For those confused, discworld dwarfs have both males and females. However, both are stocky and have beards. They also are very egalitarian regarding jobs etc. They long ago gave up correcting the surface races regarding their gender, who assume a burley minor in heavy armour, and a thick beard, is a male dwarf.
Did you read the article? Are you familiar with the concept of tech debt? Sounds like they would have to put the rest of the game dev on hold for months if not a year to make progress, and they’re already known as a company with slow dev because they take care of their employees and don’t crunch.
I mean I agree I want female dwarves in the game, but it’s literally millions of dollars to implement
I’m sorry, how is the exploitation of little people as a tourist attraction equivalent to fantasy dwarves? The first one is a reduction of human beings and the condition they live with to a sideshow curiosity; the second is a story that was made up for entertainment. I don’t see how the latter is related to the former.
The tourist attraction is based on the stories. And the stories are based on little people being ascribe magical properties, like “rubbing their head brings luck” or someshit like that. The fantastical stories live in a real context. And a lot of the stories about dwarfs come from an ableist view on short people.
Lots of fantasy creatures are based on a phenotype of human. Our ancestors didn’t know anything about anything so they made up a bunch of shit to explain it. If you plan to argue that the entire fantasy genre needs to go - no more elves, gnomes, halflings, hobbits, vampires, orcs, goblins, bugbears, etc - you’re gonna have a bad time.
If you plan to argue that the entire fantasy genre needs to go
yes, by valve not putting in “dwarf” as a tag to make it easier for its customers to search for games the entire fucking genre dies. Put ASoIaF fans on suicide watch lmfao
Hey, you’re the one saying the word “dwarf” is offensive. I’m just extending your logic, to illustrate for you why I think it’s a bad take. I’m glad you got it!
No you are trying to extrapolate from what I said into some generic ideal that I supposedly have. That’s not extending someones logic, thats strawmanning.
This is a story about Valve not putting a “dwarf” tag on their Steam platform
Your first post I replied to said there would be “able-ist connotations” to putting a dwarf tag on Steam
I want to know what “able-ist connotations” there are to a tag on a video game platform for the word "dwarf"
You replied with a video showing little people being exploited, with the comment “This kind of shit”
If your own video and comment and the entire context of this thread aren’t relevant to your point, that isn’t strawmanning on my part; that’s you not knowing how to make a reasoned argument.
I think the people with the condition are the ones who said the term can be offensive, which is why valve was not gung ho on using it.
I dont think its really up to you on if their opinion on their own insults is a bad take or not. Do you step in like this about other insults and slurs for other people?
I think if you bother to look for some of the conversations on the topic you’ll find the community is quite divided on the term, in point of fact. There’s nothing to stop any given individual being offended by literally anything; personally, I choose to respect someone if they ask me to refer to them in a particular way (or not), but that doesn’t mean that person speaks for their entire community and it doesn’t give them alone the sole right to blanket ban a word or concept.
You have a word that is hotly contested as pretty offensive to a group of people who deal with a lot of regular mockery and ridicule. A word so regularly debated on if it counts as reclaimed or insulting that it sounds like a conversation Ive had many many many times about such slurs as dyke, trannie, and faggot with other queer folk.
And youre shocked that a respectful company isnt chomping at the bit to use it to sell video games?
Just to make sure. Thats the stance you want to take right now?
Assuming you're asking from a place of wanting to know. "Dwarf" is a term that has been used in the past to describe little people or those suffering from dwarfism. It can be a negative word for some in that community and is tied to ableism in that way
Yeah, and it is also the name of a race of people from fantasy stories that were completely made up. Yes, fantasy races are based on human phenotypes. That doesn’t make the names of those races a slur.
It’s also the preferred descriptor for some. I’ve had friends with dwarfism that thought “little people” was condescending as hell and hated it.
None of this is ever black and white. Especially when it’s just interjecting into comments on the Internet talking about the fantasy race that’s either Jews with battle axes or persons from Svartálfheim.
