[All] Thoughts? They're kinda cooking I feel like

No they arent cooking. They just made a random baseless statement supported by nothing to bait engagement on twitter.

I think it's bullshit, to be honest. Souls fanbase is very accepting, and these games are inherently "woke", and even helped me to recognize my identity as a non-binary person

DS2 had a transition coffin, for Miyazaki's sake!
- Based ass trans coffin

Miyazaki made Souls for two reasons:

There are no good berserk games, fuck it I'll do it myself
Poisonous swamps
Feet

Femboys
Femboy feet
- Who is the femboys? Please give

I play souls games to kill the ruling class and to give the world to humanity.

Any talk of this alpha and sigma bullshit instantly tells me that person is a shithead not worth listening to.

I was under the impression they were using alpha/beta not as prescriptive classifications of people, but rather as descriptive labels of the roles the right wing chooses for themselves. Many people on the right wing do believe in the idiotic alpha/beta junk, and as a result they act on it accordingly, thus making their own imaginary dynamics real within their own world. They pigeonhole themselves, artificially, into these categories - which ironically makes them useful terms for outsiders to segment them with.

Correlation does not necessarily imply causation. There's not much to go off of here other than vibes and gut feelings, not exactly a logical basis of an argument.

Context: I love souls games and hate fascism

I think Alyssa can't get past the Capra Demon. I don't even see many right wing dipshits that are into soulslikes. Plenty into Fallout and Warhammer, tho.

"Appearance has no bearing on ability"

Sounds like that fucker is mad because she can't git gud.

That's a fed doing fed shit

I can agree but also disagree at the same time. I feel as though shes onto something here, but for the wrong reasons.

In my findings, the one thing right wingers band together on is "woke" and "wokeness is destroying gaming" . There really isnt any way to break down CoD, its point and shoot "military go brrrrrr" stuff. Souls games, on the other hand, are just sandbox games. There isnt a story to be told. Go here, do objective, go back, get stronger, fight big monsters.

Now, theres definitely more to it. What I have found is that hardcore right wingers will seek out the finer details of things. Theres massive amounts of lore dumps for the Souls games, you have to go find it. Most right wingers I know will obsessively deep dive into any of their favorite mediums for lore and story, but they never have any take aways for themes, comparisons, or any critical outlooks on their mediums. Doing that will reveal that even their favorite mediums are "woke" and we cant have that in their favorite games.

Warhammer. Halo. "Souls". Helldivers. Bioshock. Mass Effect. Fallout. Nearly all of these games, if looked at critically, can be seen as a critique of traditional right wing ideologies. Most of them you do not need to look hard, its right there.

Weirdly, I think I kind of see the point. Soulslikes put you in the mindset that you have to do everything yourself. The world is tough and it’s up to you, the player, to overcome that. And the attitude of “you just have to try harder and keep at it bro” feels very capitalist sympathy.

Obviously not going to change the mindset of every player, but I could see it reinforcing those ideas subconsciously.

As opposed to team games where that’s obviously the opposite.

Well traditionally Souls games are actually about banding together, especially under jolly cooperation. Im not sure where you are getting the individual thing from
It's weird because (having only played elden ring) I've always felt like I've got support from others even though I play solo. There are so many helpful and encouraging messages, from "beware of right" to "don't give up!" to "well done o well done", that it always feels like I've got a bunch of people at my back, even though I still need to do all the work myself. Even the ghosts give the impression that we're all going through this together.
Maybe it's just a thing where you get out the same type of energy you put into it.
- I think this is something specific to the games made by From Software. Many, many other games in the genre do not seem to give off this same energy which is what I imagine is one of the key reasons they’re so insanely successful compared to their competition. I’d say From Software is the exception rather than the rule.

They are probably terrible at video games and definitely souls games lmao. There is legit saltiness in the posts

"Alpha jock FPS gamers"

Someone didn't ever use voice chat.

Hierarchies attract conservatives.

The "analysis" presented is worthless. But you could observe Soulslike communities and correctly assess that a majority of the people you observed during that time are right wing or hold some similar views. That's just because they're computer games and computer game players skew right wing.

I'd be surprised if Souls had a stronger Right bias than, say, Devil May Cry, Mass Effect, Destiny, Factorio. The popular ones that don't, draw in audiences from outside, or they're so mainstream that they accurately reflect larger society.

