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Post by colfoley on Mar 26, 2019 6:06:16 GMT
is all stories suitable for all audiences then? Would you show Battlestar galactica or Torchwood to a Toddler? Would you expect a two year old to appreciate the themes of Hamlet? What, you didn’t? To be fair i may not be the best person to judge this. I was reading Tom Clancey novels at a pre teen age.
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mousestalker
Inactive Moderator
ღ The Untitled
Just here for the cosplay
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Post by mousestalker on Mar 26, 2019 7:58:16 GMT
I read Rabelais' Gargantua et Pantagruel at age eleven. As a result I have a working knowledge of the Latin terms for the naughty bits.
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Post by Noxluxe on Mar 26, 2019 10:48:18 GMT
To be fair i may not be the best person to judge this. I was reading Tom Clancey novels at a pre teen age. As I said, I was reading Stephen King at seven, and both watched a mainstream comedy about two butchers selling marinaded human flesh as "chicky-wickies" and read a book about girls dodging horny German soldiers during the Occupation with the class in second grade. All it did was teach me more about people as an adult. And never, as a technician, to accidentally lock myself in a cooler room and freeze to death overnight to be found by professionally frustrated meat peddlers. And really, the whole censorship and political correctness argument is based on flawed logic. Positive social change has always been driven by honesty and plain speech, practical and technological development, and half-insane artists who gave it their all without caring a bit about the sociopolitical consequences. Never people clutching their pearls demanding not to be shown this or that because it offended their sensibilities, or threatened to corrupt pure and innocent minds. Obviously different products will always carter to different demographics, but the notion that an adult story-telling game shouldn't dare dig into mature themes for fear of disturbing people who for whatever reason can't handle mature storytelling? Screw that. Well bigots wouldn't perceive a problem with bigotry, now would they. Of course it's "in my head". The minority communities who suffer are the ones who get to decide what bigotry looks like. I'm getting really confused about whether or not you consider yourself a qualified representative of a minority community, as opposed to just one angry guy. You occasionally deny that you are, and that other gay men can disagree with you about what you're saying, but you nonetheless feel empowered to make bold and extensive declarations and arbitrarily accuse everyone who disagrees with you of bigotry on behalf of minorities everywhere, often based on nothing except your own self-admittedly limited experience with people and vague hunches that keep boiling down to "this is just how you are!" Which is pretty messed up behavior if your minority community hasn't collectively informed you about their opinions and asked you to represent their thoughts and interests. In which case a fan-run video game forum is a silly place to start if you don't mind me saying.
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Post by regack on Mar 26, 2019 12:04:19 GMT
And this is a great time to remind everyone that we're talking about games here.
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Post by Fredward on Mar 26, 2019 14:24:12 GMT
I mean if you're going to 1) create a setting 2) which features conflict 3) driven by 'human' actors and the 4) verisimilitude/nuance that goes into human reasoning is important to you it seems necessary to portray situations as not being black and white. Cackling villains don't see themselves as cackling villains. People who oppress/destroy minorities don't see themselves doing it for shits and giggles they're either doing it because it's necessary for some other, more important goal or as a way to maintain what they deem important, sometimes both. And if you're going to represent these themes/conflicts and the aforementioned nuance is important to you you obviously need to reasonably inhabit the brainspace of these people, a brainspace in which they can tell themselves that they are not the bad guy.
A purely reductionist, didactic representation would just seem like bad storytelling to my mind. ie one in which bad guys are portrayed as without any kind of rationalization or justification for their actions (or very flimsy ones), with the player not being able to subscribe to their worldview (or, their reasons being so flimsy, mostly steepled-fingered evil reasons for doing so) and with the game's storytelling always making sure to knock them around a bit to demonstrate what happens to the bad guys. I don't need to be taught what's right and wrong in my games and I don't need the game to map to my ethical/moral framework.
I find my escapism best when it's compelling, and I tend to find affirmation of my moral framework less compelling than 'human' characters with believable/understandable/I-don't-agree-with-what-you're-doing-but-I-can-understand-why-you're-doing-it-if-I-have-a-full-understanding-of-your-person motivations and conflicting goals.
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Post by alanc9 on Mar 26, 2019 15:20:58 GMT
People who oppress/destroy minorities don't see themselves doing it for shits and giggles they're either doing it because it's necessary for some other, more important goal or as a way to maintain what they deem important, sometimes both. I suppose there's a subcategory where the minority is defined as subhuman so the oppression doesn't register as oppression, but AFAIK the causality usually runs the other way; you define the others as subhuman when extermination or slavery is instrumentally important and you need to rationalize it in order to keep doing it. it occurs to me that I don't have a good grasp of what pessimistpanda actually wants. What would a good approach look like?
