The culture war comes from both sides...

I really hate to get political, but sometimes the politics in gaming or the gaming community comes out in such a way, that it only feels right to talk about it. It started with something I wanted to say in regards to a piece of Prey. There was a spot in the game which I was surprised didn't cause more of a fuss/virtue-signaling than it did, and for once I'm quite happy with the internet. ...and then something else happened, and now I realize why the internet can still be stupid. There's not only one guy who did make a fuss about the issue, but Far Cry 5's poster happened, and now people are bitching about that. It's time to talk about the culture war again, and this time I'm not angry at the typical social justice crusaders, because this time it's their supposed opposition that is doing the exact same damn thing I hate.

If you can remember from the way I've discussed things before, you could get the idea that I hate the intrusion of SJW politics in journalism and discussions. I've always hated it. This idea that you're gaming experience is somehow different based on your skin (pretending people are oppressed on face-less online gaming), or this thought that females have to be funneled into a narrowly perfect image or else it's hurtful, or the fact that they push for developers to re-write their games, characters, or humor to suit their sensitive needs. It all came to a boiling point long ago with a hastag consumer revolt, and ever since then and the more recent American elections, the culture war has been in full motion in all it's bullshit glory. Like usual with what you'd expect from a reactionary push back, at some point the stupid reaches circular motion and comes around to the other side.

I hate this stuff because I don't want to be demonizing developers over petty shit, divisive tactics that hurt friendly communities, or put down artistic expression of any kind (save for just bad art, then criticize it right). I want everyone to be able to walk in, pick up a game, and have fun with it. That doesn't mean zero politics in gaming, or that you can't complain about how a game was made, but let's keep things within reason and know that fun and art is the biggest thing here. Not everyone has to have "representation" to have fun, and not every game needs to be a safespace tailored to your views of the world. Naturally, that puts me in high disgust when the right-wing or supposed Anti-SJW watchdogs start sounding pretty familiar, beating on those war drums that demand or demean developers over things related to political or cultural ideology. So let's talk about two examples where I fear the anti-SJW part, is become exactly the thing they hate...

Prey's Nontroversy:

Assuming that picture holds, that above is Danielle Sho. She's one of the more... perhaps, interesting side characters of Prey. She felt a little forced at first, but in retrospect she has a bit more staying power than countless other of the 50+ names that are actually documented on the station. You see, the weird thing is your progress is blocked with one of many "your-princess-is-in-another-castle" halts to the main campaign, as you're told the one door you need is voice locked even to a top-class dude, by someone you've never heard of until now. So you've got to go and find voice samples of this character to collect their voice, and this means going through multiple voice logs, and is one of the only mandatory moments of audio-log collecting in the game. It just so happens that you'll uncover a lesbian story in the process. I'm going to admit the thought hit me that with all these contrivances, it felt a tad bit forced, and I still wonder if Arkane was doing it for points from the "look at me, we're so progressive" crowd.

However, maybe this was a genuine twist they wanted for one of their characters. It's hard to say these days whether inclusiveness like this is genuine, or forced. Fine, you know what, life goes on and the game was still fantastic. The character became a tad bit more interesting than normal anyway. She also loved games, played music, was in a band even in the middle of a space station, had some rebellious stress against upper-management, and (MILD SPOILERS) was badass enough to escape out into space, and used her dying breath to send you an email (from freakin' zero-G space) reminding you to seek vengeance on someone. Plus everything else that surrounded that level area was awesome, so it's kind of good to have taken that detour.

Whether or not her lesbian side was a choice to please certain people, Sho was still a neat character in an amazing game, and that's all that should count. Again, I'm glad I didn't see the bulk of the internet throwing a parade or hate mob against the decision, they just... let it be. The game was the center-point as an amazing game. It wasn't to last for everyone I heard from though. It bugged me a little when a small youtube reviewer decided it was worth his time and breath on the review to smack-talk SJWs, and talk down on this scene. He further showed his ignorance, by suggesting he could find no straight relationships in the game, when there were actually a few. When I called him out on this as being just as bad as SJWs complaining about "evil agendas", and how we can't perfectly assume this was agenda driven, I got this weird response that... not only is wrong, but misses my point completely:

"Given that statistics show that the number of people who say they are gay is less than 3% (some claim less than 2%), it is HIGHLY questionable how these extreme minorities constantly end up in media creations. Meanwhile, openly conservative/libertarian individuals make up a FAR, FAR larger portion of the world but are rarely represented in media (and if they are, it's a temporary character who is presented as a  negative stereotype). Yes, it's obviously an intentional effort to shoehorn these relationships into media despite their extreme rarity. This is an agenda -- the Social Justice agenda."

