Dancing on the grave of Concord

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On this channel, I discuss topics like RPGs, CRPGs, JRPGs, FFXIV, Baldur's Gate 3, Diablo 4, Path of Exile, Elden Ring, MMOs, World of Warcraft, and gaming industry news.

[@greekfire3244]

"Am I really that out of touch? No. It's the customers that are wrong."

[@Ben-jl2rh]

Proceeds to insult & mock their audience to the point of them not buying their games.

[@ILikeYous]

If only they even posed the question to themselves, but nope. Participation ribbons since birth.

[@HiArashi13]

Thing is, this way of thinking is not wrong per se. If your main goal is to make a statement, and not money that is. A lot of artists of the past were exactly like that. They didn't make a good living, but they were proud of their beliefs and how firm their position is. But when people want to make a controversial statement while *also* be commercially successful, I don't quite understand how they managed to figure out breathing.

[@Homiloko2]

They keep saying "this game is not for you" and then get mad when we don't buy it

[@PrionicProteins]

Absolutely. If they don't want our money why in Celestia's name should we give it to them?

[@Moloko_Synthemesc]

I have to wonder who this game was really made for when it was so soundly rejected by pretty much everyone. Themselves? Sony employees? Who knows. Happy to see it fail after them being so arrogant about it. What a shitshow.

[@mrbigglezworth42]

@@Moloko_Synthemesc If I'm being cynical, it was intentionally made for no one. It was made with the intention that certain large investment firms would help cushion the blow, and it could be written off as a tax write off with the company pocketing the insurance on its failure. Basically The Producers, but they pulled off the scam correctly.

[@Moloko_Synthemesc]

@@mrbigglezworth42 it does seem that way, yeah. A lot of things don't really add up, especially the part of Sony dumping so much money into it, considering they had to have known it was a huge risk that was unlikely to pay off (at least if we're talking about it in a legitimate sense), given the genre and the fact that it wasn't groundbreaking in any way. Even the devs themselves had to have known this, unless they were operating in an echo chamber that somehow didn't inform them of the saturated market they were releasing this style of game into. The devs having a tantrum and insulting people when it unsurprisingly flopped would make it appear as though this wasn't intended to those who might be naive to a more sinister angle.

[@Vaazir-sx6cd]

Dancing on their graves? No. I'm doing backflips.

[@TwoHandedChargedBonk]

As an Australian I am doing our country's standard break dance routine

[@IamJustA]

​@@TwoHandedChargedBonk🤣

[@IamJustA]

Backflips? Im getting a dance team together to win the national championship just for the competition to be rigged and we still win because of how excited I am

[@Vaazir-sx6cd]

@@TwoHandedChargedBonk 🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@zxyatiywariii8]

I'm an ex-gymnast and I'm doing an entire floor exercise on its grave.

[@Icipher353]

When he was asked why he never commented on politics, Michael Jordan famously said, “Republicans buy sneakers too.” He knew that it was bad for business to engage in divisive topics. The games industry would do well to heed that wisdom.

[@Nah-pz9ml]

Ah but envy is ok?

[@Nah-pz9ml]

Not directed to you OP. But their logic makes no sense.

[@arcadenoah993]

​@@Nah-pz9ml Actually what OP means in this situation os: do a game/book/music/story that you feel like you want, stop censor yourself because someone will think this game/book/music/story has no political views enough, diversity enough, etc

[@L4Disillusion]

Michael Jordan was a basketball player. He wasn't an extremist nut job.

[@poros4588]

We shouldn't give space to people who hate their own consumers with passion. Imagine calling your customers "freaks" and "loosers".

[@nicodemous52]

You have to love the cognitive dissonance here. Proclaims it's not woke or anti woke that's at the heart of it. Then immediacy goes on to explain how woke is in fact hurting games.

[@Damomonopolos]

They already have safe spaces. How much more space do they need?

[@anthonyblanton7074]

If that one employee was fired because of that response would your opinion change? Probably not.... I would assume

[@poros4588]

​@anthonyblanton7074 that type of mentality has been shared across the industry. So it's not "one employee" . Just a few days ago, a video showed a female "they/them" dev was mocking and insulting the male playerbase which ironically is the majority of gamers and guess what her colleagues were clapping at her speech. So no, I opinion won't change. I won't feel sympathy for someone who doesn't show me decent human behavior then act like I'm the bully and they are the victim

[@ifirespondiamstupid7750]

Assuming that not all of them think like her*​@@anthonyblanton7074

[@zaphael7238]

I think the whole fight against ‘woke’ is not against diversity we’ve had many diverse characters in games for decades. It’s against tokenism and against pandering and cringe and real world politics invading every piece of escapism we have. Dion was a good character whom he slept with had little to do with his overarching storyline, he was gay and no one cared, because he was a well fleshed out character. We don’t have issues with diversity but quotas, if I’m playing a game set in medieval Europe the last thing I want is a racially diverse cast of characters because Medieval Europe was not that. Much like if I’m playing a game set in the Congo the last thing I want is a majority white cast when I’m supposed to be playing a game set in the Congo with a cast of characters from the area. Which I would really like to play btw especially if it was made by people whom understood the culture and could bring realism to the story.

[@Smaul002]

Games centered around “marginalized” groups: - It’s about keeping the culture authentic Games centered around “non-marginalized” groups: - It’s about giving a more accurate representation of the modern world

[@AtticusKarpenter]

Woke is enemy of actual diversity, its anti-white racism (sometimes anti-Asian too, but it easily can be anti-Black under guise of celebrating Black culture, like Wakanda with stupid mish-mash of African cultures and people doing monkey noises when they angry but somehow its not racist, its hating this racist movie considered racist, wtf), its sexism because it denies women their femininity AND men their masculinity (and you are not allowed to play both sides, like elegant-but-powerful archetypes that always existed in culture for both genders, like Apollo and Artemis; no, in woke propaganda women are always insufferable brick-like brutes and men are always sorry weasels that can never accomplish anything), its hates history and culture of anything that are not modern day California. Artworks can be EXTREMELY gay like She-ra and Princess of Power, or Captain Laserhawk, and still not be woke, having men that are not complete losers, having women that are caring and gentle, not having Mary Sue, having actual plot that is interesting. Its not much to ask for! And this is what need to acclaimed as not woke. But in the minds of woke idiots there is either woke shit or kkk agitation video, no in-between

[@ksNanoSquid]

Concord's catastrophic failure gives me more hope for the industry, and even society at large, than I've had in decades. It's finally happened - we reached a level of slop that the average person will not tolerate.

[@raics101]

Yeah, that's probably the case. The hardline right-wing fans they're talking about abandoned their products a long time ago. There were apparently so many of those their number crunchers never even noticed they're gone. Now that even the ordinary people are getting sick of it, the ripples are starting to show.

[@ksNanoSquid]

​@@raics101 Can confirm. I left ages ago. Now that it's hitting the average person perhaps we can see more titles that anyone can enjoy regardless of creed.

[@zxyatiywariii8]

Wokeness in games has finally reached critical mass, and the resulting explosion is so incandescent, even the normies are noticing.

[@MeltonCrest]

@@raics101 Define "right wing" because according to what you just said YOU are a right winger to them. Your complete lack of self-awarness to your brainwashing is pathetic.

[@raics101]

@@MeltonCrest Well of course I am. What did you think they call people who state the obvious?

[@mikew1080]

This tells you everything you need to know about woke journalists. Tales of Kenzera: Zau, an african made game with an entirely black cast, never had any talk of lacking diversity. Black Myth, several outlets complained that it lacked diversity. It is a game with more creatures and people of China than any game in ages. Why? It was never about diversity or inclusion. It is just about having perceived control over what is right or wrong.

[@dreadnaught2448]

Too bad Tales of Kenzera: Zau had Sweet Baby Inc. involved with it. I was willing to give the game a try because A. I love Metroidvanias, and B. having a game's story dive into African culture that isn't Egypt is something we don't see a lot of. However, because of how bad Sweet Baby Inc. is, I absolutely refuse to buy any game that has their involvement. Maybe I'll try the game if it goes on a massive bargain bin sale.

[@mikew1080]

@@dreadnaught2448 I might be mistaken, but it's free on PS Plus currently if you have that. At least it was for a time.

[@budthecyborg4575]

100% "The Agenda" isn't pro-diversity, it's anti-gamer.

[@dreadnaught2448]

@@budthecyborg4575 It's also fascist.

[@thekraken1909]

Interesting how "diversity" always exclusively seems to mean "black people".

[@Deckyx]

It's Concover.

[@zen_7748]

That moment when Concord doesn't rake in more than 1 concordillion dollars. Truly one of the games of all time.

