Ideological Polarization: Video Games Edition

Many readers will be familiar with soaring polarization in American politics, a phenomenon that first received mass attention in 2014 and has since become known as the “Great Awokening.”

These trends are also reflected in popular culture, such as movies and video games. In recent years, it seems that there has been a growing gulf between the ratings given by professional reviewers and ordinary users. Cultural conservatives have claimed that reviewers give bad products good ratings based on both venal motives (e.g. maintaining positive relations with directors and producers; retaining premier access to video games) and as a result of living in a cultural bubble (e.g. privileging things such as forced diversity and woke signalling, over minor elements like story, immersion, gameplay, and even graphics).

Mass Effect: Andromeda (Amerikwa) vs. Witcher 3 (Polska).

(Perhaps the ur-example of this, and familiar to the greatest amount of people, would be the drama around Star Wars: the Last Jedi, which got an 8.5 rating from critics on Metacritic vs. a 4.5 user users. A discrepancy that those same journalists ascribed to Russian trolls.)

In the video game sphere, this led to that energetic but ultimately ineffectual gamer uprising known as Gamergate, which incidentally also kicked off in 2014. But were they right to rebel against “ethics in video games journalism” in general?

We may finally have a definitive answer thanks to video games blogger/programmer Shamus Young, who scraped Metacritic for all video game user and critic reviews since 1995.

What he found is that user and critic reviews tended to track each other up until around 2014, with the difference between the two breaking past 5 points (out of 100) just twice in the period from 2001, when Metacritic was launched, to 2014.

But then this indicator exploded, rising to above 10 points by 2018 and 2019.

And here are the combined absolute scores for users and critics in one chart:

This does make intuitive sense looking through some major titles over the past few years. E.g., Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (critics: 86, users: 67) and Far Cry 5 (critics: 78, users: 61) both featured more or less overt political attacks on Trump’s redneck (racist, backwards, religious nutjob) base while apparently featuring mediocre gameplay (I can’t personally confirm, not having played either). Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (critics: 83, users: 67) paid prominent homage to Black Lives Matter, but otherwise featured an uninspired and unfinished story and was infested with microtransactions. Fallout 4 (critics: 84, users: 55) was much weaker in both content and gameplay than its immediate predecessor Fallout: New Vegas, but it did loudly riff on a Underground Railroad theme. But while all this might have left a glowing impression on journalists, it would not have made a difference to ordinary gamers who just wanted to have fun playing a game.

Note that Young suggests caution in interpreting these results:

This chart is basically the green chart minus the red one. Or, how many points higher are critic scores than user scores? We could see this as an indication of the diverging opinions between the people and the press, but this spike at the end could also be the result of games that didn’t turn on their aggressive monetization systems until after the review scores were set. This pissed people off and led to review bombing. So maybe it’s not a measure of the difference between critics and users, but the difference in quality between launch day, and the day the cash shop opens.

OTOH, do also note that this graph merely shows the difference between average user and average critic scores, whereas a true measure of polarization would calculate the average of the individual difference in scores for each individual game per year. After all, there are games that are the opposite of those mentioned above, games that users like relatively more than the critics. For instance, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, a Czech game that happened to receive some wrath from professional SJWs for refusing to include Blacks in medieval Bohemia, got 76 points from critics but 81 points from users (whereas the critic gave the average game 11 more points than the average user during that year). But KCD would have had the effect of reducing the gap between critics and users in 2018.

I’d imagine that a true measure of polarization, derived as suggested above, would show an even sharper divergence between professional critics and users from around 2014.

Anatoly Karlin is a transhumanist interested in psychometrics, life extension, UBI, crypto/network states, X risks, and ushering in the Biosingularity.

 

Inventor of Idiot’s Limbo, the Katechon Hypothesis, and Elite Human Capital.

 

Apart from writing booksreviewstravel writing, and sundry blogging, I Tweet at @powerfultakes and run a Substack newsletter.

Comments

  1. Please keep off topic posts to the current Open Thread.

    If you are new to my work, start here.

  2. Maïkl Makfaïl says

    Here in France journalists ( video game or not anyway) are 90% leftists but i have the impression that at least the major reviewers ( Jeux-vidéo.com , gamekult …) are still attached to maintain some appearance of fairness and impartiality. After all France is the country of reason and measure. KCD had good reviews while Fallout 4 and the last Wolfenstein were exterminated by the press while the last far cry received mixed reviews ( if i remember correctly ). And the last star wars was destroyed by all the vidéo game journalists whose i follow the account on twitter.

  3. DXMD was so infested with microtransactions, I managed a full play-through on GMDX difficulty without knowing they were even there. And it wasn`t really about BLM, but general need for the goyim to love and understand™ those with the different skin™(and ugly metal implements sticking out of the skull, dependency on hard to get drug cocktail and various psychotic episodes without it).

    True connoisseur still much prefers original DX with GMDX mod for authentic conspiracy overload. It, after all, predicted Meme War™ and had skullgun©®. It also gave him lemon lime.

  4. Korenchkin says

    original DX

    Yes

    GMDX

    No

  5. Just try it. It does for DX what Brutal Doom did to vanilla Doom, updating to the modern standard without cutting anything and adding useful stuff, making the package a whole lot better.

  6. Korenchkin says
  7. Good luck trying to get newfags hooked on vanilla, brah!

  8. I’ve played Wolfenstein: The New Order (2014) and Wolfenstein: The New Colossus (2017). They’re fine as first-person shooters, but in terms of their stories and characters, they feel like “woke” propaganda. While a game where you fight Nazis can’t be expected to be anything but anti-Nazi, the ideological stringency was still jarring.

    I played Wolfenstein 3D as a kid in the 1990s and to the extent it had any story or ideology, it was just generically pro-American, anti-Nazi and implicitly conservative like say old WW2 movies. In contrast, the new games have retconned the war against Nazis into a conflict between woke, multicultural liberalism and white conservatism. For example, while Blazkowicz, the player character, was a blond, blue-eyed all-American hero just doing his job in the old game, in the new games he is the son of a saintly Jewish mother and an abusive gentile father who fights Nazis together with a team that ticks all the diversity boxes.

    Much of the ideological browbeating is so heavy-handed that it’s comical. Perhaps they feared that the Nazis would look too good otherwise, given that the Nazi-controlled post-WW2 world of the games seems quite nice–orderly, prosperous and technologically advanced. I think the developers of the new games are Swedes, which might explain the extreme cuckedness.

  9. While I think there obviously is an ideological component to this, it is also important to note that all the ‘redpilled’ games are, or seem to be, honestly just better games. KCD was a deep game, historically interesting, and gave me vibes similar to playing Oblivion albeit more grounded. Excluding the sin of being White most people would certainly enjoy the game whereas reviewers have to detract points for this. Same thing with Wolfenstein New Colossus and whatever the one with his two daughters is called. Reviewers must praise the game for the inclusion of hoop earinged, Afro sporting, pregnant black women commando rolling and taking down bad guys (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijIYH2OCeHI) whereas it’s a bit ridiculous for the average person to enjoy.

