Gaming The System - The Feminist Gaming Podcast

227 Gaming the System vs. The Anti-Woke Steam List – Part 2

• Gaming The System - The Feminist Gaming Podcast

Share episode

In this second part of our journey into the Woke Games Steam List, Matt, Jem, and Alex continue dissecting the spreadsheet compiled by a Steam group determined to flag games they believe are “too woke.” The list includes 1,600 titles categorised based on content they find politically or socially objectionable, particularly anything seen as pro LGBTQ+, progressive themes, or diverse narratives.

In this episode, the GTS Pod explores what motivates this kind of cataloguing, who benefits from it, and what it tells us about gamers and the industry.

Absurd - Calling Hades out for LGBTQ+ characters - you've read some Greek myths right!?

Overt - Elden Ring - overly pro-LGBT!? - There's not a single overt moment in the game. 

No stone left unturned - You have to play a lot of The Witcher 3 to find a minor character's hidden gay backstory. 

“They’ve done a really good piece of research here… what they’ve shown is that people want woke games.” — Jem

“You don’t need to understand why these horrifying things happen, just that they can—and that should inform how you live.” — Matt

“They have to play the shit out of these games to get some of the conclusions they’ve got.” — Alex

While serious in theme, this episode balances critique with a touch of dry humour and clear-eyed reflection. The hosts neither dismiss the spreadsheet outright nor let its authors off the hook. Instead, they explore how such attempts to gatekeep culture often backfire—offering more insight into societal change than the creators may have intended.

As always, the team brings an intersectional feminist lens to the conversation, grounding their analysis in empathy, history, and an unflinching look at how backlash often reveals more about fear than fact.

📢 Support the Podcast!

Let us know on BlueSky (@gamingthesystem.bsky.social), Instagram (@gamingthesystempodcast) or in the comments on YouTube!


If you love Gaming The System, consider supporting us:
🔹 Patreon: patreon.com/gamingthesystem – get exclusive content!
🔹 PayPal Donations: gamingthesystem@gmail.com
🔹 Subscribe & Review: Share the podcast with fellow gamers!

🎙 Gaming The System releases new episodes every Thursday

Thanks for listening, and remember – there’s always another game to play that isn’t full of nonsense. 🎮✨

#GamingTheSystem #GamingNews #MarvelRivals #BoobPhysics #GamingCulture #FeministGaming #ElonMuskGamingScandal #GamerGuilt #feministgamingpodcast​ #feministgamers​ #intersectionalgaming​ #equalityingames #girlgamer​ #gamergirl​

Speaker:

Hello everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Gaming the System, the podcast where three intersectional feminists examine gaming and games through a feminist lens. Today I am your host, Matt, and I'm joined by my friends Alex and Gem. Before we get started, if you want to support us, you can subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/gaming system for some exclusive content. Or you can send us a one-off donation via PayPal to our email address. We are gaming the system@gmail.com.

Alex:

It'd be interesting to, to think about how much impact is this having on the world at large.

Jem:

My favorite phrase at the moment is, hater's gonna hate. There's always gonna be somebody out there who has a different point of view from you, and there's always gonna be somebody out there who's got something horrendous, horrendous way of viewing the world. And so, you know it, how much should we care about this?

Matt:

I had a point, I had several points. I'll go with one tangent,

Jem:

Start at the beginning.

Matt:

Okay. Hate's gonna hate. That's one. Two, slavery. I'll start with that one. I been looking into some stuff about slavery recently as well. I'm really feeling drawn to finding out the worst parts of humanity.'Cause I find that given me a great perspective on the world at large, seeing things in the bigger picture. You don't need to understand why these horrifying things happen. You just need to know that they happen and that they can happen. Then make decisions in your life from that perspective what I think a lot of people on the left have is that we, we think most people want the world to be a better place. We think underneath all the stuff that they've got going on there, there's a good person in there who's just been raised a particular way, and then there's a good person in there. And there's a phrase I heard recently from a comedian who said, and I'm gonna use the C word for the first time on the podcast'cause we've been going for two years. And I thought, eh, why not? And the phrase is, hurt people hurt people, but you know, who also hurts people, c**ts. Some people just have that hate, that outwards just bile. And there doesn't need to be a reasonable rationale behind it because that's what this is. And you'll find that most people who say they care about, oh, we want there to be less immigration because the jobs should be for British people. We shouldn't have taxpayers money being spent on immigrants. And that's a conversation when you go, well we do have to have a conversation about we can't just, you want to have no immigrants. And they could point, you could say that as well, Britain is for British people and we should only be spending taxpayers money on British people. And you can go, okay, we can't stop them all'cause it's humanitarianism. But we can have a conversation about how much we allocate to them and what we should be doing. If you're part of, what Europe, the European Union should be doing is going right, we'll all take. X amount of refugees.'cause we've got space. I don't know if you've stepped outside into the countryside or been on a trade and driven and gone past the countryside. There's so much space. There's so much space with one of the wealthiest countries on the planet. We have space for that. And we could give them the economic reasons, the humanitarian reasons, pick apart all their arguments. But then at the root of it is very often, but I fucking hate black people and brown people. That's what's there. Underneath it all, underneath all of this, this reasonable sanitizing language. It can be picked apart so quickly

Alex:

we were gonna talk about how, this manifests itself in the way they categorize games. I wonder how big it is. Is it increasing exponentially or is there a cap?

Matt:

Uh, they've gone to a thousand games.

Alex:

Wow.

Jem:

1,691 games, or 1,690 games Hades is on there, I just spotted. And it says that they don't recommend it because it contains overly pro LBTQ plus messaging, homosexual relationship between mine and characters, optional homosexual romance. The NPC Chaos is non-binary. And the NPC doer says she is asexual. Do they have, they actually read any like Greek mythology?

Alex:

It is all over the ancient world.

Jem:

himself is it turns into a bull

Alex:

Yeah. Lots of different animals. There was like a swan, a bull, all sorts of stuff, but he'd basically screw anything or anyone. Yeah, he didn't care. That's the thing though, all of these things that they're against have been a part of humanity for. Eons and so it's never going to be eradicated no matter what they believe.

Jem:

They've got games that they don't recommend, ones they do, and ones that they're informational, I guess it's like a sort of be alert, you might be

Alex:

mm

Jem:

by this, But are they suggesting that people just don't play them because they've got this content?

Matt:

The first one, biggest one I've come up straight away is Balder's Gate three. Overly Pro Be staff. I love the studio director for Larian.'cause he's the one I think like it must have been years ago now, who came into a meeting dressed in S of Armor, going, we're gonna make Balder's Gate three. And the fact that I. He's just taken swings at Ubisoft and other, the corporate command structure of game designers going. Single players games are still popular. They just have to be good Eldon ring overtly pro LGB. It's not overt. There's nothing overt about Eldon ring. Nothing. Literally nothing is overt about it. It's mental.

Alex:

It's so confusing

Matt:

Let's find the first one that is, Recommended. We've got recommended,

Jem:

Oh, I need to look now see Valheim is on here.

Alex:

Is recommended.

Jem:

What's

Matt:

the first and second one.

Alex:

Really

Matt:

So this is a good opportunity for, to bring one of my other theories in. Have either of you heard of the, the Newport Naval scandal? Up until fairly recently, in fact. The Army can discharge people convicted of unbecoming conduct, which is incredibly vague. And this has meant vigilantly investigating any rumors that surfaced and maintaining a policy of active harassment of known or suspected homosexuals. So basically you find a gay person in the army and then, because you can't just go, oh, he's gay, you get kicked out for being gay. They say it is conduct unbecoming and then kick you out. Now, in 1919 there was an officer who found out about this stuff and he was horrified. And so he organized a sting operation where he recruited a handful of young sailors and tasked them with going out and collecting evidence of gay activity in the Navy. They were given permission saying, why not conduct a sting operation using good looking young men to infiltrate the homosexual underground and get the evidence they needed by having sex. So in order to sniff out the problems, gay people in the military being a problem, you send out these young men who would have sex with the gay. Sailors i'm exhausted. She goes, oh, we should take this to the higher commands. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Not yet. Not yet. We need to conduct more research. Yes.

