"It wouldn't be enough to just put a trans person in a game and have them there as a character."
Isn't that kind of what they did?
Nope, They have them awkwardly explain their trans nature to you in a way that has nothing to do with the plot at all. They're literally a token just to say "We put a trans person in the game! Give us bonus points for showing how 'progressive' we are!". You can look up videos of it on YouTube, it's pretty cringeworthy.
And going back to this char. No one sane in his/her mind would just tell any stranger her backstory in such a way.
Dude, how many characters in RPGs volunteer information that you didn't ask for or ask a complete stranger to solve their problems? This is practically what the genre's founded upon.
Look on the bright side guys, as long as the forums are being burned and flame bait reviews are being written that means these people have had to take a break from burning the devil worshiping Dungeons and Dragons manuals and Ozzy Ozbourne records. Over 30 years and nothing has changed. The availability of controversial art or the people that fight against it.
Except now it is liberal side who does the preaching and moralizes everyone into oblivion. Its liberals who say adopt our belief system or shut up. Liberals are Christians on steroids, or hyperchristians.
what you did is not only bad writing but also harmful and disrespectful to transgender people.
Oh wow, so actually you guys are here to save transgender people. Great.
No I am here to treat everyone the same. It is horrible to treat people when they are "different" as something special. They are not they do not need to be protected. You want an example? Ok it is not about transgender people but rather disabled one. My niche is disabled the is in a wheelchair for most of the time and has spastics.
She does not want to be treated as something broken or special. She just wants to be treated like everyone else. And she actually gets really sad and frustrated if you try to pity her.
This is why its bad and even dangerous writing. This is what creates prejudices against minority groups. B
I remember how I was playing this other, medieval fantasy game. There was a mission where I was to find a witness to a monster attack, yet when finding this character he requested my help first to deal with wild dogs. We approached the dogs only to find a corpse then the NPC became emotionally disrupted very clearly. I had the option to empathize with the character, he recounted a story of being a freak. By virtue of being a mutant the PC character tried to empathize yet this character proceeded to explain how he was ostracized from his community and his same sex lover eventually killed himself and the entire lordship crumbled due to the scandal that came with this revelation reminding us of a more trying, bigoted and judgmental time period and the consequences people faced for just being themselves.
I thought this characterization was fantastic: It was thoroughly integrated within the lore of the game fairly deeply, it tied to the main plot of the game, it was a realistic depiction of the historical persecution of the time period yet it was completely fair to the character in question standing his ground and remaining isolated but close by to the community that rejected him.
A far cry from what Beamdog managed here. THAT is how you get me interested in political discourse and even provoke thought on discrimination of the LGBT community. By being a damn good writer on an engaging game. But to each his own.
Nope, They have them awkwardly explain their trans nature to you in a way that has nothing to do with the plot at all.
But you wouldn't know they were trans unless they told you. Like, if they don't mention it at all then they might as well not be trans. I don't know how else you expect it to come up.
...omg. I actually went to metacritic to take a look and there's literally dozens of 0-1 reviews, obviously from one butthurt poster. The names seem random, all of them have like - 1 review only and all of them are talking about the same stuff. Some of them are even the same exact wording, from a different nick. Yeah, totally legit. Why are some people such c**ts?
Firstly, I have absolutely no issue with Trent asking for community support in an effort to mitigate intentional negativity wrought by those who have latched onto one or two extremely minor aspects in regard to the content of the game. Why would this possibly be an issue? He isn't asking anyone to lie or post fake reviews, he's asking for those who have enjoyed the game to show their support for it by utilizing the voting systems present on these digital distribution sites. Nothing unethical is being done, he is simply supporting the product that he and his team have invested their time and money in. There is no artificial manipulation of the user review system taking place.
Secondly, it is absolutely ridiculous that anyone would completely dismiss a product just because there is a line of dialogue they don't like, or they think one component of the writing for a character is bad. That shows not only an inability to examine and evaluate individual components of a product, but also an extreme level of immaturity. If you look hard enough, you can find slight issues with anything.
Finally, why is showing any kind of support or even just mentioning sexual orientation or gender identity considered so terrible? There are people out there in the world that don't share all of your views/values. That does not make them awful, nor does it mean that anyone who talks about those views/values has some agenda. Why is it not acceptable for a character to inform you, the player, that they are transgender, or have a homosexual preference, when this constantly occurs when that preference is straight? No-one loses their mind when Garrick lusts after a temple knight, or when a female Drow in the Underdark is looking for a male to mate with, or when Viconia flirts with you. There is even an encounter in the Underdark (in the original BG2) where, unless you can determine the correct dialogue options to bluff your way out of it, you have to sleep with a Drow female in order to not have the entire city turn hostile. Each of the previous situations announces sexual themes for straight characters.
In conclusion, it sure would be great if people could grow up and learn to have an open mind.
Again, many of you keep repeating this yet I have shown this not to be true at all for the most popular reviews which are the ones most new comers and potential buyers are likely to view: most of them revolve around technical issues and some focus on bad writing with only passing commentary on political statements at best and active discouragement or intentional disregard for it too.
Why are you confabulating this to some sort of concentrated effort and not just a foot note in the page of perfectly valid criticism?
Why don't you head over to metacritic right now and see if your argument still holds water. Here's the link:
I just did: it still holds water since the top comments do mention the politics but virtually ALL talk about game breaking bugs, "barely working net code" and bad, out of character writing.
