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Cyberpunk 2077 looks amazing, but I’m conflicted about supporting CD Projekt Red with the doubt they’ve cast around their social stances.
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You do you. I couldn't imagine tolerating people in my life who view me as less than or inferior. Or thinking that my sexuality was an immoral sin. You want to think that's being sheltered, naive, having little real world experience et al, be my guest. We simply differ on what we find important and the situations in which we choose not to tolerate. I think it's silly not to expect some sort of frustration when a leading developer in an industry that hasn't had a good track record as it relates to social issues does something like this and it's an important discussion to be had. Especially when they objectify and stereotype marginalized groups of people whom they've had questionable conduct towards in the past.
You simply don't boil this down to a "moral compromise" and "live and let live" situation or false equivalence of what you personally are willing to tolerate in your personal and professional life. What amazes me is how anyone, let alone someone who is supposedly part of a marginalized group, can make the "difference of opinion" or "different politics" argument when it comes to implicit bigotry. Objectifying or not being accepting of the LGBQT community isn't a difference of opinion or different politics. Your friends thinking that you're an unholy abomination isn't a difference of opinion, it's a gross obfuscation of what the bible teaches them distorted to justify their intolerance of you.
CDPR doesn't get the benefit of the doubt here. It doesn't matter if it's one person, 10, 100 or all of them... the industry is regressive and resistant to actually doing anything in admitting to its faults or improving when it comes to listening/accepting that it needs to change. If people don't want to associate with an entity that has had numerous questionable actions, that's their right and their voices should be heard. It has nothing to do with "different views", it has nothing to do with different "cultural or political beliefs". It has everything to do with fostering a toxic environment that has festered for decades and shouldn't be representative of an industry in two thousand fucking nineteen.
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I think it was because of all the shitty takes in there so they wanted to lock it while they go though it.
Absolutely. It is clearly a very bad look coming from a company that has a poor record of dealing with these issues in an offensive and/or tone deaf manner. Another interpretation might be possible, somehow, but they don't have the benefit of the doubt about these matters due to their own actions.
Regardless of whether there might be a more positive, neutral or nuanced representation of that same community elsewhere in the game, the burden of proof is entirely on the company by this point. If they ignore the issue or come up with another terrible response, that'll just confirm it.
Gay, Trans... talking for them, saying he triggered people!
Get this man a prize
You know what I'm out of here. It's clear yall aren't looking to have a discussion just looking to dump on someone who don't share your train of thought. Have fun NOT playing games. This place has been becoming a place where people can't even share their thoughts for fear of people coming at them. Nit one person even mentioned my first and second reason for buying the game! LOL
Fair enough.
There certainly isn't a lot of context for that image, but it does kind of speak for itself.
well for one you just used "triggered" unironically lmao
bye don't come back
If they had literally anyone on staff who understood these issues and they saw that image, they would have flagged it as a possible concern. The fact that it got through so far that it's used as marketing material shows pretty clearly how little they've learned, which seems to be the argument some would make in this thread. They should be given the chance to make mistakes, learn, and grow; but have they?
It doesn't have to be maliciously intended to be absurdly off the mark and an example of regression rather than progress. Continued apathy in the face of the concerns of an oppressed minority is honestly cruel enough that it begins to take on its own kind of malice, whether or not it's deliberate.
It's not because I think the behavior is ok. Like I said, i think it's worth discussing and criticizing. But I also think a lot of outrage culture that happens on the internet doesn't have much to do with actually changing culture for the better. That's not to say it never does (the "Me Too" movement is a good example of positive change that came from internet outrage), but most of the time I just don't think much productive comes out of it. Real change, in my view, largely happens legislatively on the large scale and through personal relationships on the small scale. It was a huge deal for me when the city I live in passed a law last year making it illegal to fire someone for being gay (yes it just happened here last year). And it was a big deal to see people I care about start to shift their opinions (my fundementalist father, colleagues, etc.). Real change is important. I just don't think telling strangers off online or trying to get them fired for saying things I don't like, denying them a livelihood, or even boycotting a company because I don't like what someone who worked there tweeted, makes much difference. In fact, if it moves the needle one way or the other, I'm tempted to think it just mostly creates more resentment and division than it does actually actually move things in the right direction.
But that is the point. If it is purely out of consideration for the good people within CDPR, a company with a history of transphobic "incidents," that you buy a game with transphobic content, how many bigoted employees are you willing to suffer before you stop buying their products? What percentage of the company do the unbigoted employees have to maintain to continue receiving your financial support?
I'm not making a statement, I am asking you to clarify yours.
