why do game journalists hate gamers so much?

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#gamergate #games #2024

[@Allen.Christian]

"It's no coincidence that this is occuring in a contentious election year" is the thing that got me. This fucking culture war nonsense is relentless. It's always something. And literally every even numbered year is a contentious election year in America. So stupid.

[@LordOOTFD]

Considering that it all was started by a Brazilian, makes it even more ridiculous.

[@NordicEagleVids]

Friend of mine who works with journalism told me a few things about this. It’s very common for game’s journalism to be treated as an entry level position, something you do to get some experience while looking for a better position. Alot of people who get into video game journalism do so because they have no other choise and some people can become incredibly bitter over it. This explains why it feels like so many journalists have zero clue about what they are talking about and many of their articles feel like a sunmary of what a wiki could have told you. It’s a sad side product of how the industry works sadly.

[@Temperans]

That honestly explains a lot of why the articles are written so badly. If its made by a newb or someone that is outright spiteful of having to write those articles then no wonder they would do a bad job.

[@brendo7363]

When they figured out games were a massive cultural force, games journalism became a valuable source of social capital gained by public allegiance to "woke" ideology. They aren't moving from games journalism to real journalism, they're going to activision/microsoft/EA narrative and consulting roles.

[@nichan008]

So basically you're saying games journalism is the gay porn of the journalism industry?

[@laurelkeeper]

@@nichan008 I spit out my drink and I wasn't even drinking anything-

[@fosphor8920]

This begs the question: Why do this and why not just hire gamers as journalists?

[@Anarook]

The biggest problem is this whole affair gives a megaphone to the extremists and pushes moderates to their message, which just gives the conflicting parties more fuel to the fire.

[@robertkerr4199]

They don't hate gamers. They hate themselves and project it onto gamers.

[@defaulted9485]

They hate they cannot be the biggest victim after their last push.

[@lesslighter]

next thing you know it they will nuke their homelands twice and then comment that gamers are solely responsible for their actions (such as nuking their homelands twice) and then rant about borders

[@roserevancroix2308]

Yes and if we talk about a certain gender...they "hate" everything that takes your attention away from them. So anything you like doing is "bad", go out with your friends...watch sports....gaming...working out "too much", spending time in the garage...etc...all your attention need and should be on her 24/7, at least until SHE feels she need some "space" = gets bored and want to f random badboy and then cry about it later on tiktok and say "all men are pigs".

[@Allen.Christian]

More likely, they don't hate anyone or even care about any of this, but the internet news monetization model is based entirely on click harvesting, so we get whatever this shit is thrown at us.

[@andanetr]

plz don't even joke about reigniting the great dulex paint vs farrow and ball debacle of '95

[@StarContract]

Game journalists - Hate gamers, don't even play games.

[@octitawhythisnameistaken]

Or the ones that ruined Witcher Tv Series, that disliked/hated the original content from books. Or Rings Of Power (that i never seen and never will), who created, whatever, while pretending that Sauron is cute

[@mrnotsure8655]

Candy crush experts.

[@RealityDysfunction85]

fuck me dead - people need to get off twitter

[@endlessstrata6988]

Social Media in general. This shit is not good for your mental health.

[@21palica]

It will be remembered as a digital museum of human stupidity and largest a collection of brain farts in history.

[@m96k3y7]

@@endlessstrata6988facts.

[@adherry8142]

Its weird because steam kind of hides curators and the most popular is Cynical Brit and he did not review a game since 2018 (for sad but obvious reasons).

[@asrieldreemurr1856]

​@@adherry8142 wdym sad and obvious reasons? am I missing something? what happened to him?

[@jopera2087]

"why do game journalists hate gamers so much?" Because these people aren't game journalists.

[@gamezonereactions8388]

Activist grifters. Smells like Anne Queefa.

[@21palica]

@@gamezonereactions8388 A not so small, tightly connected and protective gang of self-serving activist grifters.

[@johnnii]

They aren't even gamers

[@mattd8725]

No money in it. You got various kinds. The kind who are respected enough that some people will sub to their patreon. The kind who are annoying or notorious enough that they can do some political grift and people sub to their patreon. Then most of them who just want to bide their time until they can get a real job and will insinuate themselves with game companies.

[@kisaness]

@@Anedimeat least for Germany this isn't true. Most of the gaming journalist have exactly the qualifications you are talking about. Either you study for four years or you go into a "Volontariat" for three years, to learn how to be a proper journalist. Or are you talking about the people explicit in the video? Then you are abolutly right and i misunderstood you.

[@synony6]

I think the dilution of stories in fear of offending people is the worst. People want gritty stories not utopian narratives. It just makes characters bland and uninteresting.

[@birkinsmith88]

The one and only thing I've ever been ok at was the odd bit of storytelling, but I've become so paranoid of leaning into a narrative where the characters you're supposed to root for are terrible people that I just don't dare anymore. People think you're using the character as a means to express your true and negative opinions on something like race or gender and that's just not the case.

[@Historyfan476AD]

A lot of their 'utopian' narratives are downright disturbing as well.

[@21palica]

@@Historyfan476AD Or make zero sense for the IPs they're adapting.

[@yuzuchi5381]

Aslong as they dont target people in games or make whole games about racism etc. its fine .. if there is some light racism, sexism etc. in a game i think its fine ... we experience base levels of that every single day .. 😅😢

[@SamuelCatsy]

@@Historyfan476AD Like Starfield's semi-"utopian" narrative where humanity only has a handful of large settlements and they're the most boring places you can imagine. Even the supposedly drug kingpin-run Neon is about as exciting as a Six Flags with all the rides closed and the nightclub has people dancing around in suits you'd see as a joke in Zoolander.

[@ndh06]

I'm a bit tired of the culture war on the internet. Both sides lose and the grifters on both sides make a big name for themselves. This current shitstorm feels more manufactured than most.

[@Anayoth]

Except the left controls all of entertainment, while the right typically takes the abuse in kind. Hence all of these “diversity” (anti-white) initiatives. What is the right grifting? Methodist Christianity? Those Old Testament values have long been lost to time. It’s the same in Politics. Whenever the right-wing finds its balls and does something for once (Gamergate 1/2) the left loses their goddamn minds.

[@Masterom2000x]

I think the misconception is that for some reason, take Forspoken for example, they don't know how to actually WRITE a person of color, so the story sucked and the character was super cringe. People then blame "forced inclusion" for why the story or game sucked, even though the game wouldn't have been any better with any other character ethnicity, it was just a bad game.

[@Lenariet]

Forspoken. Forsaken was some shooter in the 90s or so.

[@Anayoth]

I mean Square Enix is a Japanese company, while Japan doesn’t have the greatest opinions of black people in particular (they didn’t favor the mixed beauty pageant winner) Not to mention their country is homogenous, so seeing a black female lead in a Japanese game is unnatural.

[@ArturGlass.C]

100 and the worse part is they promote this rhetoric by then trying to promote the game using the inclusion as a big selling point because they know the game don't have much to offer. It makes people do the association. It sucks.

[@Hemestal]

To me what's hilarious is how patronizing these devs actually are, like in the new Assassins Creed game, when Yosuke starts mowing down Japanese soldiers and hip hop starts blasting in the background, like "yeah, you blacks like hip hip right?"

[@LoneWolf-rc4go]

I really think it's down to the fact that game journalists aren't gamers. I remember seeing something a while ago where a journalist had gone into a Discord server and was asking why nobody as using their real names and nobody had a picture of themselves as their avatar. I got real 'How do you do fellow kids' vibes from it. Put another way gamers are interested in gaming, journalists are interested in journalism.

[@shorewall]

That was a games journalist "infiltrating", in her own words, the SBI detector curator group discord. She wrote an article last week defending SBI, and wanted to dox some people in the discord.