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Post by pessimistpanda on Mar 26, 2019 15:48:11 GMT
To be fair i may not be the best person to judge this. I was reading Tom Clancey novels at a pre teen age. As I said, I was reading Stephen King at seven, and both watched a mainstream comedy about two butchers selling marinaded human flesh as "chicky-wickies" and read a book about girls dodging horny German soldiers during the Occupation with the class in second grade. All it did was teach me more about people as an adult. And never, as a technician, to accidentally lock myself in a cooler room and freeze to death overnight to be found by professionally frustrated meat peddlers. And really, the whole censorship and political correctness argument is based on flawed logic. Positive social change has always been driven by honesty and plain speech, practical and technological development, and half-insane artists who gave it their all without caring a bit about the sociopolitical consequences. Never people clutching their pearls demanding not to be shown this or that because it offended their sensibilities, or threatened to corrupt pure and innocent minds. Obviously different products will always carter to different demographics, but the notion that an adult story-telling game shouldn't dare dig into mature themes for fear of disturbing people who for whatever reason can't handle mature storytelling? Screw that. Well bigots wouldn't perceive a problem with bigotry, now would they. Of course it's "in my head". The minority communities who suffer are the ones who get to decide what bigotry looks like. I'm getting really confused about whether or not you consider yourself a qualified representative of a minority community, as opposed to just one angry guy. You occasionally deny that you are, and that other gay men can disagree with you about what you're saying, but you nonetheless feel empowered to make bold and extensive declarations and arbitrarily accuse everyone who disagrees with you of bigotry on behalf of minorities everywhere, often based on nothing except your own self-admittedly limited experience with people and vague hunches that keep boiling down to "this is just how you are!" Which is pretty messed up behavior if your minority community hasn't collectively informed you about their opinions and asked you to represent their thoughts and interests. In which case a fan-run video game forum is a silly place to start if you don't mind me saying. Yeah, gay men can disagree with me, but so what? I know when I'm right, and I know that the majority of the LGBTQ community support me because, um, I have fucking eyes? The existence of alt-right troll homos like Milo Yiannopolous doesn't discredit the entire freaking movement. I don't need "qualifications", my argument would still be exactly as true if a straight man were saying it. BTW, I love your work in the Bloodlines 2 thread. "My biggest concern so far really is the political angle." Subtle. Love it. Hahahahahaaaa
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Post by pessimistpanda on Mar 26, 2019 15:58:57 GMT
I mean if you're going to 1) create a setting 2) which features conflict 3) driven by 'human' actors and the 4) verisimilitude/nuance that goes into human reasoning is important to you it seems necessary to portray situations as not being black and white. Cackling villains don't see themselves as cackling villains. People who oppress/destroy minorities don't see themselves doing it for shits and giggles they're either doing it because it's necessary for some other, more important goal or as a way to maintain what they deem important, sometimes both. And if you're going to represent these themes/conflicts and the aforementioned nuance is important to you you obviously need to reasonably inhabit the brainspace of these people, a brainspace in which they can tell themselves that they are not the bad guy. A purely reductionist, didactic representation would just seem like bad storytelling to my mind. ie one in which bad guys are portrayed as without any kind of rationalization or justification for their actions (or very flimsy ones), with the player not being able to subscribe to their worldview (or, their reasons being so flimsy, mostly steepled-fingered evil reasons for doing so) and with the game's storytelling always making sure to knock them around a bit to demonstrate what happens to the bad guys. I don't need to be taught what's right and wrong in my games and I don't need the game to map to my ethical/moral framework. I find my escapism best when it's compelling, and I tend to find affirmation of my moral framework less compelling than 'human' characters with believable/understandable/I-don't-agree-with-what-you're-doing-but-I-can-understand-why-you're-doing-it-if-I-have-a-full-understanding-of-your-person motivations and conflicting goals. For the record, "clearly demonstrating that bigotry is wrong" and "accurately portraying the psychology/reasoning of bigots" are not mutually exclusive ideas. If anything, understanding how bigots think, and the many ways they disguise their hate in order to appear "reasonable", is essential to combatting them. It's all very well that you don't want to be "preached to" or whatever the fuck, but the refusal of BioWare and other developers to take an actual stance on bigotry has a visible impact on the environment for minority gamers. Not that I expect you to care.
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Post by Fredward on Mar 26, 2019 16:08:05 GMT
People who oppress/destroy minorities don't see themselves doing it for shits and giggles they're either doing it because it's necessary for some other, more important goal or as a way to maintain what they deem important, sometimes both. I suppose there's a subcategory where the minority is defined as subhuman so the oppression doesn't register as oppression, but AFAIK the causality usually runs the other way; you define the others as subhuman when extermination or slavery is instrumentally important and you need to rationalize it in order to keep doing it. ~shrug~ Sure. The point is that the rationalization exists and it needs to be something they a) sincerely believe to be true (ie it's not rationalization to them) and something they can articulate and that other people in a similar position can buy into and c) isn't completely fatuous on the face of it. eg the Tevinter Magister believes in Tevinter supremacy and the god given right for the right to own slaves. In one representation we are simply told/demonstrated this, we don't get much into the psychology or motives of the magister. We do however get a quest in which we free his slaves and possibly kill him, we get a pithy one liner before delivering the killing blow. [this would be the affirming/didactic approach in case it wasn't clear] In another we still get the mission but you get to do some groundwork first during which you learn that 1) the magister lobbies for better treatment/maaaybe rights for slaves, on the surface this is because he's such a nice man but without a lot of in between the lines reading it's obvious this is because he's afraid continued shitty treatment will result in much worse uprising/backlash, as an added thing it's implied that his opponents in the Senate will use his death in a slave uprising to push for fewer checks on how slaves are treated 2) you learn he has done some research on the Tevinter economy sans slaves in the face of rising qunari aggression and the outlook is ~bleak~ 3) you learn that he has opened a number of schools for the poors where they teach Tevinter history and culture (and other less important things like math and such) and he gives oodles of money to museums too 4) you learn that in his youth he used to live in someplace that had qunari and that one these qunari stole his best friend, Biffy, and then one day years later Biffy returned and it was a happy reunion and but then Biffy tries to murder him and ever since then the magister has hated the qunari muchly. In one of these scenarios I can feel uncomplicatedly good about sticking it to the gross slaver in the other I can still feel uncomplicatedly good about sticking it to the gross slaver but now at least I can understand why he is a gross slaver and I know the monologue going on in his head wasn't simply "KEHEHEHEHE CAN'T WAIT TO WHIP MY LITTLE ELF BOY (which isn't a euphemism)"
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Post by Fredward on Mar 26, 2019 16:49:59 GMT
For the record, "clearly demonstrating that bigotry is wrong" and "accurately portraying the psychology/reasoning of bigots" are not mutually exclusive ideas. If anything, understanding how bigots think, and the many ways they disguise their hate in order to appear "reasonable", is essential to combatting them. Sure, and in some cases this is more clear cut than in others. Not every reason a bigot bigots is going to be as easily assailable as 'disguised hate' though. When your furbish the reasons for why someone is supporting something that is fundamentally and intrinsically unjust some of it's going to be a reactive response to maintaining their privilege and others might actually be valid. ie a Chantry Mother supporting keeping the mages in the Circle on the one hand she gets money from making mages tranquil and selling enchanted goods so the selfish motivation there is clear otoh there's the fear of what an abomination could do should mages be let out of their cages but you can develop or the dangers of one subtle blood mage near someone in power or the long term social and economic stratification ramifications (lol) a group of people with an inherent advantage like magic freely participating in society will lead to etc. Creating a setting and doing justice to the people in that setting means occasionally acknowledging that people have rational reasons for supporting unjust systems, in addition to self-serving ones. It's all very well that you don't want to be "preached to" or whatever the fuck, but the refusal of BioWare and other developers to take an actual stance on bigotry has a visible impact on the environment for minority gamers. Not that I expect you to care. Out of curiosity do you have a particular example of this? Like a specific instance in which Bioware failed to stand up to bigotry and the connection between that failure and the impact on the environment for minority gamers? I wouldn't mind hearing about it. An added bonus would be how you would have changed that specific instance and why that would have contributed to a better environment.
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mousestalker
Inactive Moderator
ღ The Untitled
Just here for the cosplay
Staff Mini-Profile Theme: Mousestalker
Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, SWTOR
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Post by mousestalker on Mar 26, 2019 17:06:19 GMT
Please refrain from commenting on real world politics. This is a gaming board.
