New Games Suck... Or Is It Just Me?

The backstory of that gif cracks me up lol

more info pls. nvm, found the video, might be NSFW

Now they are recovering from such fierce all night battle.

They need the energy to fight the round 2 later.

I made Nynja admitted that they are anti-bad games and anti-sjw, not anti-ideology in games.

So I think my mission is accomplished. You can have round 2 with them if you want :)

Now that you mentiomed...

That sounds plausible.

Maybe its Afanias win in the end!

I don't know why this is so hard for you to understand, but when social justice ideology becomes prioritized in development and writing, you get bad games. I do not think most people complaining about woke are saying games cannot have any left wing themes, gay characters, diversity, etc.

This sums it up better than I can. You are trying to use a dictionary definition for woke to make an argument, when the people you're arguing with have internalized a different definition. Argument still comes down to how you define woke, and you're not convincing anyone of anything.

Bad games are bad. Good games are good. A game that could've been good might end up bad because of pressure to force inclusivity. I do not think many people care about whether their games push environmentalism, or even eco-terrorism. The issue is the forced, poorly written dialogue and bad character design that all so often come in around social justice issues.

It seems you want to believe that the issues are not related, and bad dialogue is a product of bad writers. But, those of us who are not supporters of the leftist agenda have noticed the drop in quality whenever these issues are touched. An excellent writer can fit in these issues subtly, such that a viewer considering the material in depth comes to the desired conclusion on their own. If every writer were excellent, this would not be an issue.

But, by definition, every writer cannot be an excellent writer. When you take an average writer and force them to include things that don't really fit the vision of the project, and require they get the viewer to a certain goal, you get what we see in all these failed projects. They end up full of worldbuilding inconsistancies, conversations with the subtlety of a 'relentless damn brick', and straw man characters that serve similarly to the 1-dimensional evils of 80s and 90s writing. Without the restrictions, it is entirely feasible these writers would have produced a good project.

If this anti-woke movement on the internet only stays within the range of anti-bad games, I wouldn't even say a thing.

But some of the online propaganda cycling in different community clearly tried to establish a connection between "bad games" and "left wing ideology", while trying to re-direct angry gamer's rage towards certain political faction.

some people are really using this opportunity to push the agenda towards eliminating specific ideology in games, this is also real.

Maybe it happens because it's election year so more resources entered information war territory. Idk. I personally don't think it's a healthy development if this trend continues. This kind of irrational political war online is bad for the industry, imo.


A lot of assumptions on the internet has no proof. No one knows who made the final decision on the result of the scripts.

My personal opinion is that if there are no proof, then I only judge things from what I can see.


There are a LOT of Japanese anime and jrpg has preachy dialogues. But they aren't woke. It's just writers writes preachy dialogues.

If non-woke also writes preachy dialogues in anime, it will be hard for me to believe that woke is the source of preachy dialogues. It's simply bad writing, that's it.

the whole "left wing money leads to bad dialogues" narrative seems like people intentionally create a connection between left wing and writing quality, without strong evidence presented.

Like I said, if people really have evidence, show me some proof. Show me emails of some Blackrock manager threatening writers to add forced diversity. Then I'll stand on your side.

If you just made a weak claim like "BUT SBI is in the credits!" Then I'm just going to assume the content has woke because the creators are woke themselves. I think it's reasonable to judge based on a available information only.

Brah. It's all ***. It's all *** nonsense.

A good game can have all the DEI in existence. No one will bat an eyelash.

A bad game has one single instance of DEI they'll scream it from the rooftops.

Its the same thing with women in lead roles. If it's good no one cares, if anything is bad, blame women.

Its the same thing with poc and/or lgbtqia. If it's good no one says a word, if it's bad blame the poc and/or lgbtqia

Just make good content and you can put whoever the *** you want in it.

So woke should have the same meaning as sjw? Ok.

If that's how you define woke then I can tell you I am against the idea of sjw attack RE5 for story happening in Africa. But I am also against the idea that anytime a game has black or "type A/B" for gender selection, anti-woke acted as if game developer commit a sin or something. The standard applies to both sides.

