How Baldur's Gate's Minsc became a bland SocJus mouthpiece, and how to alienate your audience in three easy lessons.
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| What is it about this game that makes people excited about it twenty years later? |
This is an important article about the controversy of a new Social Justice Expansion to a popular classic, a computer game called Baldur's Gate. It attempts to be fair to both sides, although in my opinion that's like having a panel between a Jew and a Nazi, where the moderator decides the best solution has to be somewhere in the middle - only kill half the Jews.
Trying to Understand Baldur’s GateGate: The Controversy Explained
Screenshot:
Embedded Tweet:
should've been an additional dialogue option to reply w/ transphobic garbage. it closes game & deletes your savehttps://t.co/9eIhHNurM6— Sarah Nyberg (@srhbutts) April 2, 2016
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Sarah Nyberg Sarah Nyberg Retweeted Elainovision Primary
should've been an additional dialogue option to reply w/ transphobic garbage. it closes game & deletes your save
Why? For the same reason they hate Free Speech of any kind.
SocJus has such political power now that simply disagreeing with comments like this can get you a visit from the Thought Police - I mean, the Glasgow and Ontario Police Force.
Definition - What does Role-Playing Game (RPG) mean?
"becoming someone else, somewhere else" (source)
You don't know it, but you already know how to play a role playing game. Chances are that.. you've played one before.
..it might have been "playing army" or "trip to Mars", but more often than not it was "Cowboys and Indians". (source)
Alignment
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Alignments are often used as a short-hand guide to a personality, as well as an effort to force people to play in the spirit of things. |
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Roleplaying lets you play as a hero...(Hamlet, by Flickr user, placbo, CC) |
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| Or a villain! |
Real tabletop gamers reflect on SocJus propaganda pieces.
(skip to about 24 minutes in for the roleplaying stuff)
The D&D Alignment system:
is complicated and controversial, but the summary of it is that there is a clash of good and evil, as well as Law and Chaos - adapted from Michael Moorcock's Elric Of Melniboné series.The lawful/chaotic part is mostly there to help individualise people - Robin Hood steals from the rich, which is unlawful, but he gives to the poor, which is good.
A Paladin - a holy warrior - traditionally was always Lawful Good, and an extreme example to boot, so only very exceptional circumstances would make them steal from anyone, and they might well come to blows over such a difference in philosophical outlook.
Alignments as applied to Comics:
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| Good people can fight - even to the death - over whether obedience to the law is more important than individual freedoms. |
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Some of the less evil villains have great success with co-operation - Captain Cold, leader of The Rogues has even wandered over into morally gray areas, and helped heroes on occasion.
Other villains are utterly predictable in their unpredictability - The Joker will betray you as a matter of principle, and his violent relationship with Harley was, in a way, a betrayal of his own ideals - leaving her alive, even caring about her to some extent.
The Moral Panics
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| There's always something to blame. |
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| Some fearful threat - the strange is the enemy! (source) |
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| It might be something like music (for the Nazis, it was Jazz (source)) |
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| or even comic books! (source) |
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| Peanuts, June 22, 1952 (source) |
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| Computer games were targetted when they became popular, with the claim that playing them would turn people into serial killers and rapists. |
A Short History of Game Panics describes the way computer games followed the tradition of fear - New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia sent his gendarmes to seize the city's pinball machines in 1942, because they were causing rape, misogyny, and jay-walking .. or something... For the Christians of the 1980s, including the ones running my supposedly secular High School, the fear of Rock & Roll, and Heavy Metal, had a new target:
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| The great 1980s Dungeons & Dragons panic, discussed on the BBC website. |
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| Sadly, "mind bondage" spells weren't actually in the game - do they really think role-players would have a reputation as celibate nerds if we could use that? |
Dungeons and Dragons!*
*does not contain real dragons, dungeons sold separately. |
| MonsterTalk discusses it in this episode. |
Baldur's Gate, SocJus Style
We've been looking at this whole spectacle the wrong way.
Sure, it seems stupid for there to be a transsexual in a universe with sex changing magic and potions. Sure it's incredibly unrealistic that a trans person would immediately announce their sexual identity to you in public.
But think about it, what is the one thing that SJW's, third wave feminists and their minions love more than anything? Attention.
We see it all the time on tumblr "Oh I'm a quasisexual cat kin look at me" "I'm a pangendered basking shark I'm special" They anounce these crazy things that they are to get attention. And, unintentionally, that's what the transgendered character in baldurs gate has done, in a universe where it's easy to change sex, they have to be special and not change their sex, they are basically the Baldurs gate equivalent of the tumblr feminist telling everyone that they are some silly thing that no one would be naturally.
Therefore, when you look at the character in this light, it makes perfect sense that they announce their sexual identity immediately.
What the writers of the expansion have done is unintentionally make a negative commentary about the tumblr made up identity crowd.
And I think the irony is hilarious.
Quote from https://archive.is/7N0uZ archived from https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/4didsi/something_unintentionally_brilliant_ive_realised/ 5 Apr 2016 20:45:02 UTC
You cannot appease SocJus.
There will be no "peace in our time".
Wow that only took three days before the SJWs turned on @Ubisoft .— Supperdude9 (@Supperdude9) April 5, 2016
Must be some sort of record.#GamerGate pic.twitter.com/cnF0ywYI8M
A character like Minsc should be beyond politics. He shouldn't be used as a Flashpoint. He means too much to too many people.— Liana Kerzner (@redlianak) April 3, 2016
And that's a great saga right to the toiler :p https://t.co/Qwp4KQKNaa #gamergate #BaldursGate #notyourshield pic.twitter.com/NDKtsyZuNe— Kukuruyo (@kukuruyo) April 4, 2016
Note:
I had a look at these two articles and they say everything I was going to say (but better, dammit!), so I might leave it at that.
A Tale Of Dragons And Memes: Why Dragonspear’s Writing Is Horrid
Beamdog, let me show you the way out of this controversy.
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