I'm not keen to watch a video without a summary, and I've stayed away from this topic for a number of reasons, but I wouldn't want my workplace to represent me on any topic so divisive. There are...
I'm not keen to watch a video without a summary, and I've stayed away from this topic for a number of reasons, but I wouldn't want my workplace to represent me on any topic so divisive. There are hundreds of people in a studio in some cases, and I doubt they're having open discussions about it, so maybe no? I wish we could go back to a time when people had public discussion in community groups that could represent these issues, not entire industries and giant corporations.
I wouldn’t want my employer to represent me (or claim to represent me) concerning any political topic. It’s a job, for God’s sake. I show up and work, and in return they pay me. That’s the extent...
I wouldn't want my workplace to represent me on any topic so divisive.
I wouldn’t want my employer to represent me (or claim to represent me) concerning any political topic. It’s a job, for God’s sake. I show up and work, and in return they pay me. That’s the extent of our relationship.
Do we really need everyone to have an opinion on everything and to share it with everyone else? Why is this such a thing these days, saying, ""X” can't say silent." Why the fuck not? I'd rather...
Do we really need everyone to have an opinion on everything and to share it with everyone else? Why is this such a thing these days, saying, ""X” can't say silent." Why the fuck not?
I'd rather most people and corporations stay silent on numerous topics. No need to feed the Culture War machine.
Yes and no. The culture war needs resolution. The right needs to basically drop most of their cultural stances, and the left needs to ease up a bit on censorship. The media needs to stop treating...
Yes and no. The culture war needs resolution. The right needs to basically drop most of their cultural stances, and the left needs to ease up a bit on censorship. The media needs to stop treating both sides as equals. The center needs to toughen up and denounce the right. And we all need to figure out how forgiveness fits in to a world of disproportionate reporting and actual "permanent records".
Until you don't have the risk of neo-Nazis "supporting Palestine," it's not going to be possible to have nuanced discussion publicly online.
The only reason it works on Tildes at all is because it's not public.
Eh I'm not getting into the whole thing right now...I did make some more clarifications in an edit as you replied. I'm referring to that special blend of internet outrage and language policing...
Eh I'm not getting into the whole thing right now...I did make some more clarifications in an edit as you replied. I'm referring to that special blend of internet outrage and language policing that's caused in part by a lack of context. The kind that dissolves nuance and then gets further weaponized by the right, and basically takes the form of a modern witchhunt. I think @NaraVara touched on what I'm thinking about well awhile back.
I really think the conclusion is frankly absurd. The games industry doesn't have heavy opinions on a whole slew of genocides and horrible atrocities that have been committed in the past 20+ years,...
I really think the conclusion is frankly absurd. The games industry doesn't have heavy opinions on a whole slew of genocides and horrible atrocities that have been committed in the past 20+ years, or even farther beyond historically. Most people wouldn't even know the games industry was "involved" in the MeToo/BLM/Ukraine stuff and personally I think a ton of that was not sincere involvement and more just marketing. Much like how every pride month every company throws on rainbow backgrounds on twitter and calls it a day, and still sells and does business with companies and countries who will actually straight up murder the people they claim to be celebrating.
Further, like many media and entertainment industries, their involvement when it is there sincerely is often slapshod and ill informed. I don't really think there's a "right" side in this conflict, but even if there was you can be on the right side for the wrong reasons, and that's something that I think these kinds of movements bend towards, and yes this is a much more difficult issue.
I respect that I'm probably just not going to see eye to eye on this anyways for a variety of reasons that have been discussed to death on this site. Still, I don't see "the games industry" as the sudden change for this situation, and certainly do not see any "must" in their behavior.
This is probably too simplistic of a take for a subject like this, but I imagine a lot of game developers are scared to openly take a stance due to the scorched earth tactics that have...
This is probably too simplistic of a take for a subject like this, but I imagine a lot of game developers are scared to openly take a stance due to the scorched earth tactics that have historically been used against those on opposing sides of the ideology battles in the past decade.
