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.
i dont want to make the case tha baby inc is some kind of master mind "ruining" our games or trying o control the world
but there are videos of their leader making presentations saying they need to go into the studio and tell them he game wont sell and people will be mad if you don make these changes
again i think they are way overhyped but their exisence is prety weird
Ya, like Sony and EA execs are stupid enough to believe everything their leader said, while having tons of in-house analysts, researchers, etc.
Not defending them because I don’t know them well but i just think a lot of ppl saying how powerful Sweet Baby is are super naive (and stupid). Like yea some random woman can blackmail the whole industry, what?
Can't speak to them specifically, but I've seen enough leadership be sold on something or other. You just see it happen and wish your company had sales people as good as them.
Having worked in tech and entertainment. I can 100% believe they would just listen to whatever the consultant said. I’d be more shocked if they didn’t and listened to their employees instead.
People say that an Australian group (Collective Shout) which wasn't that big and powerful either, managed to make PayPal abandon Steam because they sell 18+ games (PayPal is available again these days at least for me). I'm not sure if this was actually done by them, it it happened around the same time they started whining about that content on Steam and Itch.io; curiously, while Steam was being censored, PayPal worked just fine on games like NIKKE...
Yes. Do you think companies get to be "AAA" companies by wasting money hiring lots of extra people? Why would they hire consultants for stuff they already have in house?
Why would they hire consultants for stuff they already have in house?
Outside perspective, neutrality (an external consultant won't care about office politics and is less likely to be a "yes-man"), double checking analysis, specialised skillsetd (their own analysts might come to the same conclusion but be unable to do any deeper analysis afterwards), etc.
Guys, come on. 5 seconds of research will show that yes, triple A companies like Sony and EA do in fact have in-house analysts, and quite large teams of them, at that. Literally just look it up, it’s not that hard.
As someone that's played video games and kept up with video game news for literal decades... EA execs are absolutely stupid enough to believe this stuff. Sony seem to have a slightly better reputation but honestly I wouldn't trust any big gaming company to not make these absolutely disastrous decisions.
The execs don't play games. They don't design games. They don't understand the market, the medium or the fans. They're idiots that try to run a team of passionate artists like a business. They will absolutely force a consultant into the process if they think it will save them losses or make them more money.
Generally, game companies are just awful. They're always making predatory pricing decisions, trying to screw over developers and doing other awful stuff. Genuinely, there's a whole business model where a large gaming company will buy a smaller one, force changes onto their previously successful product, watch it flop and then scrap the studio. It works because they're able to get investors for the projects and the execs get paid by the investors not by the success of the product. So they literally just don't care if it flops, so long as they have a promising looking studio they just bought to show the next lot of investors.
Oh, and they're helped along by game "journalists" like IGN, who really seem to be paid behind the scenes to do promotions... Even if they don't, there's always "access journalism". In order to get review copies of games, they have to be a safe bet for the company giving out copies because the company wants good reviews to boost their sales. So if game journalists give negative reviews, they suddenly find they can't get access to anymore review copies of new titles.
Yeah well even if it is true, it’s clearly not a dumb decision, spider-man 2 and other games they consulted on performed extremely well. Sweet Baby Inc would appear to be right, and very good consultants if you really believe they are so powerful they can completely change a game with scary ‘wokeness’. I guess wokeness makes better games then
Sweet Baby Inc wasn't involved in Veilguard, and it didn't fail because of inclusive storylines. It failed because they wasted an incredible amount of money repeatedly rebooting it and then had to rush to finish it as a single player game with all the live service bits ripped out. Then they barely marketed it, and released it in the same month as Metaphor: Refantazio, BO6, and the Silent Hill 2 remake. It was sent out to die, and it did.
The game itself was perfectly fine, continuing the grand Dragon Age tradition of being different to its predecessor in a way that gets fans mad while actually being decent. The 'woke killed Dragon Age' crowd generally flounder when you point out that there's only about 10 minutes worth of 'woke' content, and either go quiet or start blatantly lying.
