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[Danny Dudekisser]

Personally, I prefer sausages.

Then you must love Western female character designs.

 

[Drake]

You can either look at all the plausible, potential reasons for games' recent failures - DEI or otherwise - or you can continue to fail until your studio goes under. This is no different than any other time in gaming, except that you feel like it's your strongly held values being trampled this time. That doesn't change what the market wants.

I honestly that believe some of these studios would rather go under than to remove the DEI/woke elements from their games.

 

[cormack12]

The whole DEI thing was sold to companies as “modern audiences are diverse, they want characters that look like them, there are so many new stories we can tell with diversity, we need to end straight white cisgender able bodied men as the default!!!!”

Maybe they should blame this imaginary Modern Audience for not showing up after the whole gaming industry was retooled to appeal to them.

Yup.

Either the market doesn't exist, is insignificant or also thinks this direction is shite. Sometimes you have to make what sells.

 

[Hypereides]

So, wait, we're obligated to buy whatever they churn out? You got me, Wired. Apparently, applying some critical thought and consideration into what you want to buy is wrong.

I'll have to remember to not ask questions and just consume next time.

Btw, LectureMaster , add archive link to this: https://archive.md/L1ynS

 

[LMJ]

Brought to you by the magazine that got their transgender sex toy reviewer to trash Hogwarts Legacy.

Cry harder bitches, nobody cares what you have to say.

As hilarious as this is it suggests an even worse issue, why is WIRED reviewing sex toys 1st of all, think about this for a second, would you trust this women to inform you (regardless of sex) to inform you of how to obtain pleasure? based on that pic alone I say hell no, but did she review the game on merit or ideals, two guess'

This sickening mentality has spread to nearly every development studio, to every publisher, and journalist group that exists, Ideology over merit and THAT is the main reason the game business is on shaky legs, PR replies straight out of kindergarten. devs trashing their VERY FUCKING CUSTOMERS and journalists and media that are so high on the smell of their own farts they forget what made them get into game journalism in the 1st place, you want to fix it than DUMP THE DEAD WEIGHT and remember that GAMERS are your bread and butter, respect that and the money will flow

 

[Imtjnotu]

You can’t be in the middle these days, that makes you a nazi and a snowflake at the same time

 

[winjer]

They try to spread an extreme left wing ideology, and then get surprised the everyone else rejects it.
These idiots can't even understand that the majority of people don't subscribe to their non-sense.

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

I honestly that believe some of these studios would rather go under than to remove the DEI/woke elements from their games.

And as it turns out, so would I - why shit up the market and distract audiences from playing something good? Best case scenario, they had IP with some value that gets sold off to someone competent.

Looking directly at you, Ubisoft.

 

[mckmas8808]

I'm more liberal than conservative. Sort of a middle of the road kinda person..

But even I don't want to see your woke shit in games. And then they blame some made up right wing gaming communities?

Why is this even a political debate lol

It shouldn't be a political debate at all. Wired is forcing that part of the convo.

 

[MagiusNecros]

I honestly that believe some of these studios would rather go under than to remove the DEI/woke elements from their games.

If the goal is to burn down the gaming industry by putting out garbage I say Gamers should speed them along the process. Fuck around and find out.

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

It shouldn't be a political debate at all. Wired is forcing that part of the convo.

I don't think it's actually even a political debate. Over the years, people just conflated "alt right incels" with "edgy teenagers." Most of us were the latter at some point. The only difference is that one day, the media discovered 4chan.

 

[Unknown?]

I honestly that believe some of these studios would rather go under than to remove the DEI/woke elements from their games.

They do. Imagine how hard the first Sonic movie would have tanked if they didn't take the audience reaction seriously and how much harder it would have tanked if they said the audience were the problem.

 

[jason10mm]

I honestly that believe some of these studios would rather go under than to remove the DEI/woke elements from their games.

I think the folks high enough to be the ones picking these designs and influencing these story choices DO think they can just jump from project to project, with a round of golf claps at every bounce. To them the "socially conscious" things they do ARE currency for future growth in their industry.

