List of woke and non-woke role-playing games

[Element]

I'd bump Caves of Qud to status red due to the nature of the devs, even though I never played enough of it to see how much pozz there was in-game. Would also drop Disco Elysium to none-mild, because it's just a different beast altogether to what we're used to seeing.

[Lord of Riva]

I'd bump Caves of Qud to status red due to the nature of the devs, even though I never played enough of it to see how much pozz there was in-game. Would also drop Disco Elysium to none-mild, because it's just a different beast altogether to what we're used to seeing.

This has been debated on the 'Dex as well, you can see the arguments that were made in favor of the categories it is now in.

I think it is fair to distinguish the art from the Artist there, the list is supposed to help people find games more to their liking and to avoid getting they enjoyment sucked out of them due to surprise wokeness and all. Most people are not interested in actively boycotting things because of something a person on the dev team does, they just want to play games, which I think is completely understandable.

[Element]

I'd bump Caves of Qud to status red due to the nature of the devs, even though I never played enough of it to see how much pozz there was in-game. Would also drop Disco Elysium to none-mild, because it's just a different beast altogether to what we're used to seeing.

This has been debated on the 'Dex as well, you can see the arguments that were made in favor of the categories it is now in.

I think it is fair to distinguish the art from the Artist there, the list is supposed to help people find games more to their liking and to avoid getting they enjoyment sucked out of them due to surprise wokeness and all. Most people are not interested in actively boycotting things because of something a person on the dev team does, they just want to play games, which I think is completely understandable.

Qud's devs are so woke that it's hard to play the game and not think of it. I experienced the same thing as Falksi when trying Solasta - the pronouns in the menu alone soured the whole experience, even though the game itself was quite good. I couldn't put more that 3 hours into it. Qud is that but on steroids. I think there are non-pozzed forks (bring nights?) of CDDA that would be better.

[Lord of Riva]

I'd bump Caves of Qud to status red due to the nature of the devs, even though I never played enough of it to see how much pozz there was in-game. Would also drop Disco Elysium to none-mild, because it's just a different beast altogether to what we're used to seeing.

This has been debated on the 'Dex as well, you can see the arguments that were made in favor of the categories it is now in.

I think it is fair to distinguish the art from the Artist there, the list is supposed to help people find games more to their liking and to avoid getting they enjoyment sucked out of them due to surprise wokeness and all. Most people are not interested in actively boycotting things because of something a person on the dev team does, they just want to play games, which I think is completely understandable.

Qud's devs are so woke that it's hard to play the game and not think of it. I experienced the same thing as Falksi when trying Solasta - the pronouns in the menu alone soured the whole experience, even though the game itself was quite good. I couldn't put more that 3 hours into it. Qud is that but on steroids. I think there are non-pozzed forks (bring nights?) of CDDA that would be better.

It's just as fair of an opinion as the other one, believe me, pronouns selection (just as Body-Type) does the same for me *and* I have not played CuD. It's Twigs decision, in the end.

[Calumininium]

Interesting, I wonder where Supergiant Games fits

Well, Hades has homosexuality, mannish women, and makes several of the Greek gods dark-skinned, so it's at least a medium according to the rating scale.

Well in a lore perspective, homosexuality but more specifically so Bisexuality displayed in hellenistic period is quite canon even the norm at that time (Thracian epoch of Orpheus), mannish women and even go as far as transgenderism is quite prevalent in the hellenistic mythology (Caeneus but there are many more examples).

So to simply display them for me would actually not be woke, the intent would be more important, like portraying some bs narrative to promote the behavior, or that they were oppressed for being such which was not true at all at that time.

As for dark skinned gods, it's weird because they are truly only "dark skinned" but they display prominently european features, so I guess it's a big ambiguous between an aesthetics choice or some weird lukewarn way of inclusion but I'm really not sure but it's strange for certain. I would mod the skin white to just to make sure.

So I would give them a mild to medium.

