Video Game Controversies

[Oniya]

Also in Walmart news:  https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-shooting-employees-send-petition-to-ceo-after-walkout-2019-8

30 employees did a walk-out protest on Wednesday, citing the store's decision to continue selling actual guns.  They've amassed 46,000 signatures on a petition to the CEO (not that I think the Waltons will give it more than a cursory glance.)

[TheGlyphstone]

30 ex- employees pretty soon...

[Sara Nilsson]

Caving in to Republican pressure, Wal-Mart recently stopped selling video games with violent content in an appearance of "good taste" given the recent mass shootings.

Jim Sterling did a good video on the subject how this is part of a distraction from the greater issues at hand (legitimization of white supremacist rhetoric, gun control, etc):

Point of order, They didn't stop selling violent video games just stopped having ads for them or videos showing them in the stores.

https://kotaku.com/no-walmart-isnt-telling-its-stores-to-remove-violent-v-1837113528

And thank God for Jim Fucking Sterling Son

[Tolvo]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/ion-fury-devs-show-signs-of-transphobia-among-other-issues-update-voidpoint-twitter-responds.135368/

So it has now come out that the Ion Fury devs are pretty far right, there is the above Discord stuff of them complaining about "SJW's" and calling trans people mentally ill, etc.

I decided to check their twitter follows to see, the account may be run by one person though the Discord stuff shows multiple working there do support these kinds of ideas.

GIF 1
GIF 2
(I'm putting these as URL's in case anyone in any of the profiles is under age)

Archive Is doesn't work very well for this, it only collects the first dozen or so people the account follows. But indeed it follows one creator of the Sarkeesian Effect, Anti-Feminist Pretending to be a feminist Christina Hoff Sommers who is far right, Tech Raptor, Brad Wardell, and more. Totalbiscuit who became a figurehead of Gamergate and supported domestic terrorists at the end of his life is in there but also a lot of people followed him for other reasons similar to how while Jon Jafari(JonTron) is a Neo Nazi many who are not Neo Nazis still follow him due to his history and old content, so I don't really find that one damning. As well given the importance he had in that scene. The others though are very much inexcusable.

There are screenshots of one dev in their discord saying that indeed the screenshots are real, but are stripped of context and that some of them not speaking English very well makes them appear bad. Yet there is no context in which the things in the original screenshots are ok unless they posted right beforehand "I'm going to post here the sort of things we do not accept here so that you can see examples of the bigotry we don't tolerate."

[Oniya]

I am now less sorry that a certain band made them change the name of their game.

[Tolvo]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-08-19-ion-fury-studio-apologises-for-sexist-and-transphobic-comments-from-staff

3D Realms and the Ion Fury devs have apologized for the sexist, transphobic, and homophobic statements made by the developers and the homophobic statements found in game, which was in the form of slurs. 3D Realms has said going forward they're including stipulations in their contracts that if developers break their zero tolerance policies on hate speech they can be terminated, the Ion Fury devs have said they will donat 10,000 dollars to the Trevor Project, and will now make mandatory sensitivity training. I don't know that everyone involved really is that understanding of what happened, given they said they were empowering minorities with their example being the lead character of Ion Fury, Bombshell. But at least it is accepting responsibility for what they did, and seeing some accountability for the developers.

[ElectronicVice]

I find it hard to call what happened with Ion Fury a win at all. I mean for me its all a part of this worrying trend of the company you work for gets to decide the kinds of things you can and can't say if you want to keep your job. I have seen some of the comments made by the developers and a lot of it seems like a real mixed bag to me. Some of the things are easy to condemn or dismiss as exaggerations or oversimplifications. But some of it did read like people who really were confused about what the rules are supposed to be for you behave as a "good" person. Hate speech guidelines have always bugged me in general as I always thought the best disinfectant for bigoted beliefs is sunlight, if someone isn't allowed to talk about something it can never be outlined or explained why something is wrong. I also think its important for people to be able to know the range of people that exist in this world even if just so you know who to avoid for your own physical/mental wellbeing.