I count at least 13 reviews that give low ratings based solely or primarily on the LGBTQ issue, and that's going by pretty conservative standards. How many would it take for you to finally admit that people are targeting this game for political reasons? 130? 1300?
I shall count how this is "solely" or "primarily" based on that issue then. Again I must insist not on 13 random reviews but the top reviews that are, by popular demand, the most likely to be read:
1 "A poor attempt at continuing the franchise of Baldur's Gate. Writing is not up to scratch at all, featuring 'dank memes' and shoe-horned gender politics ill-befitting a Baldur's Gate game (a medieval fantasy game)"
Surely you will count this as "solely" and "primary" based on the issue, yet for most people the logical central focus of the comment is "Bad writting". Let's call it contested
2 "I've played the original Baldur's Gate a ton and the writing of this expansion so many years later just doesn't seem to fit with the original game, it doesn't flow well. Not to mention that it released with quite a few bugs."
No mention of politics at all, just bad writing and technical issues
3 "It would be too harsh to give this game a 0 as it is a playable game. But the writing is not what I was expecting from a proper title in the Baldurs Gate legacy. Aside from the obvious LBGT and silly 4th wall breaking "jokes" that constantly remind you you're playing a game developed by the same kind of people damaging the gaming industry that you love so much..- It's not without it's bugs either. I'm sure there can be a patch fixing some of these glitches and bugs as the reports come in, but I have a feeling that the writing will continue to irritate me. I just can't give this a positive review in any respect. It doesn't feel like a Baldur's Gate title."
Politics are mentioning but there is no explicit disagreement here just again, pointing out bad writing and saying these politics do not fit the game, regardless of agreement with them or not.
4 "I don't appreciate it when a game developer tries to shove toxic identity politics down my throat. I don't need to be educated on the nature of transgender by some third-rate hack at Beamdog. It's patronizing and arrogant. Oh, and one of my characters got stuck behind the sarcophagus in the third room of the first dungeon about 3 minutes into the game, forcing me to restart. That must be a new record."
So I can concede the "primarily" here but not the "solely" at all since it mentions a game breaking bug for about half of the overall content in his writing. Contended at best.
5 "Alert! The developer is begging people on their website to come to meta-critic and post "10" reviews to "offset" the negative reaction they've gotten from actual players.
Another timeless classic gets modernized. But in this case, modernizing means changing the personalities of already existing characters and adding technical issues where they didn't previously exist. Throw in some sprinkling of modern internet memes into a fantasy role-playing world, and pass it off as an update. Compared to the original, the writing is shallow and forgettable. A "new" feature, (scare quotes because it was also used in Icewind Dale,) is that you must remove your own characters from your party to add NPCs for many of the side quests. These NPCs are terribly written and have the effect of knocking the player out of their immersion with the type of dialogue you might hear in a modern setting as opposed to the fantasy world you are otherwise supposed to be a part of. The actual voice acting is pretty good though. You can almost hear them cringing when they had to deliver some of the poorly written lines. I don't mind the politicization of the NPCs as much as many of the detractors. What I do mind is that it is delivered in such a ham-fisted fashion. The politics of the writers are going to shine through in any work. But in this case, they repeatedly club you with it. There have been many complaints of technical issues, although I've only run into about half of them. Check out the Steam forums for details as Beamdog mercilessly deletes any criticism from their own sites.
Conclusion: A technically competent but creatively ugly work by authors that are obviously not well-versed with the source material and environment. Luckily, this means the flaws are somewhat fixable through good modding. I would wait for the price to come down and to see if such mods materialize before I'd drop money on this. Collapse"
So this is one explicitly says he doesn't minds NPCs politicization but the problem is that it was done so poorly. Score another one for bad writting he's clearly not a troll and fair in his assesstment
6 "Siege of Dragonspear has huge amount of game breaking bugs and barely working netcode. Writing is also fanfic tier garbage. If you enjoyed the original Baldur's gate series games stay away from this one."
Again not even a passing mention of politics here, technical issues and bad writing.
7 "I may get past the numerous bugs, I may reacquire new muscle memory and adapt to the new stupid UI, I may even disregard being educated in the proper etiquette of talking politely to transgender badly written characters with railroaded dialogue in the name of modernism, I may even laugh off the poor form of the devs insulting Baldur's Gate writing and labeling it sexist, and biting more than she can shew, but I will certainly not forgive twisting the character of Minsc the beloved icon of my beloved games to push forward Sjw nonsense. That get this add-on an automatic zero and a request for refund. Won't support this so called developers out of touch with reality again"
Well rounded if a tad overly critical of the political side, contested I say.
8 "Too many bugs to count, a graphical downgrade, a messy and quircky UI, coupled with amateur tier grade writing made this expansion to one of the greatest RPGs ever a complete and utter disappointment. Also Trent Oster CEO of Beamdog asking specifically on the forums for people and I quotte ''Hi everyone. I usually spend most of my time lurking here, but I'd like to ask a favour. It appears that having a transgendered cleric and a joke line by Minsc has greatly offended the sensibilities of some people. This has spurred these people into action, causing them to decide this is the worst game of all time and give it a zero review score on Steam, GoG and meta critic. Now, I'd like to ask for that favour. If you are playing the game and having a good time, please consider posting a positive review to balance out the loud minority which is currently painting a dark picture for new players." Maybe the effort could be better spent on ironing bugs and teaching Amber Scott how to write believable RPG NPCs without pushing some political agenda who no one cares about and antagonizing Baldur's Gate fanbase by stating the original game is sexist. You called down the thunder, well now you have it. Pathetic, just pathetic."
