Where is the line on political speech?

[Tom]

aaah, now it makes sense , how do you reply "at" me tho ?
it doesn't seem to do the trick if i just start with the "@"alias

[Spect3r]

Tom I almost gave up playing the game twice because of thus stupid missions you are forced to play with MJ and the black kid (cant remember his name).

[ripghoti]

Honestly, the reason I signed up for this forum was to have a place where I could see what people think about games without having to worry about any politics slipping into the conversations.

I can see discussing the in game politics of something like Far Cry 5 and specifically referencing how it affects game play and enjoyment of the game. However, if it begins being compared to real life politics it should be stopped. If a game is saturated with political BS, just state that it is saturated with political BS and leave it at that.

As for the game... well, they're not journalists. As for the click bait article writers and political activists masquerading as journalists, they'll just do what they do regardless of what we do on the forums. They'll find anything they can take out of context and write a propaganda story or hit piece on it. The less ammo we give them, the better, but its an eventuality. So let the oxygen thieves lurk and try to goad us into saying something they can write about. We just have to be better people than them, which shouldn't be that difficult.

[Damian Cunliffe]

I just realised, a brilliant idea.
Let's say you're writing a review for a game.
The game has an insane SJW "muh diversity" influence.
Instead of saying "the game has forced propaganda involved",
we say: " the game has unreasonable cast of characters and out of place mechanics, which leads to poor immersion and bad experience,
verdict: Doesn't worth the pricetag"
That's it, you don't even mention all that sheit that belongs in the dumpster, not in your review.

Because why should we care about why are they putting it in their freaking game, we don't care about agendas, we review the quality of the product, nothing else.

Precisely.

[Tom]

Didn't get whatcha sayin haha, could you elaborate please ?

[Spect3r]

I just realised, a brilliant idea.
Let's say you're writing a review for a game.
The game has an insane SJW "muh diversity" influence.
Instead of saying "the game has forced propaganda involved",
we say: " the game has unreasonable cast of characters and out of place mechanics, which leads to poor immersion and bad experience,
verdict: Doesn't worth the pricetag"
That's it, you don't even mention all that sheit that belongs in the dumpster, not in your review.

Because why should we care about why are they putting it in their freaking game, we don't care about agendas, we review the quality of the product, nothing else.

AKA - Spiderman PS4

[Tom]

I just realised, a brilliant idea.
Let's say you're writing a review for a game.
The game has an insane SJW "muh diversity" influence.
Instead of saying "the game has forced propaganda involved",
we say: " the game has unreasonable cast of characters and out of place mechanics, which leads to poor immersion and bad experience,
verdict: Doesn't worth the pricetag"
That's it, you don't even mention all that sheit that belongs in the dumpster, not in your review.

Because why should we care about why are they putting it in their freaking game, we don't care about agendas, we review the quality of the product, nothing else.

[Tom]

Yeah, exactly!

[Tom]

You are describing the mindset of a 24/7 offended" person, "big multi-million-dollar corporation" - is more of an industry talk in the first place rather than political, so the person who views this as "political" is actually the one who involves politics here, not the one who calls things what they've been named.
i mean, we have to take common sense into equasion and it sorts itself out.

[Spect3r]

Real world politics should be strictly forbidden. Religion too. I guarantee you certain bloggers and "videogame journalists" will be lurking here, collecting ammunition for their next hit piece. Some of them may even sign up and initiate certain discussions, or try to steer discussions in a certain direction, in order to get ammunition for their next hit piece.

This is why we should just keep it out of the forum, period.

[JelloDrake]

I get it. But I think it all begs the question of "what if you do/don't agree with the politics?" I think that's the problem. It's easy to talk politics when people agree with each other, but isn't that the issue that stemmed this whole initiative? If everyone was a bleeding-heart soy boy, wouldn't everyone in gaming just get along to begin with? I think it's best to just steer clear of the politics.

If Jeremy's vision was to become the leader for 'no soy' journalism in the industry, I would say knock yourself out with that kind of conversation. But my understanding is this site and forum is to remain agnostic and not lean in either direction.