    I don’t know if there is a similar site as Rotten Tomatoes for video games (excluding metacritic) but you can see the ideological slant when looking at RT’s ‘Top Movies’ of All Time, which are as follows with critic score followed by user score:

    1. Black Panther (2018)
    2. Avengers: Endgame (2019)
    3. Us (2019)
    4. Toy Story 4 (2019)
    5. Mission Impossible: Fallout (2019)
    6. Lady Bird (2017)
    7. The Irishman (2019)
    8. The Wizard of Oz (1939)
    9. Citizen Kane (1941)
    10. BlacKkKlansman (2018)

    Who knew that 8/10 top movies would have been released in a three year period! Luckily for video games it is somewhat harder to push your ideaology because you still need to create a functional game on top of your politics, which it often seems SJWs/the left/whatever you want to call them cannot do.

    Dragon Age: Inquisition and Mass Effect: Andromeda were both astounding technical failures and it is not surprising that Bioware was one of the first aggressively pozzed companies with it’s focus on polyamorous relationships, homosexuality, feminism and the other typical ails. It seems that companies like this fall into the “HR trap” where SJWs in HR hire fellow goodthinkers that have no technical experience. I remember years ago reading Bioware employee histories and such and a lot of the lead designers weren’t really known for anything but of course their twitter bios were full of rainbow flags and the like. So it is no surprise that these type of studios are the ones that lose out in terms of animation and artistic quality from hiring aspiring goodthinking tumblr artists.

    And I find these studios work pretty uncanny valley in terms of facial modelling and animation. Mortal Kombat 11 looks like this, ugly fat faces and totally plastic look, which coincides with their push to remove all bikini armour in the game. F4 definitely had a very ugly look to it as well, and technically it seemed Far Cry 5 was extremely weak in technical aspects compared to how great FC3 was on release.

  10. Europe Europa says

    I can’t see the white/European race remaining pure for much longer into the future. For a start non-whites vastly outnumber whites globally and the number of whites is getting less and less, also in general whites don’t seem to have much opposition to race mixing.

    Race mixing is common in Western countries as is widely known, but even in Russia, native Russians for the most part don’t seem to oppose mixing with Russified non-Slavs and frankly examples of it seem rather common place.

  11. Felix Keverich says

    It will be like Latin America, with pure white elite, and then the lower you go on the social ladder, the darker people become.

  12. The rebooted Wolfenstein series is developed by a Swedish company called Machine Games, whereas the original was made by Id Software. Case in point – Id did Doom 4 back in 2016, which was a really good game free of political references. The sequel, Doom Eternal, comes out next month and I hope it is as good as, if not more so than, Doom 4.

  13. Race mixing is common in Western countries as is widely known, but even in Russia, native Russians for the most part don’t seem to oppose mixing with Russified non-Slavs and frankly examples of it seem rather common place.

    This is not exactly true. At the domestic level, there is a prejudice against “racial mixing”in Russia. If the son of a student tells his parents that he will marry a Korean girl (classmate) Katya Kim, his parents will press him to convince him that he should not marry Katya Kim but instead marry a Slavic blonde Masha Ivanova (and Katya Kim will be pressured by Katya Kim’s parents to marry a Korean).

    If the son – student declares that he will marry a girl from Kongo (who is studying at his University) , it will be a scandal and a tragedy. At the same time, there is no prejudice against mixing with Russified Germans, Finns, etc.

  14. The Rotten Tomato scores are even more divergent, Dr Who has a critic score of 80% plus while the user score is below 20%, similar such patterns exist for the new Star Wars, Ghostbusters, Terminator, etc.

    The gamers may be upset, but they are complaining about the symptoms and not the cause, which is ultimately the jew. Since these cuck gamers will obviously not stand up against the jews, they deserve everything coming to their games, and they have no good reason to complain about it.

  15. If the son – student declares that he will marry a girl from Kongo (who is studying at his University) , it will be a scandal and a tragedy

    I find this hard to believe, the universities in Russia no doubt are big followers of all things post Western (Navalny, mass immigration, homosex, race mixing, etc). I think Karlin once wrote how the types that live in Moscow and St Petersburg and go to universities and earn more than the sovniks/vatniks are liberals. They would probably be ecstatic that they were marrying a sub Saharan.

  16. I find this hard to believe, the universities in Russia no doubt are big followers of all things post Western (Navalny, mass immigration, homosex, race mixing, etc).

    There are three things here:
    1) we are not talking about the student but about the reaction of his parents (who are much more conservative)
    2) in ordinary (not elite) universities in Russia, there are a lot of rednecks
    3) Western worship of the black population causes ridicule even in the most Pro-Western part of the Russian population.

  17. nope.jpg

    They will signal just as much as their western counterparts, talk endless shit about government and consider it a badge of honor to be gently “detained” by OMON at some kind of protest™, but outside of obvious head cases like homos and ecoterrorists, they will then inevitably move to the russian mean.
    Perhaps this is why le horrible dictator Putin contents himself with only a show trial here and there over an especially egregious retard protester™, who is of course the worst enemy of his own protest™.

  18. OT, but aren’t white people treated even worse than the Palestinians? At least the Palestinians have their own territories reserved for them in the West Bank, where they are allowed some amount of self government, are Whites allowed to have territories in the US, Canada or Europe that are reserved solely for genetically white people? And Arab Israelis at least have own their party in the Knesset to advocate for their issues, are White Americans allowed to form a White only party in the US Congress to advocate for issues relating to White people, so by this measure Whites are treated even worse than Palestinians who at least will be given their own self governing rump state. And the Palestinians even get to have their infrastructure costs payed for by the US taxpayer. And the Palestinians once had a deal where they get something like 97 percent of the West Bank but walked out of it.

  19. More OT but I remember there being a Polish party in the German parliament before WW1.

  20. The problem is that every race nationalist has his pet negro exceptions like Twinkie and Daniel Chieh, and then does mental gymnastics about how it is not racism but all about IQ and HDB, and you see how how it is to maintain a logically consistent anti-miscegenation ideology. Someone in stormfront made the very good point that soft White Supremacism is the only way you are really going to mentally inoculate against race mixing, that Whites should not racially mix with other races because all other races are inferior in nature.Once you logically and emotionally accept that all races are equal to each other, but are different, then your emotional and logical resistance to race mixing basically take a hit.

  21. The fat nazi girl going full-bore coalburner was a bit too on the nose, I thought. But as always, Sweden yes!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-LMkG_tV7s

  22. Daniel Chieh says

    I think it is easy to underestimate the sheer, overwhelming victory of wokeness in video games – heavily contributed by portals such as Steam which help influence and control the narrative. While it is easy to make fun of the overt and ridiculous failures such as ME:A, it should be noted that the wokeness language and mythos has promptly eaten into everything: even indie games such as Darkest Dungeon add overt and rather pointless entities such as the “oppressed black doctor’s strongk daughter,” Dwarf Fortress has partnered with Kitfox Games led by a “Tanya X” who proudly advertises that none of their employees is a “”straight white man”, and the usage of the genderless “they” is ubiquitous.

    Almost every game out of the US will follow this narrative: sex will be customization only, if even mentioned(Wayward, FTL, TEM, etc, etc); any comment on conflict will strongly have to avoid any suggestion that “xenophobia” has any value; romance and sexual relationships must be portrayed to be as same-sexpositive and unfettered as possible(Stardew Valley, etc); any portrayal of women must be positive, and increasingly any attractive portrayal of them is to be avoided. In some areas, overt and intense leftism is to be promoted and “problematic language” and individuals who use them are to be punished(Caverns of Qud, etc).

    This isn’t the case outside of the US yet, which still has some rival myths(Japanese games are a good example, though I can’t say I’ll vouch for their creativity in mechanics compared to US indies…). But along with Steam’s curation, its is pretty much beyond a victory for progressive mythos in US gaming, it is just mopping up now.

