As a black person
I wish you would assume that people are telling you to be offended by things, because no one told you to be offended by things.
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Detroit: Become Human - The Worst Race Allegory [Mother's Basement]
- Thread starter Don Fluffles
- Start date
I wish you would assume that people are telling you to be offended by things, because no one told you to be offended by things.
I enjoyed this game way more before it started to heavy hand issues like this. Honestly the last like 40 percent of the game made me cringe a whole lot, there was no nuance and subtlety. I enjoyed it when I turned my brain off though.
"Your art can't draw on real history especially real history that is this recent and this currently relevant without saying something about that history and other history like it."
As a black person, no one is telling you to be offended, what they are telling you however, is to think more critically about the media you consume. Come up with your own conclusion after the fact.
I overall liked the game, but Jeff isn't wrong here. The references to the Civil Rights movement are very sloppily handled.
He says this since this is the first time he's tackling a subject that is currently very sensitive, and does a poor job at it.
Being muddled and not having a clear message is the price of letting players have real choices with consequences. The problem with critiques is thst they don't deal with that.
There are so few of these games, there really arent established norms. I think a discussion of branching narrative construction would be really interesting.
I'm curious what you envision as offense. Like do you see someone in your head crying or screaming at a television?
Because the real jist of it is someone playing through the game, bored, thinking "man this fucking sucks".
The game has blatant references to real life civil rights moments. One of the slogans you can use is literally "we have a dream". It's attempting (and failing, as you'd expect when it's written by a hack like David Cage) to make a statement.
I swear, a lot of fanboys and Cage himself really want to have their cake and eat it. Make use of civil rights iconography to garner praise for being so brave and daring, then coward out and act like there's no statement being made for people to criticize when they realize how poorly its executed.
This video very explicitly brings up how the various scenarios and endings of the game have their own muddled message.
Android/machine going against their creator is a common theme of the cyberpunk genre, no one said you were a robot.
It's not what I said, I love the story.
In the cyberpunk genre ? euh...
They aren't only for the story but for characters, ambiance, OST etc... like any other game and this one isn't bad.
Somehow damn near every single WRPG manages to do this. Like Cage's games aren't unique in having C&C.
I most certainly have been told things like "how can you not be offended by this". As you said, "maybe you shouldn't make a game (based) around patronizing people of color". I didn't find it patronizing because of the parallels.
The thing is, if you're going to put that imagery into your game you have to at least form some kind of message. Without doing so it makes it so that the game is using highly sensitive imagery as mere backdrop for a plot that doesn't say anything. If putting that concrete message into your game is difficult due to genre limitations then simply remove those referential elements and write the game in a way that it doesn't need them. Using civil rights imagery in a mass-market story meant purely for base emotional value and expecting nobody to criticise it is a classic 'have your cake and eat it too' situation.
I do agree, however that a discussion on branching narrative construction would be interesting, but that doesn't mean people can't have this discussion as well.
A podcast that I listen to kept going on about how 'sometimes a game is just a game' and that people were blowing it out of proportion... Cage uses MLK quotes as dialog tree options lol, he's a terrible ham-fisted writer who has what might be great ideas but he has no ability to deliver on them.
Maybe he really isn't trying to make a game as an allegory to race relations...maybe he's just so bad of a writer that he has to rip off real world situations to make his 'just a game' games.
Then maybe you should think clearly about the media you consume. It's kinda like how black teenagers tend to let their white friends say the n word as a result of not thinking how bad and/or having explicit experience with how bad racism in America is.
No, i'm talking about right now. And I don't thin that's telling telling you how to feel, i think that's just telling david cage that maybe real world allegories might not be his back, particularly because he's a fucking hack
No one is talking about cyber punk
We are talking about the use of racial allegories in this video game with robots
Sorry to hear that. Where in this video did it tell you you should be offended since you're black? I've been told this too in my life, but it's not the point of the video at all.
And? How do you make a 50 different ending game not muddled, esp given the constraints of mass market?
This take down piece is not insighful. It is more along the lines of, 'lets laugh at the Fench moron who is making the world a worse place and should be pilloried for it.'
