Even in the braindead fantasy world where Sweet Baby is the unilateral all-powerful arbiter of what goes into every single game that these losers keep bitching and moaning about, you know who hires them as consultants, right? It's executives that are shielded from the consequences of bad decisions. In the real world where normal people live, nobody devotes their lives to some circuitous plot of making games worse because somehow that's their best avenue for expressing their pathological hatred for you; that's the paranoid delusion of people that think they and their hobbies are far more important than they actually are, and I'd gently suggest they grow the fuck up.

What you're actually seeing are people that don't care. Executives hire incompetent consultants (again, not evil and hell bent on taking your precious toys away) because they have never been incentivised to know what they're doing. Every time they make a shit decision that nobody likes, they keep their jobs and bonuses while devs get the ax and shoulder the blame. It's apathy. It's knowing that whatever happens, they win. And when their company is bled dry and the whole thing goes under, they turn into bats and fly into a new boardroom run by their buddies to do it all over again. Might be games today, might be baby formula tomorrow; they don't hate you, they couldn't be bothered to give half a shit about you.

Aka private equity firms' buy-and-sell strategy.

I have no idea; the logic of that Steam group is quite nonsensical. They even say Spyro is "anti-gun", and that Sonic Adventure contains "pro-LGBTQ+ messaging".

I'm not kidding.

No worries @Chdonga . I took it as intended. :)

I consider @orangebomb 's summary the comment of the thread, with perhaps the caveat that you're right: the reactionary counter pressure is really hard to understand if you weren't there.

I sympathize with the under thirty set's view of olds as just racist nazis but as someone who was indeed there, if anything I think it's a credit to the deep left leanings of gamers that the reactionary politics have been as mild as they have been (and yes, I am aware of the death threats etc.).

My introduction to all of this was one of the trailers for "Gone Home" being posted to a "Just Adventure" adjacent forum I had literally been a part of for more than twenty years. I watched it and commented something to the effect of "I like the 90's setting, but I'm concerned that I don't see a single puzzle here." I was banned for the comment with the mod note "homophobia". I obviously appealed, honestly thinking they must have misclicked. I had no idea that the entire game was a mystery box with a note inside it with the single word lesbian scrawled on it. Had I known, I--of course--would have prefaced my criticism of it with a throat clearing and a "I love my gay brothers but..." I didn't know that at the time though. The admin reply said I was a nazi and that if I appealed again I would be kicked out of the forum network. Just like that and for literally no reason I was cut off from a group of online friends I had been talking about adventure games with since before I could grow pubes. A few years after that, the network banned one of the main coders keeping the site going for similar suspected wrong-think and had to shutter completely.

As a less personal example, take the "gamers are dead" headlines. As a single unified voice--basically to the man--every single corporate website proclaimed that gaming needed to completely abandon its current customer base:

It doesn't matter what the underlying politics were or how righteous the causes. This sort of activism was always going to illicit an organised reactionary movement and demographic realities meant that reactionary movement would dominate. Talking about things young people won't understand, I think the easy wins of the "Daily Show" style politics of atheism and related movements circa 2006-2008 and culminating in Obama broke left wing politics for perhaps the rest of my life. It was fun to be cruel to the Christians, but we set a tone that has destroyed the Democratic party and I deeply regret it.

I mean, like I said I'm like 90% sure that it's one of the false flag groups, they don't really have any sort of logic behind their rating system. Which is why I'd be pretty averse to interacting with them or giving them any sort of credentials related to your account for them to log.

I never care about twitter rants. "Woke" is like one of the most meaningless label.

Capcom being cautious with RE3Make (changing Jill's outfit to be less revealing) was because they had previously been forced to spend resources censoring out a buttcrack from DMC5. ...and you can blame Sony - Santa Monica for that.

I don't think any agendas were being pushed otherwise.

Playstation (US) itself is a "woke" filter a lot of game companies must pass their content through... and almost all PS studios games have inclusivity consulting taking a front seat to the game development action.

Because a bunch of 'gamers are evil!' moral panic dumbasses who probably cloned Jack Thompson in the late 90s decided to destroy the game development industry by dictating terms to every major outlet and publishing houses by bribing game/console company executives. These authoritarians want to make games (which are supposed to be a getaway from the stress of real life) feel more like a punishment instead of fun. This results in games that basically lecture and collectively punish gamers as 'undesirables' instead of, y'know, being games.

Instead of great plot and storylines, you get verbally abused and gaslighted into accepting a buggy, subpar product or else you're a declared a "BADMAN" by these self-appointed morality police. Instead of great gameplay and the thrill of discovery, you get microtransactions and ingame ads because all they care about is to wring gamers for money rather than creating a product worth buying because they KNOW its going to flop.

This results in the company hemorrhaging customers because no one wants to be robbed like that. The sad thing is, most of the people working on actual game dev stuff don't get a cent of this dirty "investment money" and they're soon laid off when the company goes under and the moronic executives who took this bribe go enjoy their bloodstained money, not caring for the fact they've destroyed genres, careers, studios and even the lives of people. How many games and studios have been ruined thus far?

