Why women criticise sexualised character designs | OT3 | "make her look more...corpulent, more stuffed where the eyes can't escape."

[KujoJosuke]

Hoo boy. Ok, I have a bad memory but... Well, on Friday in the Cyberpunk Live Wire |OT|, user Beth-Cyra asked the future Cyberpunk OT creator Black Chamber if he could include a paragraph talking about the trans issues. Instead of saying yes or no, he responded with "everyone is welcome 💯 " Then refused to answer anyone else who asked this. Only answering a joke post with "Everyone is welcome 💯 ". Naturally, this upset a lot of trans folk who kept on asking this basic yes or no question. Apparently a lot of users decided that trans era was bullying Black Chamber for...not answerng a question and started to attack trans era for it. Eventually, mods locked both that thread and Kyuuji's thread...and took Black Chamber's side. Saying that they were "dissapointed" in TransEra and even saying that they were cyberbullies for it.

When both threads were opened, everyone who was excited for Cyberpunk started celebrating Black Chamber like a goddamn hero for...not answering transera and Black Chamber took all the praise and subtle jabs at TransEra. TransEra got (rightly) upset by this and many left and requested self-bans and requested Black Chamber actually, you know, stop this. Mods, again, sided with Black Chamber and started harshly banning anyone who criticized him. Then IceMonk revealed a PM he sent to Kyuuji where he accused her of "derailing his thread" and other barely concealed transphobia and told him to fuck off after repetaedly dodging basic questions. Mods, AGAIN, sided with Black Chamber and banned IceMonk. Meanwhile, Black Chamber lied about the context and tried to pant Kyuuji like a villain. Apparently Black Chamber was such a charmer that mods were convinced he was in the right and Black Chamber "Gracefully" accepted a 1 month ban...after his precious precious OT was created.

TransEra, after this, was incredibly upset, and rightfully so. Some started to go into his past resetera history and found he had a history of "anti-sjw rhetoric". And THEN someone went into his twitter bio...and found that he was an alt-right MAGA shitheel. Apparently (I wasn't on this discord) people confronted him on his Cyberpunk discord and after dodging the question said he was being prosecuted and fled to GAF. All of this, btw, while posters were now openly calling transera cyerbullies, hate campaigners, and other nasty things and running on twitter to spread the word of the evil trans folk daring to rob people of their precious Cyberpunk game. Mods then locked all the threads and FINALLY banned Black Chamber and he fled to "the other site" where he has since said stuff like "they chose trans lives over innocent lives" and other blatantly transphobic stuff. We are currently in the aftermath of that. We then learned that because Black Chamber was so polite, mods repeatedly gave him second chances and refused to believe he was bad because he was civil until the MAGA stuff made it imposssible to ignore.

So now, Black Chamber has succeeded in creating a narrative that TransEra are bullies of the highest order for daring to criticize his precious video game that many Era members fell for hook line and sinker. The TransEra community has been deeply hurt by this with many members have left thanks to this debacle, trust in the mods have sunk again, and we have a smaller OT than the "GRAND STORY" Black Chamber was hyping up.

So...yeah...shit happened. If someone more involved in this wants to correct me I'm down for that but I believe I covered most of the basics.

Click to shrink...

Cool, cool.

This forum is infested with shitlibs and fake allies.

Progressiveness goes right out the window when it threatens muh vidya gaems.

 

[Cyclonesweep]

I'm starting to feel that games that try to be serious and tell a real story... But have all the sexist garbage bugs me way more than anime tiddy games and stuff like that.
At least in those games you know exactly what it's about, where as games that try to be real with that shit just is annoying cause it literally detracts from the game and is just in there for no good reason. Like the whole Quiet in MGS.

 

[Cyclonesweep]

Cool, cool.

This forum is infested with shitlibs and fake allies.

Progressiveness goes right out the window when it threatens muh vidya gaems.

Click to shrink...

I kind of used to be a bit like that, where if shit was super in my face and I didn't notice I found ways to move past it. Now I really can't. There are so many games or there that don't have that bullshit there is no excuse for me to just let it slide. We live in a day and age where it's very easy to see why something is hurtful or wrong when it doesn't effect you, there is no excuse now to let it slide or ignore it.

If you choose to support games and media that continue harmful stereotypes and shit, you are helping continue them. There is no way around that anymore.

 

[Sacul64]

Been watching someone stream Danganronpa 2 lately. There's a character names Akane, who looks like this:

Which is whatever. There's a bigger issue with the character. Mostly through optional events, you learn some of her backstory, which on paper sounds like it'd make for a sad and dramatic reveal. She grew up poor in a seedy home, enduring various acts of sexual humiliation, including receiving "massages" from her mother's multiple boyfriends and being pressured by her mother to be a waitress at a place (a strip club?) with extremely revealing uniforms. The game, of course, completely plays this for laughs.

It's bewildering, because the game genuinely has fun and varied female characters, at least in terms of personality. Hell, Akane herself is pretty cool. Even if there are some unfortunate awkward moments of sexualization for her, the game manages to not sexualize her at all during her fight scenes (unlike Sakura in the previous game).

I really have enjoyed a lot of the writing in the series, but between sexual harassment getting played for laughs and the big load of transphobic shit that was DR1 Chapter 2, I don't think I'd enjoy playing the series myself that much. It honestly makes me want to write my own murder mystery so I can have a version of DR without all its bullshit, though I doubt I have the talent.

Click to shrink...

Speaking of slightly related to DR What was up with Clover and Alice's designs in VLR? They offered no explanation for that like they did with Lotus in 999

 

[Jotakori]

Looks like they did not only fuck up trans representation, but are also old fashioned sexist.


At 15:16

There are a lot of naked women and opportunities to sleep with them, but not men. They even censored a guy, who was naked in the E3 demo.