He does mention politics but not without a well rounded round of criticism: Bad UI, Bad writing, technical problems gallore. Contested leaning on reasonable
9 "Really bad writing. Devs are not happy that people aren't letting them shove their identity politics down your throat. He's asking for positive reviews on Steam, GOG, and Metacritic. " Fellow thread commenter I'm sure, this one is surely politic based, conceded.
10 "I started playing this game with high hopes, and had a positive first impression. However it soon became obvious that Beamdog has chosen to give Baldur's Gate a 'politically correct overhaul'. I think making such alterations to an old classic is in very poor form, and wish the devs would've been professional enough to leave their politics out of their work.
The game eventually became more annoying than enjoyable, and so I quit playing mid-game.
I strongly recommend against purchasing this game if you sympathize with my reasons for quitting."
Another 50/50 which is mostly what I'd consider reasonable criticism of the political angle on the writing, I only partially concede his comment since I think is fairly classy that he has specific reasons for quitting implying other customers could overlook or not be bothered by.
So do you really think that the worst case scenario you called me out on, metacritic, is "solely" and "primarily" focused on political dissent here? Or maybe people just feel this is a poor game with poor coding and poor writing, because but not limited to poor characterization due to gender politics? A far cry from "Trolls are intentionally posting bad reviews!"
Sorry, but this is a laughably thin argument. Every review on metacritic impacts the score equally regardless of where it stands in the ranking. Your refusal to accept that this is happening to even SOME degree is sad, frankly.
Not sure why the snark. Diversity is a fine goal, albeit one that is very telling if it is forced, or done improperly. I don't think Amber Scott has the writing chops to do it naturally, to tell the truth, and so she forces it. I don't think calling it out for being forced is a problem. Do you?
Yes, I do. I think that diversity is a moral imperative, not a "fine goal," and I think advocating strict standards about the "proper" way to promote diversity is reactionary nonsense that's primarily used as a smokescreen to impede social progress. I think we can aspire to do better than bare tokenism, but I think tokenism is vastly superior to complete exclusion. If this was "forced," all that tells me is that the devs care about diversity, and I applaud them for that.
Agree to disagree then. Diversity is not a "moral imperative", because sometimes a homogeneous cast is just as fascinating to work with as a diverse cast. The trick lies in implementing it right. Dragon Age 2 failed, because each of the romanceable characters were something I like calling "herosexual", as in they waited for the player to determine their sexuality for them. However, Baldur's Gate II was a resounding success, in my eyes. There was a fairly diverse selection of party members to choose from, none of them were foisted on you and you didn't have to bring anyone along that you didn't want to.
Diversity works *only* if you don't bludgeon the viewer/player over the head with it. Otherwise it's just a common trope like the black guy getting killed off in the horror movie, or the stereotypical gay guy whose life revolves around his sexuality, or, in this case, the transgender character who has to immediately announce it to all within earshot.
In real life, our sexualities, our genders, our personalities are often subtle. Most people don't go around life storying someone they just met, or a traveler they'll never meet again in their lifetime, or wear it on their sleeve. We're instead very layered, opening slowly with trust. That's what I mean by it being naturally written, and it's pretty goddamn hard to do. Props to Amber Scott for trying, but she needs to take that criticism better.
And going back to this char. No one sane in his/her mind would just tell any stranger her backstory in such a way.
Dude, how many characters in RPGs volunteer information that you didn't ask for or ask a complete stranger to solve their problems? This is practically what the genre's founded upon.
Ok I played tons of RPG West or Japanese please name me these RPG in which people just tell your whole life without knowing you. When it is a party member its usually deep hidden within and you actually need to "work" for it to know their past, backstory, motivations etc.
With NPC it is that they tell a part of their story if its quest related or has something to do with the setting the world etc for exposition. I do not know any NPC which straight up tell you his/her story, problems specially like this out of nowhere.
If you wanted it to be good writing. Make it a quest. Take a look how this char gets bullied or threaten for example. Try to find out why etc. and then have the option to change it or join in etc. This is what good writing in RPG would do. Be in charge of the outcome and do not protect NPC by the game.
What Trent is asking isn't outrageous or uncalled for. Some politically/religiously motivated people who dislike the LGBT community are bashing the game because Glint is a trans character. These unfair criticisms of the game are of course also mixed with fair criticism of the game. But it is not the fair criticisms of the game he is concerned about.
Trent is encouraging those of us who have positive opinions of the game to take the time to post our opinions offset the unfair political/religious criticisms. Some who have positive opinions of the game may not post such opinions were they not encouraged to.
So yes, he is trying to encourage those who like the game to post positive reviews to offset unfair religious/politically motivated reviews. Fair enough in my opinion.
Ok I played tons of RPG West or Japanese please name me these RPG in which people just tell your whole life without knowing you.
Noober.
You know the NPC in question isn't a potential party member, right?
YEs and that is why I said how it is with NPCs as well. Again please name me another game that is highly regarded as RPG and does this. Not even Bioware does this.
Firstly, I have absolutely no issue with Trent asking for community support in an effort to mitigate intentional negativity wrought by those who have latched onto one or two extremely minor aspects in regard to the content of the game. Why would this possibly be an issue? He isn't asking anyone to lie or post fake reviews, he's asking for those who have enjoyed the game to show their support for it by utilizing the voting systems present on these digital distribution sites. Nothing unethical is being done, he is simply supporting the product that he and his team have invested their time and money in. There is no artificial manipulation of the user review system taking place.
