By David Futrelle
Fans of the well-loved postapocalyptic video game The Last of Us are reeling over a massive leak of information about the game’s upcoming sequel that suggests the story will be taking an exceedingly dark turn that highlights the futility of a cycle of revenge and retribution.
You’ll have to look up the spoilers yourself; I don’t want to give any more plot details.
While many fans are upset with the new direction, an angry minority has decided to blame the game’s apparently much darker plot — and everything else they think is wrong with the still-unreleased sequel — on evil SJWs for “shoving as much diversity and woke agenda at the player as possible,” as the One Angry Gamer site awkwardly put it.
In particular, they’re targeting unnamed and possibly imaginary trans activists at Naughty Dog, the developer of the game, for making it (allegedly) too trans-friendly for the true fans.
Much of the ire centers around a new character named Abby, whom 4channers and others have decided is trans — or at least “trans-gendered-looking,” as One Angry Gamer has described her — because she’s small-breasted and a bit butch.
A writer at the right-wing culture war site Sausage Roll takes this argument further, arguing that the allegedly less-feminine character design in The Last of Us 2 is part of a devious plan to make the game “trans-friendly.”
“It seems … that the inclusion of gay and lesbian characters in the last three Naughty Dog games was not enough to appease the activists who are reportedly working at Naughty Dog,” wrote Sausage Roll’s Dianne Anders.
The Last of Us Part II gameplay footage leak confirms that the plot has some extreme trans rights ideologies, too. ….
Abby is the leader of [a] little gang; and, according to 4chan leaks, she is also a trans woman.
Has there ever been a less-credible source than “4chan leaks?”
The characters in The Last of Us Part II are designed in such a way to not make trans people feel uncomfortable. Every single new character introduced in the sequel does not have definitive feminine or masculine qualities.
Ellie and Dina, specifically, have been remodelled to look less feminine … .
According to an unnamed video game artist interviewed by Anders, it’s all the fault of trans women that the game’s characters don’t have massive, male-pleasing boobs. (Because what’s an apocalypse without boobs?)
“A trans woman can’t naturally grow large breasts, and not all trans people can afford implants,” the anonymous artist told Anders.
If you see a game where the women are a little less curvy, it’s not … because the game designers are worried about receiving backlash for sexualising women, it’s because they are worried about offending the trans community. …
That’s why you will see a lot of designers ‘nerfing the female form’ so to speak so that the difference between trans women and cis women is a little less noticeable.
Anders herself continues:
That might explain exactly what happened to the cis female characters in TheLast of Us Part II.
We can practically hear the gutteral cries from offended gamer dudes from around the world: TRANS WOMEN TOOK MUH BOOBIES!
This would ring true especially if one of the new protagonists is a trans woman because it would blur the line between cis and trans so people would perceive Abby simply as a female hero.
Given that she’s already seen as trans despite no evidence that she is actually trans, that seems a tad unlikely.
It’s striking how easy it is for people like Anders — and her 4chan “sources” — to conjure up a trans demon out of nothing. Because transphobia runs deep.
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@Ohlmann
There’s loads of them, but as WWTH points out the vast majority are ‘casual’ games. Any of the myriad of matching games (e.g. Candy Crush), solitaire card games, Tetris clones, bubble shooters, etc.
@naglfar
I questioned it because I have never heard a woman. Cis or trans. Call themselves female and not woman girl lady gal, anything that doesn’t identify themselves as a human female. Mysongist dickbags that are just dickbags or pretending to be a woman or girl will call themselves female or call women and girls female because they don’t count them as a human just a female animal. So thats why i doubt penny is a woman. Trans, cis or others wise.
@Ohlmann
Yup make a ‘call of duty’ game with a story centered around defending Trumps wall against Mexican drug cartel terrorists and you won’t hear apeep from the no politics crowd .
@Lainy
I’m suspicious of Penny as well. It was a key part of GamerGate that gaming dudebros had sockpuppets posing as women or PoC to deflect allegations of sexism or racism. My comment was calling out Penny and the other drive bys, not the regulars.
The only women I’ve seen call themselves females outside of medical contexts are TERFs, who like to call themselves “Adult Human Females” because of their commitment to sex essentialism. Then again, I think a lot of TERF accounts claiming to be women are actually men sockpuppeting for the same reasons as GGers.
I sometimes call myself female, because most of the other descriptors don’t fit.
I’m not a kid, and don’t like being called girl, girly, gal and the like.
I’m not particularly ladylike, so my lady, ma’am, and whatnot just feel really, really, really weird.
I don’t really feel like a “Woman” because that either feels like a descriptor of a real adult or something weird and it just doesn’t fit. Like, I usually end up going with woman instead of female, but it still just doesn’t feel great.
So, female works for me. Former EMT and biology BS, so I got desensitized. Still, 80-90% of the time anyone else uses female as a descriptor online, I still imagine a Ferengi (Star Trek) saying it? And feel strong “this person is being odd” vibes.
Super hypocritical of me, I know.
Idk.
My trolldar is notoriously weak, but Penny is lighting it up like a neon billboard.