Click to shrink...

I had a feeling immediately from the start that this was the direction it was gonna go. I love cyberpunk aesthetics so much, but 99% of the time it feels like just an excuse to hyper sexualize women with only, like, one or two 'oh yeah dudes too I guess' half-assed things in the bg. This is why I was never interested in the game even well before the transphobic stuff about it came to light.

 

[ClickyCal']

I had a feeling immediately from the start that this was the direction it was gonna go. I love cyberpunk aesthetics so much, but 99% of the time it feels like just an excuse to hyper sexualize women with only, like, one or two 'oh yeah dudes too I guess' half-assed things in the bg. This is why I was never interested in the game even well before the transphobic stuff about it came to light.

Click to shrink...

I mean when this was the original reveal

it was a bold red flag.

 

[Jotakori]

I mean when this was the original reveal

it was a bold red flag.

Click to shrink...

Yep, yep, exactly! That woman in her underwear right out the gate is exactly what had me immediately like, 'MMMMMMyeah, I don't think so.'

Maybe someday... in like another 30 years from now... we'll finally get the proper cyberpunk aesthetic game we deserve. 😑

 

[Dary]

The thing with a lot of Geek Culture is it's all about the pretense of depth, on selling an illusion of intelligence and superiority to insecure teenage boys who need to feel they have one up on everyone else. [Insert ProZD Anime Sketch here.]

There will be a raft of YouTube videos in months to come, hyper-analysing every aspect of 2077 to show you how clever it is - just as there was a raft of YouTube videos hyper-analysing tLoU2 in a bid to rip it apart.

And always there beneath the surface, behind all the pomp and pretention and pseudo-intellectual grandeur, a whiny little boy screaming for validation.

 

[Jaded Photographer]

Been watching someone stream Danganronpa 2 lately. There's a character names Akane, who looks like this:

Which is whatever. There's a bigger issue with the character. Mostly through optional events, you learn some of her backstory, which on paper sounds like it'd make for a sad and dramatic reveal. She grew up poor in a seedy home, enduring various acts of sexual humiliation, including receiving "massages" from her mother's multiple boyfriends and being pressured by her mother to be a waitress at a place (a strip club?) with extremely revealing uniforms. The game, of course, completely plays this for laughs.

It's bewildering, because the game genuinely has fun and varied female characters, at least in terms of personality. Hell, Akane herself is pretty cool. Even if there are some unfortunate awkward moments of sexualization for her, the game manages to not sexualize her at all during her fight scenes (unlike Sakura in the previous game).

I really have enjoyed a lot of the writing in the series, but between sexual harassment getting played for laughs and the big load of transphobic shit that was DR1 Chapter 2, I don't think I'd enjoy playing the series myself that much. It honestly makes me want to write my own murder mystery so I can have a version of DR without all its bullshit, though I doubt I have the talent.

Click to shrink...

Mikan's even worse. I found the fact that they fan serviced the infantilized character highly disturbing. As much shit as Danganronpa V3 gets I honestly think it's a better written game than Danganronpa 2.

 

[Vandova]

Hoo boy. Ok, I have a bad memory but... Well, on Friday in the Cyberpunk Live Wire |OT|, user Beth-Cyra asked the future Cyberpunk OT creator Black Chamber if he could include a paragraph talking about the trans issues. Instead of saying yes or no, he responded with "everyone is welcome 💯 " Then refused to answer anyone else who asked this. Only answering a joke post with "Everyone is welcome 💯 ". Naturally, this upset a lot of trans folk who kept on asking this basic yes or no question. Apparently a lot of users decided that trans era was bullying Black Chamber for...not answerng a question and started to attack trans era for it. Eventually, mods locked both that thread and Kyuuji's thread...and took Black Chamber's side. Saying that they were "dissapointed" in TransEra and even saying that they were cyberbullies for it.

When both threads were opened, everyone who was excited for Cyberpunk started celebrating Black Chamber like a goddamn hero for...not answering transera and Black Chamber took all the praise and subtle jabs at TransEra. TransEra got (rightly) upset by this and many left and requested self-bans and requested Black Chamber actually, you know, stop this. Mods, again, sided with Black Chamber and started harshly banning anyone who criticized him. Then IceMonk revealed a PM he sent to Kyuuji where he accused her of "derailing his thread" and other barely concealed transphobia and told him to fuck off after repetaedly dodging basic questions. Mods, AGAIN, sided with Black Chamber and banned IceMonk. Meanwhile, Black Chamber lied about the context and tried to pant Kyuuji like a villain. Apparently Black Chamber was such a charmer that mods were convinced he was in the right and Black Chamber "Gracefully" accepted a 1 month ban...after his precious precious OT was created.

TransEra, after this, was incredibly upset, and rightfully so. Some started to go into his past resetera history and found he had a history of "anti-sjw rhetoric". And THEN someone went into his twitter bio...and found that he was an alt-right MAGA shitheel. Apparently (I wasn't on this discord) people confronted him on his Cyberpunk discord and after dodging the question said he was being prosecuted and fled to GAF. All of this, btw, while posters were now openly calling transera cyerbullies, hate campaigners, and other nasty things and running on twitter to spread the word of the evil trans folk daring to rob people of their precious Cyberpunk game. Mods then locked all the threads and FINALLY banned Black Chamber and he fled to "the other site" where he has since said stuff like "they chose trans lives over innocent lives" and other blatantly transphobic stuff. We are currently in the aftermath of that. We then learned that because Black Chamber was so polite, mods repeatedly gave him second chances and refused to believe he was bad because he was civil until the MAGA stuff made it imposssible to ignore.

