Maybe you shouldn't look at it as internet rage. Maybe you should look at it as concern over an unhealthy view of society and women's role in it. Because it's truly fucked.
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Updates on The Last Night's development
- Thread starter Deleted member 15428
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User Banned (2 Weeks): Rationalizing Misogyny
I don't think that's their actual view. I think they view modern feminism as reverse discrimination. Basically, just flipping the tables and discriminating in favor of women at the expense of men. For example, if a job opening has two candidates (one male with more training and experience, one female with less training and experience) and even though the male is more qualified for the position, the female is hired because she's female and the business wants more women in the workplace. Is that a realistic scenario? Probably not but it's important to understand actual viewpoints instead of making extreme generalizations.
In any case, I think this game has a beautiful aesthetic but it's hard to get excited until they show what it actually plays like.
To be fair, the original DX had its fair share of cackling old dudes in towers. The villains are primarily rich CEOs or government leadership.
User Banned (3 Weeks): Excusing bigotry and misogyny; previous infractions
No I don't think any of those views are ok. A lot of them seam to be very bad. However he has the right to have whatever views he wants. We all have some views that are deplorable to others. My views on home defense would probably be looked upon poorly by many here.
Im not going to wish evil on someone because they believe something different than me.
these people actively wish evil upon many others constantly. it's not "believing something different". these are ideologies that are harmful to people in real life. it's nice that you are able to not be hurt by these things, but many others are.
Somebody liking pineapple on pizza is "believing something different than me".
Having a belief system that actively contributes to the oppression of others is a different fucking game entirely, and no, we shouldn't be tolerant of it.
So you would be totally cool with someone who wants to gas the Jews and lynch the Blacks? That is totally okay to think like that in a modern day society? Those are completely normal thoughts to have and we should all respect the people holding those types of thoughts?
The problem is in isolation there's nothing wrong with the bolded part, in reality the "other side" aren't interested in understanding themselves.
If there's no good faith that people who view feminism with sceptism (to put it charitably) then it's not a discussion or a learning opportunity, it becomes an entrenchment and also a threat.
I could easily answer your hypothetical situation by saying that it doesn't take into consideration the social and structural obstructions to people who are not white men rising through the ranks and taking positions of authority and power.
You can't talk about reverse discrimination as a thing (though I understand why you used the term) because it's key not to debate on their terms.
Which goes back to the original point. The concept of the game is rooted in the notion that feminism succeeding is dystopian. Without this premise, there's no conflict so there's no game. To suggest you can just take it out either means the game itself was never serious in the first place so there's no real reason to support it or it'll be less overt but still embedded in the fabric of the game as a whole.
If that is their "view" it has to be challenged, simple as that. If its not then why mention it at all?
If the group who view feminism as problematic don't want to debate in the actual sense of the term, you can't try and bring them round. You have to challenge it. Otherwise you get further normalisation of the issues at hand.
That viewpoint is somewhat problematic. You're essentially dismissing their points as unworthy of debate. Likewise, they do the same to your points. In the end, there is no debate because nobody wants to actually discuss anything. Instead, it's an all-or-nothing mentality where each group thinks they are completely right and that the other group(s) is completely wrong.
Is that actually the core concept of the game? From what I've read, the core concept is that humanity has reached the point where they no longer need to work to survive and that's corrupted them through decadence and complacency.
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Also, instead of cautioning people to make sure they understand the alt-right argument, I think it's better to argue for understanding their playbook. And their stated playbook (it's all out there in blog posts, books, etc...) is to get platforms where 90% of the audience will hate them and protest, but 10% will buy in. With dangerous movements, 10% is a fuckton of people.
The fundamental mistake that our societies made a decade ago was letting these people like Richard Spencer get on stages around the world and spew the vilest bullshit they could, just because the crowd would then push back on the things they were saying. They didn't care. They wanted that. Because they knew that on those stages, they could get that 10% of people to buy in, and buy in hard. That's how they got their little Nazi army today, haircuts and all. Now that we've learned to de-platform them, you've got creeps like Milo begging for money from anywhere he can get it, and the rest of them aren't much further behind. That's what should happen to this game; I'm sure it would feel cathartic for a lot of people to let it come out and then furiously write blog posts arguing against its worldview, but I feel pretty damn confident a million or more people will buy this game on visuals alone, and if even 5% of that million turn out the way the creator wants them to, then that's tens of thousands of believers in his bullshit.
I hope it's dead and buried without much fanfare at all. Just throw it in the trash.