[@stefanmadethen5359]

kekw WHAT such professionalism they think this is like Slack or smth "uhh what's anonymity??"

[@adrianstefaniak7584]

Pretty sure that was this "Kotaku senior editor" mentioned in video. Deep undercover jurnalism xD

[@DamoBloggs]

One of the major problems is most of the words have become loaded. 'Inclusive' and 'Diverse' don't seem to mean the same thing to the various factions that weigh in. It makes misinformation and misdirection easy to occur, either by intention or mistake. It's all so petty and tiresome...

[@Anayoth]

Right’s definition of Diversity: “Various races, religions, backgrounds, age, etc.,” Left’s Definition of Diversity: “Black Indigenous People of Color (no white people)”

[@ArturGlass.C]

Truly I've seen people try to portray their game as "inclusive" and "diverse" meanwhile they don't even do the bare minimum in accessibility options or give black character literally 1 choice of haircut compared to the rest and every character looks like the exact same model. Not what I would call diverse and inclusive by any standard but I guess they do. And some people might dislike the game exactly because they think there's too much diversity from just that. It just doesn't mean anything at this point, it's just marketing talk. There's a few games that could be considered diverse that were a hit regardless because at the end of the day even the annoying racists just want a good game. That's what we all want. If a game gets a bad marketing reputation like that but it's insanely good and everyone plays it, recommends it and it gets well rated. Eventually the racists will probably play it and if it's good they might keep playing it and pretend they weren't upset about it in the first place.

[@Anayoth]

@@ArturGlass.C No, people who criticize “diversity, inclusion, and equity” (D.I.E.), aren’t racist for noticing how only black/ethnic folks seem to matter in that dogma. “Diversity” was a tool in the Civil Rights era mainly to forcefully integrate black people in majority white companies. To answer one thing: black hairstyles doesn’t allow much beyond the Afro, Caesar, Dreadlocks, Cornrows, Gerrycurls, or Plataeu.

[@krypton1260]

You can easily spot tokenism, it's like a bad photoshop.

[@Shizlgizl]

I tried to to make a joke with some ridiculous implication this comment is racist, but everything I can think of has already been done in real life unironically.

[@DemmyDemon]

@@ShizlgizlYeah, the poor comedians have nowhere to go anymore. Kotaku and The Onion are harder to distinguish every day.

[@nman551]

Me who remembers gamer gate years ago: ah shit here we go again

[@Noordledoordle]

​@@Anedime fun fact: it was ALL annoying, and anyone still super big mad about it in 2024 is the most annoying.

[@xxkillbotxx7553]

@@Anedime "gaslit" stfu lmao. I swear to god gen z just finds a cool little buzzword and then picks it up for use in every single situation ever

[@Lightwish4K]

Everyone speaks on it and no one have explained what that it is XD

[@Vandassar]

@@Lightwish4K Basically some dude wrote a blog about his ex gf about how much of a piece of shit she was. She was a game dev and it came out that she had been sleeping with journos for favourable reviews on her games. Just like now, the whole thing got way out of control and she even did a me too on him that ultimately lead to him ending his life. So like what @Anedime is saying, there's 2 parts to all of this. But both parts were very much entwinned in a massive pile of shit.

[@Lightwish4K]

@@Vandassaroh wow!

[@cxxal]

anyone else think it's so funny that Tommy Tallarico is in the ad on that right there the whole time, who got called out a big hypocrite a while ago as well?

[@burningprodigy]

Calling them journalists is too much credit. They are activists.

[@borkguy]

This is the truth Kira doesn’t want to outright say, he wants to look impartial or something. They are actively at war with what they see as “toxic gamers” and have been for years.

[@CrystallineLore]

Some of them are, and they don't keep it a secret. I don't know if it's changed, but Kotaku's Cyberpunk 2077 review was a massive, lengthy monster that was literally 2/3 political ranting that had nothing to do with the game, and then the actual review included stuff like the reviewer saying they ignored all cop quests because they were anti-police, which as anyone who who actually played the game would find deeply ironic as the game basically agrees with her in that the cops are corrupt and the few good ones are slowly drowning in the abyss and no one is helping them.

[@jacobjohnson3200]

There's nothing than drives people to the right like the extreme left. Twenty years ago, I was an ally to the cause but now, I'm considered a white male colonialist oppressor, not because of what I've done, but who I am. How did we get to this point?

[@mufasafalldown8401]

​@@stanettiels7367 ding ding ding 😅

[@brendo7363]

calling them activists would imply they aren't doing it for the money. This is just how they can bully their way into some BS job.

[@Carnyzzle]

What's hilarious about this thing going on is that they tried to defend this company and go, "no they're not directly influencing games the way gamers think they are." Then there was an old interview that came out where the CEO admitted that it was their entire goal

[@luckyducky7819]

I notice this a lot in media. Creators will say "Here's my plan to put my ideals in my work because I believe it will make my work better", and when you say that's what they're doing, people will go "There's no 'agenda' here. They'd not deliberately putting stuff in the media!". I have no idea why they do it, but its a consistent lie.

[@Jokoko2828]

The woman literally tells people to pull scare tactics to terrify people into compliance and I'm supposed to pretend that didn't happen?

[@s7robin105]

Did you actually check what games they helped with? Because if you actually checked you would realize they have helped with the writing of plenty of good games too

[@lcmiracle]

@@s7robin105 Shills get killed. And no, all the games they had credits with are woke trash

[@mattjohnson8585]

Objection: relevance Just because some stuff hasn't been horrible, that doesn't change what the CEO said or the overall aim of the company and its supporters.

[@tkismik8146]

Personally, I also feel that the "diversity" tag that is thrown here and there is an afterthought. Similar to a pre-emptive defense for when the product is bad and badly reviewed "Oh, you dont like our product because you are - xyz". I have also seen this in construction projects where a bad concept with frankly stupid ideas and out of control budget, got a last minute tag of "Carbon footprint" which was utter @@. Then when the project "architects" were faced with backlash from the client and the community, they kept throwing around buzz was words like Carbon footprint, green energy etc to justify a bad idea and an expensive, completely non-environmentally friendly project. And I also feel that most people dont like the "diversity" factor in games because it is so so so poorly implemented. Generic characters, boring script and overall bad and bland writing. As if....all of it was last minute implemented as an afterthought. And if consumers dont like it, the defense presented to the shareholders (because the consumer will just not buy it) is "oh they dont like our product because people dont understand diversity. But YOU as a the big boss knows better right? So please dont fire me and also give me more money for the next project". Possibly a stretch but I can definitely imagine it.

[@Xazamas]

When 1998 Marvel movie "Blade" came out, approximately zero sane people complained that the movie had too much diversity. In recent years, Disney has claimed to have brought "first black superhero" to the movie screen.

[@ZealotOfSteal]

There's video of the CEO of sweet baby inc at a conference or something. In it she says that people should push to hire consultants and that "if your boss doesn't want to hire diversity consultants, go to your marketing department and terrify them that if your game isn't diverse it's going to have terrible PR" It is a 'protection racket'

[@tkismik8146]

@@ZealotOfSteal yep saw that. Very disturbing that they would preach terrorism with a smile xD xD

[@21palica]

Sometimes, just hearing Kira's honest, pretty level-headed opinion on a current controversial and polarizing issue, then seeing the likes below, makes me hold on to hope for mankind. Thank you!

[@Spellfork]

My issue with this whole debacle is how marginalized individuals and minorities are being exploited and tokenized more than ever only because big business wants to rake in some kind of disillusioned goodwill points

[@deltasaves]

Yep. Id rather not be represented than represented poorly.

[@pcppbadminton]

I think that's the virtue signalling that people are 'campaigning' against.