The part that stuck out for me the most was one of the developers commenting about how feminists will fight for women to be able to wear whatever kind of clothing they want without restriction or penalty, but then those same feminists get upset when female characters in media have sexy attire/are sexy. I think pretending that something like that isn't confusing would be dishonest. It is a difficult thing to unpack and understand all the moving parts involved. I can't pretend to know what the person who wrote it was thinking at the time.

From what I remember the resetera post also outlined some posts of the devs talking about how social justice warriors like to dox/harrass/get people fired/ruin lives whenever someone expresses and idea or opinion that runs counter do their own or that they don't like. Of course the thread seemed to want to pull together just such a mob to go after the developers of ion fury. It seems hard to say they are totally wrong about all the stuff they said when people did that exact thing to them, I know all this makes me sound like a horrible person I am sure but the things they said even the stuff that is pretty rude is really not that extreme at all.

You could qualify calling trans people mentally ill extreme. It would really depend upon what your feelings or beliefs of mental illness are in general. I personally do not assign any sort of negative connotation to the term mental illness, some people seem to ascribe to some kind of weird unconcious 'miasma' theory on mental illness. Where being mentally ill means you are a bad person who does/did bad things which caused you to become mentally ill, or you are less of a human being because you are mentally ill. I just think it means that you need some help and I don't mean that in a "pray the gay away" kind of way. More like peer groups, therapy, and possibly medication on a case by case basis (whatever helps and makes someone healthier and happier). So not "fixing", but real healing.

In conclusion, I am really worried about the trend of the company you work for getting to decide what things you can discuss in public. I mean if we are going to live in a corporate dystopia we should have way more neon.

[Tolvo]

Why would allowing hate speech at work make it go away? Why would allowing bigoted and hateful statements to be made in the public eye of the community be good? If the idea is for it to be brought out into the light so people can criticize it, why then are you against criticizing it? Calling being trans a mental illness is a complete misunderstanding of trans people, and is unfounded, and rooted in a long history of bigotry. More and more the medical and scientific fields have shown being trans is not a mental illness. Is it alright to call someone mentally ill for not being heterosexual? Those statements they made were blatantly derogitory towards transgender people.

IF someone at my work says slurs around me why is it their right to say slurs overrides my right to a safe work environment free from hostility? Can I talk about how cishets should be hospitalized because no one in their right mind could be cis or straight? If somehow I had a lot of people at work who agreed with that and intimidated people who spoke against me would that make the work environment better? They were essentially sharing hatful rhetoric and speech while doing community outreach, which even if one doesn't respect or accept trans people, should at least be obviously a stupid business practice and is a severe level of incompetence to do that while representing your company.

[Skynet]

I find it hard to call what happened with Ion Fury a win at all. I mean for me its all a part of this worrying trend of the company you work for gets to decide the kinds of things you can and can't say if you want to keep your job.

Nah this isn't a trend; it's actually been standard practice for as long as there's been capitalism. Employers can and do fire workers for their expressed opinions and associations all the time. Look at all the anti-union contracts passed in the 1800s, for instance.

The alternative is that people will not allowed to be fired for saying anything under the sun. Should a school employ someone who says that it's okay for grown adults to have sex with students? Or for a pharmacy to employ someone who spreads anti-vaxx pseudoscience?

In some cases it can be a double-edged sword, where smear campaigns can wrongfully pin statements someone never said and a company fires someone for the sake of good PR. But I don't think that this happened in regards to this, given the large amount of bigoted posts in the Discord and in proper context.

Hate speech guidelines have always bugged me in general as I always thought the best disinfectant for bigoted beliefs is sunlight, if someone isn't allowed to talk about something it can never be outlined or explained why something is wrong. I also think its important for people to be able to know the range of people that exist in this world even if just so you know who to avoid for your own physical/mental wellbeing.

This doesn't always work, especially when a significant portion of the populace agrees with said sentiment. Trump calling Mexicans rapist skyrocketed him in the polls. Ironically the revelation of Ion Fury's developers' statements is in fact sunlight, aka someone reposting the contents of their Discord logs.