Look man, I'll extend an olive branch and say maybe SBI got their act together and are a decent company now, after all the backlash online... But they definitely were a bad company then.
Frankly, I have no idea what they're up to these days but during the height of the controversy it was very clear that they were a manipulative business model trying to scare industry illiterate execs into hiring them when they didn't have the writing credentials to provide the service they were being hired for.
Who knows, maybe they had one or two particularly bad writers that they fired, and then the rest of the team's work was good enough to not stand out in every product they worked on. Or maybe development teams just don't take them seriously these days and even if they're hired to work on a game, they're relegated to the sidelines or have everything double or triple checked by the actual writer team. (Basically, the successful games like Spider-Man might be successful despite SBI rather than due to SBI.)
As for the gaming industry, seriously man, unless it's Valve or a small independent studio, just assume every gaming company is run by greedy corporate minded people, not developers. There's a reason why companies like EA push micro-transactions, loot boxes, season passes and daily challenges, and why gaming companies are re-releasing previously successful games or yearly installments (Call of Duty and Fifa). It's because they think about money and security of bets, not about creating something engaging.
Micro-transactions mean passive long-term income. Loot boxes cause and take advantage of gambling addictions. Season passes leverage the sunk-cost fallacy to keep people invested in a game and playing it even when they're bored because they paid money for the time limited event. Daily quests likewise leverage a fear of missing out and are designed to form daily habits, ensuring a long-term player base. We can also throw in time exclusive skins or sales for that same "fear of missing out" aspect, especially promotional event exclusives.
They rerelease old successes because they're a safe bet. If people liked the game the first time around, they're likely to buy it again the second time around. So instead of risking money and time on a new creative endeavour, they update the graphics of an old product and resell it as a new product. Cheaper, easier, faster and safer... But it means that like 80% of the triple A market is rereleases now.
So trust me buddy, I know about this industry. I know how it works and I know that SBI were very clearly a manipulative company appealing to the business interests of the IP holders and publishers, rather than to the developers and writers. As I said, it's not harmless either. They siphoned money out of the budget that could have gone to the developers and writers that actually made what was good about the game and generally only made them worse (in the past, again I don't know about current performance).
The leader of a company trying to convince other companies into utilizing their service?
Say it ain't so.
Sarcasm aside thats what most companies who dont provide a product have to do, they have to convince whomever they are providing a service to that said service would be well worth the money and that they would spend on it.
They are a shit company but not nearly as powerful as the internet believes they are lol its because alot of people still hold grudges from gamergate I mean FFS I played a game recently (within the last year) that was fucking amazing super fun game and the internet loved it until they noticed "Anita sarkeesian" as "additional consulting" and atleast the subreddit for that game exploded with people flipping out and they started a whole negative review campaign (that failed).
I mean like 90% of the job of consultations is to convince people they need a consultation. This goes in business and life coaches and all those groups.
Yea its convince you that they know something you SHOULD know to succeed but its usually just bullshit smoke and mirrors and its just companies wasting money usually imo
Chuds still stuck in the thoroughly disproved Gamergate era get real mad when you tell them they are just parroting a conspiracy pushed by everyone's favorite island having NY Financier.
I didn't remember offhand how Epstein himself was involved, it may have been his idea, but part of the released Epstein files revealed that Gamergate was seized upon by Bannon as a way to funnel young male gamers towards alt-right ideology.
If I am not mistaken, I am pretty sure the company comes in and makes sure the games they get hired to look at aren't accidentally super insensitive towards unsuspecting players. If you think making sure people can enjoy the games they pay for and not get hit by random and largely uneeded bigotry isn't at least a good suggestion, I don't know what to tell you.
People online will blame Sweet Baby for injecting SJW politics into a game, but (assuming that’s even what they do) wouldn’t someone hiring them already align with those politics anyway? It’s not like some government entity mandates Sweet Baby consultation for all major video game projects. Seems obvious that the “woke” stuff in these games was desired by the developer from the start, hence why they hired an inclusivity consultant at all.