[@ereviscale3966]

When I hear virtue signal I know it's a chud though they should just describe what's making them upset about it

[@MorbidEel]

Which is pretty stupid because people buy games based on whether or not it is "good". Sure some people want all these other things but at least for a business that is not what determines the success or failure of a game. You can have those things while having a good game, it's just that some are focusing on the wrong aspects.

[@EngineerOfChaos]

@@deltasaves That is literally the issue with DEI funding. Instead of actually improving the internal workings of the company they are putting this in their works as slap dashed and cheaply as possible to try to get the funding

[@juances]

What bothers me is that even if these journalists agree with the intent behind sweet baby inc, they should still be denouncing them for how poorly they handled the situation. You can defend that inclusivity discourse while still believing that sweet baby inc is not the right company to handle this endeavor.

[@Vandassar]

Oh no, they can't do that. Because that would mean that they would have to concede to the fact that there are shitty actors on all sides of a debate/argument.

[@johnnii]

So true, the fact that they haven't fired or apologised/distanced themselves for Chris Kindred's behavior speaks volumes

[@keungwan5901]

@@Vandassar I was thinking if journos do not toe the line, then they will get cancelled, even if they are on the same 'side'

[@Severance8859]

​@@keungwan5901 leftist love nothing more than eating their own, that is for sure.

[@Tompa8411]

I agree and what Ive heard and seen from the curator gruop sweet baby inc. detected Steam didnt find any reason shut it down. They list the games that SB has been involved in thats not harrasment!!

[@Rollerrot]

Never forget PBS Gameshow, which said Witcher 3 had no diversity and only white people. A game with diverse characters about slavic culture

[@itsthesoup11]

As a former journalist, I don’t claim these people, they’re writers, nor journalists, with agendas and axes to grind.

[@theEisbergmann]

"If you throw normal people in the same pot with extremists, guess what - at some point, they will be" thx for that. I've been trying to tell people that for quite a while.

[@Mikedot]

"These people are going to treat me like a villain no matter what I say or do, so I might as well be the best villain I can be."

[@TheCatherineCC]

If you lose your shit because there is a black character, you were always going to end up a piece of shit, you just needed to find the self confidence that let you coax yourself from your shell.

[@theEisbergmann]

@@TheCatherineCC that is exactly the mindset, that makes this whole thing as shitty as it is. You villify people and in the end, when they break down, you're like "see? I was right!" Are there racists? yeah, sure. But are these the people you lose, when you villify the slightest opposition? Unlikely. And even then - telling people how shitty they are is not the way to make them rethink. It will just solidify their stance.

[@TheCatherineCC]

@@theEisbergmannThe only thing that matters is that these people consistently prove I was right. The street violence has already started, there is no "rethinking" happening, or possible. We just pretend it's not true.

[@Tyr808]

I thoroughly enjoyed watching and also had zero aneurysms, so I can recommend this.

[@kirareacts]

😂

[@bananaslamma35]

It's projecting guilt onto the other party so they don't have to admit that they fucked up, pissed off everyone and are now reaping what they've sown. Sweet Baby Inc. threw a bitch fit over someone simply deciding to make it easier for others to know when they were involved in a game. If they were at all proud of what they're doing, they should've taken this as a compliment, but instead, an employee decided to try to harass the people telling others about their involvement in games into quitting what they were doing. Sweet Baby Inc. was indeed the instigator and initial harasser, but when they got burned playing with fire, they decided to blame the fire instead. It also doesn't help that what they do is something that only people who don't play videogames want, which is racist tokenization for the most part, and more often than not their involvement is tied to games' stories being utter garbage. Beyond the whole racism thing they've got going on, I'm actually offended as an actual writer. I spent years building up to the point that I could get people to pay me to write, and I spend hours, days, weeks and even months on a 5000 word commission in order to make sure it's ready, and I guaran-damn-tee these jokers with zero writing skill get paid in a single month more than I make all year just because a brainless executive wants to "appeal to a wider audience" via tokenization and thus hires these talentless hacks to butcher their videogame.

[@ArturGlass.C]

Thanks for that cuz I had no idea what the original issue was about.

[@cholamais-cj1wh]

Gaming as a whole devolved into a circle of hate. Gamers hate publishers/companies, companies/publishers hate gamers, journalists that are paid by said companies also hate gamers, gamers hate journalists and the list goes on. Gaming sucks so bad nowadays, it is sad to think about how great gaming was in the mid 2000s.

[@BenOzzy]

Luke Stephen’s made a good point. Even if the studio heads accepted and implemented every last one of SBIs suggestions and ideas to the letter, the decision still rests on the heads of the studio. You can dislike SBIs influence but they ultimately didn’t have the final say.

[@ereviscale3966]

This is a distraction from the absolute trash that the major studios have become, there's so many deeper issues then boob good gay bad

[@Anayoth]

These studios are fairly liberal themselves seeing the lot of them are based in California. The fact that Rocksteady & co. willingly paid tens of thousands to a worthless “diversity & representation” ‘consultation’ firm shows their level of business savvy.

[@leonhart7306]

So, some of my favorite series were pretty diverse, and some might even say "woke" (the expanse novels come to mind). But here are some of my thoughts about where diversity-centric design often runs into issues. 1. Diversity doesn't always make sense. There are people (often games journalists) who play a game where the setting is based off of another culture (say, the Witcher 3) and complain that there aren't enough black people. Guess what guys, not all countries are melting pot countries, and have the same racial makeup as America. And, from a global perspective, if every country was like these melting pot countries, the world would actually be a hell of a lot less diverse. 2. On race/gender swapping characters, I immediately think of Starbuck from the Battlestar Galactica reboot. They made the character a woman, and it worked really well. But this is a double standard, and a lot people dislike those. If you made a black character white, or a female character male in one of these mainstream movies/tv series, there would likely be an outcry. So I think people push back against it in principle, either its always okay or its never okay. And I also think on a fundamental level, changing a characters race/sex takes you a step away from the source material, and a lot of people prefer adaptations be faithful to the source material. 3. Diversity doesn't improve bad writing. My example for this will be Frey from Forspoken (a shallow character with cringe dialogue). I feel like people are used to seeing these shallow diverse characters, and they overgeneralize that experience. So, when you have a firm, like SBI, that effectively lobbies for the inclusion of token diversity characters within a plot (and receives ESG money for doing so) these characters aren't being crafted from a place of inspiration, they're written and added into the story solely to chase after material gains. Shallow motivation leads to writing a shallow character. 4. People at these companies are often their own worst enemies, they behave irresponsibly and get themselves (and their companies) into trouble (and in many cases, these individuals are actually in leadership roles at their companies). Saying that you can't be racist against white people, drumming up a harassment campaign against a legitimate consumer boycott of their products, and the journalists deliberately omit context and only report on facts that suit their preferred narrative... These people see themselves as crusaders, fighting an imaginary race war. They're extremists, and hold many ignorant and prejudicial views themselves, but completely lack self-awareness, it’s pathetic.

[@Klongu_Da_Bongu]

"Woke" has a vague definition on purpose but I don't think the expanse counts as woke. Things like civil rights and radical ideas aren't "woke". It's a very specific subset of ideas pushed by companies like Blackrock and Vanguard, special interest groups and non government organizations (NGO) like the Soros "Open Society". When you look at the people pushing the message, don't be mistaken - they are simply puppets. Follow the strings.

[@Aries73]

Incels and neckbeards aren't capable of forming a sensible statement like yours.

[@chinchilla6547]

I think so many people are obsessed with picking a side when the reality is that most people just don’t care enough to have an opinion either way.

[@mattjohnson8585]

"journalists"

[@Rietto]

It's not journalism, it's always been industry shilling and PR. They will almost always circle the wagon in defense of the industry.