Just let people freely create their stories. If you don't like it, don't buy it. Why do you need to attack the creators for it?

They took the chance to gain an edge in information warfare, that's all there is.

The evil gaming industry that ruined games is just the victim.

It comes down to a fundamental disagreement on whether they are 'freely creating their stories'. When you have a world and storyline that is otherwise coherent, and the parts that stick out like a sore thumb all pertain to a certain ideology, it is hard to overlook the known influence of DEI investors and the past trend of the company governing it.

You choose to believe this is all the authors doing, that is your choice. As you said, there is little objective evidence. But, there are documents floating around such as Amazon Studio's inclusion policy:

I don't see how you can require having a person with a disability, three regionally underrepresented cultural groups, etc.. without influencing writing. There are many settings that do not lend themselves to anything besides cultural homogeny. If there is not international commerce, where do these races come from?

These are blatantly stated restrictions that will be considered in the writing and alter the end product. That is undeniable fact, what is up for debate is whether there are enough good writers to work in these guidelines and still produce good content. Also consider that the creative teams under consideration have to fit the DEI criteria on their own, which may rule out some of the best writing teams before they even get to try. Judging by the track record Amazon Studios has so far.. it seems this is not working well.

Well yeah, if you force diversity in a region that diversity it's a thing, then it's not going to work. That's what Namco Bandai's DEI training was about.



They literally said they prefer not to put bunch of black person in a rural Japanese school because it's bad implementation of DEI. Game companies were aware of this issues and they are trying to avoid it with their DEI training.


Then the angry anti-woke mobs bashed Bandai for "embracing DEI" endlessly despite they are advocating the right thing.

If this movement isn't entering the territory of being extremely irrational, then idk what is.

Stay rational, then I'll support the movement. Or else it's hard to support such movement that's just labelling everyone as enemies. Which is exactly what's happening atm.

Again, not talking about Bandai specifically. I am fully in favor of more companies embracing tact similar to Bandai, and I oppose reactionary anti-woke trolling. I simply disagree with you on the extent to which DEI execs/investors influence western media content.

There are recognizable patterns in content produced by major studios in the west, that are hallmarks of woke design. It's not limited to inclusion, either. The 'diverse' characters will almost always be of the highest moral character and ability to influence the storyline, and will never be cast as villains. Writers are so afraid of approaching negative stereotypes that they've locked out certain traits from certain groups. It even leans on soft-spoilers, because you can predict it with such reliability.

Then why are SBI and other woketivists so upset when someones makes a steam curator group dedicated to pointing out which games include SBI to the point they start a harassment campaign to have their steam account banned for it?
Are they not proud of their work? Why did SBI start removing the list of games they've worked on from their website?

"People just assume SBI working on a game means it will be woke". SBI is literally an ESG extortion consultation group, their entire existence is to threaten studios with low ESG scores if they dont pay them make sure games meet certain DEI thresholds.

If the people in charge aren't already left wing then they won't hire SBI.

They hire SBI because they are already left wing and they want better implementation of left wing ideology.

So blaming SBI for bringing left wing ideology to games is silly. It's creators being left wing to begin with, not SBI making them left wing.

People in charge means whoever has the final say on the content. Let it be writers, artists, investors, whatever. They are allowed to put left wing ideology in their games because it's their games.


Because people aren't judging games fairly when games have politics, obviously.

Yes, Blackrock has the final say on whether the game gets left wing ideology forced into it. But, when they're holding a significant portion of stock in every major company, and have the ability to immediately crash their stock price for non-compliance.. nobody else in the process matters very much.

You can defend one of the largest entities in the world using their money and power to enforce an ideology, I guess. But, that doesn't feel very left wing to me..

SBI founder Kim Belair:
"If you're a creative working in AAA, which I did for many, many years, put this stuff (DEI) up to your higher-ups. And if they don't see the value in what you're asking for when you ask for consultants, when you ask for research, go have a coffee with your marketing team and just terrify them with the possibility of what's going to happen (cancel culture) if they don't give you what you want."