Which makes me think that it's weird that they don't promote more Hellenistic world in gaming, as it's quite compatible with some views of the woke paradigm, although the greeks were quite supremacist and "sexist" to some extent with a bit of rapey enabling culture.

[BobT]

He is correct though, the moment we put in even things like "women being equal" on the woke list, everything would be on it.

I get that but it's a very wild statement and lumping all waves of feminism together and then dismissing it as a category misses the mark to me.

How about 2008 being a divider? The modern "woke" stuff really ramped up around then.
Prior to that, women's equality and all that were on the same lines but a slightly separate, historical thing rather than the "modern" group we have now.

Same Jews behind it of course, but in terms of normie's & "cult" thinking there's a bit of separation.

[Acrux]

How about 2008 being a divider?

There's an interesting case to be made for the major break in culture happening in 1997. The link below goes into detail - but, interestingly, with PC gaming's drastic decline happening a decade later (in the coments) - putting it right in line with your suggestion.

https://brianniemeier.com/2018/01/ground-zero/

[Emphyrio]

How about 2008 being a divider?

There's an interesting case to be made for the major break in culture happening in 1997. The link below goes into detail - but, interestingly, with PC gaming's drastic decline happening a decade later (in the coments) - putting it right in line with your suggestion.

https://brianniemeier.com/2018/01/ground-zero/

pretty weak case- u2 and starwars special edition?

[Vergil]

How about 2008 being a divider?

There's an interesting case to be made for the major break in culture happening in 1997. The link below goes into detail - but, interestingly, with PC gaming's drastic decline happening a decade later (in the coments) - putting it right in line with your suggestion.

https://brianniemeier.com/2018/01/ground-zero/

pretty weak case- u2 and starwars special edition?

Yea I thought it was a pretty shit article honestly he listed a couple of (extremely minor) products he didn't like that came out that year. I think society has had more impactful events than FF7 and a shitty U2 album.

[Kalarion]

Thankyou for this. I like how you also provided examples and not just a subjective verdict. That's a lot of work.

Also add a "Fixed by mods" column, maybe? So people know that they can pirate and easily fix a game to make it palatable enough (if it's something they generally enjoy, otherwise), or just outright avoid.

Disagreed. I think it's a given that people are thinking, "mods will fix it" for games that have potential, while being paired with shit/woke content. Reference things like every Beth game ever and BG3. I don't think reminding all readers that they can look for mod content is useful.

[twig]

How about 2008 being a divider? The modern "woke" stuff really ramped up around then.

The increased liberal hypocrisy coincides more with Obama's second term, which is 2012. This is when OWS was derailed by infecting it with identity politics. You can see a lot of posters speaking positively about Occupy even while they're right-wing. This is because many of the New Right used to be liberals who became disgusted with the establishment due to GG, liberal idpol, overreaction to Trump and so on. Or it's simply part of their populist, anti-establishment views.

Then games containing wokeness informed by an anti-GG sentiment got released after or in 2015. You can see that Witcher 3 was a standard lib game because development started prior to GG. Only after that games got worse.

What was stated plainly in the Codex thread but not here is that I'm specifically not including games prior to the woke invasion of our hobby. You can see (we discussed it with @Roguey) how Fallout 2 has a typical story of 'race relations' inspired faction conflict copy-pasted all over (Slags, Gecko, Broken Hills, Vault 15 squatters, Vault 13). But it predates the time when virtue signaling and preaching became a standard practice. Liberals were treated as slightly crazy but harmless, or even right about many things.

But I don't recommend buying old games from studios that have since became woke. They won't cut off the cancerous menace, and any money sent their way promotes further hateful, divisive, bourgeois propaganda.

[Nooneatall]

Any amount of women's rights is woke. Otherwise amazing list and thank you for making it you simp faggot.

[Element]

How about 2008 being a divider?

There's an interesting case to be made for the major break in culture happening in 1997. The link below goes into detail - but, interestingly, with PC gaming's drastic decline happening a decade later (in the coments) - putting it right in line with your suggestion.

https://brianniemeier.com/2018/01/ground-zero/

pretty weak case- u2 and starwars special edition?

