Recently, i've been playing the videogame "In Stars And Time", I have not finished it, but so far, it's pretty peak, but want to talk about in this thread is not the videogame by itself, but, the context on which it exists.

In Stars And Time is an experimental, indie, RPGmaker videogame. It's also heavily leans left when it comes to talking about culture and social topics (keep reading I swear it's interesting), some people may even cosider it far left, I think the most obvious example of this is the main cast and how they're presented, as, in the actual profile for each characters, it shows their pronouns.



Not only that, but, some characters in the game are LGBT, but you may have probably guessed that already, honestly, you may have already guessed that from when I described the videogame as an indie RPGmaker game, and that is the one thing that that has kinda been plagued my mind since I started playing the game

How is this so common?, how did this become a trope?, and mainly, How can a minority group like the LGBT community have a disproportionate ammount of cultural exports in the form of videogames and sometimes even music?

there are so, SO many of these works, and it's not like they're just in itch.io and whatever, these are games that become famous, some of the most sold videogames on steam and positively reviewed, recieving award after award after award

like really, think about it, you got ultrakill, you got celeste, you got shovel knight, you have signalis, you have hades, you can probably also tag in undertale and stadew valley, so why is this the case?, how is it possible that a group that is actually so small in comparasion dominate the industry this much?

This is not the first time it has happened in history tho, I think you can do a lot of comparasions with the exports of many other social movements, I think the most apparent is racism and rap music, how the black community in the united states created the hip hop genre and turned it into what it is today

but that is just one specific genre, and not only that, but they are social movements rooted in real life. The LGBT community and indie videogames is different, as it's rooted in the internet, and while they do also dominate one specific genre (rpgmaker videogames), they also kinda dominate everywhere else, they dominate the entire indie game industry

So it really opens up the question of, is there something of this social movement, be it their philosophy or ideology that contributes to the developement and popularization of these type of videogames?, you could frame it the other way, is there something about people who lean right politically that makes them NOT want to develop indie videogames?

It's also interesting to note, that while it's very easy to see what videogames clearly lean left, it's a lot more difficult to say what videogames lean right, like really, I dare you to try to make a list of games that are the opposite of "woke", that are more far right leaning in their nature, the only games I can come up with are the paradox grand strategy games, also, with that I will know that you've read until the end.

My take is that: right leaning games can't exist, because the whole concept of the right wing is to be against changes and shiny newthings such as supporting the LGBT. If there is a game that's really obviously right wing, it's either a meme game or shit.
So a playable 'right leaning' indie game would probably just be one that is devoid of this kind of acceptance bullshit.

Ymir wrote:

My take is that: right leaning games can't exist, because the whole concept of the right wing is to be against changes and shiny newthings such as supporting the LGBT. If there is a game that's really obviously right wing, it's either a meme game or shit.
So a playable 'right leaning' indie game would probably just be one that is devoid of this kind of acceptance bullshit.

I've thought about this but I don't think it's the case because right wing movies do exist

was expecting a longer thread somehow
i also dont have a decent aswer to this

Patatitta wrote:

Ymir wrote:

My take is that: right leaning games can't exist, because the whole concept of the right wing is to be against changes and shiny newthings such as supporting the LGBT. If there is a game that's really obviously right wing, it's either a meme game or shit.
So a playable 'right leaning' indie game would probably just be one that is devoid of this kind of acceptance bullshit.

I've thought about this but I don't think it's the case because right wing movies do exist

Fair point;
Could it be that right wingers are less interested in game development? Considering a portion of the left wing is most vocal on the internet, and congregates in specific creative 'nerd' niches like digital art and programming, it could just be that righties don't like developing games yet (at least to the level that the left is).

Movies have had a lot of time to diversify in the mainstream on the other hand, and the process behind making one is much easier to understand than something like game development.

