Blog:The War on Behalf of "Representation"

I’m sure if you follow KotakuInAction like I do, you’ll be aware of the recent dumpster fire that is Total War: Rome II. Players were not happy with the developers secretly changing many of the rulers and generals to female and are now starting to review bomb the game on Steam when the developers told them to either deal with it or don’t buy it. Controversies like these have been common in the entertainment field in general recently, sometimes it’s started by the social justice outrage mod to generate the attention they desperately crave (such as the arguments of racism surrounding The Witcher 3 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance), and sometimes it’s the creator’s own doing (Battlefield V being one of the most recently example). And to be honest, I think these wars that started on behalf of “representation” should never even occur in the first place.

What’s The Point?
Some of these wars were started by SJWs who accuse a game of “sexism”, “racism” and other SJW buzzwords because “representation matters”, others started when the creators of the games decided to crave in to these demands regardless of the actual playerbase opinion because of the same reason. But the issue is, there’s plenty of representation in the video game industry. There are several popular games that feature black people as prominent characters, some like GTA: San Andreas even center around these black characters. Female characters, on the other hand, are even more common. Some of the most iconic video characters of all time happens to be female. Then there are games like Skyrim or Mass Effect or South Park or Fallout 4 that allows you to create personalized character.

Some may also complain that many of these characters are based on stereotypes, but the commonly ignored fact is that stereotypes stemmed from basic truths. And even if the character is a stereotypical one in some ways, that doesn’t prevent players from liking or bonding with him/her. If fact, overly stereotypical characters are seldom liked by the audience due to their copy-pasted nature and lacking in character.

Is It Needed?
For a gamer, the purpose of a video game is to escape from reality and have fun, for the companies that make them, the purpose is to let the gamers have fun so they will help the company profit with their money. Every game in the market is aimed at a certain audience, and understanding the audiences’ preferences is crucial to the creation and popularity of a video game. By inserting these politically correct or progressive aspects into video games, regardless of context, could potentially go against the established nature of the game, and therefore, against the wishes of the game’s audience. When playing historical games such as Total War, players will at least expect historical authenticity, if not historical accuracy. Adding large quantities of female leaders, despite what the developers of the game claim, is clearly not even historical authentic and, when compared to previous games of the series, sticks out like a sore thumb.

The same can be said of inserting black characters in The Witcher, because despite being based of mythologies, the game is still based off 13th century Poland, not a fantasy land where one can create their own rules. Games have their own setting, their own lore, their own logic, and therefore their own boundaries. They don’t make Need for Speed with construction equipment and tractors, they don’t make WarThunder with vehicles that never left the drawing board. Not all of them are free-for-all wide open sandboxes like Garry’s Mod. Instead of complaining about others, your time is better spent in creating your own content, just don’e expect everyone to appreciate it.

Is It The Right Choice?
One quote I quite appreciate from Marxism is “Practice is the sole criterion for testing truth”. While one practice may not be a decent criterion as exceptions exist. But “Get Woke Go Broke” is defiantly a truth that has been tested on multiple practices. The recent incident with Nike hiring Colin Kaepernick as their spokesman is a decent example. While no notable hits in Nike’s stock has been seen yet. A recent survey showed that nearly everyone, regardless of political spectrum or age, have claimed that they are less likely to purchase Nike products. The reason for that is not because they detest progressivism, is because Nike has gone political by hiring Kaepernick, and people, from liberals to centrists to conservatives don’t like it when the shoes they wear started carrying a political stance. By adding SocJus elements into your entertainment products, you’re essentially making a political stance and turning your entertainment into propaganda, something escapists will most likely not appreciate.

Another interesting fact is that Get Woke Go Broke is often caused when the creators decide to insult their customers when facing backlash. I don’t think it’s hard to understand why this is a bad idea. People will get angry when they are misrepresented and treated with false accusations, it’ll only take common sense to know that what you’re saying about them is false. If gamers were sexist, then Tomb Raider and Nier: Automata will never be a thing. If movie goers were racist, then Black Panther, Men in Black and Blade will never profit. And one doesn’t need to be an expert in WWII history to realize that prospect arms don’t exist back then and females fighting on the front line were a rarity. When you tell people not to buy your products, don’t be surprised when they really don’t.

You may argue that Rockstar Games did the same back then and they were still doing quite well. Well that’s because Sam and Dan Houser were smart enough to tell the difference between gamers and whiners.

If you’re still not convinced, allow me to simply show you how the previous wars on “representation” ended.


 * Kingdom Come: Deliverance refused to back down and went on to out sell Wolfenstein II in just over a week, despite boycott from various gaming publications such as Eurogamer and VICE.
 * The Witcher 3 remained one of the best selling games of all time despite accusations of racism. And when the crew creating the Netflix show decided to cast a BAME girl as Ciri, the backlash from fans was so immense that the showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich temporarily quit Twitter.
 * Battlefield V suffered from low pre-orders after the controversy triggered by its trailer. Patrick Söderlund, who called critics “uneducated” and told them not to buy the next BF instalment, eventually left EA, likely for being a PR liability.
 * Ghostbusters 2016 bombed so hard in the box office that the sequel was cancelled by Sony. Paul Feig’s plan of calling critics “misogynists” certainly didn’t save the movie from going under.
 * The Last Jedi alienated the fans of Star Wars so much that Solo became a box office bomb and is the first Disney Star Wars movie to do so. Disney was even forced to call off several other SW spin-off movie projects and focus entirely on Episode XI.

The corporations and journalists can have their culture and political war all they like, as long as they don’t get in our way of having fun, we won’t complain.