[@mummifiedgamer]

Actually SBI openly said they need to terrify PR people at the companies who hired them into doing what they want. So there is some truth to them coming in and ruining games.

[@bernhardlabus8511]

Of course they have to. Think about it. If youre company lives off diversifying stuff, if you get hired and say "Yeah no, this is pretty good already, maybe tone this down a bit, but overall good", they will not hire you again, because they don't think they need you. So you gotta make it seem like you swooped in and saved the whole thing to ensure they think they need you.

[@asrieldreemurr1856]

@@bernhardlabus8511 I don't agree with this. The company hired you, if they say this is "good enough", just go along with it, you did your job, it's okay, you don't need to terrify anyone.

[@bernhardlabus8511]

@@asrieldreemurr1856 Reads like you misunderstood my post twice. 1) The hired company cant allow themselves to give the "good enough" right away, not the hiring company. Cause the hired company has to appear relevant. 2) Noone in their right mind agrees with it, I'm saying its just basic marketing. Still completely unnecessary.

[@ThisChangeIsAwful]

I'm a gamer and i hate gamers? have you not met the internet gaming community? If you dont understand why im saying that, it could be because you are a straight passing white male and your experience with Gamers(TM) might be different than some of us. most if not all of "videogame journalism" is rubbish, but the gaming community gives them tons of low hanging fruit by being incredibly toxic, especially towards marginalized communities. I always find it incredibly weird when a community gets mad that their actions are being talked about. More mad at the people doing the revealing then the toxic actions that they dont want revealed.

[@DecrepitSundew3]

It's the 0.0000001% of "gamers" that make the rest look bad. (I put that in "" because they aren't gamers.) As a transfemme casual gamer, I have yet to find a gamer that makes gaming terrible for me BECAUSE they're a white cis-male. That's just a "put blinkers on" concept that doesn't exist. Yes, I want diversity, I'd like to see more transfemme people in video games, but putting transfemme characters in games as a "lOoK wE pUt A tRaNs ChArAcTeR iN oUr GaMe!!" is just a kick in the teeth.

[@Ceyrenn460]

As a NB person I don't like seeing token LGBTQ characters that there only personality is being queer just to get check marks. If there is a character that is a well written/developed character that also happens to be LGBTQ is always nice and proper representation. Isobel in BG3 and Alchemy in ESO are great examples of this. But if you want LGBTQ to be completely unnoticeable in media, to the point they are nonexistent, then I hope at some point you open up your heart and be more accepting to those who are different than you, even if you don't understand it.

[@Garoslol]

Hating your customers or fanbase is a great business model...

[@Paelmoon]

Did you even check the games they were involved with? Most are popular and successful - with a few flops (nothing outside the norm though).

[@Mirikyrana]

It is, if you can channel it for your upcoming BDSM sex work career.

[@Garoslol]

@@PaelmoonYou mean some were succesfull despite their crappy input. God of War was obvious that someone had to shove a black person into nordic mythology but the game was good despite that.

[@GonzoMD1993_]

@@Paelmoon The input from shitty companies like Sweet Baby can't make good games bad. At worst, they can make bad games worse. They're not the reason why those games were popular and successful; they would have been popular and successful either way.

[@kavinh10]

@@Paelmoon "most" yeah did you check the list yourself. they were involved in starfield and sucide squad two of the biggest triple A releases. it's not alot of success few flops it's several flops and a small few success. It's also heavily implied they were responsible for the harley cringe lines to batman in sucide squad about mental anguish

[@kombatwombat6579]

I appreciate the angle of "you don't need to be angry about some things". It's kind of exotic these days. Also, if you need to be angry, be angry about better, more meaningful things.

[@arnipa2]

just a little easter egg, tommy tallarico - the first man ever - was in the featured video on the right side at @3:45, im sure his mum is proud of him

[@SonySteals]

I am a gamer and I hate gamers myself! Terrible people.

[@TheCatherineCC]

League?

[@nbrown5907]

I agree with you, most people are live and let live. It is the fringe freaks that drive this crap.

[@endlessstrata6988]

That is true, until people star fucking with what you like.

[@21palica]

@@endlessstrata6988 Feelings of disappointment, sadness and apathy are not something I was hoping to get from my favorite entertainment either.

[@adaelion3772]

​@@endlessstrata6988 Which is what gamers are getting mad about. The issue is that these companies are trying to to erase whites, heterosexual relationships, and nuclear families from any product.

[@Aethelhald]

The people at Sweet Baby Inc aren't live and let live though, they're actual racists (seriously, check out their individual Twitter accounts) trying to force their bizarre racist ideology into muh videogames under the guise of anti-racism. It's fucking weird and we don't want/need it, because games have been diverse since the very beginning and we all love them. Like, some of the most popular and fondly remembered games of all time had female leads (Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, etc.) or black leads (like San Andreas).

[@Noordledoordle]

​@Aethelhald Several of the games they consulted on are fine (and some are not.) If you hadn't known of their existence, would you have honestly noticed something was "wrong" for the good games?

[@ZettXXII]

This all started with a steam curator list not recommending games involved with sweet baby and they responded by immediatly taking up arms to ban the brazilian user, who made the list, from steam. Also calling for a boycott or not recommending something are different things. This should be enough for anyone to see that the people involved with sweet baby etc. and game journalists reporting it like this are insane.

[@zombiehampster1397]

People have been telling stories and modifying stories since the beginning of time. Things change and so do stories. Deal with it. No one forces anyone to consume any media.

[@brian7android985]

Yeah, thousands of years of storytelling. But it's only recently that we have had public conferences on the psychology of influencing people through storytelling.

[@zamp7808]

we live in a time when far-right and far-left are defined by culture not economic class. what a brave new world.

[@FrederickGautier]

10:32 Tommy Talarico sighting in the video ad.

[@eddythefool]

I agree with bad writing ruining things with diversity or lack of diversity being irrelevant in games where customization isn't an option. Pretty much all shit games would be equally shit if you removed all diversity or increased it by 1000%.

[@thatHARVguy]

They're using diversity as a shield, for their shit decisions in their shit games.

[@birkinsmith88]

What're the bluff notes for this time around?

[@thomaswilson8022]

Spawn: a comic book that came out in 1992, the main character is black. Its story is god tier. No body complained. War machine: first appeared in 1979. Instead of making tony stark black they made a new character who was black and opposite stark. No body complained. Diversity has never been a problem, make new characters that offset and enhance the story of existing ones. Or tell completely new stories we haven't heard before.

[@TheCatherineCC]

Of course, when that was done, writers still got hate manifestos and death threats over Ben Sisko on DS9 and Janeway / Tuvok (Vulcans can't be black) on Voyager. Same arguments made by losers on usenet then as today.

[@xxkillbotxx7553]

A little over ten years before War Machine was the Civil Rights movement. Pretty sure diversity was a problem then.

[@MycaeWitchofHyphae]

“We don’t want politics in our video games” My existence shouldn’t be political.

[@gronodon]

Well said! Why the fuck is representation a political manner, I just like when the thing has a small part that’s gay bro 🥲

[@TerrenceMcGinnis]

Exactly. THIS! Having people of any sexuality or gender shouldn't be used as a political tool in any game. Same with nationality, religion, etc, etc. All the sides do it, and it sucks. They should just make great characters, and their sexuality and gender should only be a small part of what makes them awesome. Instead of using sexuality and gender to signal 'look, we are on X side in this!' It's sad what the world has become.

[@ereviscale3966]

It's so funny they call everything they don't like political when it's just how the world exists.