Okay, so... I could debunk that first off by noting the fact that there's an extremely normal amount of straight people in the media, and gay portrayal is still fairly low. I could also note it's definitely way lower than Libertarian anti-government type plots (full of entire resistance armies going against an over-reach of power) across any work of media. Oh, and gay rights are a part of libertarian philosophy. Still he's upset that Prey doesn't meet a right-wing inclusion quota, sounding familiar to the stupid demands of the left. Ultimately the fact remains, he proved absolutely nothing about how this was the social justice agenda, he just further espoused this "they're messing with my games! My... perfectly good games, that I still rated fondly, but still... ew, SJWs!" Oh yeah, I did mention that, right? He enjoyed the game, mostly singing praises about it until that one moment. He just had to virtue signal, and pledge his part to stick his finger in and yell at SJWs. It's absolutely unapologetic virtue signalling of the most obvious kind, and it achieved nothing other than starting an argument with people who were less agenda driven, and more of just... disturbed by his politically charged comments. Comments that nobody else I've seen make, because we're too busy enjoying a good game.

It's about the freakin' gameplay!

Far Cry 5 (allegedly) hates American Southerners

Oh, but it gets worse. Anyone see the Far Cry 5 image circling around? Oh boy, do I have something special for you:

Have a full-size one, go on. I want you to see whatever details you want, because... you know where this is gonna go. So this has been making the rounds lately, and a minority of the community is already pissed off and discussing how anti-right wing, anti-white, and anti-religious this game is. Probably anti-nationalist too, because... we're seriously just throwing this all into the same pot until it loses it's meaning, just like how everything to the left is racism or... something with a misused placement of the phobia suffix. I am so happy to emphasize that minority point, but it's sadly a larger issue than Prey's deal. Quite a few guys are just making Ubisoft jokes, or wondering about the gameplay, but... there's still those posts cropping up. It also doesn't help that people like The Verge are running with this stir-up, suggesting quite out-right that Ubisoft is indeed making white and redneck the great evil. So, uh... does this at all sound a bit... familiar? Yeah, we've been here before, with complete idiots like this Kotoku article. (I'm sorry, it hurts me as well to link to that site).

So now what do we have here? The exact same idiotic assumptions in place, but culturally reversed. We're looking at artwork before any real trailers are out, and complaining about an "agenda" applying on the developers based on YOUR views of the culture war (Offense is taken, not given). It could easily be a terrible or false assumption just like the supposed "racism" problem, but nope we're really running with this idea that (to quote a guy) they're going after "trump voters". Okay, so let's play along for a second:

1. If this game were anti-white, the "sinner" prisoner wouldn't look white. I mean... for all we know, maybe he's not, but since we're playing the judge-a-book-by-it's-cover game, he sure looks too white to be anti-white.
2. What kind of American nationalism changes the flag? I know it can happen, but it's stupid to throw a fit over how the villains are super american, while they have a different flag. Alternatively ubi could have taken a stab at the confederate flag if they really wanted to lash out against certain people, but yet here we are with this weird cross version of the stars (not here) and stripes.
3. Admittedly the image is difficult to find at a good resolution with the entire picture, but the one I have sadly cuts off the bottom where you find ammo crates and the front piece of RPG launchers. Now with that knowledge in addition to the assault rifle, the planes in the background, and the freakin' painted wolf, you're going to sit there and tell me these are normal American citizens? Or normal rednecks? Oh please, you'd have to not only stupid, but find that your own assumptions on southern culture are exaggerated. These guys are extremists, the usual bad guys.
4. Even IF they were mocking religious conservatism, this is nothing new. Remember Sabal, the religious nut of FC4 who wanted to wash away the sins by killing whoever he deemed as heretics? Oh but now it's a problem because they're white Americans? Or alternatively, you're going to say "see, Ubisoft is anti-right wing this whole time", to which I'll remind you the other side of the coin. If you didn't see Sabal's ending, you'd see the one where Amita the liberal drug-lord, came into power and forced people to work "for the common good" at gun point. Oh, and it was implied she murdered a little girl just to make sure she erased all religious culture. Extremism was the enemy, not your stupid culture war beliefs, and thankfully people were smart enough to applaud the way it was done in FC4. How sad is it that with FC5, we're here where a minority of the supposed skeptic/right-winger community are coming out as snow flakes, offended by a game art.

Oh, hey, there's that iron cross thingy again.

So, alright, let's pretend we're all sane people again and assume we'll be fighting extremists in Far Cry 5. What other game has also done this? Here, I'll even star the ones that aren't religious-like. Well: *Bioshock, Bioshock Infinite, Deadspace, Zeno Clash, RE4, Possibly Skyrim, any game with nazis*, 2016's Doom, Borderlands 2 (cult of firehawk), Soulsborne games, Probably any Warhammer 40'000 games (even if you'll usually be playing as a religious nut to, it's kind of set to be the space crusdades), and... oh hey, perhaps maybe any game inspired by modern day terrorism where we're actively worried about religious radical nutjobs in real life! Funny how often you can see this pattern when you put down your own self-centered world view of politics, and look around a bit. It's not a personal attack on you, it's one on extremists... oh unless you are an extremist, then fuck you.