    Incidentally, as someone who myself was creating content for some pretty popular games, its amazing how much narrative control there is out there from various “volunteer commissars.” I suggested a story based on lifeboat ethics and was immediately shut down as “that is too hostile, no one would want something that’s so mean.” To reveal ever slightly more reactionary preferences results in shutout.

  23. Russian students at elite universities generally look down on racism, homophobia, etc. but this doesn’t translate to them having jungle fever.

  24. Daniel Chieh says

    In practice, if I’m the biggest problem that you have to worry about, then your problems are really quite slim.

  25. I think it is important to point out that diverging reviews from critics and users are highly affected by online-bashing phenomena. For example, The Last Jedi received negative reviews from users but was a commercial success nevertheless, and so was the following Episode IX. The same goes for many of the games referenced. I would say that the increasingly purely money-driven approach of videogame studios to the users base, with mounting micropayments and DLCs ruining the experience are, at least, as much to blame as the ideological polarization of a considerable part of the userbase with respect to the journalistic stablishment.

  26. Remembering the sassy black lady in the annoying commercials, I am not very surprised.

  27. It’s interesting, different people actually have different rationalizations for letting in their pet Negros, such as she’s good in bed, or she’s not pretty but she makes a good mother for my children, or she cooks good native cuisine, or this ethnic group may not be too intelligence, but they are not terribly violent in most circumstances, and they make good low ranked ship crew, or they make ferocious and heroic soldiers, and they paid for their share in blood in my colonial wars even if they are dumb or have a certain tendency for bloodthirstyness in the wrong circumstances, or right ones if you want to terrorize your enemies (this could apply to Hmongs, Harkis, Moroccans, other Maghrebis, and the King’s African Rifles/Force Publique), and anyway I am only letting a few of them and their relatives in. Or this race makes for talented musicians and good football players. Or this race tends to be muscular and good for cheap and harsh physical labor that no one else is willing to do at the wages I am paying. It might surprise you people but different people have different reasons for letting in their favorite pet minorities. Just like people prefer different types of sports cars. So if you want to ban race mixing, you have to ban them all no exceptions for people’s negro preferences. And to be cynical about things, if I were a crypto white nationalist and I wanted to lower support for mass non-white immigration, I would actually only support the mass immigration of the most violent and worthless immigrants like Somalis and Gypsies, or any other nonWhite groups that are even more worthless than them (i.e. the ones with no redeeming values whatsoever, not even a good work ethic or are good at kicking a ball around, even if they are slightly slow witted). In order to ensure that my native White population is mentally and culturally inoculated against the idea of letting in any nonWhites, thus allowing native Whites to only come in contact with the most violent and worthless varieties available.

  28. Blinky Bill says

    You’re fine Daniel, it’s Twinkie I’m worried about. Can you imagine what the creation of more men like this will do to the Russian Federation. It would be destroyed.

    https://youtu.be/BXgWvFd16iI
    https://youtu.be/7Cf9BuOegJQ
    https://youtu.be/SOYkG5VMhp8

  29. I forgot to add the Montagnards to this list. And to be frank, if you are talking about the Turks and Mahgrebis, or even the Congolese, the first generation are perfectly fine as cheap labor, it is the second generation that is the problem, and in this case it is debatable whether this is due to nature of nurture, subSaharan African blacks are not at all unusually violent compared to Irish and Slavs in their own native environment absent of things like competing with other African tribes for scarce resources, and in Abu Dhabi I had a black African wipe the hotel kitchen sink after I used it, and I did not wind up in the hospital afterwards from multiple machete blows.

  30. And the first generation Mahgrebis and Turks, and even Congolese are perfectly fine as cheap labor and act largely civilized, compared to the Poles, it is the second generation that is the problem. And even subSaharan Africans are not unusually violent compared to Southern Slavs and and Irish when these Africans are in their native environment, and not competing with neighboring tribes for scarce resources. And to be frank how much IQ do you need out of someone who wipes your sink, drives you to work, or delivers your pizza anyway? And all things being equal, if I have to deal with grifters anyway, I would prefer to deal with a dumb grifter from Burundi, over a smart grifter from Bangalore or Canton.

  31. Over the past 10 years, game writing jobs have been increasingly taken by the same sort of failed bluehair SJW liberal types that are writing for every clickbait site. Often it seems like they don’t even like games and they definitely don’t like the people who play them.

    I find this situation to be bizarre – game writing is a hobbyist enterprise, this would be like hiring Mike Bloomberg to write op-eds in a gun magazine. And gamers have responded by looking for trusted voices in other outlets like YouTube. But these sites still exist, they still write, they still influence game companies, and they still push their politics. There is absolutely no doubt that games like KCD and Days Gone got worse reviews because of the skin tone of the characters, crap games like Battlefield V were defended by sites because they were sticking it to gamers, and stuff like garbage walking sims with gay black female leads get way kore coverage than deserved.

  32. Korenchkin says

    can’t say I’ll vouch for their creativity in mechanics compared to US indies

    Japan regularly revolutionizes certain genres of video games
    The most recent one I can think of is Dark Souls, which has spawned an industry of copycats (including US Indies)

    its is pretty much beyond a victory for progressive mythos in US gaming

    Too bad it’s not a victory of quality, US giants like Blizzard-Activision have gone down the shitter quality wise, in opposite direction to the level of wokeness
    It is telling that the most successful recent Blizzard product is a remake of the game they released in 2004 (2005 if you count the patches)
    Trying to make lightning strike twice they released a remake of Warcraft 3, a 2001 game, and it is now the lowest rated game in the history of Metacritic, deservedly so in my opinion as they somehow managed to remove a large list of features and make the game uglier and less optimized then it’s 2003 release (rumor has it they outsourced most of it to a Malaysian studio)

    In this sense Eastern Europe is doing quite well, Witcher 3 was a really well polished game (hehe)
    Stalker might be a buggy mess, but at least it allows players to fix it themselves with mods, unlike the endless Orwellian DRM systems that Westerners are relying on out of a fear of piracy
    It’s funny, the systems that are made to prevent piracy end up punishing the people who pay for the games, Watch Dogs was an infamous example, people who paid for the game couldn’t play it because Uplay was/is a buggy piece of shit (Ubisofts diversity commissars are not good programmers as it turns out) meanwhile the pirates who bypassed it got to enjoy the game (not really a prize, the game was really mediocre and terribly optimized)

  33. Daniel Chieh says

    US AAA studios have been pretty insanely terrible as of late. I think XCOM 2 was the last good release I can think of.

    Perhaps the migration of wokemons to indie is just another sign of continuing chaos destruction; after having ruined one aspect of life, they must move on to ruin more.

  34. Eastern Europe has rapidly embraced the wokeness. Expect Cyberpunk 2077 to contain transgenderidm, race mixing, evil whites, good n!ggers – basically the usual narrative that is in every game now.

  35. Daniel Chieh says

    Well, I doubt it’ll work out exactly like that – it is also different people and as such, they will portray things differently. The Witcher had a fairly leftist mythos in its own way as I mentioned before but it also had that overriding cynicism that made it much more acceptable. The same overriding cynicism is a rather EE trait in my experience, so I doubt that’ll be going away anytime soon.

    But to an extent, the progressive mythos is indeed the dominant mythos and it will find its expression until there is a different and more appealing one. Pretty much the only mainstream universe that doesn’t embrace that mythology imo is the War40k universe and it is pretty universally seen as grimdark and incredibly unpleasant.

