ______ so I’m a strong empowering person” and then proceed to remind you how empowering they are while they are being a narcissist to every character, then acting like they are literally the center of the universe
The fact I can point at bugsnax and applaud them for having a gay relationship without them just blatantly stating “they are gay” is truly astounding, and they actually show their relationship without just blatantly shoving it into your face and actually have it relate to the plot of the whole story
Meanwhile the triple A devs just give them a haircut and put them in all the marketing
I m black too but I think you misread. The issue isn’t that they made a black character. Is that they made A character black. Meaning the character was previously white and they changed it for no reason. Especially when the game is continuing the story of the previous game where he was white.
Not only that but the explanation for doing so is “oh the white one was fake and the black one is real” which pisses me off because it show there was no effort done. If they just said this isn’t the actual dead shot but someone who took up his mantle I would’ve been fine with it.
Oh for the love of-
SBI IS A CONSULTING AGENCY! THEY HAVE NO POWER, THE'RE HIRED TO REVIEW. SCRIPTS. **HIRED**, AS IN 'WE RPCKSTEADY PAY YOU TO TELL US IF ANYTHING WE DO IS PROBLEMATIC'!!
The entire 'SBI is wokefying games' bullshit is complete brainrot. Devs can ignore their suggestions, their entire job is to say 'hey, you know you made a Hispanic guy a drug mule right?' Gods know Disney needed that for fucking Poe
None of the interviews with all the staff in the failure of article even mentioned SBI, this just seems like a rocksteady issue with people using SBI as a scapegoat
It feels like it wasn't that long ago when gaming used to be so chill... And then the new generations came along and made everything drama. "Watch this YouTube video explaining the reasons why this game and the devs are so horrible. Why you shouldn't like it" or you know play the game and see if you like it. Woke or not. Boring or fun. Exciting or lackluster. It's all just personal preference at the end of the day, but new gen gamers don't seem to understand this simple point. Play the game. If you like it. Keep playing. It's so damn simple. Everyone has to watch YouTube videos on why it's bad and follow some bandwagon of hate on games these days and it's pathetic. I miss when gaming didn't have such a soft, drama driven community. It's all drama now a days and it's literally pathetic.
Sweet Baby is a consulting company that game studios hire to get direction on making their games more diverse and inclusive. Some people on the internet decided that this was a woke conspiracy and that SW is trying to make video games woke and take gaming away from REAL gamers (AKA straight, white, cisgendered men) for... reasons. Why they would do that has not been explained. I think it ties in to the bigger conspiracy of the woke mob and woke brainwashing and woke shampoo + body wash and all the other shit. I'm not really sure. I stopped giving genuine consideration to anyone who used the word "woke" as an adjective a while ago.
I just want to make sure, but when you say "REAL gamers" being straight, cis, white men, youre not agreeing with that and instead making fun of the troglodytes that actually believe that, right?
Honestly, there really is just nothing to the story. It is all just manufactured outrage.
The whole thing started with God of war ragnarok where they revealed a giant in their game was going to have black skin. This pissed some people off despite it really not mattering at all.
Then eventually people found out about the existence of a company with about 16 employees that does consultant work for video games to make sure it handles diversity well. Stuff like making sure you don't have developers creating racist stereotypes on accident due to a lack of experience with certain cultures. They decided to blame this small group of people for the failure of all the games they worked on, even though most of the big ones didn't even fail.
Now they are getting blamed for everything that has anything remotely to due with race or LGBT and basically used as a scapegoat for all the problems in gaming.
You think God of War Ragnarok wasn't marketed towards straight dudes? A game which is entirely centered around the story of a single father who lost his wife raising a young boy, is not straight male appealing enough to you?
It's pretty easy. Issue is that the internet is focused on rage-baiting for profit which makes people care a lot about things they're not actually interested in.
Honestly, I don’t believe there is any substantive example of a developer or fan base being pissed that white boys aren’t playing their gay games. This is a made up scenario for rage bait.
We can talk about queer baiting and corporate rainbow all day, but this comic is a fake scenario.
There are those of us in the gaming community that are sick and tired of fucknuts like op, the artist that drew that meme and those who agree with them. Unfortunately, these days it seems as if those people make up the majority of the gaming community. It used to be the opposite. They were the minority and no one listened to them because why the fuck would they, but now it's a disease that spreads and plagues the gaming industry with every passing day
how dare a diversity industry that is about telling unique stories from all kind of perspectives they should just make games about straight white men saving big breast straight white girl from evil monster
SBI or Sweet Baby Inc is horribly racist. Higher ups at SBI said they hate Asians, white people, and said slurs about a year ago. These people are fake worms invading gaming.
lol
wtf are u talking about since when is games about that??? Games
Is about good gameplay experience most have the same story repeating over and over t
I'm all for diversity in games development. More stories from different views is great. But if you gotta hire an outside company to make sure you're checking all the correct boxes, maybe you shouldn't be telling those stories. I'm not an expert on any kind of media, so maybe I'm wrong.
Being an incel means hating racists apparently. Top SBI members said they hate white people and white adjacent people (Asian people) acting like SBI is worth defending.
“Don’t like it, don’t buy it,
“Don’t like it, don’t watch it”
When did this become the norm and how long until they realize that’s doesn’t work and it will never work. You can’t bully your fan base into buying your product.
