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PCGamer opened a forum that prohibits users from talking about guns, religion, sexuality, abortion, politics, economics (up: policy taken down)
- Thread starter Chairmanchuck (另一个我)
- Start date
my point is you aren't even addressing what I said people on the opposite sides of the political spectrum and instead bringing up your issues with right wing politics(and spoiler alert, I have my issues with a lot of right wing politics too but that's not what I'm attempting to address I'm addressing the attitudes people have toward each other. , since you clearly don't want to actually discuss what I was trying to with my comments I'm going to stop replying to you, have a good night.
What does that mean? I have autism spectrum disorder so I'm not sure if you are trying to insult me or what?
Thanks for the Wikipedia link? I'm not sure what that has to do with my post about being able to be friends, or at least civil with people I have major disagreements with?
Paradox of tolerance - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
I really don't know what it is you want to discuss. If you're simply asking whether it is okay to insult one another over political beliefs... well, if they are reprehensible or keep the disadvantaged downtrodden then yes. It is asinine to ignore said problematic views and pretend like they don't exist. If calling them out is tantamount to insulting them, then fuck yes, do it.
Oh god, I laughed way harder than I should have.
I suppose it's all academical if they've apparently gotten rid of it, but I wonder if discussions of "Master Race" would've passed their GRAPES test.
Even with that multiplayer caveat, I gotta say I'm still confused. Unless something's changed radically since I last played, it's still about two political enemies at war using mostly guns to kill the shit out of each other.
Even with that multiplayer caveat, I gotta say I'm still confused. Unless something's changed radically since I last played, it's still about two political enemies at war using mostly guns to kill the shit out of each other.
To me the problem isn't having a game forum not focused on those subjects.
It's that creating a forum with that as a policy attracts the "keep politics out of games" crowd.
And that crowd don't want politics to be kept out of games (which is impossible anyway). They just want politics that maintain the status quo and don't challenge (or even pander to) their worldview.
On the editorial side at least, they published this a while ago
It's that creating a forum with that as a policy attracts the "keep politics out of games" crowd.
And that crowd don't want politics to be kept out of games (which is impossible anyway). They just want politics that maintain the status quo and don't challenge (or even pander to) their worldview.
On the editorial side at least, they published this a while ago
Whatever happened to the Escapist after their Gamergate makeover?
Two things.
1) When I say I'm in it for the multiplayer, that means I've played an hour of the campaign since it came out.
2) Even when I'm playing the campaign in a COD, it's just not that deep for me. I'm not sitting there considering the political and economic aspects of this fictional world that led to conflict.
Russ Pitts took over and utterly failed to grapple with the stuff they had done prior to his taking over, and pretty much adopted a Do nothing, say nothing, be nothing ideology, seeking to "leave politics at the door" (that's a direct quote).
He kept putting his foot in it by sitting on the fence and not really having the mental capacity to make any arguments about any subjects of any substance, whilst trying to balance not pissing off the "keep politics out of games" crowd and appealing to actual grown ups. Eventually he quit and left games journalism.
Then we got this tepid reboot
They said they wanted to try and forget the "old escapist" but didn't even make it clear which version of Escapist they were referring to, and continued to completely avoid grappling their history as the largest mainstream hub for a campaign of hate.
And I am pretty much done with them now.
I forget under which editor the extremely misjudged Riot games interview was published, but they did a really misjudged video interview with a Riot games employee that got them a lot of flack, too.
Edit: I think it was under Pitt, not 100% sure on the timeline. They deleted the interview (rightly so), but there is a thread here about it
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While I understand that the notion of being apolitical is a fantasy, a place where these topics are left at the front door sounds...nice, actually. There's no shortage of valid places to discuss these topics on the internet, including this one. Not only is there no shortage, these issues have been omnipresent for the past decade, which is why they can get to be exhausting. People critique the notion as privilege, but the reality is the privileged get to tune these things out all the time. It's the people most concerned by these issues who invariably get most worn out in the end.
That said, keeping the real world outside seems like a pipe dream. What do you do about discussion of things like romance options in rpgs, when the subject of non-hetero options or lack thereof invariably and validly comes up, as discussion of the implementation of a game mechanic?
That said, keeping the real world outside seems like a pipe dream. What do you do about discussion of things like romance options in rpgs, when the subject of non-hetero options or lack thereof invariably and validly comes up, as discussion of the implementation of a game mechanic?
Boogie is a gaming youtuber who tried to adopt a centrist "neutral" political opinion. This was not popular with many people, as they felt that by not opposing certain offensive groups he was effectively endorsing their views as valid elements of social discussion. Beyond that, it seemed like a cover to smuggle in his own retrograde ideas under a cover of false objectivity, while avoiding criticism for what he believed.