You could qualify calling trans people mentally ill extreme. It would really depend upon what your feelings or beliefs of mental illness are in general. I personally do not assign any sort of negative connotation to the term mental illness, some people seem to ascribe to some kind of weird unconcious 'miasma' theory on mental illness. Where being mentally ill means you are a bad person who does/did bad things which caused you to become mentally ill, or you are less of a human being because you are mentally ill. I just think it means that you need some help and I don't mean that in a "pray the gay away" kind of way. More like peer groups, therapy, and possibly medication on a case by case basis (whatever helps and makes someone healthier and happier). So not "fixing", but real healing.

Mental illness is usually defined as such in the medical community when it causes a negative impact of the individual's quality of life. Being transgender in and of itself is not a mental illness. Rather, gender dysphoria which occurs from societal and self-perceptions being at odd's with one's identity is a mental illness. And most psychological professionals agree that proper pronoun usage, hormone therapy, and other means of allowing transgender people to be at peace with themselves is the best means of combating dysphoria.

Most people who say that all transgender people are mentally ill are alt-right, GamerGater types who actually want them to go back in the closet, to present themselves as a gender solely by their genitals, and make transphobic jokes. They are by no means allies.

In conclusion, I am really worried about the trend of the company you work for getting to decide what things you can discuss in public. I mean if we are going to live in a corporate dystopia we should have way more neon.

If you're worried about corporate dystopias, bigots being fired ranks really low when you look at things like say, Coca-Cola death squads, Nestle profiting off literal slave labor for their chocolates, and cigarettes being sold to children in Indonesia and hitmen killing off people warning people  about the dangers of smoking in said country.

Edit: Tolvo covered the hate speech at work part better than I could in my post.

[Tolvo]

Content warning for homophobic slurs below.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/562860/announcements/detail/1616150570017627014

Ion Fury's devs have now put out a statement that they will not be censoring the game and will keep in the text for Ogay and Fagbag, as has been posted by Terminx who in the discord was known for posting images with the word "fag" in them to laugh at. He is listed as founder of Voidpoint and said this was a joint statement with 3D realms. So not only are they bigots they're liars.

[Tolvo]

Also I figure i should just add, I thought I'd mention in case anyone would ask "So you think it's good to censor them?" It's not really censorship, they are ignorant and hateful and put homophobic content in the game, they themselves apologized and said they'd be working to change things and improve their company culture and are now just flip flopping.

[Oniya]

'Gaming's most controversial face wash'?   :-X

[Tolvo]

It's interesting to note that they claim self moderation and removing hateful content from their own game would be censorship, then close with mentioning they will be far more strictly moderating their community. While I would not call that censorship, certainly by their own definition that would make them pro censorship.

[Skynet]

I did not know if here or the traditional video game thread would be best to post, but given that it is in response to and deals with a subject in this thread I'll link it here.



Basically one of the concept artists went into more detail on character creation:

"Our character creation menu, for instance, compared to the last demo we now give you so many more options," Jonkers told Metro. "For instance, you don’t choose your gender anymore. You don’t choose, ‘I want to be a female or male character’ you now choose a body type. Because we want you to feel free to create any character you want. So you choose your body type and we have two voices, one that’s male sounding, one is female sounding. You can mix and match. You can just connect them any way you want."

[Skynet]

PS Somehow forgot link. It's the discussion of gender in Cyberpunk 2077.

[Brittlby]

So... the "Saint's Row" approach?

[Tolvo]

It's an improvement. While I loved The Witcher 3 and even talked with writers for it and about the nonbinary and trans characters within it and was always amazed with how much they cared, I was concerned when much of the TW3 devs left after it and its DLC finished. Cyberpunk has a lot of different people making it and it is essentially a new team, and has been just terrible about trans people and I'd also say rather racist. This is a step in the right direction after their last time announcing they'd be doing this, that they are explaining more of what exactly they'll be doing. It's a shame about the limited voice options but that's one that is definitely much harder and more costly to implement due to the need to hire additional voice actors and record all those lines and program them in.

