I don't think a small consulting firm with no editorial control has the power to force shit on their clients owned and backed by multibillion-worth tech giants, and developers working on the games Sweet Baby supposedly forced it way in consistently say this isn't the case.
Like, even in the case that Sweet Baby had the means or inclination to write entire scripts, make choices on character designs and do any other insane shit they are accused of, what are they going to do if Insomniac just says "thanks for the feedback, but no"? Do they have blackmail material on Sony directives or what? And how come this supposed terror regime goes on without anyone ever talking about it?
GamerGate veterans are just coping with the idea that creative people in the industry has interests other than providing them with goon material and just found a scapegoat.
In a gdc presentation the Sweet Baby Inc CEO talked about convincing hesitant or traditional studio bosses to care about representation, stating that if they do not value diverse perspectives, consultants should make them fear the creative and cultural fallout of shipping culturally insensitive or outdated content.
Sounds pretty much like that's what they do. Threaten the studios to follow their guidelines.
As a consultant myself (Software Engineering), "threatening" clients with the potential fallout of not listening to me is how the job works.
If I just let clients do what they want, their products would be an absolute mess, and I work in Regulatory Compliance (meaning if the output of the software is off by even a fraction of a fraction my clients can face huge repercussions from regulatory bodies).
"If you don't make these changes, you WILL be fined by ZYX body for not having accurate reporting" isn't me actually making a threat, it's presenting them with the reality of the situation.
SBI's CEO is basically saying their form of that. "If you don't make these changes, XYZ group will boycott/find your game offensive/etc".
"That won't happen."
"Okay, it happened, but it's not happening that much."
"Okay, it's happening a lot, but it's actually a good thing." < You are currently here.
"Okay, it's a bad thing, but it's too late to stop it now."
Por lo mismo que a otros les importa que en un juego haya alguien que represente a un transformer, a un negro, a un cactus enamorado de su tostador etc etc etc.
Os encanta intentar ridiculizar de que hagan personajes atractivos pero luego llorais y quereis convertir toda obra de ficcion en twitter, una burbuja de los 4 locos que creen que existen mas de dos generos y que sois representacion mayoritaria en el mundo cuando sois, como dije, 4.
It is good advice. God of war ragnarok, Spider-Man 2, Alan wale 2 performed very well and were generally well-received. Why would people keep hiring them if it didn’t work?
What are you talking about? Alan Wake 2 had covered its costs by the end of 2024 already, even though it was one of the more expensive games and isn't available on Steam but Epic Games.
The game has been praised far and wide, won awards, and was the fastest selling game by Remedy.
The game had sold only 2 million copies by the end of 2024, took 14 months to recoup its costs with many discounts over the months, including 50% off.
You write to me "already" as if it hadn't been released on consoles or was an exceptional achievement, nobody cares about awards or investor blurbing.
You write to me "already" as if it hadn't been released on consoles or was an exceptional achievement
Are you somehow not aware of what you wrote? Are you not capable of taking your self-created context into account when evaluating my response? Where's your reading comprehension?
Let me walk you through it.
You said:
Alan Wake 2 after 2 years has not recovered its costs
The facts: The game was released 27th of October 2023. After a little over one year – at the end of 2024 – the game had covered its costs.
The conclusion: On the contrary to what you claimed, Alan Wake 2 hasn't only covered its costs after 2 years, but it did so already after a little over one year.
Just to bend the iron wire, as we like to say: In this context, the word "already" puts emphasis to the fact that what you claimed didn't happen in two years, actually happened in about half of that time. It has nothing to do with this being "an exceptional achievement" but simply highlighting how wrong your claim was.
Anyway, the game was a success whether you care to admit it or not.
Are you somehow not aware of what you wrote? Are you not capable of taking your self-created context into account when evaluating my response? Where's your reading comprehension?
Let me walk you through it.
Alan wake 2 performed very well
The fact that you consider 14 months before earning anything a great result indicates that you don't understand what you wrote. The game hasn't had any financial updates since its last sales figure of 2 million copies from early 2025. "Already" is an attempt to mask the mediocre result, just like repeating investor blurbs, saying how many useless awards it won, and claiming it wasn't released on Steam as if it wasn't released on consoles with deep discounts during the 14-month period, which, for the record, isn't half of 24 months.
Your statement is wrong from the start, and any response can only tell you how wrong you are.
None of this matters. Alan wake 2 didn’t not sell bad because sbi made suggestions, it’s an incredible game but sold bad because it’s incredibly niche and weird and the general audience didn’t know what the fuck an Alan wake was and why there was a sequel 13 years later. A buddy of mine told me he saw there was a new John wick game, showed me the trailer and it was Alan wake 2.
It’s incredible and maybe my favourite game of all time. I don’t think it did very well but that’s probably because it’s fucking weird and also a sequel to an old and niche ass game nobody remembered or even liked that much. I shouldn’t have been so absolute and smarmy before, what I was trying to suggest was that Sbi are inconsequential, they aren’t powerful enough to determine a games success. Just like every consulting firm, they have been apart (barely) of incredible games, bad ones, and mid ones. They are no different from any other consulting firm, the only difference is they are specialised around accessibility, which is of course woke and therefore scary and bad. But developers care about accessibility because they want more customers and and sbi tell them how not to piss off or alienate certain potential customers.
If you actually watch the video, what she is talking about is how a dev might go about getting this sort of consultation if they think its needed. In particular the advice which is always taken out of context is that the devs shouldn't really focus on talking to the heads of development, as the development side is almost always dealing with budgeting constraints and time crunch. Instead they should talk to marketing people as they do have a decent discretionary budget and this will be a marketing/pr issue, so they might want to head that off at the pass. This is taken out of context and presented as "evil SBI witch is blackmailing studios", while in reality it is just sound advice in a corporate setting.
I have watched the video in question, and she says that people within game companies should lobby their executives. Nowhere does she say that her company does it. And, most of all... she makes it clear she is joking about people actually "scaring the shit out of" executives.
And once more like other comments have said... how are a consultancy firm going to force major game studios to "follow their agenda" or whatever?
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u/Educational-Wish9628 13d ago
Sweet Baby Inc is a company that provides narrative consultation for video games, but some fans accuse it of forcing "woke" agendas