To elaborate a little, Deus Ex and Invisible War are fundamentally about the intersection of technology and human nature. You've got the Bob Pages and the Morgan Everetts. You've got the World Trade Organization and The Order, which are just two branches of the same entity. But they're not the source of evil where removing them fixes anything. I think where a lot of cyberpunk goes awry is that it wallows in the dystopia. Its characters are rebels. They are defined entirely by their opposition to the tyrannical status quo. They don't have much going on outside that. These narratives tend to go in one of two directions. One, humanity is doomed and dying and let's just ride it out. The likes of Blade Runner, and games like Observer -- they don't have any actual solutions. The world is rotting, run by corporations that are gonna bleed every putrid drop of blood for short term gains. Two, bring an end to the tyranny. Smash the state. Something like Tron falls into this category. It's not traditional cyberpunk, but it's a good example. Malice for the sake of malice. Remove the malicious element, and people will live in peace and prosperity. This is the dream of most revolutionaries. But it often doesn't end the way they thought it would.
Where DE/Invisible War differerent to a lot of peers, I feel, is that they examine the alternatives to a highly technological society dominated by corporations sometimes run by "nice" people, sometimes run by outright dicks. And the central theme is the problem of human nature. I always felt Helios was the philosophical linchpin of Deus Ex. Technology could allow us to have a society where everyone is fed. Everyone is clothed. Where the lights are always on. Where everyone's voice is heard at a political level. But. This kind of utopia stinks of tyranny bent into a different shape. When you ask people to solve the problems that face humanity, their solutions are often varying degrees of fascist. They just don't realise it. They don't quite think it through. And to some extent this is a religious parallel. To create a society free of injustice would require this entity -- an AI or a literal god -- to peer into the minds of every citizen. To know what they truly want. What they truly believe. At this point you've basically got a theocracy of some stripe.
In the original Deus Ex, Helios lays out its plan, and it has merits.
But in Invisible War, the plan has some glaring issues that Helios handwaves with, "Upon consideration, you'll see that this arrangement is for the best. 'General ideas are no proof of the strength, but rather of the insufficiency of the human intellect.' The words of Alexis de Tocqueville, an observer of the birth of modern democracy. Though general ideas allow human minds to make judgments quickly, they are necessarily incomplete."
I always liked that because I feel cyberpunk narratives flip-flop between "OMG the acid rain is so aesthetically sweeeeeeeet!" and "If we got rid of the evil corporation, it'd be sunshine and rainbows." But Deus Ex meditates upon the various solutions to tech-driven tyranny and how each solution gives birth to further tyranny. Helios asks the question, "Is it freedom when one child is born to poverty, a chance combination of organic materials, while the wealthy child is shaped every day of his life, enhanced genetically, trained, educated, often augmented nanotechnologically?" That is a damn good question. But the only practical solution to such a problem can -- and probably will -- go horribly haywire in various ways. We have to do something, but all the somethings suck.
We know the world is unjust. But we cannot agree on how to make it more just without creating further injustice, at least that seems to be a recurring theme in government that translates well to a cyberpunk setting. The reason cyberpunk stories often gravitate towards AI governance is that even though they more often than not go down the "CRAZY AI DOING EVIL THINGS BECAUSE CAPITALISM IS EVIL AND THE AI WAS CREATED BY CORPORATE INDUSTRIAL INTERESTS OR THE AI IS BATSHIT CRAZY OR THE AI IS LITERALLY JUST GERBIL HOOKED UP TO A COMPUTER" route, there is a recognition that even in a perfectly balanced society geared towards goodwill and harmony, human nature will screw it up. At their heart, humans don't want to be free. But they think they want to be free. What is "freedom?"
We will always find ways to create underclasses. People shunned by your utopia because they didn't like some aspect of it. When Helios is asked, "What if I don't want you peering into my mind?" It flat-out refuses to give an actual answer to that question, pulling the "if you stop to think I'm totally in the right here". One could draw a parallel to many real-world issues. For example, smoking. You have a system in many countries pushing people to stop smoking. Taxing cigarettes heavily. Barring smoking from public spaces. Even get to the point of not being allowed to smoke inside a building you ostensible own. It's all very "for your own good, making a better world", and stuff.
But what if someone WANTS to smoke. They know it's dangerous. But they want to. Many lines of intersecting rights can be cut. But what underpins such a situation is this new breed of dystopia that I think has come more common in western societies. Societies that on the surface seem to be all about the rights of the individual, of fairness and equality. But there are weird things under the surface. They don't march into your house and take stuff away from you. (Not to downplay examples where that does happen.) No, it's more insidious than that. They start from the premise that any sensible person supports their position that "we must end XYZ", and then they start attempt to eliminate what the see as improper behaviors or undesirable elements. At some point we cross this weird line. We go from "Hey, I can ride the train or plane without breathing in smoke. That's okay" to "Nobody should be allowed to inhale or exhale smoke anywhere. We're not saying you can't smoke. We're saying you can't smoke in any of these locations that are just coincidentally everywhere under the sun."