[@cs8712]

Concord status: Conquered

[@AnHattedTig]

Concluded

[@wookitalki4047]

Concelberry

[@verzeda]

​@@cs8712 we wuz konquered

[@gergopahollo]

I am 100% convinced that Eve’s hotness and the fanservice-y outfits/camera angles did help in selling the game, but it is shocking to me that some people really believe that it was “the only thing” that made it a success

[@john7649]

while I agree it's definitely not the only thing that made it successful, I would propose that it is what got many more eyes on it to give it more than a second look to find out for themselves if it's actually good beyond the surface level of going against the more common establishment of unattractive female characters in Western gaming

[@gergopahollo]

@@john7649 I mean… sure. It’s no accident that “sex sells” is pretty commonly thrown around, generally speaking people like to look at other, (more) attractive humans. While it may have somewhat lessened with some folks (mainly genZ, I’d wager) consciously going against the current, it’s so instinctive that maybe even the people who claim “they don’t care about that” will be more likely to enjoy it. With that being said, I’m really not againdt diversity and representation, but consumers, as a group, tend to have a really good sixth sense when it comes to detecting that it’s not genuine, just some checklist items being ticked off.

[@infinitecurlie]

​@@gergopaholloYou're right. And even if you have the most attractive protagonist, if the game isn't fun or it doesn't work then people are going to turn it off.

[@Hwarming]

It definitely put the game on a lot of peoples' radars, I'll admit that's how I heard about it, I tried the demo and loved how it played, if I can get a game that plays really well with an amazing soundtrack and look at an attractive player character, why the hell not? I really think it's one of the best souls-like games, the controls are perfect and Shift-Up knocked it out of the park for their first AAA game

[@MorbidEel]

Hmm ... are there no flops that are also good looking?

[@alanyuen2664]

Black Myth Wukong sold 18 million copies as of today. Xbox hasn't even launched it yet.

[@colnelScar2]

Can either Xbox systems actually handle wukong?

[@roscoeorginal]

@@colnelScar2apart of the Microsoft Agreement, the games have to be able to run on both systems. I am sure the Series X is fine but the S is running at a shit pace. At some point, they have to just separate the two.

[@cheungdouglas1122]

Is it good? I'm still on the fence about it, but I wanted to see what most others thought.

[@colnelScar2]

@@roscoeorginal I'm still surprised they still haven't retired the S series. That one has caused too many problems.

[@solouno2280]

​@@colnelScar2according to the benchmark, no... I have a recommended CPU, a minimum RAM and a 16 years old graphic card that says "no way"

[@eldoctoroso]

How to write a good gay/lesbian/black/etc... character: 1- Write a good character. 2- DON'T tell me that they're anything. 3- Done.

[@MachineMindDesigns]

Example: Veronica and Arcade from Fallout NV. Veronica's was a wee bit more obvious considering her interactions, but Arcade's was a "blink and you'll miss it" case.

[@avalonjustin]

@@MachineMindDesigns His pretentious personality was a quick tipoff to me. I sensed something right away😆

[@J3nnySmith]

Then they can't act like it's the first time in human history someone portrayed X minority character.

[@OneNubNinja]

@@MachineMindDesignsanother example: Riot’s Arcane.

[@GiblixStudio]

13:30 if you don't get you way. harm people.

[@highrulerdiamond6717]

Literally one of the rare games where you wish the "protag" dies at the end

[@thefgcsensei4482]

​@@highrulerdiamond6717it shares that with YIIK

[@Scav-Goblin]

I Saw an SJW "Reviewing" Dustborn on KZbin this morning, and he had all these bots in the comments like "omfg, you gave it SUCH an in depth review! you really opened my eyes, im TOTALLY buying the game now!" like, you could tell INSTANTLY that they've hired Bot Comments to make their Crappy Game look good.

[@leviticusprime4904]

@@Scav-Goblinin case your wondering the steam charts still hasn't cracked 100 all time peak

[@DeavtheDev]

The fact that abilities in dustborn are literally "cancel people" and "bully people" is INSANE

[@sol5916]

On the whole “woke” thing, it doesn’t exist in singular instances. It’s not about the girl from Suicide Squad rejecting her traditionally sexy clothing. That’s just a single scene. It’s about the PEOPLE behind the game that believed that to be a good idea. When you have lame people making games, the game itself has no choice but to be lame.

[@medgrip87]

Did Paul Tassi really tell us not to cope? While he writes an article full of cope!!! Hahaha

[@KibethSE]

Tassi is such an access media shill. Anything for the cause type. Glad to see him get pushback.

[@poros4588]

Lpve how Tassi a lefty who's so anti racist inserts "Game mostly sold in China where people don't care about sexism" love the tad racism as of Chinese people aren't human and their sales aren't really "sales"

[@provaricus627]

Never forget that he made an article shilling Disney’s The Acolyte.

[@b1indsided]

havent liked him for a while...clown ass dude for sure

[@bells5385]

@@KibethSEhe wasn’t always like that but he’s off the deep end now

[@MrBezyBez]

From Google: "Generally, fewer than 1% of the worldwide population are transgender, with figures ranging from

[@SilentAdventurerNumber02]

When you think about it, the number are actually far more smaller let's be generous and say it's exactly 5% of world population is LGBTQHDTV+++++. how many of them play games? how many of those gamers play shooter? How many of those shooter players doesn't mind Live service game? How many of those shooter players who doesn't mind Live service play Hero Shooter? How many of those hero shooter players not actively play TF2, Overwatch, Paladin, or many other Hero shooters? How may of them bla bla bla. The game itself has a ton of filters for their players. Putting a massive filter right at the start is not greatest thing to do in any way

[@Limis646]

I belive that statistic is outdated as it is rising steadily by the day as information becomes more common and people become more comfortable with coming out but still a smaller demographic I mean hey, if they want to make shit aimed at folk like me go ahead just understand your targeting a niche. It feels like all these companies would be a lot richer if they made many diverse games rather than few games with the audience of everyone, but hey im not an exec what do I know.

[@minamo4012]

Industry will learn the lesson, but in the wrong way, always.

[@Macheako]

Concord devs rn: “hmmmm…maybe it wasn’t gay enough?” 😂❤

[@Star-Blink]

"We need more inclusivity"

[@chaijulut4143]

Meanwhile Wukong and Stellar Blade are two out successful franchises made from scratch, free from woke ideology. The latter can't hit success with any original work. Concord is the High Guardian Spice of the videogames. My concern is, precisely because of that they're gonna, throw the towel on creating original franchises and keep ruining already established franchises with their garbage. They know they can't thrive without their initial momentum.

[@Exotac]

@@chaijulut4143 The light in all of this is Wukong. Not because of what it "represents", but the practical reality surrounding its success. In a time when the AAA industry has hit the practical ceiling of growth, yet the mandates of our failing economy have put even further pressure to keep that growth going, Black Myth Wukong has just revealed there's an entire untapped market in China to grow into. Literally, a golden goose. Exactly what they need. More growth, waiting to be had. Except, its in China. Which means ALL of their injected ideological bullshit isn't going to fly. The Chinese government is RADICALLY anti-intersectional (what we colloquially refer to as "woke") and the Chinese public has zero interest in American progressive values. So basically, the industry is going to have to choose. Political pandering (in a time when "the pendulum is swinging back" as they say and the public is already mass-rejecting their radical-progressive elements like gender politics anyway), or the solution to their problem (tapping into China, where they won't be allowed to pander). A lot of twitter ideologues are gonna learn real fast how much the corporate world actually give two shits about their values.

[@testxxxx123]

@@Macheako how much further do they want to go? Anti-gun shooters next? lol

[@AnthonyRinaldi1]

Paul Tassi doesn't understand, its not that the product that is woke that causes it to fail, its because the creators are woke that causes failure. Woke requires hiring less than the best people, lowering quality of the product. Woke requires a narrow view on themes than can be explored, lowering the quality of the story found in the product. Woke requires pre-configured heroes and villains, lowering the chance of surprise found in the product. Woke requires the exclusion of the majority of players from being welcomed to play the game, lowering the sales of the product. Woke cannot survive without compulsion, and no one is currently forcing people to play games. That is why you fail.

[@Variapolis]

dancing with an emote I didn't pay for

[@RinaRavyn]

🤣

[@verzeda]

Y'ARRR

[@Cyael]

Seems like that asian guy is making you all brave enough to tell the truth. Good for you.

[@LegendaryDrops]

I'm not sure who you're talking about, I've spoken my mind pretty frequently. From my perspective, bravery isn't a factor on the internet. You're either just honest or you're not.

