TLDR for folks: Don't support racial discrimination and related stereotyping in corporations, or corporate events. Don't support segregation. It's the sort of thing that strengthens racism and racial divisions more broadly, not least in that it is once again RACIAL STEREOTYPING and RACIAL DISCRIMINATION. This is directly relevant within the context of such initiatives within the industry for the hobby, and why they ought to be both recognized and opposed through boycott. It's very much relevant to this thread, I am sorry to say, because it is arguably the obvious face of the primary problem.

"Safe Spaces" created by service providing corporations that discriminate entry to gaming on the basis of race, with the justification that white people are unsafe per their race... Or using race as a stereotyping shorthand for ideological safety, or however you may want to put it... Are enacting segregation on the basis of racial stereotyping. That is my point. Never said folks should bust in there where we're unwanted, but hey, you know what? Segregation is illegal, and that's what a lot of people did back in the day, as they say, to end it. I don't think that's a good answer for things now. It would only risk further division. But where would we be if folks listened to the white folks who said they were fine with black folks who stayed in their place and didn't enter segregated spaces? Don't be the kind of person who wants segregation to stay. Be better. We can all try that, and to try to strive for equality under the law, even if it's hard.

Quote from: BadApple on January 09, 2024, 07:07:53 PM
Welp, This thread haven't been about the topic in several pages.  We aren't having a meaningful conversation about the politicization of companies that produce RPG material anymore. 

Pawsplay managed to get our goat and get us to destroy yet another thread.  Frankly, It would serve us all right if Pundit locked this thread and banned us all.

You know, at any given moment, people could choose to stop attacking me personally, and instead start complaining about how woke my publishing company is. Put me in the red, mock the quality of my products, complain about inclusive language. People are choosing, instead, just to act up, because they think they can.

Quote from: jhkim on January 09, 2024, 07:27:19 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on January 09, 2024, 05:48:39 PM

Quote from: jhkim on January 09, 2024, 05:22:04 PM
My question would be, are the Girl Scouts inherently sexist and boy-hating because they don't allow boys in?

In context? Yes.

https://www.scouting.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/BSA_Family-Entry-Fact-Sheet.pdf

https://www.girlscouts.org/en/raising-girls/happy-and-healthy/happy/girls-only-single-gender-empowering-girls.html

It sounds like you disagree with the argument that the Boy Scouts should necessarily admit girls. i.e. That the old 20th-century Boy Scouts and Girls Scouts were fine, even though they discriminated based on gender.

The point is about the inherently exclusion which was a part of the founding of the scouts. Do you think the 20th-century Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts were OK, or were they inherently wrong because they were gender-discriminatory, and needed to be corrected?

I have opinions, but in consideration to not falling for pawsplay getting threads derailed I'm going to abstain. It was dumb of me to reply even to a reply to a reply.

*Edit* In anyone wants to fork off a thread in Pundit's section, I'll glady follow up there.

Say what you will. I've engaged in you in recent posts with good faith and positive intentions. I would like to think you've attempted to do the same. I personally think this has all been firmly topic relevant. Especially the discussions I've had with you and jhkim on segregation and racial disqualification within the industry.

Quote from: BadApple on January 07, 2024, 09:01:01 AM

Quote from: yosemitemike on January 07, 2024, 08:03:51 AM
If queer friendly means what people say it means, then I find the whole thing to be pointless.  They say it's just a statement that you won't be assholes to queer people.  How about not being an asshole full stop?  This is what I would call a normal game.  You don't need to specify that people not be assholes to this small subset of players.  Just don't be an asshole.  You don't need to virtue signal about it.  Just don't be an asshole.

If that's what it meant, I'd be cool with it.  What it means is your game has to be a gay pride celebration.

I'm just sick of being beaten over the head 24/7 with all this woke mania. I am particularly sick of so called gays who push being gay like its a combination sex fetish and spreadble disease. The fucks make life hell for everyone else just trying to get along.

Let's try this again.

Woke is purely preformative and always has been, it's about pretending to be seen as a good person while doing the most heinious shit (racial segregation/discrimination, sex discrimination/segregation [where not warranted by biology/pudor/safety of women], etc).