With many of the previous causes the narrator mentioned, there really wasn't much of an opposing argument, at least amongst the left/liberal-leaning online sphere. With this latest situation though, its much more dangerous to come out in support one way or another without potentially angering very loud and very rabid online groups. Arguments for both sides often devolve into zero nuance accusation slinging.
Both sides are at fault for this and I think this is the simplistic view that they were trying to point out. The situation is incredibly complex and both sides could easily be portrayed as the...
Both sides are at fault for this and I think this is the simplistic view that they were trying to point out. The situation is incredibly complex and both sides could easily be portrayed as the right side.
On top of that, as other posters have mentioned, employees at a given company may not agree with the stance their employer takes (pro vs anti on either side) nor is this really a battleground for the gaming industry to be involved with in my opinion. I'm in agreement with Eji1700's point of view that even if they were to participate and take a stance, for most companies it would be a token and hollow effort ultimately driven by profits and good PR.
Almost every game company I know of (and I've worked with quite a few) is aggressively liberal in their company culture. Most popular online spaces devoted to discussing games are left/liberal...
Almost every game company I know of (and I've worked with quite a few) is aggressively liberal in their company culture. Most popular online spaces devoted to discussing games are left/liberal leaning as well. Young people, and especially middle class and above young people tend to be more liberal, and also tend to be much more likely to be online discussing games.
After... Ya know, 2015, I'm going to need a citation on that one. I'm not saying that there's not a lot of left leaning online discourse in the gaming community but... I mean, Alex Jones...
Most popular online spaces devoted to discussing games are left/liberal leaning as well. Young people, and especially middle class and above young people tend to be more liberal, and also tend to be much more likely to be online discussing games.
After... Ya know, 2015, I'm going to need a citation on that one. I'm not saying that there's not a lot of left leaning online discourse in the gaming community but... I mean, Alex Jones specifically targeted them as an audience, ya know?
Even before 2015 it's a pretty sheltered view. Are they mostly left leaning? Sure...if you stick to mostly western communities. International communities, especially for games, are a hell of a lot...
Even before 2015 it's a pretty sheltered view. Are they mostly left leaning? Sure...if you stick to mostly western communities. International communities, especially for games, are a hell of a lot more conservative, especially by western standards.
This was a discussion about game developers needing to speak up about the Palestinians, it's inherently a Western discussion, People Make Games aren't calling for Chinese or Russian game devs to...
This was a discussion about game developers needing to speak up about the Palestinians, it's inherently a Western discussion, People Make Games aren't calling for Chinese or Russian game devs to stand with Palestine.
You’re the one who brought up game companies and popular online spaces devoted to discussing games? Nothing about that is inherently western. Heck i don’t think the topic is inherently western either
You’re the one who brought up game companies and popular online spaces devoted to discussing games? Nothing about that is inherently western.
Heck i don’t think the topic is inherently western either
I don't really understand why you're arguing semantics about something that isn't even that important to the original discussion, but I don't believe Tildes is the place to get into scraps like...
I don't really understand why you're arguing semantics about something that isn't even that important to the original discussion, but I don't believe Tildes is the place to get into scraps like that; so I'll just say I don't agree and leave it at that. It's important to remember we're not on reddit anymore. Respectfully agreeing to disagree.
A dude from SCS Software (Euro Truck Simulator etc.) told me that when they publicly announced supporting Ukraine and cancelled their Russia DLC, the number of people who loudly complained, were...
A dude from SCS Software (Euro Truck Simulator etc.) told me that when they publicly announced supporting Ukraine and cancelled their Russia DLC, the number of people who loudly complained, were vulgar etc. was miniscule. It's not the same thing because at least around here Ukraine has a ton more support than Palestine and specifically Czech Republic is very pro-Israel, but it does seem like the number of people who decide to be assholes about it is small.
From what I recall about GamerGate, it was the same thing. The portion of people who actually engaged in harassment and not just complaining on reddit was tiny.
My understanding has always been that those are a very small yet very vocal minority of users thankfully. Though it's possible I'm wrong, I could just be speaking from my sphere of experiences and...