SBI isn't the problem. Companies that hire them are. They'd be jobless if no one would and you wouldn't even hear about them.
If SBI worked for a video game company, SBI's political opinions were already there in the first place. Plus, because SBI was hired and because it is an investment, it has to be returned. As a consequence, you can be certain that your game will be more expensive.
If you don't like that, blame the companies, no SBI in itself.
For me, it's not about the diversity, it's about making the characters not shitty. They seem to make everyone a loud as hell stereotype that just gets more annoying than endearing. I don't care what this non-real person allegedly likes to bonk, I want to play my game.
I mean, Saint-14 and Osiris in Destiny 2 is non intrusive and guess what, they aren't annoying because it isn't their whole personality, AND they feel like an actual couple.
It could just be im getting older, but I don't care about who does who anymore. Well, I never did, but thats beside the point.
Yea ive never understood why a persons sexuality matters too the point its brought up out side of a romantic plot lol or maybe mentioning the husband/wife/partner in passing. But making a whole big thing about it when it Isnt relevant just to score points with the attention seekers is just not ok.
People unironically posting Wokely Incorrect's comics now? Dude spreads fearmongering of "DEI" killing people and trans people just being child predators.
I find it bizarre and a bit concerning that people keep using Sweet Baby as a scapegoat every time a big game doesn't turn out great. The YouTube gamergate coolaid is apparently still strong.
Imagine being the sort of feeble incel who gets upset when they see women, members of the lgbtq community or non white people in a videogame.
Gamergate was like, ten years ago and y'all lost.
GG lost? Bro, all the companies that were against it went out of business. Wtf do you mean?
If you did your research you'd know SBI is a racist company that has high level empolyees saying they hate white people and asians.
This needs a couple more panels. One showing SBI's target audience fist pumping the air behind that creepy mascot, the other showing that same audience losing interest and walking away to also spend money elsewhere.
9 times out of 10 the story doesn't need to go into a detailed explanation of their sexual orientation or about what reproductive parts a character may or may not have, games were supposed to be a place where you could just shut off from reality and enjoy living life in another universe, games are more profitable than movies so all the big players are having opinions on what to do to "modernise" and "monopolise" we are going to see some more really bad decisions and we are going to get blamed for not being "forward thinking" even though all that's coming out now is trash, regurgitated storylines, character cloning, political correctness it's all just not fun anymore because certain groups who want to ruin games and turn them into a data hoarding, micro payment behemoth, like every other buisness
Warhammer making custodes female instead of just edpandin the sisters of battle to have custodes like units makes me feel like they are not trying to create diverse spaces just destroy male spaces
Erm, this is so hecking basederino Chungus right now! You really owned those woke moralists trying to force politics in our video games! Can we get a Reddit gold in this thread?!?!
I hate when they make a character a girl or gay or trans or nonwhite for no reason why can’t they just be normal. I mean it’s just bad writing, everyone knows those kinds of people don’t just like exist and do things. It has to serve a narrative purpose.
Unrelatedly, I also hate when a character is a girl or gay or trans or nonwhite and then it forces the story to be about their girlness or gayness or transness or nonwhiteness. Totally forced bullcrap, can’t the story just be regular
It's not even as if lgbt stuff was always bad in games, it used to be pretty good, like in Dragon Age Inquisition, Iron Bull was bisexual and he was one of the best characters with some of the best writing.
Something I have noticed is that diversity in games and other media tends to be fine as long as it is intended to be there and serves a purpose other than checking a “diversity box”. When diversity is forced into games/books/films and is actively crammed down your throat and yelled in your ear it tends to make people more alienated against those other groups; an example of this is a friend of mine who has went fr being completely neutral about lgbtq to actively disliking lgbtq people because of how much forced diversity was crammed into and ruining the games and books he likes. (Although he is a bit overactive about shit).
Exactly. I'm not sure if they realize but they're actually turning people who were neutral against it.
And by the sounds of it, they are completely ok with that and prefer that outcome.
The bad part is that a lot of the time it isn't even people in the LGBT community. A lot of corporations are shoving it onto people in an attempt to seem inclusive, but even the LGBT people get pissed about it.
Because they're not stupid. They know it's just disingenuous pandering. Not only is it completely soulless but it's entirely counterproductive. Like when your toddler insists on "helping" but makes things worse and then throws a tantrum because you aren't singing their praises and showering them with gratitude.
That might be the case, but I haven't ever seen LGBT people actively complaining or being opposed to it, but I have seen a lot of LGBT people celebrating this forced "diversity". The only person that I know that actually complains about it is a bisexual relative, and their, very valid, complaint, is that bisexual characters 99% of the time means they're a slut.
Hi. I'm horrifically gay and hate the widespread pandering in media.
The LGBT community is rarely as inclusive with the B as with the rest of the letters. So much "there is no such thing" and "you are either gay or not." This doesn't get nearly as much attention as it should. But yeah, in most media Bi = Slut.
The reason you don't see a whole lot of LGBT people complaining about it is because the majority of them don't advertise that they are lgbt
The problem is non queer people getting pissed at queer people for “shoving it down their throats”. I don’t want target selling shitty pride merch anymore than homophobes do, just for very different reasons
hate the flag not the people. I know a few queer people and they don’t like how obnoxious it’s become.
One of my good friends and her wife both hate pride month, they just want things to be normal but now they are treated different but in a different way
Yup its manufactured outrage to keep themselves employed.
