Do you think forced diversity is making games worse?
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but is "making games woke" the only allegation towards Sweet Baby Inc? Seems a bit like an overreaction.
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basically the company has asked people to harass and report (lying by saying that it is againts steam rules, which it is not) the person who did the curator list on steam (with info sweet baby themselves have in their website) and in their pursuit of being super mega inclusive they end up being intolerant and use said inclusivity as a shield for everything. (in this case againts a brazilian person who just took information from their website) because that person simply shared info that sweet baby made public themselves.
But not only that, apart from that and other shady stuff, there are members of their staff who were involved in gamegate and one of them could be considered the one who caused the "last straw" for the creator of "night in the woods" to unalive themselves (she accused them of sexual harassement, (nothing was confirmed but i tend to distrust by default when people accuses other people online of crimes or inmoral actions instead of telling and providing evidence to the police, because if it was true, congrats, you gave a criminal a warning and time to erase as much evidence as posible, and if it's fake a innocent person life can be ruined).
it is telling that even people that theorically they represent are againts them (myself being gay and autistic... Well, not as if they nor many other organizations try to advocate for autistic people, because aparently in general autistic people aren't a minority that exist i guess) but of course, if we, the minorities complain about "inclusivity tm" then we are wrong because how are we going to know what it's better for ourselves? either that or we are traitors to them
altrough no one can deny there are people taking advantage of the situation to say shit like "do you see?, wokeism is destroying our beloved videogames" yes, cases of "feminism and inclusivity done badly" in fiction exist and autors using feminist and inclusivity as shields to avoid criticisms exist too, but people that put inclusivity done badly as THE cause of a game being bad (like the creator of this thread) instead of a possible factor between many others, do not have good intentions.
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Thanks for the rundown! That explains people's behaviour better.
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altrough no one can deny there are people taking advantage of the situation to say shit like "do you see?, wokeism is destroying our beloved videogames" yes, cases of "feminism and inclusivity done badly" in fiction exist and autors using feminist and inclusivity as shields to avoid criticisms exist too, but people that put inclusivity as THE cause of a game being bad (like the creator of this post) instead of a possible factor between many others, do not have good intentions.
That's a very good point. Similarly to movies, it's not the "token black or LGBT" person who makes it bad, but that the writer didn't give them a personality and a role. Ignoring historically...questionable things like black Cleopatra, in a random scene in a random American town when there's weightless character played by a talentless white guy it's okay because it's standard, if the same weightless character is a woman or a person of colour, then it's suddenly just bad acting and forced diversity.
Being a bad actor, or having a badly written character in a game is WAY MORE accepted when it's a character who's white and/or a man. For some reason there are arbitrary bars raised for different demographics, for the same shitty role. They make the mistakes "pop", and get more flak for it, turning a mediocre and forgettable piece into something that people can latch on.
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exactly, just like when in a story all characters end up having boyfriends and girlfriends because everyone has to have them for the sake of it. yet it is only seen as "forced" when one or some of those couples are gay
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historically...questionable things like black Cleopatra
That was never "questionable", it was always flat out wrong. Cleopatra was Greek.
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Political left versus right mud throwing incoming in 3,2,1..
Weren't we supposed to not make them anymore for that reason?
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I guess it passes off as "game related" although I have no idea why we should care about this curation, the company or what idiots on Steam are doing from any side of the political spectrum...
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Correct me if I am wrong, but this is a consultancy company and they are hired by game companies to make sure they're both respectful and accurate to the cultures/people they are representing in their games. Game companies could do this research themselves, but it's a lot cheaper, easier, and more accurate to hire specialists that either know this information already or are experienced in researching it.
This something most big companies with a social media presence have as well, although it's usually an experienced social media manager not an entire company.
As far as I can tell, all but two of the games on the list have positive ratings, some have overwhelming positive reviews like Alan Wake 2, God of War Ragnarok, Sable, Spiderman 2 etc. The only one that had a rather negative reception was Suicide Squad. Is there any evidence that this company forced diversity into these games? Where is the rage?
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I have to look it up but there is a video out there from the CEO herself basically saying blackmail them into doing what you want.
Edit: Terrify them
Just throwing the question out there.
If what this company does does not matter, why do they react so badly to someone saying:
This company worked on this game, here is the proof from their own website.
And now the person from the company and the company itself private their own X account.
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But based on their track record so far, they were involved with games that reviewed really well both with critics and the general audience. So whatever they are doing seems to result in good games, right? All this streamer does is bring up straw man examples, games this company didn't even work on. I don't think what this woman said was blackmail at all rather a warning which is her job as a consultant. How is this an argument against her?
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"You better do this, or do you will suffer the consequences... ?" I am not sure. But watching the video, I was remembering doing that in a Mafia game. And I was the bad guy
Absolute best casen scenario, ( and reading how absolute racist sweet Inc are, looking at the comments they make, that's being extremely generous) they seem some kind of "sensititivy readers", like the ones saying we should "rewrite " classic written works. That's a problem, because they are never gong to be satisfied. Their job is not being satisfied or they get fired. They have to be constantly offended. And I hate with a passion sensitivity readers in the first place.
