I feel like a huge portion of corporate America has adopted the following strategy:
- Half ass a product despite a comically large budget, resulting in a product that ranges in quality from mediocre to downright terrible
- Stick some culture war shit somewhere in the product
- Expect reviewers to give you overwhelmingly positive reviews based off political virtue signaling
- Put a magnifying glass on the vocal minority of genuinely toxic fans, so that you can claim everyone who doesn’t like the mediocre product is toxic
- bullshit about sales numbers
- Obfuscate individual success/failures on earnings reports, and blame overall underperformance on “macroeconomic conditions”
Like at this point it’s on me for engaging with these posts I guess.
Stick some culture war shit somewhere in the product
you mean minorities?
Look if you can’t tell the difference between actually well designed games with a diverse cast and Ubisoft crap number 12 then that’s on you.
who said anything about any other thing in the games or their origin? All I meantioned was your idea that having minorities involved in anything was “culture war”
Okay so explain to me why things like Spiderverse and Baldur’s Gate receive nearly ubiquitous acclaim in ways Snow White and Assassins Creed doesn’t.
No.
Explain what “culture war” is, and how it isn’t just incorporating minorities into a work.
The difference between actual diversity revolves around tokenization, flanderization, homogenization, and of course gaslighting.
“culture war” minority characters are often inserted into narratives where they don’t quite fit, are often one dimensional characters, and often all act in a certain way based off their race/gender/sexuality combo, and are often inserted to gaslight anyone who has an issue with the low quality of the underlying product into thinking all criticism is bigoted.
It’s the last point that both you and Ubisoft are leveraging right now. If they replaced Yasuke with some burly Japanese dude, the entire discourse would be centered around how this game is a mid-at-best title for way too much money.
Instead asshole stans like you come out of the woodwork to push a narrative that most negative criticism centered around bigotry.
There are plenty of IPs with minority characters that don’t get shit on, because both the IP and the characters are actually good.
Enjoy your $70 mid-fest.
Oh lord someone get this chud out of the thread! And fer fucks sake y’all never ask chuds a got damn thing. Cuz they’ll tell you, and it will be the dumbest shit you read today
My first guess: racist losers are mad that POC exist and are represented in video games.
…Yep. I was right, sadly.
What makes it even more dumb is the guy they’re mad about existed in real life. Weird as fuck to care about something like that
I may be misremembering but I’m pretty sure the same character appears in Nioh or Nioh 2. A Japanese game made by Japanese developers. A cameo, but a representation of an historic figure and not some random person plucked out of historical obscurity.
I probably won’t play the game because I’ve never really been a fan of the Assasin’s Creed style but imagine getting your knickers in a twist over something that no one is forcing you to play. There are a bajillion other games. So weird.
Dude I loved Nioh and I love the story of Yasuke, so when I encountered him in the game I was psyched. It’s like, as a white American, if I’m writing a story about cowboys, and I find out that there was a Japanese guy that was a famous cowboy right at the time my story is set, and also clearly not talked about enough… hell yeah I’m putting that guy in there! Why should I be upset that he doesn’t look like me when that makes it so much more fascinating? That’s fucking awesome! People breaking the mold and shattering our expectations is cool, and always has been. If I’m a writer with a big fanbase and I have the opportunity to shine a light on something clearly awesome that most people don’t know about then hell yeah I want to make people know about it. These fucking people… not only are they racist and they’ve also lost their sense of wonder, their imagination, their sense of joy for a strange and unexpected world that we live in. What a miserable fucking way to live.
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I’m guessing by “normal people” you exclusively mean white cis dudes.
How does this relate to the article, or the situation with the streamer? Sure, dunk on Ubisoft, but maybe not about a black historical figure being black.
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This complaint feels manufactured. No one complained about the romance-able historical figures in previous Japanese games, and a quick look at social media and Japanese news shows no outrage. Also, every other game features historically unknown natives? What? We have multiple characters that are children of royalty, at least two that are military warlords, and a Viking raider for fuck’s sake. The only game I can think of that has a native of the region not connected to the powers that be is 3, where you play a Native American. You’re often just playing essentially a secret police for the state of the country you’re in. Why not have a black samurai, a notable historical figure, be the main character. That’s super interesting. It’s not like Japanese culture is being erased. Your outrage feels misplaced and racially motivated, and I doubt we’d be seeing so much manufactured discontent if it was a white samurai (and there were several).
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Eivor was a foreigner (and an invader) for everything outside the beginning of the game, so was Kassandra/Alexios (also invaders), they just had the same skin tone as the place they’re foreign in. There’s a big difference between “native characters with understated culture” and just “not foreign.” Those are totally different arguments, and it seems like you’re trying to make both. Again, why not have an interesting character from history be explored like this. Acting as if past characters are these nebulous “local” individuals when they’re often the direct children or relatives of prominent, real, historical figures, if fictional ones, seems silly. This is totally in line with past stories they’ve told. I really don’t see a valid reason a non-local character is “problematic” in an AC game. We’ve done it a bunch of times. We’ve played a Welsh guy in the Caribbean, a Viking in Britain, and a Spartan in Greece, just to name a few. I’m sure I’m forgetting other valid examples.
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It does sound more racist, because it is. Why not Yasuke? Just because he’s black? Why any of the other AC protagonists? Why choose a Spartan, a highly unethical culture filled with slavery and abuse? Why choose a Welsh pirate instead of a Caribbean native? These are all pointless questions, because the answer is all the same. That’s the story they wanted to tell. Maybe they wanted to highlight the historical outlier at an important time in history. We could speculate on any number of different reasons, but “DEI” doesn’t make any damn sense, considering they knew how gamers would react beforehand and even went out of their way to make a statement about it.
They wanted to tell this story. If you want a different one, play a different game. There is absolutely nothing wrong with choosing Yasuke as a protagonist. The series has consistently demonstrated that they don’t really mind telling the stories of historical outliers, repeatedly. They shouldn’t have to specifically avoid (because that is what your argument has shifted to) Yasuke for fears of “DEI.” The “anti-woke” are ridiculous.
