[quote=@Dinh AaronMk] This is a thing too that's not restricted only to video games. Movies, TVs, and even music (or music videos) do it too and have been for decades. It could be argued ever since the 1980's made being gay hip and acceptable and a discussion worth having on TV it's entered into every accessible medium or every mainstream accessible medium. It may have started off as that campy thing that certain characters were rolled up in to be "funny" or strange, but homosexuality is now an acceptable thing to market in the post-sexual revolution world. Maybe it isn't always well-written, in which case you can hem and haw over it. But zero'ing in on the "omg its homosex panda ring" perhaps the better thing to say would be, "they could have handled the writing between these characters to explore the fact". It might even be suggested that writers for video games are the nerd types who grew up on Rambo and Lord of the Rings where romance isn't really a core element of the plot so it any time its handled in anyway it's done so awkwardly. But beyond making a joke about it it may be a low blow to go further, especially given that now-a-days writing for mainstream video games doesn't have much pressure to be particularly intriguing or insightful because it has to now sell to highschoolers and College bros. We still get a few very well written games, like Witcher and New Vegas. But I have a running bias that anything advertised on Facebook and shit is going to be concentrating more on the spectacle of things going on than the art and wonder of world and plot. I doubt we're going to anywhere like... Though if someone were to try something of any considerable depth, analytical or otherwise in video games someone'll bitch and moan about the game trying too hard to sound smart in the same way they're trying too hard to be progressive and they need to be more Berry Goldwater. But on the point about games being art once upon a time: I would say Undertale is that sort of art game. And even without a AAA marketing strategy and elements included to give it broad appeal it writes in some gay plots, lesbian and otherwise. [/quote] Mainstream media in a market-based system becomes diluted by pandering pretty much always, so long as it is truly mainstream. And in every one of those cases, niche markets rise up parallel to the mainstream, sometimes producing art, sometimes just pandering to a more specific demographic. Video Games are at that point now, with small developers getting way more attention then they did ten years ago. I think Minecraft started that trend. [quote=@Dinh AaronMk] This reminds me of a post I read on /leftypol/. In it, an anon was responding to an alt-right, super-conservative visitor who was asking why any of it matters, why bother for some socialist paradise where we don't work and we own all the means of automated production, or why no one there bothers to get a job or something; I forget the specifics. In any case, the anon responded to him by spelling out that all the classic arts, literature, and everything traditional he stands for were invented by people who didn't labor in the sense they went to factories and worked 12 hours a day to make bread. All the art, literature, and what not from the time of the cavemen were made by people who had the time to because society provided for them, or these individuals worked only so much to provide for themselves and their community because there was no other expectations on them to do so. He cited his family history as Appalachians and that during his grandfather's time all the family and cousins would get together at the end of the day and make and perform music. Everyone could play an instrument and his grandfather had a piano he would play during these affairs. But eventually, the capitalist world caught up and the family could no longer hang on doing that. The farm went under, the family had to separate to find work elsewhere, and now even working eight hours shifts no one had the time, money, or energy to learn to perform folk music as they had and these days no one in his family can do as they did and pursue their old art. [/quote] To that guy's question: a person can have a job and be a leftist. I have a full time job, that pays well and doesn't give me shit, and I'm perfectly content with it. Doesn't mean I have to pay homage to capitalism in some religious way. My leftism comes from a complete lack of faith in capitalism's permanence going forward. I think people have fallen for this bizarre black-and-white fantasy that, because Leninist Communism collapsed, capitalism is now the permanent system of human civilization for all time and always. If you even spent a moment thinking about alternatives, you are a heretic. And that is alarming. If you make something sacred, even necessary criticism becomes a heresy. If I thought that I'd have my [u]current[/u] quality of life for the rest of my life (barring biological impediments), and that everyone else would be slowly raised up to the same level, then yeh, I'd be a political centrist. But from what I've read and seen, I think we are running headlong into peak-capitalism, when my life and the lives of most everyone else starts getting worse. Some art is produced by working folk. You do get stories like the conditions in which Steven King wrote Carrie. But it is generally true, and not even a controversial idea really, that part of the function of the working class is to make a class of people who experience and create culture possible. Shit, the idea was pretty much mainstream until the 19th century. I'd even bet that similar things are whispered in garden parties by our own rich and famous today, even if it is less fashionable in a democracy to admit it.