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But that's exactly what people do in any type of consultancy. They advise so the business does not suffer any negative consequences. Is that blackmail in your mind???
As for your second paragraph, I am not sure man, is that the feeling when you play the games the advised on?
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Well, in their own words, apparently all white males are "picky babies"
Dunno. Seems quite racist, you know. Imagine somebody saying the same about black gamers.
Or the person that claimed "you can't be racist against white people"
https://thatparkplace.com/sweet-baby-inc-ceo-makes-it-clear-she-wants-to-erase-white-male-lead-characters-while-employee-shows-disdain-for-white-people/ I mean, every time I take a look, they are constantly saying racist shit. Like, "abort all jews". Like, seriously???
At the end of the day, same way I don't want "sensitivity readers" to decide what I read, I don't want racist people to decide what games I want to play.
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I agree this sounds very racist.
But I didn't see this sentiment in the projects. Was this the feeling you had while you played the games they advised on?
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The only game I have played of the list is Assassin Creed Valhalla. I actually found the main character an absolute asshole and a liar. He would call on friendship forever when he was near Saxon allies, and he would call for the murder of every single Saxon king when near the vikings. Also, an enabler of people being tortured to death, while personally burning towns and killing an untold number of civilians. Not personally, but letting others do it.
I don't know how much sweet Inc worked in the project. I don't know if that was because sweet Inc, or Ubisoft just got threatened by sweet Inc to pay them and add some black Vikings.
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I have no idea what your criticism is now. Isn't that an accurate portrayal of Vikings? Murdering innocents was kind of their whole deal at some point, no?
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Presenting your main character as the hero, that only does good things, while the game goes to great efforts to talk about peace, equality and friendship, and presenting the main character as good, and the game resets if any civilian is killed, while at the same time he is low-key a cruel invader, responsible for the death of thousands, creates a disconnection, in my opinion, with the setting..
Like if the devs wanted to do one thing, but constant advise from external people pushed to the other side. And both are at the same time.
Also, the game invalidated choices because I played as a male, but at the true ending, it showed the main character as a woman.
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Okay, so do you levy this criticism against the company in question? Do you want play as a viking but not be an invader? Basic narrative structure demands that players sympathise with their avatar and the gameplay requires you to do combat against opponents. Uncharted had a pretty light tone, yet Nathan kills hundreds during the games. Ludo narrative dissonance is an old dilemma of games.
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If you want to put it like, "what did sweet Inc did against me", the whole "you can play as a man or as a woman. Buuuuut, at the end your choice doesn't matter. You will end up as a woman" didn't sit right with me. I could have played as a woman, and it souls have been fine. But I did not like the VA for the woman in this game.
And considering how much hate this company does against males, makes sense sweet Inc was involved.
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You do realize, there is zero evidence that this a consultancy company doing, right? They might have only been involved with dialogue about cultural aspects of the store, like their credit in the game suggests. Their role was scriptwriting not narrative design.
To get back to the point: Most people liked the games this company worked on. There is one writer in this company, who seems to be very racist. I think she should be fired.
I don't see how this warrants all this internet drama. Was the company pushing racist stuff? I read through the article that claims the CEO wants erase white males. At no point did she say that, that was something the writer of the article added. Honestly, she said some really interesting things, like how people are more attached to brands than characters, or that diversity is not about just using the same story with more diverse characters, and when given a choice people will generally prefer their own gender, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't play as the other gender if no choice was present. Am I missing something here?
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"Abort all jews"
"White men are all picky babies"
"I had a nightmare I was a white man"
"pay me to shoot your ideas of a white man lead game "
"zionist wore me down" (word to avoid saying jews, apparently)
"gamers shut me down" (the x account, apparently all gamers are the enemy now?)
"why action games are still white and male?)
" How white and male the Dev scene is"
"report the creator (of the curator) since he loves his account so much"
"We terrify devs into paying us "
"You can't be racist against white people"
Do you feel confortable supporting these racist people? Serious question?
I mean, when we have people on the open, saying stuff like that, on internet, I don't want to know how they are behind closer doors. And since the people publicly writing this are still in the company, makes sense the owners support it. Even the owners say basically say the same all the time.
The devs of Alan wake 2 admit they made one of the MC a Scandinavian woman, black, when she was white in the first part, because of them. So we a have at least proof that at least once, they weren't thinking on "cultural aspects of vikings". And if Saga was originally white, I also assume the quote "white asshole" comes from sweet Inc too.
"Their role was scriptwriting" which is exactly my complain, also.
"when given a choice people will generally prefer their own gender, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't play as the other gender if no choice was present" so, when given the choice, like I did, people chose a male Eivor, but then they took away the choice, and it was a woman. Yep, exactly my complaint. They are literally saying what I complained about.