So now, Black Chamber has succeeded in creating a narrative that TransEra are bullies of the highest order for daring to criticize his precious video game that many Era members fell for hook line and sinker. The TransEra community has been deeply hurt by this with many members have left thanks to this debacle, trust in the mods have sunk again, and we have a smaller OT than the "GRAND STORY" Black Chamber was hyping up.

So...yeah...shit happened. If someone more involved in this wants to correct me I'm down for that but I believe I covered most of the basics.

Click to shrink...

Wow! I had no idea, that's really bad.

 

[Griselbrand]

Hoo boy. Ok, I have a bad memory but... Well, on Friday in the Cyberpunk Live Wire |OT|, user Beth-Cyra asked the future Cyberpunk OT creator Black Chamber if he could include a paragraph talking about the trans issues. Instead of saying yes or no, he responded with "everyone is welcome 💯 " Then refused to answer anyone else who asked this. Only answering a joke post with "Everyone is welcome 💯 ". Naturally, this upset a lot of trans folk who kept on asking this basic yes or no question. Apparently a lot of users decided that trans era was bullying Black Chamber for...not answerng a question and started to attack trans era for it. Eventually, mods locked both that thread and Kyuuji's thread...and took Black Chamber's side. Saying that they were "dissapointed" in TransEra and even saying that they were cyberbullies for it.

When both threads were opened, everyone who was excited for Cyberpunk started celebrating Black Chamber like a goddamn hero for...not answering transera and Black Chamber took all the praise and subtle jabs at TransEra. TransEra got (rightly) upset by this and many left and requested self-bans and requested Black Chamber actually, you know, stop this. Mods, again, sided with Black Chamber and started harshly banning anyone who criticized him. Then IceMonk revealed a PM he sent to Kyuuji where he accused her of "derailing his thread" and other barely concealed transphobia and told him to fuck off after repetaedly dodging basic questions. Mods, AGAIN, sided with Black Chamber and banned IceMonk. Meanwhile, Black Chamber lied about the context and tried to pant Kyuuji like a villain. Apparently Black Chamber was such a charmer that mods were convinced he was in the right and Black Chamber "Gracefully" accepted a 1 month ban...after his precious precious OT was created.

TransEra, after this, was incredibly upset, and rightfully so. Some started to go into his past resetera history and found he had a history of "anti-sjw rhetoric". And THEN someone went into his twitter bio...and found that he was an alt-right MAGA shitheel. Apparently (I wasn't on this discord) people confronted him on his Cyberpunk discord and after dodging the question said he was being prosecuted and fled to GAF. All of this, btw, while posters were now openly calling transera cyerbullies, hate campaigners, and other nasty things and running on twitter to spread the word of the evil trans folk daring to rob people of their precious Cyberpunk game. Mods then locked all the threads and FINALLY banned Black Chamber and he fled to "the other site" where he has since said stuff like "they chose trans lives over innocent lives" and other blatantly transphobic stuff. We are currently in the aftermath of that. We then learned that because Black Chamber was so polite, mods repeatedly gave him second chances and refused to believe he was bad because he was civil until the MAGA stuff made it imposssible to ignore.

So now, Black Chamber has succeeded in creating a narrative that TransEra are bullies of the highest order for daring to criticize his precious video game that many Era members fell for hook line and sinker. The TransEra community has been deeply hurt by this with many members have left thanks to this debacle, trust in the mods have sunk again, and we have a smaller OT than the "GRAND STORY" Black Chamber was hyping up.

So...yeah...shit happened. If someone more involved in this wants to correct me I'm down for that but I believe I covered most of the basics.

Click to shrink...

What an utter failure by these mods.

 

[Jaded Photographer]

Wait...just trying to catch up...this is fucking fucked. How is Beth Cyra and TransEra bullies? Beth's cool. Holy shit do I hate CyberPunks fan base. Oh god, Beth's gone, she was good peole. Fuck.

 

[Deleted member 283]

Mikan's even worse. I found the fact that they fan serviced the infantilized character highly disturbing. As much shit as Danganronpa V3 gets I honestly think it's a better written game than Danganronpa 2.

Click to shrink...

Oh definitely. Like, she's supposed to be a "parody" of those kind of tropes or whatever (that's what I hear wheeled out by those who attempt to defend her, at least). But what's the point of being a "parody" or satire, when you do exactly the same thing with no commentary?

Mikan is definitely terrible, terrible, terrible.

Especially when even if the attempt was to be a parody, on top of that, like, you also have the fuckface of a pervert Teruteru right there with his whole "joke" just being that he's a pervert, making it even harder to take any potential defense of Mikan seriously. Not that any of the characters go along with Teruteru's antics from what I recall, but that he's a character to begin with, and that was his thing, over and over and over again, just bleh.

Edit: And then, fuck, in addition to Teruteru, you also of course of Soda, who's constantly creeping on Sonia. And he gets called out on that, multiple times. But he never really shows any particular character growth on that front and just keeps doing it anyway, because that quickly becomes the whole "joke" with his character as well. Just being a pervert, who is called out, but never really learns and keeps being a pervert anyway, and that's not-tolerated-except-it-totally-is by the group by how he just keeps doing it, no matter how many times he's called out.

And fuck, now I'm remembering how that's not quite accurate and early in the game Soda actually begged and convinced Hajime to be a participant in his stupid scheme with Sonia and the girls at the restaurant...

Definitely a lot of bad choices in that game.