So, ANY RPG company that engages in performative wokery IS woke. D&D has repeatedly engaged in wokery in advertising, in letting their employes vomit racist/sexist bullcrap and by casting developers by skin color (despite the cries of Jhkim asking for any other source than D&Ds own words).

Goodma'am has engaged in wokery by supporting Burn Loot Murder and the rainbow flag nazis.

Baizuo has engaged in wokery and has it in their books too.

SJG has engaged in Wokery.

Aren't those the biggest companies? Among the four of them they're over 90% of the market.

Conclusion, while the smaller of small fish might not be woke the faces everybody recognizes are.

So, the answer is yes but?

Quote from: Omega on January 10, 2024, 02:21:50 AM
I'm just sick of being beaten over the head 24/7 with all this woke mania. I am particularly sick of so called gays who push being gay like its a combination sex fetish and spreadble disease. The fucks make life hell for everyone else just trying to get along.

I think this trans lunacy is a big part of why acceptance of LGBT people is down for the first time in decades.  Trans activists have pushed and pushed and just gotten crazier and crazier.  The inevitable backlash is here and the other people who have been lumped in with them are being caught up in it.   

Quote from: pawsplay on January 09, 2024, 03:55:58 AM
Yet I'll bet plenty of you would squeal like piglets about Girl Scouts requiring troops to admit trans girls. People like to crack jokes about safe spaces, but the fact is that a lot of people's egos simply can't handle something not being about them. Not for a couple of hours in a back room at a con.

Or to rephrase that - "apples or not like pears but I'm making them equivalent bigots'."

First and last time I'm responding to this racist buffoon, time to stop feeding the narcissist.

Pawsplay loves when we react to his hate for pages of off-topic arguing.  Let's just agree on these irrefutable facts and move on:
Pawsplay is a racist bigot.  He is wrong that the Girl Scouts shouldn't be allowed to admit boys.

Also, RPG companies are overwhelmingly woke.  Too much is on cringe "we are diverse", and not enough "we make quality products".

I think "overwhelmingly" is a misstatement.  A bunch of the companies are doing low-effort virtue-signaling like replacing their logo with a rainbow for pride month, pasting some HR drivel about how much they love diversity, then doing a find/replace text search on their product to swap pronouns and create some hilarious misspellings after they couldn't be assed to do the correct search parameters.  And they do it because it gets them a net positive amount of ass-pats versus pushback on twitter, so they conclude that it has resonated well with the customer, never mind that most people camping out on twitter aren't buying any of their product in the first place, which leads to the whole "get woke go broke" phenomenon; their belief that appeasing twitter people is going to translate into sales doesn't pan out and they wind up in the lurch as a result when the silent, uncounted customers silently wander away.

Quote from: Valatar on January 10, 2024, 05:48:45 PM
I think "overwhelmingly" is a misstatement.  A bunch of the companies are doing low-effort virtue-signaling like replacing their logo with a rainbow for pride month, pasting some HR drivel about how much they love diversity, then doing a find/replace text search on their product to swap pronouns and create some hilarious misspellings after they couldn't be assed to do the correct search parameters.  And they do it because it gets them a net positive amount of ass-pats versus pushback on twitter, so they conclude that it has resonated well with the customer, never mind that most people camping out on twitter aren't buying any of their product in the first place, which leads to the whole "get woke go broke" phenomenon; their belief that appeasing twitter people is going to translate into sales doesn't pan out and they wind up in the lurch as a result when the silent, uncounted customers silently wander away.

You raise some excellent points, which brings me to something I've been speculating:
How much of the industry's wokeness is due to extremist beliefs, how much to virtue signalling, how much bandwagon-jumping, and how much is to submit to the economic terrorism of Human Rights Council's extortion racket?  I have no solid statistics to formulate any conclusive answer.