Don't sweat it bud. No reason to. No discussion to be had here. Just another one sided thread.
User Banned (2 Weeks): Dismissive and antagonistic rhetoric over concerns surrounding transphobia, posts across in multiple threads
I think the shitty takes were from the opposite side you think they were from.
I can agree with that perspective. If the company really cared, maybe they would have taken the opportunity to be proactive about the topic after the previous controversies dealt with related subjects. At this point, there's no good excuse left. Negligence, especially when repeated, can be nearly as bad as malice.
You're acting like not buying a game is taking up political capital when you say "pick your battles". It's a personal choice based on the actions of a company, but you're acting like it's some social and critical decision that is going to rip apart society.
Literally nobody is going to know that you called out a company for saying shit things and chose not to purchase their product unless you constantly advertise that you didn't buy the product. And literally all you have to say is "they said some fucked up things and didn't really see issue with what they said, so I decided to not give them my money". Done, zero drama unless the person who asked decided to make it drama.
Just from the few posts you've shared, you seem extremely worried about rocking the boat in respect to calling people out (or in this case a company). You keep bringing up your personal friends and coworkers in how "they say things that are wrong and I don't agree with" and even limit yourself in trying to compare it to being a "self righteous crusade and making it worse"
I'm very likely going to buy this game, but I fully understand my own hypocrisy in doing so, but I'm really getting a sense of projection of some of your own internal hangups with this topic, considering you keep using your own personal experience in tolerating intolerance to compare to people tolerating the intolerance of a company.
they were one of the people in that thread complaining about "outrage culture"
That there's 0 reason for outrage at the picture in question?
Even the op of said topic said "maybe trans"
I'm all for rights for everyone, but that topic was almost the definition of 'extremist'
The image may very well be (and is likely) in bad taste, but some of the assumptions made in the backlash seemed regressive rather than progressive themselves. In particular the suggestion that we should assume the image is supposed to represent a trans person is marginalizing of a number of groups and the assumption that an image of a person with a penis who exhibits a traditionally feminine appearance must be fetishization of trans people disenfranchises those who are non-op, among others. I have a longer reply about this that I'm saving for when that thread is hopefully unlocked. It will make more sense in context of the replies in that thread.
He's merely explaining how he deals with things like this and reckons with them in his own experiences and everyday life. It's perfectly valid. Era definitely has an "if you're not with us in the exact way we want you to be, you're against us" mentality, and it makes it hard to have these tough discussions sometimes.
Social media accounts aren't one man jobs. There was definitely a chain of people that had to have seen those tweets and went, "yeah, this is OK." And the fact that those people came to that decision and that it happened multiple times is indicative of the type of culture CDPR cultivates. They may not be shouting bigoted jokes from the rooftops, but they sure didn't mind letting their mouthpieces make those jokes.
How do you expect change to happen if all you do is sit on your butt waiting? Changes, like gay marriage or making homophobia a crime, happen because people, LGBTQ+ people, fought hard for those things. They called politicians, they yelled at people, they protested, they boycotted, they died. Law makers and politicians don't have a dart board with a list of different minorities, and depending on where the dart lands it's the group they will be helping this year.
If you want to wait for things to change, fine, but don't pretend you are doing the right thing by sitting tight and waiting for all this to blow over. Pick your fights, as I do too, but boycotting a game company takes little effort but can send a powerful message to other LGBTQ+ folk around the world.
But hey, nice try at trying to dismiss transphobia.
Any response to what I said to you about the exact point you're making and how that doesn't matter because the character isn't a real person and is presented as the designers chose to present them so whether or not they're "maybe trans" doesn't matter because their presentation deliberately blurs those lines?
Being "playful" with gender in a way that could easily be read as negative and fetishizing of trans or gender queer identities, especially in the context of their history with the exact subject, is grossly negligent to such a degree that it demonstrates, at the very best, apathy toward these issues and at the worst outright malicious intent. Either they're totally oblivious to topics that have been brought up to them before or they're actually shitty about these things. Either way, to react to the images in the context they exist in -- that is, the history of behavior outlined in this thread -- can't really be described as extreme.
Yea, I understand what he's saying, and he deals with it by basically ignoring it and that his friends openly think he's living a sinful lifestyle. That's cool and his choice, but he seems to want everyone else in his shoes to make the same choice in not wanting people constantly belittling their issues that directly effect their lives on a regular basis.
He seemingly has to "pick his battles" because it sounds like he deals with intolerance on a daily basis.
I don't think he's saying that everyone else needs to operate that way, just that he finds it's the best way for him to operate given his circumstances.