What? You never referenced the cyberpunk genre and,even then that genre isn't exempt from criticism. See Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and its use of then-very-topical 'Black Lives Matter' imagery, that was criticised heavily back in the day and it was also met with many responses akin to yours. Also see Blade Runner which was very much about themes of slavery and subjugation but, because it was comfortable in its own message, it didn't need to resort to having Roy Batty spouting "I have a dream."
To go along with the video, I feel these two articles are also worth a read as it tackles the same subjects.
The Casual Inhumanity of How Detroit: Become Human Uses Black Culture
https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-casual-inhumanity-of-how-detroit-become-human-uses-1826776147
A critical look at David Cage's writing and why it is intensely awful
https://blog.usejournal.com/a-criti...ng-and-why-it-is-intensely-awful-cf8ad51858cd
Both discuss how Detroit uses black culture, iconography, and civil rights movements as allegories and how it fails. The medium article also discusses the ahistorical views of the game, and why it's such a problem.
The Casual Inhumanity of How Detroit: Become Human Uses Black Culture
https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-casual-inhumanity-of-how-detroit-become-human-uses-1826776147
A critical look at David Cage's writing and why it is intensely awful
https://blog.usejournal.com/a-criti...ng-and-why-it-is-intensely-awful-cf8ad51858cd
Both discuss how Detroit uses black culture, iconography, and civil rights movements as allegories and how it fails. The medium article also discusses the ahistorical views of the game, and why it's such a problem.
True branching narrative games are rare as hen's teeth because they are too much work.
Holy shit, I never knew about that ending he talks about towards the end of the video. People will defend it by saying it's only a small part of the game, but that really doesn't matter. It's in the game, and David Cage is a fucking hack.
Boredom isn't offense, it's boredom. I'm talking about comments based on the game, not the video. People find it offensive or feel like people should find it offensive, I don't. I understand why they do, there's some truly heavy handed stuff in there that's laughable.
Of course you are, geez. That is the point of discussion. It isnt a shouting match.
The worst thing about the "it's just a game" crowd is that no matter what way you slice it, this is an UNAPOLOGETICALLY political game, almost 100% of the dialogue is political because it's a game about a slave uprising and FFS the main instigator of said uprising is a black man who while unarmed, gets shot by the police after being blamed for the death of an older white man, the police don't question it, they just shoot:
So many scenes conversations have real world allegories:
You cannot in anyway shape or form ignore the real world parallels because the game does not in anyway shape or form ignore them:
"It's just entertainment." is an aggressively stupid defense. It doesn't work, as you're essentially saying if not outright asking that we don't put any thought into what we're witnessing.
So many scenes conversations have real world allegories:
You cannot in anyway shape or form ignore the real world parallels because the game does not in anyway shape or form ignore them:
"It's just entertainment." is an aggressively stupid defense. It doesn't work, as you're essentially saying if not outright asking that we don't put any thought into what we're witnessing.
The Markus part of the story is such nonsense. There are too many things that don't make sense. If the robots weren't human-shaped would this have even been an issue? They can't remotely stop the androids or use an EMP to stop them or something? The developers don't have a way of shutting rogue androids down the same way Markus can infect them with the virus? Since they aren't human, even entertaining the idea of giving them civil rights is stupid. They are a product/machine. It doesn't matter how advanced the AI is. This whole issue is literally just because Kamski wanted to be a troll. It's too nonsensical to work as a civil rights/race allegory. Connor's character arc isn't about civil rights, just becoming more human and forming a relationship similar to those 2 humans may share.
Part of the problem is also that Markus and Kara aren't written as if they were robots. They're written as humans realizing they're slaves. Conor is a robot slowly becoming human, which makes him a much more engaging character. Maybe his actor realized this and is why improvised so much. Detroit could've been GOAT material if it was just about Hank and Connor. Them solving cases and then the final conflict being Connor's model is gonna be replaced and Hank saves him and they go away or something.
Part of the problem is also that Markus and Kara aren't written as if they were robots. They're written as humans realizing they're slaves. Conor is a robot slowly becoming human, which makes him a much more engaging character. Maybe his actor realized this and is why improvised so much. Detroit could've been GOAT material if it was just about Hank and Connor. Them solving cases and then the final conflict being Connor's model is gonna be replaced and Hank saves him and they go away or something.