The entry level coder told to add rainbow colored bricks to a wall or ensue that background NPCs in a crowd have 90% non-white isn't the problem, they are just doing what they are told and they are the ones that suffer when the studio is closed. But if said coder is a white/asian cishet male then their ONLY hope for promotion is to be as enthusiastic about "woke shit" as possible to demonstrate their allyship, or just throw in the towel, dye their hair green, and accept a non-binary set of pronouns.

 

[Pegasus Actual]

These people don't seem to understand that once they go away, gaming will be fine and better for it.

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

As hilarious as this is it suggests an even worse issue, why is WIRED reviewing sex toys 1st of all, think about this for a second, would you trust this women to inform you (regardless of sex) to inform you of how to obtain pleasure? based on that pic alone I say hell no, but did she review the game on merit or ideals, two guess'

This sickening mentality has spread to nearly every development studio, to every publisher, and journalist group that exists, Ideology over merit and THAT is the main reason the game business is on shaky legs, PR replies straight out of kindergarten. devs trashing their VERY FUCKING CUSTOMERS and journalists and media that are so high on the smell of their own farts they forget what made them get into game journalism in the 1st place, you want to fix it than DUMP THE DEAD WEIGHT and remember that GAMERS are your bread and butter, respect that and the money will flow

To be fair, sex toys are gadgets and there’s constantly new tech coming out. They fall with in Wired’s domain.

But if your sex toy reviewer is an individual with gender dysphoria and whose type of genitalia is a mystery, IDK how much relevance their opinion has to most of us.

 

[Kacho]

Who wrote this shit?

Buggy Loop

 

[Nostalgic Nightmare]

Just remember the mind virus is perpetuated by useful idiots and deceptive grifters - all of it is predicated on and facilitated in the following manner:

• View everything through the lens of sexuality/identity/race and divide/categorize people as such (ironically dehumanizing)
• Create problems linked to the above and pose themselves as morally superior and the "solution"
• Speak as the "voice" for a marginalized group to gain support (the narcissist attract mode)
• Facilitate the "boogyman" and villainization of anyone who doesn't fall in line, or poses any critical thought/dissonance to the latest subjective "problem narrative"
• Shame people into complacency and acceptance or cannibalize them

This is the playbook they have leveraged to step on the backs of real issues/victims etc to make money - and to hijack and ruin existing media as we know it for the past decade. Any failure of a product due to lack of talent or a quality product can't be admitted or discussed, instead attributed to the people that didn't consume their offering. It plays to people's inherent narcissism, desire for justice and to belong to something bigger - but requires a cultists devotion.

Thankfully it's beyond easy for everyone to realize what's going on, and it truly makes you question how we have so many easily malleable & deceptive people in this world. They have set society back decades while dividing people more than ever, but that is the goal - there is no unification endgame.

 

[Buggy Loop]

Buggy Loop

 

[Gambit2483]

2024 was the year of FAFO for the Games Industry. The market spoke loud and clear.

Let's hope the Devs/Pubs were actually listening.

 

[Tams]

and other online spaces

Oh no, we're the baddies!

 

[GloveSlap]

I've never heard the term "DEI chin" until this article, but i like it.

 

[Kacho]

 

[Danjin44]

This mostly all related to western games, 2024 was fucking amazing when It comes to Japanese games.

 

[Jaybe]

Who wrote this shit?

Clearly someone who enjoys video games a lot!

 

[Hawk The Slayer]

It's only a bad year for the insane woke folks cause this year was actually a great year for sane people and not just in games either. Tons of trash woke with disgusting sick agendas fail over 10 at least. Meanwhile we also got a bunch of great games like Rebirth, Stellar Blade, Granblue Fantasy Relink, Wukong, Space Marine 2 at the same time.

 

[Barakov]

Brought to you by the magazine that got their transgender sex toy reviewer to trash Hogwarts Legacy.

Cry harder bitches, nobody cares what you have to say.

Anytime someone uses yikes or y'all there is only thing to do with their opinion

 

[Guerilla Munch]

stopped reading at "YIKES"

 

[FoxMcChief]

Clearly someone who enjoys video games a lot!