My understanding has always been that those are a very small yet very vocal minority of users thankfully. Though it's possible I'm wrong, I could just be speaking from my sphere of experiences and having it not be representative of the actual landscape of games these days.
Even if it weren't a vocal minority (which I think is probably the case), the game dev and gamer communities are not identical, despite there beinf obvious overlap. Gamergate was a blight in the...
Even if it weren't a vocal minority (which I think is probably the case), the game dev and gamer communities are not identical, despite there beinf obvious overlap. Gamergate was a blight in the gamer community but I don't think it was nearly so prevalent among devs and it's certainly not a popular ideology among devs now. Especially indie devs, probably one of the bigger targets of this video, who do skew on the progressive side ime.
And I'm not saying the devs themselves would be wrong for making a stand. I'm just saying that attracting vitrol from vocal minorities (whom @conception noted are also quite extremist) is probably...
And I'm not saying the devs themselves would be wrong for making a stand. I'm just saying that attracting vitrol from vocal minorities (whom @conception noted are also quite extremist) is probably not in the best interest of anyone.
There's no way the public discourse in the wake of any significant corporate stance would be anything but harmful to everyone.
I think this reasoning makes sense for large corporate game development studios (who I have pretty low standards for), but it doesn't reflect the reality for indie devs, who I do think are the...
I think this reasoning makes sense for large corporate game development studios (who I have pretty low standards for), but it doesn't reflect the reality for indie devs, who I do think are the principle target audience for this video. Indie devs are far closer to individuals than large studios are and were also on the whole very vocal in their support of Ukraine. Heck, it's very common to see pro-Ukraine text on mod pages for many games I play.
Gamergate was absolutely awful but it had a very specific ideological viewpoint that's pretty orthogonal to conflicts like this. It reflects a current of quasi-fascist rhetoric among a certain demographic of gamers that is very real and dangerous, but their furor was never really tied to geopolitical conflicts like this, but rather to the increased presence of women and minorities in gaming spaces. So I don't think its exostence necessarily indicates there would be a similar degree of backlash to devs taking a stance on this particular issue. There certainly wasn't for Ukraine.
And that boils down to Ukraine being pretty cut and dry. There's almost no way you could paint Russia as being anything other than a bad actor. This situation is currently not, by a long shot....
And that boils down to Ukraine being pretty cut and dry. There's almost no way you could paint Russia as being anything other than a bad actor. This situation is currently not, by a long shot.
There was basically nothing to lose by "standing with Ukraine." In this case, you can easily be erroneously painted as an anti-semite or a genocide supporter, depending on which stance you take.
And given that there are a substantial number of anti-Semites "standing with Palestine" this time, it's not an unreasonable position to stand back and avoid falling in with the wrong crowd.
Let's not pretend that this is a bothsides issue. It's Israeli groups like AIPAC that are dumping money into propaganda, ruining students and politicians academic and professional careers for...
Let's not pretend that this is a bothsides issue.
It's Israeli groups like AIPAC that are dumping money into propaganda, ruining students and politicians academic and professional careers for criticizing Israel's right wing government etc. Spreading lies and misinformation about those calling for a cease fire.
Palestine does not have the money for any kind of global face-saving campaign, they don't have support in governments and global industries. You can say whatever you want about Palestine with any sort of consequence.
It's only Israel that has created a chilling effect on criticizing their extremist government. The only reason Palestine is garnering such growing support is because of how egregious Israel's atrocities have become, Israel has reached a saturation point in the lies they're able to tell and truths they're able to hide.
I definitely am not here to argue that point and I don't believe I was pretending any such thing in my comment. My comment was talking about the reaction from online communities to taking a...
I definitely am not here to argue that point and I don't believe I was pretending any such thing in my comment. My comment was talking about the reaction from online communities to taking a stance, not which stance is correct. I don't have the knowledge, energy, or motivation to try and get into any sort of meaningful debate about the issue itself.
This War Of Mine already exists, we don't need the games industry to tell us that war is bad. And, yeah, we can all say the industry needs to take a side but what is People Make Games going to do...