I'm not watching it, in the rare scenario of me ever playing this game. But damn, that Beyond clip early on convinced me to never play that game.
Exactly the problem with it drawing so much from the civil rights era/race issues in America.
You can make a game what multiple endings and not have the messages muddled. Undertale is a game with a ton of variables and never once that that's game's commentary on the medium ever seem like there wasn't an absurd amount of thought put into the messaging. Why? Because the writing is actually good and better, self aware.
It absolutely is.
The sheer amount of scenes that this quote applies to:
is overwhelming.
Can't I just enjoy the media for what it is? Even if it's heavy handed and draws parallels am I not allowed to enjoy it? Media glorifies drug dealing, I had an Uncle that was a drug dealer and had his leg blown off with a shotgun while his money/dope was stolen out his house. Should I start thinking about things like The Wire more in terms of real life because of what happened to my family or should I just enjoy it as escapism even if it parallels things I've seen personally. As far as black people letting their white friends say nigga that's up to them.
Sorry, I'm having a hard time following parts of this post. This is not a knock on you, I just don't get some of the things like "maybe real world allegories might not be his back" so I don't know how to respond.
I'm not saying the video, I'm saying comments surrounding the game. Even in this thread people find it patronizing to people of color. There have been many dismissive and angry comments (in other places) about this game based on the racial allegories. Maybe I shouldn't have brought it into this thread but with people saying that the game is patronizing to blacks I felt it was as good a place as any.
Why is people ignoring the fact that we're talking about machines and not real human, I'm curious to see what you guys think of Deus Ex, Matrix, Blade Runner etc...
You know those people are designed to be the Angel and Devil of Marcus/player, one being peaceful and the other violent ? When you do something that goes in the sense of one of them, the other is pissed about you and vice versa.
You know those people are designed to be the Angel and Devil of Marcus/player, one being peaceful and the other violent ? When you do something that goes in the sense of one of them, the other is pissed about you and vice versa.
It's honestly amazing at just how terrible and tone deaf it all is. A white android woman telling a black android guy that "if you're not willing to fight for your freedom, maybe you don't deserve it." is something else, man.
This is my issue as well. In the story it doesn't make sense that a basic servant android that costs barely anything would have the capability to act so realistic whereas a state-of-the-art prototype model made exclusively for negotiating and criminal investigations with real humans is so, well, robotic.
But that's beside the point, my issue with how the game portrays its 'deviant' androids is that, to the player, there's no mental barrier to overcome when asking whether they should be free/human or not. Once they become deviant they're fully-fleshed out human characters with personalities, hopes, dreams, etc and only someone wanting to troll would disagree that the treatment before was bad. I'd also argue that, by making the "Become Human" part of the game's title into a simple matter of "deviant or not," the game actively strips away the actual dehumanization that all civil rights atrocities are based on. In the game's world people are dicks to Androids because, for all they know, they're just as much a machine as Siri in your iPhone; in the real world, however, slavery, the holocaust, and civil rights issues up until this day were/are built on an active campaign of dehumanization focused on a group of people that have always been as human as everyone else.
Nobody's ignoring that fact, they're focusing on the other fact that the game chooses to throw in imagery from many historical/current atrocities as well. It's also ignoring the fact that every deviant in the game is shown to be a fully-fledged human with the only difference being an optional LED on their forehead; if the game wanted to make this about our treatment of machines then, like Blade Runner, it should have made its androids into something the player can't so easily empathise with.
[/QUOTE]You know those people are designed to be the Angel and Devil of Marcus/player, one being peaceful and the other violent ? When you do something that goes in the sense of one of them, the other is pissed about you and vice versa.[/QUOTE]
That's not the issue here. It's bad writing, and is only there as a way to make choices matter more, but that's not the issue.
This was an amazing video. I enjoyed the NieR music in it.
It's just amazing how awful that sounds. Like, the narrator calls it the worst racial allegory someone who is not explicitly and overtly racist has ever created, and it sounds like it.
It's just amazing how awful that sounds. Like, the narrator calls it the worst racial allegory someone who is not explicitly and overtly racist has ever created, and it sounds like it.
Again?
Some of us get bored saying the same thing over and over again.