I mean I don't want to go too much on the rabbit hole. But everything I have seen makes it obvious they are an male-hating white-hating extortion racket. Do they have a single white male in the whole company at least? Because I have been looking, and I can't find any
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I don't know. The majority of these quoted comments are from one person (I think Maya Kramer?) and are racist and should not be tolerated. And two other quotes are taken out of context from the CEO (I think). For Kramer there is not much to discuss. These things should not be said, not be tolerated and maybe she should receive consequences for them (depending on how far you advocate for Freedom of Speech versus cancelling).
However, this is only one (maybe two although I don't have a name available) employee and to extrapolate this on the whole company, is kind of .... brave and irrational at the same time. If the person was the CEO, it might have been something else. But it is not.
Also, the site you linked multiple times (while I give them credit for providing the original texts and apparently uncut) seems very very biased and trying hard in some exercises of misreading comprehension. I mean the quote the original text and then reach a conclusion I have no idea how.
- for example that scene with the Frenchman: The CEO asked if they have to do it at all (implying they shouldn't change the while male to a frenchman because the story does not benefit from it), why not make it a person of colour AND french? While that park place site depicted it as either french or person of colour. And also ignoring that she didn't deem it necessary at all.
- Or that article which states in the topic, that the CEO wants to erase white male lead characters while none of her quotes to support that statement.
- Or their website claiming: "Belair would admit what she’s doing is injecting wokeness into the video game industry" followed by her original quote: "None of what we’re doing is ...... about a veneer of wokeness."
That Park Place seems biased to me and tries to force a narrative which does not fit with Belair's quotes. Even that metaphor about the picky babies is explained very reasonably by her. And for that "terrify them" quote, the site has translated it into blackmailing companies while cutting out the next sentence "I say that out loud as a joke". I would welcome you to use other sources than Reddit and That Park Place.
Either way, if you want to see it this way, I have no interest in convincing you of the opposite. But at least recognize that the source is questionable. I already have said more than I actually want to. I'm off for the day.
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Why are strawmaning me supporting racists?
"And since the people publicly writing this are still in the company, makes sense the owners don't mind/support it""
Generally you as a private person do not represent your employer, if you don't write in the name of said employer. Those posts are over 10-12 years old, maybe she changed since then, maybe not. Either way, I am not sure why something someone said 10 years ago would represent the company she works at today, it's possible her current company didn't even know about her racist tweets until now, considering she was definitely not working for Sweet Baby when she wrote those, since the company was only founded in 2018. That being said, if I were the CEO I'd fire her.
"The devs of Alan wake 2 admit they made one of the MC a Scandinavian woman, black, when she was white in the first part, because of them."
They said the opposite. Maybe you shouldn't get your info from clickbait content farms. https://twitter.com/TimePirateNinja/status/1764697135344202183
"Their role was scriptwriting" which is exactly my complain, also."
No, your complaint was narrative design. Those two are not the same thing. One is done by a narrative designer, usually a game designer with some kind of creative writing background while the other is done by editors or scriptwriters.
"Yep, exactly my complaint. They are literally saying what I complained about."
No, that wasn't your issue, your issue was with the storytelling of Valhalla, the quote of this CEO is not related to that, she was speaking about why people choose their own gender in most games and why games with no gender choices are also well received.
"Do they have a single white male in the whole company at least? "
Did you even look? I can see multiple. https://www.linkedin.com/company/sweet-baby-inc/people/
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Also, the game invalidated choices because I played as a male, but at the true ending, it showed the main character as a woman.
That's only because the character was canonically female, like in 95% of the other AC games, the character was canonically male but of course in ACV, they just had to give the option to be male to avoid being review bombed into oblivion. Of course that doesn't fit with the narrative. Not much of a shocker there.
So you are right, it was indeed Ubisoft wanting to do something and yet being forced into doing something else because of politics.
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I don't mean this to sound offensive or like an attack (sorry for taking the sensitive approach :P) but it seems to me that right now the only population that has a right to be offended, righteously is white men.
If white guys feel attacked, they'll throw around words like racism and sexism but if anyone else uses those words they are "too easily offended".
Isn't that a typical example of the snowflake attitude?
I've never been a proponent of double standards so I try to get when anyone feel offended for any reason, not just women, LGBT people, "minorities" (Ugh I hate this word) etc. So I'm genuinely asking:
If someone is offended by other people being offended "for no reason"... is their offense worth more than that of others?
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Racism is racism.
If a company offering consultations constantly made constant comments insulting black women, for example, they would be racist shit.
Problem is, there is no way in hell anybody would write in Twitter "abort all black women" "I had a nightmare I was a black woman "." Black women are winny babies" "pay me to shoot your ideas of a black woman lead game ideas" so apparently there is some kind of "accepted racism" going on right now.
And sweet Inc seems to be a mafia-like extortion racket with the whole "terrify them" (just take a look at how many gaming journos are defending sweet Inc right now with all the racist shit they write, and even literally saying "you can't be racist against white people" )
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Racism is racism.