[@Xhistris]

So, here's my 2 cents on the 'diversity harmed the product' argument, from my own perspective - I'm trans. You know how many decent trans characters I've encountered in the games I've played? Only one comes to memory. All other trans characters I can think of, they're tokens, bordering on parody. Their entire character, their entire being is 'look at me, I'm trans, trans is my entire personality and I exist in this product only to be trans and to make a statement about being trans'. It's shit writing, like Kira says, but it's also shit writing that highlights the tokenized minority and makes it far more obvious than generic shit writing where people will only go 'yeah, it was bad'. As someone else said in this comment section, it's better not to be represented than to be represented so poorly.

[@DaxMarko]

Before: "Learn to code" Now: "Learn to cope"

[@noladavis5085]

Bi female gamer here. Games do not need to change when it comes to diversity. I do not need a game with a miserable, sarcastic 40 year old Bi woman to feel connected to a game. How about concentrating on the state modern games are released in. Push back against the micro transactions. Get angry about the broken buggy messes that companies have the audacity to call AAAA games. If you really care about games that's what needs to change, that's where the energy needs to be directed at. Sweet Baby Inc does not speak for the majority of people like me and I find it insulting and patronising to pretend that they do.

[@miles3101]

The main problem with shallow inclusivity will never be immersion breaking, because (like it has been pointed out before) immersion isn't that important. Bad writing for "diverse" characters is far worse, but even worse than that is the shallow disgusting "representation" they put out and how they try to sell such bullshit to us like it's chocolate as if we have no sense of smell. It insults the player's intelligence, and even further, they then insult the player's "morals" by saying "if you don't like this you're a bigot".

[@maxm2639]

I'm about 30% through the video, and I have no idea as to what controversy you're addressing, altho I get that it's the usual issues about ethnicity & people feeling ignored or persecuted as a group. I listen and watch at least a couple of KZbin gaming summary channels each week and know about controversies like scammy games & exploited workers & sexual harassment etc.. Usually you give brief summaries, even if it's the 10th video about Earth 2, and I appreciate those. As you point out, you scan social media every day, and it may seem like everybody is talking about a particular thing, but honest not all of us do that much scanning, and a brief summary really helps.

[@Raptor-Jesus]

Dont know if you got it after watching the rest of the video but. Quick summary. A company called "sweet baby inc" whose sole purpose is to inject diversity into every video game it can. 95% of the games they get to work on fail. A Brazilian guy decided to make a Steam group called Sweet Baby inc detected (100k+ members so far btw) to point out any new or old games Sweet Baby has worked on so people can avoid them. Sweet Baby inc decided to try and mass report the group to get it taken down as well as trying to get the Brazillian guy's account deleted.

[@maxm2639]

Thank you!

[@Lenariet]

There are a few loud people around believing that games like SSKTJL only fail because Sweet Baby Inc. is doing consulting work on the topic of diversity for some few devs. They make it the main talking point, the main flaw of the respective game should it fail like SSKTJL did, while ignoring that other games with their involvement did very well. Their catchphrase is "go woke, go broke". Clearly SSKTJL would have been GOTY material if not for Sweet Baby Inc's involvement - don't mind the issues of a live service game in a market oversaturated with them and the meh-ish gameplay. No, only Sweet Baby Inc. is to blame according to their short-sighted echo chamber narrative.

[@Lenariet]

And the fact you would need to do social media "scanning" yourself to even know what the current drama is means you - as opposed to others - are living in RL and are touching way more grass than some of these basement-dwelling social media drama edgelords do. These imbalanced no-lifers are greatly exaggerating the issue and are in dire need of some tree hugging.

[@maxm2639]

@@Lenariet I do like grass, thanks! Good point about SSKTJL. I think that part of the problem, besides the temptation to weigh in on anything even mildly irritating in an infinite sea of distractions (which I admit I succumb to at times) and the internet enabling us to ignore the fact that actual humans are involved and therefore say & do things most of us would not consider face to face in real time, is what Kira and a number of comments refer to, which is that so many people are hypersensitive to anything that might relate to racial and gender and misogamy and partisan political issues. I will be interested to see how we are doing with constantly available connection to Too Much Information in 20 years if I make it that long..

[@dragconen]

Edit Kira goes over pretty much my whole comment I didn't watch far enough but still thank you Kira. Dear god man you are the only youtuber that has got this right from what I've seen granted I've not seen everyone's opinion about this subject gamer gate or otherwise. I remember seeing all the gamers are dead headlines back then and hearing people try and gaslight to say that didn't happen was maddening. Just like this time where folk keep on saying that one guy that made the steam group to start harassing sweet baby inc when an employee from sweet baby inc tried to get his account banned because he made that group.

[@xm8553]

100%! Very well said points. Keep up the good work Kira

[@scroogeydoogeedoo]

the gaming journalism seems like it became almost all about just getting the clickbait, in the same vein as the facebook/social media algorithms, where things that make people angry get the most engagements and thus ad dollars

[@TheCatherineCC]

It's not like it's a sophisticated audience. Gaming journalism is written for the people who spam voice chat screaming the n word over and over again in the hopes they buy crappy, overpriced gaming chairs.

[@Lucky_Fluffy]

my problem is that the Sweet Baby CEO has been very Open about Wanting to Force Change on the Gaming Industry by Strong arming and fear inducing the development studios that hire them. For me its not about the Diversity and Inclusivity, its how they are going about doing so. The things Sweet Baby Employess have Said and Done are Outrageous and totally uncalled for.

[@onomatopoeia7505]

What's with the random capitalization?

[@saltiney8578]

When I saw the tweet by one of their employees saying you can't be racist against white people I understood what were dealing with, they're just racists and bigots.

[@Klongu_Da_Bongu]

"Diversity and Inclusivity" aren't real anyways. "Diversity" means "anyone not white (Whites account for 5 percent of the world population)" and "Inclusivity" means pandering to people and infantilizing minorities. Often times these people are treated like they can't take a joke, or don't have very conservative lifestyles themselves.

[@Klongu_Da_Bongu]

@@onomatopoeia7505 Maybe they are German. Germans do that with every noun.

[@TheCatherineCC]

Yes, a 16 person shop has the power to control studios worldwide. You people are so fucking stupid.

[@micheleosullivan4430]

SBI is the initial thread that got pulled, ya know? Now, the list keeps growing, and it's like the whole fabric of things is starting to unravel. It's shining a light on other companies that just outright hate gamers. We're the ones who make the biggest entertainment industry thrive. Fun fact, the 2008 crash affected every sector of finance, business, and real estate. Gaming was one of the few industries that flourished during a fiscal crisis. BioWare did it best with Mass Effect. The game had a diverse cast, but "the message" wasn't shoved down our throats. We weren't schooled on how to be Woke. We didn't feel like we should live in guilt for one transgression or another. We enjoyed a great trilogy because it was an impressive set of games! BioWare was woke before woke was trending. And they did it right! Hopefully, they stick with their proven formula.

[@jopearson6321]

40:00 Agreed. I like to refer to this as the "living well is the best revenge" principle.

[@Untolddead]

The thing is sweet baby inc may do nothing in reality just a way to get DEI investment. But the point that 99% of people have just like the steam curator is that sweet baby inc is the canary that says game will be bad. It's like when the marketing talks about "modern audiences" or how diverse/many women made the product. You know it's bad because the marketing team couldn't find something actually good in what they are selling to talk about. Or in the case of sweet baby you know the story has been butchered by so many committees that there was no real artistic vision.

[@diamelo]

Idk if it's that good of an indicator, sbi consulted on quite a handful of games with great audience scores. People are really trying to convince themselves that God of War wasn't as great as it was now.

[@kirareacts]

How is it a canary the game will be bad when they've worked on some beloved and top rated games?

