Inclusion at the cost of Generalization

[BookTenTiger]

How do modern videogames and RPGs oversimplify mechanics to appeal to a wider audience? Do you think it's worth it? How could you reach multiple types of people without simplifying the game and removing anything, no matter how important, just because some random person was offended?

I find this prompt really confusing! I'm going to break it into three pieces:

1) Do modern video games and tabletop games oversimplify mechanics to appeal to a wider audience?

I'm not sure this is universally true. If you look at video games, a lot of games have been simplified to appeal to the audience of smartphone gamers. However, other big budget games, like Red Dead Redemption, have gotten even more complex! So I would say that game producers have increased the variety of video game complexities to match a more varied audience.

2) How could someone reach a wide audience without oversimplification?

Online streaming has really worked. I've never watched Critical Role, but I don't think it's the simplification of the game that makes it popular. That said, simplifying games can make them more accessible... But I definitely don't think that's the only way to do so.

3) What if someone random gets offended?

I am exceptionally confused about how someone can get offended about the simplification or complexity of a game's rules, without context. Can you give an example of this? Otherwise I am going to have to make assumptions about who you mean by someone random.

 

[Thirteenspades]

Your own biases are showing; his question can be as easily applied to the people offended by combat mechanics in games (and there are a few, most of whom aren't gamers), people who are offended by compulsory actions in games, people who are offended by ahistoricity of a period game (which sometimes includes me), people offended by there being a sociopolitical agenda driving a game's design (which includes me some of the time), people who are offended by games which have PCs on what is normally considered the "Bad Guys" side.

I've known people offended by Reich Star sight-unseen; Explaining that the game is about fighting the Reich in the 23rd century only mollifies some of them. Same people usually also find Grey Ranks offensive (It's set in a ghetto in Nazi Germany during WWII). (Likewise, some people are offended at the very existence of the Maus graphic novels. Similar effect.) I've known a number of hardcore gamers who have a totally insane hatred of anything even vaguely historical in games.

I've known....

• A few gamers who hated Twilight 2000, Morrow Project, and/or Aftermath simply because they presume WW 3 happens.
• A good number who hate on (Classic) Traveller because it's got death in Char Gen as a possible outcome.
• Quite a few who find table driven RPG rules offensive, without ever having played them. (Rolemaster especially gets targeted. Simple mechanics, but lots of tables.)
• A number of gamers offended by the "Great Wheel Cosmology" of AD&D... for a variety of reasons, including the idea that characters have an afterlife determined by their played alignment; others upset that each religion in the game doesn't have its own outer plane.
• A few people offended by Star Wars because "The Empire are just space nazis"... (one was once a card carrying member of the NSDAP, when he was a Boatsman in the 1940's. I've not seen him in 35 years now.)

There are quite a few things that people find offensive that aren't Race, Gender, Sexuality, nor Religion based, and many who find fictional things based off historical evils as offensive when in games.

Exactly, thank you for detailing that point.

 

[macd21]

Exactly, thank you for detailing that point.

What point? I still have no idea what you’re complaining about.

 

[Thirteenspades]

• A few people offended by Star Wars because "The Empire are just space nazis"... (one was once a card carrying member of the NSDAP, when he was a Boatsman in the 1940's. I've not seen him in 35 years now.)

There are quite a few things that people find offensive that aren't Race, Gender, Sexuality, nor Religion based, and many who find fictional things based off historical evils as offensive when in games.

This reminds me of Wolfenstein! Back in the 90s people hated on the game cause Hitler had a role. But you were his enemy! Just like with demons in D&D. You are KILLING the demons, it is at the worst far less evil than worshipping demons.

 

[BookTenTiger]

Exactly, thank you for detailing that point.

I feel like none of those examples are people actually being "offended" by game mechanics. I see disagreements and preferences, but in none of those cases actively exclude people based on identity, which is what we are talking about when we talk about "inclusion."

 

[BookTenTiger]

Your own biases are showing...

Oof, I think I strained my eyes from rolling them so hard.

You have to commit an incredible act of obfuscation to ignore the context of this conversation. In every recent discussion of "inclusion" in gaming, we have been talking about actively making D&D welcoming to people no matter their personal gender, race, religious, sexual, or other identities. The original poster didn't clarify their meaning of inclusion, so I think it's safe to assume this is what we are discussion.

Furthermore...

• A few gamers who hated Twilight 2000, Morrow Project, and/or Aftermath simply because they presume WW 3 happens.
• A good number who hate on (Classic) Traveller because it's got death in Char Gen as a possible outcome.
• Quite a few who find table driven RPG rules offensive, without ever having played them. (Rolemaster especially gets targeted. Simple mechanics, but lots of tables.)
• A number of gamers offended by the "Great Wheel Cosmology" of AD&D... for a variety of reasons, including the idea that characters have an afterlife determined by their played alignment; others upset that each religion in the game doesn't have its own outer plane.
• A few people offended by Star Wars because "The Empire are just space nazis"... (one was once a card carrying member of the NSDAP, when he was a Boatsman in the 1940's. I've not seen him in 35 years now.)

All of these can safely be put outside of the vast Venn Diagram of "inclusion." These are nitpicks, rules disagreements, misunderstandings and preferences, but they don't have anything to do (at least, as far as I can see) with excluding people from a game because of their identity.

 

[MGibster]

This reminds me of Wolfenstein! Back in the 90s people hated on the game cause Hitler had a role. But you were his enemy! Just like with demons in D&D. You are KILLING the demons, it is at the worst far less evil than worshipping demons.

I was around back in the 90s, and the complaints I can recall regarding games like Wolfenstein revolved around the violence. I'm sure someone complained that Hitler made an appearance as a bad guy, but that wasn't really wasn't what drew the ire of most who complained. On the bright side, back in 1991 there weren't any arguments that shooting Nazis in a video game made it too political.

 

[aramis erak]

Oof, I think I strained my eyes from rolling them so hard.

You have to commit an incredible act of obfuscation to ignore the context of this conversation. In every recent discussion of "inclusion" in gaming, we have been talking about actively making D&D welcoming to people no matter their personal gender, race, religious, sexual, or other identities. The original poster didn't clarify their meaning of inclusion, so I think it's safe to assume this is what we are discussion.

I see a lot of people on this site who automatically assume "offense" to be sexual, gender, racial, or religious biases only.

I've literally heard people say that Rolemaster should never had been printed because it scares newbs.

I've seen people turn around and leave a game store because it carried Vampire. And for Palladium. In both cases, they came in looking for specific games, and were so offended at the idea of some of the games that they complained and refused to come back while those were on sale. I know one of them called in a year later, and was shocked that they still carried vampire. (that person was looking for Dragonraid... which, if you don't know it, look it up.) I know a few gamers who were offended that Dragonraid was carried by the same store... FYI, it's equally as non-inclusive as RaHoWa or Fatal, but in a different direction.

People take offense for some very different reasons. Some of them damned petty.

 

[Umbran]

Exactly, thank you for detailing that point.

The point that all conversations take pace within a context, and that people not jumping out of that context when you do without clearly stating so doesn't constitute a "gotcha" moment, you mean?

 

[MichaelSomething]

Have you tried Fall Guys?

It's easy enough that a kid can play it...


yet hard enough to make a grown man rage...