    Notably even Japanese games and media don’t exactly avoid that myth – much material pays at least mild service to progressive notions(inevitably badass warrior women, unfairness of class structures, the universality of love) – and has been doing so for a long, long time(Macross is at least 1982). Their cultural spin is to simply be overtly hypocritical and completely ignore the consequences of such whenever it gets in the way of what they see as overall beauty.

  36. Only played the 2012 X-COM. Fun mechanics, but I was disappointed by the globalist characters – European flags and black and Arab faces with European accents. Bad enough to get them under the American flag. I don’t see why they can’t give people a choice to pick only civilized peoples, with no blurring of identities.

    Deus Ex: Human Revolution was another older game that I thought was fun, but was injured a bit by PC creep. One thing that I did not like seeing was all those black hookers in China.

    Macross is at least 1982

    I think this is partly a temptation of anime. Once, you start with the premise that you are supposed to have all these visually unique characters, with blue or purple hair, and you are competing against shows with their own designs and hairstyles, there is a temptation to expand the color palette and draw someone with black skin and frizzy hair.

    Japan is coming under increasing negative influence from the West, IMO. More efforts to censor exports (SJWs are afraid of Japan exporting its relatively non-feminist culture.) And even one-size-fits-all Japanese products for the domestic market. I never thought I would see blacks in a Mario game, but they are there in the recent one, dressing conservatively and wearing bowler hats, holding one end of a jump rope, while a white holds the other end.

    It’s curious how China’s marketshare is supposed to be larger than the US, but it doesn’t seem to have a perceptible influence on the Western market, yet. (unlike movies, where there is at least a detectable influence, though I think China needs a better strategy in film). I was hoping that it would serve to at least to help anchor Japan, and prevent SJW influence.

  37. Daniel Chieh says

    I don’t see why they can’t give people a choice to pick only civilized peoples, with no blurring of identities.

    You might be more amused to know that by default, the gender bias for creating XCOM soldiers is 70% female. The main designer said that he looked up actual army ratios, and found it “stupid” and therefore intentionally countersignalled.

    Japan is coming under increasing negative influence from the West, IMO.

    At least in Macross’ case, I think that this was native. It is the central to the narrative, and it was obvious even mildly in the context: the main heroine is Chinese/Japanese in the first Macross and one of the main aces dates a black servicewoman; by Plus, almost every character was mixed(Myung Fang Lone is Chinese/European, Isamu Alva Dyson is Japanese/European, the villain is half-alien, and the only “pureblooded” character of note is a Jewish man with a Chinese citizenship). By Frontier, there isn’t a single nonmixed character afaik and alien genetics are common.

    It’s curious how China’s marketshare is supposed to be larger than the US, but it doesn’t seem to have a perceptible influence on the Western market, yet.

    Well, it is a market that spends a nontrivial amount of time yelling at each other; Japanese players get incredibly irritated at any Chinese mention of Japan as anything as less than positive, and vice versa. Girl’s Frontline, etc are fairly good examples of quality though and are quite popular in Japan.

    Japan has a much better indie scene, as touhou would suggest.

  38. Korenchkin says

    Expect Cyberpunk 2077 to contain transgenderidm, race mixing, evil whites, good n!ggers

    So a dystopia is dystopian?
    Bladerunner predicted everyone in 2019 Los Angeles would live in gigantic commie blocks and speak a mixture of Chinese, German and Japanese
    Pretty close, except it’s commie pods and they speak a mixture of Spanish, Arabic and Ebonics

  39. Daniel Chieh says

    No flying cars.

  40. Korenchkin says

    It’s curious how China’s marketshare is supposed to be larger than the US, but it doesn’t seem to have a perceptible influence on the Western market

    How wrong you are
    The reason there hasn’t been a gay or tranny person in large Hollywood blockbusters is because the CCP would ban it in China
    The recent Star Wars managed to get away with a gay kiss, because it was edited out of the Chinese version

    Movie franchises are often made or unmade by the Chinese market nowadays

  41. Korenchkin says

    I’ve come to terms with the fact that we will never have BR style flying cars
    There’d be a new 9/11 every week

  42. Europe Europa says

    Culturally I don’t get the impression that the Chinese are particularly anti-gay, from what I’ve read it seems that Russians/Slavs are much more overtly anti-gay than the Chinese are.

    I would speculate that the CCP’s aversion to homosexuality, etc is based on late 18th/early 19th century European cultural values derived from Marxist texts that is not really authentically Chinese.

  43. Daniel Chieh says

    I would speculate that the CCP’s aversion to homosexuality, etc is based on late 18th/early 19th century European cultural values derived from Marxist texts that is not really authentically Chinese.

    No? There’s not much of a homosexual/queer tradition in Chinese culture. There’s arguably a more extensive queer subculture in Japanese history with pederasty, but even so, it hardly has the dominance of American proliferation of homosexuality as a norm.

    Russians are much more into signaling, yes, and the masculinity culture but that’s separate from tolerance of homosexuality itself. It’s not really beneficial for the Chinese government to embrace values beyond tolerance of homosexuality, and the government never does anything that isn’t good for itself. Homosexuals are a power bloc that don’t play well with the rest of them.

    Traditional Chinese culture emphasizes heavily on the unit of the family, and its production of children. Things that got in its way, or individuals who did not “do their duty” were obviously deplored.

    Another way of seeing it is that Asians are the most feminized of all men racially; historically they maintained power and distinction through legal ownership of women rather than displays of masculinity. This extends to how homosexuality is to be treated – through a kind of group shunning rather than individualistic putdown or browbeating.

  44. You might be more amused to know that by default, the gender bias for creating XCOM soldiers is 70% female.

    That is funny. Though, I find women much less obnoxious than racial diversity, since there is always the question of sex appeal. Some people might enjoy controlling a harem with guns like Gadaffi, as Girl’s Frontline seems to suggest.

    With movies, it is murkier. It generally doesn’t work well as live action, IMO, where the average actress doesn’t have much of a background in acrobatics or martial arts, to help one suspend disbelief by creating a spectacle, like Michelle Yu could in her prime. And it also probably requires a general stylization of action that seems to be in decline, even within China.

    Alien miscegenation is a really weird phenomenon. Perhaps, the epitome of Bio-Leninism? Or is some of it just a play on old mythology of elf queens? I don’t know. I was thinking it was primarily a Western thing (Star Trek, for instance), but I see it is a big theme in Japan.

  45. I understand Dream of the Red Chamber has homosexual storylines, though I have not read it. It seems to be heavily promoted, as the historical Chinese novel to read, though I don’t know whether it is so in China, or only in the West.

  46. Daniel Chieh says

    Alien miscegenation is a really weird phenomenon. Perhaps, the epitome of Bio-Leninism? Or is some of it just a play on old mythology of elf queens

    A bit of both, but its obvious reference to “love and peace as the solution.” Macross was overall was in the hippie tradition, and to some extent maintains that, long after the West has gone to more insane forms of leftism:

    After her humiliation, Milia seeks revenge on whoever it was that did so. She realizes that it is Max after he beats her at an arcade. Both being ace pilots, the crowd gather around. Max insists she gives something in return for losing; saying she doesn’t have a phone, she invites him to the park. Max dodges as she attempts to stab him, Milia cries and they fall in love. They were the first inter-species couple in history. Even worse, their species were at war with each other at the time. Nevertheless, they married & showed everyone how earthlings & Zentradi can live together in peace. The marriage of Max and Milia was one of the first steps towards peace between the humans and the Zentradi.

    https://macross.fandom.com/wiki/Milia_Fallyna_Jenius

    I understand Dream of the Red Chamber has homosexual storylines, though I have not read it.

