Should Sony continue to make their games more woke and inclusive?

How about if they make the protagonist of their next game gay or gender fluid? I hear this is the direction Druckman wants to go in at Naughty Dog. We already saw this with Ellie.

So progressive.

This could give them the edge in console wars by catering to their fanbase.

should you continue to make threads that'll get locked???

It's entertaining to watch people freak out because said game is rubbing their sick twisted political agendas into the faces of gamers because the lead is a female, and/or gay, or racial minority... or too flat even, yeah, that happened.

Keep it up Sony, help us weed out the weirdos.

Why would you lock a thread based on human rights and inclusiveness?

That's fascism. Gamespot is better than that.

A great character is great regardless of its sexual orientation, race, gender, species, etc; so it doesn't matter.

Isn't it fuckedup that people are paying attention to the gender or race instead of the actual performance? The social mdedia has fucked you up, kiddo. And there's no fresh respawns, so you're permanently fked now🤷‍♂️It is what it is🤣

Definitely

Sony or Nintendo or any publisher can make their game as woke and inclusive as it can be. What matters is the gameplay loop remain fun.

I’ll say it here before the lock. I’m fine with characters being whatever but when publishers/devs force and get “preacy” with the narrative in order to get more sales and appear morally sound when they aren’t behind closed doors, is not a good look to me.

Sure.

Sure. Why not.

Yes, absolutely. What’s that saying that’s all the rage with the kids these days? Get woke or go broke.

Let me elaborate, I keep hearing Sony's past decisions is causing them to fail. Like moving their headquarters to U.S and censorship. Stuff where people blame SJWs and yet, I don't see anything that is considered 'woke' or 'SJW' being an issue when we have several games that don't go into this route. I think the audience of Sony fans doesn't care one way or the other. If a game is good or marketed as good, it will sell well and it's why TLOU2 won for that reason. If it's a good game to the general audience, what does it matter if it is woke to begin with? TLOU2 wasn't my all time fav game, but I still had fun playing it. The first game was and still the best. Ghost of Tsushima was my PS4 game 2020.

But wait, there's more. Sony censoring a butch of Japanese developed games isn't going to matter at all. The small amount of western gamers who want these games will most likely buy the Switch or PC version. (I've done that myself with more than a few games for the PC versions anyway) Weird Japanese games just don't do well here. Sony's exclusives games will sell and mainstream games will more than make up for any lost costumer who left because of censorship.

If that's what they want to do. I'll play the games if they are good.

Look, I agree Naughty Dog comes off like they are getting high off the smell of their own farts, but it is kinda fun watching them trigger the neck beards.

Why not. Doesn't really matter one way or another. In fact, I like how a lot of games are using black main characters nowadays, it's awesome. GTA started it, but now you get cooler games like deathloop doing it, miles Morales forspoken, even smaller titles like the gunk. It's refreshing to see and I hope the devs keep it up. The gunk character was over the top with the unique characteristics. Black female, with prosthetics and probably gay. Her partner was a white female, probably Hispanic who knows. But the game was something I enjoyed so that's all that really mattered end of the day.

Anyways, I think this is a great topic, even though John Connor meant to bash ps5 with it lol.

I have trouble understanding why certain troll accounts like OP here that have surfaced in the past year, are constantly making threads that get locked instead of simply banning these troll accounts.

This thread is going to end up getting locked anyways, so why entertain them?

Is there a concerted and conscious effort to make a “non-inclusive“ protagonist non-inclusive? Then why should there be in the opposite?

You explicitly attempt to force and impose equality and representation, and people will notice and oppose it. As they should.

Don't care, have no interest in getting a PS5. Have no interest in Naughty Dog either.

I'm sticking with PC, MS, Ninty

Sonys 1st party is not for me anymore, learned that with PS4. Besides a few outliers. Haven't liked thier 1st party games since PS2.

@john_connor: what are you talking about,

Sony dont make games for people who play the games. They make games for people who read about games. Get woke or go broke. Sonys new motto.

Games should only feature buff, good looking white guys so fat, unattractive white guys can get their power fantasy off…

Umm… What?

Yeah sure, I enjoy Sony games and I enjoy their narratives. I could give a damn what gender or sexuality the character has as long as they feel genuine to me. It's so odd to me that this is a constant topic that comes up. Why does it matter? Just play the game or don't play the game. Stop whining about diversity and move along. There's plenty of games coming out all the time if it really bothers you that much.

*Shrugs* It is neither something that appeals to me, nor something that gets me worked up about. I'm just neutral.

That said, I do think there are right and wrong ways to do representation and inclusivity. Haven't played TLOU2, so I don't know if they've executed it well or not.

Agreed. Now I am against certain companies FORCING their political agendas on us. But........ Seriously ppl what the hell is wrong with other groups getting lead roles especially in video games which has a DIVERSE array of consumers?? As a "person of color" we had NO ISSUES for YEARS playing as White characters, and matter fact we STILL DON'T! But when ONE game as a non-White male the whole weirdo part of the gaming community freaks out.... Either way as long as the gameplay and story is GOOD then who cares? TLOU 2 story was just trash and horrid. But the Walking Dead TellTales games that had TWO major Black leads? AMAZING stories and not forced political agendas. So yes, Sony SHOULD be inclusive as long as the story and gameplay isn't trash, and no FORCED political agendas(to the point where its not even needed).

Also a bit off topic but I HATE how the word "woke" which has SERIOUS meaning in Black politics became bamboozled by BOTH the left and the right. And yes I went there....

Still most video games feature a White male protagonist. As a Black person I'm not complaining. Heck, Tommy Vercetti, Kratos, Master Chief and Max Payne are some of my favorite characters and they're White. But its nice to see more Black characters in video games. My thing is..... Yes there should be inclusiveness in video games BUT.... As long as its done right and makes sense to the story. A game about a Black protagonist in Viking era wouldn't make sense and would be what I call "forced." But a RPG fantasy about West African Yoruba mythology? Now that's dope. But more importantly I feel its up to us Black people to become game developers.

