The Social and Political Issues in Gaming Thread

[Even Then]

I still can't really see from the POV of the people who think riding a dragon to fight an elf god (or, in a more realistic setting, one dude from the slums becoming a successful millionaire or something) doesn't break immersion, but not being able to shit in a dark-skinned man's mailbox because he's dark-skinned doesn't. But fair enough, for some people this might break immersion for some reason.

So I ran across someone whining about Zarya from Overwatch and about how she was "forced because of an SJW agenda", and it got me thinking. Does it really matter if a character's included in a game for the sake of more diverse representation, as long as they're still a good character? Zarya's still a good character in the opinion of a lot of people regardless of being made so there'd be some variance in the body types of the female characters, so what should it matter? Why do these people care?

[Tolpuddle Martyr]

They care because for some representation is a zero sum game where if someone from a different group wins then they lose. Understanding this is key to unlocking the whole siege mentality thing among the gaming right.

[Askold]

There was also a study revealing that even though women usually talk less than men in most situations men will think that the women talk more than men when men still dominate the amount of talk. I tried to find it and the closest I got is this: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=2746840 and the extract does say just that but you have to pay to get the entire study and all the implications within.

Anyway, this might be something similar. Just the presence of a few LGBT, female or SJW-like characters makes some people think that "everything" is pushing some sort of agenda and they feel threatened. Even though, even if every single game from now on had a SJW character in a important position in the story it would not still mean that SJWs outnumber the "good ol' white, meat eating, heterosexual men."

[Tolpuddle Martyr]

Re: The whole Jack Thompson thing. Jack spoke openly about wanting to destroy videogame companies, did not regard games as speech but rather "murder simulators" and compared them to lethal viruses. In short he was arguing that they must be stopped.

There's a difference between "should" and "must" one adverb suggests an imperative or command, the other is a strong appeal. If someone suggests that you shouldn't make rape simulators or you should make games more that's the latter and it's nothing remotely like Thompson's forthright  desire to destroy the producers of the games he despised.

I don't think anybody should be a Nazi, but I'm not Antifa and I'm not going to literally attack you if you have cracker bolts tattooed on you, I still really think you shouldn't and if you think that makes me literally Jack Thompson  then you can fucking bite me.

Rant over.

[Sigmaleph]

Ok but you seem to be smoothly transitioning between "expressing disgust and condemnation" and "call on stores not to stock it or to boycott your cat raping productions company". Which, um. At some point you've crossed from 'this is not my thing' to 'I want to stop people from buying this game'.

Social pressure and government action are different things, but they exist on a spectrum of tools that can be used to ban something (and you definitely can try to ban something through social pressure).

What I'm saying is that crticism is as protected in a free marketplace of ideas as edgy games are.

Also a call to a particular store not to stock a game is not necessarily a call to cut off everyone's access. Take the Target ban of GTA in Australia. The call was from parents who didn't want the hame in that store because they didn't want their kids to get access to it. There was no similar call for EB games or JB HiFi to do the same despite these chains sharing mallspace with Target Australia. Hence it was those parents exercising their freedom of speech to ask that the game be not available to small children in one specific location.

And I personally have zero problems with that!

I kind of have nonzero problems with that.

If you don't want your children to not own a particular game, don't buy it for them. If you give them an allowance, specify that they are not allowed to spend it on games you don't approve of and keep track of what they buy, or check their viedogame collections, or whatever. Parents have a lot of power over their children which they can exercise to stop them from accessing media, without also involving third parties.

If you try to get a store not to stock it, you're making it harder for other people, who are not your children, to buy the game. And affecting the sales, and making it so the next game the developer makes they have to consider whether they want to sell at Target or not before deciding to include content people find objectionable. So yes, you exert some pressure against the kinds of things you find objectionable. I dislike that as a matter of principle.

[Tolpuddle Martyr]

Practically it had no effect on anyone's ability to purchase GTAIV. Seriously, in every shopping center with a Target there's also a JBHiFi and an EB games. The only exceptions are country towns with Country Target stores. For those areas, there's the internet. In any case the store is making a decision with its stock in which you do not get a say unless you are a shareholder in Target Australia.

Ampilitwatja in the Northern Territory has only one store and is 500 km from the nearest post office, police station or Target store but you can purchase GTA if you have an internet account and a steam login. GTA is more acessible than law enforcement, potable water or fresh food. What's the problem?

[Sigmaleph]

Practically it had no effect on anyone's ability to purchase GTAIV. Seriously, in every shopping center with a Target there's also a JBHiFi and an EB games. The only exceptions are country towns with Country Target stores. For those areas, there's the internet. In any case the store is making a decision with its stock in which you do not get a say unless you are a shareholder in Target Australia.

Ampilitwatja in the Northern Territory has only one store and is 500 km from the nearest post office, police station or Target store but you can purchase GTA if you have an internet account and a steam login. GTA is more acessible than law enforcement, potable water or fresh food. What's the problem?