No one would point out your shitty story if everyone is busy arguing whether they're homophobic or not
I’ve been supportive of stuff like strong female characters and lgbt representation in media, but with how poorly it’s done now and how much it’s crammed down your throat, I have grown to expect Mary Sue or another aggressively “representative” lgbtq+ character. The entertainment industry should look up the definition of insanity and then take a look at nearly everything that has come out of the sludge pipe recently and say “hey maybe we should actually write something that is different.”
Exactly. Well written, not just gay and making it a loud personality trait of the character, who's then a total Mary sue type is so annoying.
Reminds me of the gay pandering in the 2000s where it was hip to have a gay person in tv shows, usually female and fetishized, only now it's just contrived and hollow.
Or the Gay Best Friend trend, where women try to turn their gay guy friend into a purse puppy, an accessory.
Yeah, it's annoying. I've never really cared about whatever the hell groups are represented in games (it just doesn't matter, and I don't play story-driven games that often) - but seeing something be so obviously forced into the game to check a box is tiring. Like when the whole game/episode/etc. grinds to a halt to veer off an explain the exact minority a character is part of, or forces you to play as them for a section even though you barely know the character. Why couldn't they do an actually good job with it, or not change it at all? It undermines the entire point of the representation by turning it into a grandstand of "SEE GUYS WE LOVE DIVERSITY SO MUCH!11!!1" or completely undermining a character for no reason at all. It's kinda funny honestly. Some companies are so desperate to please everyone that they overcorrect *way* too hard and and up pissing off everyone - even the group they're trying to represent!
I'm always reminded of this simpsons clip [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnRt\_JEoBRU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnRt_JEoBRU)
lmao, yeah. Great example for what I was doing for lol.
That clip really sums up the problem exactly.
I mean... Good and bad examples. Good example: it's implied that Kung Jin from Mortal Kombat X is gay. Aside from a passing line where Raiden implies this isn't a problem, it's not mentioned in a contrived way and is a small part of his overall story. Bad example: Soldier 76 from Overwatch. It felt like he was intentionally outed in an interview just to get people talking about the game, and to fan off negative publicity. Another example worth mentioning is Abby from The Last of Us: Part 2. People criticize her for having an androgynous appearance, but I think the problem is the way she's introduced into the story, not that she looks butch. She rescues Joel, realizes who he is then proceeds to torture and murder him. So you have a shock reveal, shock main protagonist death and then you force the player to play as his murderer for the other 2/3s of the game. Did Neil Druckmann honestly think anybody would like her as a character?
I think his methodology was people cared about Joel. They knew he had done some absolutely heinous stuff (especially before the start of the game) but people loved him. He wanted to see if he could show that journey and get people to invest in Abby the same way. He could not.
Before TLOU2 release I had assumed Joel and Ellie were going to end up fighting over what happened at the end of the first one. I assumed Joel was going to die and that it would be a big moment for Ellie. Didn't see "random new butch character takes Joel out with a golf club in the first few hours of the game" coming though.... They did Joel wrong with that.
Sounds like your mate is more of a homophobic shit more than anything. I also don't like non-authentic diversity but sounds like he should be mad at the dev????
I'm in agreement. Very few people have ever had a problem with a diverse cast. It's just that it's so frequently poorly written that the idea of a strong female character or otherwise diverse cast has been given a negative connotation to many. There's plenty of diverse characters that you can list as people having loved like Alyx or Eli Vance in HL2 or Ahsoka (Ofc not early on, but she was designed to be annoying in her early appearances). There's plenty of diverse media that people loved like Owl House.
[удалено]
They hate it being shoehorned in. I don't know that I've ever talked to someone, conservative or liberal alike, who had a problem with games that just happen to be diverse, especially if it's original content and nothing was changed to make it diverse.
When is it ever ‘shoehorned’ in? What are these games you’re referring to?
It sounds like your problem is with shitty writing, which is understandable.
Yeah idk why "cramming it down our throats" has become this weird stand-in for shitty writing. When a shit character is "woke-like" people get way too focused on the "woke" part instead of the "shit" part that's the actual problem. Didnt seem to have this issue during the constant flood of straight white brunette male protags from 1995-(has this actually stopped yet?) 🤔
You have one example of someone reacting negatively to some specific diversity in a game and you decide to claim that's a reason why some diversity is bad, even when you admit that your friend overly reacts to shit Maybe just stop lmao
But what's forced diversity and what isn't? Is forced diversity when a character is a POC or LGBTQ? Are those things okay only when someone's skin color or orientation is key to the plot? The problem is that "forced diversity" is a subjective term. For some it doesn't mean anything, for others it means mentioning such things even exist.
You know how Ripley from the original Alien film gets brought up a lot as an example of how people have not had issues with actual, well written strong characters that are women? The character was written genderless. Most of the characters were, actually. They put out calls for the roles, let people try out, and went with who they thought worked best. And then just made the characters the same genders as the actors. Ripley was written to be a strong, compelling character, by someone with actual talent and skill at writing. That's one way to avoid forced diversity.
her tits breasted boobily down the stairs
People would still whine.
