...Please, keep politics out of the game? Most of us are tired of people trying to force crazy ideologies down our throats at every single opportunity, or rich corporations trying to signal virtue by propagandizing the evils of capitalism and the wonders of socialism...

It is bad enough that Star Wars and half the others franchises around got destroyed by Socialjusticewarriorism. Remember: go woke, go broke...

You can't have a story without some kind of "politics" in it. People are human and every human has their own particular views and biases. If the writers did what you wanted and didn't put any references to ideologies that You, Personally, Do Not Like, that would still be making a political statement. You might not see it as a political statement because it reflected your personal views, but nevertheless it would be a political statement.

I find that people who complain about "social justice warriors" tend to be intolerant of any viewpoints except their own being presented.

I think what he is asking is for the story to not FOCUS on gender fluidity, strong and independent women, misogynistic men villains etc. And I don't think there were politics in BG1 and 2.

Politics are a facet of almost every decision you make, even if you don't think so. Or, I should say, almost every action you take can have a political statement.

And also; even the story of the game we know it is a political statement, in-universe; Becoming a mindflayer (and thus furthering their agenda to rise to ruling the world like in days of old) or fighting back and making a stand for the current status quo.

You side with the druids? Help the dryads fight back against the town that's over-foresting? Pro nature. Anti-industry.

Look at any actions you take IRL; almost any of them can have a political statement in some way. Asking for anti-politics is like asking for anti-story. You need a clashing of ideas and ideologies. If everyone agreed, or never brought up what they're fighting for/against, then there would be no conflict to drive an adventure story like Baldur's Gate.

Also, being anti-politics is, in itself, a political statement.

Also, also, BG has always had politics; you were the offspring of a god of murder, and had to decide what to do as such. Theology and politics.

That is true of some, but more often it's the folks getting called SJWs that are intolerant of views other then there own, that is partly why they are getting called that in the first place. Of course there are those on the right who just carelessly toss the SJW, or White Knight around like feminists toss the word mysongonist around till it's completely devalued.

Personally prefer the term professionally offended to SJW, but it never caught on.

For background I'm former feminist turned MRA, still very, very leftwing, but much more culturally Libertarian then I was in my youth, when at times I was what you could call an SJW, when I realized how authoritianism element of Political Correctionness was self defeating ultimately and often not honest and even down right hypocritical.

I still vote for feminists because there is common ground on stuff like social programs and the economy.

NO GAME up to 10 years ago had any kind of ideological propaganda on it. Have you seen it in BG1 and 2? This is something new. This belief that everything is political all the time and have always been, and that you cannot be neutral but will always feather one's own nest... This is just something despicable made up by post-modernism.

Interestingly enough I always see almost exclusively SJWs being intolerant of anyone else...

It's not about being anti-political, just about not using yet another form of art/entertainment as pure political, one-sided propaganda and forgetting about the game itself. Just look at the 3 last Star Wars episodes, FFS...

That's a great term. With my lack of proficiency in English I had never heard it. Thank you.

I'll be honest; I did not see any politics in the recent Star Wars trilogy, outside of the in-universe stuff (rebels fighting against an empire). But I was not looking for any political message, either.

Actually be use wokeness as an excuse for shit stories, go broke. All the woke stuff that went broke and failed did so not because they were woke, they do so because they were badly done. "Woke" stuff done well doesn't go broke, just like politically incorrect stuff done well doesn't go broke. Diversity is good, but it should feel organic and not leacturing or white male bashing. Have diversity, but stop making itthe centre piece of PR, because all the woke back patting just makes folks see there tokenism and agendas.

Destroying Luke because he was an "alpha male"?
Rey constantly beating Kylo's (a trained Skywalker who is also trained in the dark side) ass?
Rey being a better pilot than Poe?

None of that sounds like it is anything more than people looking for an excuse, no offense.
I could easily say that Luke's arc was done, and he sacrificed himself to save the rebellion.
Rey could beat Kylo because..well..slightly bad writing, mostly. Maybe the Force, too. She was strong in it.
Same with being a pilot; the Force just made her better than a trained pilot. I mean, it worked for Luke. He made a million-to-one shot and avoided getting shot down despite being a moisture farmer. Not a trained pilot. It could also just be bad writing.
Hell, Luke sacrificing himself was a parallel to his father sacrificing himself. his dad did it for family, he did it for the rebellion, for while he was the the father figure. It also coudl have been that the writers wanted him to go out in a battle, and not 'Luke grew old and died. The end'

None of it HAS to be politics unless people wanted it to be so, just so they could attack it.

People will always find a reason to complain, even if one does not exist. Not trying to be offensive, or saying YOU are. Just saying that none of that screams 'politics' to me.

What about the leaks that indicate that there was studio interference for those things to happen to please "woke audiences" (Luke being a failure and Rey being stronger than everyone without explanation)?
Would you like for events in BG1 and 2 to be retconed to please people? Balthazar was a gender fluid man-tree all along?

Here's where we get into view vs view.

The people yelling 'no politics!' are usually the ones upset if a new story comes out and has an openly gay character, or someone gender fluid.
Let's say Larian made a character in BG3 that was gender fluid, just because that's who they were. They did not retconn anything. Whole new character. People would STILL scream they were 'just added for the 'woke people'' and 'pandering'.
Even if that were not the case. Even if Larian showed writers notes on how the dude was gender fluid from day 1, people would STILL scream 'politics'.

Because they just don't want to hear it.They want THEIR version of 'Not in my game' over anyone else's views. Even the devs.

But these discussions never end with calm words on the internet. People are too defensive about there views, on both sides. I've said my part, and I will withdraw.

You've never heard of it, because I invented it and it never caught on, people liked SJW more, while I wasn't a fan of the term for various reasons, but for practical reasons of communication I still use it.

As for trans characters I'm fine with it, but they shouldn't feel shoe horned in and the nature of the setting should define it's expression.

So being trans in Waterdeep where magics exists to not only change one's gender, but sex as well to the point of fertility, which makes it a very different experience then being trans in New York or Toronto. Plus Doppelgangar and other shapeshifters. Plus a history of very different religions and cultures.

And that is true of being black, there are brown skin humans in FR, but their experiences are not a mirror to the African American or Black Canadian experience. In fact there are seperate none related black peoples in FR (some humans evolved on Toril, others came from other worlds). Like Chultans and Turmish to my knowledge have no blood relationship to each other despite both being black (this weird phenomnia is also true of white cultures, but not Shou aka Asians who are all immigrants to Toril I believe).

My favourite JRPG series, Suikoden, had 5 games between 1995 and 2006 and are pretty political and I love how their stories have a lot of shades of grey so you can even agree with some views of the villains. There's nothing "woke" about them, it's simply just very good storytelling.

To quote this article.

So yeah, I see absolutely nothing wrong with a story being political. No matter what the subject of the story is, what matters more if it's well-written or not. But I think we can agree that "woke" is not well-written, pretentious stuff rarely are, if ever.

This is the first Political themed thread I've seen since I started viewing this forum.

That is usually shaped by how the PR is handled. I mean yeah there are folks who complain about any gay or trans representations, but there are others who are more balanced then that.

I support diversity, but I don't support doing it badly or using lazy story telling to achieve it.

Oh don't get me wrong, I'm a libertarian (although all the "gender" terms are not scientific and thus are meaningless according to Biology). The point is, do not retcon established franchises to put a "woke" agenda.
If writers create feminist, gay, bissexual characters organically, i.e, it is imperative that they have those traits, then great. But do not make Lando be "gay" for droids. It is retarded.

Let's not use the "but the science!" argument. That's being used to excuse some very nasty opinions here in the UK at least and more often than not it seems the actual geneticists disagree with those who choose to use biology to support their claim.

As for politics in general, please be careful everyone. Though we generally encourage discussion about pretty much anything, there is a line when it comes to marginalising individuals or specific groups of people.

fwiw I agree about the subject of politics in games in that, if it's part of a well-written story that's fine, but if it's just come along for the ride and serves no purpose other than to Make A Point, I'm less fine with it.

I'd love to see a geneticist discuss with a "gender scholar". But anyways, the last paragraph is exactly my point. As long as it has a purpose in the story, it should be there.

As Stabby put it, every art form makes a statement including what you call political ones. Crono marrying Marle at the end of Chrono Trigger glorifies heterosexual relationships according to woke opinion. The current year is a reflection of today's political, financial and entertainment establishment. If you're not a fan of it, the good news for you is that the viral outbreak might just be the black swan event that topples the establishment so things like games, movies etc. may take a drastically different turn once this is all over. As far as Baldur's Gate 3, it will definitely be woke, the question is to what degree. A buddy of mine keeps telling me to check WotC's social media accounts to get a feel for their political affiliation. They're all for inclusiveness apparently so consider yourself forewarned.

>Please, keep politics out of the game?

It's literally impossible, no game is completely apolitcal, it's just that status quo is so ingrained, that political messaging that supports status quo feels "apolitical". So asking for apolitical game is same as asking game that enforces current political norms.

Well, other than the 'The Force is Female' tshirts and various interviews with directors and writers, etc.



The complaints come from how the character is done, not because of whatever minority status, etc, the character has. There have been lots of popular movies with strong female characters, for example, but if all the previews and interviews focus on a strong, independent woman lead and how the film has a feminist message and anybody who doesn't like it is a misogynist, it's probably not going to be a good movie.

As far as Larian's characters, there was approximately one person since D:OS 2 was released who complained about all of the companions being bisexual. It wasn't hamfisted in and announced at every opportunity to virtue signal. As most people realised, if they noticed it at all, that was done because there were not enough companions to cover every combination of romance options otherwise, and no reason to artificially restrict player choices even if that would be more realistic.



I've heard 'professionally offended', as well as 'perpetually offended'.

Conversely, some consider tolerance to be the last virtue of a dying society. Which way the entertainment industry goes next depends on a multitude of factors - the Germans call it Kulturkampf. Being part of it only makes things more exciting.

Yeah there are snowflakes on both sides, you only need to take a look what a fit people threw at taking a knee drama, or a that girl climate change activist, or tracer being lesbian or how they defend trump beyond any reason. For every screeching social justice warrior there are 2 conservatives just as emotional and irrational. It's hilarious people claiming facts > feelings when their whole reasoning is just a ball of emotion.

well ive seen this coming
>geneticists disagree iwth people who use science as an argument
well, that depends entierly on what people.
That theres only two biological genders? yeah im pretty sure that theres not a single scientist who disagrees with this. Simply because evolutionary biology.
Or is it the case of the one scientist who got deplatformed from everything after saying that IQ is heritable?
the horror.

On wokeness and tolerance: im intolerant of beeing told lies and having to go along with them because of social pressure.

This feels like some time travel itno the year of 2013 or something, because i distinctiveely remember having those exact discussions in some manner or another way back then.
Im tired of them. As far as im concerned, its been done to death and my side has won the arguments in the public view.
moslty because the other side cannot stop making themselves look stupid by making bolder and bolder claims in the face of a reality that doesnt reflect them.

Honestly i dont even want to use terms like "SJW" anymoe because it feels cringe to me.

But considering the influence on media and the like, like the recent marvel kerfuffle, i think i have to make a statement here:
Its not about having o not having politics.
its about having particulary annoying topics shoved in your face. Dragon Age Inquisiton and Siege of Dragonspear come to mind

Mind Flayers are the quintessence of totalitarian dictatorship. There you have it: politics! This game is doomed!

Well... unless only minorities' rights are considered "politics" that should be left out of the game - then we may be fine. Phew...

There's a substantial minority that prefers a particular combat mode to the one that's been touted by Larian. Does that make them intolerant?

You know where the pinned topic is. Don't try to bring that subject up here as well, please.

With all due respect, the pinned topic isn't exactly about politics or representation of minorities in video games. It would have come off as off-topic on there too so I am in a bit of a pickle.

That said, the total non-straight population makes up about 4.5% of the US demographics according to Gallup so how is pandering to them more economically sound and feasible than catering to those that polls show are much bigger? Everything costs money, right?

Every scientist should disagree with this because "gender" is a social construct that is handled differently depending on the region (e.g. in western countries it's binary but in some indigenious cultures it's not). What you mean is sex. Sex is biologically determined - while gender is not. Usually they align. Sometimes they do not. The question is not if gender is binary - it is not of course. The question you are trying to answer is if sex is binary. Well that depends on where you draw the line (or lines). Genetically speaking there are more genetical dispositions than XX and XY.

Here's a good starting point: https://www.who.int/genomics/gender/en/

Especially look at "Gender and Genetics". There's more than XX and XY. But you could make an argument that those in between are all kind of sick (although they are healthy and can reproduce) and still that everyone that has at least one Y chromosome is male (even if the individual doesn't look like a typical male). But one could also argue that sex isn't sorely determined by those chromosomes but of a whole combination of additional chromosomes - for we know by now that DNA and its effects on our body isn't a very linear thing but very entangled.

So if you define everything with an Y as male and everything that has not as female then sure - it's binary by definition. But tomorrow science could also define that somebody with more X chromosomes than Y chromosomes is female. Or just define another sex in between. It's science. That doesn't mean it's set in stone. Like Pluto isn't a planet anymore. If contemporary definitions that sciencists do were irrefutible you might have a point. Alas, they are not.

That doesn't have anything to do with the struggle of minorities though. In my opinion minorities have every right to be loud in order to get heard. Here in Romania there's a German minority. They are mostly white, old conservative people. But they have their special needs too. Maybe they want to keep German city names as alternative or they wat special German schools so that their language doesn't die out. So they are trying to be loud and get heard. And rightfully so. Doesn't mean Romanians have to be offended. Same as christans in arab countries or queer people... nearly everywhere. Be loud - it's ok.

And if somebody decides to picture your struggles and issues in a video game - I won't get mad. I'll be empathic and think about it. It won't piss me off - I'd rather think if I should change perspective for a second and think about stuff I'm usually not forced to think about. And if there's a game that transports a message that I really can't agree with: Whoa! I don't play it! Galaxy brain genius level decision....

That's a very unobstrusive way to deal with it.

Whining in a forum about "politics" in games and confusing all sorts of terms and bringing up "science" as killer argument when talking about a very complex issue is not.

He is also wrong that there are only 2 sexes.

