for the uninitiated

Conservatives didn’t even know how to use a computer in the 90’s. Stormfront was created in 95, but it’s userbase was tiny compared to those private facebook groups today.

Wow. I thought to myself surely they would be using some blatant dog whistle for the removed, but nope, steam is fully letting them rate games negatively by using every slur in the book.

This definitely looks much worse for steam than any of these sad, lifeless homunculi. I reported them and made note about how letting this group continue looks awful for steam and not taking action reads as endorsement.

Their point is Steam likely doesn’t condone this behavior; they just weren’t aware of it. Reporting it to bring it to their attention will likely get it removed.

Lootboxes influence how the game plays. Inclusive characters is [an issue of] perception, not gameplay.

Opposing inclusion [of other kinds of people] is different from opposing mechanics.

I mean… as much as it’s dumb, everyone has a right to make a list and review games how they wish, right? Some gamers don’t like loot boxes, others don’t like [checks notes] DEI or PoC in games. Better those people don’t buy a game and end up toxic elements in the gamespace, right?

Making crystal clear to people like this like they are not even remotely welcome in your community after they let it slide that they have hateful vile opinions is the only solution. Everything else offloads the pain and suffering onto the victims in favor of not doing shit to actually kick those toxic people out of any respectable place that they can make their tiny pathetic voices of anti-trans, racist and sexist tirades of insecurity rise above a cacophony of shame and insults thrown back at them.

Throw eggs, shame these people, and though we can’t make them go away, after all we define ourselves on our desire not to wish harm or erase groups of people, there is no conflict here, these people have always been here and will always be here, the question is how afraid they are to let their disgusting hate hang out in daylight at any particular time. Bigots are cowards and they will fall in line as they always do when they realize the crosshairs are beginning to turn back around onto them, our job is clear.

Basically the correct play here is to force bigots to be closeted bigots, make them deal with what LGBTQ+ people have endured, see how their fragile snowflake personalities shatter on the tiniest bit of friction and pushback from someone who isn’t afraid of them.

Aka, let’s just have a nice time without them ok :)

It’s state sponsored racism/sexism.

We should strive to give everyone the same shot, through universal free education, healthcare, etc.

Equality begins at birth, not when you’re just out of high school.

Instead we do a shit job at being a functional society and decide after the fact that none of it matters and you gotta get them quotas going.

As long as DEI, Affirmative Action, Positive Racism w/e you want to call it exists, you will always have people questioning the reason behind a minority person/woman’s employment, and their performance will always be scrutinized harder. Are they actually talented, or are they here to fill a quota? That is a valid question no matter what anyone will say.

Ebert famously reviewed a few things without giving a score; I believe one of them was Human Centipede about which he said, to paraphrase, “You’ll like this if this is the sort of thing you like.”

There’s a big aspect of genre siloing in gaming. Games tend to be developed very hard into specific genres and tropes, not all of which are things I like. However, game developers don’t necessarily like to be categorized that way, so the way things are marketed can get very muddled. I like games that are the sort of thing that I like, and when creators are actively working against me finding out what kind of game they made, I don’t always know what games are a good match for my tastes.

Then add to that: Often games will get very high ratings because the niche of players they cater to thinks the game is sitting near the apex of that niche–and nobody outside the niche is playing that game. But if that niche is, say, visual novels (which bore me to death), I’m not going to like a game. The high rating is, to me, a false signal.

But this is where curators can help! The fact that it’s a specific person with that specific person’s tastes is good if I happen to share those tastes. It helps me to avoid high-rated games that don’t contain the elements I enjoy in a game; and to find the games that cater to my tastes but aren’t marketed in a way that I recognize.