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Post by Noxluxe on Mar 26, 2019 17:15:07 GMT
Yeah, gay men can disagree with me, but so what? I know when I'm right, and I know that the majority of the LGBTQ community support me because, um, I have fucking eyes? The existence of alt-right troll homos like Milo Yiannopolous doesn't discredit the entire freaking movement. I don't need "qualifications", my argument would still be exactly as true if a straight man were saying it. BTW, I love your work in the Bloodlines 2 thread. "My biggest concern so far really is the political angle." Subtle. Love it. Hahahahahaaaa -snip, seeing Mousie's warning- Wrestling an argument in between paranoid assumptions tends to discredit it pretty thoroughly whether you're straight or gay, and when you then deliberately frame it as if you represent people whose actual opinions you obviously haven't made any real attempt to get a sense of... Yeah, no, there's really no reason to take your argument seriously. "I know when I'm right" and "I have eyes" are not, and have never been, arguments for trusting anybody's judgment so far as I'm aware. I don't see that there's any need to try for subtlety in a game forum. I usually write what I think. You're welcome to comment in the thread as well. If you just want to talk about it or you know anything I don't on the subject then I'd love to hear all about that. I've been playing that game, and the tabletop game, and reading the novels, for almost 15 years and know pretty much everything about the setting and the writing behind it up until the newest edition. I get that you see people here not immediately agreeing with you and being annoyed by your insults and hardline rhetoric as this being a forum of narrow-minded bigots to combat. That much is clear. You really should reconsider the notion that you're imagining at least some of it though. Just because people stand up to you and think you're wrong and being silly doesn't mean that they don't want the best for you, or that they don't have valid points you could stand to listen to and try to understand. You've talked about "peeling away" our pretensions, but I've yet to see you do any actual peeling, asking in to what we say or believe and trying to understand it instead of just making assumptions that we're covering for some enormous hatred and need to be shouted into submission for fear of letting it spread.
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Post by wright1978 on Mar 26, 2019 18:25:09 GMT
last thing I want is game world sanitised by puritans desperate to use them as trophy.
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Post by alanc9 on Mar 26, 2019 21:28:26 GMT
My issue with Dragon Age is not and has never been the amount of violence or sexual content, though I have my own personal threshold at which point I would cease to enjoy it. It has always been their pathetic whataboutism's they use to try and obfuscate issues like bigotry, oppression and colonisation, rather than subject them to any sort of meaningful analysis, choosing instead to throw up their hands and pretend like they don't know what the answer is, when they damn well do. And we see the real-world effects of this bullshit within this very forum, where posters freely try to drum up anger against gay/female/poc players, by claiming that we are somehow influencing BioWare to exclude their "traditional audience", when nothing could be further from the truth. Meanwhile, calling out this homophobic concern-trolling for what it is gets you a warning, or the entire discussion shut down, and the bigots rampage on, unhindered. I'm still trying to figure out what this refers to. It's not like we don't know how alienages came to be, for instance.
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Post by Walter Black on Mar 26, 2019 22:21:36 GMT
I mean if you're going to 1) create a setting 2) which features conflict 3) driven by 'human' actors and the 4) verisimilitude/nuance that goes into human reasoning is important to you it seems necessary to portray situations as not being black and white. Cackling villains don't see themselves as cackling villains. People who oppress/destroy minorities don't see themselves doing it for shits and giggles they're either doing it because it's necessary for some other, more important goal or as a way to maintain what they deem important, sometimes both. And if you're going to represent these themes/conflicts and the aforementioned nuance is important to you you obviously need to reasonably inhabit the brainspace of these people, a brainspace in which they can tell themselves that they are not the bad guy. A purely reductionist, didactic representation would just seem like bad storytelling to my mind. ie one in which bad guys are portrayed as without any kind of rationalization or justification for their actions (or very flimsy ones), with the player not being able to subscribe to their worldview (or, their reasons being so flimsy, mostly steepled-fingered evil reasons for doing so) and with the game's storytelling always making sure to knock them around a bit to demonstrate what happens to the bad guys. I don't need to be taught what's right and wrong in my games and I don't need the game to map to my ethical/moral framework. I find my escapism best when it's compelling, and I tend to find affirmation of my moral framework less compelling than 'human' characters with believable/understandable/I-don't-agree-with-what-you're-doing-but-I-can-understand-why-you're-doing-it-if-I-have-a-full-understanding-of-your-person motivations and conflicting goals. For the record, "clearly demonstrating that bigotry is wrong" and "accurately portraying the psychology/reasoning of bigots" are not mutually exclusive ideas. If anything, understanding how bigots think, and the many ways they disguise their hate in order to appear "reasonable", is essential to combatting them. It's all very well that you don't want to be "preached to" or whatever the fuck, but the refusal of BioWare and other developers to take an actual stance on bigotry has a visible impact on the environment for minority gamers. Not that I expect you to care. What specific examples can you cite that Bioware never took a stance on bigotry? From Origins on the games were pretty clear just how shitty the lives of elves, mages, and castless are, and how shitty the people who control said oppression are. If you're talking about available player choices, well:
1. Duh, it's an RPG. Evil choices are just as essential as good, neutral and crazy ones.
2. The games always beat you over the head that these are evil choices, from NPC reactions to music ques.
3. Even then, you are never allowed to display any kind of real world prejudices, being more or less an equal opportunity asshole.
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Post by Noxluxe on Mar 27, 2019 2:17:20 GMT
3. Even then, you are never allowed to display any kind of real world prejudices, being more or less an equal opportunity asshole.
I do think I remember one dialogue option to express outright disgust when Dorian springs his sexuality on you. I've never picked it and don't know what it actually makes you say, because it's never made sense for my character and his asshole dad to be the only two people in Thedas to have a problem with homosexuality, though I'm considering initially changing that up in this Lavellan playthrough on the assumption that the Dalish have slightly more utilitarian sexual values, but the option is there nonetheless. You also get to express some lovely classicism and slut-shaming as a Dwarven Noble in Origins at least. Probably Human Noble too, though I don't remember a specific instance. And there's the "you can't be a woman and a warrior" conversation with Sten. Don't remember if there's an option to agree with him in principle, but I imagine that there is. Again, it wouldn't make much sense given how intrinsically women are integrated into professions all over Thedas specifically excepting the Qunari. Not agreeing with Panda at all that any of these are evidence or encouragement of actual discrimination in any way shape or form , but they are options for your characters to express prejudice directly analogous to real-world discrimination. And I agree with you that cutting out those options and themes would severely flatten the role-playing in the games rather than deepen it or make it more "inclusive". I'd have a hard time accepting a game where you're obligated to only make perfectly optimized and respectful ethical choices at every point as an RPG, let alone a story with anything worthwhile to say whatsoever. "Unthinkingly do the most obviously virtuous thing whenever you can, and distance yourself from anyone who doesn't, and all will be well" isn't a moral, it's a doctrine. Even fairy tales have harsh moments of the protagonists' judgments actually being tried and them making mistakes affecting others. Even sanitized fairy tales. It wouldn't even be a game for kids, just exclusively for people looking for perfect validation of their politics. Barf. Honestly, the idea of multimilion-dollar mainstream entertainment being used to serve that purpose is a lot scarier and more dangerous than the occasional female or gay character being marginalized on-screen.