    I’m not familiar with it but skimming it shows that it specifically indicates criticisms of Confucian society, so in itself, it was a work of countersignaling the dominant ethos. I have a theory that male homosexuality, at least traditionally, was heavily associated with tight male clannishness and often typical of warlike societies. Past the early dynasties, despite some efforts, China never quite succeeded in creating a warrior caste and thus, the entire romance associated with deep intimacy between men such as between King Ludwig II and Wagner or the idolation of the masculine form in Greece(and I do believe, Ludwig as well).

  47. I don’t dispute that China has some influence in movies. Some people believe that they are to blame for the Midi-chlorians in Star Wars. And they have propped up some bombs like Transformers.

    And I am not necessarily saying the influence has been wholly negative. I think it is conceivable that they have had positive influence too, perhaps, more on the average, but it is harder to say because the issue of edits.

    But my contention is that, with a good strategy, China ought to be eating Hollywood’s lunch. I will particularly single out Disney, which is supposed to produce family films, but instead inserts anticivilizational messages. China could capture the family market, IMO.

  48. prime noticer says

    a similar thing happened in movies, although it started in earnest around 2011 i would say. or at least there came to be a big divergence between what the academy thought about films versus the public. i’m not sure when movie reviewer opinion began to diverge from public opinion by as big of a margin, but it got there eventually and is there today.

    not a big movie guy, and watch very little television, but i noticed ‘black washing’ even in the 80s, although it was less obvious at the time, and much more parsimonious – that’s when only 1 in 3 scientists or computer geniuses in movies and shows were african. but i didn’t pick up on the obviousness of that trend until the late 90s, when it started to be half of them. today it’s most of them. watched a few youtube videos of Westworld, which had some interesting ideas, all of which were ruined when it was revealed the true, secret genius behind the robots was some random blackish mulatto guy. yeah, ok. almost as stupid as The Matrix and the demographics of the resistance.

    my brother watched some episodes of The Witcher when i was at my old house for the holidays this year, and i noticed how black washed the show was.

    even the Smithsonian did a recent series called Europe’s Last Warrior Kings, and in the episode about 1066 and William the Conqueror, they showed one of his main guys as some random african. total bullshit.

  49. My experience has been that all Asian countries are tolerant of gays and trans people to a greater degree than Christian or Muslim countries. Its just not a serious issue there. It isn’t promoted like it is in woke culture, but it isn’t a big deal.

  50. Thorfinnsson says

    This is actually an optimistic take.

    Unfortunately, the upper classes are not likely to remain uniformly white. There will be mixing with orientals, hindus, jews, and even igbos. This process has already begun in the Anglosphere, and outside the Anglosphere elite mixing with Jewry is common in France and your own country.

  51. prime noticer says

    by the way is Bobby Kotick (Bobby Kotick)? that would explain a lot.

    Blizzard is totally done.

  52. I don’t know, if it is as objectionable, if they at least look human.

    Star Trek did some really groan-inducing things, like explaining that a Vulcan has green blood (like a mollusk?) and that Klingons have two hearts and a secondary spinal chord, or certain races have ESP.

    It is kind of funny when you think of it because Vulcans and Romulans have noticeable physical differences even though they split from the same population within a fairly short timeframe.

    obvious reference to “love and peace as the solution.

    Long ago, I noticed a similar theme in HK movies. For instance, the movie Rumble in the Bronx. IIRC, Jackie Chan is targeted by some punks in the beginning. They seem quite violent, like they are trying to kill him, but at the end, they are all friends, which seemed quite odd to me, when I originally saw it.

    Maybe, it is an Eastern theme? I never noticed the parallel in Japan. Quite fascinating to contemplate, if it is a re-occurring cultural theme.

    I suppose there might be Hollywood examples, like Jaws in James Bond, but I think Hollywood has a strong tendency to create irredeemably evil villains, as a means of virtue-signaling.

  53. Korenchkin says

    Yes
    Also, Jeff Kaplan, the guy who runs the Overwatch team
    No shock that the Overwatch team pushes the Globo Homo nonsense the hardest
    The money and leadership behind American Video Games is mostly Jewish, while the programmers are usually goys

  54. Korenchkin says

    https://i.imgur.com/kfWkJgV.png

    World of Warcraft, one of the most successful games of all time, basically died during the great awokening
    After the 2015 disaster they stopped reporting the numbers to hide how hard it was tanking

  55. I’d like to play a super-based geopolitical game about the spread of poz and the population explosion in Africa, but I won’t hold my breath for someone to make it.

    That is part of the problem: there are various disincentives for counter-signaling, from the threat of de-personing, to platform bans, to possibly even criminal charges.

    The result is that there is no balance. No equal and opposite message, even on the indie level. All you get is a few games without a political message, or many ones in a spectrum of poz.

  56. It is very obvious that blackwashing is anti-White animus, and that’s why they have to come down hard on those that don’t like it.

    But I think it is worthwhile in comparison to look at perceptions of ‘Black’ movies. There have always been Black movies that as far as I can tell Whites didn’t care so much about. Look at Dolemite is My Name that came out recently which was an all Black (or close enough) film that existed in vein of other Black movies. I didn’t see Whites protesting Blacks having their own movie, nor did it seem anyone largely cared for Black remakes of Nutty Proffessor or Dr Dolittle. Perhaps this is because in the majority of these movies it is Black men with Black girlfriends/wives who have Black children. A perfect separation of two different people having their own spaces. But now Blacks get to have films that are theirs while Blacks also get to be the token partner of Whites in their own films. Marriage Story has the Wife’s sister married to a Black with little mutt kids running around, which is of course the same thing from movies to KFC ads.

    Black Panther, as a recent example, was largely arbitrary in terms of Blacks vs Whites in film. If not for fans/corporate shilling from Marvel that it was the greatest film ever, simply because it’s a superhero film AND Black it probably would have been passed over, as it was extremely mediocre. But what White people were saying it shouldn’t exist? Probably minimal. So it seems to be a fairly redundent point to imply that Blacks have never had their own films or have been excluded from the industry when they have enjoyed plenty of success, perhaps the fact that they haven’t all become billionaires is due to the idiosyncroncies of Black movies instead of the lack of them.

    So looking at this all it seems pretty clear to me that #OscarsSoWhite and “How come Geralt isn’t Black?” tier commentary on films is just agitation from fellow-whites and not from Blacks themselves. Do Blacks care about the Witcher, Westworld and European history? Thoroughly doubt it, give Blacks their own TV shows and the create shows like Empire. Before hyper-woke agitation I’m sure they were moderately happy with the way things were going, but now the race grifters like John Boyega from Star Wars see their meal ticket as acting super Black and being in your face about it.

  57. Daniel Chieh says

    Honestly, I’d love a game or any other recent media that makes this one rather prosaic observation of modern “liberal democracies” and their insistence that everyone play by their tune. Ironically, it comes from Star Trek, usually the standard-bearer for such sentiments – but DS9 was a rare moment of self-awareness.

    Why is the Federation so obsessed with the Maquis? We’ve never harmed you. And yet we’re constantly arrested and charged with terrorism. Starships chase us through the Badlands and our supporters are harassed and ridiculed. Why?