I don't disagree with that. I also agree that they are being either deliberately provocative or just a bunch of bona fide a-holes.
I was just asking not about Sweet Inc but the general idea that white men have a right to be offended by anyone being offensive to white men but everyone else being an overly sensitive baby when they are offended.
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I guess it depends on how you are getting offended. If it you are just overly sensitive or you have a point.
For example, I was just commenting on a boycott of RimWorld organized by some gaming journos in Kotaku, because they claimed the devs hated disabled people and wanted to kill them because people right couldn't have sex right after an accident till they were sane, proving they wanted to genocide them. The Dev answered that he didn't think people wanted to have sex in a hospital bed, right after having an accident...
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"But that's exactly what people do in any type of consultancy."
Not from my experience. For me it always was more along the line of: we found this in the situation/ product.
It could be viewed as this or lead to these kind of issues.
We suggest/ advise to do something like gives example.
Not like I am going to terrify you what will happen if you don't do what I want. SBI CEO's words.
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"Terrify them with what will happen if they don't give you what you want" is almost a textbook definition of what blackmail means.
Strawman arguments, I assume you didn't catch what was going on with Hogwarts Legacy. Which I completely understand because regular people have a life outside of the internet or it is a section they don't have an interest in so they miss it that way.
What was going on with Hogwarts Legacy was that they where so set against the game (because it is IP from JK Rowling, whole different story why it is a problem in their eyes) that they made ways to track people that where playing/ streaming the game on twitch
And said streamers got harassed others have said they wont stream it to avoid said harassment.
I have even seen people make comments about the fact that they are part of the lgbtq community want to play the game and either don't or have to play in offline mode so their friends don't see it because they would get flak.
And the reason he brings up the games that Baby Inc. did not work on was to point out the fact there was controversy about the games, from said group the CEO is threatening with and it did not matter since the games where successful.
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I am sorry, but doubt most people care much about streamer drama and this has no connection to the company in question. (I seem to remember articles about people accusing the Hogwarts Legacy of being woke for including gay and trans characters, so who is boycotting what, I have no idea...) This is a non issue and it's only purpose is to generate clicks for rage bait content creators. Again it's not about "what you want", rather what's good for the business (you can of course, disagree with how valid their consultancy is). Not sure if you ever worked in corporate environment before but this is basically risk assessment 101. That's what consultants like this are for. By the way, I don't even understand how a small company could ever blackmail a multimillion dollar corporation.
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"I am sorry, but doubt most people care much about streamer drama" Completely agree.
"This has no connection to the company in question." Either you did not understand or ignore my point I made here.
The CEO is talking about terrifying the marketing team if you don't do what I want. --> Sending the hate mob against the company. In forms like this company is XYZ (Racist transphobe take your pick from the long list) because they don't want... (exp a trans person in the game)
A similar hate mob was active during the Hogwarts legacy issue.
I understand Risk assessment and consultancy. I also understand a company wanting somebody to check if it is not racist or whatever.
But they are not just checking they are also putting their political view into it sadly.
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What's their political view that they put in to these games?
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Representation: “Cultural Consultation, Sensitivity And Inclusivity Reading
They also have a line about diversity in games on their page. Cant grab it since something on my end is causing issues with loading the webpage but I remember it from several people that showed the webpage in videos.
So that would be a liberal, some would even claim far left political view.
.
I yet have to hear someone on the conservative side of the spectrum push for Diversity Inclusivity and Equity
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It's like the mafia protection fee. If you "hire" their services, you will have a "safe" business. If you don't, your business will surely be destroyed. Companies developing AAA games have fu money, so they will simply throw money at these people to avoid the backlash. Those games would be great either way, might even have been better without the intervention of these "consultants". These "consulting businesses" would be starving if it were up to me.
I find myself buying more and more retro games: Mega Drive, Saturn, Xbox, Xbox 360, GBC, etc. Most modern AAA game productions suck nowadays. Fortunately, there's a huge backlog of great titles, the same applies to the Hollywood industry. But I know I'm in the minority. The fact of the matter is that fear is selling like hot cakes and the masses are eating it.
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Maybe these games could have been better without them, maybe not. Their point is to make the product appealing to as many people as possible. I don't think big companies would use them, if their work doesn't make money for them.
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Weren't we avoiding politics on SG?
Since we're here though, I hope more companies hire them. They have a demonstrably successful track record with games.
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Weren't we avoiding politics on SG?
Yeah I was just thinking "oh boy here we go"
Since we're here though, I hope more companies hire them. They have a demonstrably successful track record with games.
I don't really know anything about them but my first reaction was to say "who cares?". About Steam users misbehaving and abusing report features (how novel!), about the company itself or the curation. The company is doing what they are supposed to do. If that's a problem for some, well, I suggest they just don't play the games the company is advising on. Ofc Steam being Steam, a good review bombing is also in order to show how displeased they are but again... nothing new here.
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True dat.
For my part, I looked at their curated list and was like "I'd play that, that, that, and that. Wishlisted and thanks for the heads up on some upcoming cool new games" lol.