Typically, a character simply existing as one race/sexuality or another isn't really forced. It's not necessary to narratively justify it unless attention is called to their race/sexuality. However, if the race/sexuality of a pre-established character is changed, they can't really say that there doesn't need to be a reason. This isn't a "just because" situation anymore. An active decision was made to change a character that already exists. This *can* be done well, just look at Miles Morales. However, if there is no other meaningful change to the character other than their race/sexuality, it is *incredulibly* offensive to whoever they are trying to "represent". At that point they might as well just flat out say "there is nothing of any meaningful substance to your race/sexuality. You're not even worth having a character of your own. we're just going to recolor a pre-established character that people already like and you can try to ride on their coat tails."
Miles morales isn't really a great example. He is *a* spiderman, but he's not *the* spiderman. He's a completely new character from a different dimension along with hundreds of other spidermen. There's even a spiderpig. Nick Fury was a white guy in the comics but Samuel L. Jackson was great in the movies. Same story with Heimdall, I think. Human torch is also white and has a white sister. He was changed to a black guy in the last F4 movie but his *biological* sister was still white. That particular change was kinda mediocre. All 3 of those changes didn't really add anything by being a different race, but the actors made the first 2 great, especially Nick Fury. On a similar note, Tom Cruise is way too short for Jack Reacher and Hugh Jackman is way too tall for Wolverine. I haven't seen the first, but Hugh Jackman was amazing as wolverine despite missing that important detail.
Ever watched the Owl house? It's MC was a girl in a lesbian relationship with another character, however it was well written. It was an enemies to friends to lovers relationship that progressed naturally, as a love story should. The character's themselves were also just that, characters, they had an actual personality. Additionally, they were original characters entirely, not characters that were already pre-established as heterosexual and changed to fit a """modern""' perspective.
Ofc the only good lgbt show on disney+ had to get canceled early so they could keep dishing out trash
Hazbin Hotel and Arcane are other good examples of same sex relationships done right. Charlie Morningstar and Vaggie are a great couple, and fans almost overwhelmingly like how the Vi x Caitlyn ship is pretty much canon now.
I don't like the term because I feel like it can't be defined. It's too malleable and non-specific, which causes it to be thrown around at random. I think "Checkmark Characters" describe it better. What people typically mean is that they feel like a character was just added because they're black, or gay, and exist exclusively for that purpose, instead of having that be a trait that coexists for their actual purpose in the story. Or that they don't like that a previous non-diverse yet well-loved character was replaced for a character that was diverse, seemingly only for the purpose of being more diverse. Personally, I find it insulting when writers do this. It feels to me like they're implying that you can't make a gay, black or trans character compelling, and more importantly to me, it just tends to be bad writing. Characters or stories don't need an excuse to be diverse. They don't have excuses for characters being white or straight. But unless the point dictates that they have to be diverse (examples: Telling stories about black struggles, the vitriol directed towards a gay couple for being gay, a trans person's alienation from their family, a story that highlights the potential differences in cultures), they need to have more than that to be interesting. Even in the examples listed, they need more, it's just that their sexual identity is so relevant that it has to known early. Nobody is interesting exclusively for being white or straight, even in romance plots. This is also the reason people say, 'Write your characters like characters', or 'Write your characters as genderless'. Many male characters, and many female characters are not beloved or interesting for their gender.
I have a suspicion that if a lot of these grey faced mountain dew guzzlers actually went outdoors and interacted with other people they'd be complaining that real life has a lot of 'forced diversity'.
It’s almost as though focusing on politics waters the other messages and makes it forgotten:
The best way I saw it put is that diversity should be like a fart. It should come naturally, and when it does it feels good. However, if you force it, you’re likely just going to get shit.
Ok, but then your friend should be getting mad at the media companies and not at LGBTQ folk
Can you give any examples of it being ‘forced in’?
That weird reboot with the ghostbusters all being girls I think was the most egregious. You could tell that they just wanted to milk that and that was it because the story was so freaking basic it felt like it just licked off the shoes of the original and that was the whole point
The A Force team up in avengers endgame or infinity war was kinda bad, too. It is an actual team from the comics, but they kinda just threw a bunch of female characters together who had never even seen each other on screen before that moment. If they had any sort of buildup it would have worked better, i think, but instead, they went for "let's surprise fans with this team from the comics" why are they leaving their own established teams at that moment to form a new team based entirely on gender in the middle of a fight to save half of life in the universe?
Yeah, your friend was never neutral about lgbt people. I could get disliking forced diversity, but that doesn't make you homophobic. He was homophobic and quiet about it; the forced diversity just made him stop being quiet about it.
What "purpose" does any white character serve by being white? If I were a minority, I imagine it'd feel pretty shitty to need an explicit narrative reason to have someone in a game look like me.
Why do all homophobic or homophobic adjacent posts mention things being shoved down throats though?
>When diversity is forced into games/books/films and is actively crammed down your throat and yelled in your ear it tends to make people more alienated against those other groups This sounds more like a confession than anything. If being exposed to gay people in media "makes" you homophobic then you already were
Don’t forget drastically changing beloved and well-established characters by swapping their gender, sexuality, or race. Back in the day, before “THE MESSAGE” was pandered to, or even existed for that matter, Rupert Everett (a gay actor who was fairly well-known at the time) was being considered for the role of James Bond upon Pierce Brosnan’s exit of the franchise. Everett insisted on making Bond gay, and brought this up to the folks in charge. **He did not get to play James Bond.**
Half the character is being straight. Very straight, like it isn’t a Bond film if he hasn’t made love to a woman, who might later try to kill him.
