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To appease a Steam user's demands for straight representation, Webfishing added a 'Straight' title that costs 9,999 fish bucks (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 2 years ago by [M] to c/gaming@beehaw.org
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[–] 16 points 2 years ago (26 children)

Obviously that steam guy was probably coming from a place of bad faith, but the response is maybe imperfect no? This would look pretty bad if the roles were reversed I think. (genuine question I am hoping I am told why this may not be the case; I have nowhere else to ask)

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  • [–] 31 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    It's okay to take context into account and not just look at it as a math problem. Targeting a minority isn't the same as doing it to people who make up 90% of society but are whiny.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    I totally agree that an unacceptable proportion of straight people are whiny about any manner of minority representation, but doesn't this also affect straight people who are normal about this? Maybe it'd be more fitting to give a demeaning title to homophobes, eg. the steam complainer, but provide regular title to everyone else somehow? Thanks for taking the time!

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

    I mean, are straight people who are normal about it clamoring for the title to begin with? This seems like a problem invented basically entirely by the whiners. You could just as easily say it affects gay people who want an ironic title, or straight trans people, but for obvious reasons the whiners don’t really care about that.

    All that said I have no idea what the price tag means in terms of gameplay time to acquire it. If it’s unachievable without 10 hours of grinding or something that’s a little mean, but not enough that I really care.

    (Edit: accidentally a word)

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Yeah a title in some fishing game definitely seems like a really strange thing to be upset about (and yeah you're totally right that this doesn't just affect cis straight people). I'm just saying that the presence of only that title for people who would like a regular version or don't care about titles and just see it in passing might feel unwelcome through no fault of their own y'know? (Though obviously feeling unwelcome would be a little ironic)

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    I’m just saying that the presence of only that title for people who would like a regular version or don’t care about titles and just see it in passing might feel unwelcome through no fault of their own y’know?

    I completely agree with this. For example, they don't currently have a gender fluid title. Most gender fluid folks may not be clamoring for them to add the title but if they joined the game and saw that the gender fluid tag was harder to obtain for no discernible reason, was in air quotes, and had the description "mhm" I think they would feel pretty unwelcome. Also - a lot of people won't know the context that there were people complaining about the lack of the title.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    I haven't played the game for very long, but from what I've seen it would take a few hours to get to the point that you can just get a thousand bucks and blow them on a title, but it's entirely doable. You would have to focus on upgrades anyways to start with just to get a proper income up and running, and then once you can fish with greater speed and with a greater success rate it should be fairly trivial.

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  • [–] 21 points 2 years ago (16 children)

    I don't think its ethical to portray straight people in video games at all.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago (13 children)

    Bioware is well ahead of you. Haven't most of their romanceable NPCs been bisexual for ages now?

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (11 children)

    Any game that doesn't make all NPCs "opportunistically bisexual" pisses me off. Quit locking content behind my character's pronouns.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    I'm sort of the opposite. Give characters sexualities! Make them people! Give them criteria by which they will or won't find my character attractive! I feel gross when every NPC is pansexual and aggressively attracted to the main character for no reason. Then again, I'm acespec, so.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (4 children)

    You can do that while still not locking any content behind gender though.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago* (3 children)

    How can you make a character not attracted to men and simultaneously make their relationship not locked for characters who are men?

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    If it were me, I'd do something like not really focus on what their actual "real" sexuality is unless it is somehow relevant to the plot. Then if it is so something like make them a 1 or a 5 on the Kinsey scale instead of a 0 or a 6.

    I don't think games should be required to do, I'm not trying to force some sort of universal bi/pan agenda. I'm just saying it personally annoys me when I am locked out of pursuing a character just because of the gender I happen to be playing as because I typically don't play games multiple times. It also annoys me when games don't allow you to pursue all characters. Like in BG3, as far as I know, all characters are bi/pan but not all are poly. The game forced me to pick between Astarion and Karlach, for example. I put 100 hours or so into the game before I quit. I'm not willing to put over 100 more hours into it just to see what would've been different. It's just a waste of my time.

    An alternative approach is only having "sex scene" type content gated behind gender, but everything else can still be seen by friends. E.g., anything a character would eventually tell a lover they still tell close friends. Which is still sort of annoying but not really as bad because you can easily just look up a sex scene, but experiencing things like dialogue and special quests in game isn't comparable to looking it up on YouTube.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    I understand your perspective but I guess I just fundamentally disagree. I'd be annoyed, in the same vein as you, if every character was poly (unless they were actually poly and they had other lovers and referenced your other lovers and it was genuinely part of their identity) or if a relationship with them wasn't different from a close friendship, besides having sex (because sex isn't the only thing separating a close friendship from a relationship).

    I guess, the way I approach the kind of game that we're both talking about is just different. I'm not interested in exploring 100% of all the content possible, but rather having a rich experience in the content that I do explore. I'll take an authentically written gay man and an authentically written straight girl who both won't explore a relationship with me, over the opportunity to have more content that's shallower. But yeah, again, thats just a different approach we both have to games.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    I'm not interested in exploring 100% of content either, but I hate when games artificially block content off. For narrative reasons, I don't care. I don't mind the idea of mutually exclusive companions based on choices in game. But something as minor as gender at character creation? Come on now!

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    For my part I didn't mind that so much in Cyberpunk 2077, I just played it multiple times with different V characters.

    But then I can see that it's a big time investment and not good for everyone.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I DEMAND EQUAL OPPORTUNITY OBJECTIFICATION IN VIDEO GAMES

    NO /S

    Except some aces here and there, for the homies to talk about books with.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    The roles are not reversed, though (quite the opposite), so no need to worry about that:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw_mRaIHb-M

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    Yeah the history of oppression is definitely reason to dislike those that support it, but it seems ill-fitting to have this affect all people who identify as straight no? (Not just cis straight people who don't support that oppression but also trans straight people and other exceptions, as another commenter pointed out)

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago

    Obviously that steam guy was probably coming from a place of bad faith

    The Steam forums actively encourage this kind of bad faith behavior:

    1. when a post gets a new reply it's moved to the top of the forums. So as long as people are engaging with a post, even if it's just to make fun of a bigot, it keeps getting pushed back to the top.

    2. Users can "award" posts for various things (helpfull, cool, funny, etc) and users have taken to giving 'Clown' awards as a way of making fun of posts. Whenever one of your posts gets an award, you are given Steampoints you can use in the Steam cosmetics store.

    This results in every game having bad faith posts "complaining" about wokeness so that people will make fun of them with Clown awards as a way to farm Steampoints. The developer bringing attention to it just helps them get more.

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