Tell you what, I’ll concede that yes, that was an unfair thing to ask. I asked it specifically because those sorts of games are the ones that people complain about the most and I was feeling irritable that day. Instead, I’ll simply ask you to consider that, in the same vein, it’s equally unfair to demand specific examples of games being “political” (which, I will reiterate, is not the same thing as a game being about politics).

I believe this for two reasons. First, because bigoted sentiment doesn’t have to be overt to be noticeable - or, alternatively, game developers at least believe that to be the case, because if they didn’t, they wouldn’t feel the need to make public statements about microaggressions. Second, because when people notice something that they consider prejudiced against them or their way of life, due to the way cognitive dissonance works, their brain will have a tendency to block out that memory unless it’s something so exceptionally angering as to be worth ranting about online. Combined, these cause a situation where a person will eventually feel discriminated against at an institutional level, but will not be able to articulate why, because the only examples they can name are the especially bad ones that get dismissed as outliers (Spider-Man 2’s “no removing the pride flags” controversy, Suicide Squad’s female-on-male sexual harassment, Starfield’s “FUCKIN’ PRONOUNS”, etc.)

By now you’re probably already thinking, “yeah, that happens with racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia too, what’s the difference?” Which is a fair point. The difference is that when someone says those specific forms of bigotry are happening to them, people on the internet will typically take their word for it. When a straight white cisgender man says he’s being discriminated against, it gets dismissed as whining, or worse, as deserved on the grounds of “white privilege” or something else of that sort. I don’t even need to give examples of it, you can see it in this very thread. But what those people fail to understand is, anyone who bases their opinions on the belief that white people are inherently advantaged in society is, by definition, a white supremacist.

My post kind of trailed off, but my point is, I believe that the reason the “gamers are all a bunch of racist white boys” angle being spread online by the likes of Sweet Baby is offensive is not because it’s racist against white people (which it is, but that’s beside the point), but because, the longer you think about it, the more apparent it becomes that it’s even more racist against everyone else. It actively works to tear people apart instead of bringing them together, and actively works to undermine the agency of marginalized groups by encouraging them to think of themselves as outcasts or victims of society instead of members of it. No matter how you slice it, the so-called DEI agenda is anti-diversity, anti-equity, and anti-inclusion.

That’s an excellent strawman you’ve built there, but you appear to have either missed my actual point, or have deemed it too difficult to refute and chosen to deliberately ignore it. So this time I’m going to put my most important words in bold, to ensure that neither you nor anyone reading this will miss them.

Unlike many on the internet, I don’t base my definition of “political themes vs. political propaganda” off of whether or not I agree with it - that’s a false assumption that you made. I base it off of whether or not the writing respects my intelligence enough to allow me to come to my own conclusions instead of trying to decide those conclusions for me. (I have repeatedly stated this elsewhere.) In other words, your responses are founded on an outright lie, and even if I give you the benefit of the doubt by applying them to what I actually said, you’re attempting to paint me as a “non-thinker” for disagreeing with the practice of writers trying to get viewers to unthinkingly agree with their opinion. Which is not just patently absurd, it’s also a disservice to your own position because it makes you come across as a hypocrite.

Moral superiority is not something you just have. It needs to be backed up with facts. And the fact is, you do not know me, you have never met me, and you do not have the authority to tell me what I am saying, much less to call my premise wrong on the basis of words you put into my mouth. So you can either debate me for real or you can agree to disagree and get on with your own life, but you will not half-ass your discourse with logical fallacies or personal attacks and then expect me to take you seriously.

Don’t you have something better to do with your time than baselessly call people white supremacists on the internet?

I know you aren’t actually interested in hearing any more examples, so I’ll keep this short and name the example that comes right off the top of my head: Timespinner. Every bad guy is a straight white man and none of the characters considered sympathetic are more than one of those three things. And its writing is the worst thing about it.

If you’d care to show me some examples of games which are recent, western-made, high-budget, and have a white male protagonist who isn’t constantly getting put down by the game’s own narrative to prop up someone more politically correct, I’d genuinely love to hear them.