Either way I don't know why people who complain about diversity in video games complain when us "minorities"(besides those feminists' gamers) STILL have no issues playing as a straight White male.

True. I know a lot of TLOU fans who really embraced Druckman's direction with TLOU and thought it just added to the realism. I think the narrative driven nature of Sony's first party titles really puts them in the drivers seat to be the first gaming company with a gay protagonist and Sony's core demographic would eat it up as long as it was well done.

Inclusive is good!

Honestly don’t care either way what sex or color my character is, as long as the story is good and the gameplay is fun! That being said I could do without a game featuring another sex scene like the one from TLOU2…😬😬

Not speaking in general, but in terms of media.

Which is exactly what happened with TLoU II. I’m very glad there was pushback against that BS, it was so obviously an agenda.

We are going down this flawed argument of diversity or some other inclusion of minority being forced as if minorities are a rare sighting that occurs once every 300 years and don't belong in media unless it has been certified by the board of "Justified Inclusion of Minority Certification Association".🙄😐

They need a move away from the cut-scene heavy ubisoft-esq model

There are many things wrong with Sony games but inclusiveness or representation isn't one of those.

They need to focus more on bedrock game design before they start trying to tweetrally any groups.

Maybe they should include an accessibility option that lets you change race, gender or wtv from a character. There's options for certain disabilities maybe we should include that for those with that kind of mental disability too. "Bigotrism" options.

Female X has too much muscles. You you wish to reduce muscular mass by y%?

Representation is always a good thing, but striving for inclusivity is the goal. Everyone deserves this and will make the medium better.

God I certainly hope not. The Last of Us 2 would have been consensus greatest game of all time if it didn't have so much woke/SWJ bullshit. its incredible how it managed to still be considered GOTG with all that included though. A true testament of its quality.

I didn't realize that it was sexual orientation and gender that made a great character. Huh.... I always thought it was the writing.

Call of Duty Vanguard def turned me off with how woke the characters and story was, very unrealistic and cringey. Unfortunately I am sure a lot of developers will be going in that direction now to cater to the new generation.

A diversity in cultures represented in games inevitably leads to a diversity in game experiences, and given the vast amount of complaints the gaming community had throughout the ps4/xbone era about how repetitive games were getting, having more inclusion is only a good thing.

Deathloop is a great example. Colt and Julianna wouldn't have been the same as the standard white dude. I hope I'm not out of line saying this, but there's a certain Black "cool factor" that those characters brought to the game that aligned perfectly well with the style of the experience and enhanced it overall.

@john_connor: did Trump make an account here since he cant go on twitter?

No, I don't want their games to be more woke or to have a gay protagonist.

I was under this mistaken assumption as well….

But didn’t you say people are pushing back against “forced imposed equality and representation“? Who determines if it’s forced? The sexual preference of certain TLOU characters was established well before TLOU 2. So that can’t be the problem, can it?

I don't think most people really care until told they should care. Then you're forcing them to pick a side.

People just want good characters.

Developers and publishers should stop asking or advertising "wokeness" and just make the damn games they want to make.

With that said, I do think inclusivity is important simply to represent the world accurately, but not something to be proud of. It's a minimum to be met, not a virtue to be signaled.

Sit somewhere in the middle.

If they have pink hair and shout about toxic masculinity and scream about pronouns and shit, consider them rotted in the brain. Esp if they work for Kotaku, Polygon or freq Resetera, usually a sign they should not be listened to in any shape or form.

When see shit like this, it's a cabal of far-left Antifa lovers trying to create narrative. Very clearly assholes. Dumbasses who's probably never played the genre more interested in self-indulgent activism.

On the other hand, when see weirdos throwing a fit about a black person or woman in thing, or call anything remotely progressive "agenda" like it's negative, they are assholes too.

Alot of the time they seem to screech it when they otherwise would have little to no vested interest in the product. Get shuffled along and bandwagons by alt-right grifters on the Youtube to monetize outrage.

Some of it, is incomprehensibly insanely stupid.

She-Ra, that cartoon created for little girls, with the character herself (I think?) not fully of adult age, no longer looks like a hooker.

Bla bla bla

At the end of the day, is the game good?

When it comes to Sony, outside the Dark Souls types games, not a lot to care about tbh. At least on this end.

Rather play Nintendo games. Seeing a big mocap trans hulk person walk round murdering people with a golf club to show the themes of something or another doesn't beat Super Mario Galaxy.

I'd rather use agenda than forced.

To me it sticks out like a sore thumb in the nuances of its execution and subtleties that oftentimes aren't, but if people need more, there is evidence....statements and actions from Naughty Dog outside of TLoU's established universe....that indicate they have ulterior motives to push a certain agenda.

.....and no, having more diversity doesn't equate to an agenda and I am not against it, but the execution of how it's done can tend to evidence one and become detrimental. Curious how neither Bill nor Ellie's orientation in the first game caused a hissy fit among us bigoted, entitled gamers, yet there was quite a bit of pushback to II. What was the difference? Execution and respect to the characters and their writing, not treating them as vapid vessels to piggyback the ideological predilections and agendas of the developers at their expense.

@uninspiredcup: Is the character in TLOU 2 actually trans, or does she just have some muscles?

@goldenelementxl: Be fucked if I know. This shit is just confusing to me.

Apparently if you are born with a dick, and declare yourself a woman, you are a woman. And can do same Olympics and stuff.

And the Harry Potter lady is Hitler. TERF. Which means something, but not looking it up.

IDK. Most just watch assholes on Twitter screeching.