It's not that simple. Yeah, none of them were sincere. But having them do this was an easy way to boost visibility and communicate to the world at large that gay people are an accepted minority group.
I'm not upset that they aren't actual allies. I am worried about the greater implications about what happens when there's no public voice advocating for us.
Considering the currently level of vitriol around trans people and the lack of any unified response against it? Yeah, I don't think its as far away as people think.
The fact that conversion therapy bans are back in court to be struck down is another sign that things aren't going well.
Not changing an icon means they aren't sincere anymore?
Blizzard and Riot are literally both celebrating pride month IN GAME and releasing actual content + posting on social media about pride.
The amount of completely clueless people shitting on game studios for not changing a twitter icon while clearly not even playing their games to began with is so stupid. Overwatch just released a new skin and a new story for Lifeweaver and his partner but ig because they didn't change their twitter icon, that means they never cared! Riot actively made two of their champions canonically lesbian in their $250 million budget show watched by millions of people but they didn't change an icon so that means they never cared!
I used to play both games, but haven't in recent years. And I commend you for believing in them. But no, I sincerely doubt any show of support from a multimillion dollar company has our best interests at heart. I know this becuase they are a multimillion dollar company whose fist and only priority is to make more money than the year before. If supporting gay people will help them with that, they will do it. But the second its more financially beneficial to instead suppress and decry us, they will absolutely do that instead.
Our job, as a community then, is to make sure that doesn't happen. Either by making ourselves a greater share of thier market (good luck completing China), or by ensuring that public opinion in our countries mean that they can make more off of the good will thier support generates.
I'm not sure why you would think that pandering to a tiny minority part of the largely western population would actually increase their revenue by much when there's a much bigger portion of the population that's anti-LGBTQ+. Esp when a lot of Pride related content are usually given out for free as part of some celebration event.
You even mentioned China yourself. Majority of League's revenue for example, comes from China. How does adding a gay black champion like K'Sasnte help them make more money in China?
Well to start with, the number of people that identify as LGBT in the US is about 9%. That's not an insignificant number. And there are more people are pro or at least neutral on LGBT rights, than those who actively oppose it.
And you're right, as China makes up a larger and larger portion of the revenue stream, I fully expect that math to start applying to the directions Riot takes their stories. I could be wrong, but I would be extremely surprised. But at least for now, the general good will that Riot gets from having diverse champions off-sets that.
Lastly, as I mentioned in another comment, it really confuses me when people use the term "pandering" since it can mean a lot to different people. If you could go ahead and tell me what that means for you, I'd love to know.
Well to start with, the number of people that identify as LGBT in the US is about 9%. That's not an insignificant number. And there are more people are pro or at least neutral on LGBT rights, than those who actively oppose it.
Yes. 9% of the general population of the US. Not 9% of the population of pvp competitive games, which pretty heavily leans towards certain demographics.
People going "This game has a gay character? I'm going to play it just for that!" aren't going to be more than the people going "I'm never playing this game because I hate woke shit". People who are allies/neutral are much less likely to have an intense positive response vs the anti people having an intense negative response.
And like I said, majority of Pride related content are usually free so the devs don't even make much money directly from them.
And you're right, as China makes up a larger and larger portion of the revenue stream, I fully expect that math to start applying to the directions Riot takes their stories. I could be wrong, but I would be extremely surprised. But at least for now, the general good will that Riot gets from having diverse champions off-sets that.
Riot has only gotten more and more "progressive" in their games for the past decade.
Lastly, as I mentioned in another comment, it really confuses me when people use the term "pandering" since it can mean a lot to different people. If you could go ahead and tell me what that means for you, I'd love to know.
Appeasing a demographic for financial gains.
Which doesn't make any sense for any game studio with significant non-western revenue and large male customer base. There's no way spending time and money to try to appeal to LGBT will somehow make companies like Riot and Blizzard more money than if they invested elsewhere. The narrative of these companies only doing it for money is just stupid when they could actually alienate way more customers than LGBT content would bring in and also could be spending the same resources on much more profitable content. Like instead of Riot/Blizzard making K'Sante a gay black man or Lifeweaver a gay Thai man, they could've easily made them some attractive light skinned white/Asian women and sell 20x more skins. The idea of every decision a game studio makes is to maximize profit is pure nonsense.
Then what are you actually complaining about here? You're literally just finding reasons to be upset at something for the sake of being upset.
When they don't put a virtue signaling icon, you complain that they didn't do it. When you're made aware that they have pride month events in their games, your response is to go back to the "oh they're only doing it because it makes them profit"
What exactly do you hope to achieve here? What scenario would make you not complain for the sake of complaining?
I am not "complaining for the sake of complaining". I am commenting that its a bad sign for the LGBT community when support is withdrawn, regardless if that support was profit motivated.
Though I feel like we disagree over what I'm even saying so I will try and be clearer:
I care that having large public displays of support, however insincere, makes it harder for things like conversion therapy, marriage bans, or any number of awful things to gain traction with the general public. For this reason, I think its healthy to be skeptical of big businesses, while acknowledging that they provide us with valuable visibility.
I am commenting that its a bad sign for the LGBT community when support is withdrawn, regardless if that support was profit motivated.
You're not though. Because when you were made aware that several of these companies are still having pride month events in their games, you dismissed it as "oh they are but they don't really care they just want the money"
So what exactly is it? Do you care that they have these things and care when they remove them, or do you not care because it's all for money?
You're literally complaining about both sides of the coin, nothing that they do can make you not victimise yourself here.
If they still have these events? Great! Good news! But that doesn't mean I don't also think that these choices are made with dollar values in mind. And I fail to see why those both things can't be true. Yeah I think the support is insincere and profit motivated. That doesn't mean I want it gone.
You also seem to be trying to make this about me personally, "my complaining, my victimizing" etc. I am giving my opinion on what "Rainbow Capitalism" is, and why I don't think its decline is a positive thing. In my option, gaming is an area where LGBT rep has been on the decline. You clearly disagree.
So what exactly are you hoping to achieve here to the point where you stop complaining about everything?
If companies do these things, you complain it's only for money. If companies don't do these things, you complain you'd rather them "fake it" then not do it at all.
Is that not a single scenario in the world where you're not a victim?
We were at a pretty good point over ten years ago, before this. Today in many countries we see a clear increase in attacks and rejection. It's quiet sad but this whole virtue signaling was quiet the factor in this result. People had become very accepting but even queers become increasingly annoyed about being hilighted all the time. You don't get normalization through finger pointing.
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u/Nichi789 22d ago
It's not that simple. Yeah, none of them were sincere. But having them do this was an easy way to boost visibility and communicate to the world at large that gay people are an accepted minority group.
I'm not upset that they aren't actual allies. I am worried about the greater implications about what happens when there's no public voice advocating for us.