Adapted from a thread on Bluesky
An aside: I’m calling this a merge game because I’ve heard others call it that. I’ve played a bunch of games with a similar evolve-and-combine mechanic on Playables, and that genre doesn’t seem to have a specific name.
Let’s start with the slot machine. I think you could make the argument for or against this being antisemitic, or at least it being deliberately so. It’s just a carnival hawker or something, don’t read too much into it? Not a great start, not the worst I’ve seen either.
But what the actual fuck is going on with the Equal Rights path?
Some of these are just straight-up misogynistic tropes deliberately made to seem as gross as possible. I thought Dana and Fencer were just references I didn’t get, but I’ll get to that in a moment.
I genuinely do not understand the thought process here. Presumably, the player that picks the Care and then Equal Rights path leans towards feminism and is likely female, so why would you serve those players depictions more in line with what an incel would expect? And weirdly, Suffragette and Rosie The Riveter are fine. Activist isn’t too bad, either, although her original depiction was worse.
I did look up a video showing the full tree, which unfortunately is older, but revealed a couple things:
- While the Care/Equal Rights tree strikes me as particularly bad because it leans into sexist ideas, the whole tree is basically stereotypes depicted negatively, so it is a more general design decision at play.
- The names and graphics used to be WORSE. Dana was “body positivity” and had a shirt that said “fat and sexy”.
It’s possible the mobile version of the game still has the older, even worse depictions in it. I can’t be bothered to check.
This is the video I used for reference (I have no affiliation with the creator): Homo Evolution – all 72 creatures
There’s a comment tree on the video that discusses why the game is sexist and the depictions of women are particularly bad. To paraphrase @DoubtlessCar0, who I think hit the nail on the head: while all characters are exaggerated for effect and depict a variation of taking an ideal too far, for female characters it’s very gendered and not just on theme. On top of that, depicting a feminist path with that progression is questionable in and of itself.
Honestly, I’m not sure why they went with “exaggerated in a negative way” for a style instead of something cute and/or positive, but hey, it’s got a ton of plays. I’m only playing this because it’s on YouTube Playables for free, I’m sure the mobile version is an utterly unplayable hellscape of ads and microtransactions.
That being said, I think I’m going to go back to the paper plane game. It may be grindier than War Thunder during a limited-time event, but at least it’s not shoving this shit in my face.