This War Of Mine already exists, we don't need the games industry to tell us that war is bad.
And, yeah, we can all say the industry needs to take a side but what is People Make Games going to do when EA decides to come out pro Israel and then blackballs anyone they decide is wrong? The 'industry' can't have a unified response when the industry is made up from everyone from single person passion projects to companies with a higher GDP than entire countries.
Besides, unless Rockstar is going to somehow reign in Bibi, what's the fucking point of them clicking their tongues? Didn't Far Cry 2 cover that 'activism' well enough? Do we need Jaeger to release a Spec Ops DLC which replaced the white phosphorus with a Palestinian hospital to really drive the point home?
The state of the Middle East absolutely sucks. The situation so profoundly complicated that folks don't actually know what side to take, let alone who to support because everyone is at each...
The state of the Middle East absolutely sucks. The situation so profoundly complicated that folks don't actually know what side to take, let alone who to support because everyone is at each other's throats... And that includes us on the "outside" of the conflict.
War is a dick to anyone involved. Those who fight, those who don't and everyone caught in a crossfire. It's exhausting enough to be expected to have a formulaic and well reasoned opinion about matters that are so complex and emotive, let alone be made to prostrate before the great Social Expectation Gods that we've made.
The entire conflict sucks. It's religious and political zealotry on both sides that have caused it to be as awful as it is. There's arguments on every side from "Defense against Persecution" to "Proportional response" that absolutely none of us have the slightest bit how to argue and stand up for... Because they're so damn complicated.
The whole situation is riddled in sorrow and madness. I (and collectively we) don't need to be lecturered about out media needing to step up and forced to take a side.
This is the take I wish everyone was able to share, it shows how insane online discourse can be. It's people trying to use their "good vs. evil" lens on an issue that they know so little about,...
This is the take I wish everyone was able to share, it shows how insane online discourse can be. It's people trying to use their "good vs. evil" lens on an issue that they know so little about, while simultaneously expecting everyone to have an equally strong opinion. Extremely traumatic events are happening and we don't need to take to announce who we think deserves to have more of their people slaughtered. It kinda shows how disconnected most people are from what real war / trauma is (myself included I am a sheltered US citizen and have no concept of what those people must be experiencing.)
I should note I only watched the summary (the "why pmg is talking about Palestine") but most of my response here is general and not really involving this specific situation (to say I am completely...
I should note I only watched the summary (the "why pmg is talking about Palestine") but most of my response here is general and not really involving this specific situation (to say I am completely ignorant of the history of the middle east is an understatement. But to educate myself requires much more than a 30 minute video)
Now, with all that said: I absolutely understand that video games are art and a large platform and that artists should express themselves, especially in times of controversy that always comes from art first. But an artist doesn't necessarily have an opinion on every single cause in every single topic. So I don't think the premise of "the games industry shouldn't be silent" is the right way to phrase it. And the arguments presented don't necessarily feel sound
"games have negatively portrayed the middle east and bear some responsibility". First, a few games, likely from over 15 years ago, have done this and the games industry at large has largely avoided the topic ever since. If you want to see how a game portraying modern war is going, take a look at Six Days of Faallujah. The development story there is its own rabbit hole of issues.
But in general, most games don't portray real wars anyway. So to say games are responsible for negative sentiment feels about as damning as someone peeing in a large public pool. Not cool, but it's also probably far from the worst thing in the water, not something a park will take responsibility for.
"the industry has donated for other causes outside of games" indeed. Now I don't want to rant about limousine liberalism, but I hope it doesn't come off as too cynical to suggest that those causes popped up because they were very easy PR. There were not a lot of studios throwing their neck out for LGBT communities in the 00's but by the '10's post gay marriage legalization its practically become a meme to have some small token of celebration in Jun before shelving their support like a Christmas tree for next year.
This isn't to say that there aren't individuals in games who don't care. But corporations aren't people and they don't make decisions like a person would. If they come out in support they are likely following a trend and not the ones leading the charge. They want it to be "safe".