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Post by pessimistpanda on Mar 27, 2019 2:21:38 GMT
For the record, "clearly demonstrating that bigotry is wrong" and "accurately portraying the psychology/reasoning of bigots" are not mutually exclusive ideas. If anything, understanding how bigots think, and the many ways they disguise their hate in order to appear "reasonable", is essential to combatting them. Sure, and in some cases this is more clear cut than in others. Not every reason a bigot bigots is going to be as easily assailable as 'disguised hate' though. When your furbish the reasons for why someone is supporting something that is fundamentally and intrinsically unjust some of it's going to be a reactive response to maintaining their privilege and others might actually be valid. ie a Chantry Mother supporting keeping the mages in the Circle on the one hand she gets money from making mages tranquil and selling enchanted goods so the selfish motivation there is clear otoh there's the fear of what an abomination could do should mages be let out of their cages but you can develop or the dangers of one subtle blood mage near someone in power or the long term social and economic stratification ramifications (lol) a group of people with an inherent advantage like magic freely participating in society will lead to etc. Creating a setting and doing justice to the people in that setting means occasionally acknowledging that people have rational reasons for supporting unjust systems, in addition to self-serving ones. It's all very well that you don't want to be "preached to" or whatever the fuck, but the refusal of BioWare and other developers to take an actual stance on bigotry has a visible impact on the environment for minority gamers. Not that I expect you to care. Out of curiosity do you have a particular example of this? Like a specific instance in which Bioware failed to stand up to bigotry and the connection between that failure and the impact on the environment for minority gamers? I wouldn't mind hearing about it. An added bonus would be how you would have changed that specific instance and why that would have contributed to a better environment. I wouldn't call it a "failure", they've deliberately written a world where blatant bigotry appears justified, and they supply players with reasons to be bigots in the game. They've been extremely open in the past about drawing inspiration for mages and elves from real-world minorities, and they use loaded, though admittedly archaic terms from the real world to reinforce that connection. But if you choose to side with bigots, then the games shield you from the realistic consequences. We know there are children in the Fereldan and Kirkwall circles, but if you decide to annul them, you are not required to kill any frightened children. In Origins they just straight up vanish, to spare the player any possible qualms. In Kirkwall they were never seen. The games use PTSD as an excuse. Poor woobie Cullen was tortured, let me kiss the bigot better. Meredith has sister trauma, awwwwwwwwww. They bring in Vivienne, the Milo Yiannopolous of mages, and frame her existence as proof that the circle was Not That Bad, Ackshually, when if anything, it demonstrates that the system was far more hypocritical and corrupt than initially presented. They paint the Dalish elves as being pre-emptively violent towards humans, do little/nothing to examine WHY they feel that way, come up with excuses for why the elves deserved to displaced from their homelands anyway (they didn't help their historical abusers during a blight, so a second genocide is only fair!). And finally, as of Trespasser, reframe the entire colonisation narrative to make the destruction of Elven civilization entirely their own fault. If a player is already inclined towards bigotry, then the game spoon-feeds them reasons to be bigots. It as good as tells them outright "It's okay to kill these people, you have a good reason to be afraid". And they DO have a good reason, because BioWare wrote the story that way on purpose. But the thing is, bigots think they ALSO have good reasons to fear gays, women, poc, etc, and BioWare has just told them it's okay to hurt people that you perceive as dangerous. Back on OGBSN, if you paid any attention at all to what individuals were saying across different topics, it would eventually become clear over time that there was a MASSIVE overlap between Pro-Templar/Anti-Elf/Pro-Loghain sentiment, and posters who were against increased representation of women and minorities. There was a lot of explicit bigotry, and rather than deal with it in a meaningful way, BioWare shut the forum down instead. One poster in particular faced a lot of cyber-bullying, and the people responsible not only were never punished, but continue to post here as well. On this forum we still see a lot of open bigotry, particularly in the Politics thread, which is now gone because it became impossible to pretend that it was anything other than a breeding ground for hate. This is not a coincidence. Bigots are attracted to BioWare fandom because their games, intentionally or not, provide narrative options that reinforce their existing worldview. Sure, you can choose differently, but the choices you make either way are never meaningfully challenged. If you're inclined towards tolerance and fairness, the game mostly supports that. If you're inclined towards prejudice, the game supports that too, and that's where we have a problem, because BioWare wants to be inclusive to a diverse audience, but continues to write narratives that attract bigots. The two are simply not compatible. You can't claim diversity in your marketing and then write stories that reinforce hate.
