As you can see, it’s a list of games curated by reactionaries so that they can avoid any game that refers to anything LGBTQ+. Or any game that depicts racism in a bad light. Or anything that mentions climate change. (But mostly the LGBTQ+ thing)
While the concept is awful, the execution is hilarious.
For example, look at the notes for Disco Elysium:
‘Whether pro or anti is unclear’ is going to live in my head until I die! This is amazing!
Or look at No Man’s Sky:
“I can’t tell which aliens are girls so it’s probably woke” is incredible.
Anyway, I want to make a sheet of my own! Only for real, and with better standards!
This is what I made while writing this post, just off the top of my head:
I’m open to suggestions too, does anybody have a game they think should be included?
I honestly don’t know what the criteria should be, but I don’t agree with these guys that the mere presence of anybody who isn’t a straight white man makes a game ‘woke’. Like I think there should be something more substantive.
It really is just a term for them that can use as shorthand for “person I hate for [bigotry related reasons]”
And it’s annoying because “woke” started as a term among black circles as a way to say you should be aware and remain aware of the injustices of the world, and of course the chuds ruined it (as they ruin every word they get their grubs on).
I sort of became tired of dunking on these people because it doesn’t take long for people to start becoming equally reactionary in a way that rubs me the wrong way. Seen people defend the usage of AI generation solely for memes making fun of conservatives and no. No.
Anyway, a lot of the games they mark as “not woke” are games they remember playing fondly at least a dozen years ago, before they were paying attention to this stuff.
Games like Bioshock and Fallout counted as being “not woke” because they have “no politics” in them.
…
Yeah. Media literacy is a dying skill. It’s fun to sometimes point out how hypocritical they are. But trying to find the logic in these inconsistent chuds is a fool’s errand.
It almost feels like they decided not to have more than three strict, easily manipulable categories they could slap on whatever. They barely follow their own rules on many levels, particularly when listing games they don’t consider woke.
SOMA isn’t woke? Really? One errant glance at the trailer footage would tell you the game gets into themes of self-identity and the nature of consciousness.
Half Life Alyx, neither? That game literally has a jaunty (albeit intellectually gifted) Brit sit back and provide assistance over an earpiece while Alyx goes out to save people.
Project Wingman presents the Federation, a ruling government, as the main antagonist for the story and allows you to actively assist in a nation-wide rebellion.
My brain’s gonna break if I keep reading on, so I’m stopping it here.
Let me explain how this happened: They have no values, thought process beyond basic feeling, and a few of these people are just flat out grifting for attention they might be able to turn into dollars. Remember that “FOCKIN’ PRONOUNS” guy we all got a laugh from? Yeah, he was an outrage grifter who probably didn’t believe anything he was saying and was banking on people pointing and laughing at him drifting his marks towards his channel. His grifter friends started sharing his cringe speech because they all knew it would make their marks think this was a man of integrity over the one thing they care about they can verbalize but haven’t put much thought in at all.
This list is the end result of those marks trying to channel their reactionary, completely emotion based anger and it ends up being nonsensical because they have no emotional understanding of themselves. They only have The Anger, which is redirected towards nonsense by grifters for money, or worse, the first step towards the alt-right pipeline.
When you understand all this, it stops being funny and just becomes exhausting. I have been dealing with this nonsense for nearly twenty years.
I am in my mid-30s. I saw friends have their brains cooked during gamergate and start openly defending people with swastika tattoos. I have been through this so, so many times to the point I don’t even get to laugh at this nonsense anymore, because I see where it all goes, and because it’s become so razor thin to find any sort of seemingly real sounding issue to latch onto that the only people still buying into this garbage are roughly half people aware it’s nonsense but have ended up in a all or nothing situation and can’t bring themselves to go back.
The reason “Obviously Woke” game is not considered “Woke” by them is entirely “I Didn’t See Enough Gays” or “The Grifter Who Cooked My Brain Never Said It Was Bad.” That is it. There is no other reason. And the really sad part is that they fall into this complete destruction of thought is because they do have things they actually care about, but are incapable of reflecting on why or admitting they may have been wrong about something when challenged on it.
We saw it in gamergate. We saw it with the discourse around The Last Jedi. We’ve seen this cycle repeat over and over, a symptom of a larger problem with the global rise of fascism and people completely lacking the framework of thought to examine what is wrong in their lives and easily being manipulated and led astray by grifters promising they know the problem, which eventually leads to much darker and more genocidal streams of thought.
You’re not wrong, and I agree with everything you’ve said here.
But if I can’t laugh, then I’m going to hyperfixate on this, I’m going to end up pulling my hair out arguing with these assholes, and I’m eventually going to want to do something to myself that I wouldn’t be able to fix.
So I mock these guys. I point out that they don’t have a leg to stand on. I show that they’re hypocrites.
The best advice I can give is the advice every established leftist gives: Go do something productive in your community. Share money when you have it, do some volunteer work, organize with a local org, ect.
Fixating on the nonsense going on online is a dangerous trap that railroads you into reactive impulses, and distracts you from real things you could be doing to act on your beliefs, even small things like giving a homeless person you pass a few bucks or spreading word of someone needing help through your socials or so forth.
As tiring as this cycle of nonsense is, you do need to remember that stuff like the “woke games list” is a pretty harmless runoff of the actual issues. The best way to combat those if you lack a large platform is to build community.
As much fun as I had with this topic, I want to second this post.
People really do get sucked into online stuff that doesn’t really matter and it’s pretty harmful in the long term. And if you are able to get involved with anything IRL, it’ll make it a lot easier to cope with what’s going on with what’s happening in the world.