Secondly, it is absolutely ridiculous that anyone would completely dismiss a product just because there is a line of dialogue they don't like, or they think one component of the writing for a character is bad. That shows not only an inability to examine and evaluate individual components of a product, but also an extreme level of immaturity. If you look hard enough, you can find slight issues with anything.
Finally, why is showing any kind of support or even just mentioning sexual orientation or gender identity considered so terrible? There are people out there in the world that don't share all of your views/values. That does not make them awful, nor does it mean that anyone who talks about those views/values has some agenda. Why is it not acceptable for a character to inform you, the player, that they are transgender, or have a homosexual preference, when this constantly occurs when that preference is straight? No-one loses their mind when Garrick lusts after a temple knight, or when a female Drow in the Underdark is looking for a male to mate with, or when Viconia flirts with you. There is even an encounter in the Underdark (in the original BG2) where, unless you can determine the correct dialogue options to bluff your way out of it, you have to sleep with a Drow female in order to not have the entire city turn hostile. Each of the previous situations announces sexual themes for straight characters.
In conclusion, it sure would be great if people could grow up and learn to have an open mind.
Again, many of you keep repeating this yet I have shown this not to be true at all for the most popular reviews which are the ones most new comers and potential buyers are likely to view: most of them revolve around technical issues and some focus on bad writing with only passing commentary on political statements at best and active discouragement or intentional disregard for it too.
Why are you confabulating this to some sort of concentrated effort and not just a foot note in the page of perfectly valid criticism?
Why don't you head over to metacritic right now and see if your argument still holds water. Here's the link:
I just did: it still holds water since the top comments do mention the politics but virtually ALL talk about game breaking bugs, "barely working net code" and bad, out of character writing.
I count at least 13 reviews that give low ratings based solely or primarily on the LGBTQ issue, and that's going by pretty conservative standards. How many would it take for you to finally admit that people are targeting this game for political reasons? 130? 1300?
I shall count how this is "solely" or "primarily" based on that issue then. Again I must insist not on 13 random reviews but the top reviews that are, by popular demand, the most likely to be read:
1 "A poor attempt at continuing the franchise of Baldur's Gate. Writing is not up to scratch at all, featuring 'dank memes' and shoe-horned gender politics ill-befitting a Baldur's Gate game (a medieval fantasy game)"
Surely you will count this as "solely" and "primary" based on the issue, yet for most people the logical central focus of the comment is "Bad writting". Let's call it contested
2 "I've played the original Baldur's Gate a ton and the writing of this expansion so many years later just doesn't seem to fit with the original game, it doesn't flow well. Not to mention that it released with quite a few bugs."
No mention of politics at all, just bad writing and technical issues
3 "It would be too harsh to give this game a 0 as it is a playable game. But the writing is not what I was expecting from a proper title in the Baldurs Gate legacy. Aside from the obvious LBGT and silly 4th wall breaking "jokes" that constantly remind you you're playing a game developed by the same kind of people damaging the gaming industry that you love so much..- It's not without it's bugs either. I'm sure there can be a patch fixing some of these glitches and bugs as the reports come in, but I have a feeling that the writing will continue to irritate me. I just can't give this a positive review in any respect. It doesn't feel like a Baldur's Gate title."
Politics are mentioning but there is no explicit disagreement here just again, pointing out bad writing and saying these politics do not fit the game, regardless of agreement with them or not.
4 "I don't appreciate it when a game developer tries to shove toxic identity politics down my throat. I don't need to be educated on the nature of transgender by some third-rate hack at Beamdog. It's patronizing and arrogant. Oh, and one of my characters got stuck behind the sarcophagus in the third room of the first dungeon about 3 minutes into the game, forcing me to restart. That must be a new record."
So I can concede the "primarily" here but not the "solely" at all since it mentions a game breaking bug for about half of the overall content in his writing. Contended at best.
5 "Alert! The developer is begging people on their website to come to meta-critic and post "10" reviews to "offset" the negative reaction they've gotten from actual players.
Another timeless classic gets modernized. But in this case, modernizing means changing the personalities of already existing characters and adding technical issues where they didn't previously exist. Throw in some sprinkling of modern internet memes into a fantasy role-playing world, and pass it off as an update. Compared to the original, the writing is shallow and forgettable. A "new" feature, (scare quotes because it was also used in Icewind Dale,) is that you must remove your own characters from your party to add NPCs for many of the side quests. These NPCs are terribly written and have the effect of knocking the player out of their immersion with the type of dialogue you might hear in a modern setting as opposed to the fantasy world you are otherwise supposed to be a part of. The actual voice acting is pretty good though. You can almost hear them cringing when they had to deliver some of the poorly written lines. I don't mind the politicization of the NPCs as much as many of the detractors. What I do mind is that it is delivered in such a ham-fisted fashion. The politics of the writers are going to shine through in any work. But in this case, they repeatedly club you with it. There have been many complaints of technical issues, although I've only run into about half of them. Check out the Steam forums for details as Beamdog mercilessly deletes any criticism from their own sites.
Conclusion: A technically competent but creatively ugly work by authors that are obviously not well-versed with the source material and environment. Luckily, this means the flaws are somewhat fixable through good modding. I would wait for the price to come down and to see if such mods materialize before I'd drop money on this. Collapse"
So this is one explicitly says he doesn't minds NPCs politicization but the problem is that it was done so poorly. Score another one for bad writting he's clearly not a troll and fair in his assesstment
6 "Siege of Dragonspear has huge amount of game breaking bugs and barely working netcode. Writing is also fanfic tier garbage. If you enjoyed the original Baldur's gate series games stay away from this one."