Would you care to offer any examples of that or would you rather do the same? I said I want in-game diversity to feel natural instead of like the writer getting on a soapbox. That’s as far from racist as you can get. The comment above me repeating the claim that characters who aren’t straight white men are required to be saddled with real-world current-day rhetoric instead of being allowed to just exist - THAT’S what’s racist.

I tried, but apparently people would rather downvote than listen.

This is the single worst take in existence. I see it everywhere and it contributes nothing. There’s a difference between a game having politics in it and a game being political. A game with politics in it typically has a message with complexity and nuance and attempts to get people to ask questions by immersing them in an environment where philosophical ideas can be explored. A game that’s political typically has no message beyond “straight white men are inherently evil and cause all of the world’s problems”, and forgoes subtlety, nuance, and often even basic storytelling in favor of shouting that message in the viewer’s face as often and as loudly as it can, vainly attempting to tell its audience outright what the writer thinks they should believe no matter how much the end product’s quality suffers.

There are always people who will complain about black people, gay people and trans people being in a game at all. But don’t lump those people in with people who are simply sick of their entertainment trying to guilt-trip them into hating themselves for having physical traits they never asked for and can’t control, otherwise your message becomes this:

“There are
Many genders: The good ones, and male
Many races: The good ones, and white
Many orientations: The good ones, and straight”

And that’s an opinion only possessed by those narcissistic enough to consider their own prejudices more justified than anyone else’s. I don’t want to hear any of that “prejudice plus power” nonsense. Bigotry is bigotry is bigotry. And we all deserve better.

The fact that people are downvoting you for speaking an objective fact is a travesty. Diversity is only as political as the writer chooses to make it, and having characters of different races, genders and orientations without putting in the effort to make them feel three-dimensional will not magically make a badly-written game into a good one.

Wait, really? I heard that what happened is they’d decided to be sneaky by patenting the control system for a heavier-than-air flying machine since they couldn’t patent the idea of the machine itself. Do you have sources I can research?

It’s actually not common at all. But the few examples of it happening were bad enough that it has deterred a lot of men from approaching women at all. Plus, regular, reasonable guys don’t like the idea of asking out a woman who’s immediately afraid he’ll kill her if she says no, not just because they don’t like the idea of potentially making her uncomfortable just by approaching her, but also because even if she says yes, a relationship that has that level of fear or distrust right off the bat is doomed. Which of course leads to a vicious cycle, where the only men asking women out are douchebags, and then those women’s perception of men becomes worse. Nobody likes this cycle, but the only way to fix it is for people to be better to each other.

A sharp wit is more attractive than any physical feature.

Screenshotted for posterity.

The Declaration of Secession issued by South Carolina, the first state to secede, directly mentions “an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding states to the institution of slavery”. It was about slavery. Period. Go deep south on deez nuts, traitor scum.

If by “embarrassment” you mean “getting arrested or your entire career and life ruined by sexual harassment accusations because you accidentally made someone uncomfortable”. Don’t act as if men are giving up dating in record numbers over “embarrassment”. It’s disingenuous. They’re giving up because guys like the one in the comic cause women to view them all as “creeps”.

To be more specific, there’s nothing wrong with those things being a CHOICE. The problem is with specific individuals telling people that millions of others need to cut their carbon footprint to near zero so that they, as an individual, can keep using their private jet without feeling guilty. And that attitude can go die in a hole. But you knew that.

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Oh yes, your “three-day special military operation” that’s been going on for, what, three, four years now? You have no business calling other people brainwashed.

They’re called Uyghurs. You’d know that if you got your news from somewhere besides Hexbear.

Wow. You really are just mask-off Russian government propaganda, aren’t you? There’s this thing called nuance and only the most vile of people refuse to see it. This “west bad, kys” nonsense isn’t just stupid, it’s boring. Go back to the drawing board and try again.

Maybe so, but they’re also on the opposite side of the aisle. The company that owns Sweet Baby Inc. and deliberately pushes inappropriate levels of DEI via bribery-with-extra-steps probably isn’t about to aid or endorse a Republican, especially one who’s that brazen about the shitty things he does.