Critic goes SJW on Witcher 3, developer rips critic a new one

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I consider Polygon’s review of The Witcher 3 poisonous to the industry: to gamers, to game developers, to game journalists.

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Actually, we already know that non-white races exist in the Witcher universe. The books talk about Zerrikania, and the first game featured Zerrikanian sorcerer Azar Javed, who was clearly not white.


So it would not be a problem if the third Witcher featured non-white races. It’s just that it’s also not a problem when it doesn’t. It’s a non-issue.

I wonder if the reviewer would complain that a game based on a Norse mythology, one about a warrior fighting his way through the frozen Scandinavian lands, featured no Asian people. I wonder if it would be a problem for him that a game mixing aliens and Maya mythology featured no African Americans. I wonder if it’s a problem for him that Yakuza 3 features, like, just one white guy and he’s kind of an a-hole.

So yeah, the fact that a post-modernist remix of fantasy and the Polish folklore made by Slavs does not feature non-white characters, is a non-issue.

Note that I am not sure that adding “strangers from the strange lands” to the game would solve anything for the chronically offended. Based on everything I learned about them in the last year, and I learned a lot, if you put a person or a few from any non-white race, they would be called “token characters”. It is the Token Minority trope after all?—?and, as we know thanks to the megaphoned dilettantes, tropes are bad, mmkay?

The only way to please the outrage factory would be to have every race, every gender, every minority imaginable represented equally. As long as the hero, Geralt, is not a straight white male. And whoever replaced him, they would certainly not be allowed to be nicknamed The White Wolf.

If you think I am exaggerating, then you haven’t been paying attention lately, have you? I so envy you?—?and I’m not even kidding.

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Again, how is such a world full of characters like these “oppressively misogynistic”? Does the reviewer even understand what these word mean?

Let’s talk more about it while we move to the interpretation two: the creators themselves are misogynists or simply bad or misguided people.

Gies is of course too smart to openly call them “misogynists”, but phrases like “the world CD Projekt has created is oppressively misogynist”, “the inclusion of so much violence explicitly directed against women feels like a clear, disconcerting choice”, “women in The Witcher 3 are comically sexualized” make it clear that the reviewer has a serious problem with the developer and their creative choices.

The thing is, neither in this case nor in the previous one the term “misogynistic” makes sense. A misogynistic developer or a misogynistic game would send a clear message that women are inferior beings and it is totally okay or even encouraged to hate or mistreat them.

Is this the message that The Witcher 3 conveys?

No?

So… Neither is the world of the game “oppressively misogynistic”, nor are the developers misogynists?

Then why the hell do you defecate on years of developer’s blood, sweat and tears by implying their work is sexist and misogynistic?

And while we’re at it, why are you hurting feminism by inserting “misogyny” and “sexism” everywhere, whether it makes sense or not, to the point when, disgraced, these words become as effective to the desensitized public as a certain boy’s cry?

I wonder: is the review a cynical click-bait or is it all just musings of a true social justice zealot? I honestly don’t know. But I know it doesn’t matter, the result is the same: poisoning the industry that is already sick.

I did consider ignoring this review but it already went boom and I think that exposing its weaknesses?—?I am being courteous here?—?helps in the long run anyway, even if every now and then a website has a traffic spike. Soon?—?it’s already happening to a certain degree, I sort of mentioned it above, and personally I am already in the first stages of indifference?—?nobody is going to care, and no amount of “misogyny” and “sexism” is going to draw the crowds anymore.

And we can all go back to enjoying video games.

Meanwhile, I hope that people also read and share reviews of the game from other places. Let’s show that we are interested in a talk about racial issues, violence or sex?—?all of which are present in The Witcher 3?—?without the blinding clickbait fire of ideological fanaticism.

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