Again not even a passing mention of politics here, technical issues and bad writing.
7 "I may get past the numerous bugs, I may reacquire new muscle memory and adapt to the new stupid UI, I may even disregard being educated in the proper etiquette of talking politely to transgender badly written characters with railroaded dialogue in the name of modernism, I may even laugh off the poor form of the devs insulting Baldur's Gate writing and labeling it sexist, and biting more than she can shew, but I will certainly not forgive twisting the character of Minsc the beloved icon of my beloved games to push forward Sjw nonsense. That get this add-on an automatic zero and a request for refund. Won't support this so called developers out of touch with reality again"
Well rounded if a tad overly critical of the political side, contested I say.
8 "Too many bugs to count, a graphical downgrade, a messy and quircky UI, coupled with amateur tier grade writing made this expansion to one of the greatest RPGs ever a complete and utter disappointment. Also Trent Oster CEO of Beamdog asking specifically on the forums for people and I quotte ''Hi everyone. I usually spend most of my time lurking here, but I'd like to ask a favour. It appears that having a transgendered cleric and a joke line by Minsc has greatly offended the sensibilities of some people. This has spurred these people into action, causing them to decide this is the worst game of all time and give it a zero review score on Steam, GoG and meta critic. Now, I'd like to ask for that favour. If you are playing the game and having a good time, please consider posting a positive review to balance out the loud minority which is currently painting a dark picture for new players." Maybe the effort could be better spent on ironing bugs and teaching Amber Scott how to write believable RPG NPCs without pushing some political agenda who no one cares about and antagonizing Baldur's Gate fanbase by stating the original game is sexist. You called down the thunder, well now you have it. Pathetic, just pathetic."
He does mention politics but not without a well rounded round of criticism: Bad UI, Bad writing, technical problems gallore. Contested leaning on reasonable
9 "Really bad writing. Devs are not happy that people aren't letting them shove their identity politics down your throat. He's asking for positive reviews on Steam, GOG, and Metacritic. " Fellow thread commenter I'm sure, this one is surely politic based, conceded.
10 "I started playing this game with high hopes, and had a positive first impression. However it soon became obvious that Beamdog has chosen to give Baldur's Gate a 'politically correct overhaul'. I think making such alterations to an old classic is in very poor form, and wish the devs would've been professional enough to leave their politics out of their work.
The game eventually became more annoying than enjoyable, and so I quit playing mid-game.
I strongly recommend against purchasing this game if you sympathize with my reasons for quitting."
Another 50/50 which is mostly what I'd consider reasonable criticism of the political angle on the writing, I only partially concede his comment since I think is fairly classy that he has specific reasons for quitting implying other customers could overlook or not be bothered by.
So do you really think that the worst case scenario you called me out on, metacritic, is "solely" and "primarily" focused on political dissent here? Or maybe people just feel this is a poor game with poor coding and poor writing, because but not limited to poor characterization due to gender politics? A far cry from "Trolls are intentionally posting bad reviews!"
Sorry, but this is a laughably thin argument. Every review on metacritic impacts the score equally regardless of where it stands in the ranking. Your refusal to accept that this is happening to even SOME degree is sad, frankly.
Read them all, because all of them matter.
I wish I had the time to indulge you and spend the rest of my week reading through all of the reviews, but I have databases to manage early in the morning.
So let's agree to disagree: you say that I refuse to accept that this is happening. I say that I just disagree on why it's happening and the overall reasons for the negative reactions are a lot more diverse than just "gamergate trolls".
I hope other users read both your thoughts and arguments and my small window on some of the most popular reviews and decide for themselves exactly how much are they influenced by just anti LGBT sentiments or just distaste for shoe-horning.
But in fairness to your point since I decided to decline to "read them all" I'll just continue the discussions with other users if they want and wish you a nice day.
What Trent is asking isn't outrageous or uncalled for. Some politically/religiously motivated people who dislike the LGBT community are bashing the game because Glint is a trans character. These unfair criticisms of the game are of course also mixed with fair criticism of the game. But it is not the fair criticisms of the game he is concerned about.
Trent is encouraging those of us who have positive opinions of the game to take the time to post our opinions offset the unfair political/religious criticisms. Some who have positive opinions of the game may not post such opinions were they not encouraged to.
So yes, he is trying to encourage those who like the game to post positive reviews to offset unfair religious/politically motivated reviews. Fair enough in my opinion.
Comments on all of the forums, including this very thread, prove your statement to be a load of shit. No one is against this because they dislike LGBT+ people, they are against bad writing that includes awkwardly shoving your political views into a game where they make no sense. This has been reiterated more times than you've taken a breath in your life, but you still stick to the narrative that it's "evil straight people" in a conspiracy to oppress LGBT people and not simply people being opposed to bad writing and shoving a political agenda where it doesn't belong. There are plenty of great gay characters in video games, but not in games made by people like Amber Scott who think that everything must be brutally shoved in someone's face.
What Trent is asking isn't outrageous or uncalled for. Some politically/religiously motivated people who dislike the LGBT community are bashing the game because Glint is a trans character. These unfair criticisms of the game are of course also mixed with fair criticism of the game. But it is not the fair criticisms of the game he is concerned about.
Trent is encouraging those of us who have positive opinions of the game to take the time to post our opinions offset the unfair political/religious criticisms. Some who have positive opinions of the game may not post such opinions were they not encouraged to.
