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[damienmondragon]

I am a 58 year old black man, (I became a sci-fi fan watching those new TV series Twilight Zone and Outer Limits everybody talked about, with my parents). I like having my avatar be as much like me as possible. I have always liked having the freedom to create an avatar that resembles me, and trying what I think I would try to do in a given situation. 513.WRT.WTW.13G.AEV.JFD.VEW.6PG.T74.FL1.ESC.A is as close as I get, could user a fuller beard really grey hair.

Pretending to be someone who should know their way around someplace they’ve never been (Prince in family castle), as opposed to a visitor who has to explore to find their way around (mercenary exploring royal castle), requires a suspension of disbelief that disrupts immersion until I have learned the basics I should already know.

A few weeks ago when I tried to check the progress of ME-4 I came across the following about a ME-4 developer at Gaming Developer Conference 2014 calling for an end to negative stereotyping in video gaming and to craft game mechanics to tackle diversity and inclusiveness more so that players have to deal with issues of social injustice.  (Noble intentions reported in way that raised red flags, I commented on it in the ME-1 character development thread; Sexuality in Character development, a respondent suggested I bring my concerns here.)

Wrote reporter Brendan Griffiths of Gamer headlines;  “The Mass Effect veteran went on to discuss how gaming consistently fails to tackle issues like “misogyny, sexism, racism, ethnocentrism, nationalism, ageism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, queerphobia and other types of social injustice.”'

"We should use the ability of our medium to show players the issues first hand, or give them a unique understanding of the issues and complexities by crafting game mechanics along with narrative components that result in dynamics of play that create meaning for the player in ways that other media isn’t capable of.”

“I think this is Heir’s way of making gamers think about the ‘issue’ rather than the sort of ‘there if you want it’ options offered by the sexuality of Mass Effect’s Commander Shepard.”  http://www.gamerhead...e-stereotyping/ 

The writers and developers of Mass Effect are as creative and talented a crew as you will find in the industry, you have your choice of age, sex, race, sexual preference for your avatar already, and you are welcome to select as love interests characters, including aliens crafted with great personalities.

The quotes above imply reducing the options to choose who you want to be and crafting game mechanics to push gamers down paths we might not choose if free to take or leave them. I can't help recalling my first run through of ME-3 being friendly and sympathetic to the grieving shuttle pilot Cortez and then not having enough paragon points to use the option to broker peace between the Geth and Quarians, because I used the only option I was given to turn him down when he hit on me in the Citadel bar, (because I favored having Liara my love interest in the game.)

I had also turned away Ashley and Miranda (whom I had selected in earlier games,) but I don't remember not selecting them earning me renegade points, and though they are game characters, I actually felt like I had hurt a girl friend who loved me. The developers who created them seem to have too much skill and talent to put something like this petty, and ham handed political correctness in a game unless pressured to go along to get along. That was years ago, this proposal at GDC 2014 was a few months ago.

Maybe that is the ’art part’ of the coercion, to experience what it is to be penalized for trying to be with the love interest of your choice, but accepting the coercion seems to be growing, apparently the suggestion there wasn’t enough social justice crafting of game mechanics and narrative components in the industry was met with a two minute standing ovation.  

No matter how well intentioned these efforts start out, the attitude to coerce as opposed to attract support and acceptance tends to draw and create the wrong type of activists. I have to wonder how many who stood in standing ovation were expressing their hearts, or going along to get along.

Are we looking at having waited years, finally buying  ME-4 or some future ME or Bioware game, and getting special penalties because we pick options political activists find politically incorrect?  Do we really want to sanction the coercion of gamers (and  eventually game developers), in the name of the ‘higher causes’ called social justice and political correctness?

 I would really like to retain the ability to choose and put together my own avatar and not have game mechanics and narrative components driven by tolerance and diversity activists with a Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, or Louis Farrakhan attitude of go along to get along with our agenda, or else. Such activists tend to generate compliance at the cost of more resentment than acceptance of their cause.

[damienmondragon]

Not to come across as an alarmist posting walls of text, but in over half a century of watching TV and movies I have watched major and powerful segments of the entertainment industry go from cowboys, cop shows, spy shows and stories recounting WW2 with guns, to detective stories, westerns, super hero shows and other crime fighter shows where only the bad guys had guns, and were out smarted or defeated by the unarmed heroes.

 This trend from anti gun violence activists shaped and limited my entertainment options for at least a decade. Look at where we are now with the depiction of gun use in entertainment, and how long we have been here. What did the market really want?