[@Raggamuffinz917]

LD been out speaking straight facts for a while now. Hes talking about the dude from Sundgramd Studios or something like that, also a legend.

[@LegendaryDrops]

Is there an article or a video or something? I haven't seen anything so I'd be interested to see what they say

[@Raggamuffinz917]

@@LegendaryDrops I got you bro. kzbin.info/www/bejne/nGrRpoCKpaZqfqcsi=YeMxqTrpM1gZJ6yd

[@Cyael]

@@LegendaryDrops it was Sungrand Studios “September 3” video that Asmongold also covered. Found his summary eloquent.

[@derpybulb8124]

Wake up mister freeman.... *wake up and smell the ashes* of concord

[@CodeEleven_86]

Imagine gman wakes freeman one more time to stop/showing how to make a great game during these game industry dark times with HL3...

[@darrellcovello7917]

I read that slowly with a weird cadence

[@shadowpathfinder7723]

Gman is such an impactful character I've only played through Half-Life 2/part 1/part 2 one time and I can hear him say this in his manner of speaking

[@AllTheBoatsTv]

The amount of: "Hi, I'm Josh, he/him cisgender, queer ally, and I want to introduce you to this new game" "No we don't put politics in our games, you're such a silly billy for thinking so" Is hilarious. Paul is indeed coping and seething.

[@asumax8]

Paul speaking of mental gymnastics is funny because he did serious ones in that article. He's not wrong but he's not entirely right either. Its like some other youtubers have said, these journos are finally coming to some correct conclusions but with the wrong lessons learned. As for the tweet from the Helldiver's dev, why should we care how hard the devs worked? Or that rhey lost their jobs or the studio closes? You all don't care how hard your customers worked to get the money you demand for the games. You don't care if their lives suck or if they lost their jobs. And the devs definitely don't care about the type of games gamers want. Gamers will dance because they are tired of the pandering and corporatism, not capitalism but corporatism, that are ruining the hobby we love

[@Macheako]

Bro, does ANYONE care how hard all these minimum wagers workers be bustin they butts for us???? 🤣🤣🤣 It’s ALL just hip hop hypocrisy ❤️

[@Raggamuffinz917]

Exactly, are these devs shedding any tears when their potential customers lose their jobs? Why should we care when they lose theirs? These people think they are entitled to our money simply because they worked hard on a project. Sheer fucking hubris!

[@danielallred4806]

Yes, which is basically just economic Fascism but the last thing people like Larry Fink and others that promote ESG want pointed out is how Hitler and Mussolini forced companies to comply with all government agendas under strict punishment.

[@budthecyborg4575]

The modern videogame developer is so hateful against the average gamer they actually produce videogames with the intent of chasing men out of the videogame market. And all we have to do to make them fail miserably is not buy it. Modern game developers are full r*tard.

[@Barni2212]

And the thing is that you can work your a$$ off, but at the end that doesn't guaranty anything. You can still make a sh*t product even if you work on it a lot.

[@RealOGfikey]

"These people don't care about you. They don't care how you identify, what colour your skin is, what gender you are, where you're from in the world. They just care about money. You think some executive is thinking, 'how can we make our games more inclusive?'. Well, they are thinking about that because they're trying to make more money." Absolutely spot on assessment. Woke capitalism is still just capitalism. It has always been this way since the first corporations started to emerge somewhere in the late 50s and have been growing ever since (and jumping on any new and emerging social trends and packaging them like they own them into selling them and make profit from us. You go back into any decade and see what things were popular within the social mainstream and you'll see this very thing). Their only motivation is accruing wealth and because of that cult-like superficial obsession they create derivate, mediocre works that are a mediocre copy of previous smash hits. It's so painfully obvious. Same as Hollywood. Same problem. Superficial, mediocre people motivated only by superficial, mediocre obsessions produce superficial mediocrity. Fast food being a fantastic example of people being fed crap. If you keep on feeding into it, you're part of the problem of it continuing to exist. You don't need to demand more. You just need to demand better.

[@nineteenblunts9195]

spit’n

[@sallybags9090]

No, they absolutely care about gender and race. These people clearly hate whyte straight males.

[@crass340]

the thing is, for some reason all these people never gave a fuck about the companies' intentions until the started being different from their desires, so that's what it take for you to realize how capitalism works? You're just angry it's not catering to your demands anymore.

[@RealOGfikey]

@@crass340 What people are partly angry with is the phony "representation" which actually masks these companies deceitfulness and real intent. So nice strawman argument there, pal. Try again.

[@f.b.lagent1113]

that’s reaching a bit too much to give the rabid creators of these slops some slack, people can see things they did and are saying to the very people they want to to sell to, “untalented frea-s” for recent example

[@alargefarva4274]

Let’s dance the night away! I’m doing the Truffle Shuffle!

[@nicodemous52]

Come on, shake your body baby, do the conga I know you can't control yourself any longer Come on, shake your body baby, do the conga I know you can't control yourself any longer Come on, shake your body baby, do the conga I know you can't control yourself any longer Feel the rhythm of the music getting stronger Don't you fight it till you've tried it do the conga beat

[@thetruth45678]

Is it safe to dance?

[@gowankommando]

​@thetruth45678 You can dance if you want to

[@thetruth45678]

@@gowankommando Can I leave my friends behind? My friends don't dance.

[@Jinjuri1]

I think Paul doesn't know that what he considers as "perception" and "reality" can be true at the same time.

[@bigboi5545]

@Jinjuri1 Tassi clearly never heard of the phrase "Perception is reality".

[@nicodemous52]

I think it's disgusting when people celebrate when someone expires. But when a game that represents what I hate about gaming and society at large? Yeah, I dance upon the grave myself.

[@DerekS-kq3zh]

These people celebrated when news broke that people who didn't get jabbed would get denied organ transplants. They've danced on our graves, I'll dance on theirs.

[@D3usEX.]

Talentless hacks like them deserve to be out of the gaming industry. No pity, no mercy.

[@lordmakino9514]

🗿 tbh I would dance on both graves ngl If game or person

[@Garbear0119]

Society?

[@RenegadeVash]

They antagonized the internet. Of course people dance on their grave because they gave the bird to their audience.

[@GNCD2099]

For me, it was the character designs. I saw the trailer and none of the characters piqued my interest. Found out it was a hero shooter with nothing new and I just checked out. On the other hand, the first time I saw the heroes in Overwatch, I could not wait to play Junkrat, Bastion, and Winston. Their designs show a lot of personality and give you an idea of what they can do in the game.

[@AtticusKarpenter]

Blizzard have some of the greatest concept-artists in the industry, like, EVER. I think this is important part of success of their games, especially World of Warcraft (yeah even in the times when all models looked very.. not detailed. Still, overall concept design is what pulled everything. Lich King is cool. Deathwing is cool. Varian is cool. Sylvanas is cool. Ragnaros are cool as hell). And that great team of artists continued to be great for years after company itself gone to shit, destroyed from inside by Activision. (also because of appreciation for Blizzard's concept design i can't even fucking look at Dota models of heroes, because they are butchered designs of Warcraft units and of boy how worse they become after that)

[@TRUEMIXEDBLOOD]

Thanks for calling out Paul Tassi for the oversimplifying and strawmanning he engages in when writing his articles.

[@kingcurmudgeon8685]

He was actually too kind to Tassi. Tassi has actually been a hugely biased liberal who attempts to sound reasonable but isn’t. His claim to fame is playing and covering Destiny 2. That’s should tell you everything about the guy.

[@DubbedJey]

Funny he doesn't talk about when they pressure other devs to do what they say, or they will try to destroy it, Soulash 2 is a recent example.

[@Casboof]

Yeah I was really hoping he was going to come out against Paul. That article completely oversimplifies the situation and ignores that “woke elements” being added to a game or show is a massive red flag. Unless you have a 10/10 product then you are basically adding another big level of risk by adding political or modern day cultural rhetoric to your product in a pretty competitive market. And that is insane to hamfist shit like that into your product when sometimes there are major gameplay flaws

[@keithfilibeck2390]

Paul is ideologically compromised

[@nicolasferreiro4492]

​@@CasboofI wouldn't even say the anti woke is winning so much as the extreme woke is losing through very bad writing and similar, and attacking the audience when pointed out. And by refusing to face the real issues they won't fix them.

[@Veteran_Nerd]

Business 101: If you fail to give your customers what they want, you’re not just missing an opportunity-you’re writing your own obituary. edit: Paul Tassi and Jason Schreier are part of the problem

[@kyeorlam1351]

"The white flame dancing on the graves of his foes."