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Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, SWTOR
Posts: 1,979 Likes: 3,493
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Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, SWTOR
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Post by Noxluxe on Mar 27, 2019 2:42:23 GMT
I wouldn't call it a "failure", they've deliberately written a world where blatant bigotry appears justified, and they supply players with reasons to be bigots in the game. They've been extremely open in the past about drawing inspiration for mages and elves from real-world minorities, and they use loaded, though admittedly archaic terms from the real world to reinforce that connection. But if you choose to side with bigots, then the games shield you from the realistic consequences. We know there are children in the Fereldan and Kirkwall circles, but if you decide to annul them, you are not required to kill any frightened children. In Origins they just straight up vanish, to spare the player any possible qualms. In Kirkwall they were never seen. The games use PTSD as an excuse. Poor woobie Cullen was tortured, let me kiss the bigot better. Meredith has sister trauma, awwwwwwwwww. They bring in Vivienne, the Milo Yiannopolous of mages, and frame her existence as proof that the circle was Not That Bad, Ackshually, when if anything, it demonstrates that the system was far more hypocritical and corrupt than initially presented. They paint the Dalish elves as being pre-emptively violent towards humans, do little/nothing to examine WHY they feel that way, come up with excuses for why the elves deserved to displaced from their homelands anyway (they didn't help their historical abusers during a blight, so a second genocide is only fair!). And finally, as of Trespasser, reframe the entire colonisation narrative to make the destruction of Elven civilization entirely their own fault. If a player is already inclined towards bigotry, then the game spoon-feeds them reasons to be bigots. It as good as tells them outright "It's okay to kill these people, you have a good reason to be afraid". And they DO have a good reason, because BioWare wrote the story that way on purpose. But the thing is, bigots think they ALSO have good reasons to fear gays, women, poc, etc, and BioWare has just told them it's okay to hurt people that you perceive as dangerous. Back on OGBSN, if you paid any attention at all to what individuals were saying across different topics, it would eventually become clear over time that there was a MASSIVE overlap between Pro-Templar/Anti-Elf/Pro-Loghain sentiment, and posters who were against increased representation of women and minorities. There was a lot of explicit bigotry, and rather than deal with it in a meaningful way, BioWare shut the forum down instead. One poster in particular faced a lot of cyber-bullying, and the people responsible not only were never punished, but continue to post here as well. On this forum we still see a lot of open bigotry, particularly in the Politics thread, which is now gone because it became impossible to pretend that it was anything other than a breeding ground for hate. This is not a coincidence. Bigots are attracted to BioWare fandom because their games, intentionally or not, provide narrative options that reinforce their existing worldview. Sure, you can choose differently, but the choices you make either way are never meaningfully challenged. If you're inclined towards tolerance and fairness, the game mostly supports that. If you're inclined towards prejudice, the game supports that too, and that's where we have a problem, because BioWare wants to be inclusive to a diverse audience, but continues to write narratives that attract bigots. The two are simply not compatible. You can't claim diversity in your marketing and then write stories that reinforce hate. We get it. You cannot stand even the hypothetical existence of any bigotry except your own. Bioware should become so inclusive that they exclude everyone who don't think exactly the way you do, because that's obviously the right thing to do regardless of how many or varied people that is, or for that matter their own bottom line. Anyone who disagrees with you on anything must be a bigot, and all bigots are the same. Oh, and you have a problem with Milo Yiannopoulos, whoever the hell he is. A google search just shows a smug-looking American wannabe political pundit, and those are a dime a dozen these days. And you not feeling perfectly supported in all this is, of course, just evidence of how bigoted we all are. Because... reasons! This is getting really, really repetitive, and I've only been here a few months.
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Post by colfoley on Mar 27, 2019 3:53:37 GMT
Sure, and in some cases this is more clear cut than in others. Not every reason a bigot bigots is going to be as easily assailable as 'disguised hate' though. When your furbish the reasons for why someone is supporting something that is fundamentally and intrinsically unjust some of it's going to be a reactive response to maintaining their privilege and others might actually be valid. ie a Chantry Mother supporting keeping the mages in the Circle on the one hand she gets money from making mages tranquil and selling enchanted goods so the selfish motivation there is clear otoh there's the fear of what an abomination could do should mages be let out of their cages but you can develop or the dangers of one subtle blood mage near someone in power or the long term social and economic stratification ramifications (lol) a group of people with an inherent advantage like magic freely participating in society will lead to etc. Creating a setting and doing justice to the people in that setting means occasionally acknowledging that people have rational reasons for supporting unjust systems, in addition to self-serving ones. Out of curiosity do you have a particular example of this? Like a specific instance in which Bioware failed to stand up to bigotry and the connection between that failure and the impact on the environment for minority gamers? I wouldn't mind hearing about it. An added bonus would be how you would have changed that specific instance and why that would have contributed to a better environment. I wouldn't call it a "failure", they've deliberately written a world where blatant bigotry appears justified, and they supply players with reasons to be bigots in the game. They've been extremely open in the past about drawing inspiration for mages and elves from real-world minorities, and they use loaded, though admittedly archaic terms from the real world to reinforce that connection. But if you choose to side with bigots, then the games shield you from the realistic consequences. We know there are children in the Fereldan and Kirkwall circles, but if you decide to annul them, you are not required to kill any frightened children. In Origins they just straight up vanish, to spare the player any possible qualms. In Kirkwall they were never seen. The games use PTSD as an excuse. Poor woobie Cullen was tortured, let me kiss the bigot better. Meredith has sister trauma, awwwwwwwwww. They bring in Vivienne, the Milo Yiannopolous of mages, and frame her existence as proof that the circle was Not That Bad, Ackshually, when if anything, it demonstrates that the system was far more hypocritical and corrupt than initially presented. They paint the Dalish elves as being pre-emptively violent towards humans, do little/nothing to examine WHY they feel that way, come up with excuses for why the elves deserved to displaced from their homelands anyway (they didn't help their historical abusers during a blight, so a second genocide is only fair!). And finally, as of Trespasser, reframe the entire colonisation narrative to make the destruction of Elven civilization entirely their own fault. If a player is already inclined towards bigotry, then the game spoon-feeds them reasons to be bigots. It as good as tells them outright "It's okay to kill these people, you have a good reason to be afraid". And they DO have a good reason, because BioWare wrote the story that way on purpose. But the thing is, bigots think they ALSO have good reasons to fear gays, women, poc, etc, and BioWare has just told them it's okay to hurt people that you perceive as dangerous. Back on OGBSN, if you paid any attention at all to what individuals were saying across different topics, it would eventually become clear over time that there was a MASSIVE overlap between Pro-Templar/Anti-Elf/Pro-Loghain sentiment, and posters who were against increased representation of women and minorities. There was a lot of explicit bigotry, and rather than deal with it in a meaningful way, BioWare shut the forum down instead. One poster in particular faced a lot of cyber-bullying, and the people responsible not only were never punished, but continue to post here as well. On this forum we still see a lot of open bigotry, particularly in the Politics thread, which is now gone because it became impossible to pretend that it was anything other than a breeding ground for hate. This is not a coincidence. Bigots are attracted to BioWare fandom because their games, intentionally or not, provide narrative options that reinforce their existing worldview. Sure, you can choose differently, but the choices you make either way are never meaningfully challenged. If you're inclined towards tolerance and fairness, the game mostly supports that. If you're inclined towards prejudice, the game supports that too, and that's where we have a problem, because BioWare wants to be inclusive to a diverse audience, but continues to write narratives that attract bigots. The two are simply not compatible. You can't claim diversity in your marketing and then write stories that reinforce hate. Pishaw. Anyways BioWare tends to offer us players a choice on how we react to cicumstances and events often beyond our undersanding or what we normally experience in our day to day lives. They let us players express ourselves however we want when we want to. In this case the central question is, somehow, how do we as players react to bigotry and hate and intolerance? With more hate and intolerance or do we try and make the characters we interact with better people, perhaps something that is very unique to the RP genre? As far as the insinuation that BioWare doesen't give anyalisis or nuance to their bigoted positions, you kind of defeat your own argument. Because Cullen can have PTSD, because Vivienne is a Circle Appologist, because humans and the Dalish Elves have a long history of mutual mistrust and a history of atrocities commited on both sides. If BioWare didn't want to provide any in world anaylisis these things would...essentially...exisist in a vaccuum. Humans would be unjust oppressors, the Chantry would be evil, and the Dalish would be pure and innocent victims. Sure I suppose it is an interesting frame of argument that BioWare doesen't go far enough in what they show on screen, but then it should't take a rocket scientist or a genius to presuppose that if you anul the circle you will be killing Children, if you wipe out the Dalish clans you can wipe our you will be getting children killed. I don't need to see it, I don't have to loose the arrow to understand that is a consequence of my player's choices if my player chooses to do them. The lore and the events make it clear in game that is what actually happens in both cases throughout all three DA games. Which is why my player never chooses to do them. (As an aside I think not showing the death of kids as something more outside of BioWare's control in the ESRB then anything, almost no game that I can think of goes out of its way to show the death of children and some game's...like ES or FO...make em immortal) I contend that is exactly what seperates good 'well written' villains from poorly written 'mustache twirlers'. The reasons why the way they are. How relatable it is, how understandable it is, and how the continuity works out makes some villains great and other villains not great. Voldemort was such a flaming Muggle hater because he was subjected to racism and the horrors of the muggle orphanage system from a young age. Darth Vader fell to the Dark Side because he was trying to save his wife and then when he failed he felt such self loathing and self hatred that he convinced himself he couldn't be redeemed till Luke found a way. None of this justifies evil, bigotry, or hatred, just helps explain it, and offers hope of redemption. The Chantry aren't justified in destroying the Dales and scattering the Elves. Just like that Elven clan wasn't justified at Red Crossing. Just like Anders wasn't justified blowing up the Chantry in Kirkwall, but if Thedas is to move on then maybe it should learn from the past, and learn to forgive.