[@Untolddead]

@@diamelo Whether is some games have a good audience score is irrelevant. If some people think it's an indicator than they are in their right to think that and not buy. Just as if they like the games the company works on it's their right to buy them. If I said I never buy EA games no one would bat an eye. But when someone doesn't want to buy a game with sweet baby involved it's suddenly bad to dislike a company?

[@TheJunnutin]

@@Untolddead lol, comparing EA to SBI is really telling on yourself and your motivations. edit. also, good audience score is irrelevant? wtf mate? "people who bought this game really like it is irrelevant because reasons"

[@Untolddead]

@@kirareacts Art is subjective. Just because a majority likes something doesn't mean that people for example the guy who made the steam list liked those popular games. I'm fine with a list that is pro sweet baby just as much as I'm fine with the list that is anti sweet baby.

[@metalenceladus]

My favourite take thus far. I suppose I have always felt like Kira's mind works in much the same as mine does. The controversy has only blown up into Gamergate 2 because they poured gasoline on the fire. People are always going to clip what you said online to get insight or make a point about your views, often out of context. But even if its within a certain context, if you believe what you say, then what do you care? SBI put a target on their back when chris kindred advocated a harrassment campaign against the curation list creator, and the racist Steam post on the group against white male gamers. If as a company CEO you can't see why that would be a problem and deal with it, or worse yet, are seen to endorse that position, then of course that's where the problem is. That's when you don't just have the internet crazies coming after you, but instead offend every single person you consider within that group of people, many of which are in fact diverse. Add on top of that, acting as though you are blameless, media outlets pushing a one-sided and provably false narrative, using straw-man arguments and unproven conspiratorial connections to further that narrative without a lick of sited proof. It's all a farce anyways since the media sites WANT this to be another Gamergate, as that kind of controversy means more subject matter to farm to generate more traffic to their sites. That in turn gives them the opportunity to amplify the issue further, and allows them to tie in political hot button topics that are there for no other reason than to fuel the fire further. If its just one issue, then its spoken on, floats in public consciousness for a time, and fades off. If you can tie it to some ongoing political controversy, well then you can just keep farming the issue, well past the point it should have just died away.

[@Klongu_Da_Bongu]

Well this time we might actually have a shot, because along the truth, which is pretty strong, we also have left leaning people "Inside the zone" (Western US, Democrat Cities) like Mutahar coming out and calling them out. Also their senior members with their comments about who can and can't be racist.

[@roserevancroix2308]

Gaming is this magical thing that everyone talks about and everyone has an opinion on but not everyone understand. That's okay they don't have to, my enjoyment for gaming is not depending on what other people think, that is not how you should live your life, stop caring what other people think - most of them are idiots anyway. Gamers are humans that like to do a thing sometimes because they enjoy doing it. It's not more complicated than that.

[@battlehotdog]

man, i just want them to do a good job and dont do some half assed writing just for the sake of being inclusive. i just want a good game...

[@OrphanHart]

I'd just like to say you don't need to know what the original scripts were because its about how things were done and presented and whether or not they add to the entertainment. Like, I don't need to know what the original script was to know I wasn't entertained by having to listen to Mary Jane try to villainize Peter and have him apologize the entire time for nothing he did wrong (choosing to be a hero and save lives), all just so Sweet Baby Inc can make a straight white male look like an awful person compared to the female character. I'm not even a straight white male and I can see how Sweet Baby Inc has influenced the game to be a worse experience. Reading some of their tweets makes it extremely clear how they hate white men, which, yes, you can be racist to, and they have been many times on social media and that way of thinking is shown via the writing in games they are involved in.

[@viddotts44]

The issue is that you're assuming that sweet baby inc is the one who influenced them to put that in the game. You don't know that, it could have literally been the people at Insomniac.

[@achehex]

Just sounds like you found a boogeyman you can point at when you dont like a thing.

[@CrystallineLore]

Yeah, I'm afro-carribean and I don't think I've ever hated a MJ more than the recent Spider-Man game one. She just constantly whines about being saved from deadly positions she puts herself into by someone that loves her while utterly refusing that the gap between them has nothing to do with gender--he has superhuman powers and she does not, and the people they are fighting are super mutants, super villians, and super-geared mercs/soldiers/prisoners. It just made her such an insuffurable idiots and I kept hoping they'd just kill her off. In the first game, Silver Sable was a much better and apporpiate contrast.

[@This-Was-Sparta]

Man, only 20 minutes in and already this is exactly the kind of calm, nuanced breakdown of this situation I was looking for. The fact that a _consultancy company_ , problematic or not, is whipping up such a media circus is patently fucking absurd in my eyes. Really sums up everything that's wrong with modern discourse.

[@IparIzar]

They made themselves radioactive, they'll have to rebrand after this

[@Merinzify]

I don't think diversity ruins anything, but I don't think that adding LGBTQ in every games add anything too, and actually I don't even think it's a good idea, sexuality should NOT define us, if you see me in the street you couldn't guess if i'm straight, bi, gay, pan, etc ( and I can tell you, i'm not straight ), so why do we spend so much time adding it everywhere ? why do we need to explain it everywhere and adding it in every games when it adds nothing to it ? do people really care about the sexuality of others ? I mean outside of my very close friends, no one knows my orientation, and that's perfectly fine with me, nobody needs to know. As for diversity for people of color, I don't care, but if someone wrote a story where nearly every character are white, black, asian or whatever, that should be fine. I don't think that having the twitter mob demanding PoC is a good thing, and if you want to change things because you disagree with the story, the setting etc, then write your own story.

[@Kenshin6321]

I've been saying this for years and I'll continue to say it. If you're upset with what a company is doing or saying, stop buying their products. You can't say "I hate Nike for using child labor" and then turn around and by the new Air Force Ones as soon as they drop. It's the same with video games. If you hate all of these identity politics in video, stop buying those video games. Companies will 100% stop this nonsense when their bottom line is effected. Stop buying the product, and I guarantee all of these problems will go away. They either go away because the company learned that nobody wants it, or the company goes bankrupt because no one bought their game.

[@samboujaiteh3331]

“Gamergate 2.0” are the worst words I’ve heard in the last 10 years of my time alive as an adult on the Internet.

[@endlessstrata6988]

True. It's just Gamergate. The ride never ends.

[@hentype]

glad to see that it isn't "Palestine-Israel conflict"

[@samboujaiteh3331]

@@hentype those words should be worse, but I’ve also seen them constantly for my entire life.

[@jwmcq]

They're calling it the "the latest harassment campaign by gamers" as if it's something that happens all the time because it literally happens all the time. Can probably name 5 times it's happened this year alone. Palworld devs harassed over AI claims, people freaking out about Stellar Blade, fanboys shitting all over the Xbox team when they thought Starfield might come to PS5... this sort of commentary doesn't come out of nowhere.

[@omega1231]

Yeah you know, thing is, that's not unique to gamers. The articles themselves are a form of outrage, especially how they are framed as if people calling your product crap is a hate crime.

[@lildgamedev6885]

You know who really is the culprit here? Twitter users. Lol. Most gamers don’t care about any of these “issues” people love pal world, the numbers speak for themselves

[@JohnnyMaverik]

That's just people complaining about shit they find irritating. A very small % of all people in an industry that touches a very large number of people, so even a very small % looks like a campaign of hatred. It's not a gaming problem, it's a human in the 21st century problem. I'm not defending those people either, I'm just saying it's not a "campaign by gamers" as if it's a unified force of hatred, it's a very small group of gamers who get a bee in their bonnet about specific things which most gamers couldn't give less of a damn about. I for example didn't care if Palworld used AI or not, nor do I actually own or have played the game, although I have watched some and it's on my wishlist so maybe one day. I've always been a pc gamer and spent most of my life watching the console wars with a mix of concern and amusement, so the whole starfield to PS5 thing was IMO, just hilarious, but also really dumb (that some people cared that much... or at all tbh). Don't even know what Stellar Blade is and CBA to google it. I am however, very much a gamer. Oh and if you are wondering as far as the whole Sweet baby Inc. thing goes I can honestly say my opinions are pretty much 1 to 1 with Kira's and to be clear I also don't really give a fk about that either.