1997 was the year Eminem started to take off. Not sure everyone would agree, but to me he's (in hindsight) the harbinger of the rot that would come. On the surface you'd think it's 'anti woke' since he doesn't give a f about anything, raps about whatever he wants etc. Insouciant and irreverent. But then you realize how much of an inroad black culcha had made into society - how much the ghetto was normalized and even idolized in the music. Contempt for normal whites, promotion of whoredom as the norm, 'rebellion' against nothing, all wrapped up in music that was blasted across two continents for the best part of a decade.

How many tickboxes does this tick? Urban decay implicitly blamed on whites, cops beating an 'innocent' nig to death, school shootings = whites, cracks a joke about white privilege with eye colour, makes fun of drug OD rates, "How many people are proud to be citizens of this beautiful country of ours". This is shitlibery 101.

[The_Mask]

If you play some of the Solasta DLCs, you'll bump into nothing but girl bosses. 0 men that have voiced lines. All the men are guards or NPCs.

Take that info and do with it as you will.

[Gregz]

I'd bump Caves of Qud to status red due to the nature of the devs, even though I never played enough of it to see how much pozz there was in-game.

The Bard's Tale 1 (1985) is an absolute classic with no pozz whatsoever, but there was a guy on the dev team who later transitioned. A fag on the dev team does not necessarily guarantee a pozzed product.

[Tweed]

I'd bump Caves of Qud to status red due to the nature of the devs, even though I never played enough of it to see how much pozz there was in-game.

The Bard's Tale 1 (1985) is an absolute classic with no pozz whatsoever, but there was a guy on the dev team who later transitioned. A fag on the dev team does not necessarily guarantee a pozzed product.

Retroactively a troon game, you love troons, ha ha ha.

[Emphyrio]

Would also drop Disco Elysium to none-mild, because it's just a different beast altogether to what we're used to seeing.

Agree. The "feminism" in the game is meant to be funny. Like you can play drunk, jilted, horn-dog Harry going around lecturing people about feminism, it's a joke.

Though some would argue DE doesn't belong on the list at all

[Element]

I'd bump Caves of Qud to status red due to the nature of the devs, even though I never played enough of it to see how much pozz there was in-game.

The Bard's Tale 1 (1985) is an absolute classic with no pozz whatsoever, but there was a guy on the dev team who later transitioned. A fag on the dev team does not necessarily guarantee a pozzed product.

If gheys are 3% of the population the chance of there being none in a 25 man team is worse than a coin flip. We'd retroactively have to label the overwhelming majority of games as woke.

[twig]

Anything explicitly anti-woke or just not woke at all shouldn't really be mixed.
Anything that's even PARTIALLY woke (one-drop) should of course go in woke table.

I actively don't support that kind of absolutist approach. Gamers may still enjoy games with small amounts of wokeness. Then it's debatable as to whether some games are woke at all (e.g. my personal rating of 'none' for Disco Elysium), and it's completely arbitary saying that anti-woke gamers wouldn't enjoy Space Wreck which has instances of wokeness so brief and specific that you can enumerate them in a single sentence.

Also I was able to enjoy some woke games such as the non-RPG Horizon Zero Dawn. You can say that it has a pro-"noble savage" and anti-male sentiment, but it wasn't too badly shoved into the player's face or otherwise too blatant, more like some distant element of worldbuilding where you've even had a few counterexamples. Either way it's a game you can pirate and enjoy for its unique combat mechanics and the innovative sci-fi main plot while accepting that the views of game's creators are their own and that world design is purely a work of fiction. But you simply couldn't play a game with blatant forced display of wokeness (such as the recent flop slop Forspoken) with that attitude. So there's a difference. As such I advise you to enjoy games in a way that involves some compromise.

Woman's suffrage from 17th century to 2023 isn't woke.

Are you insane?

It depends on how it's presented. I wouldn't fault game developers for simply including a part of history.