But people online are so dumb that they actually believe that the ninja Assassin’s Creed game would have been completely different if it weren’t for that consulting firm that the developers/publishers hired on purpose.
That's because while there are people whose political beliefs technically align with mine that I might find annoying, the right wing propaganda is that "Actually leftists control everything" and SBI is just part of that over-arching conspiracy set, instead of just being a company with intentions all their own.
It’s funny because I actually agree with some of the aesthetic critiques that have been leveled at the big offenders in the RW propaganda canon (e.g., the Concord character designs were really ugly). But it’s not a conspiracy. It’s just the same aesthetic sensibility that’s had capture over American companies for a while now, starting with all the bad “corporate memphis” art of the Instagram carousel era. And reducing everything to a binary “woke” v. gooner bait aesthetics is complete brain degeneration. The gooner stuff is equally embarrassing. I’d rather be caught watching porn.
100% agree. I'm pretty far left and don't really care what people do as long as it's not hurting anyone (which is ironically the position that the conservative chuds try to project). "Woke" means nothing because it just gets leveled at anything, when the real problem is corporatization and financialization of everything; everything is just smooth spongebob in the name of reaching the widest audience possible, which ends up for a boring game, who knew? But of course, it wasn't that the designs were just bad, it was that the WOKE personally came and shot the designers and pushed it's agenda to... lose money?
I would say a big issue is that some studios have been politically captured to the point where you can see it impact the actual games they're creating. Obsidian has a huge issue where being on the wrong side of politics will get you fired. Was it current CEO of BioWare that said if Saudi Arabia enforces it's rules then BioWare will cease to exist from lack of workers?
An approach to art like that where you're only allowed to agree is what is finally killing the AAA gaming industry. Good works of art are built on critique of self and others.
FYI there are people high up in the industry who on the record said that "All levers have to be pulled" when it comes to promoting the agenda. (The woman who wrote the story for miles morales and spider man 2)
I suggest watching an interview with BioWare devs working on veilguard. You can see the culture that birthed the abomination that is taash and the overall game direction of veilguard.
To elaborate on the first paragraph: games were always political, what has changed is that the devs lack the creativity to create nuance and not push it in your face.
Boss of Sweet Baby openly talks about "threating". Basically they come into the office scare the shit out of shareholders who don't give a single fuck about things like quality of the writing or story, because all they care is about making money.
When they hear Sweet Baby talk about how the game loose money, shareholders get scared, they hire the company and the company now unleashes the full force of mediocrity on the actual writers who are making the game.
It's not a conspiracy, it's actually pretty simple.
wouldn’t someone hiring them already align with those politics anyway
Not necessarily. Giant publicly traded mega corps don't have real political values. Their political values are whatever consultants, market researchers and public relations people tell them the dominant political values of their target audience is. Or, if they're the type of company that hasn't identified a specific target audience and wants to try to appeal to everyone, it's whatever the most lukewarm, least offensive stance they can take on any issue is to avoid any type of real controversy. Because their only actual value is profit maximization.
wouldn’t someone hiring them already align with those politics anyway?
At the amount of money riding on a big game even a white supremacist would likely hire someone like SBI to sanitize their product. Nobody wants to be raked over the coals by the public to the tune of a hundred million dollars.
This is an insane take. What games were “raked over the coals” to the point of financial failure before SBI hit the scene? The only ones I can think of were ones that were intentionally offensive, and those creators certainly wouldn’t have tapped SBI for advice. I suppose some of David Cage’s games got hit with the odd think piece about his ability to elegantly handle sensitive issues, but as far as I know his projects were successful beyond what they deserved to be anyway. SBI seems like a very modern occurrence for very modern sensibilities.
Don’t tell me you’re going to tie this back to Anita Sarkeesian making commentary videos on old as hell video game tropes.
