Total respect to you Laura and thank you for sharing your insights. Happy Holidays!

I never thought I'd disagree with one of her videos. But developers, it's just like hmm, the movie producers and actors should be able to tell whatever stories they want in whatever way they want that is the beauty of art

Social media was (and still is) a mistake. Nobody needs to know what people think. Make your game and if it's good I'll play it. Period. Your ideals means absolutely nothing to me. Tell me about them, you just risk antagonising me and losing a sale. So why do it ? You have nothing to gain and everything to lose. Check your vanity. And by "you" I mean everyone proclaimig their "truth" on social media. None of you matters, you're all perfectly replaceable, only your family cares about you, if anyone does at all.

Always the wrong people working in this industry

Everything is subservient to “The Message.” This is the root of all this woke garbage in all of our entertainment. Blackrock publicly stated years ago they would be “forcing behavior.” Look around at all the negative crap infecting every IP that we used to love. This is the result. It’s social engineering. Non of this is organic or natural. Follow the money. Blackrock owns major shares in anything and everything of any popularity. GTA 6 and Witcher 4 will be next. Guaranteed. Indies are the only way forward. It is the same for Hollyweird.

The root of the problem is that there is an entire generation of executives that have been taught that regardless of the industry left-wing activivism is the goal in order to fit in with their peers. It's religious fervor for people that decry religion.

Thank you for the motivation. You were a good executive at Microsoft. They could use someone like you now.

Until they stop putting ideology before quality they will fail. go woke - go broke. as simple as that.

Subscribed.

so what was the solution to dealing with elon attacking their game unprompted by his bigotry? stay silent? i'm not convinced that would have been the right course either

I would disagree on games still having strong narratives. They just dont. Its all superficial. Handfisted. There is almost no worldbuilding, nuance, complexity or subtext anymore. Look at veilguard. Its an r rated game written and designed as if it was for kids. Everything is said 4 or 5 times, there is no nuance, no subtext, no silent scenes where characters just emote. No worldbuilding no complex characters. It was all Twitter level ai generated dialog almost.

Large banks which issue huge loans to companies to fund developments incentivize hiring people who make things which the majority of the actual market-base for video games do not want or care for in any way. It's not compatible with reality. It's being propped up at a loss.

It really is very simple. The industry used to be filled with people who loved gaming. The devs, publisher and journalists were all gamers. And serious gamers at that. Then as the industry got bigger it attracted people who were activists first and gamers second or even third. And their goal was to push their radical progressive agenda in all games. Games went from fun escapism to obnoxious, blatant political screeds. Then came the evil companies like Blackrock and Vanguard who used cheap loans as incentive to push their evil DEI/ESG agenda in games. Suddenly the people that created the industry and largely supported it over the decades, straight males, were demonized at every turn. In particular straight, wh-te males. Journalists and devs were openly hostile to gamers for not accepting this agenda. Women characters were made uglier and manlier and completely obnoxious in their personalities. Men were portrayed as dumb, weak or evil and always shown up by the women. Also women have been portrayed as the physical equal of men, which is absurd. In addition they've pushed the rainbow agenda at every turn. I am beyond sick of it and will not support any companies that push the evil DEI/ESG agenda in their games or their hiring practices. Thank God Asian and some indie devs are giving us what we want. Which is fun escapism, with attractive characters, free of agenda with universal themes. If the west keeps pushing this crap in games I hope they go bankrupt!!

Oh look, another grifter channel.

Man, Lauren Is Amazing at breaking down these issues that plague modern day gaming. Great job

I really wouldn't have used those examples to underline Ubisoft's poor handle of the PR around Assassin's Creed : Shadows. Their use of real life companies and organization's logos in their marketing is much worse and show a level of sloppiness that is very concerning. The thing with the building mostly associated with the bombing of Hiroshima in their collector's edition is also very baffling. 10:20 I feel I gotta push back a little on this : there was no "interaction" between the art director and Elon Musk. The latter made his tweet on X and the former took a screenshot of a Reddit's thread featuring the tweet and included it in a tweet on Bluesky. I don't remember how Musk was made aware of the response, but it wasn't in his feed. As far as Avowed goes, I think the discussion around it is over. The game and the series were never big enough that the outrage grifters could stay on it for long and the "obsidian avowed" search on Twitter is now free of their bullshit. The fact that one of the loudest grifters is also embroiled in an unrelated legal battle probably helped.