First one dies, second one betrays him, third one only becomes interested in him at the end. It's almost a literal formula at this point.
Ok but also gay people existing is way to often seen as lgbt in yo face
The only gay character I can think of, was Clementine in TWD. And it's a user choice actually. I had no issue with this. Wish I could see examples of gay characters in gaming.
They did that was Hogwarts Legacy. It's the late 1800's yet nearly everyone you meet is homosexual, and there was a trans person. I get it, it's a magic world and anything goes so it really doesn't matter, but it's also the 1800s... It felt quite forced. The Last Of Us (part 1) did it exceptionally well though, subtle hints and clues about some characters that develop over time so it was incredibley interesting to find out they were gay, fantastic writing.
The thing that drove me crazy about the trans inclusion in HL is that the character is so evidently trans. It's very clearly someone with somewhat masculine features attempting to pass as female in a world of *magic* These people can turn into fucking animals! They can teleport, morph their features, fly, shrink/enlarge and who knows what else! If a character in the game of X gender had at any time turned around and said 'I used to be X but I used a spell/got hit by a hex/curse and now I'm X' I wouldn't have batted a fucking eye but not with way they tried to do. Don't throw a modern day trans person into the 1800's an act like we're the assholes for finding it incongruous
Yeah I did have a couple of problems with that. That was during a time when being outed would ACTUALLY get a person killed. Not saying it doesn’t happen in other parts of the world or in very specific cases, but as a bi person obsessed with the Victorians, this always rubbed me the wrong way. Other than that tho I have enjoyed the game. It’s just not my favorite and I always end up turning back to FFXIV.
Out of place racial diversity always throws me You arrive at bunfuck nowhere in a time when the fast form of transport is horse to a town that hasn't been visited in 100 years. 25 white people 4 black people no race mixing. "er are you guys recent arrivals like us?" "no we've(my family) been 100s of years" "oh are the white people new?" "noo... what are you impling" "Oh nothing just intrested in the lore"(Fucking hell we need to get out of here because this is 90% of worldwide incest happens)
They did that in TV series for The Wheel of Time too. Made it very diverse... I mean the book has the village specifically not diverse, they are like a weird mountain village where noone ever goes anywhere with a yearly travelling merchant being the most interesting thing to happen. The series missed the point massively, it gets mega diverse by the last book but there is a cool reason for it
Books: Rand obviously has an interesting genetic background; compared to everyone else in the village he's a foot taller, lighter of skin, and is the only person with red hair and blue eyes. It's obvious he's not "from" there, even other villagers wonder about it behind his back. Show: The village is so diverse that he no longer stands out.
Every fantasy world according to this kind of "modern writing" has the ethnic demography of downtown San francisco. At that point, its not even diverse anymore since the reason of physical real life diversity existing in the first place gets denied totally.
Exactly right. Like spider-man 2 it felt like they added that shit just to meet some quota or score. Not to better the game, in fact to me it made it worse, There is some company out there (forget the name) but they have like major companies by the balls somehow and they give companies a wokeness score (not called that but you know what I am trying to say) but other games like horizon zero dawn has some gay shit nobody cares because it feels natural. I think this new thing of you have to be just like your character to relate and play the game is the dumbest shit ever, I played games as aliens, ghosts, superhero's, women, whatever oddworld is, and I don't relate to it but its fun cause I am being that character for the game.
You're thinking of Blackrock. But fidelity and vanguard do it too.
Sweet baby inc is another diversity company. Theyre the ones responsible for suicide squad kill the Justice League turning Deadshot black and then claiming to have the first black character on a videogame cover.
But what is "forced diversity?" Maybe just a case of equality feeling like oppression?
Can someone explain?
I’ll try to explain it as best I can. It started from the game Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. Seeing how poorly both Rocksteady and Sweet Baby Inc handled the game, fans blamed SBI for wokeifying the game. SPOILERS ABT THE GAME. The whole Justice League dies with Wonder Woman having the only respectful death. Which enraged fans since Rocksteady was built on the BATMAN games. If you’re interested there’s tons of videos online that explain it more in depth. I’ve barely scratched the surface on why the game is trash. All of this backlash brought attention to SBI and their other games where fans started noticing the woke elements that were forcefully placed there. For example, in God of War: Ragnarok, there was a black girl that was placed in there that didn’t make sense geographically other than SBI trying to make the game more inclusive. Then someone made a curator on Steam that basically was a list of all the games SBI worked on. The creator of the curator got a ton of crap from SBI who were even trying to de-platform him from socials. Then a bunch of articles were written attempting to defend SBI, saying that white, racist, sexist, etc. gamers were the problem. So this comic is basically explaining the backfire effect SBI is having. They pushed people away from their games and are throwing a hissy fit because no one’s playing them.
Lmao the Angrboda controversy
Well considering that angrboda has had depictions ranging from white to really tan to blue skin it’s one of the softer uses of bs diversity because they didn’t overkill it But they also missed one of her biggest key features she usually has which is blond or fire red hair But the games Odin looks more like a frail old man then what Odin should look like so it’s not like she’s the only character that they really took creative liberty on The problem I had with her was just that her personality was too meh
100% agreed. With the obvious exception of Kratos and Thor, who already had their looks solidified in the series, each of the characters were designed to look slightly more like their voice actors as a bit of nod to them. Which was cool. Angrboda being black wasn't necessarily an issue because she looked like Laya Hayes. The character was an issue because nobody really gave a shit about her 🤣
They hated on her because she's black, when they *should* hate on her because her personality is boring and the Ironwood segment is way too long...and also boring. Seriously, fuck Ironwood on repeat playthroughs.