Here is an excellent article on that: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/stop-using-phony-science-to-justify-transphobia/

good grief well this is gonna be fun.
"gender is a social construct" yes, one thats based on biological sex.
the societal role of each gender is based on the biological neccesities and evolutionary drives of biological sex.
and even that, is something i only realy take with a grain of salt.
your source talks about some cultures that have "More than two sexes", the reality is that those cultures tend to be dead or irrelevant.
Yes there was a caste among the aztecs that was considered female despite beeing eunuchs, that doesnt constitute a gender role.
Its basically the old human principle of emasculation. Simmilar to what the greeks did, to their enemies that is.
Not to mention that this, at least in the case of the aztecs IIRC, wasnt voluntary.
Saying those cultures had "More genders" elevates this to a good thing. Rather than, in most cases, forced sterilization and cruel mistreatment of children.

"Theres more than XX and XY" Intersex people arent a Sex, they are usually a birth defect.
Humans have two arms and two legs, even if that one girl in india has four arms. an aberration does not have any say on what does and not constitute a gender or sex.
And before anyone gets any ideas. Im not saying this in a deriding fashion.
its just how it is, its a defect. That does not mean these people are defective or inferior in any way. but that the process of them beeing produced had a hang up and ended up with something that is, quite frankly, not exactly fit for purpose and carries many health risks with it.

>the dna isnt linear but entangled

its a double helix, i dont know where youre getting with this, i guess youre getting at that "sex is a spectrum" thing. Well exordinary claims require exordinary evidence my dude.
ive read what your source says on it and, shocker, its exactly what im saying.
the large majority of humans have two gender defining chromosomes and thos with a Y chromosome develop testicles. Oh yeah and then thers aberraitons, mutations, birth defects and a wide range of other things that cane make an individual have a different number or set of chromosoms or expressions of Sex markers other than those that their chromosomes might imply.

The only thing that this proves is that human genetics are error prone. which they are, hence why we tend to get cancer past a certain age.

Saying that these things should be treated as other genders can only come from an ideological standpoint.
Afterall, having other chromosomal arrangements than XX and XY tends to lead to things like not beeing able to reproduce, or IIRC in the case of XYY partial giantism and mental deficits. These are not desireable health benefits, these are detriments to those individuals.

Just because these people are, and neccesarily have to be due to their condition not beeing one that is favored by human reproduction, a minority, doesnt change anyhting. Beeing a Minortiy doesnt give you the right to declare what is and is not. Minority status shouldnt be a desired characteristic.
Its a descriptor and shouldnt be anything more than that.
If i got 6 beans, 4 of which are green and 2 of which are yellow. Saying the yellow beans are a "minority" should not be a descriptor outside of "theres more green beans than yellow ones"

This is exactly what ive been talking about when i say a certain kind of politics.
It is one thing to depict the "struggles" of a minority. it is another thing to depict something as normal or desireable, specifically when it comes to "Minority markers" that are actual health detriments.
And quite frankly, as emphatic as you might think you are, it is questionable when is the time and place to depict the "struggles" of the minorities, and how to depict them.
When i play an epic fantasy game, i do not need to kno what "transsexual" means in Klingom, thanks Dragon age inquisition.
This is not going to make me more emphatic towards the struggles of minorities. its going to diminish my compassion towards them.
And lets face it, the kind of writers that put these "struggles" in, what kinda writers are they realy?
Is this going to happen in a toned down somber fashion?
Or will it be siege of dragonspear? because weve got evidence of the latter, and not a lot of evidence of the former.



sure your minorities can be as loud and as in your face as they want.
And i can be as intolerant of that as i want.
There have been video games ive not bought as a result of blatant virtue signaling.
Which leads to a certain problem that minorities have, in a society based on supply and demand, they have to appeal to the majority to take their problems seriously.
And im telling you, they arent making that happen by beeing annoying.

Oh yeah and a little extra because i find it funny: im part of a religious minority in my country, one that has in the past been violently opressed (no, not the jews), a struggle thats part of my familys (not my) history.
i dont go around demanding special rights either. Because the laws in my country are universal and nobody needs special treatment.
all are equal under the law. as it should be.

This is typical consvervative conversation - ignore science when inconvinient, redefine terms, counter with anecdotes, claim victory. All your argument really is "I have defined gender as binary and everything outside it is abnormality, defect or error". Cool, you defined away all the nuance and real world implications, I guess overly simplistic stuff is your jam. It's like defining "everything I say is right and everyone who disagrees with me is wrong". By definition you would be wrong, but what good does it do?

>The only thing that this proves is that human genetics are error prone.

Error implies intentionality, there is nothing like that in genetics.

>: im part of a religious minority in my country, one that has in the past been violently opressed

Are you still being oppressed? Are you being actively discriminated against in job applications or in other significant ways? Are you in perpetual danger of being assaulted because of your religion? Could someone even identify that you are from said religious group if person didn't know you? If so, I guess doing nothing and bending over is your choice, but it's hardly a virtue. If not - you are not being oppressed in your day to day life, you have no point.

You are factually wrong that depicting minorities in media doesn't change society perception - for example dehumanising propaganda against Tutsi lead to Rwandan genocide and massive positive shift towards gay rights became once the media started showing gays as people.

Also it is more profitable for gaming companies - despite "be woke go broke" meme, movies with inclusive cast have been performing very well, and I suspect that's the major reason we see more minority representation in media.

Oh there we come with the boxes again.
For someone claiming to be tolerant you sure are quick to judge people.

>redefine terms
well, i didnt redefine anyhting, you did. You started defining sex as anything beyond male and female.
That means the burden of proof in that regard is on you.
The sources the other guy posted didnt state that there are any more than two genders.
Its aso funny that I ignore science when i specifically brought up the alterations in chromosomes that appear. If your strawman would be correct, why didnt i just ignore that bit?

And yes.a 5% (and thats a pretty high estamiate of numbers i might at) divergence IS an abnormality by any mathematical method of defining such a thing.
Do a grubbs test or whatever and tell me if its an outlier or not. Pretty sure it is.
Skimming through your source, a hormone plays a role in the development in gonads thats, as thy say, not an on and off switch.
The answer to that riddle is in the sentance, plays a part. the implication here is supposed to be that the involvement of chromosomes and some hormones creates a spectrum of gender. The relaity is that these parts are obviously working together to create a functioning human beeing of a defining gender and that some aberrations can cause things like Intersex people to exist.
which leads us to the next point:

On the definition of an error: thats a matter of debate.
For what we know, the purpose of life appears to be the propergation of information.
One such information packet is the DNA, the DNA appears to have the "intention" of propergating itself. Why? because the DNA appears to build a vessel for itself that propergates itself.

Why is a mutation an error? because if a mutation wasnt an error, there would not be mechanisms within the cell to repair errors in the DNA.

But ok. you could say error sin the DNA are part of the evolutionary process, which they absoluteley are, they are integral to it.
In that case, then im just refering to the use of the term "error" as it is used in "error prone PCR" which is used in accelerated evolution in microorganisms.
Which leads me back to my old post, theres no judgement here, just an observation.

A divergence.
For what we know, it could be that the next evolutionary step in the homo sapiens chan will have three genders. But currently, this doesnt appear to be the case in the vast majority of them and those deviations tend to have medical problems.

We could spin this discusison ad nauseum because what is "normal" and what is "fit for purpose" can only defined by human beeings, simmilary to what does and does not have "significance".
There are no natural metrics for such a thing beyond what does and doesnt propergate its own information.

But thats probably opening a can of worms you dont want to discuss do you now?


>Opression
that was my point.
What was that entire tangent you went on to. I made a point out of beeing a minority meaning nothing at all.
unless your definition of opression is not getting special treatment.


>Media and the rewandan genocide
exactly. Showing them as people.
You know what doesnt help anyone? Beeing annoying.
Why do you think some minorties are more accepted than others? Because they blend and because they are shown as "People".
while those that specifically try to stick out and rub their otherness into peoples faces will only be met with revulsion.

hate me for that statement, but thatd be just shooting the messanger.

>Go woke go broke
the evidence goes both ways if you ask me.
It certainly doenst seem to work with video games (see bioware)
With movies, it seems to be a matter of subject material.
The new star wars movies didnt do great (by their own budget that is), meanwhile the black panther movie did great.
One of them alienated an existing auidence, meanwhile the other catered to a new emerging audience.

i fail to see how this disproves anything ive said.
Or what youve assumed i was going to say.
For what its wroth, its been established in the 90s that Tokenism is insulting, so make of that what you want.

You should listen to your own advice. You can include thigns without beeing intentionally disruptie and people will accept it (unless it goes overboard)
o you can tryto be vocal about it and you will get rejected by your target demographic.
This is getting tiresome.
Ive had this debate already in 2013 and youll not yield. youll go on fighting strawmen and windmills all day long and in the end youll stand in front of a World, fineley constructed from carefull argumentation, that sadly doesnt look like the real world at all.

I think before we go too much further with this, I would like to remind everyone that these are not simply abstract topics we are debating but matters directly affecting the lives of real people, few of whom are attempting to make any point other than trying to get on with their lives in often difficult circumstances. For many of them, things like video games provide some escape from those RL pressures and one could make a case that using a games forum to debate their validity is in rather poor taste.

I will leave this open for now; we encourage discussion but I would ask that everyone please be considerate: what's a matter of opinion and debate for one person can be practically life or death for another.

making an argument is not insulting nor denying anyone validity.
i dont like beeing held hostage with this.
Ill not insult or deride anyone for any characteristic other than their own descisions, yet that doesnt mean i have to accept anything as fact because the opposit would be insulting to someone.

The reality is that the world isnt fair and some of us have it harder than others and this will always be the case.
Extending a helping hand is fine and good, but making demands in the name of unnumbered people that quite frankly cannot all be expected to show up and give ther opinion is not an answer to anything.

Reminds me when people complained that Turok was insulting to native americans.
because damn i too would be insulted if id be portrayed as a Dinosaur slaying futuristic weapons wielding, alien chick banging demigod...
EDIT: the point here is not that a positive portrayal as anyhting cannot be insulting or stereotypical, but that you cannot speak on behalf of a larger group of people and assume offense on their part.

Nobody is "holding you hostage"; it is indeed your decision whether or not you want to accept something but this conversation is at risk of becoming problematic. When it comes to characteristics that other people have no choice over then either be respectful or don't comment at all.

OMG
I don´t think anything useful can come out of this thread.

just 2 comments:
- I am almost surprized that nobody called computer RPGs sexist because you can only select male or female at character creation.
There were even some games were you could not select both of them for all races.

- Wow, nobody called these games racist even though you have races in them.
Well, biologically the term race could actually be true.
A species is defined as a group of lifeforms that can have fertile children together.
Races are different groups of one species that look different, like there are different races of dogs but all of them are still dogs.
In the DnD universe there are half elfs, half orcs, halflings ( whats a ling ) and so on. Just look at the bloodline selection for sorcerers and you can see that everyone has sex with everyone else.
So you could argue that there is only one species of intelligent creatures in the DnD univers and what we call races are indeed different races of this species.

So yeah, my mother was an elf, my grandfather a demon and one of my grand grand mothers was half celestrial and half dragon

Cool, my main point was - if you define sex as binary and everything else as error, sex will be binary by definition. Like saying there are only two eye collors - blue and brown, everything else is abnormality. But in real world we can see that it's not so simple. I really don't care what percentage of people have grey eyes, I still would say that they are fully human with fully human rights afforded to them. If there was a massive discrimination and very real threats (and acts) of violence against them I would consider it morally wrong and I would still think that world would be a better place if we viewed each other as humans, not the "other".

>For what we know, the purpose of life appears to be the propergation of information.

Not really. From what we know there is no purpose to life other than what we invent for ourselves or I guess what your religion dictates (please let's not start "meaning of life" discussion). DNA evolving, reproducing itself etc is just emergent property of complex chemical reactions interacting with environment, there is no intentionality. As far as I can tell DNA neither has nor can have feelings, thoughts or intentions. We, as humans, tend to prescribe intentions to things without it.

>The relaity is that these parts are obviously working together to create a functioning human beeing

Same goes for SRY.Also I would like to add that genome alone means next to nothing without environment (e.g womb), it gets really complicated really fast.

>We could spin this discusison ad nauseum because what is "normal" and what is "fit for purpose" can only defined by human beeings, simmilary to what does and does not have "significance".

It's pedantics, but what is "fit for purpose" can be viewed objectively, the subjectivity comes from defining purpose, but generally yes I agree with you on this one and it['s kind of my reasoning. I believe life would be better for everyone if we acted to minimize unnecessary suffering. Memes like "there are only 2 genders" are actively hurting part of humanity without any good reason. Nor is this meme supported by science, empirical data, human feelings etc. It's just all around bad.

> I made a point out of beeing a minority meaning nothing at all. unless your definition of opression is not getting special treatment.

Sure if we ignore job discrimination, physcial violence, humiliation, viewing you as sinful, killing you, etc etc than that means nothing. If asking to be treated as human is special treatment.. I don't know dude, I don't agree.

>Why do you think some minorties are more accepted than others? Because they blend and because they are shown as "People".

As everything it's complex - we would have to talk which minority in what environment. I am sure that being more in line what the perceived status quo is helps, however I do not think it should be requirement, because frankly it's impossible for some (like becoming caucasian). When I said they are shown as people I meant - they are shown loving, hating, being excited or sad, thougtful or mindless etc etc. As people, not as some "other" evil caricatures.

The simple way to conceptualize the difference between sex and gender is that Gender is the wiring (brain structure) and Plumbing is the rest of the body like sex organs and stuff. Being trans means having wiring that doesn't match the plumbing, with it being easier to just make alteration to the plumbing to make things work better.

And folks who see only binary sexes forget stuff like Intersex, folks XX chromosome males (as it born with male genitals), that with the condition where they change from female to male at puberty thanks to a surge in Testorone from puberty and so on.

I don't think that the new StarWars trilogy to be more political, then let's say Fury Road, but the latter was fantastic, while the Star Wars trilogy was... not. I don't think that having a more varied roster of characters then "Caucasian male" is the root of it's problems.One can also mentione how political original StarWars were. Much has been written about world of original trilogy and Vietnam War.

Being political is part of art or entertaiment - always was, always will be. Production Code directed what Hollywood could show and do for over 30 years. It can feel awkward when an IP from a different moral and political era tries to be relevant 50 years later. If it's done well (Fury Road) it's great, when it is not (StarWars) then it is not.

id say fury road was not annoying about its politics.
Its characters were flat, becuase its an action movie, but not obnoxiously so.
There was no agency taken away from characters to make a point. Id say the only characters where agency was a quesiton were the women beeing freed.
Taking agency was somewhat of a theme for this movie, which arguably is giving a dumb action film a bit too much credit.

