Hiya!

Let me start this post by saying I have yet to play Pragmata. It has been a game on my radar for some time but I wasn’t sure I was going to like it. The idea of having to control a character who’s shooting at something while controlling a character who’s hacking that same something at the same time was a problematic proposal for me. I don’t like multitasking and having to do 2 things simultaneously for an extended period of time would be my living nightmare. However, I have been keeping tabs on Pragmata since Capcom released it a couple of of weeks ago. From what I’ve seen the “multitasking” aspect doesn’t seem so bad.

However, what really made me want to get the game now is the relationship between Hugh, the guy who does the shooting, and Diana, the little android girl who does the hacking. I’ve seen a lot of gamers play Pragmata and see their hearts just melt when they see Diana. I have seen grown men tear up just because Diana got a high five from Hugh! Ultimately, the reception for Pragmata as well as Hugh and Diana’s pseudo father-daughter relationship has been mostly positive.

Unfortunately, there is a small contingent of gamers and people in general who look at Pragmata differently from the majority of players who are enjoying the multitasking gameplay and the relationship between the main protagonists. They see Pragmata and they don’t look at it the same way I view Pragmata. So, before I do eventually get the game and play it for myself, I decided to dive into the game’s biggest “problem” surrounding it to try to understand it and even try to see if they have a point.

The issue has to deal with Diana, particularly Capcom’s decision to design her to look like a child. From a gameplay perspective, this makes a whole lot of sense. Diana has to come off as helpless in combat so Hugh, the character you actually control, has to protect her during the combat sections. She also has to somehow be very close to Hugh and what better place than right on his back? Capcom could’ve designed Diana to be this nondescript thingie like maybe the Pods in Nier: Automata. However, Capcom wanted you to actively try to protect Diana throughout the game. They wanted the player to get attached to Diana. So, making her look like a flying toaster wouldn’t work. So, they chose to make her look like a little girl. Capcom seems to have a habit of that lately.

A lot of players didn’t give it a second thought. We’ve seen a lot of video games where an adult has to protect a child. We’ve seen the adult grow fond of the child and form a relationship with them. Pretty standard stuff, right? With Pragmata, however, some gamers look at Diana and want to form a different kind of bond with the child-like android. It’s not a wholesome father-daughter relationship but, shall we say, a more father-mother relationship, if you catch my drift. In turn, if you play Pragmata, then that means you are one of those people.

A lot of gamers, including myself, were kind of shocked by this kind of thinking. I watched the trailers. I saw the people playing the game. I never really thought Capcom was trying to market Pragmata to this brand of “child lover” market. All I saw was Hugh, a grown man, trying to care for and protect Diana, a child/android. I guess a lot of gamers also couldn’t see this as, like in the video above, started calling out these same people for bringing it up in the first place. The people defending Pragmata are now saying that these “detractors” are essentially reporting on themselves and, for a good while, this is what I thought as well.

That was before I knew about the Pragmata Reddit issue.

So, maybe you were like me and didn’t really know anything about Reddit and its, shall we say, more freeform way people post their ideas on the site. For some, Reddit is a bastion of free speech, where people can spread their ideas more freely than other social media websites. For others, it’s become a forum where anyone can post some of the most disgusting and vile stuff. I’m somewhere in the middle of this. However, this is where a Pragmata subreddit comes in as it kinda falls under both of these sides.

In this Pragmata subreddit (which has since been taken down by Capcom themselves), users were posting images of Diana, the android designed to look like a child, in various states of undress and performing, well, let’s just say acts unbecoming of a child. There were also users posting on this subreddits specific things they would want to do with Diana, both in the game and in real life. Their excuse as to why posting these things isn’t a problem is because Diana isn’t a real child.

So, here’s the thing. Those people who are saying that Pragmata is “bait” for certain individuals? They might not be as demented as they come off because, as evidenced from that subreddit I just mentioned, there are individuals who are more than okay with fetishizing the child android! So, in a way, they do have a point!

While I am still of the opinion a lot of them are self-reporting of being guilty of what they say others are thinking, I also believe there is a contingent of these “self-reporters” who look at Pragmata and genuinely see Diana as someone/something some particular adults are going to try to exploit. It might be someone who went through a particular trauma or they know someone who’s gone through that particular trauma. Whatever the case, they see the danger and, once again, they were right to see the danger. After all, it did already happen with that subreddit I mentioned earlier.

I do see this as incredibly disturbing. Not only because there are people who look at Pragmata, a game about a father figure adopting a child-like android, and see this connection get distorted in a very malicious way. I see this as incredibly disturbing because the people who think like this are doing that right now. There are, right now, some people who might be playing Pragmata and looking at Diana in a way that makes me very uneasy. For me, it’s particularly troubling because I feel helpless in a sense. There is a segment of the population who’s brains will always go that direction and they either don’t see it being a problem or they’re afraid to get help even if they know it’s a problem.

Ultimately, I don’t think this is what Capcom was going for with Pragmata. They wanted to design a game which emphasizes a father-daughter relationship and this is what most people say. Unfortunately, how we perceive any art or media is subjective. People can see Pragmata as problematic and, in that sense, they were correct to think that way. I don’t think this will hurt Pragmata’s legacy down the line unless something terrible happens in real life which links to it in the future. Sorry, that’s the pessimist in me talking as, generally, I do think Pragmata is a game and I hope I can play it… despite my adversion to multitasking.

Byee!

What do you think of Pragmata’s controversy revolving around Diana’s design? Let me know in the comments section below!