I agree. Back in the day, talking politics was considered in the same vein as talking religion and was commonly a temp ban offense; if the discussion wasn't about topics brought up in the game. For things like Metal Gear and MegaTen, they were allowed because those were main themes of the stories; but devolving into personal attacks and agendas was where we drew the line. The most controversial thing we allowed was "MGS 2 IS VR!!!!" and that one is still raging almost 2 decades later. They were allowed only in reference to discussions on theme analysis.

In general we used polite company common sense rules. You don't talk religion or politics on a personal level amongst friends or family, and forums are on the same level because you're stuck with each other in the same spaces. If it breeds animosity amongst members and divides the forum into tribes then it's crossed the line.

(Edit)To add: We encouraged people to keep that crap in PMs if they absolutely had to talk about it; but they weren't allowed to carry any of it back into the forums with them.

But as has been mentioned before by others, this forum is run by someone else and I can't speak for him. This is just my 2 cents.

(Last Edit, sorrysorry D: ) It may be wise to consider not even bringing up games in conversation here that are made intentionally to promote a political or religious agenda. Many games manage to have these topics in them on a purely analytical level and it's usually pretty obvious when a game has an agenda, be it far left or far right. We can even politely ignore when a game obviously is espousing politics or religion for browny points, in an effort to encourage more dev teams to feel safe in not behaving this way. No backlash for doing it, but also no points either; just praise or otherwise for how well they made their games.

[Damian Cunliffe]

Not if the video game journalists smear as like they use to.

Most gamers either haven't heard of GamerGate or don't think it was important "thing/event" or an outright bad thing.

At the same time most gamers are irritated that video game journalists make horrible reviews, makes weird articles (Political/feminist/sjw stuff) or are defending bad consumer practices (which was exactly what GamerGate was about and against this whole corrupted level of video gaming journalists and the horrible practices of the AAA industry)

I'm willing to bet 1000 dollars that if you could make a giant survey and ask every gamer out there: just on specific things like:

Are you frustrated that most AAA seems to be released in a horrible state?

Should Video Games Journalists focus on actual factual reporting on video games instead of pushing their own political opinions in video games reviews?

then more than 50% of all gamers out there would say yes to both, which was the core principal of GamerGate, yet most haven't heard of it or think it was just a bunch of hateful trolls harassing woman...

I know all that but what I'm saying is, no matter how much they smear the website, if there is a hard line on political discussion and the whole site is about games and nothing but games, the smears won't work. We will be able to literally show people that it's a website for people who love games and are sick of politics.

If this website/forum becomes an orgy of people complaining about "SJW's" and political ideologies being forced into our favourite hobby... then this website will have failed instantly.

[Temuldjin]

Right, but then people will come here to see all this allegedly horrible stuff and all they'll see is people talking about games.

Not if the video game journalists smear as like they use to.

Most gamers either haven't heard of GamerGate or don't think it was important "thing/event" or an outright bad thing.

At the same time most gamers are irritated that video game journalists make horrible reviews, makes weird articles (Political/feminist/sjw stuff) or are defending bad consumer practices (which was exactly what GamerGate was about and against this whole corrupted level of video gaming journalists and the horrible practices of the AAA industry)

I'm willing to bet 1000 dollars that if you could make a giant survey and ask every gamer out there: just on specific things like:

Are you frustrated that most AAA seems to be released in a horrible state?

Should Video Games Journalists focus on actual factual reporting on video games instead of pushing their own political opinions in video games reviews?

then more than 50% of all gamers out there would say yes to both, which was the core principal of GamerGate, yet most haven't heard of it or think it was just a bunch of hateful trolls harassing woman...

[Damian Cunliffe]

This is gonna happen if it isn't already happening, this site, any staff and it's users is gonna get the same treatment as "GamerGate" got from the video Games Journalists, we are already worse than Hitler in their eyes.

Right, but then people will come here to see all this allegedly horrible stuff and all they'll see is people talking about games.

[Temuldjin]

Having such discourse also invites external criticism. Then the site, and everyone here, gets branded as nazis or commies

This is gonna happen if it isn't already happening, this site, any staff and it's users is gonna get the same treatment as "GamerGate" got from the video Games Journalists, we are already worse than Hitler in their eyes.