The sad part is: it didn't. Baldurs Gate 3 is still an anomaly and especially the AAA industry is not interested in learning anything from it, because it isn't as thoroughly monetized or monetizeable.

About the black samurai, the real issue about it is that Japanese people do know their history but suddenly it's shocking to USA public ? The core problem is ignorance and how it is perpetuated in the USA education system 😅😅

Brilliant channel. Thank you x

I wonder if it is even possible for larger developers or publishers to even make an interesting game these days. In the west, at least. Theres too much worry for sensitivity that you end up with a windows aero of story presentation. Perfectly soft with no hard edges. Bland in the most Ubisoft of ways. The culture of finger waving amongst devs and disrespect for gamers intellect is also very damaging. But now we see indie, AA or eastern games that are taking risks, respecting the fans ability to like or dislike something on their own terms. And they are seeing success.

Elon attacked the game first. The devs have a right to fire back.

Found you and Tim Cain in the same year. I love when experienced industry veterans share their thoughts on the current state of gaming. Always looking forward to your analysis.

Wow the fact that you found that hidden text... he probably thought no one would ever see that, what (bad?) luck to actually find that. Anyway the fact that people can't just say "Sorry you don't like it. Hopefully you still give our game a chance!" shows a great weakness in the character of the upcoming generation. So many game devs are outright nasty, petty, and childish. I don't think the future is bright for the mainstream videogame industry.

Your professionalism and calm demeanor is a breath of fresh air. Consider me a new fan, I'm interested now in what games you worked on besides the ones you mentioned.

what i dont get is why developers dont put a clause into their work contract to prevent social media outbursts in relation to their product from employees.

I love how you made the richest man into the world publicly attacking a piece of art with his mob some how seem like a victim from this evil evil game developer.

It's very interesting to hear more of industry inside stories and history while talking on modern issues. Keep up the good work!

so if you were told to remove jews from your book, and you said no, and that you’re glad those people are annoyed about the inclusion. how does this become a ‘both sides are at fault’ thing? if mainstream gamers can be whipped in to a frenzy over non issues then im sorry, they’re as big a part of the problem as Musk and any other social engineers aiming for accelerationism

Its funny regarding DA4... they lost their fans. I really can not understand the thinking behind these games : Allienate current fanbase in order to win new fanbase. But if you dont want your current fanbase, why make franchise sequel ? Why not make fresh game ? I mean unclaimed fanbase does not care about the franchise , and current fanbase will just be pissed and hurth the sales. This actually extends to lot of shennenigans we see with franchises today - almost all are doing this bait and switch ( and failing horribly ). Star Wars, LOTR ... etc etc

Oh Laura, sweety, I thought you with all your industry experience were above this. If Microsoft didn't pay you for promotion, then you either do their marketing for free or jump on the exploitation train like all the other “critical thinking critics” out there. You answer your own question, “Why are you responding so harshly to someone whose posts will be seen by millions of people?” Because at least half of the people who will see this post don't like Musk. The problem isn't the themes that are touched on in Avowed (people, have you even played Obsidian's previous games? Because if you think pronouns are some kind of hot topic for them, you definitely haven't played their previous games, or played them without reading the dialogs or learning the lore of the games) The problem is that now it's around a half of the budget allocated to the game goes to marketing, the problem is that the course of development of the game industry is now led not by developers, but by guys from PR and finance departments. And for them, it's not the game's sales figures or positive critics' scores that matter (because they depend on the developers), it's other metrics that matter to them. Because when Biowere closes down after the next Mass Effect installment is released (if it doesn't happen even sooner), the marketer guys will simply post their resume on Linkedin, where he will state that they, working at Biowere, helped increase awareness of the game by so many percent, and was able to realize a marketing budget of so many millions to so many clicks and create so many mentions of the game. They won't care if 90% of that activity is trashing reviews or whining incels in the comments. Stop feeding the trolls.