 

[Choppasmith]

Hoo boy. Ok, I have a bad memory but... Well, on Friday in the Cyberpunk Live Wire |OT|, user Beth-Cyra asked the future Cyberpunk OT creator Black Chamber if he could include a paragraph talking about the trans issues. Instead of saying yes or no, he responded with "everyone is welcome 💯 " Then refused to answer anyone else who asked this. Only answering a joke post with "Everyone is welcome 💯 ". Naturally, this upset a lot of trans folk who kept on asking this basic yes or no question. Apparently a lot of users decided that trans era was bullying Black Chamber for...not answerng a question and started to attack trans era for it. Eventually, mods locked both that thread and Kyuuji's thread...and took Black Chamber's side. Saying that they were "dissapointed" in TransEra and even saying that they were cyberbullies for it.

When both threads were opened, everyone who was excited for Cyberpunk started celebrating Black Chamber like a goddamn hero for...not answering transera and Black Chamber took all the praise and subtle jabs at TransEra. TransEra got (rightly) upset by this and many left and requested self-bans and requested Black Chamber actually, you know, stop this. Mods, again, sided with Black Chamber and started harshly banning anyone who criticized him. Then IceMonk revealed a PM he sent to Kyuuji where he accused her of "derailing his thread" and other barely concealed transphobia and told him to fuck off after repetaedly dodging basic questions. Mods, AGAIN, sided with Black Chamber and banned IceMonk. Meanwhile, Black Chamber lied about the context and tried to pant Kyuuji like a villain. Apparently Black Chamber was such a charmer that mods were convinced he was in the right and Black Chamber "Gracefully" accepted a 1 month ban...after his precious precious OT was created.

TransEra, after this, was incredibly upset, and rightfully so. Some started to go into his past resetera history and found he had a history of "anti-sjw rhetoric". And THEN someone went into his twitter bio...and found that he was an alt-right MAGA shitheel. Apparently (I wasn't on this discord) people confronted him on his Cyberpunk discord and after dodging the question said he was being prosecuted and fled to GAF. All of this, btw, while posters were now openly calling transera cyerbullies, hate campaigners, and other nasty things and running on twitter to spread the word of the evil trans folk daring to rob people of their precious Cyberpunk game. Mods then locked all the threads and FINALLY banned Black Chamber and he fled to "the other site" where he has since said stuff like "they chose trans lives over innocent lives" and other blatantly transphobic stuff. We are currently in the aftermath of that. We then learned that because Black Chamber was so polite, mods repeatedly gave him second chances and refused to believe he was bad because he was civil until the MAGA stuff made it imposssible to ignore.

So now, Black Chamber has succeeded in creating a narrative that TransEra are bullies of the highest order for daring to criticize his precious video game that many Era members fell for hook line and sinker. The TransEra community has been deeply hurt by this with many members have left thanks to this debacle, trust in the mods have sunk again, and we have a smaller OT than the "GRAND STORY" Black Chamber was hyping up.

So...yeah...shit happened. If someone more involved in this wants to correct me I'm down for that but I believe I covered most of the basics.

Click to shrink...

Thanks for the write up. I hadn't been following Cyberpunk news at all since I was long disinterested in the game. Caught wind of some of the OT shenanigans but didn't know the full story. What a mess. Much love to ya TransEra, hope no more of you feel compelled (or are given a reason) to leave.

 

[Jaded Photographer]

Oh definitely. Like, she's supposed to be a "parody" of those kind of tropes or whatever (that's what I hear wheeled out by those who attempt to defend her, at least). But what's the point of being a "parody" or satire, when you do exactly the same thing with no commentary?

Mikan is definitely terrible, terrible, terrible.

Especially when even if the attempt was to be a parody, on top of that, like, you also have the fuckface of a pervert Teruteru right there with his whole "joke" just being that he's a pervert, making it even harder to take any potential defense of Mikan seriously. Not that any of the characters go along with Teruteru's antics from what I recall, but that he's a character to begin with, and that was his thing, over and over and over again, just bleh.

Click to shrink...

2's cast minus basically Gundham and Nagito is quite weak in my opinion. Fuyohiko isn't too bad either.

 

[Xaszatm]

Wait...just trying to catch up...this is fucking fucked. How is Beth Cyra and TransEra bullies? Beth's cool. Holy shit do I hate CyberPunks fan base. Oh god, Beth's gone, she was good peole. Fuck.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, Beth requested a temporary self ban along with a few others. The worst part was that a few hours later Black Chamber was finally exposed. Just a mess all around.

 

[Jaded Photographer]

Yeah, Beth requested a temporary self ban along with a few others. The worst part was that a few hours later Black Chamber was finally exposed. Just a mess all around.

Click to shrink...

CDPR really seems to galvanize a lot of shitty people. No wonder why I didn't want it nominated for GOTY. You can complain about Naughty Dog and crunch, but how it did it's best to represent everybody respectfully should be applauded.

 

[Saucycarpdog]

Looks like they did not only fuck up trans representation, but are also old fashioned sexist.


At 15:16

There are a lot of naked women and opportunities to sleep with them, but not men. They even censored a guy, who was naked in the E3 demo.

Click to shrink...

7 years later, this video is still relevant.

 

[rras1994]

CDPR really seems to galvanize a lot of shitty people. No wonder why I didn't want it nominated for GOTY. You can complain about Naughty Dog and crunch, but how it did it's best to represent everybody respectfully should be applauded.

Click to shrink...

Well, not black people, and there were still a lot of posters here that were very aggressive to people making those critiques

 

[grand]

I have a policy of never going into a Cyberpunk thread or engaging with that game and so far it's served me well

 

[RecLib]

Well, not black people, and there were still a lot of posters here that were very aggressive to people making those critiques

Click to shrink...

There is that. TLOU2 was definitely my favourite game of the year, and while I got to be Ellie it meant the world to me to be playing as someone like myself for the first time in such a fun, well written, high budget game.

But ND definitely has a history with making very white games. Off the top of my head the only significant surviving person of colour between the two last of us games was Lev, and just Nadine and Tenzin across all 4 uncharted games (Nadine has a whole separate conversation about casting too though). I could be forgetting someone? I only remembered Tenzin at the last minute.

