Nope, won’t buy products associated with Mormon homophobia.
Then I assume you do background checks on every developer who works on a game because that’s the road you’re heading down there. If you don’t, you’re cherry picking.
This whole Shadow Complex situation reminds me of the plot to Videodrome. Going to pass on this game.
There’s nothing wrong with cherry picking. I wouldn’t knowingly buy alot of things, but sometimes I accidentally do.
One of the ones that pissed me off the most (off the top of my head early in the morning after a short night’s sleep) was when I found out I’d paid for hours of propaganda by seeing the movie Hero. Had I known what it would turn out to be I’d have skipped it.
I tend to read a lot more about games than I do movies before I pay for either one because game spoilers don’t ruin anything for me typically.
There’s nothing wrong with cherry picking. I wouldn’t knowingly buy alot of things, but sometimes I accidentally do.
My wife and I recently went through this with Whole Foods. Same sort of situation. Their CEO wrote some article with some crazy views on health care that we really don’t agree with. Our first thought was to boycott Whole Foods and shop somewhere else.
But … how do you do that with any teeth if you don’t research the CEO of the competing food chain as well? And then if he doesn’t work out, the next one? And what about the suppliers for those food chains?
It’s hypocritical so we decided that not shopping at Whole Foods wouldn’t hurt anyone besides the employees there and it isn’t their fault that the CEO is a loon. So we said fuck it and went back to life as normal.
I don’t get it. The book is terrible (as I said) but the game seems to have almost nothing to tie it into the book. There is no indication at all that the enemy force is supposed to be a crazy left-wing paramilitary force bent on killing all the good Christian folks and destroying the USA in the name of liberal media and eco-terrorism. In fact, from people that have played the game without knowledge of Empire, the feeling was that they were fighting in a stereotypical right-wing secret military compound.
I totally understand why someone would be offended by the message in Empire. Hell, I hated it. Shadow Complex seems to have little to no “message” other than it’s cool to blow shit up. As long as a game isn’t shoving a hostile message in my face, I couldn’t care less what a peripherally associated author has to say.
If there is little to no connection, I wonder why they bothered with the tie in. It’s odd to me.
Here is the afterword of the book Empire by Orson Scott Card. In it he paints himself as a moderate and makes a plea for more moderate views and less polarizing of views. I haven’t read Empire myself, though I can tell from reading that Afterword that OSC is probably the kind of person who considers Fox News to be fair and balanced.
Still, whatever his political philosophy today, I won’t stop recommending his earlier works to people. Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead are brilliant books.
Do the various titles that have been paraded around in front of us by politicians as “violent video games” not count in this thread or are we specifically referring to politically motivated topics in-game?
There’s a whole host of the former, but of the latter the only ones that come to mind are the few done by various developers involving the killing of IDF forces. They are the flip side of many westernized games which sometimes include generic “arabs” but are frequently not specific on which organization or ideal set they belong to.
I remember them being talked about on TV, CNN I think with other games like that being mentioned. A lot of shooters tip toe across this line, I think even Tom mentioned just how much you could fit the current Iraq storyline into Red Faction: Guerrilla (intended or not.) Of note though, I can’t think of any recently that were blatant enough that I heard of someone boycotting the game entirely.
No, because you can take into account a person’s position and influence within an organization, celebrity, and what influence and money they can extend because of their work. You don’t have to do background checks on every person, you just have to look at who and what the company has donated to as well as upper management. And then if they are part of a conglomerate, you can see how the conglomerate does business.
You take all those and come to a conclusion. Often times it comes down to balancing factors and you’ll usually end up making compromises with your morals, but it’s better people think about the consequences of their purchases than not.
Plus, you don’t have to bother with all the background checks if the watchdogs groups remain vigilant and keep you informed through digg headlines.
Hahahaha! Are you joking here? Because that’s pretty funny. I mean I agree with the part about not blaming a whole company for one person’s views. But the idea that you shouldn’t boycott because you don’t know what other people are up to is silly. You DO know the one company/person is into something you find unsavory. You don’t know if others are. So you use an argument from ignorance (a fallacy) to suggest that since you don’t know, they might be!
Why not use this with pedophile babysitters? They might all be pedophiles, so it doesn’t hurt to hire the one you know is.
Nope, OSC is a known homophobic Mormon and they are licensing his name for the game. Just like I didn’t buy Daryl Gate’s Police Quest. I won’t buy “George Bush’s Iraq War” game either if they make it. I don’t support these people. I don’t want their names to be glorified in a game, and the only way I can affect that is to lessen the demand for the game by not buying it.
Talk of pedophiles and fallacies all introduced in one post. My god, I think you just gained a level.
What’s interesting to me about those books is that they could easily be used to support the OPPOSITE of the policies that Card actually espouses. It’s strange. I mean that series should be teaching tolerance, and yet Card is an intolerant ass, from all reports. It should be showing us the need for transparency in govt., and yet Card supported an administration that pushed for the opposite. Just odd.
I would have gained two, but you are only allowed to move up one at a time.
Yes, exactly. I was pretty young when I read Card’s books. In fact, I’d say his books have had a greater affect on my belief system as an individual than any other piece of literature I can think of. I was 15 when I read Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead, and it really had a huge affect on me in that I started trying to view things from other people’s point of view, and always started saying to myself “what does this look like from their perspective?” That’s the baseline message of those books, and it’s told very powerfully. Tolerance and empathy are expressed through fiction in very powerful ways.
Hahahaha! Are you joking here? Because that’s pretty funny. I mean I agree with the part about not blaming a whole company for one person’s views. But the idea that you shouldn’t boycott because you don’t know what other people are up to is silly.
No, it’s making a choice. In the case of the food chains, if I wasn’t willing to do the research I have no business making a decision that affects people who happen to work there. By choosing to boycott one store, I feel that I would be obligated to research the other stores I might go to instead. That’s a personal belief. If it turned out a few years later that the CEO of FoodStoreX was a raging homophobe, I’d feel pretty stupid about my Whole Foods boycott.
Then I assume you do background checks on every developer who works on a game because that’s the road you’re heading down there. If you don’t, you’re cherry picking.
That’s a terrible assumption, and you’re a terrible person for making it.
Ditto. Games are fun diversions, so I don’t personally lose anything by not spending time with a particular diversion. I’ve never had an emotional connection with any game, and I’ve never had a game expand my horizons, except in a general way when games (as a whole) have improved my analytical skills. So I’m quite happy to steer clear of games associated with homophobic filth.
Better the devil you know.