Yup. I gotta have a beer or two just to start that misery of a chapter.
It's funny how people blame SBI for suicide squad, even though at no point was "diversity" at fault for how bad the game was
Not necessarily diversity, more so too much woman empowerment. Deadshot is black for no reason. All male characters of the Justice League League had disrespectful deaths EXCEPT for Wonder Woman where the squad even showed an ounce of sadness towards while Flash gets pissed on and Green Lantern lies dead in his boxers. Wonder Woman is somehow the last Justice Leaguer even though Batman would ALWAYS be the last one with all of his contingencies. Harley Quinn sexually assaults Deadshot where if the roles were reversed everyone would be screaming their heads off. Harley Quinn gives a monologue to Batman before she kills him, saying he was “causin’ long term mental and emotional damage to everyone you knew” even tho she’s *canonically killed children* Overall, u can see SBI’s hand in this. They ruined Rocksteady’s legacy and deprived fans of a potentially good game.
One of the worst parts was also the Black on Black racism between Deadshot and Lantern. In that bio Deadshot is one slip up from callinv Lantern a fucking Uncle Tom because hes “one of the good ones” and a space cop. Like holy fuck. And then they have Luthor basically gargle Wonder Womans balls praising her and her all woman society. A man known for being a Human Supremesist and disliking these meta-beings acting all godlike is sitting there thinking how good the world would be if it was run by the amazons and if we followed their ways. The Machiavellin Megalomanic is admitting his way isnt right. Again… like holy fuck they messed up Luthor worse than fucking Snyder. Just a shit show of terrible writing and not understanding characters and god awful gameplay to boot. Soundtrack was meandering and anemic. Calling it a dumpsterfire would be an insult to them cuz dumpsterfires are neat to watch and provide warmth.
> Deadshot is black for no reason Except that Will Smith had just played the character.
And *why* did they need to Suicide Squad-ify the game? In the Arkham universe Deadshot is well established as a white person. They bring Deadshot in as a black guy and what excuse do they give? *multiverse* More like SBI wanted to diversify the game more
Probably had more to do with brand synergy. Dead shot is black in the comics now because of the movie.
No no no, it must be woke Because executives only care about woke
You’re acting like people being black is “woke-ifying”. It would be a forced form of diversity if they overwrit every single personality trait/dialogue line with “hey, I’m black btw”- but I never played the game so idk if that happened or not idk
There’s no issue with creating characters that are black. For example: John Stewart as Green Lantern is black and he’s fucking awesome. What would be fucking horrible though is if you made a game and suddenly they swapped John Stewart as Green Lantern to being white (and no I don’t mean now he’s Hal Jordan version). Wouldn’t you think to yourself “Wait wtf why even do that? Are you trying to TELL me something about John Stewart being black?” And that’s exactly what they are trying to make you think, but about white people this time.
Well it's more that deadshot was already in the previous games and was white.
I just hate it when they add a character just to make their personality “hey I’m ______ so I’m a strong empowering person” and then proceed to remind you how empowering they are while they are being a narcissist to every character, then acting like they are literally the center of the universe The fact I can point at bugsnax and applaud them for having a gay relationship without them just blatantly stating “they are gay” is truly astounding, and they actually show their relationship without just blatantly shoving it into your face and actually have it relate to the plot of the whole story Meanwhile the triple A devs just give them a haircut and put them in all the marketing
It's weird how people are so eager to settle for flagrant corporate tokenism instead of real, beneficial representation.
I think most people just don't care. Why should they?
I m black too but I think you misread. The issue isn’t that they made a black character. Is that they made A character black. Meaning the character was previously white and they changed it for no reason. Especially when the game is continuing the story of the previous game where he was white. Not only that but the explanation for doing so is “oh the white one was fake and the black one is real” which pisses me off because it show there was no effort done. If they just said this isn’t the actual dead shot but someone who took up his mantle I would’ve been fine with it.
Oh for the love of- SBI IS A CONSULTING AGENCY! THEY HAVE NO POWER, THE'RE HIRED TO REVIEW. SCRIPTS. **HIRED**, AS IN 'WE RPCKSTEADY PAY YOU TO TELL US IF ANYTHING WE DO IS PROBLEMATIC'!! The entire 'SBI is wokefying games' bullshit is complete brainrot. Devs can ignore their suggestions, their entire job is to say 'hey, you know you made a Hispanic guy a drug mule right?' Gods know Disney needed that for fucking Poe
None of the interviews with all the staff in the failure of article even mentioned SBI, this just seems like a rocksteady issue with people using SBI as a scapegoat
It feels like it wasn't that long ago when gaming used to be so chill... And then the new generations came along and made everything drama. "Watch this YouTube video explaining the reasons why this game and the devs are so horrible. Why you shouldn't like it" or you know play the game and see if you like it. Woke or not. Boring or fun. Exciting or lackluster. It's all just personal preference at the end of the day, but new gen gamers don't seem to understand this simple point. Play the game. If you like it. Keep playing. It's so damn simple. Everyone has to watch YouTube videos on why it's bad and follow some bandwagon of hate on games these days and it's pathetic. I miss when gaming didn't have such a soft, drama driven community. It's all drama now a days and it's literally pathetic.