(It's been kinda weird to see a lot of people being on the "purge smoking from society" bandwagon but also be supportive of legalized cannabis. It's almost doublethink to some extent. I think a lot of people don't even realise their position is contradictory. Banning smoking is a liberal political position. Legalizing weed is also a liberation political position.)
And then before you know it, there's no smoking in Disney films. People who were smokers in real life can no longer be depicted as smoking. And that superficially seems okay. It's Disney. They've always been wacky. But then Disney starts buying huge chunks of the entertainment industry. Suddenly there's no smoking in any new movies by any companies controlled by Disney, and that is a shitload of movies. Which is actually a remarkable example of how the entertainment industry being owned by a tiny number of companies has odd side effects. The James Gunn thing is another example. Disney fired him. Okay... Well, he's also fired from everyone that Disney owns. Which does come back to the unique nature of corporations in their ability to be kinda tyrannical.
I'm sure some people see that as no problem. They think smoking is a rotten habit that should be consigned to the dustbin of history. But there are implications there. Concerning implications for how we've created this new type of smarmy tyrannical corporation that is super inclusive and friendly and loves the whales and loves the baby seals, but underneath it is ruthless towards groups it has a beef with and is kind of a dick.
Cyberpunk narratives always assume the evil corporations are doing evil science experiments in their basement. (Deus Ex included.) But evil corporations in the real world? Not so much. The love of money may be the root of all evil, but many bad people do bad things for very noble reasons. It seemed like a good idea at the time. The benefits outweighed the risks, that kinda thing.
This is what I see in the first post: The Last Night is a 2.5D cinematic platform game, where the player controls Charlie, a person living a lower-class existence among the rest of society that is living in an "era of leisure" and where computers and machinery have otherwise taken over all menial work. The player can have Charlie explore his city, talk freely with other citizens, get involved in gunfights, and includes elements of stealth.
There's no mention of feminism in the game's description.
Edit: Ah, I didn't see the tweet. That doesn't really seem to match the game's description. Feminism has nothing to do with computers and machinery taking over all menial work. The tweet seemed more like a sarcastic and/or reactionary response to something that offended the developer rather than an accurate description of the game's premise.
They've reworked the game description. It's not a reactionary response, Soret has gone to length explaining the potential evils of feminism.
of course, this was all prior to the Raw Fury statement, so who knows what Soret is thinking. All we do know, is that he feels suitably victimized, and was celebrating when GAF imploded.
I think it basically boils down to the inherently relative nature of "justice." When people get what they want, they see it as justice, even if it means depriving other people of what they want. The only way to create a system of governance that makes everyone happy is by ensuring that everyone has the same principles. DX:IW alluded to that with the Denton/Helios hive-mind ending, though one could argue that religion exists for the very same purpose.
I do agree that the original DX games do pose more interesting philosophical questions than typical cyberpunk fiction, though most of those questions only really appear at the very end of the games. The rest of the narratives are pretty standard cyberpunkish fair.
He absolutely knows. Whenever people play stupid, it's clear what they're really doing.
User Banned (2 Weeks): Rationalizing Misogyny
What exactly did he say that was wrong here to everyone? Is it now a crime to have an unfavorable view of feminism?
Why? And to be more clear, he was speaking on extreme forms of it. Why is it a bad thing to have an unfavorable view of that?
tell us how you really feel about women campaigning for their rights
he's clearly talking about modern feminism.
its in his tweet that you shared yourself. and you don't see a problem with defending gamergate?
Because the idea of "extreme feminism" is either made from strawmanning actual feminists or its just taking statements from a vocal minority and thinking that they apply to all feminism.
What even is "extreme feminism"? If feminism looks to achieve an equal society for all genders and races, whats the "extreme version" of that?
(Also the crime Soret committed was being in favor of a movement that went after women and minorities since its inception)
(And being a piece of shit)
Please cite examples of "extreme forms" of feminism that actually hold any power in society or have the potential to change it.
Spoiler: There aren't any. This form of feminism is a boogeyman constructed by bigots to dupe fools (like Soret) into thinking feminism and egalitarianism aren't synonyms. And on top of that he's supporting Gamergate, an anti-woman hate movement. What else do you need to stop "just asking questions" about this, exactly?
of course, this was all prior to the Raw Fury statement, so who knows what Soret is thinking. All we do know, is that he feels suitably victimized, and was celebrating when GAF imploded.
I bet he fucking loves GAF now lol
He was against feminism because it was getting more skewed to which I take reading his other tweets posted here to mean it's getting extreme and in that I see nothing wrong with him having an issue with it. An extreme of anything can be bad after all.