None at all, if accessibility is not reduced. But reducing accessibility is usually the reason why one asks stores not to stock a product.

[Tolpuddle Martyr]

The store didn't have to heed the parents groups demands and it's also clear that some of their competitors didn't. Are you saying that Target Australia has some sort of moral duty to sell the products of Rockstar Games?

If so does this moral duty extend to other video game manufacturers?

[Cloud3514]

Sorry, Tol, I have to disagree with you on this one. From what I understand (and according to Jim Sterling), the petition was disingenuous and the decision to pull it is stupidly selective. Why pull GTA, but not Watch Dogs or Assassin's Creed? There are plenty of games that are just as violent on the market, but they aren't as infamous as GTA. Rock Star's only crime here is that they make a controversial game.

Target Australia pulled the game in a purely political move after the game had been out for months and already made them about as much money as it was going to make them. The decision to pull isn't censorship, but I argue it's still stupid to pander to a petition that continues to perpetuate the "murder simulator" rhetoric that made the series infamous in the first place.

[Tolpuddle Martyr]

I don't believe that the type of folks who fly the "save the kids from violent games" brigade are making good arguments and of course it was a political decision to pull the game. It was as heartfelt and sincere as Reddit's decision to ban coontown. That is to say nakedly political and utterly insincere. That said, it'a still a stores right to stock what they want or don't want even if their reasons are dumb and/or cynical. It still didn't affect the games avaliability.

People will make the case to boycott businesses based on reasons that range from noble and enlightened to thunderingly stupid and reactionary. They still have the right to do so and businesses have the right to react. You want to fight things like the GTA ban? Do it with good arguments and good information. As it stands only one store bought into the moral panic to the benefit of their competitors.

It's true that the GTA ban was literally pointless, how pointless? The wee little wattle flowers down under couldn't have bought the game anyway. It's rated MA (15+).  Are we gonna waste time condemning big box stores for making pointless PR gestures now?

[Cloud3514]

Criticism is not finite. I level some criticism towards Target Australia for making the decision, but I level far, far more of it towards the people responsible for the petition. They want to save the world from a video game that isn't even targeted towards their kids, while happily ignoring all of the other M (or rather, whatever the Australian equivalent is) rated titles, some of which (namely Call of Duty) are actually targeted at kids. It was a stupid thing to petition, especially when you consider, again, they waited until the game had already made Target all of the money it was going to make anyway.

[Tolpuddle Martyr]

Yep, I concede that. It was a stupid petition that yeilded an utterly vacuous result. But if it didn't actually do anything to stop Australians getting access to games they want to play, why should I care?

[Cloud3514]

That question I don't have an answer for if I don't want to go to the slippery slope. And I don't.

[Tolpuddle Martyr]

Ok.

I can see people's concerns here with any movement that seeks to paint games as a social evil that must be kept away from children. First there's the spectre of Gaming's own Mary Whitehouse Jack Thompson and his evidence free assertion that games are merely murder simulators that constitute neither art nor speech. Secondly there's the tone-deaf inference that games are primarily for children, you know-like comics or dressing up.

The moral panickers are always going to be there. In the eyes of some on this board I'm among this number because I believe making games where a player can gain entertainment simulating rape or pederasty is morally repugnant and not a thing which is morally acceptable.

The thing is, reacting to every challenge to haming as if it were Jack Thompson reborn loses the lesson of Jack Thompson's crusade. If you try and squash everything that initially looks like a potential threat the way Thompson tried to squash rap music and computer games you'll end up looking as silly as he did.

If I make the argument that the Target ban in Australia was no big deal, I'm not arguing that it was a good thing or similar anti-game campaigns don't necessarily represent a threat to free speech. If I argue that an artistic expression is morally unacceptable to me I'm not on a personal quest to destroy the manufacturers of those games a la Jack Thompson or make the game unavailable to you. If I agree that boycotts based on moral opposition to a thing are not inherently bad I'm not arguing that the campaign to stop Target Australia stocking GTA was innately good either.

TL;DR good people of FQA not every negative opinion towards a game or games represents the spectre of Jack Thompson rising from obscurity to be really scary. Right? Right.

[Sigmaleph]

The store didn't have to heed the parents groups demands and it's also clear that some of their competitors didn't. Are you saying that Target Australia has some sort of moral duty to sell the products of Rockstar Games?

If so does this moral duty extend to other video game manufacturers?

No. I'm not discussing the morality of the actions of Target Australia. I was arguing about the general practice of demanding that a store not to stock a game because you personally find it disgusting.

If you demand that a store not do a particular thing, there's one of two possible outcomes:

a) nothing happens, because the store ignores you or because people buy their games elsewhere. Or,

b) people have a harder time buying the game.

People don't usually intend a, because a is pointless. So one has to assume they intend b. Which I think is a dick move.