Meanwhile in star wars, agency is taken away from legacy character

TadasGa:
So your issue is with my definition?
Well if the definition beeing based on a vast majority of cases and those examples that do not fit within that beeing "created" in a different way, by which i mean by "acciden" ( i know this implies intent, but lets call it that for simplicity, compared to how reproduction tends to otherwise work in mammels) is not good enaugh a definition for you, then it all boils down to Subjectivism.

In which case its an argument of Ideology and Principle rather than one of science.
You cannot expect an objective answer to a subjective question in that case.

>Massive threats of violence
that seems like a truism. When talking about intersex people, i guess they do get bullied in school, maybe, but kids dont understand nuance and a lot of people get bullied for a lot of reason.
Open violence against those people?
Well i dont know where you live, but certainly not in western or central europe.
maybe if you talk about the middle east or china where the gender of children is a huge deal, sure.

In the western world i think any "issues" therein come from the fact that parents ofthen get asked to make a descision on the sex of the child.
Which then comes to the question: what is medically adviseable versus the wellbeeing of the child.
You obviously cannot know what kind of person a child is going to become, but you can predict medical risks for intervening or not intervening.
In that case, i wouldnt call that open hostility or violence, but a very heavy question on the life of a potential child that can only realy be answered by the parents.
And quite frankly, not a quesiton that theres a definitive answer to, as with many dilemmas.

>Purpose of life
Im not getting into the "Meaning of life".
you are interpreting me wrong.
All meaning is derived from Humans. Flat out. Only a sentient beeing can ascribe meaning to something.

I am not ascribing meaning to life, i am observing what life does.
And from observing life in its various forms one can see what it does. Nameley it tends to propergate information, in some way.
Wether or not theres purpose behind that, is for humans to determine.

but you cannot deny that this is something that all lifeforms , biologically, attempt to acomplish in some fashion.
Of course some humans activeley try to work against that, but thats a conscious descision and quite frankly another topic entierly.

>SRY
again, yes, it appears to be an Enzyme that is integral in the embryonal development. it works together with other factors. What im saying is that yes, theres other factors than chromosomes that help the development of gonads.
Doesnt realy have any impact on the debate on sex.
Unless you want to REALY simplify the debate.

>Memes like there are only two gendes hurt people
do they?
i mean, sure, some intersex people might get hurt. But others might say "yeah duh, but that doesnt mean i dont exist it means that i am literaly, in some fahsion, part of both genders".
Thats what i said, you cannot assume Offense on the behalf of those people.

There might be intersex people who DONT want to be seen as a Third gender because that makes them "other" from other people, rather than including them.
you cannot know this and thus you cannot say that one or the other way of saying it hurts or helps them.
Theres not a lot of em, but theres enaugh that they have different opinions (by which i mean theres more than one)

>Discrimination
im again asking the *where*
im not making a moral argument for China or Saudi Arabia.
But i dont think theres literal lynchmobs going around for intersex people.
as for job discrimination: its hard to pin that down since theres so many factors.
Im pretty sure im at a disadvantage for having a very complicated last name. Im pretty sure that if you mention wanting to have children on Social Media your employment will become more difficult.


>Becoming caucasian
in america maybe.
In europa, well. I can talk about central europe and its culture as lot but due to many migration periods and wars, people tend to differentiate on a lot of factors and looks is only one of them.

By blending i mean blending into public consciousness BY not acting a lot different from the general public.
This might be a tough pill to swallow, but this is not somehting you can argue away. People will extend more leeway and consideration to them they consider to be on their "Team"

If you define that there are only 2 genders, it's ammunition for homophoboes, transphobes etc. That's the problem with memes, both shitty and good memes eventually end up in legistlation. In five countries and in parts of two others, homosexuality is still punishable with the death penalty, while a further 70 imprison citizens because of their sexual orientation. Fairly recently in Poland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_ideology-free_zone

>again, yes, it appears to be an Enzyme that is integral in the embryonal development. it works together with other factors. What im saying is that yes, theres other factors than chromosomes that help the development of gonads.
>Doesnt realy have any impact on the debate on sex.

That argument is just against there are only 2 sexes and they are defined by XX and XY.

>But i dont think theres literal lynchmobs going around for intersex people.

Is that your standard for discrimination?
https://www.transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/USTS-Full-Report-FINAL.PDF
https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc...s-motivated-anti-lgbtq-bias-fbi-n1080891
etc etc

>People will extend more leeway and consideration to them they consider to be on their "Team"

Agreed, that's why it's good to include marginalized communities in media, so they are shown as part of the "team" and not some kind of weird "other" you saw that one time in right winger youtube video.

Thanks for making the thread.

Larian, please don't follow in Bioware's steps now that you're relatively successful. PLEASE DO NOT USE YOUR GAMES TO PUSH AN AGENDA.

Games can contain politics, maybe they "will" contain politics like a lot of people here are saying and maybe we can't avoid them but I'd rather not see the game become a device utilized to push an opinion as the RIGHT thing. Bioware did that, focused on that and look where they are now.

Include choices that are diverse, and not make us feel helpless in the face of the writer's agenda(again, like what Bioware did).

This is such a weird thread. Let devs make what they want. Politics are part of our lives.

Learn to deal with different opinions than yours, and in the process you may learn a thing or two

Again; an agenda, or politics, flavors everything people do. You base your actions on your worldview. Do you think people need help? Then you donate to the local food bank. That's a personal agenda; to help the hungry.

Are you someone who feels the LBGTQ community needs more repesentation? You might add a few characters to your book/movie/story that fit that role. Even if they come off as natural due to good writing, it might be your 'agenda' that added them in the first place.

And the thing is; whenever someone disagrees with a bit of media, be it book/movie/show/game, they will start looking for agendas they disagree with and say 'This is why it sucks!'.

It is almost impossible to NOT put your personal views in your work, because your personal views are part of WHO YOU ARE. Even if you just like chocolate, so you give one of the characters an addiction to chocolate that pops up at funny moments. That personal view has now made it into the game with your statement 'I really like chocolate'.
And someone looking to attack your story/game could say 'Character with chocolate addiction! Making fun of diabetics/Obese people/addicts?'

Anything can be politicized these days, and usually is, when someone needs ammo to attack something they hate.
..Or when websites/'games journalists' (ugh) need clicks '10 reasons why the protag of BG3 was secretly a genderfluid tree in love with a bumblebee! You won't believe number 8!' or '10 reasons why Larian are liberals, and why their game succeeded/failed!'

It will always be there, because everything we do, we do based on our personal views and life choices. IE: Personal politics & agendas.
Most people saying 'Please don't add politics' are saying 'Please don't add something I won't like'. Because they don't want politics they don't like. If they agree with a statement, they probably won't even be aware that it was there at all.
We only take note of things we disagree with. It's kind of the human condition, sadly; we don't care, so long as it does not bother us.

Would agree STRONGLY to keep modern-day politics out of the game. Games are escapism, and in today's overly politicized world with radicalization and culture war, we may need a break more than ever before. That said, WotC is every bit as progressive/regressive a company as Bioware, and I fully expect them to nudge Larian in that direction.


Hah! Did I hear the pot calling the kettle black? The issue is not about not tolerating different opinions, at least not the way you probably imagine it. This is about not wanting grating and unrelenting neo-moralizing propagandizing of ONE politically correct viewpoint inserted in a game that depends upon immersion. That's the opposite of pluralism you espouse.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker licensed by Paizo is a recent relevant example; about all the female characters were shallow radical feminist tropes. The oppression, oh the humanity, won't someone think of the women! Their Stream forum was zealously moderated by radicals who went on an ideological crusade against heretics. At one point like 1 in 10 (confirmation bias trigger warning) of the regulars was banned (at least I never saw so much posts for later banned people in my life) and warnings were handed out like a paedo hands out candy during Halloween lol.

No. It might seem difficult to distinguish and then broadly paint it all as the same thing(agenda) but it is not. The creator's comments or thoughts about the implementation quite often spills the beans. We see this all the time with movies these days.

I don't really like to get into this as I've learned to distance myself from "statement makers" over the years. I'll just leave it at saying that it's pretty easy to spot and is laid bare when the creator mentions "representation" as a reason for implementation. Again, like Bioware.

Larian can do whatever they want and I'm not one to object to that. I'm just giving them my two cents that going after a certain agenda be it "inclusivity", "diversity" or rainbow colours or whatever and using the game as a device to push that is not recommended as it usually comes at a cost of the RPG experience becoming lopsided.

for one i dont care who it gives amunition to.
I think defining sex as beeing two genders gives homophobes (why homophobes anyway? homosexuals kind of stop beeing meaningfull if theres more than two genders) less ammunition than obscene displays at pride parades do.
If gender would be "officially" defined as having more than two sexes, you think this would persuade anyone to change their mind in that case?

As for Poland and its LGBT ideology free zone:
You got it exactly the wrong way around.
This is what im trying to say. Its not that poland is going around shooting gay people there.
Its explicitly against the ideology of normalizing it.

You can disagree with that and say thats bullshit. but this position has widespraed appeal in poland.
So wether you like it or not, youll have to persuade people in poland if you want to get them over to your side.

Persuade is the important word here.
PERSUADE instead of SUBVERT.

Poland is a highly christian country and if you try to subver that from the outside, they will not change.
ive actually had this discussion with a very catholic woman once, who told me that basically, the cahtolic church got pretty far in saying "yeah actually its ok" because aperently, the entire "Homosexuality is bad" part of the bible stems from the belief that there was a limited ammount of sperm in the male body and that it needs to be preserved.
More itnerrestingly, the Bible actually has nothing to say on Lesbianism and is basically not prohibiting it.

Either way. What im saying is, nobody is int he position to force their beliefs on a majority.
Trying to do so will only result in backlash

>Deaht penalty on homosexuality

Well for one i dont know how we came from Intersex people to homosexuality, but right.
So on the deaht penalty.
Theres a certain kind of country that has the deaht penalty for homosexuals. Muslim theocracies or at least very religious muslim countries.
I think theres only 3 muslim majority countries that dont prohibit it (bosnia, malaysia and turkey if i recall correctly)
Im certainly not jumping to the defense of those.
but i dont think that portrayal in Video Games (western devil media) will persuade any of those people to change their stance.
Likewise i dont think that a western definition of Gender would persuade them, since they dont give a shit about what the west has to say anyway.

Good that we agree on the biology thing.

>Discrimination
nother big topic since it happens to a lot of people for a variety of reasons.
Youll never fully get rid of it because how the human brain is rigged.
But you certainly wont get rid of it by forcing things on people.
which gets me to

>Including marginalized groups
It is exactly the opposit way around.
Including them in ludircous ways otherizes them more.

Especialy if their inclusion is, liek ti is in many of the "woke" media is at the detriment of characters representing the majority.
These stories are either supposed to be aimed at the minorities themselves, trying to score points with them, or at the woke bubble that doenst need to be persuaded.

To me, it appears to be invasive, it appears to be disliking the majoity and it seems to not include the minorities, it seems to be activeley holding them to a different standard and showing their otherness.

To give a random example of where the inclusion is done well, id point towards, i know random example, Dr House, cause ive been watching that show as of late.
Theres no tokenism there, no elevation of minority status. Its just there.
Whats also important is, that minorities arent overrepresented. Because that again gives off wrong vibes.
Like those fake commercial friends groups where everyone is some token persona.
Just feels jarring and uncanny.

>If gender would be "officially" defined as having more than two sexes, you think this would persuade anyone to change their mind in that case?

It's about changing societal meme, just like "slavery is ok" were societal memes. We grew past that. We can grow past that one as well.

>PERSUADE instead of SUBVERT.

I don't understand how having minorities in video games is subversion, the whole point is showing people as people. You probably won't change lifetime indoctrination of 80 year old babushka, but younger people, absolutely.

>Poland is a highly christian country and if you try to subver that from the outside, they will not change.

It's completely different topic, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_web_brigades seem to be fairly effective. I wouldn't be so sure.

>the entire "Homosexuality is bad" part of the bible stems from the belief that there was a limited ammount of sperm in the male body and that it needs to be preserved.

Not really, most explicitly it's in Leviticus 20:13. There is more. But it doesn't really matter, thank god, no one follows what bible says anyway. What is moral or not in christianity generally just follows wider trends with ~20 year old lag.

>but i dont think that portrayal in Video Games (western devil media) will persuade any of those people to change their stance.

Media is becoming more and more globalized, plently of muslims consumes western media. From what I heard, youth is considerably less religious and more wordly.

> What im saying is, nobody is int he position to force their beliefs on a majority. Trying to do so will only result in backlash

All changes will face backlash, especially from conservatives. Lots of conservatism can be summed up by - "yeah it's bad, but it's bad I know so let's not change it".

> Youll never fully get rid of it because how the human brain is rigged.

I try not to think in black and white. There is less discrimination now than it used to be, activism does work. Hopefully there will be even less in future.

> Especialy if their inclusion is, liek ti is in many of the "woke" media is at the detriment of characters representing the majority.

I agree, including minority characters can be done very unskilfuly and to detriment of the group. Opposite is also true.

There is incongruity with that argument, however. If it is about representation, then statistically speaking having minorities equally represented in all literature/video games/etc distills the lived reality by creating false pictures of life through the process of literary catharsis. Over-representation is as much an issue, which we see in the largely western, male oriented narratives (edit: meaning the over representation of white male narratives, just to clarify) - but it is likewise possible to over correct. I think over correction is what happened in the case of the "Force is Female" kind of marketing, for example.

I don't see issues with characters who are gay, straight, or anywhere in between, but I do see an issue with normalizing - in the statistical sense - outlying representations of sexuality in literature/games that are consumed by pre-pubescent audiences. I'm not a prude that thinks kids shouldn't know about sex, but I think offering answers to certain questions about sexuality prior to actual physical relevance is problematic. I think more precisely, as I am writing and thinking about it, is the mixture of sexuality with audiences who are classified as kids rather than young adults. It is an important distinction. And this leads in to parental responsibility to be informed of what your kids are up to, and support them while they explore who they are. This is why ratings exist, for the most part. To help parents guide their kids' choices of content consumption.

In itself, this is not an issue for creators making their stories, etc, it is a home issue. But the issue is dramatically exacerbated by the fact that there is no way to enforce ratings at the actual user level.

Me, personally, I find that if the romance doesn't actually have some importance to the narrative, then it is superfluous and masturbatory - wholly useless for anything other than self aggrandizement. Art should follow the KISS rule.