Now if there are any studios voicing their thoughts on this I wish them the best of luck and support the idea of such practice (again, I can't speak of this specific situation. More of thr general sentiment of speaking up). But I also don't think there is some built-in obligation for the games industry specifically to speak out.
This is just an absolutely absurd misstatement of the state of the games industry when it comes to the Middle East. The most recent CoD game, 2022's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II is set in a...
games have negatively portrayed the middle east and bear some responsibility". First, a few games, likely from over 15 years ago, have done this and the games industry at large has largely avoided the topic ever since. If you want to see how a game portraying modern war is going, take a look at Six Days of Faallujah. The development story there is its own rabbit hole of issues
This is just an absolutely absurd misstatement of the state of the games industry when it comes to the Middle East. The most recent CoD game, 2022's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II is set in a fictional Middle Eastern country. It's absolutely ludicrous to claim that game devs have largely avoided setting games in Middle Eastern warzones since 15 years ago -- there is an absolute glut of examples contradicting that.
For what it's worth, the primary controversy over Six Days in Fallujah happened back in 2009, when it was (rightly) called out as "too soon" to be tasteful and thus cancelled by Konami. It's a weird choice to represent the status quo for portraying a modern war in 2023. More recent coverage once it went back in development was criticism of the lead dev's comments on the game leading people to believe it would not ultimately be well-executed. Here's a review of the early access game from earlier this year. Criticism of how a game portrays Iraqi civilians is not the evidence that games set in the Middle East demonizing the people who live there is no longer an issue.
so, a single game thst is a soft reboot of a 14 year old game that is set in a fictional world that still proceeded to fall under controversy and have mixed impressions. Yes, that seems to track...
The most recent CoD game, 2022's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II is set in a fictional Middle Eastern country.
so, a single game thst is a soft reboot of a 14 year old game that is set in a fictional world that still proceeded to fall under controversy and have mixed impressions. Yes, that seems to track well.
The mainstream gaming sphere doesn't exactly discuss any COD story In depth so I don't know how respectful or not its (likely much shorter) campaign is.
It's a weird choice to represent the status quo for portraying a modern war in 2023.
If you have any other modern projects to use as an example, I'm all ears. But my main point is that 99.99% of games avoid those topics or country portayals because even the American choice to go to war with Iraq is a touchy subject (once we got past the 9/11 nationalism). I don't feel like this is something the game industry has a huge hand in orchestrating.
"so vocal, so passionate, and so informed about other crises of social justice" That sounds rather overly generous. Especially if your definition of "the games industry" includes Activision.
"so vocal, so passionate, and so informed about other crises of social justice"
That sounds rather overly generous. Especially if your definition of "the games industry" includes Activision.
I'm not keen to watch a video without a summary, and I've stayed away from this topic for a number of reasons, but I wouldn't want my workplace to represent me on any topic so divisive. There are hundreds of people in a studio in some cases, and I doubt they're having open discussions about it, so maybe no? I wish we could go back to a time when people had public discussion in community groups that could represent these issues, not entire industries and giant corporations.
I wouldn’t want my employer to represent me (or claim to represent me) concerning any political topic. It’s a job, for God’s sake. I show up and work, and in return they pay me. That’s the extent of our relationship.
Do we really need everyone to have an opinion on everything and to share it with everyone else? Why is this such a thing these days, saying, ""X” can't say silent." Why the fuck not?
I'd rather most people and corporations stay silent on numerous topics. No need to feed the Culture War machine.
Yes and no. The culture war needs resolution. The right needs to basically drop most of their cultural stances, and the left needs to ease up a bit on censorship. The media needs to stop treating both sides as equals. The center needs to toughen up and denounce the right. And we all need to figure out how forgiveness fits in to a world of disproportionate reporting and actual "permanent records".
Until you don't have the risk of neo-Nazis "supporting Palestine," it's not going to be possible to have nuanced discussion publicly online.
The only reason it works on Tildes at all is because it's not public.
What censorship does the left need to ease up on? The right is the one most publicly getting into censorship these days.
