Killjoy-NL
Member
The terms has its origins in Gamergate and it was tied to a particularly hateful way of looking at people who enjoy gaming. The premise, though, as we see it today goes something like this: gamers are predominantly made up men/boys (some throw white and straight in there too). This is not okay. Games have traditionally been made for and marketed to this demographic. This is bad. In order to bring in more people to buy and play games, marketing and games have to represent everyone who is not part of the traditional demographic. This potential broader audience is the "modern audience" who won't be interested in games unless they're represented, included, etc. - basically, DEI.
It's this idea that if DEI is put into games, it will attract all those people who don't game - they'll see themselves in a video game and will want to play that game. That's the mythical modern audience as it's defined today, imo. Definitely not those nasty gamers who have been the core of this industry since its inception.
Essentially, it's a concept steeped in extreme idealogy and its basic premise is and always has been inaccurate too. Gamers are a diverse group and games have always been diverse too. Some developers have chosen to alientate their core audience because they really believe they're being progressive and sales will be made up by new customers However, as it turns out. changing games to chase this imaginary audience is not profitable or sustainable. That's the point being made by Tyminski in the OP.
Thanks for clearing that up.Sorry, may be a bit defensive. It is a woke term though. Corpo speak and it just shows up a lot in mockery and is often in quotations. Shows in in marketing for a lot of games. Shows up in quotations a lot when our youtubers mock games. Truth is it doesn't exist.
The idea is there is some large audience of woke people who would game if only gaming itself was more woke, and that developers should design their games around this modern audience rather than their traditional audience in order to maximize profit. Time and again it has proven to not exist. People that just want the games to be woke like to pretend it exists in order to trick large publishers and devs who drink a similar type of cool-aid to make them in the first place. When the games come out they go broke but also wokies get a cool new game to tout and take from normal gamers via opportunity costs.
If it's like that, then yeah, "modern audiences" is retarded.