Alex:

Need to

Matt:

that's the feeling I'm getting from these anti work people because it's the me thinks the lady does protest too much

Alex:

I. They have to play the shit out of these games to get some of the conclusions they've got to on the spreadsheet,

Matt:

And then go, oh, this, this was terrible. Absolutely terrible. I'm part of the team. I've got to soldier through and do my duty

Jem:

I played it so that you don't have Take one for the team.

Matt:

such a good way to put it. And so the, the thing that, brought that to mind was in the, the, Witcher three is, one of the ones, so the first two are

Alex:

Hmm.

Matt:

and it says, contains no woke content. But then the third one, it says it has subtle pro LGBT messaging. Several minor characters provide exposition regarding their experiences of homosexual individuals. There is one, I have played it for hundreds of hours. There is one example of a minor character having a homosexual relationship, and it is so. Easy to miss. It's like two lines of, of gay hunter who you meet who just says, I was a stable hand and I fell in love with the, master of the house's son. And he, kicked me out and it was all very, apparently there's a, there's a stereotype of, I think it's called TragiGay, where anytime there's a gay romance, it's always gotta have a tragic, a tragic conclusion to it. And in order to find that bit, you have to properly pay attention and play the game. And they've gone in like. I think it's six months. It's a very short period of time to go from zero to a thousand games.

Alex:

Where do they find these recruits?

Matt:

someone's got, to do the dirty work

Alex:

yeah.

Jem:

Well, I think we should be sympathetic to them because clearly they. They've obviously stumbled on these games or been gifted them, or you know, bought them off the back of good reviews and then they've managed to get a couple of hundred hours in and, and realize like how terribly woke these games are. It must be really traumatic

Alex:

heartbreaking for them. Yeah.

Jem:

I can't take it seriously. What do they want to happen? Are they trying to encourage people to boycott these games to shift the industry? Or do they have a plan with what they want to do with all of this spreadsheet?

Alex:

Perhaps it's God's work who?

Matt:

that's one of the questions I've been pondering because they're losing, if we were to write a list of, the things that. Let's say cultural and social issues, apart from actual gameplay stuff like accessibility features included with the social, social stuff. Things like, what's a thing that is, I hate, fucking intro c tiles. You know, when you, you start a game, it goes, right start game, game, game name, studio name, made by Nvidia. This game was made by a team of diverse individuals. And you go, I, I want to play it. That's something that I would include in the list of like game stuff, gameplay stuff, and that's a taste thing. And then there are the social and cultural things. We want games that are pro accessibility to let more people play the game. And in order for that to happen, we need game studios to invest in making their games accessible. If someone said to me pro if you wanted to go anti-capitalism in art, there's a place for literally everything in. Cyberpunk 2077 Capitalism One. You could describe it as pro capitalism or anti-capitalism, because from our perspective it's bad. But for the people in charge, it's good. Like I say, there is a place in art for every one of the list of the things on there, what is woke because you could have, there's say LGBT stuff. In the last of us two, for example, when Dina and Ellie are kissing on the dance floor, and one of the old, old guys comes and calls them dykes, and Joel comes in and punches him. And you go, that's anti LGBT stuff, but there's a place for it in the story, I want to see reflections of the world, reflections of reality. Because if everyone agrees on everything, then what's there to argue about? How do you create conflict when everything follows, follow these things. How do you create conflict if you, if you adhere to all of these rules, if you can't even have the, the option to argue with them, and like you say, Jem, the, the originals of ancient Greek and the. It's always been about gods and sex. That's what all religion has always been about, especially the ancient Greeks. And I'm a, I I'm either of, you know what pederasty is,

Alex:

I feel like I know part of the word,'cause it sounds like a Greek word, but Yes.

Matt:

It is, it's the ancient Greek practice of older men having sexual relationships with younger boys.

Alex:

Yeah, it was very common in ancient Greece.