My dude, but it's only weird if you make it weird, honestly. Believe me, I was in your place a couple of years back. Today I simply don't care. Some things I agree, some things I don't.

Imagine if everyone would give their two cents about what devs can say on their game's story and what thay can't.

But today I think what ruins games, and what we should REALLY care about, are games being released incomplete, full of bugs and lots of microtransactions.

Not being confrontanional, my man! Just saying I understand you, but it's not a big deal unless you make it be

Guys, I'm not going to read 72 posts because it's useless.

Please, let's NOT discuss our own opinions or chosen positions here because it's useless. No one is going to change anyone's opinion or position like this. This isn't like the human brain works. Everyone please keep it to themselves. Or create a new post.

Let me clarify the intention of my original post: just asking Larian to not destroy their game, spoil all the fun and destroy another franchise to follow certain political agenda. Star Wars has been destroyed, Ghostbusters has been destroyed, comics in general have been destroyed (Captain America being secretly a nazi all these years?) etc. BG1 and 2 have had no problem with it, Divinity 2 and Kingmaker had just a little bit of it but not in a manner that spoiled them, and Siege of Dragonspear was mostly ruined by it.

Remember Gamergate

People is here repeating all the time that "politics is in everything", despite I having addressed that already, so let me say it with other words: even if that was true, "politics being present" is DIFFERENT from "the game must focus on one-sided political propaganda and the artistic or entertainment value is secondary to our goals". Thing is simple: I don't want to keep hearing in every game how the free-market is terrible and how communism is so great and caring, and also I don't want those who think that to keep hearing in the same game the opposite.

Since none of us are experts, all we can discuss are our opinions and positions on the topic.

Kind of hypocritical of you to start a topic and then tell people not to discuss it.

1) But I AM an expert. I have been reading and writing in the field of Political Philosophy for about 30 years now. 25 professionally. Most days since the start of it I have reached my goal of reading 450 pages per day, about 95% of it in that field. Make the math to check how many books those are. Over 1000 of those books/thesis I have read were written by communist philosophers. Have written three doctoral thesis about it so far. All of them have been approved with distinction.
As of the late few years I have been expanding that knowledge to areas like Evolutionary Psychology and Comportamental Neurosciences.

Being so much into that exact area is what makes me NOT want it in my entertainment. Even more so that 99% of those we see around there are included by (let's be honest) mentally impaired people who has no clue whatsoever about the topic, to the point that most of them think things like... That nazis are the same as conservatives and libertarians, for instance. Or that the snow is black, which is about the same amount of absurd (Bertrand Russell's reference, BTW).

2) I have not started a topic about politics, but a topic to ask the developers — for theirs and ours sake — not to destroy the fun we should have playing the game with propaganda.

3) Sorry, but I haven't TOLD you to stop discussing it. I have just asked pretty please to focus on the topic if you could. Sorry if that got out wrong, but sometimes it happens due to — as I have said already — my lack of proficiency in English.

You display a total lack of erudite argumentation for someone supposedly well versed in political philosophy.

You can keep espousing your opinions as palatable facts, but you will always be wrong in that regard.

The topic is politics in video games. The current political insertion in games is gender related. People therefore are talking about gender and politics in games.

You make the mistake of thinking that you have any authoritative control over your discussion thread, like an artist thinking they can force an audience to see their point of view.

That isn't how things work.

Uh uh!

I am also an expert. Actually the best one because I have been with the university of I-read-it-on-the-internet for quite some time now as a fellow researcher in the field of being awesomest. I researched like... a lot. At least five thousand stuffs for about 40 years now. Make the meth to check out how much longer my intromittent organ is.

That's why you should really consider my hot takes.

1) lack of mastery in your language, one could say.
2) I didn't say anything about "gender" nor I will, as I know that's a drop of water in the cultural war we live in the moment. It's meaningless, anything but a minor smoke screen for bigger subjects.
3) I don't think that. Don't infer my inner thoughts, please. All I said was "can you, please?"

Just by reading this thread can't you see it's a heated topic that brings intense emotions, and if inserted in any entertainment will spoil the fun for at least 50% of the people? Depending on how it's done will do it for up to 100%. My original post just asks for common sense.

Actually, trying to suppress 'hate facts' does much more to empower actual bigots (and I need to specify 'actual', due to the very common usage of *phobe to mean disagreement with ideology).
Biological sex is essentially binary (strongly bimodal). Having people who don't fit exactly into either sex doesn't mean there are additional sexes, nor does it justify any discrimination based on that.



They are not part of the team if they are perfect, can do no wrong, and if you don't like them, or the media in question, it can only be because you are a bigot. I think that was kind of the point of asking for overt politics not to be inserted into the game.



There is media which arguably does suck, though, specifically because of an agenda being pushed into the story. If there is pandering to the 'woke' crowd, the characters tend not to have any faults, so do not grow/evolve, etc. Bat Girl gets captured and tied up, exactly like Batman? That's misogyny. Spider Woman in a classic Spiderman pose? Sexual exploitation. Because it is hard to write perfect characters, the characters around them are generally just written worse. Apparently in Game of Thrones, the last season or two, without the books to go off of, having strong intelligent female characters meant the men became useless idiots and blacksmiths needed to be told how to make armour and that (X seasons later) winter was coming.



For someone arguing against discrimination, that seems like a less than charitable interpretation of an opposing position (unless you figure no change can be bad, or the consequences ever be worse than issues an existing situation may have).

Guys, this discussion right above is useless because each one thinks they are talking about the same thing, but each one is actually talking about something else. Not going into details, but basically that's two brain mindsets (modes): one for external, objetive reality and other for language/feelings/internal "reality". You CANNOT agree and will never do.

About 86% of political tendencies is epigenetic and cannot be changed by reasoning, facts or arguments.

>Biological sex is essentially binary (strongly bimodal)

I strongly suggest reading up on: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/stop-using-phony-science-to-justify-transphobia/ You are basically reiterating same points that have been said int this thread.

>Actually, trying to suppress 'hate facts' does much more to empower actual bigots (and I need to specify 'actual', due to the very common usage of *phobe to mean disagreement with ideology).

1) Is it even true? Do you have data on this? Is not allowing drawing ASCII penis on the site is empowering teenagers who want to draw ASCII penis here?
2) It's not suppression, no more than "earth is round" is suppressing "earth is flat".
3) Cool, it would be relevant if I called someone who disagreed with me *phobe

>They are not part of the team if they are perfect, can do no wrong, and if you don't like them, or the media in question, it can only be because you are a bigot.

I am not sure who are you arguing with, but you sure showed that strawman!

>For someone arguing against discrimination, that seems like a less than charitable interpretation of an opposing position (unless you figure no change can be bad, or the consequences ever be worse than issues an existing situation may have).

I am arguing against discrimination against groups of people based on their identity. There are really shitty ideas/ideologies that need to be opposed. People can and do change ideas all the time.

>member gamergate
yes.
Gaymers stronk! Gamers won!

uaaaaaahhh!!!! Bannerlord got released!
wheres your respectfull nods now?


UUUUAAAAAH!

That link does nothing to refute the fact that the vast majority of people are male or female, and differences in hormones / development / personality is not relevant to biological sex in this context (already accounted for by saying 'essentially' binary, and strongly bimodal).



There have been several countries where 'diversity is our strength' types in authority have ignored or covered up crimes from certain minorities (sometimes for years/decades) and gone after criticism of minorities or the government harshly. Does that not obviously create resentment, and empower bigotry?
Unconscious bias training doesn't reduce bias (and 2 of the 3 originators have come out and said their research isn't fit for the use it is being put to), and there is some evidence to suggest it causes bias (with explicit diversity hiring, any new minority hires can not be assumed to be hired because they were the best person for the job, in addition to specifically dividing the workplace into the 'good/minority' group and the 'bad/majority' group); I've heard this from several people in interviews (the scary intellectual dark web types your link refers to).
If you were fired or deplatformed, etc, for something you believed and there was evidence for it (valid or not), would you suddenly stop believing that thing, or assume the reason those taking actions against you were doing so because they could not address the evidence, and resent their unfair treatment of you?



That makes no sense whatsoever.
You said 'stating a politically incorrect fact empowers phobes', to which I responded that not being able to state such facts is worse in that regard.



If saying there are only 2 genders is "ammunition for homophoboes, transphobes etc", that is at least implying one should not claim there are only 2 genders (specifically, biological gender, ie sex). If not arguing against saying that, you are at least making a moral judgement of it, neither of which are compatible to countering a conspiracy theory.
It is illegal in Canada to missgender someone (slight hyperbole, though technically correct; clarification in a reply below), police in several other countries respond to 'hate incidents' on social media ('incident' being a non-crime), Twitter has made using the wrong pronouns and deadnaming banable offences, Youtube channels get demonetised for talking about the wrong subjects, etc, so don't try to claim there is no suppression of politically incorrect facts.



It is relevant because you referred to homophoboes and transphobes, when those terms have become almost meaningless, for the reason I stated. I wished to be more specific when replying.



I don't think you know what a strawman argument is. I gave an example of a character written like that, and there have been movies mentioned earlier in this topic with such writing, where any criticism was claimed to be only because of bigotry.
Media exists as I described. Minorities in such media are not 'part of the team'. That was my point. I was not arguing with anyone.



Yes, but I doubt it happens much due to the use of inaccurate and insulting stereotypes.

wew, i didnt know it was that bad in canada.

I only know it in the form of social consequences. but yeah, thats pretty tyrannical given that this ltieraly does nothing.

Well, it falls under the Human Rights Act, so missgenderring would have to be argued to be part of discrimination based on 'gender identity or expression' to be handled through a human rights tribunal, which is generally limited to financial penalties (though refusing to pay could result in criminal court involvement). The good news is that the human rights tribunals no longer have a 100% conviction rate (too much publicity over certain cases in the early 2000s), and overreaches (like ordering an accused person's home seized and sold to pay the complainant) can get overturned by actual courts.

>That link does nothing to refute the fact that the vast majority of people are male or female, and differences in hormones / development / personality is not relevant to biological sex in this context (already accounted for by saying 'essentially' binary, and strongly bimodal).

Vast majority people fitting into 2 categories is not the same as binary. That's the problem I am adressing. Vast majority of people have brown/blue eyes. It doesn't make eye color binary. Bimodal distribution is not the same as binary, it's spectrum by definition. The problem with looking at sexes as bimodal is that some trait can be one side of spectrum, another - on opposite. Some people don't fit that well on the scale. As almost everything in life - it's complicated.

Development and personality are absolutely relevant in discussing sex differences and again they are not binary. Development doesn't magically stop once you leave the womb. It's not as explicit or obvious as reproductive organs, but brain is absolutely crucial in sex determination. That's why you get trans people. MRI imaging reveals that some parts of their brain are closer to the sex they identify as, not as their genitals. There is some research being done in estrogen receptor pathways: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200205084203.htm

>There have been several countries where 'diversity is our strength'..

I shouldn't have asked and shoudln't have tried to be mildly amusing. It's red herring to the topic we were discussing. You don't offer hard data and I could counter with anecdotes too, but it's not relevant. I have no strong opinions on unconscious bias training. In terms of platforming I believe in responsible platforming - if you decide to platform harmful ideas, you should also present strong opposition (in terms of arguments) to them.

>If saying there are only 2 genders is "ammunition for homophoboes, transphobes etc", that is at least implying one should not claim there are only 2 genders (specifically, biological gender, ie sex).

I am claiming that sex being binary is demonstrabily false and is used by bad faith actors to spew anti lgbtq propaganda.

>suppression of politically incorrect facts.

Could you tell me fact you are referring to? So far I have seen that some canada/some platfroms have decided that being dick to trans people is violation of their rights. For youtube - it has generally trended towards more adverstisment friendly content, all kinds of speech is being demonatised on both sides of political spectrum. Also on canada:

"But experts say just using an incorrect pronoun isn't enough to qualify as criminal hate speech. "Absolutely not a chance," says University of Toronto law professor Brenda Cossman. "There is no criminalization of the misuse of pronouns."

Richard Moon, a University of Windsor professor who studies freedom of speech issues, says only speech that is "extreme in character" would qualify as criminal. He says the person uttering the words must be found to have "willfully promoted hatred."

>I don't think you know what a strawman argument is.

You quoted me and then said: "They are not part of the team if they are perfect, can do no wrong, and if you don't like them, or the media in question, it can only be because you are a bigot. I think that was kind of the point of asking for overt politics not to be inserted into the game." I have never claimed anything like that. By wiki definition: "A straw man (or strawman) is a form of argument and an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not presented by that opponent". I think it fits.

I'm not really seeing why not misgendering someone is considered a problem, though; I mean it's the same sort of thing as using e.g. racist language to address someone. I think the problem comes down to seeing it as being a black-or-white issue, no pun intended, where it really has to be based on all sorts of things including terminology, intent, circumstance, context and so on. While I agree it "should" be the case that it says much more about somebody who chooses to be crass and unpleasant the reality is that it can and does cause actual harm, at least eventually. Making a gamble about when is the cut-off point for "eventually"... I guess it's easier to just be considerate in the first place.

Could you PM me with links to your theses?

I am intrigued. How do you explain the results of this study (http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/biblio/articles/2010to2014/2013-transsexuality.html) whose abstract states "Combining data from the present survey with those from past-published reports, 20% of all male and female monozygotic twin pairs were found concordant for transsexual identity." Monozygotic twins inherit the exact same DNA so why isn't the concordance rate 100% for all pairs? In other words, gender dysphoria is shown not to be congenital but caused by environmental factors.

I wouldn't know. Gene expression is very complicated and enviroment dependent. I've read that monozygotic twins sharing same umbilical cord won't have same environment depending on which one gets the cord "first". There are many many subtle diffences (for example inhereted mitochondria might not be evenly distributed, mitochondrial mutations can be inherreted much more by one twin than another). Monozygotic twins won't always have same genome by the time they are born: https://www.kqed.org/futureofyou/134603/why-identical-twins-dont-always-look-the-same There are also problems of false positives etc. But yeah, frankly, I don't know.

That article links to this one: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/...twins-different-skin-colour-born-UK.html
The chances of that occurring are slim but regardless of mutations monozygotic twins are still our best bet when trying to ascertain environmental and genetic influence on a particular person's traits. The concordance rate should be much higher all the same. Also, those babies... some couples are truly dysgenic.