Good thing I have a stash of old games, I estimate they'll last me a couple thousand years at best. (More when I learn to properly read Japanese)

When was the Gone Home trailer posted at that forum? Because at the time of the game's launch, no one was aware that the game was really about a sister's coming out story, so that mod would not have been aware of that yet.

Well, because of image compression, I cannot read any of these headlines or articles in that collage. And I have no idea who that woman is in half of the headlines.

Oh noes! You've caught me in a logical contradiction! Like Nomad, I will now explode!

Oh wait... false alarm... I don't seem to be exploding.

1) The endings to games spread online within hours even in the teens.

2) I have no idea *when* I reacted to the trailer (this was more than a decade ago) that's why I didn't--for example--say whether it was at the game's launch

3) I didn't say (and don't recall) if it was a post or repost either

If you strongly wanted to insinuate that my nearly impossible to verify story about what happened a decade ago on an Internet forum that has supposedly since closed is fabricated, you should have just said that. People would probably have naturally sided with you because--you know--the whole decades old unverifiable part. Making up stuff that I didn't say and holding it against me as some kind of gotcha exchanges what was a rhetorically superior position for looking like a crank.

I know NG hates AI, but if you are vision impaired you really owe it to yourself to get access to an LLM that also does image recognition. I used Poe to give the 3.7 version of Anthrop\c's Claude the image and asked:

Can you please list out only the headlines from this image:

Within seconds it responded with:

Here are the headlines from the image:

1. "Gamers' don't have to be your audience. 'Gamers' are over."

2. "We Might Be Witnessing The 'Death of An Identity'"

3. "Gaming Is Leaving "Gamers" Behind"

4. "A Disheartening Account Of The Harrassment Going On In Gaming Right Now (And how Adam Baldwin Is Involved)"

5. "A Guide to Ending "Gamers""

5. "A Guide to Ending "Gamers""

6. "The death of the "gamers" and the women who "killed" them"

7. "An awful week to care about video games"

8. "It's Dangerous to Go Alone: Why Are Gamers So Angry?"

9. "The End of Gamers"

10. "Sexism, misogyny and online attacks: It's a horrible time to consider yourself a 'gamer'"

11. "Misogynistic Trolls Drive Feminist Video Game Critic From Her Home"

12. "Feminist Video Blogger Is Driven From Home by Death Threats"

13. "Fanboys, White Knights, and the Hairball of Online Misogyny"

I also used archive.md to find some links from the week of August 28th 2014 that you can use with your JAWS screen reader:

'Gamers' don't have to be your audience. 'Gamers' are over

The death of the “gamers” and the women who “killed” them

A Guide to Ending "Gamers"

We Might Be Witnessing The 'Death of An Identity'

Gaming Is Leaving “Gamers” Behind

Sexism, misogyny and online attacks: It’s a horrible time to consider yourself a ‘gamer’

The End of Gamers

This guy's embarassing relationship drama is killing the "gamer" identity

The End of Gatekeeping: The Extinction Burst of Gaming Culture

This Week in Video Game Criticism: Tropes vs Anita Sarkeesian and the Demise of 'Gamers'

There are gamers at the gate, but they may already be dead

Why I’m not a “gamer”

Google is a bit more old school than modern AI, but it too can a great tool. Here's a result of a cropped picture from the screenshot. Google correctly identifies her as United States Agency for International Development and Raytheon grant recipient Anita Sarkeesian.

Getting back to my point. If you don't recognize Anita Sarkeesian, you really can't even begin to understand the full context of the hellscape that was the teens.

to be specific, the website is ran by someone who dislikes the list and believes that showing you your own results damages the credibility of the group, which is quite smart

That screenshot came from your own post. Didn't you already have the links to begin with, or if not, googled them yourself?

I did not claim I didn't believe you. I was trying to figure out why a mod was going on a power trip in a forum. I also did not suggest you said anything else.

I know who Sarkeesian is. I just never bothered to look up her picture, ever.

Like with the AI, I let someone else do the hardwork. I remembered it from back in the day. The screenshot was from an image search for "gamers are dead collage". Maybe I'm going crazy, but it seems like the jpeg crank on the BBS has been turned up yet again. Shrinkflation.

Fair enough @JerseyWildcard . I withdraw my snark and apologise for doing the very thing that got my irk.

On the power trips: That's the thing. This went beyond mods having bad days. GG literally started the whole reddit tradition of "if you post here you're banned there" and the scores you gave games on Steam being perma-ban offenses. Honestly, I don't think I saw a good cause being used as justification for so much obvious cruelty again until Covid. Shit was insane.

I salute you.

This list is just funny to read through.

LA Noire is "Not Woke", even though it is probably the most political heavy game in that list.