    Because we’ve left the Federation, and that’s the one thing you can’t accept. Nobody leaves paradise. Everyone should want to be in the Federation. Hell, you even want the Cardassians to join. You’re only sending them replicators because one day they can take their ‘rightful place’ on the Federation Council. You know, in some ways you’re even worse than the Borg. At least they tell you about their plans for assimilation. You’re more insidious. You assimilate people and they don’t even know it.”

  58. Felix Keverich says

    Hey, Thorfinnsson! How is your TSLA short doing? 🙂

    I never read your original post (predicting Tesla’s downfall), but I would like to hear an explanation now as to what the hell is going on.

  59. Divine Right says

    The same polarization can be observed in review vs. critic scores for television shows and movies within the same franchise:

    Rotten Tomatoes, critic vs. fan difference.

    Star Trek

    TOS (1966). 80 / 88 Difference: 8
    TNG (1987): 89 / 89 Difference: 0
    DS9 (1993): 90 / 86 Difference: 4
    Voyager (1995): 77 / 75 Difference: 2
    Enterprise (2001): 50 / 76 Difference: 26
    Discovery (2017): (Season 1) 83 /51 Difference: 32; (Season 2) 83 / 36 Difference: 47
    Picard (2020): 90 / 77 Difference: 13*

    *Note: It should be noted that RT has gotten fishy with user reviews since the premiere of Discovery. There are many examples, including freezing user review scores on high-budget blockbusters like Star Wars Rise of Skywalker for days. They’ve also instituted a “verified” user review score system that allows companies to game the system for positive reviews, although that seems to affect movies more than television shows. There is also a bias in the numbers: Star Trek shows prior to Discovery were more widely available on cable television whereas the newer shows are only available on a fairly new streaming service that far fewer people have elected to purchase.

    *Note: There is an inflection point around the time of Enterprise. Critics began hating on the show while audiences stuck with it. Enterprise featured a white-male lead and was mostly devoid of modern woke politics. After, the franchise when woke with Discovery (SJW female lead, showrunners publicly proclaiming Klingons to be akin to xenophobic Trump voters), critics started heaping praise on it while audiences scorned it. As for Picard, it’s too early to know. General feeling is that it’s better than Discovery but the show doesn’t really feel like Star Trek. I happen to agree from what I’ve seen.

    ===================
    Dr. Who /nuWho

    Series 1 (2005). 80 / 86 Difference: 6

    *Note: I’m going to skip ahead to the point where significant numbers of user reviews became available. Sample sizes seem too small for this show so far back. However, between the two periods both critics and audiences received these shows positively; anecdotally, this sentiment seems justified by Dr. Who’s generally positive reception, including gaining a noticeably large American following – impressive feat.

    Series 7 (2012). 100 / 83 Difference: 17

    *Note: well-received despite the difference, so this does not necessarily represent critic and audience divergence.

    Series 8 (2014). 88 / 79 Difference: 9
    Series 9 (2015). 90 / 82 Difference: 8
    Series 10 (2017). 88 / 68 Difference: 20

    *Note: Series 10 is poorly received by the audience; goes woke at this point / TDS; race-swaps the female lead to an African; inserts feminist jokes, degrades male viewers repeatedly.

    Series 11 (2018). 90 / 20 Difference: 70

    *Note: Swaps long-time male lead with female lead; extreme political correctness inserted; showrunner removes traditional Christmas special and replaces it with a secular New Years special, lies about the reason (he can’t think of anything to write).

    Series 12 (2019). 91 / 16 Difference: 75

    *Note: same female lead; lots more wokeness; RT accused of deleting user reviews.

    ====================
    Ghostbusters

    Ghostbusters (1984). 97 / 88 Difference: 9
    Ghostbusters II (1989). 53 / 61 Difference: 8
    Ghostbusters (2016). 74 / 50 Difference: 24

    *Note: 2016 gender-swapped all the male characters and turned the property into a chick flick; the studio compensated by loading the film with special effects and an unnecessarily high production budget, perhaps thinking that would make up for the cast change. It lost Sony around $75 million.

    *Lots more examples.

  60. Divine Right says

    There was also an episode where the Bajorans considered the asylum request of poor alien immigrants and rejected it; the newer Picard show is all about damning the Federation for not swamping itself with Romulan migrants fleeing misfortune. The stated reasons in DS9 are almost the kind of thing you’d read on this website. Also, the show’s lead once scolds his child when he sneers at the backwardness of Bajoran superstitious beliefs (modeled on evangelical Christians / Jews); just because they believe differently doesn’t make them wrong. The show’s Ferengi bar owner employs scantily-clad women and demands sexual favors (IIRC) from them as part of the employment contract; he also steals a portion of their tips, hates unions, is openly misogynistic — demands his mother stay home and not work or wear clothes, berates humans on racial grounds … but he’s still a beloved character with an occasional heart of gold — also learns to respect others as the show goes on. The military superpower Dominion is xenophobic and evil, but they are also somewhat justified in their mindset as depicted by the show’s various treacherous aliens. The Klingon Worf is an honorable warrior whom the audience looked up to and admired, not a cheap MAGA spoof. There’s even an episode where the black lead character learns to let go of racial grievances from an unjust, racist 20th century America and just have fun to save a friend. etc etc etc. Tell me again how Star Trek was always SJW. Whatever that show once was, it is not that now and it probably never will be again. That show was basically an optimistic liberal male normie’s version of a utopian future. The newer properties are written by nihilists with extremist grievance politics. Their self-loathing often comes through in painfully uncomfortable ways.

  61. Well the Qing did criminalize and punish sodomy.

  62. anonymous coward says

    Eastern Europe has rapidly embraced the wokeness. Expect Cyberpunk 2077 to contain transgenderidm, race mixing, evil whites, good n!ggers – basically the usual narrative that is in every game now.

    Of course I grew out of manchild vidya several decades ago, but looking at what my kids play, I see that the idea of “video game story” is itself a quaint anachronism. Kids these days play free-to-play grinding games on the phone or tablet, fully embracing the grind and dark monetization patterns. For one, they feel that the grinding/upgrade treadmill is “serious work”, sorta like playing pretend at adult life. For two, the idea of a game that has an ending upsets them; for example, War Robots was released 6 years ago and still going strong, and kids these days like the idea that their game is ‘forever’.

    P.S. Vidya to Gen X is like TV to boomers. Kids will laugh at you and your video game collection; cringier than dadrock with their Pink Floyd and their JFK memories.

  63. anonymous coward says

    Well the Qing did criminalize and punish sodomy.

    Literally every nation in the history of mankind with a functioning central government criminalized and punished sodomy.

    (Connect the dots as to the state of the West today.)

  64. Daniel Chieh says

    No.

    Mobile games are a thing but the overall gaming industry is still many billions of dollars, most which have endings and the weird little rambles of “kids these days” is pretty hilarious. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice shipped over 4 million copies and it very much has an ending, just to throw away one name right away. That was last year, by the way, on the notion of “kids.”

    https://www.pcgamesn.com/sekiro-shadows-die-twice/sekiro-sales

    I could also tick off Nier Automata, Last of Us, and of course the various Witcher games; even a typical online free to play monetization model such as League of Legends(easily one of the most successful examples of that type) has a pretty extensive lore component and mobile games such as Girl’s Front Line or Honkai Impact have clear “season arcs” plotlines and endings with “nontrivial” efforts at animation, to put it lightly.

    https://youtu.be/8dmvNGxYPCU

    Once again, you do feel the need to embrace the title of being forever wrong.