Just shows that I know fuck all about genetics. Considering concordance I am not sure if it's true (again, can't comment as I just don't know). From wiki problems with concordance studies:

There are several problems with this assumption:

A given genetic pattern may not have 100% penetrance, in which case it may have different phenotypic consequences in genetically identical individuals;
Developmental and environmental conditions may be different for genetically identical individuals. If developmental and environmental conditions contribute to the development of the disease or other characteristic, there can be differences in the outcome of genetically identical individuals;
The logic is further complicated if the characteristic is polygenic, i.e., caused by differences in more than one gene.
Epigenetic effects can alter the genetic expressions in twins through varied factors. The expression of the epigenetic effect is typically weakest when the twins are young and increases as the identical twins grow older.[2]
Where in the absence of one or more environmental factors a condition will not develop in an individual, even with high concordance rates, the proximate cause is environmental, with strong genetic influence: thus "a substantial role of genetic factors does not preclude the possibility that the development of the disease can be modified by environmental intervention." So "genetic factors are assumed to contribute to the development of that disease", but cannot be assumed alone to be causal.[3]\

Edit: Another article: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/identical-twins-genes-are-not-identical/
Edit: Another study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22146048/

Science isn't perfect so you should always be on guard whenever there's a new study that supposedly proves decades-old assumptions to be wrong, which isn't to say that what it claims isn't true. It simply requires further trials and studies so there's a large enough sample for meta-analysis. Otherwise we yield to scientific nihilism in that nothing can be verified with 100% accuracy and that there is no objective reality. When it comes to gender dysphoria we will probably have a clearer picture of what underlies it as more time goes by and as charlatans posing as scientists are filtered out. I'd be wary of ideology attempting to dictate reality in any case.

I didn't say it was, and repeatedly used the term bimodal.



About 15% of people do not have brown or blue eyes.
What percentage of people can not be classified biologically as male or female?



The discussion was the number of sexes, not the fact that there are differences between people of the same sex. There are many such differences, but not enough to create a separate biological sex or invalidate the concept of biological sex (those factors spread out the distribution, possibly quite significantly, but it remains bimodal for sexual characteristics).



I never said you did. That was what I thought was a very clear reference to the original post of this topic. Even if you missed that, I was in no way phrasing it as if it was your position.




The objection is generally about compelled speech rather than the need to deliberately misgender anyone, though some people have religious or other objections.
Accidental misgendering is easy if you do not know someone very well, or have known them for some time before they came out as trans.
There are also an infinite number of tumbler pronouns, and one advocate for Bill C-16 in Canada recommended using a phone app for keeping tack of the preferred pronouns of all your friends, co-workers, acquaintances, etc.
Generally if trans people are at all putting some effort into transitioning (even just socially), I think most people will make an effort to use their preferred pronouns.

People have put 'Your Magisty', etc, as their preferred pronoun when schools, etc, have made arbitrary pronouns an option.
Trolls on twitter have added they/them pronouns to their bios, and used that to get people banned when 'misgendered'.
Political activists are likely to use this to make political points, as has been done with the human rights tribunals before (going out of their way to create situations that can be used to punish ideological opponents).
Rules/laws intended to be inclusive are not used exclusively to protect trans people.

Which I agree with to an extent. The trouble is the people with extreme positions: doesn't matter what the position is, it's that a few will push it to absurdity and go via several other unwelcome places on the way there. In this case, those who want everyone's speech to be controlled and those who want to say whatever they want with no consequences. "This is why we can't have nice things", etc.

>What percentage of people can not be classified biologically as male or female?

About 1.7% are intersex https://www.intersexequality.com/how-common-is-intersex-in-humans/

Edit: also any definition of "male" or "female" will always depend on averages, on statistical norms, or on arbitrary cut-off points.

Most people who use science to defend that there are more than two sexes make two mistakes:

1) they conflate sex (biology) with gender (affective identity).

2) they ignore the role that statistics play in science.

No one is going to deny the existence of non-binary individuals. XY, XX, XXY, YxY, etc ... are all real genomes that exist.

However ... non-binary sexes are a statistical outlier, not even a minority ... they are an outlier.

To force societal behaviour to conform to an outlying minority is folly. It is better to create legislation that protects them and provides avenues for them to find peace and self expression.

Transgenderism is a societal problem wherein individuals are not being given space to express non-binary GENDERS (not sexes) ... and after how ever many thousands of years of cultural evolution, right now Transgenderism is based on sex precisely because of the conflation between the two words and the unwillingness of legislators to touch the issue.

I'd rather not join the discussion at all, but this number has been addressed in the past:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12476264 a scholarly resource website suggests the number to be closer to 0.018%
https://isna.org/faq/frequency/ an advocacy site for intersex youth suggests 1 in 1500 to 1 in 2000 or 0.05%
I won't get into gendered topics, but it's suggested that the 1.7% encompasses a multitude of genetic and birth abnormalities and not actually intersex itself.

As to the actual OP and not this seemingly off-topic discussion: I would prefer overtly real world politics be left out of the game. Politics between factions in the game can be done very interestingly, but as soon as you start ham fisting real world politics (I don't care what end of the spectrum) I'm out.

So I hope there is some interesting politics, but I don't want the developers to try and force either their views or their fake views on me.

Same with diversity in the game, great if it's there, but there's no need to force it in like some square box to be checked off (Bioware) and it should make sense within the context of the IP. Cyberpunk should logically nail this out of the park given its setting, but we'll see if CDPR can handle it.

Politics are in the Eye of the Beholder (pun intended) and making a mountain out of a mole hill is all about how hyper focused one becomes on a singular issue alone.

if you let one minor detail of a characters personality ruin your experience...that’s on you man. Maybe see a therapist if minor details in your morning routine ruin your whole day, nothing negative but life is more enjoyable for everyone when what you may consider a flaw becomes just a detail.

Now on the conservative liberal side of things...I can’t think of a single game that leans conservative throughout, but again it’s relative to how big of a deal you make of situations. Rob the rich to feed the poor? liberal pig! Help free slaves from human traffickers? They just need to pull up their boot straps and free themselves! Evil bandits killing all the men in a town? They should learn to use a sword. Evil bandits killing all the babies in a town? WRATH OF GOD WILL BURN THEM ALL.

Story lines are easier when you assume the player has compassion, if you wrote a game so you could just choose to ignore massive inequalities, you’d press a few buttons and get a giant YOU WIN notification at the end. Hell maybe that would work for a large portion of the player base, but I wouldn’t buy it.

actually, a lot of games are conservative without realizing it.
Basically any plot about saving your people is conservative by todays standards.

i also love your narrow minded view on what conservativism is.
And it shows that you should follow your own advice and maybe your entire view on this is, as you say, on your own.

its funny however how this view of "bruh its just a little thing duuude" only comes from people that already have their way in the industry and are on the defensive.
If its just a small thing, why even have it?
The argument works both ways.
Why do you need to have more than 2 genders in your game? Whats gained from it if its so insignificant?

on the issue with compelled speech from the last page: dont realy have to add anything there, but a big issue.

A game which I like a lot but which paints a rather misogynistic picture (and doesn't touch LGTB at all besides an event where gay love is mentioned and condemned in-game) is Battle Brothers:

Only men can fight (no single woman as playable char in the game), women are depicted in clichee roles such as prostitutes, damsel in distress etc.

But: this is a game that takes place in a low fantasy medieval world very similar to Europe's medieval times. So while I would oppose such behavior and views in the real world (I guess most people would do) it's okay for me in this game. Why would I be offended by a game that tries to somewhat accurately depict medieval flair? Life in general isn't worth much in this game. It's obviously a game made by nerdy men for nerdy men. No harm in that. The devs themselves don't share the views of the characters in their game.

A far as I can tell BB didn't get a lot of backlash for this rather "conservative" or clichee game/world design. The game was very successful. Most games cater to male audiences. Yet male gamers keep yelling that their views get oppressed, politics shoved down their throats etc.
What a nonsense. There are writers in the game industry that want to tell a story about something they think is worthwhile writng about. Let them. Don't tell creators what to create and what not. If you don't like the outcome then pass. It's very easy.

Whats gained is you make someone different than you feel included....denying happiness from other people just because you want to is wrong. I know that view is considered liberal but treating others how you would want to be treated is kind of the golden rule of humanity. Its not 'have their way in the industry' its just reality; some people have different ideas than you do, and that's ok. Imagine if the first human who learned to draw, or start a fire, or tried to come up with speech was just kicked out and left to die.....we'd still be in the trees picking ticks off one another. Granted picking a characters sexuality is a far fetch from progressing mankind, but it's the same train of thought that let us get here.

Maybe someone's struggling with what they are going through and all they can relate to is a few pixels in a game. Why deny them that?

I'm not sure what country you're from...but conservatism in the states just tried to sacrifice thousands of real people so the rich can continue to get richer and because a good economy was the only positive in our president's reelection campaign. I hear what they are saying just like everyone else, but look how they vote, read what they are voting for and against. don't just trust karen from facebook or comrade mikael from russia. There's about to be a huge fight over voting by mail or online here...one side wants every citizen to have the ability to vote and vote easily, the other side wants to keep as many people from voting as possible. Which is right and why would they be afraid of letting people vote? It's not voter fraud, remember last election how they claimed so many illegal immigrants and dead people were voting and how they were launching investigations into each area the numbers didnt make sense to them? Zero voter fraud was found, just like every other investigation. It's lies to whip their base up for them to go vote....lies are another one of those golden rules of humanity things. They are wrong.

I don't get how conservative is synonymous with degenerate incestuous hillbilly in this thread. Perhaps the mainstream news and social media are partly to blame - if someone is dehumanizing your opponents, you are probably being hardwired for violence at some point in the future. Fans have every right to say what they like or don't like about a particular game's writing unless you don't believe in free speech which is undoubtedly preferable to censored or no speech (when you cease communication with the other party, you are already on a war footing). I can't comment on BB but it seems more like anecdotal evidence to me. Does the current establishment (by that I mean Hollywood, the Silicon Valley, Blizzard, Activision, EA etc.) strike anyone as conservative or far-right? People who have consumed their products for a long time are obviously going to cultivate the perception things are being shoved down their throats as some of their favorite franchises have recently taken a different turn as far as writing. It's up to the developers to act on the feedback or ignore it, that's for sure. There's no need to tell people things like "if you don't like the outcome then pass" because it's redundant and sounds like you want to ostracize people for merely expressing their opinion instead of dealing with the latter's contents.

>I won't get into gendered topics, but it's suggested that the 1.7% encompasses a multitude of genetic and birth abnormalities and not actually intersex itself.

Sure, it just goes to show that either definition relies on arbitrary cut off points and how do you want to compartmentalize the spectrum. For example is XXY male or intersex or it's own thing? Is XY who has external female genitalia and sees herself as a woman is a male or a female or w/e? Depends on definitions. My bigger point still stands - sex is not binary.

Yes, whats happening in the game has to fit the setting of the game. This fantasy world is not a representation of the real world.
I am not an expert for DnD lore, but Larian works together with WOTC, so I see no problem there.

We have to remember that the things that are shown in the game are not the opinion of the devs.
Just because a game has a torture scene and the one who is doing it is not shown as insane, a terrorist or the absolute evil does not mean the devs support torture.

Once again: The stuff that happens in the game and the opinions of the characters of the game has to fit the setting.
The worst thing that could happen is when the devs use a game to force their point of view on the player.
Hypothetical extrem example: The devs are against abortion. They show a doctor who does abortions as evil and insane monster and they show the psycho killer who tortures, kills and eats this doctor as the good guy.
I have absolutely no reason to assume that such things will be in the game.

Regarding gender: Game mechanic wise gender has no effect in DnD. Any char of any race or gender can have any class, background, feats or alignment.
So its only about how each char fits into this story and into this fantasy world.
Outside of romance options there are very few cases where the gender of your char had any effect on the game.
I remember:
- Only a male human noble could become king in Dragon Age Origins. All other chars could not get this ending.
- In arcanum woman had -1 str and +1 con, some races could only select males and some backgrounds were only for some race/gender combinations.
I still remember my female half elf debutante with max cha and int. She solved all problems by talking and if this was not possible she had an army of followers to fight for her.
- In Realms of Arcadia 2 you have to enter a city that is occupied by orcs. You can enter but they take away all your non magic equipment. Only woman can keep their body armor, so its good to have a all woman party because plate armor can be very expensive.

Let me be clear on one thing - a politician cares about votes, they seldom put their money where their mouth is and normally try to live as far away as possible from the issues they have had a hand in causing. If you judge an entire subset of the population by the politicians claiming to represent them, you are going to end up hating millions of people, that's a given.

As far as commitment to inclusion, do you think only LGBTQ people or those from ethnic/racial minority backgrounds are supposed to be included in entertainment? What about the deaf, the blind, the physically/mentally disabled, religious minorities, aborted fetuses, pets, communists, white nationalists, national socialists, black panthers, RTwP fans etc.? How do you accommodate all those people without offending anyone, coming off as cheap or mismanaging the budget? Maybe there's a totem pole I'm unaware of.

man you realy are 16 and going through an edgy phase right macadami?
You realy think thats what conservativism is?

TadasGa ah, same applies to you.
World must be easy for you. Dont worry, youll grow out of it.

The one shows revulsion and fear is you.
Who has offered compassion to the other view? who has extended the olive branch? it wasnt you.
It is never people liek you either.
Because you feel like youve got all the answers.

that the world is literaly that easy.

Thats the difference. I understand why you are that way. It does come frm compassion. it also comes from wanting to fight for the underdog and from seeing injusitce.

What you dont see is that you exclude those that dont fall into your vision. That you want to activeley saccrifice liberty in the name of doing "the right" thing.
We already talked about this when it comes to compelled speech.

You ignore the bad faith actors in your own ranks and you ignore that the rules imposed can be easily exploited.

You think Conservativism is based on fear? Meanwhile your disdain for conservativism comes from a fear of intolerance and a fear of loss.
You dont get that some people want to preserve good things out of love for them.

Protecting what you hold dear is, at the core of it, a conservative value. Not a "Liberal" (in the american use of the word) value.

Guys, discuss the topic (whatever it has transitioned into), not other members. Thanks.

Just to be clear, I made an edgy post, that I deleted, but it seems not fast enough - Sordak is reacting to it.

Edit: but also you have in your mind some kind of cartoonish version of "liberal" that you have heavily projected onto me. Let's leave this topic. My post was distatesteful and let's leave it at that.

Are you trying to say that intolerance is a virtue? You're certainly trying to imply that intolerance is not something to be feared. Have you missed the dozens of news stories about members of hate groups who bomb or shoot up people they don't like (or are arrested before they can do so)? That is what unrestrained intolerance leads to. Hate and destruction.

