Trying to reason with you people is like trying to teach my dog calculus. I didn’t say fantasy had no connection to reality, only that the entire purpose of the fantasy genre is to create a fictional setting disparate from reality with magic, superstition, and whatever else can be concocted that has absolutely no representation in real life.
Not everything in said fantasy setting has to be present in reality, because then we’re no longer dealing with a piece of fiction, but rather, non-fiction. Last I checked this wasn’t a non-fiction MMORPG that takes place on planet Earth.
You know how GoT actually starts? With a bunch of white walkers attacking north of the wall. NOT REAL!
What exact assumption is taking place when I state that changing fiction does not change reality? Art may be connected to reality, but it’s not a two-way road. If you remove racism from WoW you don’t remove racism from reality. By your logic, all of the world’s problems could be solved if all instances immorality were removed from literature. What a fascinating delusion, and rather bland choice of entertainment.
Kinda why R R Martin and Warcraft shouldn’t use pop culture references. Or did I miss TGoT episode where they spoofed the Nike basketball commercial like Scary Movie 2?
Man, if you watch that movie today, it’s even worse than watching it then.
Don’t go outside, watch it and tell me pop culture references in movies/games are just simply timeless.
I disagree that the disparate setting is the “entire” purpose of the fantasy genre, though I want clarification: do you think this is the entire purpose of fantasy stories? I do agree that the main signifier of the fantasy genre is the inclusion of elements that have no counterpart in the real world, be it rings of power, magic schools or ice zombies.
But you can have things that are present in reality and still be a fantasy story, yes? A flying car is still a car. This is such a large grey area.
What I don’t understand is how you go from “fantasy genre is a disparate reality” to:
Are you saying this is a function of the fact that genre is premised on creating a disparate world disconnected from our reality? Because I fundamentally disagree with that. For one, for the story to make sense it has to carry certain universal assumptions to the present reader, for two, the core of these stories are the emotional catharsis of the characters and their arcs. Game of Thrones has Jon snow, Tyrion Lannister and Arya Stark facing unrelateable problems in a world wholly not our own, but the narrative makes the audience care by making these characters relatable. I don’t know what it’s like to be a dwarf nobleman whose father and sister hate me because of something completely beyond my control, but Tyrion makes us care about his problems regardless.
And if you’re not saying that, what is the point of making a big deal out of the true purpose of the fantasy genre? Just say that stories don’t affect real life. I still disagree.
The scene I described is how it starts in the books. In the show it starts by two guys being spooked by a scene of massacre and frustrated their boss says “eff you’re feelings we’re gonna find what killed them!”. Go watch it, it immediately makes the two guys sympathetic and the boss intolerable.
And then in this relatable, understandable situation you THEN introduce the ice zombies. And you get Ned Stark ignoring the warning of the 3rd guy scared of the ice zombies, setting the theme of everyone ignoring their impending doom until Florida is half underwater.
I’m talking about your claim that it doesn’t have an effect at Blizzard. Just pointing out, you don’t know that.
This is such a gross misrepresentation of my position.
Media and society/culture have a positive feedback effect on each other. So everyone wears hats, TV and movies and radio portray everyone wearing hats, everyone continues to wear hats because that is what is presented to them as normal.
So what is normalized by media does have an effect on society.
Now, showing racism as bad isn’t going fix racism as a problem, but down the line it’ll help by normalizing that position. It can’t hurt.
The entire point of not just fantasy, but all fiction, is to create an alternate, disparate reality for the audience. That fictional world is obviously not completely disconnected from reality, with each story having a different degree of real references. The removal from reality is particularly pronounced within the fantasy genre, which is why it is referred to as the fantasy genre, per the definition of fantasy.
Therefore, since WoW is set within the fantasy genre we should expect the story and setting to have greater variations from reality than say, a sitcom like Will and Grace. In regards to both GoT and WoW, they aren’t supposed to be mirrors of reality, so to expect positive elements from our world to be constantly, often forcibly, introduced is a betrayal of creative liberty.
It is a bit of a grey area though, because only the writer knows whether or not a specific reference to reality is being introduced because it best fits his or her vision of the story, or is being introduced simply to pander to employees and/or virtue signal to players after being sued by the state of California. For example, if Medivh is heterosexual, then why would he have male hookers in his castle? Perhaps Khadgar is bisexual, but was that the intention for the character all along? If not, then why retcon the lore, and why not just create new forms of inclusion in future content, such as the gay couple in Ardenweald?