[@echoingemotions]

honestly, your video has been the best in talking about this whole situation, without any hate to any side, and just being really level headed about it.

[@soratarz7830]

Gotta love the authentic Kira Content

[@Khandrake]

I feel like a consulting company having a hate fest with Twitter gamers is a bit of a nothing burger

[@FrostyFate]

Gamers don't agree with journalists so journalists hate them. Typical braindead internet behaviour.

[@stuyboi888]

There are racist people in charities, in sport and in gaming. But don't tar all gamers as being racist. When I first played last of us 2 there was backlash about Ellie being gay, abbey being manly, that kid being potentially trans. Did people not play the last of us when Ellie is with Riley, are people so dense not to see it. Outstanding game with an amazing narrative about revenge ultimately not being worth it and takes a chunk out of you(Ellies fingers literally)

[@fletch1313]

Fair play mate, you definitely nailed it in this video!

[@everwake2689]

Baldur's Gate III did it right. There are tons of "diverse" characters, but it doesn't bog down the game or warp the plot.

[@scruffopone3989]

What the fuck do you mean by diverse.

[@laurelkeeper]

@@scruffopone3989 I mean, a majority of act 2's plot centers around two characters who are in a lesbian romance, I guess, and it was a well-written story beat. Plus there's a practically limitless character creator, a wide variety of ethnicities and species represented both among the party and among the game's general cast, and fully open-ended romance. It by every definition has plenty of diversity. And it's a brilliant, wonderful game.

[@ppsarrakis]

@@laurelkeeper that just means that a new baseline is set,so woke gaming need to push even harder to scandalize on the next milestone

[@bhijdasasdjhasdbjkdasbjkfasbjk]

@@ppsarrakiswhat is 'woke' gaming

[@laurelkeeper]

@@ppsarrakis I think you are committing the exact same fallacy of extremist generalization that you get so mad at the ‘woke’ for doing. I’m sure there are some people (like the SBI employee in this video) who will push things to their limit just to shock and attack their audience, but the majority don’t actually want that. They just want to see diverse narratives normalized as part of gaming and for real-world cultures to be meaningfully adapted when possible. To build things up with more possibilities, rather than tear them down. And you are doing those people a grave disservice.

[@TombofAsh]

On "you can't be racist against white people", I was born in ussr and upon its collapse I ended up in one of Central Asian countries. At a time there were roughly 40% "ethnically russian" people living there. We then got nationalisation laws that denied anyone of Russian/soviet descent to be able to get public sector jobs, we literally had "ethnic background" field in passports that would say things like "Russian", "armenian" and so on. Is that not racist? Is me being physically assaulted on streets for being of a wrong ethnic background not racist? (BTW by the time I left there were around 3% ethnically russian people left due to the laws etc). I'm one of those lgbt people that Alyssa and Sh!tbaby should pander to but this is ridiculous. I don't want to play a relatable gay spider man (as an example), I want to play spider man that inspires me, or at least is fun. If I want a relatable spider man, I make one in fucкing sims. Why is it so difficult to understand? They are so overwriting this bs its ridiculous.

[@krazyxki]

That is specifically a US argument friend. It doesn't apply to people outside of the US. It still isn't right though, it's an argument against institutional racism specifically for conversations in the US. Of course it doesn't make sense outside of that scope, because white people have been oppressed in other countries. But not the US. Sadly a lot of the internet is involved around the US so conversations like this lead way to confusion and from people outside of the US.

[@p3rzival]

Awesome commentary as always. Really appreciate it

[@mahasura9667]

as a non straight, non white guy, i fucking hate these types of articles that try to portray all people who think something as one shade of paint. sometimes people just don’t fuckin like something

[@chinchilla505]

Kira you're missing a key issue. You are claiming that the corporations will just find another if sweet baby didn't exist. This appears to be false because sweet baby stated the corporations didn't want to hire them until they threatened the HR department of the company. Their business model is to threaten companies with racism accusation if they aren't hired on as consultants. Sweet baby publically stated this in their 'Tedx' style speech. In some sense, this is an example of the "forced diversity". Also, you claim that sweet baby doesn't barge in and say "Hey make that white man brown!" But in the sweet baby tedx, they say they do this. They claimed that a game designer was making a white French guy, then sweet baby employee told him to make it black Frenchman. They said the designer pushed back and didnt want the character to be black, but sweet baby forced him to do it. They literally say this in their speech and think it makes them look good

[@kirareacts]

If you're basing this entire theory on that single clip from gdc, you're misusing what was said and taking it out of context to fit the narrative you've moulded around it. If you have other evidence, feel free to email it to me.

[@scruffopone3989]

"sweet baby stated the corporations didn't want to hire them until they threatened the HR department of the company" The conspiracy brainrot from dipshit right-wing gamers has never ended I see.

[@guardiantko3220]

​@kirareacts how is it "out of context", it's pretty clear that's how they could dig their claws into a company. Fake rage on Twitter by thousands of bots that a handful of these activists use.

[@kirareacts]

Well, how context works is that you typically listen to/view/read the entire thing the person is saying and then approach what they said with that being the case. When you take a short clip of someone's presentation at a conference where the clip starts in the middle and ends not at the end, you're taking the thing out of the context in which it was created. Therefor, you're taking it "out of context" as it's describe in English. Which part is unclear, I'm not sure how better I can explain the concept, I believed we all knew what it means. What you think is clear is irrelevant to what I said, or the clip in question. If you watch the full video, you get the total context and not the out of context clip.

[@Gnarfendorf]

The idea that corpos like EA and co can be threatened by these hacks is so nonsensical that even with everything said in that clip i wouldnt believe it. Also, you cant force a company to hire another company as a subcontractor by going to HR.

[@micheljolicoeur6094]

Gaming sites gaslighting the playerbase for their own corporate ESG rating. Throw Wired in the pile with Kotaku, PC Gamer and Mary Sue.

[@gwynn2528]

Traveling outside the US was the best thing I ever did for my mental health. Love your tirade about getting the f out of that place to gain perspective.

[@FlamingZombie626]

What's your favorite stupid problem song? I like Providence by Poor Man's Poison

[@Meanlucario]

Funny enough, I can answer the "surrounded by enemies" line of thinking due to my religious background. They see it as being in the right in a world that's wrong. They see themselves as the only source of truth and light in a world of darkness. It's a mindset that breeds inbreed thought and cults. And I saw SomeOrdinaryGamers video on Sweet Baby. Why they aren't the source of the problem, their tweets and speeches heavily indicate they are gleefully part of the problem. I honestly forgot about the WW2 katana guy BS in the battlefield or COD or whatever it was. That was so dumb.