I don't think this comes as deliberate malice from ND or anything, but it is a pattern. Majority white cast, characters of colour who are there tend to die. I don't know what ND's writing staff consists off outside of the big names, but it seems like maybe they could just use a more diverse crew in the writing team. I do want to compliment Dina as being the only significant Jewish woman I can ever remember appearing in a video game though, certainly one where her Judaism was actually brought up in meaningful way.

 

[rras1994]

There is that. TLOU2 was definitely my favourite game of the year, and while I got to be Ellie it meant the world to me to be playing as someone like myself for the first time in such a fun, well written, high budget game.

But ND definitely has a history with making very white games. Off the top of my head the only significant surviving person of colour between the two last of us games was Lev, and just Nadine and Tenzin across all 4 uncharted games (Nadine has a whole separate conversation about casting too though).

I don't think this comes as deliberate malice from ND or anything, but it is a pattern. Majority white cast, characters of colour who are there tend to die. I don't know what ND's writing staff consists off outside of the big names, but it seems like maybe they could just use a more diverse crew in the writing team. I do want to compliment Dina as being the only significant Jewish woman I can ever remember appearing in a video game though, certainly one where her Judaism was actually brought up in meaningful way.

Click to shrink...

While I also don't think it's malice, to me it means it's an area they need to improve and to improve on it, they need to hear the criticism. Which to me is why those fans that silence the criticism from some kinda of misguided idea to protect Naughty Dog does both themselves and Naughty Dog a disservice. Their games would only improve if they listen to those criticisms and take them on board, which is a benefit for them, for Naughty Dog and PoC players which are continually let down by the industry. Everyone has games which hold a special place to them but it's thing's like this that remind me even for the games I love such criticism is sooooo important. Like for example, one game I have always really loved is the Sims, and the Sims 4 just released an update which really improved the skintone range and makeup in the game, and they did it by finally listening to and collaborating with their black sims players. The best changes come from that. Which is why it's sad when you look at the big games this year like Cyberpunk and TLoUII that it's fans that seem to have the biggest backlash to looking at games on that level, because the medium would improve so much better for everyone if that critique was normalised and the person amkjing it didn't get the wave of harassment that often happens.

 

[Jaded Photographer]

Well, not black people, and there were still a lot of posters here that were very aggressive to people making those critiques

Click to shrink...

Their main problem is with how they represent black people and I honestly think this depends on who you're even asking about that. They break Neill's balls about Laura being Nadine while forgetting or cherry picking out that every black character in Last of Us 1 is voiced and portrayed by a black guy. I'm black. Personally I'm just happy that they were able to write Nadine well and add onto her in Lost Legacy.

There is that. TLOU2 was definitely my favourite game of the year, and while I got to be Ellie it meant the world to me to be playing as someone like myself for the first time in such a fun, well written, high budget game.

But ND definitely has a history with making very white games. Off the top of my head the only significant surviving person of colour between the two last of us games was Lev, and just Nadine and Tenzin across all 4 uncharted games (Nadine has a whole separate conversation about casting too though). I could be forgetting someone? I only remembered Tenzin at the last minute.

I don't think this comes as deliberate malice from ND or anything, but it is a pattern. Majority white cast, characters of colour who are there tend to die. I don't know what ND's writing staff consists off outside of the big names, but it seems like maybe they could just use a more diverse crew in the writing team. I do want to compliment Dina as being the only significant Jewish woman I can ever remember appearing in a video game though, certainly one where her Judaism was actually brought up in meaningful way.

Click to shrink...

Chloe's not exactly white.

 

[Metalsnakezero]

7 years later, this video is still relevant.

Click to shrink...

Continue to be relevant since many don't learn from critics as the "market" tells them to go one way. Also Jim sterling still good.

 

[RecLib]

Chloe's not exactly white.

Click to shrink...

Yeah that's fair. I actually feel pretty dumb about this one. Lost Legacy becomes super notable as a game starting two women of colour with no male lead at all.

Which is why it's sad when you look at the big games this year like Cyberpunk and TLoUII that it's fans that seem to have the biggest backlash to looking at games on that level, because the medium would improve so much better for everyone if that critique was normalised and the person amkjing it didn't get the wave of harassment that often happens.

Click to shrink...

Fans hardcore defending things is a huge cultural problem in general unfortunately. It definitely applies to gaming, and to TLOU2 specifically as well, but you see it all over the place. I've even encountered it in really weird meta ways. Remember a few months back, die hard fans of a gaming outlet refusing to listen to queer women saying that outlets takes on TLOU2 were actually offensive to them. People let themselves become too invested in being fans of things, and then they feel a need to defend it as if people critiquing the thing they are a fan of is somehow a personal attack against them.

 

[ClickyCal']

Their main problem is with how they represent black people and I honestly think this depends on who you're even asking about that. They break Neill's balls about Laura being Nadine while forgetting or cherry picking out that every black character in Last of Us 1 is voiced and portrayed by a black guy. I'm black. Personally I'm just happy that they were able to write Nadine well and add onto her in Lost Legacy.

Click to shrink...

Well I think what was meant there is more about the black characters themselves and how they have been handled in terms of being killed in part 1/2. I definitely feel like that was never intended maliciously, but more of something that they did without realizing the rough optics of it. Killing mostly all of the named black characters particularly because the main characters are white.

Adding to the diversity of people on the team can go a long way with that, like how they did work with people that are trans with Lev's character. Neil has said he lurks here, where that has been talked about. Hopefully he can work on that. Especially with more power now.