Having read your post, I don't think this is what you are doing.
I'd say there is actually a pretty serious shortage of gaming related spaces where these issues are actually taken seriously. And acting "apolitical" on these issues allows for the bigoted viewpoints to keep in easily, because the status quo favors them. When you have dozens of military shooters about killing brown people for dubious reasons, going "hey maybe the killing of random brown people who are victims of imperialism isn't so justified" is a political stance, but "shut up and kill the browns" isn't, because it's the default.
This is a really reductive explanation of boogie. He didn't just not take a stance and make people feel like they endorsed them. He consistently goes out of his way to attack and mischaracterize leftist viewpoints while leaving right wing viewpoints unchecked. I ain't gonna link his tweets or screenshots because fuck giving him a platform, but you can google his tweets about the left. Just like most self-identified """centrists""" he is actually a vocal anti-leftist who happens to not criticize the right anywhere near as often. How curious.
User 1: ''So yeah the AK47 just got nerfed pretty hard in the latest COD:MW update, any thoughts?''
User 2: ''Oh wait really? I was hoping they will nerf the M4 instead..''
Mod: HELLO GUYS JUST WANT TO SAY THAT EVERYONE IN THIS THREAD IS NOW BANNED
User 2: ''Oh wait really? I was hoping they will nerf the M4 instead..''
Mod: HELLO GUYS JUST WANT TO SAY THAT EVERYONE IN THIS THREAD IS NOW BANNED
Hey the tomahawk chop is just misunderstood m I rite?! Politics and belief systems are intrinsic to everyone's way of life. Saying they aren't relevant is silly. What you mean is that you don't care about it.
Yeah. He's literally framed issues as being "Nazis on one side say X, everyone else says Y, but the truth must be somewhere in the middle".
No. The Nazis are wrong, and attempting to compromise between the two is not enlightened or logical. Sometimes one extreme is categorically wrong.
I don't even just mean far right, I mean like the actual Nazi party from WW2 era Germany.
Outstanding post. 😂Me when I go to PCGamer to talk about Asura's Wrath
So no guns, religion, abortion, politics, economics, or sexuality. But plenty of alt-right memes.
I think it's clear the people making the decision there and the people making the decision here are not the same.
yes the chop is stupid, the Braves play it every five seconds. Anyway, obviously political discussion is basically a discussion on life and any discussion will ultimately have that part of the background. But when I go to a Gaming forum, the discussion I am looking for is about games, not about the current bill on the senate floor. I don't think that is too much to ask to be honest.
This is exactly why it's exhausting. This type of thinking necessitates everything being taken as a zero-sum declaration on extremist viewpoints. "You must denounce X, Y & Z at every opportunity or you are a de facto nazi." Denouncing happens constantly. The people who most need to listen generally don't, they just stay in their own curated feed.
It's okay to make space for yourself in the world as you, not as a political subject, not as a locus of oppression, not as a body inscribed by the discourse of socially constructed identity. Because if you don't, you're essentially making a declaration that you not only have no existence apart from it, but that you are ultimately a puppet obliged to stand up and dance every time Trump or yet another alt-righter vents their life frustrations by saying something obnoxious on the internet. That ultimately they control your thoughts, feelings and time, not you. TBH it's important to just tell all that to eff off every once in a while, and just be a person who wants to talk about Salt & Sanctuary or whatever. It's alright to create a place to facilitate that.
But beyond all of this, given the fact that only 32% of millennials and Gen Z are republican or even republican leaning, I don't think the notion that "shut up and kill the browns," as you put it, is the default viewpoint in gaming circles is supportable. It's just that the losers who say that sort of thing are loud and routinely use bots to fill the vacuum of their lack of actual allies.
I mean, I kind of said that when talking about smuggling in retrograde views under a cover of false objectivity. I will admit to not wasting my time following his exploits to know it all in detail though.
lol, this is gold.
PCGamer is making a discussion form that is going to have absolutely nothing to discuss.
I don't think that's what they mean by no politics. For instance, if I wanted to discuss Death Stranding, one could conceivably talk about abortion considering some of the major themes of the game, how Sam interacts with BB, what BB is, etc. And what PCGamer is saying is that's not allowed. They are preventing talking about themes of games. I'm not sure how you feel about it, but for me, that's bullshit.
Outright banning discussion about those topics is super dumb. Though I gotta say I could do with less threads about that stuff here on era. The off topic section especially is like a freaking onslaught of depressing headlines.
Like fuck, I get the world is shit. I just don't need to be reminded of it 20 times a day
Like fuck, I get the world is shit. I just don't need to be reminded of it 20 times a day
This is what someone sounds like when they literally pay zero attention to what is happening in the world around them but try to act like they have a level-headed take on a topic.
