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!
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?
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?
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
Video game news oriented community. No NanoUFO is not a bot :)
Posts.
News oriented content (general reviews, previews or retrospectives allowed).
Broad discussion posts (preferably not only about a specific game).
No humor/memes etc…
No affiliate links
No advertising.
No clickbait, editorialized, sensational titles. State the game in question in the title. No all caps.
No self promotion.
No duplicate posts, newer post will be deleted unless there is more discussion in one of the posts.
No politics.
Comments.
No personal attacks.
Obey instance rules.
No low effort comments(one or two words, emoji etc…)
Please use spoiler tags for spoilers.
My goal is just to have a community where people can go and see what new game news is out for the day and comment on it.
If you don’t rock and stone, you ain’t coming home.
Rock and Stone! Yeah!
Rock and stone to the bone!
ROCK. AND. STONE.
For Karl!
Rock and rollin’ Stone!
I fucking love dwarves, I’m all for a dwarf tag.
Screw layoffs, this is the actual Gaming Industry Disaster™
I think they want to avoid the abuse potential. It could be used to make fun of little people.
Let’s move it a bit further and introduce tags as detailed as vndb.
Given the ableist connotation I think valve is in the right on this one
Agreed Valve isn’t that shortsighted.
Booo.
deleted by creator
What able-ist connotation?
This kind of shit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2UgwINQVPM
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.
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!
(Narrator: They didn’t get it.)
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=S2UgwINQVPM
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
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
honestly couldn’t they easily sidestep that whole can of worms by requesting a ‘dwarves’ tag instead
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.
Sounds like something a dirty elf would say.
Elves are pretty much always lowkey supremacists and their tree love/fetish is obviously inferior to the industrious dwarves.
Found the drow.
Racist!
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.
The way Tolkien-style dwarves embody stereotypes about Jews makes me really uncomfortable. I’m glad I’m not the only one who sees it.
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.
From what I’ve heard, I think that is the officially accepted term from the community that most prefer, or am I behind the times?
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?
There are lots of tags about themes, not gameplay. This would be one more.
Is Dwarf really a theme though? Even in theme the sci-fi drg isn’t really similar to traditional fantasy dwarves in Dwarf fortress.
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?
The article even says that in a similar vein there’s official vampire and werewolf tags
They diggy hole.
You’re damn right it is, cloud brained Umgi.
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.
In Elder Scrolls lore, the dwarves are elves. So are the orcs.
Blashphemy!!
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.
Such clearly incorrect information doesn’t bother me. It’s not like you said elves were better than dwarves. THAT would upset me.
I mean, they are better than dwarves at basketball.
I’m relatively short and wide in shoulders. Fuck me, I guess, for feeling represented?
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.
And while we’re at it they should add tall dwarves too! So anyone tall who plays it feels represented
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.
WTF? Valve are you serious?
Valve knows that making a story about it will drive more sales.
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.
Aren’t there community tags for situations like these?
Also: who gives a fuck?
They ofcourse because it would put them at the top of some new to be category view and they think it will bring them more name and money
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 🤮
Yeah I didn’t understand how RDR won that award. Weird.
Awards are decided by number of votes
People are idiots
Do the math
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.
I really do hate those goofy ass reviews.
300 hours It’s okay I guess
Wow. So helpful in helping me decide if I want to spend my hard earned money on this game.
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.
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.
It made about as much sense as Starfield winning the most innovative gameplay…
Yeah steam awards were a joke but what does it have to do with a dwarf tag? Do they also want a dwarf category in steam awards?
Isn’t Steam awards are voted by users? So if anything, should the users (or rather, troll voters) be blamed?
I mean by the nature of more popular games getting more votes, its just how this system will always play out.
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.
It’s why Pizza Pizza has a history of being voted as Toronto’s best pizza chain despite selling cardboard with red paint on it as food
deleted by creator
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.
I believe Starfield at least was brigading to prove the point that the awards are silly at best at this point.
Did the job pretty well.
RDR is awesome, but yeah, the devs were probably crunched and were dying to finish it so they could rest lol.
RDR2 is an amazing games yes.
But it is not a game that deserves to get labour of love.
Devs don’t determine when or what they work on, that’s all up to management
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
Deep rock is getting serious about dwarf representation. But still thinks female characters aren’t worth the effort?
It’s easier to make fantasy men than literally 1 woman. I would call it a joke, but those are funny. This is just sad and infuriating.
Should have just said that it already has female dwarfs and refused to elaborate.
The Discworld way.
The Tolkien way, too. Remember Gimli’s bit about people thinking there aren’t dwarf women because they can’t tell them from the men?
I mean, Cheery is one of the best characters in the series.
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.
It’s an indie game and they would have to hire new voice actors. Frankly, it doesn’t matter in the slightest.
Indie dev that have made around 100 million dollars on Steam https://vginsights.com/game/548430
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
Except you can do it incrementally and just have a female dwarf that doesn’t support everything.
I demand an “undead” tag!