For some reason, almost every time a game is announced, usually one developed by a AAA studio, it's automatically declared as "woke". Apparently, the term "woke" used to refer to being aware of social issues but is now a pejorative that mocks progressive or otherwise left-leaning ideologies, at least, that's what I can gather from online discourse. Though, one thing that's been bothering me is how pretty much every game, regardless of actual content, is deemed as such. Like, I dislike it when media contains heavy-handed political/social commentary, however, some people will call a game "woke" just for having a minority character. Some will go "this game has a female protagonist; therefore, it's guaranteed to be woke garbage" or "it has a black character, so it contains DEI/ESG messaging" or whatever new term is coined. It's funny how some of the self-proclaimed Hardcore GamersTM act like this is anything new when, in actuality, games have included diverse casts since the 90s.

I guess an argument could be made about games including them just for the sake of tokenism or pandering and there definitely is criticism to be directed there. However, the extreme some take it too is quite ridiculous, there was even this one list of "woke games" that contained at least a thousand titles. Said list even labelled stuff like Final Fantasy VII and Portal 2 as "woke". Those games are among the greatest gaming has to offer, yet they were put under the 'not recommended' category. And in all honesty, a lot of the obsessive 'anti-woke' gamers are basically the right-wing equivalents to SJWs as they both focus on potentially offensive content in games rather than, well, the quality of the game itself. I don't know, I'm just exhausted by people bringing politics into every discussion, even when it has nothing to do with the initial topic.

I think they are labeling them as that because that's what they are. Almost every time nowadays.

The video game industry might be the worst example of an industry that actively dislikes its consumer base.

its because that's what a lot of them are compared to the days of the 2000's when the gen Xers were largely making games that we played.

I think it might have something to do with the variety of consulting agencies that exist for the explicit purpose of redirecting games into being ideologically motivated.

That being said, I do know at least on Steam there's like 4 different false flag groups because said consulting agencies and ideologically motivated people got mad at that one that just listed specifically ones that were worked on by one of said consulting agencies was really popular or whatever.

You know doing this instead of playing and making fun games.

Some recent games of this year:

Dragon Age Veilguard: best known for a cringe scene where a character suddenly declares "i'm non-binary" and also known for a cringe scene about misgendering others. Completely breaks the previous games lore to avoid "cultural insensitivity"...because stealing fictional artifacts is "bad".

Avowed: every male companion is gay, the entire theme is about how "colonization is bad", the entire world looks like how a progressive would envision paradise.

Assassin's Creed Shadows: threw a black samurai into historical Japan for very obvious political reasons, that was hit with controversy after controversy

Kingdom Come Deliverance 2: the original was a quite faithful capture of medieval European life. That got the developer in a lot of trouble, because it wasn't woke enough, now the sequel has a black character for no reason and the main character is suddenly gay for some teenager.

The political direction the games industry is taking is very obvious.

As are the declining sales and the continued death of once-great franchises. I loved the first two Dragon Ages. Now we will never have another one again because gaming companies don't listen to their fans. They want to educate and indoctrinate, not entertain.

It's weird. Most of these games are putting me to sleep

But at that point, the games are the opposite of woke.

Yeah, that was what I was referring to by mentioning 'heavy-handed political commentary'. I'm aware that some of those consulting agencies are not the best at taking criticism or writing games in general. I don't think politics should be erased from video games entirely because they are an art form and should be able to express ideas. As an example, Disco Elysium, one of my favorite video games, offers a critique on several ideologies and, despite taking shots all across the political spectrum, did give me a pause for thought. Even if one doesn't care for that stuff, the game was still an incredible experience with fantastic writing, a gorgeous art style, and choice-based gameplay that takes the narrative in wildly different directions.

However, as one of the people here replied, there are cases of studios prioritizing politics over, well, making good games. That one scene in Dragon Age: The Veilguard came across as particularly juvenile and patronizing, and I'm saying this as someone who falls under the LGBT spectrum.