So yes, he is trying to encourage those who like the game to post positive reviews to offset unfair religious/politically motivated reviews. Fair enough in my opinion.
1) That's demonstrably not all of the criticism and not even the most popular one, the main complain being completely unrelated which is technical issues and the second one being only a related tangent: poor writing.
2) Where is religion ever mentioned? Produce ONE popular review where it is mentioned.
3) While you're entitled to your opinion, Steam has Terms of Service developers must abide to and this is borderline if not explicitly against said terms and conditions for a development to encourage politically motivated upvoting, no matter how much you agree with the politics, when it comes to Steam it's their house, their rules frankly.
One great example is Sunset which was such a game. In the end it did not sell and the developer insulted and attacked the whole gaming community because they did not support this game while even forgetting why this game was bad in the first place. But then they put op some patreon and victimized themselves.
As for the rest I totally agree and I feel really sorry for that... And people often forget that these agenda wars have a lot of people suffering from that as "collateral damage"...
Well, this is just my two copper pieces on the situation so far. I wasn't sure I was going to write this but thought about it over a Whopper at Burger King.
So, I want to get out of the way that first I am a former Gamergate supporter. I am still sympathetic to aspects of their cause such as ethical journalism, against censorship and/or being pressured and free expression/creative freedom. I think most GG supporters are good people and I have many friends and people I respect who believe in it but I do also recognize there are some bad apples.
Now that I've got that out of the way.
So, this will be very brief but for me personally, what I've heard so far about the 'social' issues in the game does not bother me in the least. I have no real issues with it. I have absolutely no issue with trans/gay characters or Minsc's "easter egg" line. I think the "outrage" over those issues are a bit much. Now, I don't know exactly what the writer or the developers think about Gamergate or non-GG people who are not happy with some of the social or ideological themes present. What I know, as of now, is no group or individual was attacked and nothing was removed due to peer pressure, etc. I do think Minsc's line is a bit silly, though, at worst but not much more different than adding equally silly pop culture references in video games in the past. In fact, one could possibly see Minsc's line as complimentary to GG to some degree.
Anyways, so far - because the game is new - I haven't seen anything hateful against any group or individuals nor too many forced ideological themes. I do not agree with the writer claiming the original is sexist and I can understand why people see the game as pushing specific ideologies or putting down those with other beliefs, but I don't particularly see anything to offensive either.
The fact is, "social justice" issues are sort of a trend right now. I don't agree with a lot it just as I also don't agree with those on the other far side of the political spectrum that say games like Siege of Dragonspear influence occult behavior and are sinister.
But hopefully, we can all find a fine line and still enjoy a good story in a Crystal Sphere far, far away.
Anyways, that's all. Was expecting to be more brief but.... meh. A few things I actually probably forgot to say but that's my two coppers.
I am impressed with what I have seen of the game but right now, the broken difficulty slider changing on it's own is a game stopper. As a result, even though I am fairly certain that Beamdog has delivered what I have been hoping for after years and years of waiting, I can't review the game until I have played more of it. As I said before, I really happy that Beamdog came around and picked up the torch and resurrected the masterpiece. Everything I have seen has further cemented my opinion that everything is going great. I just hope the easily offended and politically charged resistance to the handful of controversial lines in the game will not hurt the chance for future BG additions.
I am a very picky gamer and BG is one of the only series of games I still care about. It would be a shame to have it ruined by all this drama.
You will be surprised but there're probably no religious people involved in this issue whatsoever.
The liberal left is generally open to the LBGT community and most liberals are agnostic or atheist (though there are religious liberals as well).
The Conservative right has a HUGE evangelical Christain base that generally is NOT supportive of the LBGT community.
Those who are bashing the game not for legitimate reasons, but instead because a trans character is in game are most likely religiously motivated Christian conservatives. People of no religion generally seems to have little problem with trans-gendered people. I am sure there are many Christians out there who don't have no problem with trans people, but many Christian conservatives are anti-LBGT, while most liberals are pro-LBGT.
Of course, muslims hate trans people too. So not all the trans hate is Chrisitans - it may be other religious groups too. But mostly conservative Christians, I am sure.
With NPC it is that they tell a part of their story if its quest related or has something to do with the setting the world etc for exposition.
Oh, so now we're moving the goalposts. Only an "insane" person would start yakking to a stranger about their life...unless it's quest or exposition related. Because a sane person is going to worry about making sure some nebulous extradimensional entity understands what's going on.
As a trans person, here is what I feel about the situation.
I hate being used as a political football by - SJWs and anti-SJWs - GGs and anti-GGs - Conservatives and Liberals I don't count myself among them. If you do, just leave me out of your arguments.
When I first saw the character (and you have to ask her about her name -- she doesn't just up and talk about herself as an introduction), I thought... 1. That's neat! Kinda cool. Nice to see a trans person in a game. 2. That backstory was too long, too forced, and too forward.
[snip]
And for all the ugliness, some truly insightful comments emerge. I think Beamdog made the right choice in: 1. including the character and 2. not shutting down the discussion.
I'm stunned that this minor NPC made such an impact -- if it weren't for this forum I would have forgotten those two sentences.
With NPC it is that they tell a part of their story if its quest related or has something to do with the setting the world etc for exposition.
Oh, so now we're moving the goalposts. Only an "insane" person would start yakking to a stranger about their life...unless it's quest or exposition related. Because a sane person is going to worry about making sure some nebulous extradimensional entity understands what's going on.