Frankly, I have no clue either.

paradox games have nothing to do with far right or whatever ;-;
they just let you do whatever you want in a historical context (also edit for more example of this since idk if u have played them or have just heard me/poly talking about making space hitler or whatever but i also once made a race of space ghandis on stellaris who never went to war and just did diplomacy ;-;)

anyway there are a bunch that i would say lean right but they are more indie games/rage bait games
like the team sneed games

edit: lgtv people and left people are prob the majority of people who make games commercially tho, maybe cos its easier to express through games than other sources

Duck o-o wrote:

paradox games have nothing to do with far right or whatever ;-;
they just let you do whatever you want in a historical context (also edit for more example of this since idk if u have played them or have just heard me/poly talking about making space hitler or whatever but i also once made a race of space ghandis on stellaris who never went to war and just did diplomacy ;-;)

anyway there are a bunch that i would say lean right but they are more indie games/rage bait games
like the team sneed games

edit: lgtv people and left people are prob the majority of people who make games commercially tho, maybe cos its easier to express through games than other sources

I don't mean far right, I just mean right leaning, like, as an example, in literature there exists the idea of the "Great American Novel", a novel that properly represents all of americas value and is also really fucking good. I think the concept of the great americal novel is interesting, because nowadays I feel calling something right wing is kinda like an insult, but that kinda proves that you can make art that is right wing in nature that is good

I say paradox are overall right wing because as i've heard, it's interpretation of history is more right wing, also, it falls under that military simulation/alt history genre, I feel most works of fictions that are that sympathetic to war and overall show enthusiasm about military history is right wing

if people are calling this gay game "far-left" because it's gay and has pronouns, those people are fucking morons

conservatism is all about maintaining the status quo. you fundamentally cannot have new ideas and expression of those ideas coming from a group whose entire political and social agenda is shaped by ideas of old.

How can a minority group like the LGBT community have a disproportionate ammount of cultural exports in the form of videogames and sometimes even music?

be careful with this kind of thinking though, a good chunk of right wingers will say this is due to either cultural marxism, "wokeism," or The Jews™

honestly video game discourse online has become such a fucking shitshow I hate engaging with it lol. slackjawed rightoid retards will just call anything woke or that it's been infested with DEI or some other kind of buzzword bullshit and it's so fucking tedious trying to talk past this. brainwormed as hell.

xch00F wrote:

if people are calling this gay game "far-left" because it's gay and has pronouns, those people are fucking morons

conservatism is all about maintaining the status quo. you fundamentally cannot have new ideas and expression of those ideas coming from a group whose entire political and social agenda is shaped by ideas of old.

How can a minority group like the LGBT community have a disproportionate ammount of cultural exports in the form of videogames and sometimes even music?

be careful with this kind of thinking though, a good chunk of right wingers will say this is due to either cultural marxism, "wokeism," or The Jews™

honestly video game discourse online has become such a fucking shitshow I hate engaging with it lol. slackjawed rightoid retards will just call anything woke or that it's been infested with DEI or some other kind of buzzword bullshit and it's so fucking tedious trying to talk past this. brainwormed as hell.

yeah no, I had to word the post very carefully so it didn't seem I was saying it in a negative light, I don't think there is a conspiracy or whatever keeping those games at the top, I think it's neat, it's cultural and artistic expresion for an opressed group, i'm down for that

but yea, again, I don't think there is any reason why conservative videogames cant exist, as conservative movies and film already do exist

also wtf does "slackjawed rightoid retards" mean, I agree that people claiming x videogame is woke or whatever is stupid tho

media illiterate right wingers who consume all of their media uncritically and bitch about surface level presentation using buzzwords like "dei" or "woke"

conservative video games do exist, they're generally just all really fucking bad. you could argue that some games are conservative/right wing if you parse them as satirical or not. for example a lot of people consider helldivers 2 to be a right wing game because they're unable to understand satire.