I suppose, you know, mileage may vary and "RPG Gameplay", but Disco Elysium honestly just seems pretty pretentious to me and not all that compelling. You know, like YIIK, but not funny.

I don't particularly agree, but I see where you're coming from. Disco Elysium's style of gameplay is not for everyone, but I thought it succeeded for what it was trying to do. Though, YiiK is one of those games that's so bad it ultimately ends up becoming ironically amazing. Unlike a lot of AAA games, you can tell there's genuine heart put into YiiK, even if the final result is a dumpster fire.

Its definitely not every game. There has just been a cancer plaguing the game industry called DEI.

Game companies need investment money.

Some time ago, investors started paying attention to what is known as a company's "DEI score" when deciding where to invest their money. For regular companies, a DEI score is allegedly one of the ways to determine how well a company will do in the future. For the game industry it is a disease.

DEI involves pushing agendas. These agendas are always focused on inclusiveness (race/gender swapping characters, adding more lgbt characters, etc.)

The more lgbt, women, genders, etc. a company has... the higher their DEI score. The higher the DEI score, the more investment opportunities they get.

Making games that are more inclusive and "for everyone" often times leaves a bad impression on loyal fans of the franchise in question. ...and more often than not, the changes made are superficial and often times two dimensional with narratives and characters thst feel forced. Not to mention, the target "audience" for these changes often times simply do not exist. (as in... black lesbians are not suddenly going to go out in record numbers and buy the game because you put one in the game.) It only makes loyal fans upset.

It promotes bad writing (when a narrative needs to have a black woman or a lesbian shoehorned in at the last minute) and consulting companies (who employ the biggest pieces of shit you could imagine) are usually the ones making the changes.

Perhaps the consumption needs reflection for a long time. moving on from a quack’s evaluation as these words are likely heard from someone better. The folk that made that so-called filtering is out of malice. they never wanted to be fair they wanted divide the audience to have control. Instead, of the shallow form rainbow capitalist they are cashing out to rose tinted nostalgia that ignore consequences. Maybe the color red because not have enough attention. There were others were ignored or been treated like society’s villain for many years.  That wound was being tended until it was punishable to take care of them. 

Have you noticed how people who complain about "woke" games are not eyeing Yakuza, Metal Gear Solid, Disco Elysium, Final Fantasy 7R or FF16... games that pull out a megaphone and fire political commentary directly into your ear hole? It's never the games that actually have something substantial to say politically that get called woke. It's the games that simply have a minority too close to the forefront that gets these guys frothing at the mouth. As much as I wanna give the benefit of the doubt and not just accuse them of parroting some professional angry Youtuber, I'm constantly seeing people share rants these days from guys like Grummz or Asmongold, and I think these guys who call games "woke" are just letting these aforementioned professional angry Youtubers form opinions for them.

These anti-woke crusader guys tried and failed at labeling Baldur's Gate 3 as "woke". Everyone I've seen play BG3 has had a blast. Everyone I've seen play Dragon Age Veilguard says it's fine. Not only that, but the past two Dragon Age games also had weird ham-fistedly tacked on attempts at trying to seem hip with the LGBT as well and people enjoyed those games as well. And Ubisoft hasn't put out a good A̶s̶s̶a̶s̶s̶i̶n̶'s̶ C̶r̶e̶e̶d̶ game since AC: Black Flag, so let's stop pretending that AC Shadows could've been good in any universe.

What we're seeing is publishers trying to tap into a wider audience. The power that consulting agencies have over the sway of a game's development is greatly exaggerated. If the game in question is a $70 bloated mess with derivative gameplay, horrible framerate, day 1 glitches out the ass, and a start screen that begs you to buy the DLC before the menu even finished loading in, then it was still going to be crap even if they didn't waste time designing a few gay & nonwhite NPCs. Look at the PS3 and 360 library of uninspired brown & bloom regen health cover shooters in an apocalyptic setting. I feel like I'm straying from the plot so I'll conclude before I get too rambly.