 

[semiconscious]

I think a lot of people here look at firms like sweet baby as the problem - but they're a symptom of the real problem imo.
It's that many big budget games aren't being led by a singular visionary anymore - there are too many cooks in the kitchen. Creative decisions happen by committee and outside of forced DEI, it's very hard to put a finger on why a game lacks soul - but as a result of this watered down design by committee approach, there's always some element like this forced DEI to point the finger at too because one investor thought it would make things safer...

consultants are often brought on to advise on accuracy, sensitivity, and more...

you're correct. whether it's sweet baby, in-house, whatever, it's all about being as 'inoffensive' as possible, a ludicrous goal that ultimately leads to stripping away any & all character whatsoever. creative work can't be subjected to this crap. never mind the fact: what the fuck is a 'sensitivity expert'? what does that even mean?...

 

[LordCBH]

“Harassment” of sweet baby and their ilk isn’t high enough. It won’t be until they’re completely unable to work due to the “harassment.”

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Meanwhile GaaS games are breaking records.



Consumers have spoken.

 

[AmuroChan]

Companies went from "The customer is always right" to "You're a bigot if you don't like what we make" and they wonder why their products aren't selling as well as they used to.

 

[Kings Field]

 

[NickFire]

How stupid do you gotta be to keep preaching to the few people that actually liked all these commercial failures?

 

[bitbydeath]

Meanwhile GaaS games are breaking records.



Consumers have spoken.

You’re goddamn right.

 

[Jaybe]

2 misrepresentations immediately disqualify this for any consideration as an article and I see it time and time again.

1) the right wing groups say games failed entirely due to DEI. give me a break. While go woke go broke is a fun rhyme to throw out truth is most people see the DEI portion being some aspect of a games failure but I see very few people say it’s the entirety of the reason for a game’s failure. Most AAA games are $70 USD and need every copy sold they can to break even and yet a small percentage of execs, creative directors, character designers, writers, and marketing are tanking Western AAA studios and the thousands of people that work for them. You’d think they could read the writing on the wall and yet they seem to want to double-down. And that they need to use right-wing likes it’s some boogie man is a joke. I’m pretty centrist and I don’t think it’s too wild of a take to not care for current day transgender topics to be in a medieval fantasy game let alone one where children and teens are a part of the broader targeted audience.

2) groups harassed Sweet Baby Inc, false, the primary and starting harassment to this was an SBI employee targeting a Brazilian steam curator to get him banned and to lose his Steam account and the many games he has purchased. This caused a Streisand effect putting SBI under the spotlight in a glorious self-own.

Drama - Community - Drama: Sweet Baby employees start fighting back against Steam curator

via Niche Gamer Individuals who work with Sweet Baby Inc. have begun striking back against the creator of the Sweet Baby Inc. Detected Steam curator. The curation page is intended to inform users whether a game has relied on Sweet Baby’s “narrative consultation” service. Critics of Sweet...

www.neogaf.com

And what no ‘journalist’ has yet bothered to do is research into why Tales of Kenzera: Zau's director, Abubakar Salim, had a separate company set up with the Sweet Baby Inc founders called Sucre Bebe (sweet baby in French). Seems like something a person would do if they were trying to slip invoices through EA’s accounting for consulting and collect the revenue on the backend. Not one journalist has looked at this.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

If you go woke, you better be exceptionally good….or you’ll go broke

SWO, Concord, DA….just middling slop….not going to cut it

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

You know I just watched that “Mr. McMahon” documentary on Netflix. One thing that really struck me was how Vince was absolutely obsessed with making the most entertaining thing he possibly could.

And a lot of times that meant swallowing his pride and admitting when something didn’t work and it was time to try something else. There was no blaming the audience and calling them names for not enjoying the thing he was pushing.

 

[Gambit2483]

Meanwhile in Japan...

Most Popular Games of 2024 for Japanese Developers, Including Atlus Producers - Persona Central

Weekly Famitsu issue 1880, released 26th December, 2024 includes the magazine’s annual feature on the most popular games played in 2024, as selected by 181 industry figures and celebrities. Each […]

personacentral.com

2024 was a Great year.

 

[Brakum]

I mean gamers are to blame though. They make videogames. Gamers are the reason when games succeed and the reason when they dont.

Maybe try and appeal to them since they're the deciding factor for your success.