Regardless, this still doesn’t explain the removal of emotes like /fart. Is that really changing society? And if media has such an impactful feedback on society, then why has it already been established that things like video game violence don’t normalize real violence? The point of my OP was that you can include objectionable content in literature and video games and not be personally defined by that content… that the audience differentiates between reality and fiction, because the two are exclusive.
I never said I was an amazing writer, but from the books I’ve read usually characters that are villains, for instance, would likely not share the author’s values. The overall arc of the storyline though, well, they say write what you know. You stray too far from what you know and the story starts to look like it’s a caricature or just flat out wrong.
I could use Steven King as an example, he has some pretty heinous villains but they are mostly stereotypes playing on the fears of middle america, some of the worst of them actually take you out of the story (like the lisping guy in Library Police who’s after little boys ). King, despite his prolific catalog, isn’t taken very seriously by academics, probably that’s one of the reasons.
Edit: Just remembered that Alan Moore is an absolute beast at writing evil characters in very nuanced ways. The V for Vendetta movie really clowned up the dictator, in the comic he’s presented as a very logical, though also very misguided person. He’s evil, but he justifies what he does to himself quite well. I’d dare say Moore might be the best (comic) author of all time though.
To me, art is the medium where we can explore often repressed aspects of the human condition and understand the impact these may have on our reality. Be it violence, death, war, disease, suffering, pain, sorrow, and even mental health.
It’s often that I read something and think to myself “what would happen if this were to happen to me?” It helps me to process questions that I would not have otherwise thought of, and I feel like it helps to shape me to become a better person because rather than being ignorant to my vices, I become more aware that if had things been a little different (be it with a different set of genes or social conditioning), I could become the very same thing I’m judging.
For example I’ve been reading American Psycho recently, and it contains some obscene material and the authors interpretation of sociopathy. Does this mean that the book is trying to enable violence and sociopathic behavior?
So my point here is that these things actually helps to improve society because it puts us into a position (without actually being in it) to think about the consequences and weight of these issues. Removing and censoring these things does nothing but perpetuate ignorance because it’s not like these things don’t exist in our world. People do terrible things everyday, and the more we are aware of the factors that cause these types of behaviors, the better we are at avoiding it.
Counterpoint, people should be comfortable making content for and playing the games they design. If they’re not comfortable with something in the game, something they have the ability to change, and the consensus of the team is that it should be changed, then it should be changed.
And let’s be real for a moment, if this was happening in your workplace, and you were in a position to change things that made you uncomfortable, things that your team agreed were not appropriate, you’d absolutely change them. None of you would be jumping up and down and trying to keep things as they are.
Or they can leave the company and go make a game they are comfortable with.
Let’s be real here for a second this game is a very mild version of a “T” rated game. There are plenty of other games, movies and media with a higher rating and you are saying all those employees are working uncomfortably on those projects? It is a bit comical really!
But the developers aren’t making the game for themselves; they are making the game for the players. We are the ones paying here (both literally for the product, and now, figuratively for the lawsuit). Most of the stuff that has been changed was not inappropriate to most people who are not mentally ill: cleavage, funny emotes and flits, sexual innuendos, etc.
Other stuff that was offensive, like Garrosh, Trollbane, and Ymiron was fiction. Their comments and behavior might not be appropriate for the culture of an office in real-life, but within the fantasy genre, it is expected to have flawed, vile characters saying and doing terrible things.
It’d be like HBO censoring Ramsay or the sex scenes because a few employees were accused of sexual misconduct.
They are though. The developers of the game play the game, despite the frankly idiotic accusation that they don’t, which absolutely no one has been able to prove. And we pay for a digital license to access certain pieces of content, and access to the service. Nothing more.
What is and is not in the game is solely up to the discretion of the developers. If they decide that a certain piece of content makes them uncomfortable, they have every right to change it.
If you don’t like the changes, if you feel that Blizzard’s attempts to make their own developers comfortable is ‘too much for you to bear’ then the door is that way. Don’t let it hit you on the way out.
). King, despite his prolific catalog, isn’t taken very seriously by academics, probably that’s one of the reasons.