It's not that it takes "political capital" but it does take personal cognitive/psychological captial. My point was that we have to pick which things we decide are worth being concerned about. All of us do. And I think how we come to those is often very personal, which is why I was trying to share some of my own personal reasoning and where I ended up on topics like this.
I don't really have "hang ups" about this. I'm in my 40's. I dealt with that shit a long, long time ago. I was just trying to share why I thought someone a company making a handful of tweets that I think were offensive is not the kind of thing I try to get too worked up about. I only have some much mental capacity to "give a shit," again I think all of us do, and I try to save it for things that I think are big and more impactful.
I try to be conscientious as a consumer where I think it counts the most because, again, I don't think I can do it everywhere, and I don't want to just be abitrary about where I care and where I turn a blind eye. And for me say, how the cattle industry treats animals or Monsanto's monopolizing politics, or labor exploitation in the tech industry or factories are examples of things that I think weigh harder on me personally than what some dude that works at a company said online in a few Tweets. I'm sure there are blindspots I have or places where I compromise where I shouldn't. I think it's probably pretty much impossible to live in a western country and not be complicit in a lot of awful shit. But one can't lives one's life in a state of constant guilt or function in society without some barometer for how and where to focus one's concerns. And that's why I said I think it's important to think about why and how we pick our battles rather than ignoring that we all do.
If you argue whether or not something is transphobic doesn't make someone a transphobic.
There's literally 0 evidence showing that image is a dig on trans people.
It's literally telling you there's multiple flavors, do what you want!
Hey, thanks so much for saying that. After dealing with people harassing me in my notifs on Twitter and seeing both consumers and industry professionals dismiss concerns from PoC and trans folks about Cyberpunk 2077 (among other games, as always) as "Outrage Culture," it's nice to hear this kind of thing.
Unfortunately as long as it doesn't affect them personally people will always try to dismiss this stuff as "Outrage Culture". Thank you for continuing to fight the good fight 👍
Because your first post directly talked about this incorrectly as "people in the company" who are bigoted, and not the company itself forwardly representing and expression the marginalization of issues that effect trans people... twice.
So yea, you don't have the capacity to give a fuck on this topic, cool. The fact that you keep conflating "political and cultural" beliefs with a company shitposting "did you just assume their gender" and coopting a trans slogan that was in response to Trump attempting to make trans people literally not exist is tone-deaf at best.
What did you quote? It literally says in your quote "this can be a sign of bad representation"
Yeah, anything can be. But I'll bow out because if it can be, it is, is not a battleground I would participate in.
But continue to label me as a transphobe because I argue against certain fronts.
If you clicked on the Twitter thread you would have seen a trans person give their reasons on how this is bad. But it's obvious you don't care about the people who are affected feel.
Now you are just turning my argument into a straw man. I didn't say I don't care about the topic at all. In fact I said multiple times that I think a discussion/criticism of those Tweets was definitely warranted. My understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, is these Tweets were a good while ago and there were only a few instances of them and they haven't happened again since. And that they were, as you say, someone directly voicing their agreement with Trump's policies and making implicit jokes about that issue.
We probably live in different worlds. I can not fathom expecting everyone around me to voice dissent with Trump's arguments about this issue or any other number of cultural issues (Black Lives Matters, etc.) or expecting companies/instituitions to blatantly fire people because they make a statements that agree with his egregious cultural viewpoints. I think the dude was clearly out of place; it had no place being on a company Twitter for a videogame company regardless. But I don't see it as eggregious that the company didn't fire the guy because of it. I don't really want an environment where people get fired over issues of publically contested political viewpoints (even those I strongly disagree with). Private censure / cessation of the problem works for me because, like I said, I think there are bigger issues that need attention and there is only so much attention to go around.
At this point should I just assume you have me blocked? Starting to look that way.
Really productive conversation.
Okay so if not for you, for the thread as a whole: the way you know this ad is a problem is by simply asking yourself what reaction you think the developers expected you to have when looking at it. Did they want you think, "Oh, what an extremely normal and common place image, there's nothing unusual about it, looking at it barely registers to me"?
Probably not.
So if we're honest with ourselves, their intent is to surprise you in some way. Almost certainly, anyone being honest, can admit that you're supposed to look at that ad and think it's edgy, unusual, or even weird. Now what about it makes it any of those things? What makes it surprising? What types of bodies are they demarcating as unusual and outside the norm, worthy of a reaction and surprise, and who do those bodies belong to? What associations are they creating between that image, the intended response to it, and real world people who the viewer might assume share traits with that image and their intended response to it?
At this point, honestly, it would probably be better if they were doing this deliberately and maliciously instead of creating media where they don't even fully understand the implications of what they're making when working in a genre that's supposed to be filled with meaning.