 

[.exe]

Oh definitely. Like, she's supposed to be a "parody" of those kind of tropes or whatever (that's what I hear wheeled out by those who attempt to defend her, at least). But what's the point of being a "parody" or satire, when you do exactly the same thing with no commentary?

Click to shrink...

Reminds me of Daru in Steins Gate and that one character in My Hero Academia.
Like, maybe just don't? I don't know. Just a thought.

 

[arcadepc]

The thing with a lot of Geek Culture is it's all about the pretense of depth, on selling an illusion of intelligence and superiority to insecure teenage boys who need to feel they have one up on everyone else. [Insert ProZD Anime Sketch here.]

There will be a raft of YouTube videos in months to come, hyper-analysing every aspect of 2077 to show you how clever it is - just as there was a raft of YouTube videos hyper-analysing tLoU2 in a bid to rip it apart.

And always there beneath the surface, behind all the pomp and pretention and pseudo-intellectual grandeur, a whiny little boy screaming for validation.

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Wait till Vampire the Masquerade 2 is released....

 

[Jaded Photographer]

Yeah that's fair. I actually feel pretty dumb about this one. Lost Legacy becomes super notable as a game starting two women of colour with no male lead at all.

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And what Chloe represents is even rarer than what Nadine represents in a video game. You could probably count woman Indian video game protagonists on one hand.

Well I think what was meant there is more about the black characters themselves and how they have been handled in terms of being killed in part 1/2. I definitely feel like that was never intended maliciously, but more of something that they did without realizing the rough optics of it. Killing mostly all of the named black characters particularly because the main characters are white.

Adding to the diversity of people on the team can go a long way with that, like how they did work with people that are trans with Lev's character. Neil has said he lurks here, where that has been talked about. Hopefully he can work on that. Especially with more power now.

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Yeah I think he's trying to improve it. Every interview I see with Neil, he strikes me as a guy that legit cares. He didn't even half ass the Lev casting since Ian Alexander is a very vocal member of the trans community.

 

[rras1994]

Their main problem is with how they represent black people and I honestly think this depends on who you're even asking about that. They break Neill's balls about Laura being Nadine while forgetting or cherry picking out that every black character in Last of Us 1 is voiced and portrayed by a black guy. I'm black. Personally I'm just happy that they were able to write Nadine well and add onto her in Lost Legacy.

Chloe's not exactly white.

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I would more break Neil's balls (maybe a bit extreme lol, politely worded critique more my thing) on how he responds to those criticisms about Nadine, it's a bit defensive. Like I said earlier I don't think they are malicious about it or it's a conscious decision, just when you compare how white people are treated and black people in tlous games, black people tend to be treated in much more brutal ways and they'd improve if they took those criticisms on board for their next game. Like Ellie wouldn't have become a main protag if Naughty Dog didn't get the criticisms on how they only had male protags or how they didn't have good LGBT rep. Criticisms helps. I wouldn't say Naughty Dog is directly analogous to CDPR in that Naughty Dog actually seems to listen to people to try and improve while CDPR just.... doesn't, if anything they seem to go more into. Just on how fans of both companies seem to respond to such critiques and how aggressive they get is similar. A product of the gaming community were people tend to become warriors for brands.

Honestly just remember the thread criticising botht he Nadine casting and critiques of black people on how they are treated in TLOU's really really bad. People got really aggresive at whatat the end of the day were pretty mild critiques?

 

[RecLib]

Wait till Vampire the Masquerade 2 is released....

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I don't think that game is going to have the same shit show. Largely because most of the big Vampire fans seem to have already resigned themselves into thinking the game is probably going to be bad. It has had a TROUBLED production that has really stemmed that hype down.

And what Chloe represents is even rarer than what Nadine represents in a video game. You could probably count woman Indian video game protagonists on one hand.

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In that arena of budget and popularity, probably on one finger.

 

[timedesk]

Oh definitely. Like, she's supposed to be a "parody" of those kind of tropes or whatever (that's what I hear wheeled out by those who attempt to defend her, at least). But what's the point of being a "parody" or satire, when you do exactly the same thing with no commentary?

Mikan is definitely terrible, terrible, terrible.

Especially when even if the attempt was to be a parody, on top of that, like, you also have the fuckface of a pervert Teruteru right there with his whole "joke" just being that he's a pervert, making it even harder to take any potential defense of Mikan seriously. Not that any of the characters go along with Teruteru's antics from what I recall, but that he's a character to begin with, and that was his thing, over and over and over again, just bleh.

Edit: And then, fuck, in addition to Teruteru, you also of course of Soda, who's constantly creeping on Sonia. And he gets called out on that, multiple times. But he never really shows any particular character growth on that front and just keeps doing it anyway, because that quickly becomes the whole "joke" with his character as well. Just being a pervert, who is called out, but never really learns and keeps being a pervert anyway, and that's not-tolerated-except-it-totally-is by the group by how he just keeps doing it, no matter how many times he's called out.

And fuck, now I'm remembering how that's not quite accurate and early in the game Soda actually begged and convinced Hajime to be a participant in his stupid scheme with Sonia and the girls at the restaurant...

Definitely a lot of bad choices in that game.

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Danganronpa is such a weird series to me. I remember it first being recommended to me as a kind of parody of anime archetypes. It was a murder mystery game staring a grab bag of cartoonish cliches. So I assumed the whole thing was going to be a parody or satire of shallow anime characters, and that's really really not the game at all. It takes its overall story very seriously, but the character archetypes they supposedly parody are mostly just straight examples. Nothing about 90% of Mikan's character is any different then any other helpless clumsy type.

It's especially annoying when you have some very very shallow characters make it all the way to the end of the game with zero development. All the games have pretty bad examples of this. Danganronpa could be a funny skewering of formulaic anime archetypes, or even be a fun deconstruction or celebration of them. Instead it feels like a weird drama featuring flat characters. They also seemed to insert more and more fanservice in each entry.

