Comment by petsfed
5 days ago
What I'm understanding you saying re: Concord is that the game was poorly marketed, had bad character designs, and also one of the developers made some ill-considered tweets 4 years before the release of this game.
Absolutely, that one dev has some weird opinions. But if those opinions are/were core to the game design, and done on purpose, then the marketing also failed to get that point across.
There's also something sort of funny about digging up 4-year-old tweets and saying "see, this is what cancel culture looks like in action".
Speaking to the concept of "DEI hires", the implication is always that the person in that role is only there because they met some quota. The reality of affirmative action was that frequently, you could never get into that role, regardless of qualifications, if you had the wrong skin color. And that wasn't just like a backroom sort of thing. There are countless examples of explicitly racist policies in the US prior to 1964. But the funny thing is, with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it became illegal to hire based on race in either direction. "DEI Hire" affirmative actions are explicitly illegal, and it would be an easy case to win if you thought you lost the job to a less-qualified "DEI" candidate. Indeed, the US Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld that racial quotas (of any stripe, but especially "hire more minorities") are illegal.
Re: that video, I see that as less of a policy fail and more of a marketing fail. Like, everybody producing that video understood that as "when a firefighter, ANY firefighter, is physically carrying somebody out of an actual fire, a great number of things have already gone VERY wrong, and being a racist prick about the exact race/gender/etc while a rescue is underway is severely missing the point". But nobody bothered to run that in front of somebody who wasn't adjusted to how firefighters see the world.
Firefighters' physical exams are notoriously physically demanding, because the consequences of not measuring up are pretty dire. And yet I know several female firefighters.
> Concord is that the game was poorly marketed, had bad character designs, and also one of the developers made some ill-considered tweets 4 years before the release of this game.
You almost got it. Not "some developer made some ill-considered tweets 4 years ago", but the Lead Character Designer. That is the person who is responsible for the whole character design concept. And because you're so focused on the Tweet being from was 4 years ago: That game did not magically appear a few months ago. 4 Years ago, it was deep in development and that person was already very publicly apparent about their opinion regarding the main target audience. The characters in question were being formed at that time.
And it was also the first hit I got on Google with my search query. It's not that I dug really deep. It was literally the first result I got.
People like these are what the average guy calls "woke" nowadays. This person has a very toxic agenda and is still put in a lead position for a project with a budget that - according to some sources - may have been up to 400 Million USD. And that is an example on what is considered problematic regarding the DEI topic. If you think that this is not a problem and not even a part of the reason why games like these fail; fine. Then we agree to disagree on this point. You could also look at the game "Dustborn", if you want something that you could find in the glossary next to "woke game". I don't even know what to say about that mess. But that game at least was openly marketed for it's woke target audience.
> Indeed, the US Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld that racial quotas (of any stripe, but especially "hire more minorities") are illegal. I don't like this Dave Rubin guy, but this video sums it up pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwwjREOWtm0
In the comments, you can find plenty of people who tell their own stories matching the one told in the video. So, this apparently does happen. People see that and they're angry. Normal, simple people see that. Some of them, who were neutral before, now look at these minorities with distrust. That's what I mean when I say that these practices sometimes increase racism in the end. That's normal human behavior. If you say those things and are called "racist" in response, that doesn't help. Instead of a proper discussion and trying to find solutions on how equality can be reached without creating these issues at the same time, people need to get together and find solutions. Calling each other swear words and continuing as planned does not help, but worsens it.
> that video, I see that as less of a policy fail and more of a marketing fail. Like, everybody producing that video understood that as "when a firefighter, ANY firefighter, is physically carrying somebody out of an actual fire, a great number of things have already gone VERY wrong, and being a racist prick about the exact race/gender/etc while a rescue is underway is severely missing the point". Wow. I have to admit that I did not manage to get to that train of thought. So, they created a narrative that people care how their rescuers look like, and then they call the people in their story "racist pricks"? How often does this happen that somebody complains about who they were rescued by? I haven't heard that before. So either you know of some of these cases - in that case, please enlighten me. Or are you already conditioned to see racism everywhere, even in made up stories? Honestly, how did you manage to interpret racism into that video?
That is precisely the problem that I mean. People call out an obviously bad video. Instead of saying: "Oh boy, they messed up there. Let's see how we can fix that." the people criticizing it are being called "racist prigs". That will surely improve the situation! Well, shit. If that's how people "discuss" things nowadays, society is really doomed.
The only thing that I know average people complain about is when anyone considers lowering the criteria for physically demanding jobs specifically for women. And that is precisely what this question is about. "Is that woman able to carry a man out of a burning house?". If the answer is "Yes, she has to meet the same physical requirements as the men", then that is the answer that should make everyone happy. To answer "It's his fault to get into a fire anyway" is the worst answer anyone could give. And this went through numerous hands before it was published. So either no one involved realized that this spot could be a bad idea, or there was toxic positivity involved again. Things like these push people further apart when we should be working together. But, I forgot. Nowadays, one also gets called a "racist" for listing biological facts like "women have different bone structure, average muscle mass and hormone levels than men".
Yeah, I can't see why the average person would have anything against the woke people.