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RE: The Decade in Tabletop Gaming, as told by Dungeons & Dragons
I’m quite sad to see how much “woke” gaming has been hitting the industry. Every time I see another company go that direction I just see them walking off a cliff.
That just what happens when they cave in to demands. Hopefully there not much funding when they do and they get a little slap on the wrist for doing it.
I frankly prefer the nonsense politics to stay out of things. Unless that is what the actual game is about in the first place. Would be funny to create a game called “Get WOKE Go Broke.”
I mean, I have mixed thoughts on it.
If you want to create a work that's also an act of political expression, go ahead. I'm a believer in games as art, and art makes statements.
However, there's this interesting thing going on where there was this big thing about consent in gaming and how we should make everyone feel welcomed by avoiding content that players will find unduly disturbing (true, with some caveats to be made about the therapeutic role of deliberate exposure to stimuli in safe places; definitely not something you should force on people without their awareness) and then also saying "Well, if you don't want politics in your games, you must be the sort of person who has wrongthink and doesn't want to be called out on being a bigot!"
That's not an exact quote, but I saw that on Twitter either yesterday or the day before, but after I wrote this. It's this sort of weird attitude that says "We'll include everyone, but not you!"
You could point out that the same thing could be said for a lot of the types of content that people would object to "If you don't want sex in your games, you're just a prude!" or "If you don't want violence, you're sheltered!" and both of those arguments would rightly be considered absurd. There are people who don't want certain things in their entertainment. That's the whole point of seeking out a mutual understanding about what a game should and shouldn't include.
I think that one of the things about the tabletop industry is that it doesn't have a lot of "cancel culture" as we've seen in other media. Most creators aren't high profile enough and most of the "woke" audience has their own niche, either in the games that do outreach (e.g. D&D) or smaller games that come from that political atmosphere (e.g. Spire and Eclipse Phase, both of which are far left politically but still manage to be good games). There are some people who definitely produce drivel, but that's generally true across the industry regardless of politics.
Tangentially, there is also some interesting stuff in games like Secret Hitler, a board-game and not a roleplaying game but one which is fairly well-known (and we steal from board-games all the time; just because tabletop roleplaying is distinct doesn't mean we don't double-dip). There's a central game mechanic/driving element where the "liberals" need to take power so that they can assassinate the "fascist" leader, and it's just like:
"Either they're doing this with an incredible sense of irony, or something's rotten in Denmark."
Doesn't mean it's not a fun game, but it's one of those examples of the disconnect between the Twittersphere and reality.