• barrbaric [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    54·
    9 months ago

    Games where one (1) white guy dies: unthinkably political, monstrous

    Games where hundreds to thousands of PoC zombies are murdered indiscriminately (Dying Light, RE5): as apolitical as can be

    • doublepepperoni [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      30·
      9 months ago

      With the talk of more remakes I’ve seen old discussions about Resident Evil 5’s racism pop up again lately except now it’s smooth-brained gamer youtubers complaining about people discussing the racism

    • TraumaDumpling@hexbear.netEnglish
      4·
      9 months ago

      is dying light racist? i thought that like, a lot of the survivor NPCs in that game were POC because it takes place in like turkey or something. theres like 2 ‘white’ western characters and one of them (the player) is secretly working for the evil organization that is using the zombie outbreak to develop bioweapons - they even have you burn anti-zombie drugs at one point to keep the survivors desperate enough to help you with your mission. the other one is just some british guy that was in town teaching parkour, but he ended up as the leader of the tower so thats somewhat problematic i guess but he admits its entirely undeserved. at the very least a huge amount of sympathetic NPCs, both plot-important deuteragonists like jade ‘the scorpion’ aldemir and sidequest-giver characters like Spike or Tolga and Fatin, were either POC or at least heavily muslim-coded, and the zombies have always been very diverse in dying light games. dying light 2 has prominent black characters, one leads the Peacekeeper faction and the other is like a deuteragonist/pseudo-love interest (idk what all the endings entail but my playthrough’s aiden was uninterested in relationships) that drives and helps resolve much of the plot and is quite competent, explicitly faster/better at parkour than the player character and an excellent crossbow sniper.

      plus the plot of both dying light games are like super political, touching on themes like factionalism, humanity’s propensity for self destruction and ignorance, government conspiracies involving bioweapons, how people make selfish choices instead of thinking about others, etc. it even has a last of us style ending in dying light 2 where you have to choose between potentially saving 1 person (with a choice of who the person you save is) or potentially saving the world/The Last City.

      • barrbaric [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        4·
        9 months ago

        I’ll admit I stretched to include it. Didn’t remember specifics, mostly going off of “zombies in a foreign country” and imo there’s a bit of white savior-ism with the PC. A quick google does reveal that the main villain and his whole gang are former not!Turkish military, though.

  • randomname01@feddit.nlEnglish
    46·
    9 months ago

    Tbf, meaning can be conveyed purely with subtext. To be even more fair, absolutely no mainstream piece of media lectures the viewer/watcher/listener on why being a white man is bad.

    • Amerikan Pharaoh@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
      31·
      9 months ago

      Iunno, I felt Baldur’s Gate 3 had a very strong condemnation of the hubris inherent in white men through the existence of Gale Dekarios.

      • jjjalljs@ttrpg.networkEnglish
        11·
        9 months ago

        I can see that reading, but it’s undermined by … How do I do spoiler blocks?

        spoiler

        It’s not like he blows up or anything. I think in the later patch he gets an even happier ending.

      • randomname01@feddit.nlEnglish
        4·
        9 months ago

        Criticising the consequences of a patriarchal white supremacist sexist society isn’t the same as condemning white men as a whole.

        • Amerikan Pharaoh@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
          5·
          9 months ago

          When the vast majority eagerly participates in patriarchal white supremacy, that kind of takes the knees out from under your argument. Sounds a whole lot like that whole “#notallmen” horseshit to me.

          • randomname01@feddit.nlEnglish
            8·
            9 months ago

            Yeah nah, I’m not saying it as an excuse for men. My point is that criticising a system where most men participate in is not the same as saying all men are inherently shit - which guys like Boogie are pretending.

          • FanonFan [comrade/them, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
            3·
            9 months ago

            I was thinking something similar but I wasn’t sure how to put it into words.

            Like this has a sort of circular self-proving logic to it (not in the fallacy way, like the dialectical way) where the more these people get upset by criticisms not directly aimed at them, the more they prove that an association exists between the behavior being criticized and their identity.

            Whiteness as a floating signifier will change meaning with ebbs and flows of power and material dynamics, so it’s interesting to see these reactionary manifestations.

  • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    27·
    9 months ago

    seeing stuff like this actually has been motivating me to make games. I’ve been learning modeling and coding in Godot, and I’ve already started work on a soundtrack. It might take me years to finish anything playable, but I’m gonna try my best. I wanna make dungeon crawlers in the style of SMT.

    Also the games will be explicitly leftist, there will be mandatory pronoun selection, and when you have white characters in your party their class/job will be identified like “Johnny Whiteguy, Class: Crakkker.”

  • GeorgeZBush [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    27·
    9 months ago

    Do these people ever get tired of beating the same. Fucking. Drum. Over. And over?

    Shut down X dot com formerly known as Twitter. Please God just get rid of it all. I’m so over this same repetitive manchild discourse.

  • RyanGosling [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    27·
    9 months ago

    I would do everything Joel did 50 times over even if I knew it would “doom” the world because at that moment, having armed goons assaulting me while my ‘daughter’ is who knows where and some sketchy woman telling me to “trust her” means a helluva lot more than whatever world is out there. But at the same time, actions have consequences, regardless if what you did was good or bad, rational or not. If I was in Abby’s position and someone like Joel did that to my family, I would also do what she did 50 times over. I don’t know if Joel is “good,” and he’s certainly not “condemned” by the writers, but he’ll always be literally me.

    These people want “nuance” and a “marketplace of ideas,” but when a piece of media explores the human condition where emotions naturally triumphs any logic and one situation is presented in multiple perspectives, then they immediately screech because their beard daddy is no longer seen as universally good. But I don’t understand. These people presumably are the same ones who say “I’ll do anything to protect my family,” but being seen as “the bad guy” is where they draw the line? Why does it matter? I would never apologize for doing what Joel did even if Ellie and the whole world condemned me because I’ll do anything to protect my family.

    • SuperSaiyanSwagEnglish
      7·
      9 months ago

      There is some nuance to the story, but Gamers are too pea-brained to get it. It’s not that Joel is bad, it’s about actions having consequences no matter how justified those actions may seem from one side, those actions could be seen as unredeemable from the other side.

      I also hate that they criticize the story for being “revenge bad”, it’s okay if you’re tired of that trope, but boiling it down to that just shows that you are too stubborn to pay attention to the story. After Ellie lost her fingers (the ones she plays the guitar with), it triggered her emotions and memories about Joel, she realized that she wasn’t mad at Abby, she was mad at herself for taking so long to forgive Joel and now she won’t get that chance again.

      There are definitely valid criticisms for the game the game though, but I don’t get why people make it their personality to hate the game. I disliked Witcher 3 and Baldur’s gate 3 and guess what? I moved on.

      • RyanGosling [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        4·
        9 months ago

        I disliked Witcher 3 and Baldur’s gate 3 and guess what? I moved on.

        On god I hate a lot of games and movies and other people hate the ones I like. But I only ever bring it up if someone else does, and usually only when they have an absurd take. Otherwise I’m never thinking about the media I hate because life is too short and I could consuming the media I like instead

  • DragonBallZinn [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    20·
    9 months ago

    Let me guess, they had any of their biases challenged and it made them feel bad about themselves.

    So, if what you’re doing is wrong and you acknowledge that its wrong, why continue doing it?

  • WhatDoYouMeanPodcast [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    17·
    9 months ago

    There’s a line to be drawn about patriarchy and fascism from a conversation like this. You know how there’s fragile masculinity? This is like extra fragile white masculinity. Then fascism is like a death cult where a single drop of any out-group means you should die. What’s up with the fragility increasing as specificity increases?