Matt:

Very, very common. This is, this is moving off from the subject, but it's basically, there's a, there's a, there's a, trope in Hollywood of young hairless boys having these torrid romances with older men like Daniel Craig and in one of his latest films and that called me by your name film. And all of the boys looked like Timothy Chalamet and all the men are in their forties and fifties. And it always leaves me speechless'cause I dunno fucking where I'm meant to be going with, the thoughts of it. I don't think they want anything. What do you two think

Alex:

it doesn't appear like they are taking things further in the spreadsheet at this from working can gather, but I assume them that if things were to escalate, they'd want what's happening in America right now anyway. Taking over of, systems, shutting down of initiatives. All those sorts of things that we've been hearing about under this new Trump administration, are now becoming a sad reality for a lot of, public and, uh, Who knows impact that's gonna have years down the line. I don't know where the line is for these people. If there is a line. Um, it's a difficult one really, other than the spreadsheet.

Matt:

Yeah, I, I was just gonna say, Yeah, what I've been reading about recently is always assume that there isn't gonna be a line

Alex:

Yeah.

Matt:

I have extremes that I would go.

Alex:

That's not okay.

Matt:

not To, I don't agree with that. So like, if, uh, labor Party suddenly turns around and goes, right, we're going to allow. immigrants in and we're going to, support them, fully. And you go, yay, that's good. That's great. We can have a plan with that. If they then said, we are gonna bring 10 million immigrants in and they're gonna move all the British people out their homes, and British people who live on the street and immigrants can live in their houses, I go, woo, let's take a step back and, and go there. So we have standards where we go, I'm not following you. Just'cause I like you, I'm following you because I agree with what you, uh, believe in and what you do. Whereas with these people they don't have that, because they will believe what they're told, their beliefs will shift and change based on what they're told

Jem:

they've done a really good piece of research here, and I think that's to be commended that for however they've gathered this information, they have put it all in this excellent spreadsheet. And what the spreadsheet says, I've just very quickly looked at it, is that they've looked at 1,600 and let's say 58 games, and very quick look is about 600 to 700 of those are games that they would recommend or they would recommend with advisory, which means that about a thousand are games that they would not recommend. So what that says to me is that the industry. Is and has been making lots of woke games, and those woke games are doing very well. Thank you very much. Because as we've talked about so much, this is a growing industry. So I think what they've shown is that people want woke games and these people, I'm going to say they're probably mostly male, are dinosaurs. I fling back and forward about whether or not this is that death rattle that everyone hopefully speaks about, because I think that it would be nice. I would love to believe that, but I have concerns about the likelihood of that. But I do think that the vast majority of people in the world want to just get on with their lives and they don't really mind what other people do, as long as it doesn't get in their face and ruin their lives. And that's why the right wing, and these organizations spend their time really trying to convince everyone that your life is gonna be worse because somebody is gay. You could have same sex marriages. You know, it makes no difference to my marriage. The people can get married to themselves, to dogs, to whatever, you know, that has no impact on my marriage or the sanctity of my marriage in whatever way you want to view the word sanctity. The main aim of these organizations is to try and convince people that there's something we should be scared of. So we have to fight against it. Because in reality, I think the vast majority of people aren't scared of it and don't feel the need to fight against it, and really just wanna get on with their lives, do the things that make them happy, and have enough money to be able to pay the bills.

Alex:

excellently argued. Jem, I feel like when you said it was an excellent piece of research, I can imagine it decades on in the future, that spreadsheet being like a historical source that students study and then have to argue points of view from it, I think it'd be hilarious. It's a, it's a good note to end on that most people just view, uh, anti woke people as a bit of a laughing stock really when it comes down to it.'cause what impact are the things they're saying we should be scared about actually having on our lives? Not very much.

Matt:

Yeah, and it's a useful tool. This tool that they've created has led to this conversation and has, uh, informed my perspective on the matter massively. And researchers research, the bigger the sample size, the better. So they've both shooting themselves in the foot and helping us. So just leave them to their own devices for now, I suppose.

Alex:

Hmm

Matt:

So thank you very, very much, both of you. That was a fascinating discussion. I really enjoyed that. Really interesting. I know it brought some dark stuff, but we, managed to have some fun, with it, some tonic to, to. Wash that down. In our next episode. Farewell. Bye.

Alex:

Bye.

Jem:

Bye.