It’s a mostly standard view of Tolkien scholarship. They’re much more a medieval view of jewishness then something straight racist like say, JK Rowling’s goblins. As makes sense for an Old English scholar like Tolkein.
Ancient people, separated into familial tribes, outcast from their ancestral home, not really welcomed anywhere but tolerated some places, warrior poet tradition, noble ‘in their way’, beards, gold, noses.
Sprinkle on some Norse/Germanic for flavor and there you go. Though then you can get into the side conversation of Yiddish being a Germanic dialect/language.
I think it’s more that it’s a meaningless tag. Dwarf fortress and drg are totally different games. Do all games that have any amount of dwarves get this tag? Does LOTR count for Gimli, or total war Warhammer for having a Dwarf playable race, or elder scrolls for the dwemer which are dwarves?
As a huge dwarf lover, this would be great for me. I’ve loved playing dwarves ever since I played Golden Axe at the arcade. Whenever there’s a dwarf as a playable character I’m more interested in the game. In fact, I dislike Skyrim for having elves but no dwarves.
Let me upset you further. Dwarves are just short humans, elves are just skinny humans, and orcs are just green humans. Halflings are human children, and gnomes are mischievous human children. We don’t talk about the aarakocra.
It doesn’t have to be the main theme, just something that’s present in the game. As some of the other commentors have shown, there would be people interested in tags like that, so why not?
You should feel represented. And so should girl gamers who the Deep rock Devs have continually said aren’t worth the effort of even 1 female character.
Are tall people literally half the human population? Are they a historically marginalized group? Is there an entire body of literature and studies examining the ways they are not repented in media?
I don’t think it’s worth a downvote, but what’s the ableist connotation? It’s not a judgment of disabled people or dunking on people with dwarfism, it’s just a tag for a would-be genre of games.
I think the problem is that they don't get awards even tho they are very good game and really amazing devs who love their games and playerbase. Last year read dead redemption won labour of love in the same category as drg was in 🤮
I think RDR and Starfield winning were ops planned by their respective communities. Like, these games are clearly neither of these things, yet they won. It’s seems intentional. Not on Valves part. I have no proof, of course. It’s just baffling.
How is it baffling? Gamers are “idiots” in the sense that memes are usually more important than useful communication. This post is exactly the same type of thing, a “dwarf” tag doesn’t really help communicate anything useful; am I more likely to want a “dwarf” game, or more likely to want a specific genre of game?
Starfield and RDR won their respective categories because gamers like to meme about. It’s the same reason useless Steam reviews get highly upvoted, gamers like to meme about.
What’s even worse is the reviews like “I’m gay” that gets a ton of “helpful” awards. They’re easy to scroll past, but it’s indicative of the unhelpful nature of a lot of gamers.
Not as bad as those asinine game guides that all say, “How to walk: press W lololol we’re all so funny and goofy 🤪” stfu that was funny maybe once at most, now the whole community is flooded with that stupid shit.
Oh my god, yes I’ve seen those! I saw it on Dark Souls 2 community and thought it was funny because the in game messages other players leave are usually not helpful at all, so I didn’t really pay it much attention. Then I saw it in Death Stranding, Skyrim, Lunacid, and a few others.
The Steam awards are a total joke. RDR, a game with zero content updates won labor of love. Starfield, a paint-by-number Bethesda RPG is most innovative. But it doesn’t matter because the awards don’t matter.
Not even that. The suits at 2K publishing (and maybe on Rockstar’s board of directors too tbh) just decided that it wasn’t worth investing any development time in since it prints money less easily and more slowly than GTA online
Certainly trolls deserve quite a bit of the blame. But Steam is also to blame for allowing people to vote on games they’ve never even played before, and allowing games that haven’t been updated in over a year to be eligible for labor of love. When 5 games someone doesn’t own are the options, it just becomes a contest of which game is best known.
I think the way tags work is that steam shows the most commonly used tags. But you can still add your own. If enough people add a dwarf tag then eventually it’ll start appearing as an option for other people.
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