In America, one side is currently led by a literal white supremacist who admitted to sexual assault. The entire party is based around demonizing minorities.
The other party is not like that.
There is no "both sides."
Educate yourself on the issues.
More importantly, how do non-white/straight/cis/men fucking exist at all?
You keep creating this straw man situation where people call you a nazi if you don't spend 24/7 fighting against mild bigotry. That is not the situation I am talking about, and it is not a realistic situation. I think you need to read what I wrote more carefully instead of trying to bolster your complaint. What I am saying is, when a game makes a political statement, like "kill the brown people they are bad", if you ban political discussions, no one will be able to argue "actually maybe killing brown people endlessly isn't cool" - it's against the rules. Hence the status quo remains what the game posits, you cannot argue against it, but the game exists and unless you ban discussion of it its statement will be left as de facto. And considering most mainstream games have at least some amount of right leaning ideas (imperialism, capitalism, gun violence, etc) the status quo ends up being right leaning by default.
Let me tell you this. I am middle eastern. Born and raised there. Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, I saw game after game demonize the middle east. For you, maybe it's easy to "tell all that to eff off and talk about the games, man", but for me every mainstream FPS game was another example of dehumanizing me, my background and my fellow people. Maybe you can sit back and just shoot some dudes or whatever, but being able to talk about how these games support ideas that are actually maybe not that cool has been pretty important to me. Whenever I brought it up on reddit back then I was downvoted and told to keep politics out at best, and insulted in bigoted ways at worst. Keeping politics out of games discussion only works to bolster the "default" viewpoint.
Those things are still going to be discussed, they'll just be discussed with an entirely right-wing slant. When forums create these rules, they're really just saying "progressive viewpoints are unwelcome here".
A gaming forum wants to keep their discussions about video games? I am shocked. I can't believe a thread about this can bring almost 300 replies.
FUCKING LORD.
"CALL OF DUTY IS JUST A GAME ABOUT COOL GUNS AND FUN SHOOTING!"
If the kind of video game discussion you want is one that involves no GRAPES, then you don't want video game discussion, you want to mire yourself in a marketing campaign.
But wouldn't this also work the other way around?
DIsco Elysium is quite left and doesn't try to hide it at all. It's a fantastic game.
In this new forum right wingers couldn't talk about how wrong the left /etc. is. They would have to talk about the game itself.
Isn't it more to weed out something that can be discussed nearly everywhere on the web to only talk about the game itself. How the controls work, how good the graphics are, etc.
One could say "i like character x" without people berating them that X is trans/gay/etc. and therefore shouldn't be in the game.
Like trying to talk about games in a vacuum/ outside of real life.
But i think this wouldn't work without hard moderating and that isn't going to be the case i believe.
With DE specifically, under these rules, it would be almost impossible to talk about what makes that game meaningful as it is almost all completely politically aligned.
The more likely scenario is that no one gets to discuss (For example) why Quiet's design is silly and nonsensical and a huge example of male pandering and female objectification, because those "aren't relevant to gameplay and thus aren't worth talking about".
It's the garbage argument of people not wanting reviewers to talk about their personal feelings with a game in a review and instead just want "the hard facts" about how much graphics there are and how much sound there is and how controls are to be, not realizing that those sort of reviews in almost every case are meaningless beyond further justifying a purchase.
That is how a lot of people view cod. Fire through the story, enjoy the explosions then spend 99.99% of the rest of your time in the multiplayer shooting your favourite guns. And what is wrong with having a place to discuss that?
Marketing campaign how? This makes no sense. There are plenty aspects of video games outsides of GRAPES(what a stupid acronym) that can be discussed.
Christ, imagine playing through COD's campaign and finding 0 political relevance, especially after what happened over this past week.
Maybe a lot of people do view COD that way, and I'd say that's a myopic AF way of looking at it, ESPECIALLY this year.
Saying that is like saying FF7 is "just about fun turn based strategy and Tifa's chest!"
There are, and they are strictly mechanical, and those conversations usually last one page and aren't interesting until the actual developer are ready to implement changes. Because outside of GRAPE discussion, you basically begin and end at "this is mechanically fun, this is not mechanically fun", end of discussion. Beyond that, it's just rah rah "I'm super hyped for x game that's not out yet, let's all get excited so everything feels more fresh and interesting than it would be because we have no information."
I'd suggest that if you're limiting discussion just that, that forum isn't worth visiting.
As someone not living in the US I may see something good in this, because usually "discussions about guns, politics, economics and such" are in fact "discussions about guns, politics, economics and such in the USA". Sometimes you want to talk/read about games.
This probably falls under their "except covered by PCGamer articles and editorial staff" clause.