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Post by pessimistpanda on Mar 27, 2019 7:09:34 GMT
I wouldn't call it a "failure", they've deliberately written a world where blatant bigotry appears justified, and they supply players with reasons to be bigots in the game. They've been extremely open in the past about drawing inspiration for mages and elves from real-world minorities, and they use loaded, though admittedly archaic terms from the real world to reinforce that connection. But if you choose to side with bigots, then the games shield you from the realistic consequences. We know there are children in the Fereldan and Kirkwall circles, but if you decide to annul them, you are not required to kill any frightened children. In Origins they just straight up vanish, to spare the player any possible qualms. In Kirkwall they were never seen. The games use PTSD as an excuse. Poor woobie Cullen was tortured, let me kiss the bigot better. Meredith has sister trauma, awwwwwwwwww. They bring in Vivienne, the Milo Yiannopolous of mages, and frame her existence as proof that the circle was Not That Bad, Ackshually, when if anything, it demonstrates that the system was far more hypocritical and corrupt than initially presented. They paint the Dalish elves as being pre-emptively violent towards humans, do little/nothing to examine WHY they feel that way, come up with excuses for why the elves deserved to displaced from their homelands anyway (they didn't help their historical abusers during a blight, so a second genocide is only fair!). And finally, as of Trespasser, reframe the entire colonisation narrative to make the destruction of Elven civilization entirely their own fault. If a player is already inclined towards bigotry, then the game spoon-feeds them reasons to be bigots. It as good as tells them outright "It's okay to kill these people, you have a good reason to be afraid". And they DO have a good reason, because BioWare wrote the story that way on purpose. But the thing is, bigots think they ALSO have good reasons to fear gays, women, poc, etc, and BioWare has just told them it's okay to hurt people that you perceive as dangerous. Back on OGBSN, if you paid any attention at all to what individuals were saying across different topics, it would eventually become clear over time that there was a MASSIVE overlap between Pro-Templar/Anti-Elf/Pro-Loghain sentiment, and posters who were against increased representation of women and minorities. There was a lot of explicit bigotry, and rather than deal with it in a meaningful way, BioWare shut the forum down instead. One poster in particular faced a lot of cyber-bullying, and the people responsible not only were never punished, but continue to post here as well. On this forum we still see a lot of open bigotry, particularly in the Politics thread, which is now gone because it became impossible to pretend that it was anything other than a breeding ground for hate. This is not a coincidence. Bigots are attracted to BioWare fandom because their games, intentionally or not, provide narrative options that reinforce their existing worldview. Sure, you can choose differently, but the choices you make either way are never meaningfully challenged. If you're inclined towards tolerance and fairness, the game mostly supports that. If you're inclined towards prejudice, the game supports that too, and that's where we have a problem, because BioWare wants to be inclusive to a diverse audience, but continues to write narratives that attract bigots. The two are simply not compatible. You can't claim diversity in your marketing and then write stories that reinforce hate. We get it. You cannot stand even the hypothetical existence of any bigotry except your own. Bioware should become so inclusive that they exclude everyone who don't think exactly the way you do, because that's obviously the right thing to do regardless of how many or varied people that is, or for that matter their own bottom line. Anyone who disagrees with you on anything must be a bigot, and all bigots are the same. Oh, and you have a problem with Milo Yiannopoulos, whoever the hell he is. A google search just shows a smug-looking American wannabe political pundit, and those are a dime a dozen these days. And you not feeling perfectly supported in all this is, of course, just evidence of how bigoted we all are. Because... reasons! This is getting really, really repetitive, and I've only been here a few months. You're trying to frame it as absurd, but yes, essentially, tolerance and intolerance are incompatible positions. BioWare can't have their cake and eat it too. It's called the Tolerance Paradox. Since you are an adult who owns a hat and goes outside, I guess I just assumed you had heard of it? I'm not saying BioWare "must" do anything, except make a decision about who exactly they want their audience to be.
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PSN: Former_Fiend
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Post by formerfiend on Mar 27, 2019 9:28:47 GMT
I've long bee a proponent of taking the tone back in a darker direction. I don't want the game to be dry & humorless by any stretch of the imagination, but I did feel that the self-refrencing meta humor really hurt Inquisition for me. There's a balance to be struck, but I feel the humor can be dialed back significantly without removing it entirely.
