You misunderstand me. I'm not making a realism argument at all. I'm saying that in Arcanum's fictional setting, there could be a reason why women strength tiers are capped versus men's. Like I said, though, I played through as a badass female swordswoman and kicked just as much butt as any male melee counterparts, albeit in a more dexterity based way, as opposed to raw strength. At least in my opinion, it really doesn't make the option less viable, even if it does cap lower.

This means :
1.You assume / don't consider the intent of the developer (ie the dev wants to balance ranged and melee weapons so increases the price of arrows, is that promoting capitalism?)

2.You are assuming there is a status quo across all games and that everyone who doesn't oppose it is contributing to it. And its absurd to consider there is an intentionally maintained status quo across all or even most games.

3. You assume something merely being in a game as ''preaching'' it. By that logic, most games are ''preaching'' murder aren't they?

"Presenting" and "preaching" are not the same thing to me. Just because a game has a money system does not automatically make it preachy about how capitalism and globalization are great and I should love it.

If I get a feeling the game (or movie or whatever) is trying to "teach" me what I should be thinking about something, I start resisting it. That's why I steer clear of any "Christian games" as well, even though I am a secular Christian myself.

I just finished AER - Memories of Old and really liked it. I would not call it feminist, but it has a female lead, deals with themes like culture, religion, war, and nature, and features neither combat nor death. It's basically a 3D adventure with focus on exploration, if that is what you are looking for.

Except that the game abandons that ecological undercurrent and devolves into chasing Sephiroth; the game would have been better (or at least less bad) if the game had kept with that theme.

(The game has other major issues as well, to the point where I consider it to be a bad game.)

I kind of expected you didn't like it.

Also, you're wrong... the "defending the planet - and then the planet helps me defending her" theme stays until the very end, it just evolves from the obvious "eco terrorist groups tries to save the world" to something far more subtle. I know you're not much for story and that's fine, but then you shouldn't try to judge story.

Isn't that mostly just a matter of exposure, though?
Every single game (and real life) has money, so we wouldn't feel it is pushing "capitalism" on us or whatever.
Some other controversial topic, however, like if a game just happens to feature a homosexual character or a transgender character, their very presence there would have people yelling about "pushing agendas".

Taking your example of Christian games, for example. I mean, is Noah's Ark "preaching" at you? :D
Or "That Dragon, Cancer" (mentioned in this thread, I think)?

Or if a game features a devout character, would that be preaching at you?
Or if a game features a character with a redemptive arc, with the redemption also including their religiousity, would that be preaching to you?
All that, of course, being different from something that would, for example, involve Bible verse quizzes or something.

So a game like "Gone Home", which accrued a ton of vitriol because it "pushed a homosexual agenda", did it really? Or did it just feature a homosexual person's story?

I belong to the school of thought that sexuality should rarely even be part of the gameplay, or story. I have no idea if Garrett in Thief games, or JC Denton in Deus Ex, is hetero, gay, bi, S&M leather and rubber lover, pedophile, animal lover, necrophilic or whatever. They never bring up their sexuality, and that's the way I like it. Why would it be important to know whether Garrett is hetero or gay (or something else) while he is clubbing enemies from the back and shooting water arrows? You can leave it to the player's imagination, if it is so important to some player.

I even disliked it they introduced the (hetero) romance between the protagonist and Alex in Half-life 2 + episodes. I would have preferred their mission together would have remained professional, after all they were trying to save the world and shit.

Then again, I guess Leisure Suit Larry is hetero because he is always after women and in that case sexuality is part of the game's story... but frankly for all I care he could have been a gay as well, looking for gay men in clubs. But I guess that would have been thought to be degrading to gay community then, considering how Larry is portrayed in the game.

I didn't mind at all that (as far as I know) in CRPG games like Fallout 1-2 and Baldur's Gate 2 you could have gay/lesbian relationships, if you so choose. That's not pushing an agenda on my face as I have the option not to do it, and select the kind of protagonist I want.

Never heard of them, so I can't comment. Depends if they try to convince the player that Christianity is the way to go.