  65. anonymous coward says

    Are you even literate? Read my comment again.

    Vidya to 2020 is as dadrock is to 1990.

    Of course the video game industry is dominated by adults and the money they can freely spend. 10 year old kids are not making bank for the video game studios, at least not here and now in 2020.

    It’s also irrelevant. In 20 years when today’s 10 year old kids are 30, they aren’t going to remember ‘the Witcher’, they’re gonna be waxing nostalgic about how they used to play Brawl Stars with their classmates.

    Video games as a kind of vicarious cinema is dead.

    You people complaining about ‘naggers in my vidya’ is like boomer ranting about all that rap on television these days.

  66. Your entire argument is irrelevant. The point is that there are going to be ever more niggers being shoved down peoples throats in whatever new medium that exists in the future.

  67. Daniel Chieh says

    Of course the video game industry is dominated by adults and the money they can freely spend. 10 year old kids are not making bank for the video game studios, at least not here and now in 2020.

    And like any sensible company or individual, the creators want to lose money and thus do not create for their most profitable market.

    ???.

    Also adolescent experiences(which likely will be the most serious exposure to “influence” from media) will be of minimal importance?

    ???

    And it is dead as a storytelling medium because? It has a “dark monetization model?” Even a dark monetization model tells a story and models a kind of behavior in itself. But as I noted – those free to play games themselves actually still engage in the vicarious storytelling model.

    I do agree that the “full cinematic” and triple AAA games seems like it’ll be in the decline and budgets staying around 30 million or less will probably be more realistic than 50 million or 100 million budget games. But storytelling doesn’t necessitate ridiculous Hollywood level of spending(and it should be noted that those kinds of budgets are comparable to movie creation in general).

    It will likely remain an important component in media and “opinion creation” in the future.

  68. Picard show is even more illustrative if you consider that only the home world of romulans is destroyed, but not all the other romulan systems where refugees could theoretically go.

  69. Lars Porsena says

    I was watching this last night and it makes good points.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sFrG02xpAw

    The SJW entry point probably relates to that. It’s eased by corporatization and the fact that the MBA’s now running the developers parent corporations don’t care about games and don’t understand gamer culture, and the fact that SJWs norms are their cultural norms but with less neuroticism.

    Money ruins everything. What’s happened to gaming now that is worth billions of dollars is similar to what’s happened to sports, or what recording studios did to music.

  70. Lars Porsena says

    If a movie or video game has a cost of $100M to make, how much of that is spent on marketing and advertising? $70M?

  71. anonymous coward says

    There will be no mediums (media) in the future. Niggers and civilization decay preclude it.

  72. anonymous coward says

    Let me rephrase my train of thought.

    TV for boomers was Serious Business. It was a source of truth and a shared communal experience. Being shown on TV meant you won the lottery of life, the best day of your life.

    Fast forward to today. Who even watches TV today? I’m guessing dumb boomers too spaced out to do something other than roleplay a vegetable.

    In 30 years video games will suffer the same fate. Vidya may be serious business to you, but in 30 years your grandkids will laugh at gramps while he mashes his stupid console buttons and drools.

    All “popular culture” is mental junk food, meant to rot your brain and get you addicted. No reason to seriously discuss the latest generation’s poison of choice. It will be gone in 30 years anyways.

  73. Daniel Chieh says

    According to Venture Beat, a Triple A game studio spends 75% to 100% of its budget on marketing and advertising. So I guess we can estimate that a 100 million budgeted game would spend 40 or 50 million on its budget on advertising and marketing. Apparently for mobile games, the ratio can estimated to as high as 80 to 90 percent of the total budget.

    Its pretty ridiculous.

  74. Daniel Chieh says

    No reason to seriously discuss the latest generation’s poison of choice. It will be gone in 30 years anyways.

    Good for you. For the rest of us, we still need to exist in a reality with other people and their opinions(informed or otherwise) that will inevitably affect the world that we reside in, including things that make it both more or less pleasant for us.

  75. Divine Right says

    Something that further illustrates the point of increasing cultural polarization in video games is the relative difference in character attractiveness, male vs. female.

    Mass Effect: Andromeda

    Male / female lead character compared with human model:
    https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-17ffeaf8cf79066eb1b6c7f975556f2a

    ===================
    *Or in the same female character over successive iterations of the property

    Halo

    Halo 3 (2007) Cortana:
    http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20070922064708/halo/images/5/5b/Cortana_Halo_3.jpg

    Halo 4 (2012) Cortana:
    https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DOxiDgO_kRo/UyISUqf0G7I/AAAAAAAArao/kBO1FjKB5KY/s1600/Cortana-in-Halo-4-HD-Wallpaper.jpg

    Halo 5 (2015) Cortana:

    *This Cortana is both wearing clothes and has been made less attractive in the face, a common theme with wokeness.

    https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Cz2O4gxDpyw/maxresdefault.jpg

    Other examples: Mortal Kombat 8 female characters vs. Mortal Kombat 11 female characters; Dragon Age; Tomb Raider.

    Also, there is the trope of female characters in successive iterations of the same franchise (ex: Mass Effect) being portrayed with increasingly fewer feminine features and progressively more overt masculine characteristics, including body type, gait, and hair style –- the half-shaved head haircut, for example (straight men don’t find that attractive, but it was common in LGBT circles at that time). This phenomenon is also seen in American comic books from 2012 – present. For instance, Captain Marvel has a short, unattractive haircut in the comics. The sales numbers are pretty low; most comic book buyers are male.

    *Aside: Mass Effect Andromeda was also marred with a controversy upon initial release where it was difficult, if not nearly impossible, to create a white character. I believe this had to be patched. Considering the cultural zeitgeist at the time, it’s hard to believe this wasn’t deliberate, so the idea of them purposely “uglifying” the female characters seems possible, aside from whatever animation difficulties they experienced in production. “Default white characters” has been a controversy on SJW forums for the last several years.

  76. Divine Right says

    Perhaps a more obvious example is the character of Lara Croft from the Tomb Raider series. At the beginning of the 3D console era, she was popular among male teens and young men. There was, of course, the typical faux feminist outrage from certain quarters, but it was ignored by society for the most part. I remember one example of a Canadian teen drama where the feminist sister of the normie brother who likes the character gets offended. The episode ends with the girl basically being told to get over it while she learns to embrace the character for herself. But that was then. This is now. Notice how the character becomes more heavily dressed as we enter The Great Awokening:

    Lara Croft, Tomb Raider II (1998), PC Cover Art:
    https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/VOMAAOSwUchZ5kCs/s-l300.jpg

    Lara Croft, Tomb Raider: Legend (2006), Gameplay Image:
    https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-jYQg9Ac-2Fc/TYf59PNwXuI/AAAAAAAAACs/HxeYWIAq22s/s1600/laracroft.jpg

    Lara Croft, Tomb Raider (2013):

    *The character is now wearing pants.
    http://www.airdecker.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/tomb-raider-2013.jpg

    Lara Croft, Rise of the Tomb Raider (2015):

    *Further dressed up for larger segments of the game.
    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/29/Rise_of_the_Tomb_Raider.jpg

    *When cold weather is not an excuse.
    https://icdn7.digitaltrends.com/image/rise-of-the-tomb-raider-0022-1500×844.jpg

    Lara Croft, Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2019):

    The new Lara Croft. My understanding is that she changes clothes throughout, but only rarely (if at all) does she appear as she did in the original games. Part of the reason she had duel handguns was so that she didn’t have to wield large, obscuring rifles; there was a definite sex appeal angle. Now that obscuring the character isn’t a concern …

    https://i.ytimg.com/vi/9V8raRHjUT0/maxresdefault.jpg

    Result: the character has lost much of her previous cultural cache with these newer games, although they are all graphically and technically far superior to the original PlayStation versions.

