GTA 6 to feature series' first woman protagonist - and be more 'sensitive'

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[–]RamblingOtter 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I don't have an issue with a game having a female protagonist. But let's call this what it is. It's Rock* virtue signalling and wanting to look like they're sticking it to the old boy's club. If they can't create a new franchise based upon a female protagonist, then don't just stuff one into where it may or may not fit in the hopes that suddenly they are all virtuous.

I believe it's the petty virtue signalling and attempts at looking like they're trying to represent who knows what now that people have a problem with, not playing as a female character. If that were the case, Tomb Raider would have never seen the light of day.

[–]Alienhunter 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It's a form of viral marketing. Call it the "hate-and-switch" if you will.

Company makes a point to emphasize that "our new game will have a female/black/insert marginalize group here protagonist". In and of itself there's not real problem with this, but fans will be quick to criticize this for mostly good reasons like "gender of the protagonist has no bearing on whether the game is good, and they've got nothing to show for that" along with a handful of truly sexist or racist takes. Company then plays up the hateful response and repaints all the criticism of it as hateful and gets the internet to work it's magic as the white knights jump in to virtue signal and the anti-woke jump in to decry them and before you know it buzz is generated the name of the game is being spread everywhere and the company just managed to get wider coverage than they ever could have before. It's a classic move out of the trolls playbook. Say something you know will trigger people, sit back and eat the popcorn as they go at it. Gets a whole ton of people who'd never otherwise talk about your game to talk about it.

Disney does this a lot. Rememeber Force Awakens and all the "controversy" with the racists saying "hold up why is the stormtrooper black ain't they clones" from all those horrible racists that didn't read some spin off comic that explained that they weren't all clones? That's when I first noticed this style of marketing. It's been going strong ever since.

Eventually the market will get wise to it and it will no longer work and they'll have to move onto something else. But for the time being it seems like there's no shortage of people who will fall for it. Try to point it out to people in real life though and you'll find yourself the new target of these idiots wrath though so be prepared. People tend to respond very rudely when you suggest they're being manipulated.