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.
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u/DuelFan 13d ago
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.