For years, sci-fi movies and TV series portrayed aliens as evil invaders, and then enlightened visitors victimized by evil frightened humans and then the likes of Predators and Aliens. I remember going to see Alien for the sets and special effects expecting another tame predictable copy of E.T., Close Encounters or Star man, and being amazed to be surrounded by so many so excited by something so old school.

I remember when Sci-fi was dumbed down to attract children; Star Trek, Twilight zone, Out Limits and similar shows were considered too cerebral even for most adults, and the years of no sci-fi on TV (until Star Wars made clear the market for sci-fi,) because well intentioned outsiders with theories on changing social behavior with TV that sounded good, had to find out the long hard way it wasn't as easy as they thought, then admit it, and hen ttry and fix it.

Well intentioned beliefs can prove wrong and take a long time to disprove and root out, be careful the well intentioned activists you allow to influence your media, and other good things you have built up to have great influence on the masses. The lure of power and influence attracts those desperate for power and influence.

I also remember when on the day of the assassination of Reverend King, Rev. Jesse Jackson showed up in a stained pull over shirt claiming he wore the blood of Reverend King who died in his arms turning over the reins of our Civil Rights movement to him. There were those who stood behind him when he said this, and those who stood in the place of others you would expect to be there for such an occasion.

Nobody said anything different until the widow King said the next day Jackson wasn’t even there as Reverend King was shot and died. Those who knew and kept silence, going along to get along lost a lot of stature in the eyes of many, at a time when we needed leaders of stature most.

Most went to Martin Luther King’s funeral on the day of the sanitation workers march he had come to Memphis to lead. Activists like Basil Patterson (father of New York’s first black governor, David Patterson), passed on the photo ops and risked marching with the sanitation workers. You hear very little of the Civil Rights leaders like Basil Patterson.

Al Sharpton was close enough to the Genovese La Cosa Nostra drug traffickers heading NYC organized crime that he could safely carry an attaché case with an FBI tape recorder hidden inside while they talked enough about their activities in front of him to be convicted and sent to prison. These were not rookie light weights; these were the leaders of New York City's largest organized crime family.

Louis Farrakhan has openly spoken of his role in the assassination of ex-black Muslim Malcolm X, once Malcolm X traveled to Mecca, compared Islam as practiced by most of the rest of the world with what black Muslims practiced and denounced the teachings of Black Muslim founder Elijah Mohammed  as racist and heresy.

So who is presented as and identified as the face and voice of the modern black Civil Rights movement to those who follow our friends in mass media, by our mass media? How many like Basil Patterson do you remember ever even hearing of, even if you can't recall their names right now?

Be careful the well intentioned activists you allow to influence your media and other good things you have helped build up to where they have great influence on the mass numbers of supporters and sympathisers. Such power and influence is addicting to the self serving.

[damienmondragon]

I am feeling too old to keep going through these cycles where the well intentioned but naive get dominated  by those with a score to settle and an agenda to settle it with, and screw up good things that worked for a lot of people for years, and screw them up for a long time. Beware of the dominating types who want to choose and limit your options because they feel they know better than you how to make you live your life better.

[damienmondragon]

Someone’s present definition of social injustice includes nationalism, what else are developers being called upon to address?  Where does patriotism fit in? By the time ME-5 comes out, what exciting social justice advocacy will be shoe horned into all the good stuff most of us will have waited how long and paid how much for, and how much of what we have come to look forward to will be judged socially irresponsible to advocate to young gamers?

Who will decide what is too much violence, or too traditional, too nationalistic, patriotic, unhealthy, or too macho for video games?  Will the gamers, who are targeted to be sensitized to things they would not choose, decide what is too much? Will the well intentioned game developers, or will the social scientists from academia that have a new theory, decide?

Remember attempts to ban the use of guns and violence from TV and movies, or the later attempts to tame down video games to prevent promoting violent tendencies?  I wonder how those veteran TV and movie writers felt about the unrealistic scripts they were pressured to write where men with fist and cunning routinely beat down men with guns.

Especially given the credible and quality scripts they used to write (based on their life experience living through the hardship of the depression, WW 2, and early cold war), now writing dumbed down scripts (like sci-fi with cute robots and children in need of heroic rescue every week) from what had started out high quality, award winning class sci-fi and action/adventure show projects.

Writers who watched flight go from bi-planes to space flight, sea power go from U-boats and battleships to nuclear submarines capable of launching ICBMs with nuclear warheads, and carriers launching jets capable of delivering H-bombs, by the time they had reached middle age. Most of their primary audience were adults who had lived through at least as much as they had, they had to keep their work as real as anything that could be shown in front of children on the family TV.