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Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, SWTOR
Posts: 1,979 Likes: 3,493
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Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, SWTOR
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Post by Noxluxe on Mar 27, 2019 10:57:41 GMT
We get it. You cannot stand even the hypothetical existence of any bigotry except your own. Bioware should become so inclusive that they exclude everyone who don't think exactly the way you do, because that's obviously the right thing to do regardless of how many or varied people that is, or for that matter their own bottom line. Anyone who disagrees with you on anything must be a bigot, and all bigots are the same. Oh, and you have a problem with Milo Yiannopoulos, whoever the hell he is. A google search just shows a smug-looking American wannabe political pundit, and those are a dime a dozen these days. And you not feeling perfectly supported in all this is, of course, just evidence of how bigoted we all are. Because... reasons! This is getting really, really repetitive, and I've only been here a few months. You're trying to frame it as absurd, but yes, essentially, tolerance and intolerance are incompatible positions. BioWare can't have their cake and eat it too. It's called the Tolerance Paradox. Since you are an adult who owns a hat and goes outside, I guess I just assumed you had heard of it? I'm not saying BioWare "must" do anything, except make a decision about who exactly they want their audience to be. Uhm, yes they can? It's called eating some and saving the rest for later. In other words, moderation. Striking a balance. Compromise. I know you're not a big fan. No, I'd never heard the term. Us adults who wear hats and go outside and meet and work with people who disagree with and occasionally offend us without demanding that society stops in its tracks to deal with the injustice? We call that idea plain intolerance and totalitarianism, when put the way you just did. Nobody who deviates deserves rights, and anybody who questions your absolute and perfect morality deserves punishment, because they can't possibly know or understand something you don't, and must thus just be out to disrupt and spoil the fun. Sounds familiar? Really, we get it. You wish you were the arbiter of what everyone else was allowed to consider right and wrong, and you think that if you were the world would be a better place. Those of us who know anything about modern history think that's hilariously hypocritical, especially given your propensity for accusing others of fascist tendencies, and that just makes you even more eager to get into a position where you can put the rest of us in our places for having the temerity to try to socialize you and teach you about the world that you imagine you have perfectly figured out already, whether it's real or fictional. And makes you even more bitter that that isn't going to happen just because you want it to. Again, you have some funny notions about what other people should invest millions of dollars and years of their lives into just because it would be convenient for you. And of course, the ideal for a videogame forum is some semi-incestuous echo-chamber self-esteem circle where everyone agrees with you and dissenters are punished, and where threads where you complain about other people and use them as punching bags aren't locked, and this board and all the others are broken and corrupted for not being that for you and your supporters, real and imaginary. And it's Bioware's fault for writing stories that attract people other than you specifically. Seriously, we get it.
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Post by Ieldra on Mar 27, 2019 11:37:56 GMT
We get it. You cannot stand even the hypothetical existence of any bigotry except your own. Bioware should become so inclusive that they exclude everyone who don't think exactly the way you do, because that's obviously the right thing to do regardless of how many or varied people that is, or for that matter their own bottom line. Anyone who disagrees with you on anything must be a bigot, and all bigots are the same. Oh, and you have a problem with Milo Yiannopoulos, whoever the hell he is. A google search just shows a smug-looking American wannabe political pundit, and those are a dime a dozen these days. And you not feeling perfectly supported in all this is, of course, just evidence of how bigoted we all are. Because... reasons! This is getting really, really repetitive, and I've only been here a few months. You're trying to frame it as absurd, but yes, essentially, tolerance and intolerance are incompatible positions. Incompatible within one mind, perhaps - and even that's debatable since you can be tolerant on one axis and intolerant on another - but games aren't made for one mind. They're made to appeal to millions of people who all have different preferences in the kind of characters they'd like to express.
You're basically asking for games to target only people with certain often-grouped mindsets as defined by you. You are imposing an "us vs. them" stance on people who play Bioware's games, according to how you alone view the demographics.
Finally, perhaps a reminder is in order that tolerance is a virtue applicable specifically to people whose attitudes you don't like. If you like someone else's attitude, there is no problem in the first place. The question of how far you're willing to extend your tolerance only applies if there is disagreement, and right here and how, tolerance is exactly what you do *not* show. You do not just demand that you can express yourself in a game in ways you prefer, you also demand that other people with whom you disagree can't. You demand that the complete fictional world vindicates your view. I consider such demands utterly illegitimate.
Edit: While I'm at it, certain things people do are not my business and have zero impact on my life, so why should I care about how they do these things? Tolerance, in cases like this, should be easy to come by, don't you think? So why do *you* care about how other players like to express themselves in games? It's not like it has any impact on your life, is it?
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Post by Fredward on Mar 27, 2019 11:54:55 GMT
The games use PTSD as an excuse. Poor woobie Cullen was tortured, let me kiss the bigot better. Meredith has sister trauma, awwwwwwwwww. They bring in Vivienne, the Milo Yiannopolous of mages, and frame her existence as proof that the circle was Not That Bad, Ackshually, when if anything, it demonstrates that the system was far more hypocritical and corrupt than initially presented. They paint the Dalish elves as being pre-emptively violent towards humans, do little/nothing to examine WHY they feel that way, come up with excuses for why the elves deserved to displaced from their homelands anyway (they didn't help their historical abusers during a blight, so a second genocide is only fair!). And finally, as of Trespasser, reframe the entire colonisation narrative to make the destruction of Elven civilization entirely their own fault. See, you're taking examples that used to not have any counter narratives, that used to be absent of those we-aren't-the-villains-to-ourselves rationalisations that I mentioned before and saying that furbishing these is tantamount to enabling/endorsing bigotry. Which is a perspective I suppose. None of those things you list make the actions the people take morally right necessarily (and many of them are amoral elaborations on a character's inner landscape), they just give these characters understandable motivations. Motivations that strive beyond blind, blank hate or just self-serving ones once removed. I simply cannot read that as a bad thing from a storytelling perspective. - Cullen and Meredith have trauma, this is not the same as saying what they did is fine, it just gives them internally justified (ie not externally sourced sanction) reasons for doing what they did. The absence of these would still have had the characters doing what they did they'd just have been more prone to mustachio twirling. ie poorer characters. - Vivienne is pro-Circle but this irretrievably tied into her nature as an extremely ambitious, self-serving person. This is literally the crux of her character. Vivienne being pro-Circle as a mage made for a compelling character cuz you got to tease out her motivations and come to your own conclusions about their validity. The conclusion you reached about the hypocrisy and corruption is an entirely fair read for example. It's nuance not apologia. - the Dalish/ancient elves were presented as being the noble victims throughout 1 & 2, there was a narrative/motivational absence for why they were in that position. The Dalish wander the world because their homeland was destroyed and it's dangerous for them to settle anywhere, as a culture they're never preemptively violent towards humans. If you're talking about something like Red Crossing in particular that's purposefully constructed to mirror a Romeo & Juliet-esque tragedy that