There's nothing woke or political about gays and blacks simply existing; there's nothing woke or political about game devs wanting to have blacks and gays into their game. Anybody who tries to debate otherwise is an idiot.

you should check out this website. it checks your public library and matches it to the stupid woke detector curation group and shows you what they said and how absolutely hilarious and stupid it is. https://wokedetector.cirnoslab.me/

See it more in this way... Who are the people who yell about this the most? It's always either Youtube critics who post daily 20 minute slop that just pats the length of the video so they can get the watch and ad revenue. Or sad checkmarked people on Twitter who don't mind throwing to shit their reputation in order to get that good old 40 dillar paycheck from Twitter at the end of the month, they start yelling about WOKE THIS, WOKE THAT even before a game releases, even before knowing if the game will be enjoyable or they get to experience the story, they perfectly know that having the Internet divided and talking about dumb bullshit without fundamentals aside from their "Gut feelings" or just the fact the game features an average looking girl with a mohawk will earn them money. And people like Grummz being self proclaimed heralds of JUSTICE in this DEI-ridden society, the last good developer from the time when Blizzard was good... When the guy was just a producer.

Is the same stupid grift as The Quartering and those sad individuals who still shit on one week controversies even months after the topic has stopped being the main discourse in the Internet. I personally try to avoid these people and just play what I love, and I think people should try to do the same, be open to getting their world view challenged I feel one can have meaningful conversations derived from games that either do shove or don't shove political messages in their games; to be mindful that the way they engage with gaming is not the same as when they were kids or teens, heck, I even reckon games I used to like were garbage or that some modern popular games aren't for me even if I wanna try em, and also try to read between the GODDAMN lines, cuz, holy shit, I sometimes find Reddit interpretations of games like Disco Elysium or Soma and I wonder if we played the same game, and yet, I am okay with their opinion even if they think Disco Elysium is actually a lowkey diss at capitalism, in the end, no one should get their panties twisted because of a game, they are meant to be a unique experience.

Excuse me if something I wrote seems off, English ain't my first language and I am kind of sleepy. (This is also a threat to whoever wants to reply to this, I won't fight back, I'll be in my bed by the time you finish).

They're overreacting. Wokeness doesn't exist. Nothing is ever woke. Ever.

I'd say that "woke" is 100% subjective and this umbrella term has become so vague at this point, that literally everything is woke by at least one of the definitions. xd It's another one of those labels that exist only because they can act as a handy ersatz for proper critique/argumentation, similar to buzzword terms like "nazi" or "boomer".

There has always been pandering, obnoxiously in-your-face media that fails at its stated objective because of how artless and heavy-handed its execution is, but before everyone had 24/7 access to screeching incel rage farmers making blacks in video games their hill to die on, people would traditionally tend to act normal and not be utterly, unconsolably ruined by shit that obviously doesn't matter.

Just like gamergate's "ethics in games journalism" being a front for pathological woman hating, there's a motte and bailey argument being made by people that actually unironically say the word "woke" or "DEI" as a pejorative and don't immediately die of embarrassment. Up front is thinly veiled seething at the existence of minorities being treated as equals, but when called out on it, they retreat to a more defensible argument that corpos are insincere in their fronting of minorities in the media they produce. I'd believe that and even agree with it (the left has its own term for it: Rainbow Capitalism) ...if any of their world views aligned with that. If they really hated cynical businessmen forcing their views on us by monopolizing entire industries and making it impossible for alternatives to be viable, their favorite people on earth wouldn't be capitalists and union busters. We'd see eye to eye on root causes, but of course we don't, because when I say corporate greed I mean corporate greed, and when they say corporate greed they mean Jews hiring too many blacks.

No not every game is woke and no it doesn’t mean “when there is black women” or minority characters woke simply just means leftists ideology and DEI because really it's kinda like heat you don't need to define it you feel it and know it's heat and if anyone tries to say it's not then they are simply seen as stupid dumbasses

when you see a “woke” game you can tell what was the intentions of who made it is with the way the characters look like, the way they talk, and just generally what the theme of the game is

I think you missed the part about literally every game being labeled “woke”, not just the ones you don’t like/the ones with bad writing.