Eh I'm not getting into the whole thing right now...I did make some more clarifications in an edit as you replied. I'm referring to that special blend of internet outrage and language policing that's caused in part by a lack of context. The kind that dissolves nuance and then gets further weaponized by the right, and basically takes the form of a modern witchhunt. I think @NaraVara touched on what I'm thinking about well awhile back.
I really think the conclusion is frankly absurd. The games industry doesn't have heavy opinions on a whole slew of genocides and horrible atrocities that have been committed in the past 20+ years, or even farther beyond historically. Most people wouldn't even know the games industry was "involved" in the MeToo/BLM/Ukraine stuff and personally I think a ton of that was not sincere involvement and more just marketing. Much like how every pride month every company throws on rainbow backgrounds on twitter and calls it a day, and still sells and does business with companies and countries who will actually straight up murder the people they claim to be celebrating.
Further, like many media and entertainment industries, their involvement when it is there sincerely is often slapshod and ill informed. I don't really think there's a "right" side in this conflict, but even if there was you can be on the right side for the wrong reasons, and that's something that I think these kinds of movements bend towards, and yes this is a much more difficult issue.
I respect that I'm probably just not going to see eye to eye on this anyways for a variety of reasons that have been discussed to death on this site. Still, I don't see "the games industry" as the sudden change for this situation, and certainly do not see any "must" in their behavior.
This is probably too simplistic of a take for a subject like this, but I imagine a lot of game developers are scared to openly take a stance due to the scorched earth tactics that have historically been used against those on opposing sides of the ideology battles in the past decade.
With many of the previous causes the narrator mentioned, there really wasn't much of an opposing argument, at least amongst the left/liberal-leaning online sphere. With this latest situation though, its much more dangerous to come out in support one way or another without potentially angering very loud and very rabid online groups. Arguments for both sides often devolve into zero nuance accusation slinging.
And we all know that online gaming communities have always been a bastion of liberal thought and reasonable behavior, right? Right?
:)
Both sides are at fault for this and I think this is the simplistic view that they were trying to point out. The situation is incredibly complex and both sides could easily be portrayed as the right side.
On top of that, as other posters have mentioned, employees at a given company may not agree with the stance their employer takes (pro vs anti on either side) nor is this really a battleground for the gaming industry to be involved with in my opinion. I'm in agreement with Eji1700's point of view that even if they were to participate and take a stance, for most companies it would be a token and hollow effort ultimately driven by profits and good PR.
Almost every game company I know of (and I've worked with quite a few) is aggressively liberal in their company culture. Most popular online spaces devoted to discussing games are left/liberal leaning as well. Young people, and especially middle class and above young people tend to be more liberal, and also tend to be much more likely to be online discussing games.
After... Ya know, 2015, I'm going to need a citation on that one. I'm not saying that there's not a lot of left leaning online discourse in the gaming community but... I mean, Alex Jones specifically targeted them as an audience, ya know?
Even before 2015 it's a pretty sheltered view. Are they mostly left leaning? Sure...if you stick to mostly western communities. International communities, especially for games, are a hell of a lot more conservative, especially by western standards.
This was a discussion about game developers needing to speak up about the Palestinians, it's inherently a Western discussion, People Make Games aren't calling for Chinese or Russian game devs to stand with Palestine.
You’re the one who brought up game companies and popular online spaces devoted to discussing games? Nothing about that is inherently western.
Heck i don’t think the topic is inherently western either
I don't really understand why you're arguing semantics about something that isn't even that important to the original discussion, but I don't believe Tildes is the place to get into scraps like that; so I'll just say I don't agree and leave it at that. It's important to remember we're not on reddit anymore. Respectfully agreeing to disagree.
I was mostly thinking of a fanbase that has a tendancy to send death threats for patch notes they don't like.
Or GamerGate.
A dude from SCS Software (Euro Truck Simulator etc.) told me that when they publicly announced supporting Ukraine and cancelled their Russia DLC, the number of people who loudly complained, were vulgar etc. was miniscule. It's not the same thing because at least around here Ukraine has a ton more support than Palestine and specifically Czech Republic is very pro-Israel, but it does seem like the number of people who decide to be assholes about it is small.