[@donspafford414]

Hail the Black Emperor!

[@tt128556]

"My pronouns are woke/broke" -Concord

[@WwZa7]

The problem is companies treat games like it's a product instead of art. Like they're selling car tires. They look at rules, here's learned formula, produce it. Can cut costs on some fun elements? Cut them. We're selling a product, not making art for fun. Experts say that winter is coming? Make winter tires. Sadly experts are from Finland and they're selling tires in Texas. Yet someone all higher ups expected them to be sold so well, that advertisement campaign even includes a whole episode in Amazon's upcoming show, that's because none of the higher ups actually ever drove a car, they only fly private jets and helicopters or just never leave their alien spaceship.

[@nicodemous52]

To be fair, just like not every movie needs to be a truly artistic expression, neither do all games. That said, they need to be mindful of the space they are in, because it is in fact an artistic space.

[@WwZa7]

@@nicodemous52 It's not just an artistic space, it is art. Even documentaries have to be made with enough knowledge about art, narration, writing, editing, putting it all together in a way that will not be confusing, keeping composition rules for shots, audio mixing, post-processing, all of that is done to make something cool. And that is art. It only stops being art, when the intent is no longer to create something for people to enjoy, when it's no longer about sharing a vision, but about following spreadsheets and checking boxes on the list. Working as a CGI artist in advertisement industry really taught me what is the difference between art and a product. For exxample, when I'm making visuals for a manual for some constructions, that's not art, deffinitely not, it's made to be useful, functional, and checking some boxes in law, but not fun to gaze at (altho I do try to make them look nice). But when I'm tasked with making an architectual visualisations, where client wants it to look pleasing, and I have to come up with some elements like lighting myself, because client expects to be stunned and to be pleasing for people to buy it - that is art.

[@Macheako]

@@nicodemous52 the HAVE to be fun….period…. Otherwise it’s not a f**ing Game 🤣🤣❤️

[@ezekielgallardo8385]

Company executives forget they’re in the ENTERTAINMENT business 🤦‍♂️

[@BlueHells]

Paul Tassi knows exactly what the issues are and is obviously trying to minimize them.

[@TheBeardedBrawler]

Any time any developer adds anything to their game they need to ask, "Does this make the game more FUN to play" or "Does this make the game's story better". Then go further by asking the question of "How?" to both of those. If it doesn't make the game fun or the story better in some meaningful way then leave it out, it's not important to the player.

[@zxyatiywariii8]

The problem is, to the Woke acolytes, every spore of Wokeness does make the game "better". Pronouns = better, pride flags = better, whining about Orange Man = better.

[@Xenbiotic]

The problem with adding too much is you start tuning down the player-base into a smaller and smaller group. It needs to be optional like a rainbow tie in Abiotic Factor and not be forced to be a character ultra woke character. If you want to have a male voice with a female body and rainbow flag tie by all means do it but don't force everyone to do it. Quiet/silent characters like in Subnautica and Halo are fun as a lot of things are cut out like OP here says. It really depends on the game that is being made obviously as something like Concord/Overwatch need characters with corks and personality. Point being is don't go full woke and instead make a game that is fun above all, let everything fall into place afterwards

[@dakota9821]

@@zxyatiywariii8 Thats why he added step 2: Asking "how?". While you can come up with any reason whatsoever, having to articulate the how poses an issue if it's actually bs.

[@yamiookami]

I love the "perception vs. reality" bit. A not so clever way to try and dismiss some criticisms but not others, when the actual reality is both criticisms are true.

[@jubei7259]

Note the framing of this - anyone not liking the 'modern audiencing' of video games is now 'far right' apparently lmao. Yep 'how dare you peasants oppose our corporate overlords' lol

[@watzbeats9104]

Same tactics their types have used for years

[@Hwarming]

Yeah I'm pretty left leaning but I really don't care about identity politics, when I see a character screen that announced pronouns first and foremost it just makes me roll my eyes. I don't get upset about all the diversity in say the new Hogwarts game, but when I'm introduced to a brand new character and literally in the first conversation with her she says she's trans, like, unprompted, nobody asked, that's kinda annoying and silly. If you want diverse stuff, fine, do it, just do it well. Same issue Acolyte had, they didn't focus on making a good show, they focused on making a diverse show, meanwhile Fallout focused on being good and has a lot of diversity but it doesn't club you over the head with it. And having a good faith conversation about it is impossible because everyone is so polarized, you either get called a racist sexist incel or woke DEI

[@AtticusKarpenter]

You aware that socialists from rest of the world aside from USA are "far right" too? =D u'know, be it China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, numerous communist movements and parties all over Eastern Europe, nowhere identity politics celebrated, or DEI, or modern audiencing, this is not really a divising point, what in USA considered "far right" view of DEI in rest of the world considered "common sense" and shared by everyone despite their political views, aside maybe from tiny amount of young terminally online libs/red-libs, that spend in Twitter more than anywhere else and so indoctrinated by this absurd worldview. Yes, among other great feats of American exceptionalism, bunch of Californian students decided that THEY are actual Marxists and the rest of the fucking globe are wrong kind of marxists. Then again, we leftie love bickering and hating each other but its usually between particular groups and movements that are misaligning in methods and goals, writing off entire planet out of your particular brand of trucommunism is pretty much unheard of. (Since Pol Pot? But he was sponsored by France anyway so hardly considered ideologically sincere)

[@JoeyP7998]

Well said. Mainstream entertainment journalism is a complete fucking joke. I’ll gladly celebrate the failure of the bullshit they prop up, every single time.

[@leucis8248]

As someone that is supposed to be the target audience for "woke" games I absolutely love your coverage of this topic. You brought up the single most important point to me: "there's a lot of poor representation in these games that make these communities look terrible" THANK YOU! I am so tired of seeing another obnoxious, non-binary character that isn't allowed to be charismatic or attractive (Venture from Overwatch 2 comes to mind). It's like the writers see all these communities only through the lens of twitter, applying the most loud and extreme personalities of them to their characters. We don't want fake representation. Why can't they let us be cool, hot, funny, just like the rest, just like a lot of us are in the real world? Diversity shouldn't make people unlikable and in the real world, it rarely does. Keep it up.

[@nicodemous52]

That is what many of us mean by "woke". It's not the "diversity" and inclusion itself we object to. We object to it being tacked on merely to virtue signal.

[@feralknights2792]

Yeah, definitely. The rainbow capitalism is so exhausting.

[@SuperCosmicMutantSquid]

Most of the worst 'diverse' characters are based on the devs/designers as self inserts because they're hoping for that second-hand praise through said character. Either that or they take stereotypes everyone knows are messed and repackage them as an identity that only covers the most extreme of caricatures.

[@raics101]

Yeah, the media is very much at fault there. When they bring in someone gay they like going for the weirdest possible bunch, because what's the point if the audience doesn't notice. It isn't enough to bring in a gay girl to the show, she needs purple hair or no hair, piercings, tattoos and has to talk about pissing on her girlfriend for bonus points.

[@solouno2280]

Trans characters should either look like Eivor (the handsome girl one, no translation errors here, she is HANDSOME, not beautiful, no pretty, just handsome) or Max from Life is Strange (she is probably the first real trans character ever made). Putting a fat, flat chested girl with bowl haircut demanding to be called a boy is enraging for both sides.

[@Ewiril]

Woke games don't fail because they're woke, bud because they are bad?... OK. It's funny how every bad game is also woke then, isn't it? ... I mean, where are the million-selling smash hits featuring blue-haired lesbians, ransacking the city, "eating the rich"? Sure, successful games are good, not because they are "anti-woke" but because they are simply good. But why does every successful game not feature any woke propaganda? ... The reason why games are bad is clearly because the focus was aimed at something different than the game mechanics...

[@CurtOntheRadio]

Baldur's Gate? Fortnite? Why don't these 'woke' games fail?

[@Ewiril]

​@@CurtOntheRadio How are they woke?... I swear, this retardation that simply having agay character is woke is oneof the core issues of this.

[@Ewiril]

​@@CurtOntheRadio How are they woke?... I swear, this 3.et.43d:ation that simply having a gay character is woke is one of the core issues of this.

[@vojtechbouda9350]

@@CurtOntheRadio Just having gay characters doesn't make it woke. Overwatch wasnt woke until it added that pansexual lotus character, a clear token of a character.

[@CurtOntheRadio]

@@vojtechbouda9350 lol. You have a selection bias - anything can be made to fit your point like that.

[@SaddleSniffers4000]

If a games journalist told me to not eat shit, I'd eat a bucket of it. What a strange power they wield, those magical little goblins

[@nicodemous52]

If a game journo tells you the sky is blue, he is lying.