There other elephant, one in the room: It's not strong narrative. It's not hard themes to discuss. It's not important topics for all times. It's nothing burger. It's twitter instead of script. It's just distilled boredom.

as someone who has trans friends. I'm fine with inclusion. Studios should keep doing what they love and ignore the haters. They're sad and entitled people who think games should be made specifically for them and their beliefs.

The “modern audience” is now relegated to a few weirdos over at Bluesky.

Merry Christmas, Laura.

You’re such a breath of fresh air on KZbin. Great videos. Great channel. Thanks

As newbie a game dev myself, this is some valuable insight. The information you're uploading your channel is very helpful to navigate the industry and its pitfalls.

Isn't controversy used deliberately by the companies to attract attention? Topics that produce strong emotions will get more coverage. A lot of these decisions feel like publicity stunts to me. As was said these companies have people / departments that would warn about these issues so it is hard to believe this isn't intentional.

I'm not so sure about things getting better, if MS is keeping the people who, causes this outburst, safe and protected.

I dont agree with what your saying at all. Your basic premise on not offending people is literally the same thing as the DEI garbage but just a line drawn in the sand a little earlier on. Those totem poles for example are part of a demon worshiping slaving warrior culture, their thoughts and feelings do not count for anything

What we need is someone to win the lottery and then spend a hundred million building a “we don’t give a fuck about your feelings” game. Bet if it was honestly done, it would be a hit despite the inevitable and predictable screams from the snowflake blizzard.

I really love hearing your work insights, your takes are such a cool look into the games industry.

Gamers don't care if woke people work on the game. Gamers in the end just care about good games. If avowed wows us by being a good game, no one will care. But if awoved is a flawed waste of potential, all these woke biggots are the first people on the chopping block

08:55 Empathy is not necessary everywhere.

It'll be fine. Everyone take your meds.

You are nice but not truthfull. Talk about ideology

Are you a woman

I remember back in 2007 when Asscreed 1 first came out and the big animus twist was revealed. Everyone's immediate request was do one in Japan with Samurai. It was literally the most popular request for a Japanese Samurai Asscreed game and Ubisoft spent the next 17 years doing everything but what the fanbase wanted the most. And now that they are finally getting to the Japanese Samuria game everyone has wanted since 2007, Ubi has decided to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by actually making it a game about an African person who's visiting Japan and culturally appropriating all their culture. FFS.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the deepest things that motivate, and the strange modern relationship between Art, and Carnival. I have this sense that people follow genuine, and earnest creative projects, this is treated as a form of capital and exploited much like a natural resource. I do think that democracy is the death of ingenuity. (I don't feel the need to expect a single political position to apply to every level of human interaction. Topically it's irrelevant, and anyway why should it?). Creativity must necessarily step on old forms by virtue of being newborn. If I'm to coax something out of primal chaos through a careful process of divination, am I really beholden to some low thinking stat chaser? People long for real meaning, and solid boundaries. If you stand for something enthusiasm will follow (Though the amount will be relational to your connection with the spirit of... [literally anything fits here] and how many also follow that same spirit). And then the suits can take over and exploit the value out of this new land. Minecraft is a potent example of this. Optimal really, it's gameplay captures so many spiritual pursuits. The moment a game starts drawing lines to the real world (parrots/cocoa) it starts damaging its own creative substrate. Players/fans (the people drawing value out of that space) immediately pickup on this but will really struggle to voice their actual complaint.

Love everything you've done, but ... The question, "Why does he want to hurt Elon Musk? Does he know him?" was naive.

0:40 It became way too profitable, and what's worse...it became *mainstream*