Those who are intolerant think the way to try and preserve things for themselves is by prohibiting them for others. They love themselves and hate others. Is that healthy?




The key word in that sentence is "you". Conservative value is "f--k you, I've got mine". It's about selfishness, protecting what they, personally, have while everyone else is on their own.

The smaller your focus, the less you can see. Trump cannot manage to see outside of his own head. He drove the United States off a cliff because he was incapable of seeing the bend in the road.

That's just it though by your votes you are deciding how you are viewed...not the other way around. You don't like how they are representing you? Stop voting for them, it is that simple.

And yes, except for the hate groups you listed, most of those groups are represented in games where the story is broad enough to include them. It's only a few keystrokes or one artist's rendering to add a detail to a character. Obviously not the player character, but I really can't think of a single old or new RPG game that didn't have at least one physically handicapped NPC(usually the wise blind guy trope) and multiple shades and flavors of characters.

The all white male game would standout way more than adding variety to NPC's.

None of that matter's though, it all goes back to the same point. Why not? It costs the same to paint a picture of a blind guy, brown guy, or gay guy as it does a straight white guy.

No, you aren't. Mature people don't judge the contents of someone's character solely by their voting patterns (that's called guilt by association) especially not in this day and age when politics is conducted for the highest bidder. The only thing this indicates to me is that you have a problem with diversity of opinion. Hopefully I am wrong.



What's a hate group? Do you not realize how error-prone and subjective the term is? Most of the movements you call hate groups operate legally around the world because having a particular opinion doesn't make you a criminal (no matter what the news media says) in a society that values free speech. What's stopping me from calling you a hateful person based on your post history? You can't think of a single old or new RPG game that didn't have at least one physically handicapped NPC? Okay, how many wheelchair-bound characters can you think of from recent games?

In summary, your view of diversity seems to be very narrow. It's very convenient to smear minorities you don't like as hate groups, isn't it? Plus, who is supposed to be prioritized (who is at the top of the diversity totem pole) when making things like games according to your opinion?

Are you trying to say unrestrained tolerance is a virtue? Give me access to your savings and personal information now! If you don't do as I say, you're an intolerant bigot. Boo. Why would you be so selfish as to protect your belongings from other human beings?




As it happens, the keyword in your post is strawman. Since you're so hung up on Trump, he had been a lifelong Democrat prior to running as a Republican candidate. Do you not see the futility of such labels as liberal and conservative? It wasn't Trump that drove the US off a cliff but the people who have been utterly blindsided by party politics!

That's the funny thing though, they're all the same on either spectrum. It's not like either side cares about the people or anything, it's just what they can do to get more votes and keep their influence going. They just pander to different groups and exploit them in different ways.

It's not something exclusive to democracy or capitalism either. Look at any governing system in the world and you'll see the exact same thing.

Hell, I haven't seen a difference regardless of president since Clinton. It's all been the same to me (aside from Clinton's housing market fiasco), but even then it never actually effected me at all. Clinton was Bush was Obama was Trump. They pretend to care about certain groups, but really they don't. The only one I think who might actually care is Trump, but not because he cares about the people, but because he cares about the overall perception of himself (even then it's for self-benefit).

All you can really do is live and let live. Even if people managed to radically change the governing system or the people running it, it'll literally end up in the same situation anyways.

Yep. These are career politicians we're talking about. They've all become filthy rich in the meantime. How? Literally by shoehorning entire strata of society into predefined categories (which defy rational thought) and letting them duke it out while they line their pockets with money.

Something we might actually all agree on. The political class seems to be its own thing and the rest of us... well, aren't.

You clearly cannot have a mature debate about this.
And its funny how aperently "conservativism" means "Libertarianism" to you people.

Im a european, so to me, this make so sense at all. In a european sense, Libertarianism is more of a centrist position (in the right vs left spectrum).
hence why the usual political acis has "libertarianism vs authoritarianism" on one axis and "left and right" on the other.

Conseratives are not about caring for oneself. Obviously. Otherwise conservatives wouldnt uphold the preservation of values, local culture and nation states.

You have to have a very narrow mindset if you want to see this as Selfishness.

>Muh Hate
>muh intolerance
Wrong.
Hate is an emotion. Intolerance is a tool.
Zero tolerance of crime is the way the police works. Imagine if it were any other way.

Intolerance of stuff thats harmfull to society is good.
Im intolerant of a lot of things and im in my damn right for beeing so. I have no tolerance for pedophiles, i have no tolerance for corrupt authority figures, i have no tolerance of opressive laws in the name of social inclusion, i have no tolerance for any morally deficient criminals.

neither should you.
it is the rampant tollerance of harmfull factors that has infected the moral compass of the modern world and that makes us become apologists for reprehensible actions.
This is a video game forum so im not bringing up the examples for the most reprehensible crimes on this list but you probably know what im talking about.

But its bad enaugh that worker exploitation, tax evasion, wage dumping and spying on your allies have become treated as basically schoolyard pranks instead of serious offenses.

***



You are attempting an irrelevant distraction.




"Hung up on Trump". "Blindsided by party politics". "It wasn't Trump".

I can't help but notice that you're casting blame everywhere else but Trump. I hope you're not trying to say that Trump's handling of the COVID-19 outbreak is good or working.

Thanks for your input I guess. You're hopelessly consumed by partisan politics so no matter what I say you can't overcome your biases. No, I don't think Trump is a moral person let alone a decent politician.

If a Democrat says "2 + 2 = 4" and a Republican says "2 + 2 = 6", it is not "partisan" to say 2 + 2 = 4. It is not correct to say "the truth is in the middle, therefore 2 + 2 = 5." It is not correct to say "both sides are equally to blame."

Oh yeah? Which party is better and for what reasons?

The Democratic party is better (not perfect, but better) because they focus on improving the lives of ordinary people, and as a bonus, when ordinary people do better, the economy does better. They believe in facts and science, instead of firing experts for not sucking up enough.

If you truly cannot see any difference between the Democrats and Republicans, then you are hopeless and I will waste no more time on this.

Oh yes, certainly. Especially when Democrat presidents abet or start a bunch of wars in the Middle East and North Africa, I'm sure the locals' lives are improved by a wide margin as a result of carpet-bombing their homes and livelihoods to dust.

Not true. They deny biology with gender ideology, a ideology who ignores all natural differences among males and females that exists on every complex species, their overregulations kills small/medium business, the states controlled by democrats are the worst. They also keep with retarded identity identity politics, some so retarded that the Argentine son of Adolf Eichmann would be eligible to affirmative action programs if he claims to be "hispanic" despite the fact that they never worked,

Los Angeles is now the homeless capital of US. Detroit is more violent than Hell de Janeiro.

Huh? Who's George W. Bush? Never heard of him, or this trillion-dollar "Iraq War" thingee. Drone striking an Iranian General? Doesn't ring any bells to me!

https://sputniknews.com/us/201803271062904845-us-war-democrats-republicans/



The Democrats are warmongers too. How can you support them?

Nope this is an argument the right uses....the two sides are more different now in their beliefs then since the civil war. Both sides are not equal.

Look at how your color votes....that is all that matters. What are they for and against? Against a living wage? Against worker protection? Against free internet? Against giving money to workers and instead wanted to 'trust' the companies to give out the money? Against separation of religion and state that has led to people still have church gatherings and the belief that a covid free future is just a few dollars in tithe away.

That's called "Whataboutism", where instead of addressing my point, you deflect by trying to raise a different issue. I never claimed that the Democrats were perfect.

Also, don't use Russian propaganda sites to support your case.

False. You claimed Democrats strove to improve the lives of ordinary people, which is demonstrably a lie. Are you disputing the facts presented in the article or are you merely attacking the source? I speak Russian and chat with my peers from Russia sometimes, maybe you should just walk away from me. Propaganda is highly contagious after all.

The only liar here is you. You are not even pretending to argue in good faith and are instead trying to endlessly deflect away the facts. I am done wasting time on you.

Look, guys, cool it down a bit. Thanks.

Okay, this is politics after all. Things are bound to get heated. Maybe you're attracted to the Democratic party because they pay lip service to protection of the working class, feeding the poor, building schools and providing less trammeled access to healthcare. No sane person I know is opposed to any of those things. Unfortunately, when your country runs hundreds of military bases overseas, runs up the national debt i.e. spends trillions of dollars on war and generously dispenses foreign aid (you would think everything is peachy back in the states) to a multitude of nations to varying effect, obviously there will be less money for the facilities Democrats say they want to improve. When your country behaves like an empire and is basically ruled by secret societies of criminal warmongering psychopaths, resources will be stretched thin and as a result the people back home will suffer.

If the party you claim to be the better one were genuinely interested in improving your life, the first thing a Democratic president would do is dismantle the military-industrial complex thereby freeing up valuable funds to actually improve your life! That's how I can tell they're a bunch of liars. The only Democrat to have tried such a thing in recent history was John F. Kennedy. He didn't fare well because as I may have previously hinted at the federal government is a criminal enterprise that tortures, murders and oppresses freedom-loving individuals both at home and overseas. I don't hate people who vote for Democrats, everyone has their reasons and ultimately votes for what they believe to be the lesser evil. However, saying that on a fundamental level they are somehow different from Republicans is extremely far-fetched and naive to me.

It's a very common idea, but if you look at voting patterns of rep vs dems, there is a very clear difference. Dem party has shitload of problems, but it's miles better than republicans. Obamacare was very flawed, but it was step into right direction, uninsusured people went from 44.3 to 28.2 mil. After trumps changes - it is projected to grow 24% by 2029. Iran deal was AMAZING, it's insane that they managed to negotiate it so favorably, it has decreased world conflict and obviously, trump fucks it up. In terms of abortion rights - republicans and especially trump is pandering to fundamentalist evangelicals (he has 75% approval rating from then), in roe vs wade overturn there is very clear distinction. In terms of ICE there is clear differencde, gun control etc etc.

No. They are not the same.

Oh, that's just fantastic. So why don't they pass a bill stipulating everyone on US soil is automatically insured? The extra hospitals, doctors, nurses, medical equipment and medicine (tons of which is made in China nowadays) you sorely need will materialize out of thin air! Woo-hoo! Now we can all die together in the waiting room. Iran deal was amazing compared to what.. Syria? Assad must go, Assad is gassing little children says the country that vaporized entire cities with nuclear bombs dropped on a nation that had already surrendered. Libya? We came, we saw, he died *cackles*! Sounds like someone who urgently needs to be committed to a mental institution. World conflict sure does seem to decrease when you stop reporting on certain subjects. Instead of preventing situations that lead to abortion, you're debating how to kill babies on the cheap? Whoa, American exceptionalism at its finest.

All Democrats do is redistribute what little wealth is left for ordinary people along tribal lines, they never tackle the source of the issue.

Right, it's not white, means it's black. Got it.

> Iran deal was amazing compared to what.. Syria?

Iran with (relatively) stable goverment without nukes > iran with religion fundamentalist goverment with nukes. Hillary is fucking atrocious, carrier politician with no real stances on anhything, but she wouldn't have fucked up as much as trump. USA military industrial complex is a nightmare.

> So why don't they pass a bill stipulating everyone on US soil is automatically insured?

Republicans. Like Ben Shapiro, whose doctor wife would appearantly would become slave and other nonsense arguments. How do you think politics work? It is very rare to see drastic changes in any country, including one party dictatorial like china. It's mostly moving to one or another direction by inches.

> Instead of preventing situations that lead to abortion, you're debating how to kill babies on the cheap?

You clearly have no idea on this issue in usa.

>All Democrats do is redistribute what little wealth is left for ordinary people along tribal lines

Nonsense. Compared to republicans democrats are fiscally responsible party. Republican monetary policy is cutting down regulations and lowering taxes for the rich - the idea is that some of that money will trickle down to regular people. In reality what happens is stock buybacks, which artificially inflates stock prices and together with poorly regulated economy creates bubbles. Companies don't start producing more because they have more money, they produce more when there is demand for it. Trickle down economics has only worked in countries where there is naturally high demand - for example post war countries.

I'm going to keep it short here. Last I checked Democrats were in favor of both open borders and free trade - none of that helps the working class but if you think of the latter as bigots then it doesn't feel as bad to ruin their livelihoods I guess. Speaking of religious fundamentalist governments with nukes, there's one based in Washington, D.C. How many wars has Iran started and how many nukes has it launched on its enemies compared to the US? If anything, it's the US that needs to be contained for the greater good. You give presidents too much credit for foreign policy.

The issue on abortion is very simple - Americans don't want to give up their porn habits (which is an industry that exploits people and contributes to human trafficking), think casual sex is an inalienable god-given right plus they worship sportsball personalities as deities even though a great deal of them are abusive or turn out to be rapists. Oh yeah, Hollywood is crawling with those as well. Abortion is a pathological occurrence in society that traumatizes people and any nation that has come to the point where it's regulating abortion on virtually a daily basis deserves to be nuked. America is a nation of degenerates, that's all you need to know in order to understand abortion.

Perhaps we could stick to debating. This approach isn't going to change anybody else's mind and neither will it win the internets.

I've left the topic open to discuss stuff but not if it's just noise.

>Democrats were in favor of both open borders and free trade

Could you give me source? What exactly are you talking about? The more emotional you get the less coherent your arguments become. Ignoring whataboutism I am very much in favor of world wide denuclearization.

I won't respond to your gish galop of sex issues. But for this argument:
>Abortion is a pathological occurrence in society that traumatizes people

https://www.ansirh.org/sites/default/files/publications/files/turnaway_study_brief_web.pdf

It's not based in reality, it mostly comes from false religious beliefs.

<psst> /hey, over here in the corner./

wha ..? Oh it's quiet over here.

/Yeah, this is why we don't need politics in video games. Party over here, politics over there./

Precisely my point. Quod erat demonstrandum.

the point every one else is making is that there wasn't any until YOU brought it up. and you seem most devoted to keeping the debate going.

it is the definition of hypocrisy.

They both suck, as a Canadian Universal Health-care WORKS!, yet you Americans just seem to love doing things the hard and confusing way.

Both Republicans and Democrats pander to the rich, all other pandering is in service to the goals of the rich. Your political system is a failure, it was a failure before Trump, it's a, Failure now, and unless you reform it will continue to be a massive failure.

And both Democrats and Republican Presidents and Governors are at fault, because none of them fixed the health-care system, and no Obamacare wasn't a fix, it had it's own problems, it was a bandaid, not a solution.