That would be good if “woke” wasn’t a widely overused word for whatever the user doesn’t like.

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No, no, you gotta understand. It's only woke if the west does it. It's always perfectly okay when japan does it.

What a rare opportunity to try to give a real answer before this thread is locked.

There's a phenomena in medicine called central sensitisation where an injury related to a certain kind of stimulus creates permanent pain from what would formerly be neutral amounts of that stimulus. Think of someone who injures themselves playing guitar and then can't take the strain of playing even casually, or someone who's so badly burnt by the sun they suffer sun poisoning with mild exposure thereafter.

As people point out, nerd media has a history of being more diverse than mainstream media despite nerd demographics actually being less diverse than average. This lack of demographic diversity was considered problematic and unnatural according to blank slate theory (ie the result of the patriarchy etc.).

As nerd culture became ascendant (super hero movies, gaming) this lack of diversity also became a ceiling on profit. The related industries responded with concerted efforts to "open up" brands to larger demographics. This coincided nicely with purely political movements to do the same both top down (DEI) and grassroots (more diverse hires and community members).

While most of the theories as to why this new diversity focused media was generally considered worse are probably rightly considered political, I don't think it's political to say that they were. While profits did in some cases continue or even rise the demographic diversity did not really improve. Despite being "woke" emblems, works like "the Marvels", "Velma", and "Doctor Who" are *still* mostly supported by white males, just by less people overall. In the case of formerly family brands like the aforementioned Velma or Buzz Lightyear, their newest outings were actually watched by *fewer* women and non-whites. Doctor Who female viewership peaked forever ago with David Tenannt. The "Force is Female" shirts didn't really change the audience. The billion dollar outings were still almost completely from the wallets of the white and male.

And going back to central sensitisation, one of the worse outcomes of this is that a large swath of the fandom has become adverse to diversity full stop, reversing their former better than mainstream tolerance. Thus: everything is woke if it's even a tiny bit diverse. Better to take such a stance than suffer another Ghostbuster 2016 to live (or whatever).

It sucks, but I don't see any way forward. The culture war has claimed real victims. Stores closed. Communities ended. As an example, the entire corporate video game press basically has ceased to exist. Like a real war that starts out with a goal, the collaterally injured now--predictably--seek revenge perpetuating a cycle of revenge attacks. Everything is Gaza now forever. Sorry.

It's over henry stickmin bros....

Time to throw my copy of the game away

This.

I mean, I still remember the gammon who got mad, and beet red at Starfield having they/them pronouns, it was hilarious, and embarrassing at the same time.

Games are played by more than just straight white dudebros, give everyone a chance to be represented in gaming.

Soz for the edit reply (mobile).

I think everyone who's right thinking agrees with this. I also think that a narrow window was missed and it's probably screwed up culture for at least a decade. It's mostly the fault of AAA. They wanted four quadrant games (which they've failed to produce) rather than diverse product ranges.

coz they are

Now I want to re-play it over and over even more.

Don't mistake my laugh react for a disagreement. You've got one hell of a perspective on this topic.

I think many people just forgot how insane the gaming discourse scene was in the 2010s. Some ten years ago we had droves of video game journalism rags and grifter video essayists criticizing the game industry for not making games that appeal to marginalized groups. The response was a resounding "well make your own goddamn games then", and they ended up doing just that. Games development has become super accessible and we're currently getting a ton of experimental titles by people who don't have a firm grip on how to make a game that appeals to people other than them and their peers. The AAA industry has been cranking out overpriced DLC-ridden grey slop since the PS3 and 360 era, and the only thing different is that they're slapping a few more black & gay NPCs in the background. But I already said that in length so I won't repeat myself lmfao.

TL;DR: People have been waiting for an industry crash since the mid 00s. But I think it's been happening, just in extreme slow motion, and vagueries like "wokeness" and "the culture war" simply makes for a great scapegoat when someone's favorite dev studio shutters its doors but the Grey Slop Generator 9000 is still operational.