[@vorlonanon4055]

You are making the mistake of thinking they're journalists. like the MSM, they are nothing that even resembles one.

[@TygerTyger911]

Never spite yourself just to make a point.

[@verzeda]

​​@@nicodemous52 soy is not "he", soy is "it", by soy's own admission

[@RealKeetz]

Please don't. For your own safety. Nobody needs dysentery in their lives. 😬

[@shaicat]

I love how in his article Paul sets out the criteria that woke things fail "purely because they are woke, *not any other reason at all,* ignoring any and all other factors" that the supposed right-wing uses, when the only people using that criteria for why these projects are failing are Paul himself and the gremlins living inside his head. Pretty sure if you engaged with the criticisms of those projects with any amount of good faith whatsoever, Paul, you'd see people had _a lot_ more issues with them than _just_ that they were woke.

[@AtticusKarpenter]

also he arguing that woke game journos don't hated Stellar Blade, nor Wukong. Lol. Who wrote all that articles then? (not like woke game journos do anything BUT hate good games. They are too busy to write stuff that game journos actually supposed to write)

[@JVIoneyman]

Obviously these games Tassi mentions failed for a multitude of reasons, but to completely discount every factor that personal offends his ideological leanings is doing the exact same thing he is criticizing the other side for.

[@kingcurmudgeon8685]

He completely ignores the common denominator between all the games. Actually he insists it doesn’t exists. It’s everyhting BUT THE OBVIOUS. He is in such sad denial. It’s not surprising from him

[@TheRedstonian]

@@kingcurmudgeon8685 I think you gotta understand that, as someone who has feet on both sides of the aisle, NOBODY I know goes "oh the weakly written shithead is gay? I gotta buy the game now". Nobody boycotts the game for not being queer enough. People *do* boycott games for being too queer, but, look under the hood a bit. Nobody *would care that the character is gay* if the game the character was *in* was actually Good. Yeah? Like, the way I'm hearing this is that people are sick and tired of companies signaling Rainbow Capitalism to help prop up their game sales. I guess I'm asking, why does it translate so often to Gamers(tm) online attacking the folks being represented, and not the studio being disingenuous? Is it just internet shorthand gone out of control?

[@AtticusKarpenter]

This is hilarious because its reverse tactic from what Lucas film used there was: "Gah you say that our movies are bad not because they are bad but because you are loud rigntwing minority that hate women, you will call any movie that empowers women bad so we will not listen to you" and here is: "gah gamers think woke games fail but these games fail not because they woke but because they are bad, and not woke games are just good! So woke not lead to bad games its just these games was bad!" sooo attempt to defend wokeness by "its not bad, its woke" and "its not woke, its bad". Who are right? :D maybe they are both woke and bad after all and these factors connected somehow and bad faith development leads to releasing a game that is both bad and woke? There is bad and not woke games (like Gollum) but there is sure suspicious devoid of games that are advertised for diversity and other woke virtue signals but turned out actually good.

[@xstonedsoberx]

Paul is a complete industry shill he will constantly stick his head in the sand when it comes to anything remotely tangential to culture war and whole heartedly plant his feet on the side of what is "right" I.e the side that calls everybody a bigot, ist or phobe. He can have a good take once in a while but when it comes down to brass tax make no mistake he is solely on the side of journalist slop reporting and not on the side of us having good games. A complete paid and bought shill through and through and it's really pathetic but to be expected from his ilk.

[@debiruwew]

"We have pandering and tokenism. We have self-righteous studios, writers and actors that lack the talent and vision to portray characters tastefully and holistically." A side effect of DEI. To enforce DEI is to abandon meritocracy. That could mean the quality of the end product, or the ability of the artist. Some projects will still succeed under these conditions (Baldur's Gate 3 comes to mind, great game) but it's why consumers can identify the surface level "woke" products and write them off. This only gets worse when you take in to account how most of the industry people act on social media. To to put it simply, I think I speak for a lot of people when I say I'm tired of being told what to think. That's why I don't buy as many games or watch as many movies or shows anymore.

[@ckaldariaq5904]

Paul doesnt seem to understand what 'woke' is based on his article. People can tell based on the presentation of a game what the priority in the minds of the devs was. I think you said it best with calling out the 'token' characters or aspects. When players see that they know instantly the whole game is fake and inauthentic.

[@CurtOntheRadio]

How do you know that? How do you know those are the reasons people act as they do?

[@Femtoisbackandbetter]

@@CurtOntheRadio how do you know he’s not right? :)

[@CurtOntheRadio]

@@Femtoisbackandbetter I'm not making any claim. It is down to someone making a claim to stand it up, not me the sceptic.

[@brianaiken3917]

@@CurtOntheRadio common sense

[@vissermatt1058]

This is the thing that gets sidestepped or ignored. A dev team who THINKS these designs are good, THINKS pronouns have value.... Its not the fire, its the pitch black smoke seen from dozens of miles away that there is a fire. ANY time wasted on these subjects implies even mire was wasted on stuff behind the scenes, instead of invested in making a good/better product. Prime example, it took 8 years to make this product... And its empty of anything even remotely to herald as a selling point.

[@smwad7103]

The games don’t fail because they’re woke they fail because they prioritize woke over gameplay soooo same, same.

[@KingNal2]

Ubisoft is next. Get your bets in

[@CeruleanChurch]

The fact Ubisoft hasn't folded with all the repetitive slop theyve been putting out, its genuinely impressive theyre still around. The cockroach of the game industry.

[@kreenbopulusmichael7205]

sadly they have a huge audience of normies who dont even think, they just buy the new AC and thats about as much thought as they put into it

[@IamJustA]

I want EA's head first but that won't happen since too many people like to buy the same game every year

[@Macheako]

@@CeruleanChurch every ~3 years they get a whole new set of young gamers that haven’t played ASSassins creed yet 😞

[@Macheako]

@@IamJustAbro I really thought losing the FIFA trademark was gonna hurt em waaaaay more 😭

[@Xfushion2]

The reason they are coping and even lying about attractive characters not being a selling point for games (or any media in general) is because one of the main core tenets of Wokeness is the _deconstruction of beauty_ basically they claim that traditional beauty standards are BS, discriminatory social constructs. That every body type is as equality beautiful and that male and female aesthetics don't exist. That's why prominent woke games like Concord, Dustborn, SW: Outlaws and Veilguard feature ugly characters, because they unironically believe they are pleasing to the eye. But the problem is that it has been proven, multiple times now, that their _deconstruction_ does not work and even if beauty is a subjective thing the overwhelming majority of folk share the same idea of it, that's why they make fun of Kay, SW: Outlaws protagonist being hideous looking while praising Eve from Stellar Blade. And they can't handle that most of people refuse to fall in line with their concept of beauty. And the kicker is that even they deep down don't believe in their own deconstruction, the major tell is that they initially pushback against attractive characters saying BS like _they are misogynistic representation of women_ but after some time they also start _thirsting_ for them but in order to save face they make-up some delusional narrative as how the character in question was always a stand in for _queer representation_ or something, Bayonetta is the prime example, she went from being patient zero of women being portrayed as _sex objects_ then for some reason she became a “lesbian icon” which lead the wokies to have a breakdown when she marries in the third game with the guy she's been flirting since the first game.

[@AtticusKarpenter]

Yeah, beautiful characters being allowed being beautiful as "icons of empowerment" only when Twitter thirst them so much that they have to get over their narrative is always hilarious and sad Beauty IS a mix of objective and subjective things, some culturally dependent like small foot in China, long neck in central-east of Africa (don't remember the actual country but there is/was practice of stacking metal coils on girls necks as they grow up so their necks become longer because this perceived as attractive in local culture), also people love exotic (so pale skin considered beautiful pretty much almost everywhere because is you are pale then you are not forced to work under the sun, then you are rich and influential; but amongst court aristocracy its the opposite, skin darkened by the sun is considered mark of natural beauty and health to the contrary to pretty ill and meek fellow aristocratic partners); but there is also objective aspect - brain's pattern recognition seeks hints that partner are healthy and children will be healthy too, so morbid obesity can never ever be socially accepted as attractive. Smooth skin, fitness (then again, with different levels of fat as long as body is overall fit), good-shaped hips always part of accepted beauty standard. And even as for subjective part, its decided not by some conspiracy-cabal (that are terminally online people believe they are fighting, and that corporate CEOs want to be) but by whole culture, just like language - it evolves by itself, according to emergent results of cultural routine of all people involved, just like slang types (and even popularity of particular words) rise and fall and newly created, but cannot forcefed into public, so does beauty standards. Even woke devs themselves not consider Concord's and like abominations attractive, they just condition themselve that its society conditioned them and they need to decondition themselves to free up Old trick, to convince people being conditioned you have to convince them that they are already conditioned and you just will decondition them lol

[@Duvoncho]

This mythical modern audience sure does make a whole heap of twitter noise about gaming. Actually buying and playing games though... not so much.

