Sucker Punch do actually understand what their audience likes in many respects, which is how they were able to be so insidious with the original Ghost of Tsushima. It is in many ways a more competent fantasy depiction of Japan than Rise of the Ronin which I'm playing right now, in the open world aspect alone. Sucker Punch know for example that gaming is full of unabashed weebs who want to be a cool samurai, run around a stylised version of japan with nice graphics, climb vertiginous temple complexes, stroke furry foxes, bow to the honoraburru dead, pretend they watch B&W samurai movies, etc. and so they gave them all that, to a high level of competency.

This unfortunately blinded gamers to all the blatant feminism: every woman ugly, henpecked protagonist doing everything an angry woman wants, a dozen girlbosses, lesbians and gays, two fat BBWs starring in the mongol invasion on opposite sides, the complete absence of female grunt enemies despite their lopsided presence as named badasses, absence of female accountability, all the men exclusively being weak/cruel/naive, the worthlessness of tradition except for temples being colourful climbing frames, the lack of any question of heterosexual romance in the main narrative despite the fact that Jin is meant to continue his uncle's legacy... And so Yotei being what it is comes as a betrayal only to some (and fwiw that social media photo of all the women in the dev team, captioned 'Ghost of Yotei', is from 2018).

So I think we're at a stage that the propaganda just becomes more insidious the more competent a dev is and the better they understand gamers. I'm fine with them misunderstanding us, so that they go bankrupt quicker. I actually don't think it balances out if a company gives me a fun experience which understands my desires well in one respect - raking in the normie bucks - if they're simultaneously trying to shoehorn their ideological agenda in behind my enjoyment. When it comes to a game like that I think one should pirate it at most (which is what I did for Tsushima). I actually paid for Disco Elysium, in contrast, although I wouldn't do so nowadays - at least those guys admitted they're hardcore commies and my money went towards nothing but the comedic collapse of their studio.

Sucker Punch do actually understand what their audience likes in many respects, which is how they were able to be so insidious with the original Ghost of Tsushima. It is in many ways a more competent fantasy depiction of Japan than Rise of the Ronin which I'm playing right now, in the open world aspect alone. Sucker Punch know for example that gaming is full of unabashed weebs who want to be a cool samurai, run around a stylised version of japan with nice graphics, climb vertiginous temple complexes, stroke furry foxes, bow to the honoraburru dead, pretend they watch B&W samurai movies, etc. and so they gave them all that, to a high level of competency.

This unfortunately blinded gamers to all the blatant feminism: every woman ugly, henpecked protagonist doing everything an angry woman wants, a dozen girlbosses, lesbians and gays, two fat BBWs starring in the mongol invasion on opposite sides, the complete absence of female grunt enemies despite their lopsided presence as named badasses, absence of female accountability, all the men exclusively being weak/cruel/naive, the worthlessness of tradition except for temples being colourful climbing frames, the lack of any question of heterosexual romance in the main narrative despite the fact that Jin is meant to continue his uncle's legacy... And so Yotei being what it is comes as a betrayal only to some (and fwiw that social media photo of all the women in the dev team, captioned 'Ghost of Yotei' is from 2018).

So I think we're at a stage that the propaganda just becomes more insidious the more competent a dev is and the better they understand gamers. I'm fine with them misunderstanding us, so that they go bankrupt quicker. I actually don't think it balances out if a company gives me a fun experience which understands my desires well in one respect - raking in the normie bucks - if they're simultaneously trying to shoehorn their ideological agenda in behind my enjoyment. When it comes to a game like that I think one should pirate it at most (which is what I did for Tsushima). I actually paid for Disco Elysium, in contrast, although I wouldn't do so nowadays - at least those guys admitted they're hardcore commies and my money went towards nothing but the comedic collapse of their studio.

Sucker Punch do actually understand what their audience likes in many respects, which is how they were able to be so insidious with the original Ghost of Tsushima. It is in many ways a more competent fantasy depiction of Japan than Rise of the Ronin which I'm playing right now, in the open world aspect alone. Sucker Punch know for example that gaming is full of unabashed weebs who want to be a cool samurai, run around a stylised version of japan with nice graphics, climb vertiginous temple complexes, stroke furry foxes, bow to the honoraburru dead, pretend they watch B&W samurai movies, etc. and so they gave them all that, to a high level of competency.

This unfortunately blinded gamers to all the blatant feminism: every woman ugly, henpecked protagonist doing everything an angry woman wants, a dozen girlbosses, lesbians and gays, two fat BBWs starring in the mongol invasion on opposite sides, the complete absence of female grunt enemies despite their lopsided presence as named badasses, all the men exclusively being weak/cruel/naive, the worthlessness of tradition except for temples being colourful climbing frames, the lack of any question of heterosexual romance in the main narrative despite the fact that Jin is meant to continue his uncle's legacy... And so Yotei being what it is comes as a betrayal only to some (and fwiw that social media photo of all the women in the dev team, captioned 'Ghost of Yotei' is from 2018).

So I think we're at a stage that the propaganda just becomes more insidious the more competent a dev is and the better they understand gamers. I'm fine with them misunderstanding us, so that they go bankrupt quicker. I actually don't think it balances out if a company gives me a fun experience which understands my desires well in one respect - raking in the normie bucks - if they're simultaneously trying to shoehorn their ideological agenda in behind my enjoyment. When it comes to a game like that I think one should pirate it at most (which is what I did for Tsushima). I actually paid for Disco Elysium, in contrast, although I wouldn't do so nowadays - at least those guys admitted they're hardcore commies and my money went towards nothing but the comedic collapse of their studio.

Sucker Punch do actually understand what their audience likes in many respects, which is how they were able to be so insidious with the original Ghost of Tsushima. It is in many ways a more competent fantasy depiction of Japan than Rise of the Ronin which I'm playing right now, in the open world aspect alone. Sucker Punch know for example that gaming is full of unabashed weebs who want to be a cool samurai, run around a stylised version of japan with cool graphics, climb vertiginous temple complexes, stroke furry foxes, bow to the honoraburru dead, pretend they watch B&W samurai movies, etc. and so they gave them all that, to a high level of competency.

This unfortunately blinded gamers to all the blatant feminism: every woman ugly, henpecked protagonist doing everything an angry woman wants, a dozen girlbosses, lesbians and gays, two fat BBWs starring in the mongol invasion on opposite sides, the complete absence of female grunt enemies despite their lopsided presence as named badasses, all the men exclusively being weak/cruel/naive, the worthlessness of tradition except for temples being colourful climbing frames, the lack of any question of heterosexual romance in the main narrative despite the fact that Jin is meant to continue his uncle's legacy... And so Yotei being what it is comes as a betrayal only to some (and fwiw that social media photo of all the women in the dev team, captioned 'Ghost of Yotei' is from 2018).

So I think we're at a stage that the propaganda just becomes more insidious the more competent a dev is and the better they understand gamers. I'm fine with them misunderstanding us, so that they go bankrupt quicker. I actually don't think it balances out if a company gives me a fun experience which understands my desires well in one respect - raking in the normie bucks - if they're simultaneously trying to shoehorn their ideological agenda in behind my enjoyment. When it comes to a game like that I think one should pirate it at most (which is what I did for Tsushima). I actually paid for Disco Elysium, in contrast, although I wouldn't do so nowadays - at least those guys admitted they're hardcore commies and my money went towards nothing but the comedic collapse of their studio.