There is a difference. This has nothing to do with the overall story or the world it is set in. This is just in there as a token nothing else. It is in there so Amber Scott can feel good about it and show how "progressive" the game is. She even called the old games sexist which is just ridiculous.
What Trent is asking isn't outrageous or uncalled for. Some politically/religiously motivated people who dislike the LGBT community are bashing the game because Glint is a trans character. These unfair criticisms of the game are of course also mixed with fair criticism of the game. But it is not the fair criticisms of the game he is concerned about.
Trent is encouraging those of us who have positive opinions of the game to take the time to post our opinions offset the unfair political/religious criticisms. Some who have positive opinions of the game may not post such opinions were they not encouraged to.
So yes, he is trying to encourage those who like the game to post positive reviews to offset unfair religious/politically motivated reviews. Fair enough in my opinion.
Comments on all of the forums, including this very thread, prove your statement to be a load of shit. No one is against this because they dislike LGBT+ people, they are against bad writing that includes awkwardly shoving your political views into a game where they make no sense. This has been reiterated more times than you've taken a breath in your life, but you still stick to the narrative that it's "evil straight people" in a conspiracy to oppress LGBT people and not simply people being opposed to bad writing and shoving a political agenda where it doesn't belong. There are plenty of great gay characters in video games, but not in games made by people like Amber Scott who think that everything must be brutally shoved in someone's face.
Most of the bad reviews I've read go out of their way to mention LBGT in them. Hence my opinion. They specifically mention not liking the LBGT content. Case closed.
The liberal left is generally open to the LBGT community and most liberals are agnostic or atheist (though there are religious liberals as well).
People you are arguing with are mostly liberals as well. They don't care about LGBT, they just dislike methods used to promote it. Like forcing LGBT characters into everything for no good reason. Thanks to quasi-religious people who think it is a "moral imperative" to do so.
What Trent is asking isn't outrageous or uncalled for. Some politically/religiously motivated people who dislike the LGBT community are bashing the game because Glint is a trans character. These unfair criticisms of the game are of course also mixed with fair criticism of the game. But it is not the fair criticisms of the game he is concerned about.
Trent is encouraging those of us who have positive opinions of the game to take the time to post our opinions offset the unfair political/religious criticisms. Some who have positive opinions of the game may not post such opinions were they not encouraged to.
So yes, he is trying to encourage those who like the game to post positive reviews to offset unfair religious/politically motivated reviews. Fair enough in my opinion.
1) That's demonstrably not all of the criticism and not even the most popular one, the main complain being completely unrelated which is technical issues and the second one being only a related tangent: poor writing.
2) Where is religion ever mentioned? Produce ONE popular review where it is mentioned.
3) While you're entitled to your opinion, Steam has Terms of Service developers must abide to and this is borderline if not explicitly against said terms and conditions for a development to encourage politically motivated upvoting, no matter how much you agree with the politics, when it comes to Steam it's their house, their rules frankly.
If you would read my post, you will see that I clearly stated "These unfair criticisms of the game are of course also mixed with fair criticism of the game." There are many fair criticisms of the game.
But most of the reviews go out of their way to mention that they dislike the LBGT content. The left generally supports the LBGT agenda. The religiously conservative right does not support the LBGT agenda. It is not liberals (for the most part) complaining about LBGT content. It is mostly those of a religious right disposition that are writing such reviews.
People you are arguing with are mostly liberals as well. They don't care about LGBT, they just dislike methods used to promote it. Like forcing LGBT characters into everything for no good reason.
The problem people have is that LGBT characters need a "reason" to be present in the first place. How come you don't need a reason to be straight?
What Trent is asking isn't outrageous or uncalled for. Some politically/religiously motivated people who dislike the LGBT community are bashing the game because Glint is a trans character. These unfair criticisms of the game are of course also mixed with fair criticism of the game. But it is not the fair criticisms of the game he is concerned about.
Trent is encouraging those of us who have positive opinions of the game to take the time to post our opinions offset the unfair political/religious criticisms. Some who have positive opinions of the game may not post such opinions were they not encouraged to.
So yes, he is trying to encourage those who like the game to post positive reviews to offset unfair religious/politically motivated reviews. Fair enough in my opinion.
1) That's demonstrably not all of the criticism and not even the most popular one, the main complain being completely unrelated which is technical issues and the second one being only a related tangent: poor writing.
2) Where is religion ever mentioned? Produce ONE popular review where it is mentioned.
3) While you're entitled to your opinion, Steam has Terms of Service developers must abide to and this is borderline if not explicitly against said terms and conditions for a development to encourage politically motivated upvoting, no matter how much you agree with the politics, when it comes to Steam it's their house, their rules frankly.
If you would read my post, you will see that I clearly stated "These unfair criticisms of the game are of course also mixed with fair criticism of the game." There are many fair criticisms of the game.
But most of the reviews go out of their way to mention that they dislike the LBGT content. The left generally supports the LBGT agenda. The religiously conservative right does not support the LBGT agenda. It is not liberals (for the most part) complaining about LBGT content. It is mostly those of a religious right disposition that are writing such reviews.
I love getting accused of stuff like this indirectly because of my religion and political views! I don't really want to turn this thread into a discussion of both mine and the Church's beliefs on the LGBTQ etc. community, but you really should try to learn something, at least about Catholics.
Comments
I thought this characterization was fantastic: It was thoroughly integrated within the lore of the game fairly deeply, it tied to the main plot of the game, it was a realistic depiction of the historical persecution of the time period yet it was completely fair to the character in question standing his ground and remaining isolated but close by to the community that rejected him.
