emeraldheart

"Stray Gods" is an incredibly beautiful game. I was turned off by the playstyle at first, but then I embraced it and got really invested in the characters and the story. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys Greek mythology and/or fantastic stories about interpersonal drama and enjoys games with tough dialogue choices.

The soundtrack also!!! It's a musical game and the songs are all SO BEAUTIFUL. I teared up a few times.

I agree with most of what you said. I think it's important to be conscious of where our money is going and to be comfortable discussing that with others.

About FF14 and Yoshi-P, however, I've actually heard the opposite about his opinion on trans people and NFTs. I heard from my friends (and upon a quick Google search I just did) that he expressed sympathy towards trans community members and that he was trying to keep NFTs out of the game? If you've heard otherwise, can you please share the information? I was going to resubscribe to play with my friends, but if you know something, I'd love for you to share it.

I will also check out those companies you mentioned near the end, such as KO_OP and Supergiant!

I really admire your response here as you put my thoughts and feeling about this more eloquently than I could. I really want to incentivize the good work people are doing, and while my dollar going somewhere else might not mean much to EA or Blizzard, it means a lot more to smaller groups who are trying to do the right thing with less resources. It also just feels nice to spend money on something good :)

I really appreciate this response. It balances the want to do good and make ethical choices with the reality that I can't do everything perfectly. It's important to do the best we can and also leave room to enjoy ourselves :)

Thank you for your response. I also think it's good that people are becoming more aware of these issues and doing what they can to address them.

I also think your point about FOMO is a good one; it becomes much less frustrating when I look at my backlog of games I've already purchased and have thousands of hours left to play. There will always be new games, and they won't always be made by people that make me feel uncomfortable.

As others have stated, you make a good point about indie game devs. Jonathan Blow is one that my partner brings up regularly. I didn't know about Ion Fury or Kovarex but that's disappointing. It's hard to keep track of it all, but when I find out about things like this, I'll do my best to consider it when making future purchases.

I appreciate your thought-out response. I'm going to respond as best I can to your points.

I struggle with moral/ethical conundrums in all areas of my life. The current discussion is games, but I really do consider the harm I might be causing any time I buy things. There are some harms that I cannot avoid, such as the purchase of gasoline (my current income is low and I cannot afford a greenee car). Others, such as food purchases, are limited in what I can do... But I try anyway. I have an app for telling me about ethical sourcing by company/product which I use at the store. Clothing, sadly, tends to be unethical no matter what, unless I make my own clothes - I sadly don't have the time or money to do so.

With video games, which are themselves a luxury, I have so many choices of what to play that I feel I have much more ability to decide what not to play, based on how I feel about where my money is going.

I should also acknowledge that I don't think any of these games/developers will suffer as a result of me not purchasing them. Developers/programmers also do not make income based on sales, and layoffs happen after the release of many major AAA games, simply because they don't need that large team anymore (I don't agree with this practice at all, and I think it's horrible to do to people who already don't make enough for their work, but it's relatively industry standard). The gaming community is also waaaay too large for any kind of boycott to be effective. I'm just trying to be mindful about my purchases based on my own feeling.

I think you raise a fair point about indie games. I think it's a good reminder to me to look into those as well. As long as there's no major publicized controversy surrounding an indie company, however, there's no information I can use to steer me away from it. But, I appreciate your reminder not to blindly purchase indie games just because the company is "indie."

Overall, I appreciate you taking the time to respond to me. I will be considering your points as I move forward.

Sorry to concern you! If anything I'm on the complete opposite side of the gaming politics pendulum.