 

[Bricks]

They even censored a guy, who was naked in the E3 demo.

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That's just weird. Apparently in the same section of the 48 minutes gameplay demo from 2018 (where you enter the den of the gang who "harvests" people for cybernetic parts) they added pants to the naked man in the tub.

I can't help but wonder why. We saw back then how the game didn't exactly shy away from showing naked bodies, male or female. I find it hard to believe that, say, 2 years down the line someone (be it the director, some developers, or whoever else) just woke up one day and thought "You know, I'm not really comfortable with that guy being completely naked, let's cover him up a bit".

I'm almost tempted to think it might have to do with matters such as ratings, classifications and the likes, to avoid any kind of ban - although from what I know the infamous "Adults Only" rating is assigned only if you show a fully erect penis...

 

[ClickyCal']

That's just weird. Apparently in the same section of the 48 minutes gameplay demo from 2018 (where you enter the den of the gang who "harvests" people for cybernetic parts) they added pants to the naked man in the tub.

I can't help but wonder why. We saw back then how the game didn't exactly shy away from showing naked bodies, male or female. I find it hard to believe that, say, 2 years down the line someone (be it the director, some developers, or whoever else) just woke up one day and thought "You know, I'm not really comfortable with that guy being completely naked, let's cover him up a bit".

I'm almost tempted to think it might have to do with matters such as ratings, classifications and the likes, to avoid any kind of ban - although from what I know the infamous "Adults Only" rating is assigned only if you show a fully erect penis...

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Some feel like they purposely did these changes in that time frame from the backlash they started getting. Basically going out of their way to pander even more to gamers.

 

[Deleted member 56306]

Honestly just remember the thread criticising botht he Nadine casting and critiques of black people on how they are treated in TLOU's really really bad. People got really aggresive at whatat the end of the day were pretty mild critiques?

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Very much this.

 

[Redcrayon]

So...yeah...shit happened. If someone more involved in this wants to correct me I'm down for that but I believe I covered most of the basics.

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Okay there's a lot to unpack here. We know we made serious mistakes, but so much of this post is just not accurate.

Eventually, mods locked both that thread and Kyuuji's thread...and took Black Chamber's side. Saying that they were "dissapointed" in TransEra and even saying that they were cyberbullies for it.

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This is just wrong. Kyuuji's thread was not locked then (this was Saturday), only the Night Wire thread was locked at that point. We never accused anyone of cyberbullying. We never said we were "disappointed in TransEra". This just isn't factual.

Mods, again, sided with Black Chamber and started harshly banning anyone who criticized him.

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Again this is not true. There were many, many posts that were critical of Black Chamber and nobody was banned for criticism. The staff felt he deserved the criticism. There were some bans handed out for excessive personal attacks (which have been lifted), which is normal, because we were operating on what was known at the time. Obviously we had no idea Black Chamber was a Trump supporter on Twitter. And during the time this happened we handed out a lot of bans for trolling or dismissing trans concerns.

We then learned that because Black Chamber was so polite, mods repeatedly gave him second chances and refused to believe he was bad because he was civil until the MAGA stuff made it imposssible to ignore.

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This is a mischaracterisation of what we've said. When we initially approached Black Chamber about his OT, we expected a confrontation, and were surprised when he seemed eager to cooperate and said all the right things. After his recent comments, he kept up the act and volunteered to take a long ban by way of apology, among other gestures. Because of that, and because this kind of situation has never come up with an OT creator before, it didn't occur to us to vet him further. We were fooled into thinking he was acting in good faith, and that the situation could be mediated. We were wrong about that.

Where we actually fucked up the most was failing to scrutinize Black Chamber's infraction history the moment he posted the "everyone is welcome!" comment. He had a couple of prior bans that in a vacuum could've been innocent mistakes, but in this case should have made us suspicious of his motivations much sooner. The whole team has been agonising over that and we're trying to learn from it. People have called us out on it and they're right to. But Xas, we know we made a mistake and it doesn't help anything when people post completely inaccurate stuff to make us look worse.

 

[rras1994]

Okay there's a lot to unpack here. We know we made serious mistakes, but so much of this post is just not accurate.


This is just wrong. Kyuuji's thread was not locked then (this was Saturday), only the Night Wire thread was locked at that point. We never accused anyone of cyberbullying. We never said we were "disappointed in TransEra". This just isn't factual.


Again this is not true. There were many, many posts that were critical of Black Chamber and nobody was banned for criticism. The staff felt he deserved the criticism. There were some bans handed out for excessive personal attacks (which have been lifted), which is normal, because we were operating on what was known at the time. Obviously we had no idea Black Chamber was a Trump supporter on Twitter. And during the time this happened we handed out a lot of bans for trolling or dismissing trans concerns.


This is a mischaracterisation of what we've said. When we initially approached Black Chamber about his OT, we expected a confrontation, and were surprised when he seemed eager to cooperate and said all the right things. After his recent comments, he kept up the act and volunteered to take a long ban by way of apology, among other gestures. Because of that, and because this kind of situation has never come up with an OT creator before, it didn't occur to us to vet him further. We were fooled into thinking he was acting in good faith, and that the situation could be mediated. We were wrong about that.

Where we actually fucked up the most was failing to scrutinize Black Chamber's infraction history the moment he posted the "everyone is welcome!" comment. He had a couple of prior bans that in a vacuum could've been innocent mistakes, but in this case should have made us suspicious of his motivations much sooner. The whole team has been agonising over that and we're trying to learn from it. People have called us out on it and they're right to. But Xas, we know we made a mistake and it doesn't help anything when people post completely inaccurate stuff to make us look worse.