A far cry from what Beamdog managed here. THAT is how you get me interested in political discourse and even provoke thought on discrimination of the LGBT community. By being a damn good writer on an engaging game. But to each his own.
Some of them are even the same exact wording, from a different nick.
Yeah, totally legit.
Why are some people such c**ts?
Read them all, because all of them matter.
Diversity works *only* if you don't bludgeon the viewer/player over the head with it. Otherwise it's just a common trope like the black guy getting killed off in the horror movie, or the stereotypical gay guy whose life revolves around his sexuality, or, in this case, the transgender character who has to immediately announce it to all within earshot.
In real life, our sexualities, our genders, our personalities are often subtle. Most people don't go around life storying someone they just met, or a traveler they'll never meet again in their lifetime, or wear it on their sleeve. We're instead very layered, opening slowly with trust. That's what I mean by it being naturally written, and it's pretty goddamn hard to do. Props to Amber Scott for trying, but she needs to take that criticism better.
With NPC it is that they tell a part of their story if its quest related or has something to do with the setting the world etc for exposition. I do not know any NPC which straight up tell you his/her story, problems specially like this out of nowhere.
If you wanted it to be good writing. Make it a quest. Take a look how this char gets bullied or threaten for example. Try to find out why etc. and then have the option to change it or join in etc. This is what good writing in RPG would do. Be in charge of the outcome and do not protect NPC by the game.
Trent is encouraging those of us who have positive opinions of the game to take the time to post our opinions offset the unfair political/religious criticisms. Some who have positive opinions of the game may not post such opinions were they not encouraged to.
So yes, he is trying to encourage those who like the game to post positive reviews to offset unfair religious/politically motivated reviews. Fair enough in my opinion.
You know the NPC in question isn't a potential party member, right?
So let's agree to disagree: you say that I refuse to accept that this is happening. I say that I just disagree on why it's happening and the overall reasons for the negative reactions are a lot more diverse than just "gamergate trolls".
I hope other users read both your thoughts and arguments and my small window on some of the most popular reviews and decide for themselves exactly how much are they influenced by just anti LGBT sentiments or just distaste for shoe-horning.
But in fairness to your point since I decided to decline to "read them all" I'll just continue the discussions with other users if they want and wish you a nice day.
2) Where is religion ever mentioned? Produce ONE popular review where it is mentioned.
3) While you're entitled to your opinion, Steam has Terms of Service developers must abide to and this is borderline if not explicitly against said terms and conditions for a development to encourage politically motivated upvoting, no matter how much you agree with the politics, when it comes to Steam it's their house, their rules frankly.
As for the rest I totally agree and I feel really sorry for that... And people often forget that these agenda wars have a lot of people suffering from that as "collateral damage"...
So, I want to get out of the way that first I am a former Gamergate supporter. I am still sympathetic to aspects of their cause such as ethical journalism, against censorship and/or being pressured and free expression/creative freedom. I think most GG supporters are good people and I have many friends and people I respect who believe in it but I do also recognize there are some bad apples.
Now that I've got that out of the way.
So, this will be very brief but for me personally, what I've heard so far about the 'social' issues in the game does not bother me in the least. I have no real issues with it. I have absolutely no issue with trans/gay characters or Minsc's "easter egg" line. I think the "outrage" over those issues are a bit much. Now, I don't know exactly what the writer or the developers think about Gamergate or non-GG people who are not happy with some of the social or ideological themes present. What I know, as of now, is no group or individual was attacked and nothing was removed due to peer pressure, etc. I do think Minsc's line is a bit silly, though, at worst but not much more different than adding equally silly pop culture references in video games in the past. In fact, one could possibly see Minsc's line as complimentary to GG to some degree.
Anyways, so far - because the game is new - I haven't seen anything hateful against any group or individuals nor too many forced ideological themes. I do not agree with the writer claiming the original is sexist and I can understand why people see the game as pushing specific ideologies or putting down those with other beliefs, but I don't particularly see anything to offensive either.
The fact is, "social justice" issues are sort of a trend right now. I don't agree with a lot it just as I also don't agree with those on the other far side of the political spectrum that say games like Siege of Dragonspear influence occult behavior and are sinister.
But hopefully, we can all find a fine line and still enjoy a good story in a Crystal Sphere far, far away.
Anyways, that's all. Was expecting to be more brief but.... meh. A few things I actually probably forgot to say but that's my two coppers.
I am a very picky gamer and BG is one of the only series of games I still care about. It would be a shame to have it ruined by all this drama.
The Conservative right has a HUGE evangelical Christain base that generally is NOT supportive of the LBGT community.
Those who are bashing the game not for legitimate reasons, but instead because a trans character is in game are most likely religiously motivated Christian conservatives. People of no religion generally seems to have little problem with trans-gendered people. I am sure there are many Christians out there who don't have no problem with trans people, but many Christian conservatives are anti-LBGT, while most liberals are pro-LBGT.
Of course, muslims hate trans people too. So not all the trans hate is Chrisitans - it may be other religious groups too. But mostly conservative Christians, I am sure.
I'm stunned that this minor NPC made such an impact -- if it weren't for this forum I would have forgotten those two sentences.
But most of the reviews go out of their way to mention that they dislike the LBGT content. The left generally supports the LBGT agenda. The religiously conservative right does not support the LBGT agenda. It is not liberals (for the most part) complaining about LBGT content. It is mostly those of a religious right disposition that are writing such reviews.