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Eh, not caring about the actual quality, just involvement of a firm in storytelling or some design elements is as much of a "virtue signaling" as any.
Not worth my time and attention, but I think some people can use that kind of trigger warning without having to make a research of their own. It's a lot easier to listen to the selected few, telling people what they should be playing.
edit: unbiased and fair voting options you got there :D
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Eh, not caring about the actual quality, just involvement of a firm in storytelling or some design elements is as much of a "virtue signaling" as any.
Could also just be people developing games and recognizing that they have a blind spot when it comes to empathy regarding what others might think so they hire professionals to help them out. It happens in other areas as well.
edit: unbiased and fair voting options you got there :D
lol right? That poll had me in stitches
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It wasn't clear, but the first part you quoted - I wrote that about the curator. Their filtering and downvoting is not based.on quality, it's just a trigger warning about the consultation firm for people following their page.
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For a company that is about inclusivity, they're pretty racist towards white people. Yet another group of racists towards white people who are allowed to push their agenda into something. How long is this shit going to keep going on?
https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/2770277-sweet-baby-inc-controversy
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/767/542/251
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/770/277/841.jpg
Just another one of those specimens who say you can't be racists towards white people while they threaten companies into DEI despite those people not being skilled enough to qualify to work there, so these companies have to hire useless trash and keep them on a payroll in order to avoid retaliation from these companies that you or me never heard off that do nothing, absolutely useless unproductive beings who go out of their way to breathe and instead only caused damage to the gaming industry. They don't consider that in certain parts of the world white people are a larger demographic than other races. I can confidently say they don't go out of their way in places with predominantly black, asian, indian demographics to push for white people to be included in these companies. How? Because I know they're pieces of shit, since they smell so bad from so far away.
To make it worse, they get funded by the canadian government, through who knows what sorry excuse of a program meant for inclusivity and apparently to support racism against white people. Congrats Canada, another step backwards! I'm sure the taxpayers in Canada would be overjoyed to know the CEO and employees of this trash company use their hard earned money to be racist despite the whole point of the program to reduce racism.
Then of course we wonder why these games are lackluster and why they don't deliver what we expect. No wonder recent indie devs make games as good or better than AAA studios with hundreds of people, because instead of making games these companies are forced into DEI and their leaders are stupid and actually fall for this joke of a trap, and the people they hire don't actually do any work just collect a paycheck and go home and waste funds. If gamers knew about this all they'd care about is a good game, if you're not qualified to make the game, DEI is irrelevant. Why would a company fall for these threats is beyond me because I wouldn't ever judge a AAA studio(or anyone) for hiring the best people, regarding of their race or whatever. I just care that they can do their job, so should the CEO's.
Baby shit inc should just go fuck itself in hell along with all it's employees imo. Embarrassment to even work for that kind of company even more so when they go out of their way to be racist, something that they are supposed to be so extremely against.
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https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/769/787/819.png
References so you can see where this company came from.
As for some saying this is political, I mean sure, but it's gaming related at least. I'm going to at least try to inform you guys of what's out there, rather than you thinking this is just some good company. They deserve this.
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That third link shows some of the most vile & racist shit. Imagine if you were tweeting like that publicly about Jews or black people, you'd be out of a job in a matter of hours.
I don't understand where all that hatred and resentment is coming from
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Perhaps do your actual job and point and and perhaps close (yes you can't, but find someone who can) since we weren't able to make political threads anymore?
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Well, they publicly said "abort all jews", on X which, is, I don't know, one of the most racist things I have ever read
How come there are people supporting these racist shits?
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Pay money to some "consultants" to make your games objetively worse (ie: Suicide Squad story) then fire your hard working staff. Sweet indeed.
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I played couple of "woke" games and they were good - so I don't think that ideology itself is that bad for gaming.
On the other hand they don't introduce "wokeness" or whatever you could called that, but replace one bad thing with another.
They replace racism towards black people with racism towards white people.
They replace misogyny with misandry.
And so on.
People in general don't like hypocrisy - and consultant companies like that are the pinnacle of hypocrisy. Practicing exactly the opposite of what they preach No surprise that whatever they touch changes into shit.
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I do agree somewhat with this but not completely. I don't think there is any ideological reasoning behind companies doing this, but rather trying to market to newer demographics like gay people etc. However, there are more gay people in game dev who are bringing their life experiences into their art too. AAA games tend to get diluted in the art aspect in favour of broad commercial appeal.