Tldr, LGBT in games is cool, queerphobia is cringe

MaxIsABigKaiju wrote:

Tldr, LGBT in games is cool, queerphobia is cringe

not exactly what I was trying to say, yes, LGBT games are cool, but i'm asking why aren't there more right leaning videogames in the indie sphere, why do people in the LGBT community seem to be more willing to take up the task of making indie games

Patatitta wrote:

MaxIsABigKaiju wrote:

Tldr, LGBT in games is cool, queerphobia is cringe

not exactly what I was trying to say, yes, LGBT games are cool, but i'm asking why aren't there more right leaning videogames in the indie sphere, why do people in the LGBT community seem to be more willing to take up the task of making indie games

i feel like the arts in general tend to lean toward progressives types in my experience

Patatitta wrote:

Duck o-o wrote:

paradox games have nothing to do with far right or whatever ;-;

I say paradox are overall right wing because as i've heard, it's interpretation of history is more right wing, also, it falls under that military simulation/alt history genre, I feel most works of fictions that are that sympathetic to war and overall show enthusiasm about military history is right wing

not really, any radical movement, be it fascism or communism in those games will need to be risen with revolution and its usually quite bloody lol, and uh "the interpretation of history is right wing" is quite weird to say since the ussr has one of the biggest trees on the game, I guess you come from not many events notifications being about ussr or communist countries?

z0z wrote:

Patatitta wrote:

MaxIsABigKaiju wrote:

Tldr, LGBT in games is cool, queerphobia is cringe

not exactly what I was trying to say, yes, LGBT games are cool, but i'm asking why aren't there more right leaning videogames in the indie sphere, why do people in the LGBT community seem to be more willing to take up the task of making indie games

i feel like the arts in general tend to lean toward progressives types in my experience

this also holds true

you'll see a lot of right winged guys on physics, biotechnology, mathematics...

and you'll also see a lot of left winged guys on arts, history, journalism...

now why its like that I dont know how to answer lol

Polyspora wrote:

Patatitta wrote:

Duck o-o wrote:

paradox games have nothing to do with far right or whatever ;-;

I say paradox are overall right wing because as i've heard, it's interpretation of history is more right wing, also, it falls under that military simulation/alt history genre, I feel most works of fictions that are that sympathetic to war and overall show enthusiasm about military history is right wing

not really, any radical movement, be it fascism or communism in those games will need to be risen with revolution and its usually quite bloody lol, and uh "the interpretation of history is right wing" is quite weird to say since the ussr has one of the biggest trees on the game, I guess you come from not many events notifications being about ussr or communist countries?

idk, I've taken that information from my brother and their group of friend, who are paradox fans, idk how much of it holds true, they tell me that there is a bias with political systems that are right wing being more powerful

Patatitta wrote:

MaxIsABigKaiju wrote:

Tldr, LGBT in games is cool, queerphobia is cringe

not exactly what I was trying to say, yes, LGBT games are cool, but i'm asking why aren't there more right leaning videogames in the indie sphere, why do people in the LGBT community seem to be more willing to take up the task of making indie games

Maybe because overall the society leans more about what you would call "the left": more tolerance, more inclusion, etc., and maybe a reject of the past. I think this phenomenon is beyond indie game, and reflects on everything. And why the LGBT community in particular? Because for some people it's because the LGBT movement is one of the symbols, an important part of this new ideology getting more and more common.

Corne2Plum3 wrote:

Patatitta wrote:

MaxIsABigKaiju wrote:

Tldr, LGBT in games is cool, queerphobia is cringe

not exactly what I was trying to say, yes, LGBT games are cool, but i'm asking why aren't there more right leaning videogames in the indie sphere, why do people in the LGBT community seem to be more willing to take up the task of making indie games

Maybe because overall the society leans more about what you would call "the left": more tolerance, more inclusion, etc., and maybe a reject of the past. I think this phenomenon is beyond indie game, and reflects on everything. And why the LGBT community in particular? Because for some people it's because the LGBT movement is one of the symbols, an important part of this new ideology getting more and more common.

I don't really mean overall left wing games are weirdly omnipresent, I mean games made by the LGBT community in specific, which are a minority

Patatitta wrote:

Polyspora wrote:

Patatitta wrote:

Duck o-o wrote:

paradox games have nothing to do with far right or whatever ;-;

I say paradox are overall right wing because as i've heard, it's interpretation of history is more right wing, also, it falls under that military simulation/alt history genre, I feel most works of fictions that are that sympathetic to war and overall show enthusiasm about military history is right wing

not really, any radical movement, be it fascism or communism in those games will need to be risen with revolution and its usually quite bloody lol, and uh "the interpretation of history is right wing" is quite weird to say since the ussr has one of the biggest trees on the game, I guess you come from not many events notifications being about ussr or communist countries?