And now you are were you are, in the midst of a disaster, each side pointing fingers at each other when the truth was both sides had a chance to creator a modern, public health-care system, and decided nacking the rich was more important.

Canada 131 deaths, the United States has over 5,000, which even accounting for population size differences (the US has roughly 10 times Canada's population), is absolutely huge. And Trump only gets so much of the blame.

Sorry but seeing a pissing contest between Republicans and Democracts over whose shitty useless system would have been better when there was a PROVEN model that has saved lives is more then I can bare, while watching neighbours to the south disintegrate before my eyes into chaos.

Meanwhile we can look forward to Biden and Trump accusing each other of being a rapist without trials during future debates, and competing on who can protect the rich from universal healthcare at the expense of your citizens faster.

Bill Clinton (D) signed NAFTA in 1993. As far as open borders, cf. https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/illegal-immigration-democrats-open-borders/ (it's not even a recent article). Denuclearization is never going to happen - nuclear weapons are a very powerful deterrent against your rivals and potential invaders, it's why countries like Iran and N. Korea want them. It's not really whataboutism - Iran is by no means a warmongering country with imperial capacities but a regional power and poses a much lesser threat to world peace than the US.

Regarding abortion: https://afterabortion.org/abortion-...-abortion-dangers-abortion-side-effects/
Also, if there were no need for abortions in society healthcare would be able to focus its efforts on other life-threatening medical conditions. Obviously refusing women access to abortion has a negative impact as per your source, but I don't see how you can consider it a normal / harmless thing.

Since people are getting tired of this debate, I think it's fair to call it even now. PM me if you're interested in further conversation.

It does not come from a place of anger - it is merely passionate. Changing someone's mind takes a long time so obviously that isn't the goal here. However, you can broaden your interlocutor's horizons by exposing them to a different set of opinions. I consider it a stressful albeit enriching experience plus the internet is arguably a safer place to do it than a real-life setting.

There is that and to some extent I agree with your point, but the trouble is it so often becomes personal which then spills over into other areas of the forum in question in the longer term and can become disruptive. It might be better once we've resurrected the general chat forum which is languishing where nobody can find it, but still waiting for the go-ahead with that. It can be a headache to babysit though: there's a reason most forums disallow politics, religion and the usual slew of "don't go there" debates.

If it is politics that deal with the factions in the game itself, that doesn't bother me at all.

But if it's stuff about the real world? Eh, I do agree. I mean ten years down the road those IRL political jabs would be old news really. Gosh, first thing that comes to mind is watching the old Star Trek episodes and Gene Rodenberry put in a lot of political views and issues from the real world into the plots of the story.

As for NAFTA - world is moving towards creating trading blocks, because of success of EU. As a trading block, not only it's beneficial for memebers withing the block, but the negotiating power of trading block >> negotiating power of individual country. Also given that you needed to go 30 years ago to find an example is kind of telling.

You have linked old article on a single speech Hillary gave? Often misinterpreted 2018 poll shows:

Given the choice between "open borders" — a position that no mainstream political leaders are proposing — and a "secure border," which is current U.S. policy, 79 percent of Americans agreed that the U.S. needs "secure borders."

The study you linked is on 1997 Finish study, this is critique from experts:

The Finnish study (5–7) did not control for the factors that are known to lead to the need for abortion, such as history of mental health conditions, violence, and abuse, and to increase a person’s risk of experiencing suicidal ideation or behaviors (8–11). When studies fail to account for these preexisting risk factors, they may misattribute any adverse mental health outcomes to the abortion rather than to those factors. Studies that control for these confounding factors have found that abortion is not associated with an increased risk of suicidal ideation or behaviors (12–14).

Edit: for physical harm: In our study sample, women who gave birth reported potentially life-threatening complications, such as eclampsia and postpartum hemorrhage, whereas those having abortions did not. Women who gave birth reported the need to limit physical activity for a period of time three times longer than that reported by women who received abortions. Among all women enrolled in the Turnaway Study, one maternal death was identified—one woman who had been denied an abortion died from a condition that confers a higher risk of death among pregnant women. https://www.whijournal.com/article/S1049-3867(15)00158-9/fulltext

When someone is saying please no politics it's more than likely code - "please no minorities ok ty?"

Yes.
Same argument as for witcher.
Minorities should bethere if they make sense.
baldurs gate has a city part called little Calimsha, so there should obviously be middle eastern looking people there.

Why howver are, in Dragon age Inquisition, ltieraly 50% of the population of Not!England black?
And why not asian for that matter? (because black people are the only minority americans acknowledge, kind of my point on why tokenism is bad)

It should be consistent within the world.

So yes.

I am against minorities within my fantasy setting if they dont make sense within the world.

Sure, I don't think there are many who would disagree that tokenism is crap. But quite often criticism is why is there minorities at all, for example - why is Tracer a lesbian, why is a minor transexual character in dai. Not that they are poorly written or don't fit in game world. Just that they exist. If the thought is "I don't want poorly written characters whose only character trait is that they are minority and they don't fit in story or context". I agree. I don't want characters like that either. BUT well written inclusive characters do make the game better.

Not by that name. Democrats in the US have been claiming fences are racist for the last 3 years, though, and deportations inhumane, etc (but fine under Obama). During one of the early leadership debates, all 10 candidates raised their hand to providing health care to illegal immigrants. I assume they will flip back to the secure boarder position, or at least dial back the rhetoric, due to covid-19, but they were leaning pretty open boarder.



This assumes there is little or no reason to not want politics in entertainment (including the hamfisted, preachy kind).
Were this true, there would be backlash with 'minority' characters in games that did not insert politics.




It depends on the setting, and how it is done; personally I don't mind the odd black viking or white samurai if the story/setting isn't suppose to be historically accurate (half the population is a little hard to justify, though).




Apparently she isn't in the Chinese localization.


If I didn't know better, I'd think you were "more than likely" a bigot.


Has anyone complained about well written inclusive characters? The politics people complain about in entertainment are the not-well-written kind.

>claiming fences are racist

You do realise what a waste of resources trumps wall is? Illegal immigrants are mostly people who overstay their visas. Most of drugs comes trough legal crossing points. How effective will a wall be stopping drug trade in world with drones? It's not just building wall, it's all the intrastructure surrouding it. It's millions and millions dollars every year for a meme. It's a childs solution. Let's be real, it has nothing to do with immigration, but everything to do with trumps campaign slogan. It's a monument to stupidity. Just for a laugh https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oP8H9nQKT4 Top notch security: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToFk0kwrN9k

>Apparently she isn't in the Chinese localization.

Yeah after blizzard became activision-blizzard the company is all about those dollar signs in their eyes, I think their undead have no showing bones in chinese version and there was also this diablo mobile thingy and honk-hong thingy.. If it's not already there it's moving to EA and Bethesda tier fast.

>Has anyone complained about well written inclusive characters?

Well it's the internet if you start senetence with "has anyone complained about x" the answer is always yes. But more to the point, I think there are a lot more of "oh this movie sucked, it's because they went full SJW" when the movie script just sucked and it happened to include some minorities. Latest star wars trilogy script was really bad and there is more than enough good faith criticism. But there is loud crowd crying it's because of sjw. It's nonsense.The fuck cringy luke drinking blue milk scene had to do with sjw? The fuck constant memberberries? The fuck pacing? The fuck lack of build up and pay off? The fuck with plotholes like hyperspeed ramming? The fuck with crazy op new jedi powers? It's just lazy excuse. It follows the same pattern - something bad - point thinger to something you don't like, even if it has nothing to do with it. It's not only that latest star wars trilogy sucked, han solo movie sucked, most dc movies suck etc etc. Sucking has nothing to do with including minorities. Bad writing is just that - bad writing.

okay, time out.

where the hell do you come off, as an employee representative, saying something like this about one of your fans because they have an opinion that you don't concur with?

I've been lurking a lot since the game play reveal, and frankly, if I was in charge of communications at Larian, I'd have pulled your privileges ages ago for being an abrasive and rude gate keeper.

I have a multitude of screenshots I've been taking of your posts.

You need training in how to deal with the public.

>where the hell do you come off, as an employee representative, saying something like this about one of your fans because they have an opinion that you don't concur with?

He doesn't mean it as an insult, he is referring that opinion I stated is somewhat simillar to what would possibly get called as a "bigoted" by overzealous sjw.

It doesn't matter if it is meant as an insult. He is a representative of Larian, and now Wizards and Hasbro, and his actions here reflect upon the entire organization.

You can dismiss the veiled insult all you want, because you know the context, but the veil and the insult are still there.

I really feel that you are reaching here..

Well written characters make the games better wether they are minorities or not. One major complaint is to write a character just to state from nowhere "oh he is a drag queen btw" when that never had any part in the story.

Well.. kind of.. But on the other hand why does a character need a special plot point that explores say.. his gayness. We don't need an excuse to put a hetero character. His hetero doesn't play into the story and we don't seem to mind. Why the higher standard for gayness etc?

because without the plot point, the "gayness" is superfluous and irrelevant to the story.

it's like expecting to walk down the street and just know who is gay and who isn't just by appearances, or needing to know someone is gay before working with them.

why? why does it matter?

the only time something as personal as sexuality matters is if it directly influences the character's impact on the main narrative.

If raising a family for future legacy exploration was part of the game, for example, then I would love to see same sex couples and romances that deal with adoption etc. But it has to matter,

I'm not on particularly amicable terms with Raze but even I fail to see the veiled insult, honestly it sounds more like he is giving TadasGa praise. Trust me, he is the least of Larian and Co.'s problems. Their issues stem from management and an employee representative is powerless to remedy them no matter how crafty they are with words.

Believing you shouldn't just let a illegal immigrant die from lack of medical attention doesn't mean someone supports open borders, it means setting humanitarian priorities. Maybe if America hadn't spent most of my life bragging about how great it was, the American Dream it wouldn't have gotten so my deseperate illegal immigrants.

I agree with you on no politics doesn't mean no minorities, a lot of folks that refused to watch the 2016 ghostbusters loved Black Panther. Folks that critize Star Trek: Discovery for being SJW (although it's not, it's just the bad PR that creates that impression) while equally or more diverse Orville doesn't provoke those critisms. Too many folks haven't learned it's more about the presentation then the existance of diversity. If you make your audience feel leactured and judged you will have a major problem on your hands.

Actually, it was a reference to your post "When someone is saying please no politics it's more than likely code - "please no minorities ok ty?" "
That's why I quoted "more than likely", because you were saying 'no politics', at least for tokenism.



Apparently not enough that previous administrations stopped the maintenance and infrastructure for border security, and other countries have and are building border walls.


A significant number cross the boarder on foot, as well, and multiple large caravans attempted to do so a couple years ago. It is a dangerous journey, where people are vulnerable to the elements (sometime fatal) and various kinds of abuse on the way, including a large number of unaccompanied minors. Improving border security discourages people from trying in the first place. A wall may or may not be the most cost effective deterrent, but it seems better than encouraging illegal immigration and creating a permanent underclass.



The Force is Female t-shirts and various interviews do support the claim that inserting feminist politics into the films was part of the problem, at least.


Including minorities isn't the issue. Including minorities 'because politics' is something done by ideologically motivated people who are restricted in what they can write, and therefore generally write poorly.




Hospitals treating illegal immigrants (which is currently already happening) does not require that they be officially given full health care coverage; the democratic candidates' health care plans would be more than just necessary treatment, because hospitals already provide that, as well as emergency care regardless of insurance coverage.

>Apparently not enough that previous administrations stopped the maintenance and infrastructure for border security, and other countries have and are building border walls.

Let's stick to USA. There is a lot of nuance when it comes to migration. Border security =/= building a literal wall.

> A wall may or may not be the most cost effective deterrent

That's an understatement. But more importantly immigration "problem" in usa is completely manufactured bs for conservatives. Not only immigration trend from mexico has reversed as more people are leaving the country than entering, but more importantly net economic impact is either not existant (if you look at reasearch from conservative think tanks) or positive - if you look at anyone else research. The main reason why immigration is such a big talking point, because it hits conservative emotional triad - fear, disgust, otherness. It''s very easy target to point finger and say "look at them, that's why your life sucks" and ignore serious nuanced systemic issues.

>The Force is Female t-shirts and various interviews do support the claim that inserting feminist politics into the files was part of the problem, at least.

Force is female t-shirts came from The Archer Film Festival which is a high school student film festival dedicated to empowering female filmmakers. In 2017 Nike launched the add campaign. That's a huge fucking reach dude.

>Including minorities isn't the issue. Including minorities 'because politics' is something done by ideologically motivated people who are restricted in what they can write, and therefore generally write poorly.

Can you substantiate your hypothesis by any research? Or is it just anecdotes again?

walls a pretty good border security all things considered.
the biggest issue greece has with border security is that they dont have a well defined land border that they can build a wall on.
Meanwhile for hungary and israel it tends to work...

>A significant number cross the boarder on foot, as well, and multiple large caravans attempted to do so a couple years ago. It is a dangerous journey, where people are vulnerable to the elements (sometime fatal) and various kinds of abuse on the way, including a large number of unaccompanied minors. Improving border security discourages people from trying in the first place.

That's false. If you look at EU experience from this report: https://www.tni.org/en/businessbuildingwalls This is also a deadly business. The heavy militarisation of Europe’s borders on land and at sea has led refugees and migrants to follow far more hazardous routes and has trapped others in desperate conditions in neighbouring countries like Libya. Many deaths are not recorded, but those that are tracked in the Mediterranean show that the proportion of those who drown trying to reach Europe continues to increase each year.

Five years ago, open borders was supposedly a right wing proposal to get cheap labour.
Bernie Sanders: "Open borders? That's a Koch brothers proposal"

Democrats were for a wall before they were against it


Claiming walls are racist doesn't do much to deal with criminals entering the country illegally, human trafficking, people entering without medical screening who may or may not be sick, and may not be vaccinated, affecting herd immunity for various diseases in certain locations, etc.



Was I referring to the fact that the t-shirts existed, or who was wearing them and how they were being promoted?



Can you substantiate "When someone is saying please no politics it's more than likely code - "please no minorities ok ty?" " by any research?
Do you actually doubt that overtly pushing a particular ideology can result in character and plot designs that are not to the betterment of the story?



I used reasoning and gave examples. If you can not argue the reasoning or counter the examples, I don't see why you would accept any research I provided.



I thought you wanted to stick to the US?

I agree with you that feminist politics is being injected into alot of media, which often dishonest and manipulative.