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exactly, while sweet baby themselves are not saints (for reasons that have little or nothing to do with putting a gay or black character in a game and which are the actual cause of the controversy as i told in my comment) it is not like lgtb people or black people are going in for the sake of destroying gaming, it can happen that someone gets overeager making a product where "finally a person like me is the protagonist" withouth any bad faith and things go wrong somewhere. But most cases of characters that belong to minority groups and are supossed to be sympathized (that i know) are fine or at worst are on the level of "meh" of other characters that happen to be white straigth people.
and it takes waayyyy more than a bad or overeager writter to ruin gameplay or make the developers do anti-consumer practices.
what happens with sweet baby is an issue where the backslash is deserved, but not for the reasons told by the creator of this thread and certain people are taking advantage of it say "do you see? inclusivity is EVIL and it comes to ruin gaming"
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I don't think there is any ideological reasoning behind companies doing this
I agree. But they use ideology only as excuse. And also I think they are missing the point. Inclusivity is good. But pseudo-inclusivity - where you just replace one bad thing with another (for example adding more options to character creators but also removing for example option to change breast size) or using some hostile approach towards certain group of people (like white male) will actually fire back.
I mean - you can sell your game to gay people without insulting heterosexual people. And if you insult them - why would they pay you money to listen to that?
Also trying too hard to market your product to new audience might even enrage that audience. I remember mute character in "new witcher" only because how badly it was written. She was there only to mark another group on checklist and nothing else.
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Another drama rage-bait thread filled by small-brained angry-at-the-world incels. I thought these threads weren't allowed anymore?
Also, for any normal person reading this, they're complaining about 'wokeness' in games like Amazing Spider-Man 2, God of war ragnarok, Alan wake 2 lmao.
Just completely online people who have nothing going on in their life trying to farm anger and outrage on the internet. Oh well, keep fighting the good fight! The holy war continues!
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Yeah pretty much this. Some people hear the word woke and instantly trigger. Ragebait stuff.
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the drama with sweet baby happened for reasons that they deserve the backlash for, but are unrelated to putting gay characters in games (as i told in my comment) this is another case of people taking something out of context to say "see? woke is EVIL"
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Convenient, isn't it?
If someone's mechanic turns out to be a member of the Klan, I doubt everyone will just assume mechanics in general are evil and nobody should be working on your car ever again but when it works well, conclusions and generalizations are a great go-to
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I don't even really understand what it means to be left or right or woke - I just know the kind of things I like and the kind of things I don't - I do understand however that something are only there to cause people hate and to offend but other seem like they try to make anything offensive
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I prefer to avoid entering fights with reactionary ragebaits. Mostly because I prefer to maintain my mental health and I left the reactionary mindset a long time ago. But...
All the games listed (and many more not on Steam) have absolutely crap writing, characters, and 100% diversity.
I find kinda funny how y'all all avoid mentioning games such as God of War Ragnarok that was acclaimed by basically everyone, Spiderman 2 which was good if you ignore the stupid polemic about clay faces or Alan Wake 2 which won a fuckton of awards related to storytelling. And I recognize some other award winning games such as Sable or Gooofbye Volcano High (I don't know much about this last one but I heard it's pretty good for it's niche):
Should a game focus more on the gameplay and writing or forced diversity?
They are not mutually exclusive
Should someone get hired because they are from ABC or because they are competent with their work (regardless of their background)?
No, BUT many careers are unevenly distributed in favor of diferents backgrounds (many for no reason at all) and making visible people from those backgrounds help to promote more varied people entering there. And that's good specially with creative works where having different visions and experiences is fundamental to get novel ideas and concepts.
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no one ever got the job because of who they know or what family connections they have - (I say this as a big joke of course)
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Many of these games were created because queer devs decided to start their own teams and develop them independently. I haven't played any of the recent games that are currently being downvoted because of the curator drama, but I generally love playing games that deviate from the norm. It's sad to see them boiled down to "woke = bad".
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It's sad to see them boiled down to "woke = bad".
The right-wing have somehow co-opted the concept of [checks notes] 'being aware of the social injustices experienced by minorities' into a slur, but then modern discourse is a dumpster fire across the political spectrum.
Whilst some people take it too far whilst standing up for whatever minority/ethnic group they represent, calling it tantamount to the ethnic cleansing of white people is just bollocks pedalled by privileged people being asked to consider the social position or status of anyone who is not them.
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There was a survey last year that showed a majority of people actually see the word "woke" as positive.
Of course, the percentage varies depending on which side of the political spectrum the person asked identifies with, or if they identify with any side at all.
Because we all know tolerance and empathy are "political" now. Just like the weather.
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As Lexbya said: Why not both?
A game can have strong gameplay and contain elements of / promote diversity. They are not mutually exclusive. And if you are looking through Steam, you will find multiple examples for this.
Why is this even presented as a binary choice of having either one OR the other? To be clear, speaking about diversity not "forced" diversity which is not a thing as far as I can see in this thread.
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Yes, exactly! This is clearly a false dichotomy and I was hoping someone would have noticed and mentioned it before me.
As the game from the baiting video said: I refuse the question, you can have both.
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Too bad games cant be games anymore without pushing political and societal issues...
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To tired to catch up with the dumb drama. But Tales of Kenzera™: ZAU looks incredible.
This curator had the opposite affect on me, instead of boycotting those games. I discover an interesting gem to add to WL :)
Thanks weird curator for the non-recommendations!