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I will say that Sophia's message wasn't actually targeted at anyone so it was unclear who was the ones doing the disappointing in that OT thread so some trans users wondered if you meant them. But I don't remember the mods accusing trans era of cyber bullying, that was some posters not mods.

 

[Lausebub]

Some feel like they purposely did these changes in that time frame from the backlash they started getting. Basically going out of their way to pander even more to gamers.

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I think the capital G gamers wouldn't even mind, if the guy would have been naked, if the game wasn't so sexist, if there were some side quests about trans sex or race issues and even if there were better voice/sex options in the editor.
There already was a small backlash for the minimal character options, but those people comolaing wouldn't notice or care, if you could change the voice.

They could have made a halfway inclusive game in which the chuds could have easily ignored all the inclusiveness, but they couldn't even be bothered to do that.

And I was so stupid to think that they can't be that stupid.

 

[Lausebub]

...

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I don't want to antagonize you or the other mods, but as I see it, trans eras question towards black chamber was ignored by him and his post after the night wire thread got reopened was definitely ban worthy in my eyes. It felt like textbook gaslighting to me. And instead of a ban, which would usually happen, there was a conversation with him, in which he could explain himself. I think you are in cummunication with trans era, so please correct me if I am wrong, but your biggest mistake wasn't checking black chambers ban history, but ignoring trans era.

 

[Deleted member 7130]

Is this OT title an actual quote someone said? lmao

 

[Vee]

Danganronpa is such a weird series to me. I remember it first being recommended to me as a kind of parody of anime archetypes. It was a murder mystery game staring a grab bag of cartoonish cliches. So I assumed the whole thing was going to be a parody or satire of shallow anime characters, and that's really really not the game at all. It takes its overall story very seriously, but the character archetypes they supposedly parody are mostly just straight examples. Nothing about 90% of Mikan's character is any different then any other helpless clumsy type.

It's especially annoying when you have some very very shallow characters make it all the way to the end of the game with zero development. All the games have pretty bad examples of this. Danganronpa could be a funny skewering of formulaic anime archetypes, or even be a fun deconstruction or celebration of them. Instead it feels like a weird drama featuring flat characters. They also seemed to insert more and more fanservice in each entry.

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Another thing about the DGR series is that the optional social links flesh out characters but the female characters noticeably always seem to turn into some form of attraction to the bland ass MC you play in the series or add some form of ship teasing.

 

[Timu]

Is this OT title an actual quote someone said? lmao

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Yeah it is, though I missed that thread as I didn't see the actual quote.

 

[RecLib]

Is this OT title an actual quote someone said? lmao

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It was a defense of Cammy (from street fighter) always baring her ass to be ogled.

 

[super-famicom]

It was a defense of Cammy (from street fighter) always baring her ass to be ogled.

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Yeah, an actual ERA member posted that. That thread weirded me out.

 

[RecLib]

Yeah, an actual ERA member posted that. That thread weirded me out.

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It was an extremely revealing thread, I think, for people who may have naively thought sexism wasn't a very real problem here on ERA.

 

[Timu]

It was an extremely revealing thread, I think, for people who may have naively thought sexism wasn't a very real problem here on ERA.

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I wish I saw that thread to see how absurd it was!

 

[ClickyCal']

I wish I saw that thread to see how absurd it was!

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The thread title pretty much sums it up. And the famous ProZD clip.

 

[Timu]

The thread title pretty much sums it up. And the famous ProZD clip.

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Ha, ha, that is just nuts!

 

[Xaszatm]

Okay there's a lot to unpack here. We know we made serious mistakes, but so much of this post is just not accurate.


This is just wrong. Kyuuji's thread was not locked then (this was Saturday), only the Night Wire thread was locked at that point. We never accused anyone of cyberbullying. We never said we were "disappointed in TransEra". This just isn't factual.


Again this is not true. There were many, many posts that were critical of Black Chamber and nobody was banned for criticism. The staff felt he deserved the criticism. There were some bans handed out for excessive personal attacks (which have been lifted), which is normal, because we were operating on what was known at the time. Obviously we had no idea Black Chamber was a Trump supporter on Twitter. And during the time this happened we handed out a lot of bans for trolling or dismissing trans concerns.


This is a mischaracterisation of what we've said. When we initially approached Black Chamber about his OT, we expected a confrontation, and were surprised when he seemed eager to cooperate and said all the right things. After his recent comments, he kept up the act and volunteered to take a long ban by way of apology, among other gestures. Because of that, and because this kind of situation has never come up with an OT creator before, it didn't occur to us to vet him further. We were fooled into thinking he was acting in good faith, and that the situation could be mediated. We were wrong about that.

Where we actually fucked up the most was failing to scrutinize Black Chamber's infraction history the moment he posted the "everyone is welcome!" comment. He had a couple of prior bans that in a vacuum could've been innocent mistakes, but in this case should have made us suspicious of his motivations much sooner. The whole team has been agonising over that and we're trying to learn from it. People have called us out on it and they're right to. But Xas, we know we made a mistake and it doesn't help anything when people post completely inaccurate stuff to make us look worse.

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Ok, I'll change some of it. But I still think that was mostly accurate.

Edit; OK, I removed and changed some stuff.

 

[super-famicom]

I wish I saw that thread to see how absurd it was!

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It's this thread iirc

Should/Will a Street Fighter 6 do away with Cammy's gratuitous ass shots?

Everyone who has played Street Fighter with Cammy since 2 knows what I'm talking about. Its quite possible some only remember who Cammy is because of vivid Victory poses where the eyes are meant to focus on her posterior. Is this just a tradition expected to be kept in each installment? Or are...

www.resetera.com

The title quote comes from Post #53, written by someone who requested an account closure.