[@saschaberger3212]

A woke property built from the ground up without hijacking a standing IP. I love how it imploded

[@Relhio]

At this point I'm dead sure this whole modern audience is just a joke everyone doesn't understand they're in on. This whole diversity nonsense only exists in USA and the percentage of people that are part of it is so obnoxiously small, I don't understand how the internet echoes this nonsense so much and making it seem like such a big deal. There are no people that want diversity in gaming, there are no people that want politics in games, there are no people that complain characters are too hot... these people don't exist, they're just one or two that mention this and then thousands, if not hundred of thousands of people point at them making it seem like they're the biggest detriment to humanity... This really has to stop cause it's getting ridiculous. Terminally online people should really go outside and see that 99% of the stuff they think are problems online, don't exist in the real world. Concord didn't fail because it was made for the modern audience, it failed because they made uninspired character designs and boring gameplay. It's hilarious a studio would think if they added absolutely zero attractive characters, all of society that is pretending we're not animals that like hot and naked characters would appreciate what they made. Life sucks, we want games that don't reflect that life, unless you have a damn good point you want to get across and do it well.

[@ubiquityofficial4363]

​@@saschaberger3212 That is one point grossely overlooled in the media piece from Tacy. Almost every new wokish (meaning preaching) IP's like concord fail miserably. Woke by definition means to correct the cultural fondation by changing the archetypical components that guide a society (culture, discourse, values etc...). Those aspects are inherently formed by former pieces of art

[@shaed9928]

Both the perception points and reality points Paul Tassi mentions can be true. One doesn't cancel out the other. To say that that Concord's 'ugly characters' and pronouns, weren't a factor(however small) is just silly.

[@KibethSE]

I will never not dance on the grave of a bad gaming going down. Bad content needs to be allowed to fail so that the lessons are learned from it. We need games to be made for the paying audience instead of for the activist devs and their echo chamber.

[@hartantoanggoro]

Learn from mistakes or just go fall to the abyss. The activist developers just doesn't learn, they tried to improve but in the end if those improvement doesn't align with their agenda, no improvement is necessary. Games are supposed to be fun and enjoyable but as long as current politics are being used, that's not a fun game anymore, just plain ads.

[@blairowens8912]

They want us to eat shit and smile

[@zxyatiywariii8]

Well said, thank you

[@The_Kelgos]

As a great character in a great TV show once said, “There are four lights!” The people in media can try to say their are more or less but there are only four.

[@CleverCodger]

Iconic quote and such a depth of meaning behind it.

[@keowa2208]

Nice reference!!! You win the internet today

[@sealboy1211]

Probably the best show ever created. Picards flute has more backstory and emotional connections than any modern slop these writers are writing these days. Also….he was about to say 5 lights….

[@The_Kelgos]

@@sealboy1211 Don't ruin it!

[@cirescythe]

Love how Tassi, one guy, is telling hundreds of thousands of people, why they REALLY didnt like something. The gaslighting does work less and less with each passing month. To legendary drops, i mostly agree. Great video. Disagree on the money thing though. Just read tweets by many many of those devs. You will be shocked. If theyd reverse roles in those tweets, they would have legal trouble.

[@CurtOntheRadio]

Nobody can *know* what hundreds of thousands of people think. You can't say why folks act as they do either.

[@regex2660]

I stopped paying attention to Tassi when he glossed over the Act Man and Heelsvsbabyface beef

[@WholeHolyHole]

@@regex2660 that is just unforgivable. Who would dare gloss over babyheelface and the male-who-acts?!

[@Pårchmēntôs]

@@regex2660 wow, that is just unforgivable. Who would dare gloss over babyfaceheel and male-who-acts?

[@cirescythe]

​@@CurtOntheRadioi can see their comments. So i aknowledge them and factor this into the calculation. Tassi, and you seemingly, see hundreds of thousands of comments and go "naaah thats not it. Its a bubble". Which as i aknowledged might be the case. But it is a city sized bubble.

[@anthonyduran7553]

Literally mentioned on twitter this game had a shorter lifespan than a horse fly!

[@clovermite]

20:03 "It's sad to see players celebrating the closing of studios or games failing" They reap what they sow. If these companies and developers that are closing didn't want an adversarial relationship with the players than they shouldn't be labeling those players "hateful bigots" for expressing criticism on the lack of quality. Anyway, fantastic video all around. Part of me still wants to nitpick, but everything you're saying in this video lines up with what I wanted to hear you saying when I left a massive critical comment on one your previous videos. You definitely understand what I wanted you to understand and the way you are expressing it in this video is excellent. In particular, I like your take on this situation much better than Sungrand Studios' take. He made the failure of Concord out to be "the defining moment" where "gamers took back the industry." But it's not that serious. This wasn't an organized boycott, it's just the inevitable result of gamers being tired as the same bland junk being sold to us as if it's premium quality. It's not the turning point - that happened a good while back. It's the pendulum picking up moment after it's already shifted direction. Yes, it's *A* victory, but it's not *THE* victory.

[@ARStudios2000]

Honestly Sungrands thing to me felt far more humourous than serious, dude was dressed and speaking like a president at the elections

[@nicodemous52]

@@ARStudios2000 I think it's a bit of both. He was obviously playing it up, added some dramatic flare. But I don't doubt that's how he actually feels.

[@ZeroXSEED]

@@ARStudios2000 Sungrad was making fun of game execs and PR managers...but the content of his speech are always pro-gamers. Some call him grifters, but be honest, does it matter? He spoke what we could not as mere youtube commenter.

[@AtticusKarpenter]

Exactly (how are we blamed for celebrating the victory over people that themselves declared war on as and then lost? What is bad for us in this event? Of no, "there weirdos will not have games to play!" also Wukong, Space Marine 2, Age of Mythology Retold and ton of other releases, and even when large scale industry is silent there is innumerable good indie games that are just don't received their spotlight yet. Humanity now produce amount of videogames that will be enough for person to play non-stop all his life even if all studies that are even slightly woke just disappear today with all devs worked in it)

[@oneeGrimm]

I like how this dude from forbes completely skipped dustborn in his article. Shame tho. Would love to see his representation on "perception" and "reality" of that game's great success.

[@TheRedstonian]

Likely an older article, since Dustborn only released a week or so ago. But frankly, the only time I heard of Dustborn was someone complaining about muh woke instead of, like... substantive complaints. I had to go to Steam to figure out the game ran like trash, had soggy character writing, and largely revolved around the main character being a manipulative scumbag. Now, granted, that last part is entirely fine - antiheroes are a thing. But if you're making the player one, you gotta label that, because a player who isn't ready to put themselves into the shoes of someone they dislike is gonna immediately ricochet off like a stray bullet. Regardless - the perception and reality split is echoing pretty similarly here. I had to actively dig through reviews to find complaints that actually mentioned what's bad about it besides anti-identity politic fanaticism, and it's getting really exhausting. What happened to just saying "the writing is weak"? "The game doesn't make me care about any of these people" is a *scathing* review, and will always be stronger of a statement then "woke bad". Sorry, I'm ranting. Hope you're having a good day.

[@AtticusKarpenter]

@@TheRedstonian well, you are right, but its sadly natural result of raised awareness about woke shittiness plaguing game/movie industry. Average Joe will not write thoughtful review or even think about why he love what he love and hate what he hate. Not because he is stupid (but it could be the case) but most likely because he hardworking man and play/write review in steam only several hours in Sunday and not care about such thing rest of the week (and his life). So its either people will continue buy shit from AAA companies just because they familiar with the brand or, when they after years of Gamergate catch up with they reason games turned into shit, will angrily yell at anything remotely woke and anything they don't liked. Now shitty woke games will fail, yes, because general public began to understand what's going on. And also now critique of woke games (particularly in steam reviews, KZbin comments, etc) will be much more bland nonsensical yelling than before, for same exact reason. When only small thoughtful part of the gamers fought and critiqued woke, it was mostly thoughtful and polite because it was from the smartest part of the community. And now it from whole community so average quality of critique will fucking drop, and some woke journalists will try to capitalize on that fact (most likely futile because to turn the tide backwards they need as much effort as gone to the open public's eyes to the DEI bs in the first place) So your displeasing is rightful, but i think nothing is can be done about this. Also its funny how protagonists of some deliberately dark and villainous stories like Coffin of Ashley and Andy is more likeable than scumbag protagonists of woke stories. Because yeah, usually writer can't help but give away whose villainy protagonist shows - his own (deliberately written as villainous by author that not have some villainous morals in real life) or his author's (and so other characters also love protagonist for no reason and forgive him his horrendous acts because author not perceive them as horrendous, plot armor and contrived happy end hug protagonist-scumbag instead of deserved bad end, or at least bittersweet ending where he get his happily ever after but understanding that he is not deserve it, or/and it portrayed as bad ending for every victim that suffered because of villainous protagonist)

[@iamgeorgesears]

Yeah, Tassi is a misserable hack, what a surprise.