Edit:
I also sense a huge amount of Bias in your write up. You have already decide how this brand/company is the bad guy without laying out any objective proof. The poll also has 2 extreme options.🤔
So consider reading something, to shake your bias. Just found this article.
Diversity Is Not Your Enemy In A Live-Service World
Sweet Baby Inc. Doesn’t Do What Some Gamers Think It Does
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I have no idea what that's supposed to mean.
But yea, the website is really named Kotaku. Its an article that offers an alternate perspective.
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Just for explaining. Kotaku is a company quite infamous for hating gamers, constantly calling them names, insulting, saying they are the absolute worst.
The review for Playstation, for example, was them saying gamers should be ashamed of playing games instead of fighting against Injustice, or the time they organized a boycott against the game RimWorld because they said they hated disabled people. Because they couldn't have sex, inmediately after having an accident and staying in a hospital.
Having Kotaku defending you, basically means you hate gamers.
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Wow, that is certainly not the impression I got from reading that article. The more you know..
Added an alternative article to my comment.
https://www.thegamer.com/diversity-consultants-sweet-baby-inc-gaming-worse-live-service/
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I mean, you jump from kotaku to thegamer... It's not your fault, I know. But you reaaaally don't want to know about thegamer. They make kotaku seem serious, passionate gamers. They famously wrote articles saying "gamers are dead"
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Didn't read the whole post but looking through the comments, do these guys just review games to....make you hate them and not play them? Such a useless and frankly irrelevant way to use your tine. Also politics blah blah
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People, why are you all so surprised? This is a standard government policy in the field of propaganda and censorship. This has always been the case, even in ancient Rome. It can be decorated in different ways, but it is everywhere. China, India, EU, USA, Russia, Iran, Israel. You'll find it everywhere. Moreover, many cult works are a direct product of this. Atlas shrugged, Rambo, The Fall of the black hawk...
Personally, I just ignore works where there is too much propaganda. Except that I do it more and more often
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It's like the mafia protection fee. If you "hire" their services, you will have a "safe" business. If you don't, your business will surely be destroyed. Companies developing AAA games have fu money, so they will simply throw money at these people to avoid the backlash. Those games would be great either way, might even have been better without the intervention of these "consultants". These "consulting businesses" would be starving if it were up to me.
I find myself buying more and more retro games: Mega Drive, Saturn, Xbox, Xbox 360, GBC, etc. Most modern AAA game productions suck nowadays. Fortunately, there's a huge backlog of great titles, the same applies to the Hollywood industry. But I know I'm in the minority. The fact of the matter is that fear is selling like hot cakes and the masses are eating it.
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I mean I agree that forced diversity is ruining both fiction and reality but it's not the only or the biggest problem plus having a curator that negatively reviews every game just because a specific company worked on it is simply wrong.
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I think the point of the curator is not to offer reviews, but to inform people which games belong to sweet Inc.
Before, people would just use their own webpage. But I guess people are moving more and more towards big companies. And that is a worrying trend.
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A hilarious place to run a poll like this for sure.
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I don't know if you wanted a serious discussion on the topic. But the way you are presenting your opinion as information, and the biased wording you're using makes you look like a Russian shill.
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Vote with an informed wallet. However it goes you now know where your cash is going and that's a better thing than not knowing.
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Yeah this topic man, it sucks pretty bad, and after everything that has come out it feels like you guys are waking up a bit slow to this, but anyways.... All the biggest companies get massive tax rebates for employment and these rebates increase if your ESG scores adhere to certain criteria, so the reasons for all the marginalized group inclusion is actually disingenuous, and doesnt equate to true equity at the expense of other people, given that the money is taxpayer money and that 90% of the suffering populace is a common denominator and that ultimately it doesnt correct the impact of the colonization period by the same degree, because they took they world for nothing and are selling it back to everyone at 10000% margin.
But yeah ESG and Democrat voters, its not the voters seeing the benefits of those rebates, its the same old business socio-industrial complex that serve the demon god Baphomet, thats the one that celebrates the social order hierarchy and the manipulation thereof. Believe me I know a lot about this stuff as a poor white man in a post-Apartheid black-dominant nation that have used racial narratives to suppress country-wide injustices backed by the ill-informed narratives that were propogated by the news and international media. But the fact that you think your vote matters, I mean with large resistance maybe, but the ultimate social order is to maintain the political status quo, they will take 100% and then celebrate the 1% victories over each other to give you the perception that you made the right call with your vote and we won't repeat the issues of previous regimes because you think you voted for the right person 'this time', when the nett result is always the same.