It's set in the 1940s, so there is widespread racism, sexism, and antisemitism, and the game clearly shows that those kinds of views are not ok.

And the police captains want the player to go after alleged communists, even though they may be innocent, just to close the case.

If anything, the game does a good job showing how corrupt the LAPD is.

I think what depresses and pisses me off the most at the same time... is the fact that older games as far back as the late 90s are retroactively woke now. That bullshit I have no tolerance for, because they know they're doing the exact same thing they accuse 'the left' of doing. Bunch of goddamn bastards, some of them might stand for something, but most of them don't.

Whomp whomp!

This is generally one of the reasons why I generally ignore people/websites that declare a game to be "woke" that is based on a slippery slope moving the goalposts rationale. The concept of "woke" was nonexistent in the 90's, as most games tried to be as hard edged as possible and anything that was viewed as "gay" was verboten. Of course, I can't rule out that they are probably trolls or grifters looking for outrage clicks, but even then...

(Yes, I'm well aware that gay/trans characters existed even in the 90's, but about 95% of them were either viewed as jokes and/or were glorified extras. Also oddly enough, a lot of that came from Japan)

people realized they can make tons of money off of people mad they can't beat their dick to the girls in mortal kombat anymore and rolled with it. I feel like a lot of it is a grift to make money off of extremists. Like you can't tell me a lot of Anti-Woke channels care *this* deeply about series i don't know if they even give a shit about in the first place. Not saying people aren't that deeply hateful, but a lot of it just feels like they're fishing for outrage clicks from people old enough to need viagra to jack off. And if they are geniunely this mad about everything that releases, that's probably why they're getting put in a home in like 40 years.

The witch hunt for "woke" absolutely existed in the 90s, it was just called "politically correct" at the time.

Then calling things "politically correct" became a clear indicator of cranks that just hate seeing minorities exist, the term lost all its meaning, and it got replaced by "SJW"

Then "SJW" became a clear indicator of cranks that just hate seeing minorities exist, the term lost all its meaning, and it got replaced by "CRT"

Then "CRT" became a clear indicator of cranks that just hate seeing minorities exist, the term lost all its meaning, and it got replaced by "Woke"

Now it's a clear indicator of cranks that just hate seeing minorities exist, the term has lost all its meaning, and it's currently being replaced by "DEI"

Can't wait to see what three letter acronym people use as a more plausibly deniable replacement for slurs is next.

While I agree with you for the most part, I recall that the crusade against political correctness was not a thing among those ages 20-30. It was just a bunch of old geezers and politicians rallying behind it. Now the literal boomers are being replaced by the youth as the political actives ones.

I have to disagree. If the left is morally right about the harms of non-inclusive media then old media is harmful. If the right is morally right about the subversive harm of diversity then inclusive old media is harmful. I personally don't believe in thought crime so my position is completely consistent but for those that do believe in thought crime, it seems odd to be mad at them for *not* being hypocritical.

Being honest, of the most infuriating things about NG is the hypocrisy of "grandfathering". As the rules became more and more restrictive regarding "edge" the mods/staff/Tom made alot of excuses regarding not taking down old content that violated new rules by making references to "changing times" "knowing better now" etc etc but that was all revealed to be just gloss when new rules regarding nudity and copyright started to appear.

If you read any of the lectures given in any random "why was my art deleted" thread then you would certainly be lead to believe that the rules against pressing the nudity/loli limits exist for moral reasons. If that's the case though, then the lack of intra-portal consistency is a moral failing as is not taking down older violating content. If a minor is harmed by seeing bush, that harm will be done regardless of what portal they see it in and regardless of what Photoshop version rasterised those pubes.

The real clencher is copyright rules. The idea that if/when NG is taken to court that "but your honor, we've hosted this violating content for decades!" is a better position to be in than having *just* posted it is beyond absurd. SFM artist have every right to be livid.

Taken together it just gives credence to the idea this place is a museum to Gen-X. I find that far more infuriating than if either the rules were relaxed or if a purge was undertaken to put new artist on equal footing with old.

Yeah, back then, the terminally out-of-touch were almost always older, and that made sense: of course network news, the only game in town, would focus on outraging the demographic with dwindling cognition and nostalgia for simpler times, before everything was ruined by shit like desegregation.

Now the power of the internet lets legions of repellant chuds poison humanity's other mentally deficient demographics: children, and people with the minds of children. They've tapped a new market of gullible morons in ways that network news never could, so now millennials are the last generation to know what it was like when only ghouls with one foot in the grave had an 1800s mindset.

I see where you're coming from re: DEI being the new PC but do you really want to paint with that broad a brush? Black families in the South certainly lobbied against their kids being taught in ebonics, which was the height of "PC". I remember having to drive through a rally in South Carolina. Were they all just anti-black? Many black intellectuals, some who prominently marched with MLK, believe DEI undermines race relations by creating the spectre of token positions. Are they also racist?

alr Stay woke