I think what some people in this thread are trying to say is shaming, attacking, boycotting everything that has a belief against yours often doesn't actually have a positive effect on things, it either has them keep their same shitty beliefs or just pretending they don't have them.
I think more and more instead of attacking or boycotting or...being angry, we need to start celebrating, promoting and sharing love of the companies and things that do have those good beliefs.
The world is full of so much anger and hate that trying to fight it with more anger and hate just sucks.
People spend so much time talking about things they either don't like, or they hate or that offends them.
I think the whole thing with "outrage culture" or the whole "cancellation culture" is that people still talk about them, it's almost promoting them to the wrong thing. Often large vocal outrage causes people on the other side to start hard supporting that company or person etc.
This is just me and I think I'm going to be this way but if a company has shitty views, I ain't going to talk about them, I'm not going to support them, they aren't going to live rent free in my head. Instead I'm going to push and promote great companies.
Example, Pepsi decides to say something homophobic, Imma start pushing Coca-Cola.
I think more and more instead of attacking or boycotting or...being angry, we need to start celebrating, promoting and sharing love of the companies and things that do have those good beliefs.
The world is full of so much anger and hate that trying to fight it with more anger and hate just sucks.
People spend so much time talking about things they either don't like, or they hate or that offends them.
I think the whole thing with "outrage culture" or the whole "cancellation culture" is that people still talk about them, it's almost promoting them to the wrong thing. Often large vocal outrage causes people on the other side to start hard supporting that company or person etc.
This is just me and I think I'm going to be this way but if a company has shitty views, I ain't going to talk about them, I'm not going to support them, they aren't going to live rent free in my head. Instead I'm going to push and promote great companies.
Example, Pepsi decides to say something homophobic, Imma start pushing Coca-Cola.
If you don't wanna support them then don't buy the game. It's up to you to decide if you wanna play the game or would rather stand up for what you believe in.
The game will include transgender characters as we have already seen from recent new photos.For anyone who doesn't know there is a woman with a penis shown in a screenshot. One of the big things about Cyberpunk (not the game) is that the body doesn't mean much anymore. Nobody is left out or shamed for what they are.
The game will include transgender characters as we have already seen from recent new photos.For anyone who doesn't know there is a woman with a penis shown in a screenshot. One of the big things about Cyberpunk (not the game) is that the body doesn't mean much anymore. Nobody is left out or shamed for what they are.
And I gave my reasons why this outrage over this picture is outlandish, why don't you care about my feelings?
If I gave weight to everyone's feelings suddenly I'm giving empathy to Peta or the wbc.
Yet I still believe in ethical treatment of animals and rights for those who believe in God.
I'm arguing against the fights that are being fought, not against the people behind the fights.
That seems a pretty blatant exaggeration, no? If they literally "didn't mind" then the tweets would still be happening. Now the question of WHY they cared, whether it was economic concerns or genuine cultural disagreement, I suppose we don't know and have to just guess at.
For a long time I thought it was problematic the way we talk about intuitions as individuals. Again, no doubt this is not acceptable material to be in a game company Tweet, but implying that the company endorses it seems more than a bit of a stretch to me. It seems like saying Gearbox and Borderlands 3 endorses "barely legal" porn and bad magic tricks because that's what Randy Pitchford is all about. He still works there and runs the company so surely that whole company must be all about that stuff by this kind of logic. Companies and the relationships of people within them seem complicated to me. If I felt certain that Cd Projkect Red as a company culture was promoting transphobism in their work culture or in their games, if you could point me to some expose article about that with evidence, then yeah that would probably be important enough to really take notice of. But I think a handful of tweets by a social media account is a long long way from proving an endemic culture of transphobia.
Honestly, I got no interest in this game. Feel free to look at my posting history and see the post I left in the Cyber Punk thread if you want proof. However, if YOU want the game, I think you should still get it. I wouldn't generalise the entire company based on what has happened before, you can choose not to buy it out of protest but the writing is on the wall, this game is going to sell gangbusters, any boycott probably won't even register for this company. It's straight up a male power fantasy game, it's got Keanu, it's got great graphics, it's got nudity, it's got violence, it's got swearing. It has everything it needs to be a big success.
As for me, I just look forward to Animal Crossing, the older I get, the less I need these kinds of games.
As for me, I just look forward to Animal Crossing, the older I get, the less I need these kinds of games.
It also lets you play as a female character. You can customise your character to what skin colour you like. It has LGBT characters. But ok
Oh wow, thanks for correcting me, I had no idea. I totally got that wrong I guess.
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