Anyone who pays a little attention to the game industry will know that in recent years, there have been many works in the game industry, such as Battlefield 5, The Last Of Us 2, and the Witcher live-action TV series, which have had problems because of the implantation of politically correct elements, and these problems are caused by a group called SJW, and if they are not, they are labeled as discriminatory and attacked. So where does this SJW community and the idea of political correctness in the gaming world come from? Why is the influence so great? Let's talk about these issues this time.
SJW's full name, "Social Justice Warrior," originated in the late 1900s and originally meant people who joined the social justice movement. But since its appearance on the Internet in 2011, SJW has become a negative word, because the excessive behavior of SJW supporters has made everyone feel disgusted, the main problem is that SJW supporters often hold up the banner of support for pluralistic speech to bully various industries, but when they encounter people with huge backers, they keep silent.
In modern society, pluralism due to democracy is a progressive value; however, what SJW does is often to require everyone to speak according to the standard of "pluralism", and not to allow others to speak in other ways when they encounter content that involves public issues, which is itself an anti-pluralism phenomenon. There is nothing wrong with pursuing feminism and LGBT (sexual minority) rights, but if you use the banner of diversification to criticize or regulate how creators should create, if there is no SJW element is discrimination, then this will also be resented by people, to talk about the impact of the SJW community on the game industry in recent years, you have to start from the player-gate controversy in 2014.
Player-door controversies, simple emotional disputes escalate into feminist storms
In 2014, Eron Gjoni, the ex-boyfriend of independent game developer Zoe Quinn, posted online accusing Zoe Quinn of infidelity, pointing out that the editor of the game media Kotaku and the Steam game reviewer were also involved. It just so happened that Zoe Quinn's work "Depression Monologue" was forced to take down after being listed on the Steam platform because of bad reviews, but it was endorsed by well-known media such as Kotaku, so there was a conspiracy theory among players, believing that Zoe Quinn exchanged ulterior motives for profits. Since then, many netizens have discussed Zoe Quinn and Eron Gjoni-related posts on major forums have been deleted in large quantities, and some players have been banned, causing players to doubt the media to control speech.
However, after "Depression Monologue" was forced to take down in 2013, Zoe Quinn began to claim that the reason for the removal was due to the traditional chauvinism of the game industry, which gained a lot of recognition, and Zoe Quinn also began to participate in the feminist debate in the game industry, becoming a feminist fighter, and even began to direct himself, labeling other groups or individuals as discriminatory. Although she gained a lot of sympathetic eyes in the name of victims, with the exposure of the emotional incident in 2014, Zoe's opponents also accused Zoe of doing what feminists despised the most.
Since August 28, 2014, many foreign game media have published articles pointing out that with the diversification of the game audience, the masculine traits of some players' self-reinforcing groups are trying to build a closed group, contrary to the prospect of the game being more widely accepted, and the behavior of some players using violence and threatening to treat female participants in the game culture is an obstacle to the game culture. But later, some hackers hacked into Zoe Quinn's computer, announced that many of Zoe Quinn's funders are big names in the game industry, including male editors of the game media, and made everyone convinced that Zoe Quinn did use a special way to obtain benefits, which completely ignited the fuse of Gender Discrimination, Freedom of Speech, Political Correctness, Media Self-Discipline and other content in American society.
There have been many battlefields everywhere on the Internet, and many feminists and groups and developers have been seriously harassed and announced, including the feminist Anita Sarkeesian who became famous in the "Last of Us 2" incident. This incident even led the United States to pass a bill on online anonymous harassment, and the player-gate incident also began to make people think: Is feminism and self-censorship too much? Is there a possibility that anti-discrimination and freedom of expression will no longer coexist?
However, there is a follow-up to this incident. In September 2019, Alec Holowk, a game developer accused of alleged abuse and a member of the game studio Infinite Fall, committed suicide. However, the matter was not confirmed, nor was Alec Holowka prosecuted or investigated, and the allegation was made by Zoe Quinn. Ironically, Zoe Quinn's confession also did not mention Alec Holowka's sexual assault, but Alec Holowka was cornered by online pressure.