They were as good as any game developers in modern gaming; they were the home video entertainment experts of their day, can we even imagine the great stories that might have been told on TV and movie screens, and what they in turn might have inspired? What if Rod Serling of Twilight Zone, the Outer Limits and Gene Roddenberry of Star Trek had the backing to hit their stride and have a long on air run like Bonanza?

If shows like Voyage to the bottom of the Sea and Lost in Space had not been made childish and hokey even to kids after their pilot episode. If the genres had been able to evolve, written by people who had come of age in an era of life and death decisions at an early age. Global economic collapse, second world war in a human life time, prospect of a third world war in a human life span, this one ending human civilization and possibly all humanity in the wasteland of a thermal nuclear holocaust.

How differently gaming might have evolved if the generations that produced our game developers had been raised on the type of TV and movies that might have evolved. I believe we lost a good generation of sci-fi development to the meddling of those who did not watch, read, enjoy or get sci-fi, but had the power or influence to exploit it to advance an agenda, some of which proved naïve, (never show good guys using violence to resist evil will reduce crime and violence, because the evil will not exploit the defenseless.)

Look at the grittiness Australian and British post holocaust sci-fi, Russian sci-fi video games have always had. Long lived British TV series like ‘Dr. Who’ proved what could be done with TV sci-fi.

If a show like Star Trek had run twice as long and had good spin off shows, think of the Trek inspired tech that might have been inspired and developed by now. Think of where sci-fi might be today if people with the talent to write the kind of sci-fi we have today, had been funded to produce such sci-fi then for the writers of today to grow up on and be inspired by.

Sci-fi monthly digests from the 1950 and 60s like Galaxy, Amazing stories, Fantasy and Science fiction, Astounding tales and If, are proof of the sci-fi talent available at the time. Many of the greatest names in post war science fiction were building their reputations writing stories that first appeared in these digests.

Bottom line we lost a generation of quality science fiction, our heirs will see in their life time about what we should have seen in ours, but we won’t. We should have, could have had more evolved sci-fi stories, tech and games in our life time had not progress been stalled a generation, and given the progress lost our heirs probably could have inherited better than they will get.

Be on your guard against  letting well intended ‘change the world activists’ hijack a good thing, and cost yet another generation of progress as in the name of political correctness and social justice if too few stand up to them when they are going too far. Life is short and they can ‘go off the rails’ and screw up a good idea for decades.

[damienmondragon]

I have just read some of the speculation about E3 2014 and ME-4. Sounds like there is a playable version and the release date may be revealed soon. Also there is a chance you can have the option to play as an alien race, I would pray this is the game I hope it will be and such a success that an as good or better ME-5 comes out a lot faster than ME-4 could. And it is followed by an ME-6.

Call me selfish; I hope 4 and 5 are such international successes like Call of Duty, that it is profitable enough to have a better cutting edge sequel in the making so it is ready within two years from release of the previous game. Anyone else agree?

Much as I do not want political correctness in the name of social justice to limit my gaming options by crafting the narrative and the mechanics of my gaming to advocate the latest social justice political correctness, http://www.gamerhead...e-stereotyping/

I and probably others do not feel comfortable recommending a game to people whose opinion I value, as a representation of me and my values when it tries to force players to actions I and most of my friends would probably avoid if given the chance.

If my values and those of my community are not politically correct enough, how will such as us be depicted, as opposed to those who are more politically acceptable. My family is predominately black and most conservative Christian. Many of us have spouses and blood relatives who are white, Latino, Native American, and Asian where is the social injustice of ethnocentrism on race pride?

Where is the social injustice of nationalism on patriotism? Many of us are veterans and other proud patriots who would have a problem recommending a game that as part of its story line depicts nationalism as social injustice.

I think a lot of people are going to have a problem recommending as a favorite game they enjoy playing for hours, one that pushes players to advocate for sampling intimacy with the spectrum of sexual minorities, as opposed to leaving it a choice. I can see a lot of people from a lot of religious, ethnic and national back grounds having a problem even playing such a game around people whose opinions they cherish, much less advocating it as a favored past time that they feel others will discover they really enjoy.

If it is important to you that this series be the biggest success it can be, if you feel strongly one way or the other about the sentiments I have expressed, but feel uncomfortable making a comment or reply on this forum, do you see a problem with being intimidated into going along to get along with political correctness, even at this point?