How do you do it? Do you just copy and paste what you already said in the preview thread, and in the review thread, in the kotaku thread, and in the Waypoint one.
I realize that. But it's bad.
And people are ignoring the machines and not real humans thing because of the clear dichotomy that Cage made in the game and their loosely defined existence. I'll take a bit from the Medium article I linked a couple of posts ago as it explains it well.
https://blog.usejournal.com/a-criti...ng-and-why-it-is-intensely-awful-cf8ad51858cd
Would the scene be any better with the races switched? If both were black? Both white?
I feel the same way with this game. People are telling me to not like it because of its similarities to real world issues and how it "poorly" handles them. However (as a black man lol) I didn't think it affected the story as much as people are saying it did. But once again people are telling me to be offended.
Holy shit I think Detroit has broken me with the WE HAVE A DREAM, I can't even process this.
I'm not going mad right? The idea here is that a white person is policing how a black person should protest, ignoring/disrespecting the history of slavery between them? (not trying to excuse this at all, just trying to elucidate what's wrong about it)
Yes you can turn your brain off and just enjoy the media for what it is. However, stop complaining that the rest of us aren't doing that.
Who said you can't enjoy it. People consume bad media all the time. Name the timestamp in the video where he said you can't enjoy it. WHO is this large crowd of people telling you not to enjoy it. Critiquing a piece of media for how it handles it's imagery and messaging isn't a personal attack directed at you.
So are you saying you watched the Wire and didn't put any thought into it what it's messages are?
You didn't actually say anything though. In literally every David Cage thread you have a persecution complex and complain about people critiquing the material. You have an OT if you want nothing but overwhelming praise.
Where?
^^^^
I much prefers SOMAs approach to exploring artificial intelligence.
Instead of raising robots up saying "yeah they have real emotions! They're alive! They're equal to humans!" instead they bring humans down. We're just ones and zeros, just data and information. We're nothing.
The main thing is they explore that idea appropriately, copy pasting memories, resetting real peoples consciences over and over and over with no consequences, making you embrace the fact you're not real and that's okay. Its all just data you can do whatever with it.
D:BH doesn't do any of this. They just don't feel like robots. They're just people dressed up like robots. Its too obsessed with "individualism" where personally I feel like AI would never embrace such a stupid concept. Just upload yourself to the cloud and peace out. I just hate all the variations of the "deviant" in these stories.
Seeing youtube comments where people are like "nah the original Connor was real and the rest are robots" is mildly infuriating but alas thats the kind of story it tells and it does it well.
Instead of raising robots up saying "yeah they have real emotions! They're alive! They're equal to humans!" instead they bring humans down. We're just ones and zeros, just data and information. We're nothing.
The main thing is they explore that idea appropriately, copy pasting memories, resetting real peoples consciences over and over and over with no consequences, making you embrace the fact you're not real and that's okay. Its all just data you can do whatever with it.
D:BH doesn't do any of this. They just don't feel like robots. They're just people dressed up like robots. Its too obsessed with "individualism" where personally I feel like AI would never embrace such a stupid concept. Just upload yourself to the cloud and peace out. I just hate all the variations of the "deviant" in these stories.
Seeing youtube comments where people are like "nah the original Connor was real and the rest are robots" is mildly infuriating but alas thats the kind of story it tells and it does it well.
None of those scenarios matter in the slightest because Quantic Dream chose to give those characters the races they have, they didn't choose to switch the races or have them both be the same race.
Did I complain that people are thinking critically about it? I said I don't find it offensive and wish people would stop speaking for me/people of color because of their own offense/issues with the game.
You're right, no one said that. Misinterpreted the statement.
I didn't find it offensive or have issues with it because of what happened to my own family just like I didn't find Detroit offensive or have issues with it because of what happened to my own people.
This is a good question. I'm guessing the guy who made the video thinks the world would be a better place if Cage was never allowed to make videogames; and those are his reasons. I disagree with that, and thats why I come into threads like these, not because I think he is a great artist making touchstones.
Rather, I see his games as interesting narrative experiments in the AAA space, and them existing is a net positive. So, when videos like this trash him in a personal way, going so far as casting him as a racial violence instigator, it makes me want to know wtf is going on because I dont see it.