Yet you're reacting in the manner you are to the choice they made which is fundamentally the same, saying the choice is invalid because of what it happened to be. So then the conclusion is that any predefined protagonist is wrong and a shift in predefined protagonists simply moves the problem. Which is absurd.
I've been lazing around and reading the discussion as I believe that esserius is more eloquent than I am and able to say what I would wish to in a more succinct way that doesn't feel perfunctory, which is my problem.
That's my problem. I don't know how to talk to people, really. What I can do, however, is spot when something is disingenuous or manipulative. This was indeed putting words in esserius's mouth as he was talking about exclusionary. Whereas, unfortunately, you've been playing what I call semantics bingo. If a person spends their entire argument hung up on semantics, I feel inclined to think they may not have an argument in the first place.
Semantics is what you do when you don't have an argument, basically.
Esserius has been talking with you in good faith, which is what I initially did. I have to raise caution at this, though, because this is where it steps into territory that needs to be highlighted. This is, basically, silliness. You called it absurd, because it certainly, indubitably
is absurd.
But you're the one saying the absurd thing, that has no bearing on the current discussion at hand.
So I'm just wondering, here... What's the angle? Why argue without an argument? I'm really not a fan of semantics bingo.
If semantics bingo is happening, there's usually an angle.
So, here's what I think: You're using semantics to cover up a deep-seated belief that you don't think that the exclusionary attitudes of video games should be challenged. So I'll put it that way.
That's what the discussion should be about.
There are exclusionary, dismissive attitudes afoot in video games. Such as perverted cameras, mistreatment of ethnicities, and even hate speech in some cases (the treatment of autistic people in Dreamfall Chapters et al, as I've brought up elsewhere on this forum).
Do you not believe that there are exclusionary attitudes involved in video game development?
If you do believe that they exist, why try to obfuscate that with semantics-based arguments?
If you don't believe that, how do you respond to the lack of reasonable coverage of women, minorities, and the disabled in video games? That it's a 'poor medium' doesn't cut it as an argument, which I pointed out prior, as that argument didn't fly with films when it was brought up decades ago just as it doesn't fly with video games.
I think there's a simpler truth, here.
You don't want to be taken out of your comfort zone. You're protecting it. I think that's understandable. I see that behaviour from people who seem to have a lack of effective empathy, who can only rely on cognitive empathy to learn the kind of unfair situations other people experience.
If you're not relying on effective empathy, if you can't see things from the other side, you're going to perceive this as us trying to take something from you. In this case, your comfort zone. I'm not going to beat around the bush, here. I learned the folly of that when debating the Alt-Right in the past. It's important to be upfront and challenge things as I see them.
The fact is is that you are relying on semantics bingo and this argument will just go around and around and around ad nauseum. We'll be tossing definitions back and forth because this is basically a filibuster rather than a genuinely respectful discussion.
I don't like that.
The benefit of the doubt really ends with semantics bingo.
And if I'm wrong, which I'm completely open to, then why are you relying on semantics to sustain a faux argument? The fact is is that esserius has been talking about exclusionary, dismissive behaviour in video games development and it's really manipulative to twist that into "
everything is invalid, there are no right answers."
Why do that?
As I said, I've spent a long while talking with groups like the Alt-Right and I've become a bit familiar with certain debate tactics. Including semantics bingo. So I had to step in here and say something. Sorry if I'm stepping on anyone's toes.