I recall in Age of Empires you can play warlords of different religions, like middle age Christian (crusaders?), muslim invaders etc. AOE2 never preaches of them or consider them as "good" or "bad", they just are there. I don't think anyone was yelling AOE2 being "pushing agendas".

Good games with modern feminism? I dunno if there are any. I haven't seen a game where you get to whine about an imagined patriarchy for days on end.

But isn't that an incomplete experience in terms of story? In many RPGs, the entirety of a character's arc is not complete without the romance option (probably in a bid to increase replayability). Or in many (many, many, many, many, including golden classics) games, the entire impetus for the story is (to be fair, the lazy trope of) the character's wife/girlfriend being kidnapped or killed. People have gotten used to that, but if it happens to be someone of the same gender, it seems everyone will flip their lid.

Actually, on thinking about it a bit, I realise that in some cases, even if it isn't "preached" outright, stuff like, for example a playing a game with the protagonist being a racist or misogynistic character -for example, by stuff like racist taunts or sexist taunts (I think I can give the example of "bitch" and the forum software will allow it, but a certain n word will block my post) when you kill enemies- would annoy me too much to continue playing.

I'm not sure, perhaps the distinction is that stuff like feminism, homosexuality or religion may not be inherently harmful, while bigotry is.

PS: Alyx Vance romance? I don't remember anything at all like that in HL2 or the episodes...

Really? She was all over the player (you) in the game. It is not like you had a sexual intercourse with her or married her, but it was clear she had a crush on you. I am unsure if it was like this already in the base game, or mainly the episodes. I recall she even gave a warm hug to you.

When people talk about "exposure" of other than heternormative meat-eating white men, they seem to always mean they should be a protagonist or a good NPC. How about if someone made a FPS game where the evil end-boss was clearly a transgender, or a beat'em up game where you are fighting hordes of gays? Or in Baldur's Gate 3 there would be a quest to attack an evil underground gay community?

Would that appease the people who want more exposure to LGBT people in games, or is the idea that they should be depicted ONLY in a positive manner in games? Nobody complains if the evil end-boss is hetero (e.g. because he has female slaves).

I would rather go back to the argument, why is it so important to bring up the sexuality of the game character, be it a goodie or an evil character? If some developer kept making games where the evil hordes are constantly LGBT, then I would similarly think he has some kind of hidden agenda, preaching about the evils of LGBT people. Similarly like someone else wants games to depict LGBT people in a positive manner.

Already in 1990, the movie "Silence of the Lambs" caused an uproar in the LGBT community because the main baddie was a transgender.

Hmmm....I didn't get that vibe at all. She clearly hero-worshipped you, but if she had been a dude, I don't see how that would've been different.

Well, I'd say the negative exposure already exists, and already feeds into fears and bigotry about these people, like, for example, the stereotype that gay people are especially promiscuous or rapey: http://eng.timtal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/vendetta-rape-pic.gif
I'd say if a antagonist in a game was a well thought out transgender person, or homosexual person, or religious person, or woman, it could make for an interesting game- instead we usually get overdone stereotypes of aggressive gays, terrorists or fundamentalist rednecks, and sinister seductresses.

Oh, now I remember one kickstarter game which was at least supposed to have modern feminist themes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-o9a3FmLYc

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sjw-riot-troops-vs-women-in-video-game#/

So does that fit into for what the OP was asking, or should the "modern feminist themes" be presented only in a positive manner?

That's a false equivalence. If heterosexuality is the norm and almost everyone in the game is assumed or even shown to be heterosexual, a heterosexual villain has no special meaning, he's just a bad apple. If homosexual/transgender/whatever characters only appear as villains in a game, then that could send a completely different message.

Taking your example, don't you think there would be a lot of complaints about the evil end-boss being hetero and e.g. holding female slaves, if all the positive characters in the game were female, homosexual, transgender or whatever, and the evil end boss is the only depiction of a heterosexual male? Wouldn't that seem a tad biased to you?

Really?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgkEWwHlXME#t=153

In games? I must be playing quite different games than you.

Seems to me you evaded my question.