 

[Plague Doctor]

This literally all started cause one Brazilian man wanted to share very public, if not boastful information by SBI, of what games they worked on.

And then a SBI employee wanted to use social media to pressure Steam to cancel his account for it.

That's exactly what happened.

---------------
Edit: Since then, nearly every mainstream gaming outlet has tried to gaslight, contort, or outright lie about what happened.

Nearly every fucking one. Remember that.

 

[phant0m]

This the same Wired that gave Hogwarts Legacy a 1/10?

All you need to know. EiC should’ve been fired for allowing that to publish.

 

[Kacho]

This literally all started cause one Brazilian man wanted to share very public, if not boastful information by SBI, of what games they worked on.

And then a SBI employee wanted to use social media to pressure Steam to cancel his account for it.

That's exactly what happened.

Hard to believe that was almost a year ago already. Since then we’ve had multiple high profile flops with more to come in 2025 and beyond. The rest of this generation is going to be bumpy.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

This literally all started cause one Brazilian man wanted to share very public, if not boastful information by SBI, of what games they worked on.

And then a SBI employee wanted to use social media to pressure Steam to cancel his account for it.

That's exactly what happened.

You can tell when shit has hit the fan when SBI changed their website to exclude which games they worked on (that big montage page of 15 games). The game companies were getting laughed at and many of those games bombed hard, so they agreed to take it down.

Embarrassing. If companies cant be proud of what they've worked on, it goes to show how bad it's got.

 

[rm082e]

People not liking something are “bad actors” now? Wtf logic is this?

They're in a cult. They believe their ideology is right and true and just and the way forward. They believe if they just push it hard enough, it will spread and dominate, and eventually everyone will agree with them. They want the satisfaction of feeling like they got in early and helped spread the message. Their "faith" is in the long term pay-off of having been right when everyone told them they were wrong. Of course, people who oppose them are naturally the enemy.

I have a friend who's part of this cult. A couple of years ago we had a discussion about the pronoun thing and he said to me: "One day you will look back and realize you are just like the white people who were fighting against de-segregation in the '50s. You're going to realize you were on the wrong side of history." He was not trolling. He really believed what he was saying.

Their beliefs are a turn off to the vast majority of people because average people aren't in the cult. It shouldn't surprise anyone that products/media produced by cult members aimed at pleasing fellow cult members aren't selling (remember Battlefield Earth?). When reality catches up to them, they can't bring themselves to accept that they're in a cult that's developed an ideology most people want nothing to do with. They can't accept that they're actually the outsider. So they have to make up an explanation for why the products/media aren't selling. The easiest narrative to go with here is "rare incel victory", but they're saying the same things about other media that's failed recently.

What we're seeing right now is members of the cult going through the five stages of grief. They tied their identity to this belief system and now it's failing them. They're not the apostles of a new global culture, and they're starting to really feel it. They've been in the "denial" stage for the last year or two, and now they're moving into "anger". We're going to see more of this blaming and shaming tantrum stuff over the next year or two before they eventually move into the "bargaining" stage. They'll eventually retreat into their safe spaces (Blue Sky, tmblr, whatever) with fellow cultists to go through their "depression" and "acceptance" phases, as they won't want to experience those publicly where they can be ridiculed.

 

[{insert code here}]

Gimme your money or you're a mentally ill, bad-acting, far right, conspiracy theorist!

 

[OGM_Madness]

Why did you forget Astrobot?

As much as I love Astro Bot, the purple forum was touting it as a non-binary win.

Because only they/them can look at a cute kids-friendly robot and wonder what genitals it has or lacks.

As if my man Astro had any issues with gender identity… his only problems is that the alien scalper took the PS5 apart and he needs to save it and all his friends!

 

[DaleinCalgary]

Companies went from "The customer is always right" to "You're a bigot if you don't like what we make" and they wonder why their products aren't selling as well as they used to.

Thats why they get unemployment slips for Christmas and not a bonus.

People do not have to buy any game, they need to earn our interest.

 

[Korranator]

Doubling down on stupid. Hilarious

 

[FunkMiller]

“Everyone who works in the video games industry hates it that you straight dudes are still our biggest audience by far. Can you stop, please?”

The entire thing in one sentence.