idk, I've taken that information from my brother and their group of friend, who are paradox fans, idk how much of it holds true, they tell me that there is a bias with political systems that are right wing being more powerful

I mean, germany and japan starts pretty strong early game, but when 1943 hits, they start slowing down (battle of stalingrad), both getting eaten by ussr and usa. I believe because of how easy the early game can feel with those countries (you can literally take over denmark in some hours with germany, like it happened irl, 4h30m.) you can get the feeling they're more "powerful" or more "important" than other ones I guess.

the thing is, its a strategy game, if you know your shit enough, you can get poland strong enough early to resist the attacks from germany, it has many variables but it tries to stay consistent with what happened irl and thats why some countries have crazy buffs, at least in hoi4, games like ck3 is a little different and usually a mess lmao

Ymir wrote:

My take is that: right leaning games can't exist, because the whole concept of the right wing is to be against changes and shiny newthings such as supporting the LGBT. If there is a game that's really obviously right wing, it's either a meme game or shit.
So a playable 'right leaning' indie game would probably just be one that is devoid of this kind of acceptance bullshit.

an rpg setting that of a christian family on a journey to find god to save a newborn child cursed by the devil

wait. what is left leaning about ultrakill, undertale, stardew valley and termina?

Polyspora wrote:

wait. what is left leaning about ultrakill, undertale, stardew valley and termina?

for ultrakill, it's develped by hakita, the community is gay as fuck, and hakita just plays into that with every update, they even added buttplug support



for stardew valley, it's a bit more complex, this is why I put it in the maybe you could consider this section. Stardew valley is a life sim, and one thing life sims really struggled with in the past (with the exceptions of the sims), was queer relationships. I remember people changing the gender of their miis in tomodachi life in order to have gay characters. Stardew valley at the time of it's release, stardew valley was one of the games that were most progressive in this front. ANd even today, stardew valley is most popular between girls and people in the spectrum

Undertale, developed by toby fox, who was a terminally online teenager, homestuck fan, half of the characters are furry and gay, your protagonist is genderless, and the fandom is really something, also, the point of the game is pacifism

also, I did not mention fear and hunger 2

MaxIsABigKaiju wrote:

Tldr, LGBT in games is cool, queerphobia is cringe

This TLDR makes it look like you didn't read past the first 3 paragraphs.

Polyspora wrote:

wait. what is left leaning about ultrakill, undertale, stardew valley and termina?

Stardew Valley has the implicit anti-Joja message.

You have the option to go through the Joja way though.

Conversly, do you know the show Yellowstone? No? Well it's the most watched tv show in the United States (excluding football) (source). But why don't you know it? Why does no-one talk about it? Probably because it's entire viewerbase are older American people that don't use the internet to talk about this stuff, maybe indie games and internet culture is kinda like this but on a global scale with left leaning internet people. Like my close family is 8 people, and out of them probably only I know that any of these games exist, maybe my cousin came across them through youtube randomly but I doubt he'd be very familiar with them.

As for why left leaning internet people express themselves through art on the internet more, it may be because they're kinda forced to. Maybe an LGBTQ person can't express themselves fully irl, but on the internet they are free to do whatever, and these are the people making and playing indie games. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of art in general is similar in this way, where people who can't express themselves in a wider context go into smaller communities and can fully express themselves in these communities and through the art they create.

Maybe indie games aren't something that inherently favours left leaning values, it's just that it was left leaning people who made them. Like in an alternate universe where somehow right leaning people were expressing themselves on the internet because they had to escape from the systematic wokeness, globalisation and moral corruption of society or something then indie games would be right leaning.

And in terms of left leaning ideas dominating the indie game industry, that might just be because there's lots of left leaning people out there. Maybe "left leaning" and "right leaning" aren't the right words to use in this discussion. Like if you were to look at people who were at least tolerant of LGBTQ, then that would probably number in the billions, even a small portion of that is enough to make an industry look big. And if you look at "right leaning" as the want to maintain the status quo and not whatever it's seemingly become in America then the above paragraph doesn't make sense.