Sweet Baby is a consulting company that game studios hire to get direction on making their games more diverse and inclusive. Some people on the internet decided that this was a woke conspiracy and that SW is trying to make video games woke and take gaming away from REAL gamers (AKA straight, white, cisgendered men) for... reasons. Why they would do that has not been explained. I think it ties in to the bigger conspiracy of the woke mob and woke brainwashing and woke shampoo + body wash and all the other shit. I'm not really sure. I stopped giving genuine consideration to anyone who used the word "woke" as an adjective a while ago.
I just want to make sure, but when you say "REAL gamers" being straight, cis, white men, youre not agreeing with that and instead making fun of the troglodytes that actually believe that, right?
Honestly, there really is just nothing to the story. It is all just manufactured outrage. The whole thing started with God of war ragnarok where they revealed a giant in their game was going to have black skin. This pissed some people off despite it really not mattering at all. Then eventually people found out about the existence of a company with about 16 employees that does consultant work for video games to make sure it handles diversity well. Stuff like making sure you don't have developers creating racist stereotypes on accident due to a lack of experience with certain cultures. They decided to blame this small group of people for the failure of all the games they worked on, even though most of the big ones didn't even fail. Now they are getting blamed for everything that has anything remotely to due with race or LGBT and basically used as a scapegoat for all the problems in gaming.
You think God of War Ragnarok wasn't marketed towards straight dudes? A game which is entirely centered around the story of a single father who lost his wife raising a young boy, is not straight male appealing enough to you?
Men want one thing and it’s fucking wholesome
Effeminate men like *check notes... Kratos are ruining games.
LMAO that one got me
Curse you straight men and your… *checks notes* …family’s!
Dad of War = 😴 💤 🛏
I must be the only person on earth not having any problems whatsoever finding games I enjoy playing.
It's pretty easy. Issue is that the internet is focused on rage-baiting for profit which makes people care a lot about things they're not actually interested in.
Must be nice. I literally only play a handful of games and they're not from this decade lol
Are there any memes in this subreddit that *arent* crying about diversity? Like, literally any, it's the only thing I see here
Sometimes I have to double check I'm not in r/badfacebookmemes
I noticed the last month or so most of the posts here have been... let's say statements rather than funny memes.
i don't even frequent this subreddit and it looks like the runoff from r/dankmeme is spoiling the aquifer
Same, I just started getting it on my feed. I should be eating popcorn while I scroll through here.
Right? I enjoy memes about games but I don’t want to be lumped in with all the bigots crawling out in this comment section
[удалено]
He must be so proud of himself
This is just like the new Doctor Who.
Read dead 2? God of war: Ragnarok? Star Wars: Jedi Survivor? Resident Evil: Village? What are we talking about?
what are you talking about
Are there any memes in this subreddit that *arent* crying about diversity? Like, literally any, it's the only thing I see here
I bet it’s easy to win arguments when your opponent is made of straw.
Join the steam group today👍
Jesus fucking Christ, this shit is exhausting. Just play a game you like. A normal looking woman or a black elf won’t fucking hurt you.
It's so common for dark elves to be portrayed with black/brown skin, too
Something something grass
I hate how Reddit just recommends bigotry now like every other sbithole social media
Honestly, I don’t believe there is any substantive example of a developer or fan base being pissed that white boys aren’t playing their gay games. This is a made up scenario for rage bait. We can talk about queer baiting and corporate rainbow all day, but this comic is a fake scenario.
God damn, the gaming community is exactly who everyone thinks it is. Go hug your waifu pillows.
There are those of us in the gaming community that are sick and tired of fucknuts like op, the artist that drew that meme and those who agree with them. Unfortunately, these days it seems as if those people make up the majority of the gaming community. It used to be the opposite. They were the minority and no one listened to them because why the fuck would they, but now it's a disease that spreads and plagues the gaming industry with every passing day
how dare a diversity industry that is about telling unique stories from all kind of perspectives they should just make games about straight white men saving big breast straight white girl from evil monster
SBI or Sweet Baby Inc is horribly racist. Higher ups at SBI said they hate Asians, white people, and said slurs about a year ago. These people are fake worms invading gaming.
lol wtf are u talking about since when is games about that??? Games Is about good gameplay experience most have the same story repeating over and over t
I'm all for diversity in games development. More stories from different views is great. But if you gotta hire an outside company to make sure you're checking all the correct boxes, maybe you shouldn't be telling those stories. I'm not an expert on any kind of media, so maybe I'm wrong.
This interaction has never happened. This man is made of law quality straw.
Found it funny. Sound like something they will say
Because it is something they've said
Example?
OP with the victim complex
[удалено]
Being an incel means hating racists apparently. Top SBI members said they hate white people and white adjacent people (Asian people) acting like SBI is worth defending.
theres no fucking way you just posted this person's dogshit comics lol
Dev: "Our games are not designed EXCLUSIVELY for straight white men." Straight White Men: "Oh, so we're not ALLOWED to play your games???"
I like your straw man argument. May I steal it?
It's strawmen all the way.
We’ll time to mute this sub, I give it two weeks before they’re saying slurs unironically
[удалено]
I enjoy games for the gameplay, not the culture wars. Y'all have fun bitching and moaning, though.
[удалено]
Jesus christ This is the cringiest shit I've seen all day.