Does OOP / anyone else here think that there's a causal effect, and if so which way is it going? Like is the rise in right wingery meaning that said right wingers seek out Soulslikes, or is the rise of Soulslikes causing people to adopt right wing positions? I feel like it can't be the latter just down to a matter of numbers, as they were a famous but still relatively niche genre up until Elden Ring and the right wingery was definitely on the move before that

I don't think there is a causal effect - people tend to consume media that appeals to them for some reason or another. If someone enjoys a Soulslike because they like being the simultaneously strong and weak underdog conquering strange foreign monsters, that's just their pre-existing fascist tendencies being the reason they enjoy the game. Many different tendencies might cause different people to enjoy the same game for different reasons.
Now, I do think media can shape a culture. But in the case of Soulslikes, any latent fascist messaging seems too subjective and subtle to be doing that.
It's more likely that rising fascism contributes to the popularity of Soulslikes, which I think is at least plausible - just like how rising nationalism could easily contribute to the rise of team FPS games. But there are so many other viable causes for the popularity of Soulslikes that it seems extremely presumptuous to single out that one.
- I think I'm in agreement with all of this. I certainly don't feel like my own personal enjoyment of the genre is anything to with some kind of... subconscious political position I don't realise I have
No.

If this was the blurb on a book I would be 100% in

I don't think this is the cause behind the proliferation of Soulslikes, but I do think Alyssa has accurately identified the distinction between the appeal of these games to right wing people. I'm not sure that this is intrinsically the message of Soulslikes, although I do think that games like CoD are pretty undeniably transmitting a nationalistic message. And this is fitting, because the "alpha jock" nationalists tend to do a lot less mental gymnastics and warping things to fit their views than the pseudo-intellectual fascists. Nationalism isn't great, but it's also very simple and rooted in a fundamental truth, which is that your nation is out for itself, and the rule of force is your ultimate unavoidable defense and offense - as a result of this nationalism doesn't need to perform any mental gymnastics, it just needs to establish a connection between the well-being of the nation and the individual. Similarly in these games there is typically no non-combative way to win (vs. games where pacifist playthroughs are possible), and there are clear red-blue team distinctions. Soulslikes, on the other hand, definitely send the message that success is entirely in your hands, and establish a notion of skill hierarchy and underdog-ness. Your enemy is the world, not just some other group of people. This is appealing to any mentality that perceives itself (accurately or not) as oppressed by an outside force. So I feel like the intrinsic message of the Soulslike genre is one of rebellion against powers-that-be through unrelenting individualism. This message is a bit more asymmetric and suggestive of objective heroes and villains, whereas the nationalist game seems more honest about it's nihilistic and relativistic context, e.g: " when you're on the red team you want the red team to win, when you're on the blue team, you want the blue team to win. It's not about what the teams are, it's just about what team you find yourself on". But the asymmetry of a Soulslike implies that your enemy is not "the same as me, but just against me" - rather the enemy is fundamentally different from me. This is a more moralized narrative, and one which requires an oppressive outside force for you to act as a noble underdog against. This hits home with a lot of people, sometimes justifiably so, but sometimes only via mental gymnastics. It's also interesting that the power fantasy of the Soulslike is more self-contradictory - you want to be powerful, but you also want to be the underdog facing a great challenge. The nationalist+team fps fantasy is more about crushing your enemy unflinchingly, obliterating their puny inferior forces with ease. The fascist+Soulslike fantasy is about prevailing despite your enemy's advantage. But of course, if you are always prevailing, then can we really say your enemy has an advantage over you? Exactly like any challenge-oriented gamer understands: you have the most fun when you're doing well, but only if you believe you are in danger of doing poorly. If you know you can beat a boss flawlessly, it becomes boring. You want to be in a flow state. Fascist propaganda can maybe be understood as game-designing a flow state in the populace where the enemy feels terrifying and threatening, but still defeatable enough to give a rush of superiority. You have intrinsic superiority (skill, strategy), the opposition has extrinsic superiority (more powerful weapons, environments) is one way to express this, but it can also be done with mutual intrinsic ability, where the protagonist is differentiated by their superior dedication, etc.

Ultimately, it still seems like the Soulslike genre is more about overcoming oppression, and the way that it appeals to fascists is via their imagined oppression. In reality, the Soulslike genre seems very anti-fascist to me, maybe anarchist if anything. It's kind of perfectly fitting that the way the genre fits their worldview is with the same persecution complex they employ for so many other purposes.