[@BalbazaktheGreat]

The whole "minority characters shouldn't have to justify themselves" line is a bit disingenuous. Nobody would question a "black Nathan Drake" or other Indiana-jones like adventurer as the lead character in a contemporary setting because they wouldn't have any reason to. But if you take a historical setting or a fantasy setting based closely on a historical setting and try to insert characters of races or ethnicities that would not typically be there people are naturally going to wonder how they got there. There is nothing racist or offensive about that. The Witcher III is a good example of this. You meet some black characters (a merchants, sailors, diplomats etc...) in the clearly Northern Medieval European setting and it's briefly explained they originally come from Orfir in the South - all it takes is that one little line and *bam* nobody has an issue with their presence. Everything makes logical sense. White guy in a 16th century Medieval Japanese setting a la Shogun? He is a shipwrecked sailor. An Arab scholar and poet in Viking lands a la the 13th Warrior? Well, he's a diplomat and the Vikings picked him up while they were sailing around because Vikings went everywhere. The problem is that people aggressively pushing diversity in media don't want to do this simple step for reasons I don't fully understand. They don't want you to ask where these characters are from or why they are here because they resent having to give an explanation and are offended that you would ask in the first place. You're just supposed to accept them and if you ask you're a bigot. Its baffling, really, when the problem could be solved by in many cases by a single line of dialogue. Diversity and inclusion done in a natural way that only hardcore racists would object to is incredibly easy - pick a setting where racial diversity is common, like the cities of a cosmopolitan society, or simply explain the characters presence with a tiny amount of backstory - but they won't put in the effort. This is how you get people calling the developers of Kingdom Come: Deliverance neo-nazis for not putting black characters in its rendition of 15th century Bohemia.

[@utubecop11]

Best post in the whole of the comments. Well done

[@shorewall]

They want to rewrite history, and socially engineer you. They want 1984, where there is no past, there is no future, there is only what the party decides today.

[@RockylarsYT]

Not buying it is an option, but what if you love the series and now suddenly they made it all weird, instead of action, deep stories and a fun challenge they're all whining about student debt and gender. Of course you'd be upset. You can't be just silent and let them slowly push over you with no resistance. Even in your next video about Dragon's Dogma, you directly show this point to where if you say nothing or behave apathetic to it, then they will continue doing it until they come for you.

[@daikideku]

I would think a company full of people with egos that big would love having all of their work credited so thoroughly for games they worked on.

[@42saram42]

I'm trans and I am really appreciative of the games that let me feel like I am represented and wish they'd do more with making the characters multidimensional instead of feeling token or flat just to market it. Wish I could use the steam discussion forums to look to see quickly if people are having a similar issue without seeing the unmoderated troll pits screaming about woke and how people like me should basically die but I just go elsewhere and ignore it. Hell this whole "culture war" thing seems to be mostly a twitter thing where the obscene number of bots stoke the flames on both ends and bleeds elsewhere when the media posts clickbaity bullshit like this article.

[@adherry8142]

AAA Industry: Best I can do is putting a "I am trans btw" character into a corner in the 5th village you visit.

[@PokeComm]

womanface

[@ereviscale3966]

Or like P4 where you think they are going to be trans but they just want to be taken more seriously as a male. And take out all of the gay scenes. Maybe we need more trans writers in there to tell stories. authentic stories

[@yuzuchi5381]

I feel this .... i like the Trans Flag Car in Cyberpunk cause it looked nice .... but hte whole story ending of the Women beeing Trans made no sense whatsoever ....... just a little "yeah im trans btw" ... feels like someone throwing you a half eaten chicken breast and then telling everyone how good tgey were for fedding you 😅😢 either do it right ... or leave it be :/

[@42saram42]

@@ereviscale3966 Yeah I wish we could have that but I also don't want people to feel unsafe because a small minority of nutjobs think death threats, harassment, and doxxing are completely okay just because they dared to write a believable trans person.

[@Bladezeromus]

"Imagine you made a game with Winston Churchill and you made him a black man. Now that's a wild example, because people sometimes use hyperbole." Netflix Cleopatra: *exists*

[@View619]

It's because gamers call them out on bullshit and they can't cope with that.

[@llYossarian]

7:30 - "The noise only increased. _'You made this character black, you made this character gay, or you ruined this story,'_ Belair says of the comments, the tone of which, she adds, never changed." -- So! "Tones" considered _equivalent_ by Kim Belair; 1. racist, 2. homophobic, 3. _didn't like what we did with the story..._

[@ashmaniacal]

The only problem with the "Don't buy the game if you don't agree with what they did to your favourite IP" argument is that if your favourite IP of all time made a game like this, and nobody bought it, the stupid executives, which you frequently referenced, would just look at it and say "Oh, I guess the IP is dead, let's not waste any more money on making more of then". Then your favourite IP is no more (for 10 years until they remaster it for quick £££. Just my take on the way people may validate purchasing a game they hate.

[@kirareacts]

For sure. But at that point, if the execs are making bad products, why would you assume any new product they made wouldn't also be bad? Bad products are indicative of bad decision-making. If you're buying things you hate just because you love an ip, you're fueling the problem.

[@ashmaniacal]

Oh yes, this is very true. I don't agree with buying games that are bad, I just feel this is the rationale people use to justify their purchase. I do my own research on games and decide what best suits my desired playset that day. In regards to Sweet Baby though, I don't know how anybody can claim to be "inclusive" when all they preach is isolationism from those they hate. They really need to look up segregation in the dictionary sometime, as that's what they are essentially preaching at this point.@@kirareacts

[@ppsarrakis]

life is too short and some peoples lives too empty ,so people are getting tied to IPs and universes to fill up the blanks :(

[@ashmaniacal]

Sadly atm this is something I can relate to.@@ppsarrakis

[@Coffeemancer]

What is the goal of this video, or a summarized message?

[@21palica]

To present us with his view on the matter, going through the timeline and the facts of it.

[@notnoaintno5134]

Kira thinks diversity not necessarily bad but game journos hate white people

[@ILikeGoodFood]

Something they're obviously and intentionally ignoring is that when a movie or video game turns a character that was black, or of some other non-caucasian demographic, in the source material into a caucasian person, the exact same reaction occurs. Scarlet Johanson's lead roll in Hollywood's live action adaptation of Ghost in the Shell is a great, and relatively recent, example of this. She was broadly considered to be, by fans of the original work, the wrong person for the job, because she wasn't Japanese.

[@Lagbeard]

I would say the main source of their hatred for gamers is the fact that they took out massive loans to overpay for university to get their fancy degree in journalism, then go to a big publication and go dig out some groundbreaking news stories and do actual journalism... But in the end the only job they could land was talking about video games at places like kotaku and polygon.

[@gamerguy9836]

You summed it up so well, i agree 100%. Nice to hear someone who is reasonable like most of us gamers actually are.

[@TenebraePatruus]

I'M a 'cis white male gamer' and no, I dont think inclusion takes anything away from the gaming experience.

[@endlessstrata6988]

But what does it add?

[@gronodon]

@@endlessstrata6988representation. I’m pansexual, it’s neat when someone isn’t exclusively into one gender. That’s just a cool thing. Does it subtract from your experience?

[@TerrenceMcGinnis]

@@gronodon Only if the character is written as a chess piece of a political side instead of as an interesting character that happens to be pansexual. Or bisexual. Or Gay. Or anything else. It subtracts from my experience because I like my characters - of any type, race, creed, sex, whatever else goes here - to be given their own two feet to stand on. Made as a unique individual not just a 'look, we included it to score brownie points! Let's take it out in China now' BS.

[@TheCatherineCC]

@@endlessstrata6988 It makes people who have nazi references in their usernames angry, and isn't that enough?

[@endlessstrata6988]

So, one for "it detracts nothing", another for "make some people angry". Fantastic. I'm definitely willing to pay for that. For sure. Or, hear me out, we can not having any sexual preference shit forced into my face. Did you know Arcade Gannon from New Vegas is gay? Yeah, I didn't either until someone mentioned it on some forum I frequented. That's how you write that into a character. It's not EVERYTHING about the character, just background.

[@Napping-dragon]

The whole issue with God of war Ragnarok was that they replaced a god with something that wasn’t in line with what the stories told like if they turned Aries into a girl it’s just odd. I get that they’re gods and they can take whatever form that they want but like usually there’s some consistency.

[@afmutw]

Thanks