could have been avoided if either side just stopped and reflected on their presuppositions for a sec. The colonization narrative isn't absent, that's still an entirely valid read for anything post-Veil, it just exists in tandem with a society that had it's own injustices baked in. Which is again a nuanced representation, not Bioware saying they deserved to have their shit kicked in for millennia. If a player is already inclined towards bigotry, then the game spoon-feeds them reasons to be bigots. It as good as tells them outright "It's okay to kill these people, you have a good reason to be afraid". And they DO have a good reason, because BioWare wrote the story that way on purpose. But the thing is, bigots think they ALSO have good reasons to fear gays, women, poc, etc, and BioWare has just told them it's okay to hurt people that you perceive as dangerous. I disagree with the notion that giving conflicting actors rational justifications for their actions (in addition to self serving ones) is synonymous with the endorsement of the morality of the actions themselves and I disagree with the implicit notion that most readers of the text that is DA are so morally and intellectually simple that that is how they read it, if only because I really don't think the bar in DA is all that high. High enough to be entertaining, not high enough that the average bear can't reduce characters' worldview to its composite parts and judge for themselves which are valid and which are self-serving (mostly, there are exceptions). Back on OGBSN, if you paid any attention at all to what individuals were saying across different topics, it would eventually become clear over time that there was a MASSIVE overlap between Pro-Templar/Anti-Elf/Pro-Loghain sentiment, and posters who were against increased representation of women and minorities. That's not surprising tbh, the fact that there's a consistency in people's ideological perspective across contexts isn't particularly noteworthy but this is I think a good example of what lies at the core of this discussion: about whether Bioware should be telling stories in which these people can see themselves represented at all beyond motiveless evil. To which let me fetch my first post on the topic: I mean if you're going to 1) create a setting 2) which features conflict 3) driven by 'human' actors and the 4) verisimilitude/nuance that goes into human reasoning is important to you On this forum we still see a lot of open bigotry, particularly in the Politics thread, which is now gone because it became impossible to pretend that it was anything other than a breeding ground for hate. This is not a coincidence. Bigots are attracted to BioWare fandom because their games, intentionally or not, provide narrative options that reinforce their existing worldview. Sure, you can choose differently, but the choices you make either way are never meaningfully challenged. If you're inclined towards tolerance and fairness, the game mostly supports that. If you're inclined towards prejudice, the game supports that too, and that's where we have a problem, because BioWare wants to be inclusive to a diverse audience, but continues to write narratives that attract bigots. The two are simply not compatible. You can't claim diversity in your marketing and then write stories that reinforce hate. If we assume there's a problem with the fact that these people can see themselves presented, warts and all, (which is not really a premise I can get behind but w/e) then the problem is fundamental to the kind of story Bioware has chosen to tell. There's no way to tell a story with the components I mentioned and not deal with the fact that sometimes there are underlying structural reasons that motivate bigoted behavior and renders it rational and understandable, which, again, is not synonymous with endorsing the morality of the acts themselves. Not from an in-world perspective or a writerly perspective. It's a necessary consequence of the kind of story you've chosen to tell. Is there anything wrong with games/media that choose not to tell these kinds of stories? No. I really like games like Sims 4 and Stardew Valley, largely apolitical games but low key very much not a space where societal/cultural inequities exist. They're entirely fine, Dragon Age just isn't them. Part of diversity is diversity of opinion, of showing how another person, your fellow (hu)man, can come to an awful conclusion and extending the truly basic courtesy of assuming they're not amniotic sacs filled with nothing but antagonism, vitriol and hate. This is after all the core assumption of any kind of acceptance ideology, that we are human and deserve to not be essentialized into something easily hated. Of not creating a curated space in which absolute moral authority/insight is claimed and it's not only allowed but encouraged to represent anything outside of that as at best a kind of moral blankspot and at worst either terminally self serving (which it might be, sometimes) and/or driven by free floating antagonism.
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Elvis Has Left The Building
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Oct 31, 2020 23:57:02 GMT
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pessimistpanda
Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect Andromeda
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Post by pessimistpanda on Mar 27, 2019 13:30:33 GMT
You're trying to frame it as absurd, but yes, essentially, tolerance and intolerance are incompatible positions. Incompatible within one mind, perhaps - and even that's debatable since you can be tolerant on one axis and intolerant on another - but games aren't made for one mind. They're made to appeal to millions of people who all have different preferences in the kind of characters they'd like to express.
You're basically asking for games to target only people with certain often-grouped mindsets as defined by you. You are imposing an "us vs. them" stance on people who play Bioware's games, according to how you alone view the demographics.
Finally, perhaps a reminder is in order that tolerance is a virtue applicable specifically to people whose attitudes you don't like. If you like someone else's attitude, there is no problem in the first place. The question of how far you're willing to extend your tolerance only applies if there is disagreement, and right here and how, tolerance is exactly what you do *not* show. You do not just demand that you can express yourself in a game in ways you prefer, you also demand that other people with whom you disagree can't. You demand that the complete fictional world vindicates your view. I consider such demands utterly illegitimate.
Edit: While I'm at it, certain things people do are not my business and have zero impact on my life, so why should I care about how they do these things? Tolerance, in cases like this, should be easy to come by, don't you think? So why do *you* care about how other players like to express themselves in games? It's not like it has any impact on your life, is it?
It does, in fact. Media of all forms shapes people's perceptions, and therefore the world I live in. People like to pretend it doesn't ("next thing he'll say is video games cause violence! lolololololol"), but we all know it does. If I feel a piece of media is provoking/encouraging fear or hatred of minority groups, well, as an LGBTQ person, and an individual with a less visible disability, I have reason to be concerned. It is making the world a more dangerous place for me. The effect is not immediate, nor obvious. It aggregates until it cannot be ignored. BioWare is by no means the only offender, nor are they the worst. But they specifically market on a platform of inclusivity. They make a big deal about offering diversity, particularly in the romance options, they've benefited from positive exposure in the form of special recognition from LGBT organisations like GLAAD. But that doesn't mean they're doing a particularly good job. In fact, I and a lot of LGBT people that you won't see here because they've largely departed the forum think BioWare is doing a very bad job. But this is a field in which BioWare have no competition. It's easy to look good with no meaningful point of comparison. I know for a fact that at least a chunk of the LGBT audience in particular is getting tired, both of how we are presented, and how BioWare's metaphorical stand-ins for us are represented. Assuming the studio lasts much longer (who really knows what the future holds? not me), I think the competing ideals of "championing diversity" and "allowing players to be shitty to our in-game minority rep" are going to pull at each other until BioWare is forced to make a choice. I have my preference, yes. but to categorise my opinions as some sort of "demand", in order to make me seem aggressive and irrational is pretty shitty. I'm not making any demands. I am describing what I perceive as an inevitability; BioWare is eventually going to have to re-evaluate the way it tells its stories if it wants to hang on to its minority fanbase.
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