But in games like RDR2 or especially Vampyr there were contrived preachy and uncritically-presented characters. In Vampyr it was especially jarring, the feminist activist was a black teenage girl completely out of place in 1918's London. In retrospect, with knowledge of the specifics of the woke '''movement''' we can see it as an example of the 'progressive stack'.

Would also drop Disco Elysium to none-mild, because it's just a different beast altogether to what we're used to seeing.

Agree. The "feminism" in the game is meant to be funny. Like you can play drunk, jilted, horn-dog Harry going around lecturing people about feminism, it's a joke.

It was meant as halfway ridiculous (Harry as an SJW trying to police people's language) but also as there being some merit in what he said. From a left-wing perspective I remember that the argument toward feminism was pretty solid, but that the game switched to a distinguishable "preachy-exposition" kind of prose during specific parts of a conversation.

Personally I think DE deserves a none-mild rating. It has a lot of typical Old Left ideas and it's likely that some of them were also adopted by the New Left menace. If you have arguments toward keeping the none-medium rating for DE then please present them.

Then in Marxism under Lenin you still have the notion of women's class interests. This establishes that women need a bit of special treatment due to the specifics of their materially real physical capabilities. You can notice them needing tampons, having limited upper body strength, childbirth and child rearing interfering with work, and so on. But "he who doesn't work, shall not eat" as Vladimir Ilyich once said. In a similar vein you can think of cripples, who still in many cases can contribute productive labor to society. All that without creating some woke-like hierarchy of "oppression". You can note that the Old Left almost never uses words such as "oppressor" that the woke menace are known for.

[Anon]

Thankyou for this. I like how you also provided examples and not just a subjective verdict. That's a lot of work.

Also add a "Fixed by mods" column, maybe? So people know that they can pirate and easily fix a game to make it palatable enough (if it's something they generally enjoy, otherwise), or just outright avoid.

Disagreed. I think it's a given that people are thinking, "mods will fix it" for games that have potential, while being paired with shit/woke content. Reference things like every Beth game ever and BG3. I don't think reminding all readers that they can look for mod content is useful.

Starfield isn't fixed by mods afaik, so it's not this obvious.

[Oyster Sauce]

I nominate Greedfall for its bizarre Burger King Kid's Club notAmerican aboriginal tribes. Super jarring.

[Rand]

Styg (the main developer) is allegedly an Orthodox Christian according to Discord members

Can confirm. Styg is Orthodox Christian.

[Rand]

A.K.A. not pandering to their ideology in any detail, or possibly speaking against their evil.

[Oyster Sauce]

@twig what types of RPg Games do you want on this list? I notice there are no MMOs or JRPGs.

[Roguey]

But then you realize how much of an inroad black culcha had made into society - how much the ghetto was normalized and even idolized in the music.

This was happening long before you were even born https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Love_to_Singa

I nominate Greedfall for its bizarre Burger King Kid's Club notAmerican aboriginal tribes. Super jarring.

? They're not American. They're oirish.

[Rand]

Starfield isn't fixed by mods afaik, so it's not this obvious.

Starfield could maybe be fixed by mods.
This was discussed in the Creation Engine Mod community.
Requires massive work on the voice lines equal at least to original VA workload. Still boring stupid quests... so no modder interest in that.
The non interactable NPCs are a question. Best you can seem to do is de-brown them somewhat.
But the game is shit, so who's going to bother?

[asf]

the autism is strong in this thread

[rusty_shackleford]

No idea how you can put DOS1/DOS2 at the same level as disco communism

[rusty_shackleford]

I think he means just so it's easier to read / filter. Anything explicitly anti-woke or just not woke at all shouldn't really be mixed.

@twig yes, this is what I meant

[Rand]

But I don't recommend buying old games

And that's the only part of this sentence that needs being said.
One exception: Indie devs. The real ones. They make $$$ from every purchase.
The companies paid everyone for old games long ago. You aren't paying the makers. You may not even be paying the original producers.
Why do they deserve the money? Because they bought contracts?
This ain't finance. Fuck off.