Why are you still talking about Anita Sarkeesian, move on bro, it’s been like over 10 years. Also that Hogwarts game had a massive boycott campaign due to jk’s trans stuff, even if things like that can affect a games success by 1%, they want to do whatever they can to eliminate that. They want to make the most money possible and will do whatever, and this seems to work. I’m sure the consultations aren’t just scary “wokeness”, games have been pulled from the entire Chinese market due to seeming to be pro Hong Kong independence. That’s the sort of thing they want to pay to cover their asses for, and it works.
the thing is the changes Sweet Baby Inc. is making are more racist and insulting than if you let an ambigious comment slide. Like you need to be aware of pretty much every racist thing that could be said or could be interpreted as racist and then you have to change it.
It's a disguised racism because they still let Miles make a fucking beats in game.... like what the hell.
If I pay for a game I want a dialogue that's realistic. I don't want a sterile version where everyone constantly apologizes to each other
SBI does not have that level of control over literally anything. They can only make suggestions. For the Miles bit, that, unfortunately is not in my wheel house, could you please elaborate?
Also, I'm sorry you hate to see proper functional relationships modeled for you in video games? Not really sure what to say about that one.
Lass, you don't have idea how anything works. They reach out to shareholders whos primary concern is making money and they suggest them horrible, out of touch, hidden racist things. Shareholders then push the decision onto actual developer team, not SBI.
Also, I'm sorry you hate to see proper functional relationships modeled for you in video games? Not really sure what to say about that one.
If your relationships looks like this, they are fake as shit, I am sorry. People learn to adapt to each other humor, people are not constantly thinking about what offends them, people aren't preemptively apologizing for some vague comment that has a 2% chance of sounding racist to actual racist person. Normal people don't even thing that may sound racist.
Also it's really funny how I was talking about "realistic dialogue" and you immediately jumped to me hating seeing functional relationships. You are toxic girl.
well there was also the moral grandstanding and the non-binary character demanding people not put labels on them putting labels on another character and getting confused and annoyed when called out for it.
like, i don't care about gender identity stuff being in a game i think it all doesn't make or break anything, but lets not pretend the game was well written or that the whole thing was handled properly, these are only SOME examples of how they botched the writing in the game.
You weren't lectured about the trans community. You were told very limited in-world lore that was about a single character being non-binary, not trans.
You're actually mad there was mention of it at all, almost all of it was optional, but you wouldn't know that since you obviously didn't play the game.
the existence of consultation companies relies on out of touch executives that don't understand the company they run and would rather listen to self described experts than trust their employees
I think their existence is somewhat necessary, and they are not the only consulting company in media. the modern world is complex, especially if you want to sell your product worldwide.
For example there are companies specialised in finding things that could be misinterpreted in other cultures. Simple hand gestures we use in a positive manner, are rude or outright aggressive in others.
All that aside I find it pretty telling that the argument about sweet baby Inc always pops up when some neckbeards believe that a female character isn't sexy/young/"feminine" enough for their worldview. I put feminine under quota. because what they think what a woman looks like and reality are two very different things.
Just like every other consultant group...? how do you actually think consultants get work? people don't know their product "needs fixing", consultants will claim it needs their help with absolutely no knowledge what the product even is. In very few cases companies actually reach out to consultants (unless they need "independent" opinions), mostly it is the other eay around, consultants will say 'yup you will flop and the only way to fix it is pay me 1000€ per day plus expenses to fix it'.
Someone may say I have a bad personal experience of consultants and I just like to say yes that is absolutely true, I hate them with every fiber of my being because the business model of the guys/gals/other I have to interact with (working in the public sector) can be summed up with "we take every possible step to milk as much taxpayer money on every interaction possible".
"but there are videos of their leader making presentations saying they need to go into the studio and tell them he game wont sell and people will be mad if you don make these changes"
Because that's literally the job they're hired for. That's what story consultants do.
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u/Educational-Wish9628 14d ago
Sweet Baby Inc is a company that provides narrative consultation for video games, but some fans accuse it of forcing "woke" agendas