[@Giraffasaur]

Legendary Drops: "Helldivers 2 brought the boys back together." Deep Rock Galactic: "Am I a joke to you?"

[@provaricus627]

Rock and stone!

[@Giraffasaur]

@@provaricus627 Rock and stone, yeeeeaaaah!

[@SuwinTzi]

Sounds like Paul Tassi is coping and seething

[@spookyface4304]

The issue with the article is that he is using woke for it's intended definition (being inclusive), but most people using that word use it as a insult for out of touch executives forcing in diversity so that their lower quality product can sell. If you take woke for it's original definition I completely agree with the article as there have been several games with a very diverse roster of characters that have been massive hits.

[@AtticusKarpenter]

There always was games, movies, books with diverse rosters of characters (and even with gay relationships even in time when it was not allowed by law). Because mass audience never was "homophobic racist bigots", at least since WW2 and sexual revolution. Woke isn't diversity, woke is shitty, tokenist, pandering pseudo-diversity that diminish both men and women, offend from one to all races simultaneously (like blackwashing Cleopatra and british queens - its disrespect for white people because they are not allowed to play people that was actually white in real history, and its disrespect for black people because they are not allowed to play their own historical figures that was actually black in real life, instead they forced to appropriate European history which is insulting for both European and African history and culture), and hate original and diverse settings instead making them all into grey goo of generic fantasy populated by modern people from California

[@OutLanderUSN]

I have a buddy who doesn't want to understand why the community at large is so polarized and feels as though gamers just complain for the sake of complaining and shit on Ubisoft or CoD or even Concord because it's "the cool thing to do." It's utterly infuriating how he's perfectly fine with what's being released no matter how utterly mediocre or just bad it ends up being.

[@nurgle333]

Sounds like he's part of the problem

[@OutLanderUSN]

@@nurgle333 He is, and it's frustrating.

[@sarcasm-83]

Yeah no gamer sits at home hoping "I wish they will start making a terrible game, then make it to completion and it fails". But when one _does_ fail after them having ignored the vast majority of their audience saying things against it for *YEARS* , they call us talentless or one of the many "ists" and their project crashes and burns.... Welp. How do you think any human would react in such a clear cut "Told you so" moment, towards people who are so stubbornly ignoring every bit of feedback and instead chalking it all to be "hate" instead, instead of shifting through the constructive part at all? If I had to point out a moment this all started, I'd point to when Battlefield V released a tone deaf trailer, gamers had tons of feedback + lots of memery about a prosthetic limb wearing female soldier and DICE decided to not listen to *ANY* of the feedback and instead call gamers "uneducated" and said "don't buy it". Yes there were a lot of trollish jokes, but there were also mountains of constructive feedback, but they put it all under one category and shut their eyes and ears to all of it... and yes, it was a terrible move. Ever since then I remember many devs (and media along with them as their eager parrots on their shoulders) stubbornly just almost doing things out of spite against player wishes, then get angrier and angrier when their products aren't working. Like... wtf? :D

[@Zantetsu13]

The people complaining about gamers dancing in the grave of this game have danced in the graves of real people in very recent history.

[@theduck2970]

Ok..........give an example. I'm genuinely curious as to what you mean. The only legit one I can think of was the dev who made Night in the Woods.

[@aznhomig]

​@@theduck2970Just look at all the people who were genuinely disappointed that Trump didn't actually die to the bullet he caught. You know they would 100% danced on his grave if the bullet wasn't off by mere millimeters.

[@Mastashad160]

@@theduck2970 "toriyama gave us the best and worst black characters in anime in the same series, it took range to do that" -Chris Kindred of Sweet Baby Inc.

[@theduck2970]

@@Mastashad160 Yeah, I remember that but it's just one dum dum looking for clout. It's still very poor taste obviously. Also, SBI has been proven to be not the boogeyman the gaming community feared. They're quite ineffective and lacked the influence some thought they had.

[@Femtoisbackandbetter]

@@theduck2970 bro, countless people were mad and spoke openly that they wished the guy didn’t miss Trump

[@mukiex4413]

“At the end of the day, you’re asking for our money. We don’t have to give it to you.” That’s it. That’s the golden quote. That’s the core concept that these idiot companies are missing. And not just for the DEI stuff. This is like, across the board.

[@PGM991]

*"make products that worth our money not empathy"* golden sentence right there❤

[@Megaphy]

Next in line Ubisoft and EA, get the pitchforks ready.

[@KibethSE]

Players want quality and sincerity. Consumers are sick of the ham fisted messaging and poor game design from the rainbow mafia. These games come out and devs scream about how they're entitled to sales and that we NEED to give them our money. As the saying goes, "the customer is always right in matters of taste". No business is entitled to success or consumer money. Bad employees getting fired is a good thing. Studios getting shuttered for making a bad product is a consumer win. No one is celebrating when a Hi-Fi Rush situation occurs where a successful game launched and a good studio got shut down. We're celebrating the closure of wasteful, entitled, activists squandering hundreds of millions of dollars on bad, boring, uninspired propaganda.

[@CurtOntheRadio]

IS BG3 "propaganda"?

[@KibethSE]

@@CurtOntheRadio Nope, because the game was about quality and gameplay experience FIRST. Having inclusive features vs the game being ABOUT inclusivity are not the same.

[@CurtOntheRadio]

@@KibethSE BS. That's you equivocating to protect your initial inadequate claim. The fact BG3 is woke doesn't fit your point, so you invent some spurious other reason.

[@KibethSE]

@@CurtOntheRadio My first point literally starts with "Players want quality and sincerity" both of which BG3 has in spades.

[@CurtOntheRadio]

@@KibethSE But it's woke! So it isn't about woke, it's about quality. Woke has nothing to do with it - it's a claim being hijacked by the far-right.

[@fattony75]

Imagine you go to an icecream store - and they sell Vanilla, Chocolate, and Rainbow icecream. But over the years they slowly stop selling Vanilla and Chocolate, and ONLY sell Rainbow icecream. And when you refuse to buy it and go somewhere else with your money, that icecream store is shocked. That is how the videogame industry feels right now.

[@MacSmithVideo]

It's not just about woke messaging. A game may have no woke messaging at all, but still be affected by wokeness because it's made by people hired according to the ideology, which is anti-merit. It drags the whole western industry down.

[@CB-qg3yh]

Life in of itself is inclusive. You go to the store, and you see all kinds of people from all walks of life. Life imitates art, and vise versa. It's the job of the artists to capture that. When publishers try to capture that, they have zero idea how, because they aren't artists. They know that it's popular and try to capitalize on it. They have no intentions of actually being inclusive. They just want to pander. A good piece of art is inclusive without pandering because it's imitating life

[@daviddesrosiers1946]

Reward those who serve the fans. Punish those who do not.

[@goldfish1837]

You're much more nuanced and yet straight foreward than most of these gaming react channels. Atleast that's my expierience. Thanks man

[@LegendaryDrops]

Thank you, that's a pretty big compliment now a days.

[@Katie-hb8iq]

Life is Strange is a great example of a game that integrates representation and themes important to minorities while excelling in storytelling and gameplay, offering universally relatable themes. The game has been played by over 20 million people-putting it in the same league as Zelda, Pokémon, and Mario. This is what "woke" games should strive for: organic diversity and compelling narratives, rather than forced messaging, shallow character designs, or divisive themes. Interestingly, they achieved this in 2015, yet much of the industry has churned out DEI/woke slop ever since.

[@Gilsao157]

Only played the 1 and I very much enjoyed it. I miss stealing from charity, instigating selfdelete and killing dogs.