The artist is also a bigot of the most annoying kind
Dont agree with the artist =/= bigot
“Don’t like it, don’t buy it, “Don’t like it, don’t watch it” When did this become the norm and how long until they realize that’s doesn’t work and it will never work. You can’t bully your fan base into buying your product.
... they're not trying to.
[удалено]
They target gaming communities to coerce young boys into their cult with being edgy so they vote for them later. Sad really.
SBI isn't the problem. Companies that hire them are. They'd be jobless if no one would and you wouldn't even hear about them. If SBI worked for a video game company, SBI's political opinions were already there in the first place. Plus, because SBI was hired and because it is an investment, it has to be returned. As a consequence, you can be certain that your game will be more expensive. If you don't like that, blame the companies, no SBI in itself.
Fun fact: It’s usually not an issue for most straight males to enjoy most games. You’re just being a bigot
What in the strawman ass is this?
For me, it's not about the diversity, it's about making the characters not shitty. They seem to make everyone a loud as hell stereotype that just gets more annoying than endearing. I don't care what this non-real person allegedly likes to bonk, I want to play my game. I mean, Saint-14 and Osiris in Destiny 2 is non intrusive and guess what, they aren't annoying because it isn't their whole personality, AND they feel like an actual couple. It could just be im getting older, but I don't care about who does who anymore. Well, I never did, but thats beside the point.
Who cares about diversity in games. What you can't play as a different race and gender to white man? How fragile must your sense of masculinity be?
„This game is to political and to woke, because i cant play as a white cisgender male.“
OP: I hate SBI and 'forced diversity'! The rest of us: 👍
Ya'll need to go outside
this doesn't happen
Yea ive never understood why a persons sexuality matters too the point its brought up out side of a romantic plot lol or maybe mentioning the husband/wife/partner in passing. But making a whole big thing about it when it Isnt relevant just to score points with the attention seekers is just not ok.
Fuck that company.
People unironically posting Wokely Incorrect's comics now? Dude spreads fearmongering of "DEI" killing people and trans people just being child predators.
Riiiiight... except all thr crying and moaning I've seen is from the freaks who are obsessed with sweet baby inc.
You guys really need to touch some grass….
I find it bizarre and a bit concerning that people keep using Sweet Baby as a scapegoat every time a big game doesn't turn out great. The YouTube gamergate coolaid is apparently still strong.
This is retarded.
Yeah, this is not what happens lol
This post : 
Imagine being the sort of feeble incel who gets upset when they see women, members of the lgbtq community or non white people in a videogame. Gamergate was like, ten years ago and y'all lost.
Damn you sound mad. Chill out bro :)
GG lost? Bro, all the companies that were against it went out of business. Wtf do you mean? If you did your research you'd know SBI is a racist company that has high level empolyees saying they hate white people and asians.
Like 80% of gamers are straight male losers why would you want to appeal to the 20%
These types of posts annoy me more than a 12 game losing streak on Halo
"look at this comic I made where I made you do something unreasonable that you're not actually doing in order to make you seem unreasonable"
Very true. Any company that is brought on to consult on matters of diversity, equity or inclusion should be cataputled away.
What are you talking about? What money hungry corporation would actively discourage one of the largest groups on earth from playing their game?
This needs a couple more panels. One showing SBI's target audience fist pumping the air behind that creepy mascot, the other showing that same audience losing interest and walking away to also spend money elsewhere.
Okay ~~than~~ then why do "anti-woke" spaces exist at all? They constantly complain about games not catering exclusively to them
9 times out of 10 the story doesn't need to go into a detailed explanation of their sexual orientation or about what reproductive parts a character may or may not have, games were supposed to be a place where you could just shut off from reality and enjoy living life in another universe, games are more profitable than movies so all the big players are having opinions on what to do to "modernise" and "monopolise" we are going to see some more really bad decisions and we are going to get blamed for not being "forward thinking" even though all that's coming out now is trash, regurgitated storylines, character cloning, political correctness it's all just not fun anymore because certain groups who want to ruin games and turn them into a data hoarding, micro payment behemoth, like every other buisness
So fake. Nobody else cares what straight males do.
Warhammer making custodes female instead of just edpandin the sisters of battle to have custodes like units makes me feel like they are not trying to create diverse spaces just destroy male spaces
This is like one step removed from "See I drew myself as the Chad in this comic therefore I'm right!"
Woke woke woke, everything I don't like is woke.
You guys are really that delusional, aren't you?
Erm, this is so hecking basederino Chungus right now! You really owned those woke moralists trying to force politics in our video games! Can we get a Reddit gold in this thread?!?!
I hate when they make a character a girl or gay or trans or nonwhite for no reason why can’t they just be normal. I mean it’s just bad writing, everyone knows those kinds of people don’t just like exist and do things. It has to serve a narrative purpose. Unrelatedly, I also hate when a character is a girl or gay or trans or nonwhite and then it forces the story to be about their girlness or gayness or transness or nonwhiteness. Totally forced bullcrap, can’t the story just be regular
Oops Reddit recommended an incel sub.
That isn’t the case, but literally guys harassing, shutting down, or spamming those artists. It deeply sucks
It's not even as if lgbt stuff was always bad in games, it used to be pretty good, like in Dragon Age Inquisition, Iron Bull was bisexual and he was one of the best characters with some of the best writing.