But I will point out that if you really want to cut back on illegal immigration maybe America can stop destabilizing Latin America every time a Latin American country elects a leftwing government, the US starts pulling crap them to get them over thrown while giving their backing and praise to right-wing dictators that torture and steal from their citizens to give to the rich.

And then Americans complaining about illegal immigration after helping to wreck other countries is a self inflicted problem.

Europe's own immigration crisis was caused by America continuously screwing around in the Middle East with regime change wars back up by having no meaningful plans for rebuilding and peace after each war, which leads to more wars.

>Five years ago, open boarders was supposedly a right wing proposal to get cheap labour.

Right, being against open borders or a literal wall are mutually exclusive positions. Got it.

>Claiming walls are racist doesn't do much to deal with criminals entering the country illegally, human trafficking, people entering without medical screening who may or may not be sick, and may not be vaccinated, affecting herd immunity for various diseases in certain locations, etc.

Building a literal wall doesn't really address these issues either, it's just a symbolic act. A meme if you will. A meme that costs billions of dollars. If you want to combat those issues there are better ways to spend those billions of dollars.

>Was I referring to the fact that the t-shirts existed, or who was wearing them and how they were being promoted?

Ok, I am really not following you. How does this t-shirt support claim that "inserting feminist politics into the films was part of the problem, at least."? I am 99% sure that for dysney money >> politics. Whatever sells. I am pretty sure that their decision to include minorities or plot points have more to do with toys and to whom they can sell, than any political ideology.

>Do you actually doubt that overtly pushing a particular ideology can result in character and plot designs that are not to the betterment of the story?

Your initial claim was much stronger - " therefore generally write poorly." "Can" is an easy give. On the other hand "Parasite" won too many awards to mention, including oscar for best movie and it's highly ideologically driven, so is latest Joker etc etc.

Um.. what?
You said concern over illegal immigration was "completely manufactured bs for conservatives", and I replied that it was once a concern for liberals, as well.
In any case, I fail to see how continuing this would be productive.



The producer of the movies, and a group of others, wore a t-shirt with a feminist slogan, did interviews promoting feminist talking points, promoted the movies as feminist, critics reviewed the movies saying they were great feminist films, the film content had feminist tropes (Mary Sue female character, incompetent male characters), people who criticised the film were widely called misogynist, there were articles in the press pre-release about exclusively male trolls online 'review bombing' Rotten Tomatoes by saying they were not interested in seeing the film, getting the site to disable that feature for the film, and 'correct' the user review scores after release, etc.
Is your position really that the film content and quality was unaffected by the feminist ideology?


There were minorities in the original films. Somehow there was no backlash.



Was either film advertised and promoted as an ideology, and not the content of the film, with any criticism entirely the result of hating the ideology or proponents of that ideology?
There is a difference between a film having an ideology and a film being used to overtly push an ideology.

I meant that rhetoric surround immigration is manufactured. The problems are insanely exaggerated by the right. Building the wall has no merit, it's purely pandering for trumps base.

>There were minorities in the original films. Somehow there was no backlash.

I really can't think of any? Maybe Lando? If there were they had no major roles. Also no internet as we know now back then.

But anyway I went way off topic with what I wanted to say. My idea was - that people with anti-minority bias are too quick to attribute any and all negativity towards sjw, inclusivity, feminism w/e when it's more likely just incompetent script writing.

>Is your position really that the film content and quality was unaffected by the feminist ideology?

I have no idea how much feminist ideology affected it. I am 99% guaranteed that writing script to sell toys and attract largest possible audience had way more to do with writing than anything else. I actually didn't know about that there is feminism angle for marketing, as most people I just watched trailers, but it doesn't surprise me. Attracting female audience that might not be interested in "nerdy" movie is $$. Also outrage marketing is the new hot thing.

>with any criticism entirely the result of hating the ideology or proponents of that ideology?

Feminism is much more controversial than class warfare in todays climate.

I think one could make the case that a significant part of that controversy is precisely because of class.

There was actually an article written about this topic some time ago argueing that having races in games reinforces racism in the real world. It never caught on for whatever reason.

Isnt it interesting how we all agree that men (on average) have a higher STR score than women in real life yet males never get a STR bonus in games? And I guess to balance it out, give females a higher WIS or something. I guess in an effort to avoid "drama" people just ignored it. Anyway, your quote below...



...the only true statement it this whole thread.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker had it? I dont know about DOS2 because I didnt play it much but I've been through PF:K several times and I cant pinpoint any particular ideology being pushed. Would you care to clarify? Because if you mean small events where a character with a particular personality is driven by ideology thats practically unavoidable in an RPG. Because the game is embedded in a world that mirrors our own.

So its Europeans countries fault ?
So basically european countries should let them in or else theyll.... hurt themselves?

Yeah, thats not how negotating works. if i stand in front of your house and threaten to shoot myself unless you give me all your money, im pretty sure youd closer your front door

This is one of my biggest gripes with the whole "inclusion" model that a lot of media has been pushing. I understand that there are still some major shortcomings in most countries regarding the issue, however, the way it's handled in media is as though people are singularly defined by their sexuality or skin color, rather than their actual character.

When I go out to perform errands, go shopping, get my hair cut, or even go to work, I have more than likely seen or even conversed with people from the LGBTQ community, or who don't adhere to the male/female/hetero grouping, or several people from minority groups. I more often than not don't even realize this though since they don't wear a badge on their shirt saying "nonbinary" or "homosexual" and don't live their lives defined completely by stereotypes or informing everyone they meet.

There's no reason we need special plot points or quests or entire character arcs to tell us NPC #1 is black, homosexual and votes red or blue, when in reality, I don't give a flying fudge about any of that. I want to care about NPC #1 for other reasons than some forced inclusion that looks more like a box being checked off on a list (looking at Andromeda and Bioware).

I would say the perfect inclusion of a homosexual character in a game was Ellie from TLOU's base game. We get mild hints in the game, but unless you're looking for it you wouldn't really notice. Instead you develop an attachment to the character for a number of other reasons and the character is in no way defined by their sexuality or being female. They're just human.

+1

Yes and no. LGBT people are still at risk of getting aggravation even in supposedly tolerant societies if they give any hint of it in public, whether it's the smallest show of affection for their partner or in the case of trans people who don't "pass" well enough, simply existing in public. "At risk" can be anything from a passive-aggressive under-one's-breath insult to being pushed, spat on, assaulted and even murdered. Society is tolerant on some levels but there's still enough of an element of "but don't dare give any hint of it in public" because some people consider stuff that is perfectly normal for non-LGBT people to suddenly be promoted to "forcing it down our throats".

OTOH, are fantasy role-playing games the best medium for this? Some subtle amount of inclusion, maybe; caveats are reasons already mentioned by many which is most people are fairly relaxed until someone starts preaching. Nobody plays video games to be preached at.

What the hell does this have to do with BG3?! *Screams, foaming at the mouth*

It's albeit tangentially related to the OP, and I'm still awaiting the go-ahead to move the general chat forum somewhere people might find it, so here it is. With the exception of the TB/RTwP debate we don't generally police discussions for strict relevance... but yeah, at this point it is a bit of a stretch to say it's really anything to do with BG3!

I love it when people complain about sjw stuff making themselves a sjw

sure buddy...

Brienne from ASoIaF carries herself as a man, looks like man, wants to do masculine things (like be a knight). If she lived in Real World year 2020 she could easily identify as a man and talk about how we need to "destroy the cis-hetronormative patriarchy" and think everyone would benefit from reading some Judith Butler. But she doesnt do that because she's in Westeros which is a reflection of Europe year 1200 or so (sprinkled with magic). I cannot speak for the LGBT crowd but is that not "represenation"? GRRM has created a world where the norm is what we're used to but so many of the stories focuses on the outliers. The bastards, cripples and broken things (as Tyrion puts it).

Dunno really. I never thought of Brienne as anything but Brienne: she never struck me as any sort of LGBT statement. It's 25+ years since I read any of ASoIaF and I can't even remember if she was in the bits I read, but in the TV depiction I never got a hint of anything like that about her: I mean yeah, kinda the logical conclusion of what a tomboy is maybe, but that's all I took from it.

brienne is an ugly woman who wants to be a knight.
That doesnt make her anyhting less of a woman.
what is this nonsense.

No, I agree. She is not a LGBT statement but with some creative thinking she could easily become one. The point was about political narratives being subtle enough that you cannot make a definitive claim about them. GRRMs books are full of messages but theyre not MESSAGES in bright neon lights.

Brienne have plenty of POV chapters in the books and the tv show adaptation does her justice except she's more masculine in the books. Gwendoline is basically just a tall woman.

I wouldn't say "just"; I encountered a policewoman who looked quite similar when I required some, ahem, RL moderation, and she wasn't "just" anything, she was serious business.

i think its a bad way of thinking about it when a masculine woman automatically gets labled, or treated as, something other than a woman or assumtpions about her sexuality are made.

in the books Brienne wants to be a knight because she has a huge crush on Renly, but she's too ugly to be a lady of the court. she isn't gay.

and example this is a prime example of how LGBT try to usurp existing narratives to suit their own perspective, instead of sharing new perspectives.

I think one issue for some people is that they don't like to feel manipulated into accepting a viewpoint regardless of whether that is the writers intent or not. I can see how if you have a medium that you enjoy, whether it be video games, comic books, movies, literature, etc. some writers could come across as using the medium as a vehicle to subversively expose people to their viewpoint, in turn being disrespectful to the medium and the consumer of said medium. Nobody likes feeling used.

I would argue that no topic should necessarily be off limits if its reason for being included is to tell a compelling, engaging story, but who is able to make that determination? I would wager to think that there are some writers would claim that something is included purely for artistic merit when in truth at some level, consciously or not, they are seeking validation for themselves or their views. I also have to ask myself if somethings appears to be included for political or validation reasons is it just because it doesn't align with my own idealogical viewpoint and would I even be able to recognize something that was included for reasons other than storytelling, especially if it already aligns with me idealogically. The best propaganda isn't viewed as propaganda, at face value it just makes sense.

Creators have their own values and I feel it would be a shame for them to have to censor stories they would like to tell an order to appease those that find their values offensive. Should I clamour for Warhammer 20k to be censored because of its ultra right wing themes? Should Star Trek be banned because it presents a socialist utopia? Are either of these political/propaganda or just interesting stories?

Let's take a transgendered character for instance. I think if done right it could be a great way to explore themes of rejection, bigotry, isolation, acceptance, self-worth etc.. as well as (And I want to make it very clear that this is not a viewpoint I am endosing, non of these traits, postive or negative, am I claiming to be inherit to a trans individual) perversion, mental illness, corruption, decadence etc.. If it makes for an interesting story or character and the intent is just that and not to incite persecution or violence in real life I say to hell with those that are offended whether they are conservative, liberal, religous, racist etc.

You got the Brienne thing backwards. When the character first appear in the GOT series she was labelled as "ugly" "tomboy" "manly" a "rug muncher", a "dyke"
So some collectives, LGTB included, use her as an example of how a woman in a traditional manly role and with a particular look can be unjustly labelled by the society even tho the character was not gay from the start. Also how a manly woman is characterized as gay and it´s used as a pejorative with prejudice.

Exactly, the point isnt that Brienne is gay but that everyone around her thinks she's gay. And if you want you can draw parallels to modern society about that. I dont think its necessary though, GRRM does a well enough job to humanize her beyond superficial lables.

I think it would be a good thing, if the player would be asked in the beginning, if he/she wan'ts to have gay options in the game. If not, than don't let them show up in the game at all. I am tired of feminin looking gays that wanna have sex with the player character or huge warriors who want's to . . . up my characters . . .!

I believe that would be quite offensive to many people.

Well quite. IMO suggesting at the outset that LGBT characters may be considered so offensive to some they can be screened out is no better than the unsubtle making-a-point-for-its-own-sake characterisations. Plus it just generates a bunch of unnecessary work and complication for the writers, voice actors and so on.

The first movie in the recent trilogy was alright. The second one was basically one long feminism and diversity propaganda showcase. It was quite surreal actually. The third one I haven’t watched because of how poor a craftsmanship the second one was, so can’t comment on it.

I just saw "bad plot" and "bad storytelling" in the first two movies of the new Star Wars trilogy. (I haven't yet seen the third because of the aforementioned "bad plot" and "bad storytelling" present in the first two).

It's perfectly all right to dislike the new Star Wars trilogy. I dislike them because the writing is really bad and the plot is nonsensical. However, if all a person can see about those movies is "one long feminism and diversity propaganda showcase", that sounds very much like the words of someone who resents seeing women or people of colour getting the spotlight focus instead of white men specifically because they are not white men.

How does 'basically' become 'entirely and exclusively'?


Then why is it that films pushed as feminist get backlash, but those that do not push a political agenda with prominent female or minority characters generally do not?

Those movies? As said I think the first one was alright. As far as I remember it had a female and a black man in the leads. Please think at least for a moment before commenting. The second movie on the other hand was simply ridiculous in its preachines. End of story. And yes I agree, it was also just a poor movie in general.

Well, if anything, those films completely derailred what they wanted to do with inclusion. Finn after the first film became the "black sidekick", a comic relief that just follows Rey like a lapdog.
Rey is simply ridiculous. There has been a lot of leaks regarding studio interference for her to appeal to woke audiences by making her step on the face of stablished characters (Luke) and pretty much all male characters. Her godlike aspects were a demand from Kathleen Kennedy, the original character was supposed to be a padawan like Luke was in the second trilogy.

No. Next.



Libertarian eh? That's another word for "fascist".

Fast approaching the fulfillment of Godwin's law.

>libertarians are fascists
my dude, i dont like libertarians, but holy shit my dude.
Hahahahaha
What are you doing?

I think it is better to keep the current politics of the real world out of a games/movies and other art products,
before someone very loud in TV gets offended, by a binary cis-gender-phobic-white-man,
or by anyone who forgets to pretend, that any of this makes sense.


Unless it is done well, but it is very hard to do propaganda well...



I think this should be moved to an other topic, and not left at BG 3 forum, this whole topic just brings "bad luck"...

That is the plan, at least in more general terms.

So are you hinting at a new and improved forums is waiting for BG3 to hit Early release? (One can hope)

Haha, if only! I mean the idea is somewhere on the agenda but other than it being planned I have no further information other than "probably not imminently". Just a small reorg of what we have at present, hopefully.

ugh, i pity the committee process you have to go through. i know it all too well; my career is in bureaucracy.