Patatitta wrote:

Polyspora wrote:

wait. what is left leaning about ultrakill, undertale, stardew valley and termina?

for ultrakill, it's develped by hakita, the community is gay as fuck, and hakita just plays into that with every update, they even added buttplug support



for stardew valley, it's a bit more complex, this is why I put it in the maybe you could consider this section. Stardew valley is a life sim, and one thing life sims really struggled with in the past (with the exceptions of the sims), was queer relationships. I remember people changing the gender of their miis in tomodachi life in order to have gay characters. Stardew valley at the time of it's release, stardew valley was one of the games that were most progressive in this front. ANd even today, stardew valley is most popular between girls and people in the spectrum

Undertale, developed by toby fox, who was a terminally online teenager, homestuck fan, half of the characters are furry and gay, your protagonist is genderless, and the fandom is really something, also, the point of the game is pacifism

also, I did not mention fear and hunger 2

oh you mean the conservative right, not the liberal one, I see

I think that Wolfenstein is too political tbh it's soo extreme with the right wing, classical woke game that says that everyone thats normal and don't want communists is AN EXTREMIST

- Marco - wrote:

I think that Wolfenstein is too political tbh it's soo extreme with the right wing, classical woke game that says that everyone thats normal and don't want communists is AN EXTREMIST

I think you're reading too much into it, its like doom but you kill social nationalistic germans.

its that rambo hollywood formula, cool game overall, it doesnt go much into politics, you just murder for fun while saving good old murica

Polyspora wrote:

- Marco - wrote:

I think that Wolfenstein is too political tbh it's soo extreme with the right wing, classical woke game that says that everyone thats normal and don't want communists is AN EXTREMIST

I think you're reading too much into it, its like doom but you kill social nationalistic germans.

its that rambo hollywood formula, cool game overall, it doesnt go much into politics, you just murder for fun while saving good old murica

That's what the deep state wants you to think lol

- Marco - wrote:

Polyspora wrote:

- Marco - wrote:

I think that Wolfenstein is too political tbh it's soo extreme with the right wing, classical woke game that says that everyone thats normal and don't want communists is AN EXTREMIST

I think you're reading too much into it, its like doom but you kill social nationalistic germans.

its that rambo hollywood formula, cool game overall, it doesnt go much into politics, you just murder for fun while saving good old murica

That's what the deep state wants you to think lol

damn marco trolling goes hard

DM FOR MUTUAL wrote:

Conversly, do you know the show Yellowstone? No? Well it's the most watched tv show in the United States (excluding football) (source). But why don't you know it? Why does no-one talk about it? Probably because it's entire viewerbase are older American people that don't use the internet to talk about this stuff, maybe indie games and internet culture is kinda like this but on a global scale with left leaning internet people. Like my close family is 8 people, and out of them probably only I know that any of these games exist, maybe my cousin came across them through youtube randomly but I doubt he'd be very familiar with them.

As for why left leaning internet people express themselves through art on the internet more, it may be because they're kinda forced to. Maybe an LGBTQ person can't express themselves fully irl, but on the internet they are free to do whatever, and these are the people making and playing indie games. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of art in general is similar in this way, where people who can't express themselves in a wider context go into smaller communities and can fully express themselves in these communities and through the art they create.

Maybe indie games aren't something that inherently favours left leaning values, it's just that it was left leaning people who made them. Like in an alternate universe where somehow right leaning people were expressing themselves on the internet because they had to escape from the systematic wokeness, globalisation and moral corruption of society or something then indie games would be right leaning.

And in terms of left leaning ideas dominating the indie game industry, that might just be because there's lots of left leaning people out there. Maybe "left leaning" and "right leaning" aren't the right words to use in this discussion. Like if you were to look at people who were at least tolerant of LGBTQ, then that would probably number in the billions, even a small portion of that is enough to make an industry look big. And if you look at "right leaning" as the want to maintain the status quo and not whatever it's seemingly become in America then the above paragraph doesn't make sense.

yeah this seem reasonable

Wolfenstein is bad and political because it depicts nazis as the bad guys.