After that, there are still good people who go around the game under the banner of political correctness, and they don't even care about the game's settings, but are busy labeling others as discriminatory. For example, after the release of "Kingdom of Heaven: Deliverance" in 2018, some people debated: "Should the game include characters of color?" However, the game's historical background is the medieval bohemian Kingdom of Heaven: Deliverance, where there were almost no people of color, and the game's map was only 9 square kilometers, so the probability of encountering people of color was obviously very low. The incident quickly caused a lot of controversy on the Internet, and supporters on both sides began to attack each other.
In response, daniel Vavra, the game's mastermind, has publicly stated: "If you want a game that presents 'medieval people of color', then you should do it yourself, not blame others." I don't think I'm going to force people who disagree with me to resign. If I don't like it, I'll specify it with you, but it doesn't matter if you can't change it in the end, after all, it's hard to settle the crowd and you can't satisfy everyone." And such arguments, often without a real winner, can hurt many people.
For the sake of "political correctness", it has caused more controversy
Daniel Vavra agrees that it's all about "political correctness." Neither his game nor his player base will be attacked for "no reason" if he does not act firmly on the guidelines of political correctness. This also seems to reflect the gaming world in recent years: more and more developers are adding politically correct elements to their games to prevent themselves from unwarranted attacks.
EA's masterpiece "Battlefield 5" is an example, in the game's first trailer appeared in the British female soldiers of the World War II period, but this plot does not match in history, after all, in history, it has been proved that the deployment of female soldiers on the front line is only the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front, coupled with the chaotic rhythm of the trailer, so that players have left bad reviews of the game's trailer. The CEO of DICE told the media about this controversy: "Players read too little, this is a complete possibility of happening, unacceptable players can not buy, we will not make any changes." 」 Then battlefield 5 game sales went downhill, and EA was also considered to ignore the original player base in order to curry favor with feminism.
During the filming of the Netflix TV series of "The Witcher" and after the release, the main characters were replaced by people of color, which was also unacceptable to many players who loved the original game, causing a lot of turmoil on the Internet. It is rumored that even the heroine Ciri will become black at the beginning, causing the dissatisfaction of most netizens to cancel the plan. However, the Netflix version of the "The Witcher" TV series has also been labeled as "disrespectful to the original", and it has also lost a lot of viewers who support the original.
In 2020, Naughty Dog Studios' annual masterpiece "The Last survivor 2" has brought the "political correctness" controversy to the peak, in addition to the problems of narrative logic disorder, trailer fraud and deliberate misdirection, the politically correct elements and the speech of creative director Neil Druckmann have plunged the entire work into a public opinion storm, and even let the rating website Metacritic modify the scoring rules. Players mostly blame the character of Abby in order to cater to SJW's "progress, justice" issue, and the main reason for Abby's unusual strength is not to deliberately objectify women (but her strong posture is completely different from normal human women), Neil Druckmann blamed the discontent on "discrimination against LGBT, people of color and female races", but the dialogue of another character in the game, Jesse, has also been accused of discriminating against Asians. This further sparked dissatisfaction among players, culminating in the misery of Waterloo sales of The Last of Us 2.
And "The Last survivor 2" even broke out a review war with "Soul of Tsushima", and players who supported "The Last Survivor 2" left bad reviews on "Soul of Tsushima" released at almost the same time, and left praise in the "Last Survivor 2" rating. And some of the SJW proponents of Last Of Us 2 put it this way: "The Last of Us 2 is an American cultural game, while Soul of Tsushima is a Japanese game made by white people who don't understand Japanese culture at all." But in fact, Japan's Nagasaki Prefectural Tourism Bureau cooperated with Soul of Tsushima to promote tourism, and Japanese players also loved Soul of Tsushima.
The mouth is full of doctrine, and the heart is full of business
The various progressive values advocated by SJW people, such as feminism, gender identity, equal rights and other issues, are not wrong, and they are also values that this society should strive to pursue, but too extreme SJW groups or people often wear colored glasses to watch many games or film and television works, thinking that the other party does not clearly express these values is discrimination. In order not to be criticized and attacked, game manufacturers deliberately add these elements to the work, but the result of too deliberate is often to ignore the original audience of the work and the established impression and setting, and finally lose those fans and players who support themselves. And those radical SJW people and groups, how many of them will really buy games because of these changes, support game manufacturers?
Fortunately, not all game manufacturers will attach great importance to the opinions of SJW people, but more manufacturers and studios that are willing to implement their own creative concepts, bring players the most perfect game works in their own minds, pass on the values they want to convey, and share them with players.