Life is for playing games, not for being manipulated by politics

Come and help promote Jia'an's "Video Game Philosophy" , and the method is not what you think.
Let me start with a thunderbolt: My views on the game "PC" are in great conflict with Jia'an's.
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I believe that the issue of "political correctness" should have made many players roar in their hearts: "Please play the game well," or even the ugly phrase "Please, politics is politics, and games are games."
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That's what I think. I think it's really stupid to continue to be manipulated by the issue of "PC" vs "anti-PC".
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But please note that this does not mean that games can be separated from politics and justice, but it means that what is happening in front of us is neither politics, ethics, nor games, but a very old-fashioned manipulation of the wind direction !
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Again, this has nothing to do with politics or ethics, just very old-fashioned manipulation of the wind direction!
Why do we players fall in? Is it okay for a zhai to have the dignity of a zhai? We are not just babies born yesterday!
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Whether the sexy setting of "Sword Star" caused controversy (whether it was Yan Shang Law or not), or whether "Star Attack" was DEI and mediocre and was withdrawn from the market, what does it have to do with us?
Ask yourself, are you really someone who only plays one type of action adventure? Are you really someone who gets seriously uncomfortable when you see sexy female characters/objectified female characters? Do you really play every game like Battlefield?
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Or, are you from the game industry?
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If not, why on earth are you engaging in these news topics? What does the publication or fate of these games have to do with you?
Why do you play games? Shouldn't it be to show that you are superior, noble, or wise to others?
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At least not for me. I just want to relieve my stress and adjust my mood to read stories.
So I have been obediently being a garbage person for the past few years, almost only playing "MTGA" and "Path of Exile", and occasionally reviewing a few antique masterpieces such as "P5R".
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At least for me personally, playing games is not about being controlled. We all don’t like to be controlled, we don’t like to be controlled by work, and we don’t like to be controlled by games.
But in the "PC" controversy, it's not the game that controls us, but the media.
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The controversy between "Sword Star" and "Star Strike" is actually a political blackboard, or an old trick used in reporting on various political operations in history: "Pick extreme examples and hype them up."
In every camp and every community, there will be outrageous and extreme examples. Public relations experts will use these examples to promote the enemy camp, and then cause a lot of controversy and division. What kind of psychopath, "welfare queen"...even the previous "18 Party" in China.
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These have nothing to do with politics, they are just public relations techniques to make money and gain power.
The disgusting old tricks used in political wars of words should not be repeated in the gaming industry, okay? There is dignity in staying home (really speaking, staying home is a kind of dignity!)
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People who like games should not participate in these wars of words at all.
Regardless of your stance on political correctness, you should all refuse to be manipulated by this crude, inferior, and malicious public relations method.
You can play "Sword Star", "Star Strike", "The Last of Us Part 2", and "Horizon West" expansion packs, or you can not play them. You can criticize these games, but be aware of the old tricks of PR companies that tear people apart and don’t become a free agent.
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Or you can spend a lot of time writing wars on the Internet, or watching articles and videos in which both camps claim that they are the most righteous and wise, squeezing in your gaming time.
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My friend Zoey just heard about the AI ​​lecture given by Lessig, the open source law scholar, in May this year . Lessig believes that since the emergence of social media, the main function of the media is no longer to deliver news, but to deliver the most extreme opinions. The media decides which tweets/videos to promote and reward based on the degree of interaction, and people who spend a lot of time scrolling and interacting on the Internet are usually those who seek the most excitement.

Therefore, in the era of social media, a small group of extreme people, or a smaller group of wealthy people who deliberately want to manipulate public opinion, can easily determine the information environment of most people.
Not to mention after the emergence of LLM. Everyone knows about model collapse: AI content is posted on the Internet, and then the AI ​​is trained based on the Internet content , BOOM!
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The "PC" controversy in games, like many other contemporary issues, is model collapse. A small group of people think that the skin color, origin and body shape of video game characters are important to video games, and then another small group of people deliberately select the most extreme opinions and broadcast them as news.
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serious? When every player is a three-year-old?
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Now I press hide when I see this kind of content. I can’t even close the platforms I see so often.
Please, the rice is not tasty anymore. Uh no, the game has become unplayable.
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If you want to talk about some issues surrounding games, or want to discuss what constitutes good game design, I think instead of continuing to get stuck in the war of words, you might as well go to a game designer forum, or this book "Video Games" written by Jia An seriously. Philosophy" .
"What is the degree of freedom?" "What are the pros and cons of open worlds (and why some open worlds make games unplayable)" and "Why plot killings feel inconsistent" are much more interesting than political correctness.
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And these issues are closer to the game and further away from the dirty things you want to stay away from.
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(Yes, I object to Jia An’s PC-related chapters in “Video Game Philosophy”. This article can also be regarded as my casual argument on this issue*
But there are 23 chapters in the entire "Video Game Philosophy", and PC only occupies 4 chapters. Believe me, if you miss the remaining 19 chapters just for those 4 chapters, you will regret it. )
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If you are a gamer, you will like "Video Game Philosophy"
If you are a citizen who thinks about things seriously, you will come out against those inexplicable remarks that are manipulated by PC issues to besiege our family.
And more importantly, no matter what, you can safely withdraw from discussions of so-called "political controversies" and go back to play more games of "Path of Exile" comfortably.

PS 1. The cover is excerpted from Jia An’s response article. This article is also highly recommended to read .​​

PS 2 A brute force condensed version of the entire argument:
1. "Political correctness controversy" is a kind of public opinion manipulation that stigmatizes extreme opinions and appears in all public arenas.
2. The meaning of the game to the vast majority of players does not include public opinion, and may not even involve the public domain and public identity.
3. Therefore, for the vast majority of players, whether or not to play a certain game has nothing to do with the "political correctness controversy". Players have every right to withdraw from a discussion or discussion if it makes them uncomfortable, bored, or a waste of time.