Who are the bad people again?

I am not a left wing anti-captalist, I give zero *** about captalists influencing the world with money.

But I defend for left winger's freedom of speech on expressing their ideology in games. Because I adore game as an art medium.

I vastly disagree with Philip K ***'s view on capitalism, I still adore his work though. I don't need to have the same political ideology to admire art.

The same standard applies to right wing. If you don't like left wing ideology, don't buy their work. Or even make your own right wing ideology story, I will support that.

Just don't attack people for having different political opinions in games, then we are cool.

Sure, they "hire" SBI, just like businesses "hire" protection from the mob for "protection". And when a studio doesnt hire SBI, like Game Science didnt, a bunch of hit pieces came out against the game and studio.

Honestly, I don't care if we are cool or not.

I don't enjoy the crappy writing and worldbuilding that forced DEI create.

Blackrock's monopoly over funding sources has ensured that almost all major studios are forced into it.

If they can influence media on such a wide scale, why should I care if people are being disingenuous while pushing back against it? The way I see it, these 'anti-woke influencers' are actually the little guy fighting back against the tyrant. This does not apply to misrepresenting content, such as was done against Bandai. It absolutely applies to criticizing any game studio that hired SBI as a consultant.

If hiring SBI becomes a risk to the outcome of your product, and blackrock loans require SBI, game studios are put in a tough position. One outcome is that less games are produced and gaming as a business shrinks. Another outcome is that someone backs down, or an alternative source of funding becomes more widespread. Either way, I'm not going to miss any of the SBI shovelware. So, I'm down for it.

Thats the neat part: we dont, because 99% of the time its actually garbage.


Tales of Kenzera: Zau
I'm just gonna quote whats on wiki:
Is there any reason whatsoever why a game written by a man of African descent, inspired by his own life experiences he's witnessed first hand, would need a DEI consultant company from Montreal, Canada to advise him on narratives for the story?

Are you trying to say that hire SBI=bad game, don't hire SBI=good game? This sounds like a forced conclusion that has zero logic.

Anti-woke had been hyping Stellar Blade as saviour of gaming industry before, and they didn't hire SBI. They only sold 1m-3 copies.

Nevermind MANY other 1m copy games like Yakuza or Team ninja games.

On the other hand, Spider man 2 is on SBI website, it sold 11m units.

If you want to make an argument that SBI has a real effect on the final product, then ALL the game worked with SBI should flop, and ALL the game without SBI should be successful. You can not cherry a short list of games only to make a point.

Otherwise the argument is weak and unsupported by real evidence.

False equivalence. If SBI typically takes 3/10 off of a game's end result, then an otherwise 10/10 game may end up a perfectly playable 7/10. But, a 7/10 game that could've been good ends up a 4/10 dumpster fire.

If SBI is a straight negative influence, as it seems to be, then it makes sense to push against it. If pressure causes game studios to hesitate to use them or similar consultants, then we get more games that we consider good.

I don't see them as little guy lol. They are influencers. Every marketing professional working in the field that I know irl knows in order to market something, such as a product, ideology or political position, getting influencer to work with is the first step.

Sorry, I can never see influencers as "little guy". They are on fact, people with power in today's world.

Spider-Man 2 was:
1-Bundled with PS5's and sold at a time that ps5's were scarce
2-A follow-up to two great Spider-Man games
3-questioned about the lower quality and messaging of the storylines in Spider-Man 2. People dug deeper and deeper and thats when people started finding the cancer.

I haven't find strong evidence to support how SBI would make a game worse. I suspect consultant is just game dev ask for advice on how to implement something, but the ultimate decision is on the dev.

So if a story becomes worse after SBI advice, I would blame the one who implement it. They should be responsible for the final outcome, not external companies who aren't the final decision maker.

Anyways, my opinion will change if real evidence is presented. Such as an email from SBI saying if they don't do what they said the studio will shut down or something.

I don't think either of us will change others opinion on this matter and very little evidence can be found online regarding SBI's actual role, so I'll stop there. Let's agree the part that we both did on DEI practice and move on.