[Callie Del Noire]

Right now, I’m having fun with Control, a remarkably creepy game

[Callie Del Noire]

I’m holding off on chunk till it comes out

I retail high hopes..but I do see some of what you’re talking about in the teasers

[Lustful Bride]

NBA 2K20 is including an actual slot machine and a roulette mechanic in it. Literal gambling mechanics, but is being labeled okay for players of any and all ages.

Its full of tons of pretty colors, flashing lights and other addictive measures designed to get kids addicted to mechanics.

PEGI though seems perfectly okay with that.

[SINless]

NBA 2K20 is including an actual slot machine and a roulette mechanic in it. Literal gambling mechanics, but is being labeled okay for players of any and all ages.

Its full of tons of pretty colors, flashing lights and other addictive measures designed to get kids addicted to mechanics.

PEGI though seems perfectly okay with that.

just hope there's no actual money involved or my country will ban it.

[Brittlby]

There may very well be? I think it said it does have micro transactions for jerseys, etc.

I’ll tell you, I go to Vegas for the shows and never thought I had a gambling problem. Then my husband and I started playing Overwatch! I had to have blown a hundred bucks on those loot boxes to dress up my characters. Lol

I can only imagine the pressure on a child!

[Sara Nilsson]

just hope there's no actual money involved or my country will ban it.

if it is anything like the previous one you have to spend real money to use any of those gambling me... sorry surprise mechanics (as they like to call them)

[Tolvo]

https://www.pcgamer.com/night-in-the-woods-developer-alec-holowka-has-died/

As a heads up, there has been a tragic story relating to the suicide of Alec Holowka, one of the devs of Night in the Woods and other games. This came after accusations from many women and some nonbinary people that he had abused them. the other two developers of Night in the Woods removed him from their team. His sister announced his death on twitter with a focus on how she believes the victims and that they did nothing wrong, the struggles her brother was facing, how he was trying to work on his issues, and that she mourns him as does their family.

A part of why I bring this up is not just the tragedy, but to make it clear what happened. Gamergate is still around as well as the various other movements that are just all the same bad actors, they're trying to drive the accusers to suicide and get them arrested on manslaughter and murder charges. This looks like it might springboard into another big campaign centered on trying to get Zoe Quinn to kill themself. It's been getting very bad and the internet hate machine is kicking into motion spewing out articles, sharing outrage over false versions of the story, and are calling for blood, often while saying "This shows cancel culture is dangerous and killed a man!" Which is a deep level of hypocrisy but these people as a reminder want to cause suffering and spread misery, point out the contradictory nature of their statements means nothing to them they don't care. In most cases it is best to disengaged and/or block them, report them, on whatever platform you're on, rather than engage in heated arguments they'll then use to target you. I was deep in the mud dealing with this back in 2014 and now personally many of the large targets, Zoe has deactivated and the blood is in the water as the sharks circle. Please protect yourself.

[Twisted Crow]

Final Fantasy VIII Remastered is being panned. Not because of features, but because of censorship. Or something.

Video on what is censored, linking because most of the main characters in the game are 17 years old.

My opinions: This complaint is fucking dumb. But I felt that this video was informative.  ::)

The big gripes I keep seeing around are mentioned in the video:

- Rinoa's shirt is not as low cut as in her PS1 days.
- Siren's pelvis is covered with a feathery skirt.

For the record, I'm the guy that bitched about DOA6 toning down its fanservice. You know, the thing that made Dead or Alive what it was in the first place. I get why people dog DOA6. But this game? This is a little ridiculous. It's not like Rinoa's lo-def 'almost-cleavage' or Siren's feather bush added anything to the heart of what Final Fantasy VIII was. Even more unsettling is that people can still see underneath's Selphie's skirt. People can still eye-bang Shiva, as she's pretty much unchanged. So, weird changes. Yes. But it isn't the same as when an entire game changes up its design choice in spite of its demographic. Games like Dead or Alive dared to be what they were. Up until 6, it made no apologies about what it was. If one wants to see them both as equal "crimes of censorship" then I find that silly.

It's like pointing at the jaywalker and saying that they are just as bad as the arsonist or bank robber sitting next to them. I just hate that one of my favorite games in this series is becoming another dumb, cringe Gamergate thing.