Quote from: Cathode Ray on January 10, 2024, 08:17:37 PM

Quote from: Valatar on January 10, 2024, 05:48:45 PM
I think "overwhelmingly" is a misstatement.  A bunch of the companies are doing low-effort virtue-signaling like replacing their logo with a rainbow for pride month, pasting some HR drivel about how much they love diversity, then doing a find/replace text search on their product to swap pronouns and create some hilarious misspellings after they couldn't be assed to do the correct search parameters.  And they do it because it gets them a net positive amount of ass-pats versus pushback on twitter, so they conclude that it has resonated well with the customer, never mind that most people camping out on twitter aren't buying any of their product in the first place, which leads to the whole "get woke go broke" phenomenon; their belief that appeasing twitter people is going to translate into sales doesn't pan out and they wind up in the lurch as a result when the silent, uncounted customers silently wander away.

You raise some excellent points, which brings me to something I've been speculating:
How much of the industry's wokeness is due to extremist beliefs, how much to virtue signalling, how much bandwagon-jumping, and how much is to submit to the economic terrorism of Human Rights Council's extortion racket?  I have no solid statistics to formulate any conclusive answer.

I agree with Valatar. For most of these companies, the wokeness seems like very low-effort gestures that at most shows up as a small sidebar somewhere in their production lineup.

As for getting solid answers about their motivation, that would take action like studying the subject and interviewing people who work there, and even maybe (gasp) reading their material. I doubt anyone here is interested in that sort of actual research. I have only a handful of WotC products from the last five years, and haven't bought anything from them since the OGL scandal a year ago. I prefer to put my effort into learning more about games I genuinely like, and products I'm interested in playing.

Quote from: jhkim on January 10, 2024, 08:40:57 PM

Quote from: Cathode Ray on January 10, 2024, 08:17:37 PM

Quote from: Valatar on January 10, 2024, 05:48:45 PM
I think "overwhelmingly" is a misstatement.  A bunch of the companies are doing low-effort virtue-signaling like replacing their logo with a rainbow for pride month, pasting some HR drivel about how much they love diversity, then doing a find/replace text search on their product to swap pronouns and create some hilarious misspellings after they couldn't be assed to do the correct search parameters.  And they do it because it gets them a net positive amount of ass-pats versus pushback on twitter, so they conclude that it has resonated well with the customer, never mind that most people camping out on twitter aren't buying any of their product in the first place, which leads to the whole "get woke go broke" phenomenon; their belief that appeasing twitter people is going to translate into sales doesn't pan out and they wind up in the lurch as a result when the silent, uncounted customers silently wander away.

You raise some excellent points, which brings me to something I've been speculating:
How much of the industry's wokeness is due to extremist beliefs, how much to virtue signalling, how much bandwagon-jumping, and how much is to submit to the economic terrorism of Human Rights Council's extortion racket?  I have no solid statistics to formulate any conclusive answer.

I agree with Valatar. For most of these companies, the wokeness seems like very low-effort gestures that at most shows up as a small sidebar somewhere in their production lineup.

As for getting solid answers about their motivation, that would take action like studying the subject and interviewing people who work there,

An interview would be an interesting thing to see. Even if we got a lot of corporate boilerplate, I'm sure in an era of DEI and ESG, that boilerplate would be both revealing and disturbing.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on January 10, 2024, 09:39:33 PM
An interview would be an interesting thing to see.

Could be a group effort hosted on these forums. Invite industry professionals and fire away with the questions.

I think we'll see some from under every column, except from the real die-hards like evil hat:

- The common zeitgeist among the left is that being "inclusive" is basically mandatory to be a good person, so you'll see some amount of it just because the creator feels it's a necessary act of a decent person.
- Some amount is probably because they're seeing other companies do it and feel that it's where the market is going, so they have to follow.
- Some amount is because if they don't they know someone's popping into twitter or big purple to start a thread about how problematic their stuff is.
- And lastly I think they expect that they can snag some free goodwill from the community from some virtue-signals that will turn into more sales.

There are the hardcore left creators out there busy creating games about killing cops in the name of the new post-capitalist utopia, but from what I've seen they represent a very small minority.  Most of what I've seen is minimal effort stuff that I suspect is coming from a cocktail of those four elements above.  They do just enough to be fairly sure a twitter mob isn't showing up with torches and pitchforks and call it a day.