    It’s funny thinking back how feminists got upset over the character’s original voluptuous depiction (and were ignored by devs – there’s a lesson in that). Now, the only versions of these games I see girls on Twitch playing are the older ones, up through Legend. It’s almost as if most girls never really had a problem with the original Lara Croft in the first place. Was criticism the result of fringe political actors presuming to speak for a demographic they know nothing about?

  77. Thorfinnsson says

    I had the good luck to get out of it before the surge, so I’m all right.

    I’ll discuss Tesla in the next open thread.

  78. RadicalCenter says

    Make that Spanish, Chinese, some more Spanish, a little Tagalog and Korean, and did I mention Spanish. But there’s still a pleasing variety: Mexican Spanish, Squatemalan Spanish, Salvadoran Spanish, and even more!

  79. Money ruins everything

    No it was not money, the money was there for some time now. It was the jews that correctly noticed that games were not part of their control of the narrative they push, thus they decided to take over.

    jews ruin everything.

  80. anonymous coward says

    Complaining that someone put naggers in your vidya is like complaining that someone put strychnine in your crystal meth.

    Yes, the product is certainly adulterated, but nobody gives a damn because all it accomplishes is the user reaching his destination faster.

    Your nostalgic emotional reaction to video games (due to being raised by them in childhood) is as ridiculous as boomer worship of their shitty boy band. (Starts with a ‘B’, ends with a ‘eatles’.)

  81. And your generation has come-up with any better pop-music geniuses? 🙂

    https://youtu.be/8EJ3zbKTWQ8

    Yum, yum, yum ??

  82. At least the 90s had the Corrs, Backstreet Boys, Leann Rimes, Shania Twain, and Celine Dion, and whatever you say about their politics, you have to concede that at least they can sing.

  83. re: Polarization

    Scifi Utopia or Dystopia …. no more eye rolls, fleeting smirks, lifting of an eye brow at the work place ,,,

    U.S. Army Funds ‘Fully Automated Microaggression Detector’ to ‘Catch Implicit Bias’ In The Workplace

    From NorthEastern.edu, “Could a smart device catch implicit bias in the workplace?”:

    But what if a smart device, similar to the Amazon Alexa, could tell when your boss inadvertently left a female colleague out of an important decision, or made her feel that her perspective wasn’t valued?

    This device doesn’t yet exist, but Northeastern associate professors Christoph Riedl and Brooke Foucault Welles are preparing to embark on a three-year project that could yield such a gadget.

    http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=61154
    https://news.northeastern.edu/2020/01/29/how-about-a-smart-device-that-could-catch-implicit-bias-in-the-workplace/

    hmm … only the SEEK module initially … will the DESTROY functionalities follow?
    or a CATCH and RE-EDUCATE unit?

  84. Daniel Chieh says

    Incorrect on all counts as usual.

  85. I thought of an interesting idea, related to the Great Awokening: how many of these foreign tweet storms start off in English?

    Some outrage cascade takes off in a non-Anglo country, about something not-PC that happened in that country, and the original tweet that set the whole thing off is in a different language – English. Maybe started by a ethnic native, with ties to America (college), or an expat.

    Seems to have been the case recently in Japan, as the Red Cross were using a large-breasted anime character to solicit blood donations. The first tweet was in English.

  86. Divine Right says

    That controversy was started by a white man from Washington State who had moved to Japan, if I recall — something like that anyway. He implied the Japanese were immoral for using the character and invoked #metoo.

  87. If your reaction to this is shitty boy band, you’re a fuckin’ retard

  88. another anon says

    See? The left is international, the left knows that the world is one, and are pushing their agenda worldwide, unlike the parochial right.
    Can you imagine NRA activist moving to Japan and fighting there for right to keep and bear arms, with full support of American right wing media?
    This is why the left is winning and the right is losing.

  89. Korenchkin says

    Guys, why discuss music when 90% of music is samey trash? 😮
    I am very intelligent! 😉

  90. Korenchkin says

    Can you imagine a Russian firearms activist moving to the US and fighting there for the right to keep and bear arms? Crazy stuff right!
    Imagine if she was also a redhead!
    D:

  91. Daniel Chieh says

    Iowa cacasus looks real winning to me. The left is discovering the inefficiencies of scale but due to their innate philosophy, fundamentally cannot help but plunge deeper into it.

    Right wing thought has its weakness in the modern world but the more the left spins into insanity, including engaging in pointless global spats which it ultimately lacks the capital to succeed in once pappy Murica retreats from its international role, the sooner globohomo will self destruct to its innate contradictions.

  92. another anon says

    Iowa cacasus looks real winning to me.

    Elections in US were always dirty affairs.

    Iowa is nothingburger compared to what happened in Florida in 2000. Remember hanging chads?
    Remember the left just watching, being unable to stop the recount?
    Remeber 537 senile Florida men and women deciding the fate of the world?

    Can you imagine a Russian firearms activist moving to the US and fighting there for the right to keep and bear arms? Crazy stuff right!
    Imagine if she was also a redhead!

    Yea, I remember her too 😉

    Not my example, she would be as if Japanese activist went to US – or, even better, young enthusiastic communist in the 1930’s went to USSR to help build socialism.
    Anyway, her fate exactly proves my point.
    There was no interest in her case in the American gun community. There was no NRA campaign to help her. There was no million men marching with assault rifles on Washington to free her.
    She saw American gun owners as her brothers. They, if they knew about her at all, saw her as dirty communist animal.

  93. Daniel Chieh says

    Iowa is nothingburger compared to what happened in Florida in 2000. Remember hanging chads?
    Remember the left just watching, being unable to stop the recount?

    Not really the same thing – but even if it was, at least the systemic corruption in your scenario worked in the way that it was supposed to – to help themselves. Iowa is just random self-destruction, something which is increasingly common with leftist dominated organizations.

    Leftist organizations believe in a number of completely nonsensical things(though in all fairness, right-leaning organizations do as well; such is the way of humanity). And so long as a there was a significant amount of accepted hypocrisy so that organizations would still operate, both of them operated within function. This increasingly isn’t the case with the left, which is spiraling off into honest, genuine madness and virtue signaling that prevents them from functioning.

    Leftism behaves in almost every day as a virus – it creates very little, but it corrupts and parasitically overtakes many things very efficiently. The parasiticism strategy is not unlimited in its capability, however.

  94. I wonder if he is gay, or just make a display to try to attract women.

    At any rate, they should revoke his visa, and ban him from any kind of re-entry, if he is still there.

  95. jbwilson24 says

    ” subSaharan African blacks are not at all unusually violent compared to Irish and Slavs in their own native environment absent of things like competing with other African tribes for scarce resources”

    WTF does that word salad mean?

    Most resources are scarce, you fool. Particularly in a continent where women pop out 7 kids each.

    Where is this magic fantasyland where there is no resource competition?

    Blacks in welfare states (e.g., Sweden) are markedly more violent than Irish.

    You aren’t smart enough to be commenting here.