But its also why I look at these programmes with some amusement, the latest to pay homeless people $1000 per month to solve homelessness and in some ways equity and economic stimulation, the Right is flipping out about this because its 'their money', but they have been borrowing and printing from the reserve bank just as much as they need from the hedge value of their reserve status, but they have been selfish and left the thrid world behind while we get to pay first-world prices after all the value has been liquidated from our currencies, the point being $1000 in my country is about nine months groceries because of the Big Mac effect of not supplying goods to market at cost plus margin, but rather what you can make the market pay by artificial demand and systemic resource deprivation which they see as growth and economic strength, strong for who you should ask. So for me a big part of it all is to remember who's really getting helped, my view is that many social groups are being weaponized to greater ends and some are ignorant to that and some conveniently ignore this, which is the case with Sweet Baby Inc, operating in the name of justice but instead just looking to weaponize social narratives for financial gain.
Because if you look into the reasoning of the ESG as a movement, and the points highlighted above, and the random attack on the videogames industry when there is already products that caters to everyone, the argument that they operate on the basis of equity falls pretty flat on its face. But for frustrated everyday people to go against these people, to be taken out of context, that is a suppression in its own.
Now taxation systems are so entrenched that ultimately any money in liquidated free-market form since injection, if it exchanges hands more than twice, 50% of its value is taxed back to treasury. The treasury has run out of ways to avoid the money just always ending up with big business, a result from the debt-driven tariff economy, so now these programmes to give money to immigrants and homeless starts to make sense to their balance sheets, which is still unfair to the 90% that are slaving their asses off to make it in the world due to the hierarchy of the economy. As it is unfair to people working their whole lives for a pension at age 65, only to die three years later. Then they can tax your estate and the value has depreciated.
Edit: Some links to referred tax schemes for employers.... Its tough to get more specific ones.
https://www.uschamber.com/co/run/finance/employee-benefits-tax-deductions
https://askearn.org/page/federal-government-employer-tax-incentives
In the context of the Sweet Baby Inc argument, its tough to know the exact outlay of their perceived benefits, but companies have to knowingly bear some culpability, but the benefits can be huge, like 50% of employees' salary gets rebated, but also gives incentive to dissolve studios after each release, I guess it depends what arrangement you as a company operate within. I for one am not entirely against socialist solutions in the face of the global desperation, but not like this, where the largest demographic is also the most vulnerable and the most unprotected. The whole thing runs three layers deeper than the argument at face value.
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Emmm.. Can someone explain to me from the top in a few words what's going on?
I'm missing the backround ("history") info so I don't really understand
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Sweet Baby Inc is a consulting company whose job is to proof read your game to check if there are any biases that can be considered offensive. It was recently targeted by online reactionaries because it worked with the latest Suicide Squad accusing it being the reason it's so shit. And then, a steam curator made a list with all the games SBI worked for (a list that doesn't include the big hits btw). Because of that, several employess and the CEO (i'm not sure about the CEO part) asked ppl to mass report the curator and the things went out of hands. With legit critics against SBI got mixed with right wing reactionaries saying that minorities are the reason games are shit nowadays, SBI being as professional as my 7 years old cousin didn't help. And now there's like a weird polemic where everyone is throwing accusations with news from weird sources, unchecked facts, etc...
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"as professional as my 7 years old cousin" I almost spiller my coffee with this one xDDD
Thank you! Now the rest of the comments start making sense..
"whose job is to proof read your game to check if there are any biases that can be considered offensive"
My only question is why that is even a job?.. Especially contracted.. sigh
Anyway, no matter, nothing we can do over that
"(a list that doesn't include the big hits btw)"
That's probably the most interesting thing in the whole story
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"My only question is why that is even a job?.. Especially contracted.. sigh"
That job can be found in every media actually (books, films, music) and you would surprised by the kind of things that can appear if it's isn't properly reviewed, specially when dealing with complicated and nuanced topics.
Also, it doesn't has to be contracted too, many companies do have those as a departments.
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So, there is a new curator on Steam: Sweet Baby Inc detected
Basically, leftists and so-called liberals are raging because the only thing this curator does is list down the games that were consulted with the said company, nothing else.
However, it looks like they are not proud of their work because they mass-reported the group to Steam so all the discussions are closed for now but the curator is still up.
It's hilarious that the people and companies claiming equality and preference are angry because the other side has their preferences!
AllMajority of the games listed (and many more not on Steam) have absolutely crap writing, characters, and 100% diversity (from my POV of course, you can disagree).What do you think? Should a game focus more on the gameplay and writing or forced diversity? Should someone get hired because they are from ABC or because they are competent with their work (regardless of their background)?
Edit: Some people saying this is political. No, it is not and I'll tell you why.
Imagine you are creating a game based on Norse mythology. There comes an external consultant who says that you don't have diversity and you must add one or more colored/women in the game. You don't agree.
Then they say that if you don't do it, we will make sure your game fails, we'll do the negative marketing and we'll make sure you won't get the funds to complete this game or develop any future ones.
You agree and bow down. That's how we get black gods and a "sissy" EX-God of War in Ragnarok.
This is a very small example and I'm not against black people or women. But if you are going to make existing characters crap, well, I'm surely against that.
If you create something new, then it's OK but having Spider-man as a side character in a freaking Spider-Man game is a crime that I cannot forgive. And don't get me started on uglifying the women characters.
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