Tl;dr: I’m a female who describes themselves as female, and I STILL am suspicious of people who describe themselves as female online.
Just wanna leave a quick note.
Nobody (and I mean NOBODY) cared about tits in this game. People had a problem with the story being garbage and pandering to a group that won’t buy the game anyways.
@Heythereguys
Got any proof outside of 4chan that there is any pandering going on? becauses all we see is guys looking at a character that doesn’t fit their narrow idea of ‘female’ and coming to the conclusion that she must be trans.
@Heythereguys
Except for those who came all the way here to say they did, and many others.
Got a source other than the rectum?
Trans people: known to never play video games?
There’s a lot to unpack in just this one word!
I’m going to laugh my ass off when Abby turns out to not be trans at all and all this 4chan theorizing turns out to be the usual garbage that comes off the site.
But let’s say that Abby does turn out to be a trans character. When are you going to express your anger at all the games that pander to straight cis white men? If a character existing in a game = pandering to the group that looks the same, then most games pander to straight cis white men. Is pandering only bad when it’s not pandering to YOU specifically? Or is all pandering bad?
If you think pandering is automatically bad, then literally every game that has a character in it panders to some group(s) and the only non-pandering games are ones like Candy Crush and Tetris that don’t have characters. That means that Candy Crush is morally superior to every AAA game out there, and you should probably confine yourself to that style of game so as not to offend your delicate sensibilities with pandering.
@PoM
Though I myself don’t play video games much, most of the trans* people I know IRL and online do play them. There may be a sampling bias at play, but it seems trans* people play games just as much as cis people, if not more.
That sound you just heard was the collective sound of a thousand GamerGaters exploding with rage.
@ POM
I don’t know if there was any pandering in Tetris; but it was certainly political. Both internally with the game, and externally with the marketing.
The fact it was marketed is itself political. It was meant to be marketed by Elektronorgtechnica; a state agency specifically set up to monetise games. There were all sorts of shenanigans about contracts and Nintendo and stuff.
The USSR had had video games previously. But they were government designed ones. The games promoted the military, healthy pursuits, and Russian culture.
But the Russian government liked the idea that the game was good PR abroad, and also promoted mathematical thinking, And it’s hard to imagine any game more Russian themed; even the music!
@Alan:
I did not know that. Cool!
Back on Topic:
My dearest Heythereguys,
If no one cared about Abby’s appearance and all the rage is about pandering, then why the hell are they complaining about the appearance they care nothing about?
Instead of the ‘weak pandering plotline’ that they supposedly are angry about?
I am confused.
…that was facetious.
If you were correct in your premise, you’d be better equipped to offer specifics about what exactly constitutes or demonstrates pandering or weak plotting instead of the general hand waving of:
“ignore these very boob specific diatribes! It’s not about the boobs! It’s the PANDERING!!!“
Look, sometimes I just want a nice, relaxing time struggling to survive against waves of zombies in an end of the world scenario. I don’t want to be reminded that certain ordinary people exist, because that’s politics and stressful.
@Alan Robertshaw
I kid about Tetris, of course. Tetris has the greatest, most complex and deep character of any video game: the straight-line piece.
@ POM
Yeah; and why isn’t there a queer-line piece! It’s like everyone has been saying; all games are political. But that idea of complexity in simplicity is something I ponder every now and then.
I do like Tetris though. Never played it; but can watch and listen to it for ages (I’m very easily entertained).
Maybe all the others are queer in some way! And only that one is not …
You’re familiar with the Game of Life, I assume.
@PoM
Conway’s? That one occasionally makes shapes reminiscent of Tetris, but not as often as some other cellular automata I’ve seen.
@ POM
Ooh, now there’s a blast from the past. Played that on a Commodore PET! Now, you’ve got me on a hunt for a web based version! See you in four months.
@Alan
If it takes you 4 months to find a web-based Game of Life, I worry for you, lol.
I cannot tell you how happy this makes me. On a real flashback. I can even smell the room. Computers seemed like functional magic then.
@ POM
I’m old school; I insist on finding it with Alta Vista! 😀
@Alan Robertshaw
In case you want to save some time, have a link.
Of course, if you want to go really old-school, you’ll have to find a book of BASIC programs and type it into an interpreter. I have a few of those books lying around, maybe there’s a version of Life in one of them.
@ naglfar
Cheers for that; amazingly I had actually managed to find it. I also now know there’s a board game of the same name.
It’s a real nostalgia trip tonight.
There was a magazine called Computer & Video Games. As well as articles it featured BASIC programmes for different machines for you to type in. It would take ages, and there’d be lots of de-bugging. But the anticipation was fantastic, and the sense of completion once you got it working. Having done that I’d then never play the game again.
@Alan Robertshaw
There is, and I’ve played it. I personally didn’t enjoy it much, and it has nothing to do with Conway’s version, but YMMV.
Since I have some computers around that still run BASIC, I might try to get Life up and running later if I get a chance. Or maybe I’ll try to run it on a TI-84. This website has code for it in dozens of languages if anyone is interested.
Policy of Madness says:
Except the Candy Crush games do have characters. And even little storylines.