[@AtticusKarpenter]

Not that like Life is Strange not critiqued for its plot flaws or characters but what even most fierce hater of the game i think cannot argue with its that LiS many times ahead of shallow bullshit like woke companies releasing today, there is nothing ever to hate or argue about, its just devoid of passion. And LiS tried to do things innovative in form and gameplay, yep, instead of being YET ANOTHER hero shooter or witcher 3-lookalike, or extraction shooter, or whatever market analysis team are convinced is trending right now And i'm myself being as far from the LiS themes as possible (and not played the game either), nonetheless have one of favorite fanfics that i ever read - crossover of Gravity Falls and Life is Strange, so thanks devs for the game that inspired author of that fic to write this beautiful piece of literature

[@carbagehealth9634]

2 points to really hammer home here that arent said enough "Woke" games are full of tokenism, legit racism/sexism and segregation. It's like if you were to ask what ACTUAL racists and sexists are or how those people would draw/write said characters in a game! Like I mean ACTUAL REAL racists and sexists, I know the word has lost meaning today but ya. Also its weird how NONE of these outlets and journalists NEVER EVER EVER hold each other accountable or have varying opinions on things... thats kind of weird huh? I know you like to point to paul lots but even the title of his article he labels everyone who doesnt agree with him a right winger ON TOP of all his constant harassment of people who dont agree with him "Bigots" and other nasty shyt just because they dont agree with him, he is a VERY hateful person just like the rest... its flat out gross...

[@RyandlaKinelberg]

continuing to call everyone who doesnt want DEI right wing, only further alienates you from popular consensus. my advice to paul is he doesnt need to go live in an igloo, id argue hes already there. he needs to go outside of california and talk to people instead of sitting on twitter talking to bots and WEF social engineered weirdos

[@CurtOntheRadio]

How do you know how many folks "don't want DEI"? How on earth do you know it's a consensus?

[@kingcurmudgeon8685]

Follow the trends? What’s losing all the money?

[@jimcarrey2866]

I'm not happy with this situtation, if the studio shuts down, losing your job fucking sucks. But as a great peaceful philosopher once said "I won't kill you, but I don't have to save you."

[@METAL-ADDICT]

Dance baby! 💃🏾 🕺 Concord 🪦🪦🪦

[@infernas]

These "woke" games did not fail because they're woke; they failed because the developers/publishers were too focused on DEI and all that shit that they ignored the most important aspect of a game: good gameplay and (where applicable) story. Frankly, I didn't mind when Starfield added pronouns, or that Star Wars Outlaws' player character is ugly, as those didn't affect my gameplay. But some are just too obsessed with wokeness - like they built their game around DEI lmao. (i'm sure there's a game in there somewhere!) And then when the games ultimately fail, they blame it on "toxic" gamers when the reality is that we just don't want to waste our time and money on trash that has nothing good to offer. As much as I hate when projects that devs worked on for years fail, I am glad to see gamers starting to vote with their wallets. I hope this sends a clear message to developers and publishers not to serve us slop, but eh who am I kidding. These folks never learn. So keep making trash products and keep losing money I guess.

[@takarahayashi4124]

am i dancing on it? I'm 💩ing on it gleefully.

[@IamJustA]

What we need to do is pull a morbius with concord 🤣

[@captainhook3962]

Perception is as they say 99% of reality. Not to say that both sides one is correct over the other, but both perception and reality factor in to the entire picture as we can all see from the results.

[@Rivershield]

This article is coping so hard. His gaslighting attempt is utterly pathetic: "hot girls don't sell games, this game failed for literally any other reason than it being woke, etc". Let me be clear, there are two kinds of gamers: the ones who hate woke, and the ones who don't care. What that means is that a good game will get away with having some woke shit in it, but it will be MASSIVE SUCCESS if it has none. Therefore, why not STOP putting woke elements in games altogether? That way you can please both types of gamers.

[@VampireNoblesse]

no more "agendas", no more "DEI / ESG checklists", no more "uglyfied" characters, etc. ... and discard all "DEI consultant companies", they litterily ruin games (or make them less likable..), just let the devs build their visions, free from activists & agendas!

[@CleverCodger]

To go on your point at the 21 minute mark. We do look forward to it. We do care and yes, for some it is a form of entertainment in a bleak life where we are all dealing with inflation, jobs we might hate and other stressors. $70 - $130 bucks is a lot for some people. It's hours of our life spent working, it's sacrifices in saving up for a game we are anticipating. Yet, journalists and "woke" devs want to shame us within the message of these games and then shame us for not spending our hard earned money on their "product". It's a form of art for sure, but it's a product at the end of the day and we are the customers. People are sick of being told what to think, to do, to accept and to be shamed for not doing what we all know is essentially destroying an industry we have all grown up with and love.

[@solouno2280]

I am indeed grave dancing, in the same way i would be dancing on Torquemada's grave

[@rhys5958]

Tassi misses the point entirely, claiming audience perceptions from a liberal’s perspective. The truth is perception impacts sales, and first impressions are vital. Men and young men dominate the gaming audience, so if you want to sell your game you need it to look cool, Helldivers and Space Marine being great examples, or you’d use the male gaze in the form of an attractive female protagonist in the case of Stellar Blade. The term “love at first sight” is true in video games as it is in relationships because appearances matter, and no significant number could look at Concord and fall in love with what they see.

[@JanPapiezGaming]

wukong = goty

[@cirescythe]

So far, surprisingly, yes. It was incredible. Still in shock. I expected an ok linear actiongame that looks great and nothing else.

[@jasonarnold1990]

The secret ending boss was so fkin infuriating, but the part after was absolutely insane!! Def GOTY

[@D3adCl0wn]

While well deserved, it really didn't have competition. I don't know any other promising 2024 releases. 2025 however could get tight.

[@TwoHandedChargedBonk]

Great game, but so far my GotY is Stellar Blade (if we disregard SOTE as a DLC of course). Having high hopes for the Space Marine 2 though.

[@FoxSiR]

I think you said it Best! "We are not their friends, we're their customers" and if they make a product I have 0 interest in it's not cause I'm racist or a bigot it cause I don't want it and someone else has a product that I'm interested in. It's just that simple.

[@damonzen]

Concord's cord has be uncorded.

[@Lucky_Fluffy]

i think Game journo's are under the impression they hold any Power in the gaming world..... when in reality the Gamer holds all the power, as they hold the money.

[@rule665]

Dion is such a great character. Most of the characters in that game were well fleshed out.

[@ElDrHouse2010]

I can't believe Jurnos are this freaking mad. Yes they fail because they are woke, woke concepts honestly put me off a game I won't buy if its too much in my face & its unimmersive. It needs a little bit of realism, yes i can suspend disbelief I know very well magic doesnt exist for example but even still I like my characters athletic for a reason, they don't have to be roid monsters just athletic. And pronouns are absolutely not necessary neither body type A or B slop.

[@Darrylx33]

Yes, we are.

[@ezekielgallardo8385]

They shut down Japan Studio but spent 200 million on this garbage?!

[@celras5941]

Space Marine 2 is a wake up call - Just don't tell anybody you read this here. Now do with this information what you want.

[@enightc]

Unfortunately people do not learn, and big companies will never wake up until they make that 1 live service game that dethrones Fortnite and make them billions. I believe their next target is Gacha Gamers but they are afraid of the character designs that they are not allowed to create in the west so that will take a while to happen. Lets wait until a few more millions of dollars go to the drain for them to wake up.

[@nurgle333]

How so?

[@berniecat8756]

18:07 Yup, the next big Sony release - Fairgame$ is also dead on arrival.

[@mikeg5039]

Aww youtube didnt like my factual comment. The woke characters of concord are 90% of why no one wanted it.

[@kingcurmudgeon8685]

Tassi logic: Just because every game that is failing has a woke agenda doesn’t mean it failed cause its woke.

[@elmasheavy89]

I do not agree with the gender ideology in this game, even if the game becomes free to play now.

[@AreWeLearningYet77]

I can't stand the constant gas-lighting coming from game journalists. I'm not right wing AT ALL and I definitely think attractive characters are a major element to the success of games in addition to the fundamental flaws these failures have demonstrated. Pretending like people don't care about the aesthetics of what they engage with is still dancing around the reality of the audience. Niche tastes are for niche games. If you're trying to go for a major audience, you do need conventionally attractive or at the very least, aesthetically CONVINCING characters. For example, every black male character that has come out in a game in the last 5 odd years has no resemblance to me or any of my friends and we keep wondering why they choose to design them the same way (thin / wide brim hat / killmonger hairstyle / gay coded) for EVERY GAME. It's incredibly annoying and off-putting and feels like we're just being ignored in favor of some tumblr-bait non-existent stereotype. We only just started getting decent hairstyle in games with create a character, but character based games are still afraid to actually LOOK AT REAL BLACK PEOPLE for inspiration.

[@seansullivan5965]

"Modern" audiences are a very small percentage of gamers