From what I recall about GamerGate, it was the same thing. The portion of people who actually engaged in harassment and not just complaining on reddit was tiny.
My understanding has always been that those are a very small yet very vocal minority of users thankfully. Though it's possible I'm wrong, I could just be speaking from my sphere of experiences and having it not be representative of the actual landscape of games these days.
Even if it weren't a vocal minority (which I think is probably the case), the game dev and gamer communities are not identical, despite there beinf obvious overlap. Gamergate was a blight in the gamer community but I don't think it was nearly so prevalent among devs and it's certainly not a popular ideology among devs now. Especially indie devs, probably one of the bigger targets of this video, who do skew on the progressive side ime.
And I'm not saying the devs themselves would be wrong for making a stand. I'm just saying that attracting vitrol from vocal minorities (whom @conception noted are also quite extremist) is probably not in the best interest of anyone.
There's no way the public discourse in the wake of any significant corporate stance would be anything but harmful to everyone.
I think this reasoning makes sense for large corporate game development studios (who I have pretty low standards for), but it doesn't reflect the reality for indie devs, who I do think are the principle target audience for this video. Indie devs are far closer to individuals than large studios are and were also on the whole very vocal in their support of Ukraine. Heck, it's very common to see pro-Ukraine text on mod pages for many games I play.
Gamergate was absolutely awful but it had a very specific ideological viewpoint that's pretty orthogonal to conflicts like this. It reflects a current of quasi-fascist rhetoric among a certain demographic of gamers that is very real and dangerous, but their furor was never really tied to geopolitical conflicts like this, but rather to the increased presence of women and minorities in gaming spaces. So I don't think its exostence necessarily indicates there would be a similar degree of backlash to devs taking a stance on this particular issue. There certainly wasn't for Ukraine.
And that boils down to Ukraine being pretty cut and dry. There's almost no way you could paint Russia as being anything other than a bad actor. This situation is currently not, by a long shot.
There was basically nothing to lose by "standing with Ukraine." In this case, you can easily be erroneously painted as an anti-semite or a genocide supporter, depending on which stance you take.
And given that there are a substantial number of anti-Semites "standing with Palestine" this time, it's not an unreasonable position to stand back and avoid falling in with the wrong crowd.
Sure but those are also the communities that try and kidnap a senior House member with a hammer to break her knees. It’s not an existential threat.
Let's not pretend that this is a bothsides issue.
It's Israeli groups like AIPAC that are dumping money into propaganda, ruining students and politicians academic and professional careers for criticizing Israel's right wing government etc. Spreading lies and misinformation about those calling for a cease fire.
Palestine does not have the money for any kind of global face-saving campaign, they don't have support in governments and global industries. You can say whatever you want about Palestine with any sort of consequence.
It's only Israel that has created a chilling effect on criticizing their extremist government. The only reason Palestine is garnering such growing support is because of how egregious Israel's atrocities have become, Israel has reached a saturation point in the lies they're able to tell and truths they're able to hide.
I definitely am not here to argue that point and I don't believe I was pretending any such thing in my comment. My comment was talking about the reaction from online communities to taking a stance, not which stance is correct. I don't have the knowledge, energy, or motivation to try and get into any sort of meaningful debate about the issue itself.
This War Of Mine already exists, we don't need the games industry to tell us that war is bad.
And, yeah, we can all say the industry needs to take a side but what is People Make Games going to do when EA decides to come out pro Israel and then blackballs anyone they decide is wrong? The 'industry' can't have a unified response when the industry is made up from everyone from single person passion projects to companies with a higher GDP than entire countries.
Besides, unless Rockstar is going to somehow reign in Bibi, what's the fucking point of them clicking their tongues? Didn't Far Cry 2 cover that 'activism' well enough? Do we need Jaeger to release a Spec Ops DLC which replaced the white phosphorus with a Palestinian hospital to really drive the point home?