I honestly did not know wtf Gamergate was outside of knowing the name and that it's typically looked down on/taboo. I never actually took the time to look into it as I had many other things going on with me in life that took me out of gaming for a long while. Looking it up just now I can definitely see what you all are talking about though and I don't quite get the developers take on it fully, as his views laid out in tweets posted ITT seem to indicate that he wants equality across the board and not a forced push of extreme feminist ideology.
Maybe I missed some of his other tweets?
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I think there is an interesting discussion to be had about if you can separate the views that someone has on the product that this person creates, in this case here's a game that looks cool and interesting but is seemingly spearheaded by someone with shitty views that most people would consider disagreeable. Although in itself I don't get the weirdness of the statement that TLN takes place in a world "where feminism won", is that right? What the fuck does that even mean? That sounds like a pretty good world to be in, why not have equality, sounds good to me. If his game takes place in a world where men are second class citizens it feels like he has grossly misinterpreted what feminism actually is.
Could you spin an interesting or thought provoking game/premise based on that particular concept of men considered less than women? Probably, but then again you would have to put aside the feelings towards someone who thinks that is what feminism would lead to.
Makes me think of Shadow Complex. The game is based on a book by an author with some pretty fucked up views on homosexuality. Now it's not quite the same cause the game itself makes no reference to these views but there is no question that due to the links to the source material Orson Scott Card must have been decently compensated financially. As a gay man, do i boycott this product because of just how much of a homophobic fuckwit this person is? In the end i bought SC cheap in a sale because I do love me some Metroidvania's and there was a bit of a drought of those at the time and enjoyed what i felt was a decent if unremarkable take on the genre. I don't lie awake at night feeling regret that I've let down my people by in some small way supporting the author in question. But i don't know how i would feel if the links were more direct, like perhaps in this case.
Could you spin an interesting or thought provoking game/premise based on that particular concept of men considered less than women? Probably, but then again you would have to put aside the feelings towards someone who thinks that is what feminism would lead to.
Makes me think of Shadow Complex. The game is based on a book by an author with some pretty fucked up views on homosexuality. Now it's not quite the same cause the game itself makes no reference to these views but there is no question that due to the links to the source material Orson Scott Card must have been decently compensated financially. As a gay man, do i boycott this product because of just how much of a homophobic fuckwit this person is? In the end i bought SC cheap in a sale because I do love me some Metroidvania's and there was a bit of a drought of those at the time and enjoyed what i felt was a decent if unremarkable take on the genre. I don't lie awake at night feeling regret that I've let down my people by in some small way supporting the author in question. But i don't know how i would feel if the links were more direct, like perhaps in this case.
here's an easy way to sum it up - All Lives Matter promotes equality across the board, not like the extreme views of Black Lives Matter
if you feel the above statement is disingenuous, you're close to understanding the issue with Soret's statements
I definitely get it now. I just saw his dislike of feminism and figured that was the issue people were speaking about without looking into the other tweets and thoughts he has, like this GG shit.
Happy to hear it's experiencing difficulties. Of course once he turns to Kickstarter or Patreon, he will get the funds and release, but still, nice to see this is happening.
Has there ever been a video of actual gameplay, or is it still just pretty vaporware?
Has there ever been a video of actual gameplay, or is it still just pretty vaporware?
Good, I just wish to gas the jews. Whats the big deal? While im done rallying at a gas the merchant-rally, we can go pick up some coffee and have a lunch.
No he wasn't, lmao.
Gamergate trash think any feminism is "extreme". He's not talking about TERFs or anything close. He's just whining about women in general.
Get out of here with this.
"They're just against extreme forms of feminism", which is why a media critic applying her extremely benign feminism 101 stuff to video games had them foaming at the mouth
Game that is set to criticize the concept of Universal Basic Income runs out of money.
Like holy shit.
Like holy shit.
Do people think they're being subtle when they come in these threads and post "looks good, gonna buy it" and leave?
It's actually funny because this isn't even one of those threads where someone tries to ignorantly talk about how cool it looks only to correctly have to deal with criticism of what the game is. It's literally about how the game is having trouble and might not be made. "Looks good, gonna buy it" doesn't even make any sense.
It's actually funny because this isn't even one of those threads where someone tries to ignorantly talk about how cool it looks only to correctly have to deal with criticism of what the game is. It's literally about how the game is having trouble and might not be made. "Looks good, gonna buy it" doesn't even make any sense.
So a flash game demo and being part of a hate movement will get you enough money to start a studio from scratch in London, the place with some of the most expensive rents in the world.
Yup, feminism is the problem.
Yup, feminism is the problem.
haha good observation
"we're fucked please give money ;("
"it looks so good i'm jerking it to the trailer right now"
right? i used to have doubt but now I'd just straight up flag people for posting the same exact message - the consistency of "looks good, day one, i will be purchasing this with my dollars" is somewhat hilarious, and rarely seen in other threads.
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