This is also all coming from someone who is an american white southerner. Over at one of the places I stay (parents separated) I've got a bit of peach moonshine left in a mason jar that sits over on a table, a confederate flag flying out in the front yard, a basement with a collection of guns and even historic swords or replicas, and it's surrounded by a decent amount of woodland scenery. Now most of that is admittedly a byproduct of my father, who's definitely a bit more redneck than me and has choose to do stuff like fly that flag. It's definitely a part of my family and history though. However I think I respect him enough to think and hope that he's not at all worried about being offended by artwork for a virtual game. He's got more things to worry about, including actual SJW outrage like the fact a monument in town is eyed to be taken down by the city. He's not concerned or afraid of liberals having their own voice in the media, we're both actually fans of that cheesy film Ferngully after-all, and he liked James Cameron's Avatar even more than I did. He's concerned when the culture wars comes in to rewrite history, or destroy it altogether, and suppress freedoms like that of expression. He is occupied more with that, than to actually become that very thing himself and hate on Far Cry 5 because "Oh no, the bad guys of a fictional video game have church and apple pie. How dare they!"

Apple pie: Conquering the world as soon as it gets out of the oven

...and here's the thing, even if Ubisoft is pushing an agenda here... WE TOLD THEM TO DO THAT IF THEY WANTED TO! Do you remember when SJWs were bitching and complaining, begging established things to change? (well, it still happens, no need to "remember") It was said time and time again, stop ruining our fun, and go do your own games. Well, maybe now Ubisoft has decided to speak up more politically. Let's say they were blatantly obvious about it, one of the bad guys had a "Make America Great Again" hat on his head, the sinner was an illegal alien being executed, there's a massive wall being built in the background, and one of those guys even had a nazi symbol because... that's what the left thinks all trump supporters are doing apparently. Well guess what, we told them they can do that, because that's exactly how art works! We told them if they wanted their messages, if they want to put more gay or trans people in games, then go and make your own damn games with that exact thing there. What the hell do you think is going on whenever a game has actual nazis as villains!? How about all those games with Russian spies and fictional depictions of cold war threats? How about nearly everything in Killzone, and how it was a sci-fi depiction of various historic events redone with a slightly deeper perspective on the antagonists? How about the founding father loving, white christian only type, pro-'murica of Bioshock Infinite? These are political messages in the games, and we're fine with that! Now when the shift turns just a slight bit in this awful climate, you've shown you're okay to go back into the culture wars, slinging mud or demanding games to be burned down because they offend you? No, fuck off, and go make your own games. ...oh, and if you're a nationalist, you can leave America because I can tell you right now, you do not stand for the amendments it was built on if you're going to have your fragile little ego and feelings hurt over a video game.

Bioshock Infinite had an absolutely fantastic job of writing one very crucial part in the game. Not everybody agrees with it, and it's sparked some people who were upset by the sudden turn, but I feel like it's the most important part in all of this and exactly why I choose the heading image. This minority of right-winged snowflakes bitching and moaning about their hurt feelings are more closer to the Vox Populi than they are to the actual founders that look like them. They came out of this viewpoint that their voice was unheard, so they reacted in a great way. They rose up to fight the bitter and divisive press, they donated to those that actually needed through charity, and they fought against this threat. However somewhere along the lines, it wasn't good enough for some of them. Some of them had a taste for something bolder, and decided to snap at the "roots, or else it'll grow back", and with the growing sight that it's good to be revolutionary, good to be against the liberal side, and a cool punk-rock sort of rebel against the establishment, they think it's points for their side to fight tooth and nail on this culture war front. They became the same horrible monsters, or perhaps even worse, than the ones who they claimed to fight against. The rebels in Bioshock infinite, the supposed warriors of virtue and justice, who then turned around to collect scalps and torment innocent citizens, and kill children, became monsters that were far from just. Now, the right-wing has it's own people of social justice, watch dogs with teeth who want to bite and chew out the "social justice" they don't agree with, and claim it's the fair and just thing to do. I'm calling it out for what it is, and remembering my place and principles. I enjoyed wrecking both the founders and Vox Populi in Infinite, and I saw it coming a mile away. I see it now in the culture war, and I sure hope it doesn't spread to be another giant monstrous disaster.

...but I'll just be here, enjoying video games, and hoping that idiots don't wreck them and their ability to express whatever cool things the artists come up with. To me, the only sad thing about this FC5 piece, is I'll miss the adventure to exotic places. However, maybe I'll enjoy laughing as I hijack a moonshine area or something. Who knows, I'm looking forward to hearing about the gameplay either way.