The state of the Middle East absolutely sucks. The situation so profoundly complicated that folks don't actually know what side to take, let alone who to support because everyone is at each other's throats... And that includes us on the "outside" of the conflict.
War is a dick to anyone involved. Those who fight, those who don't and everyone caught in a crossfire. It's exhausting enough to be expected to have a formulaic and well reasoned opinion about matters that are so complex and emotive, let alone be made to prostrate before the great Social Expectation Gods that we've made.
The entire conflict sucks. It's religious and political zealotry on both sides that have caused it to be as awful as it is. There's arguments on every side from "Defense against Persecution" to "Proportional response" that absolutely none of us have the slightest bit how to argue and stand up for... Because they're so damn complicated.
The whole situation is riddled in sorrow and madness. I (and collectively we) don't need to be lecturered about out media needing to step up and forced to take a side.
This is the take I wish everyone was able to share, it shows how insane online discourse can be. It's people trying to use their "good vs. evil" lens on an issue that they know so little about, while simultaneously expecting everyone to have an equally strong opinion. Extremely traumatic events are happening and we don't need to take to announce who we think deserves to have more of their people slaughtered. It kinda shows how disconnected most people are from what real war / trauma is (myself included I am a sheltered US citizen and have no concept of what those people must be experiencing.)
I should note I only watched the summary (the "why pmg is talking about Palestine") but most of my response here is general and not really involving this specific situation (to say I am completely ignorant of the history of the middle east is an understatement. But to educate myself requires much more than a 30 minute video)
Now, with all that said: I absolutely understand that video games are art and a large platform and that artists should express themselves, especially in times of controversy that always comes from art first. But an artist doesn't necessarily have an opinion on every single cause in every single topic. So I don't think the premise of "the games industry shouldn't be silent" is the right way to phrase it. And the arguments presented don't necessarily feel sound
But in general, most games don't portray real wars anyway. So to say games are responsible for negative sentiment feels about as damning as someone peeing in a large public pool. Not cool, but it's also probably far from the worst thing in the water, not something a park will take responsibility for.
This isn't to say that there aren't individuals in games who don't care. But corporations aren't people and they don't make decisions like a person would. If they come out in support they are likely following a trend and not the ones leading the charge. They want it to be "safe".
Now if there are any studios voicing their thoughts on this I wish them the best of luck and support the idea of such practice (again, I can't speak of this specific situation. More of thr general sentiment of speaking up). But I also don't think there is some built-in obligation for the games industry specifically to speak out.
This is just an absolutely absurd misstatement of the state of the games industry when it comes to the Middle East. The most recent CoD game, 2022's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II is set in a fictional Middle Eastern country. It's absolutely ludicrous to claim that game devs have largely avoided setting games in Middle Eastern warzones since 15 years ago -- there is an absolute glut of examples contradicting that.
For what it's worth, the primary controversy over Six Days in Fallujah happened back in 2009, when it was (rightly) called out as "too soon" to be tasteful and thus cancelled by Konami. It's a weird choice to represent the status quo for portraying a modern war in 2023. More recent coverage once it went back in development was criticism of the lead dev's comments on the game leading people to believe it would not ultimately be well-executed. Here's a review of the early access game from earlier this year. Criticism of how a game portrays Iraqi civilians is not the evidence that games set in the Middle East demonizing the people who live there is no longer an issue.
so, a single game thst is a soft reboot of a 14 year old game that is set in a fictional world that still proceeded to fall under controversy and have mixed impressions. Yes, that seems to track well.
The mainstream gaming sphere doesn't exactly discuss any COD story In depth so I don't know how respectful or not its (likely much shorter) campaign is.
If you have any other modern projects to use as an example, I'm all ears. But my main point is that 99.99% of games avoid those topics or country portayals because even the American choice to go to war with Iraq is a touchy subject (once we got past the 9/11 nationalism). I don't feel like this is something the game industry has a huge hand in orchestrating.
"so vocal, so passionate, and so informed about other crises of social justice"
That sounds rather overly generous. Especially if your definition of "the games industry" includes Activision.