The first talk was great. Solo developers can get caught up following professional project management methods but forget the factor of individual motivation. E.g., it might be faster to first deal with the most complex problem, but making small wins working on art or marketing along the way helps you to stay motivated.
@@SongofIron I thought your talk had some of the best and most practical advice! The talk of motivation, momentum, art from the beginning, is all very real. My project that was initially supposed to be maybe 1 year long, turned out to be 1.5 yrs+, and when I looked back, I realized that momentum got stifled by lack of direction, and the direction was stifled by lack of art from the beginning/middle of the project. During month close to the end of the development, I did the most work I ever did, I had all of the assets ready, knew exactly the scope of the system, and everything came out so fast, very little bugs, and is probably one of the best parts of my game. When I reflected on it, I came to the same conclusions that you talked about, which was art first. I have already started planning out the second project during wait times of App Store reviews for this finished one, and this time I am frontloading ALL of the planned art assets, music, sfx. I think it's going to streamline development so much, and I am planning on making a game that is 2x-4x as big, in less than half the development time of this one. Great advice all around from everyone! But yeah, thanks for confirming my thoughts, because this project is going to be a big time investment!
46:24 This is actually insanely important and probably underrated advice. There was a time in my life where I ended up stifling all of my random ideas in the name of "higher priorities", and it unwittingly spiraled me into 2-3 years of burnout and depression. This is all in retrospect, because at the time I thought I was doing the right thing, but it's extremely clear to me now that you *need* to give yourself the freedom to create and explore; eventually you'll find the balance of how much time you should set aside for those tangents, and sometimes those tangents turn out to be a core part of your final work! (Sometimes they turn out to be nothing too, but don't be discouraged, just have fun!) Overall I loved all of these speakers, really excellent session!
@@orangestapler8729 Yep! Time-boxing your exploratory/research tasks is important, and the amount of time you set aside depends entirely on your circumstances. 1-2 days is a good place to start. Taking the limited time seriously is critical: limiting your time will help you focus in on what you’re really trying to explore, and not just end up aimlessly exploring the possibility space. Always go into exploratory tasks with specific questions you’d like to answer. A couple other things: 1. Focus. If you’re going to spend time exploring, commit to doing only that. Don’t let your core work distract you during exploration - you’ll get back to it right after the time box! 2. Make lots of notes! If you explore something for 2 days and make no notes, you’re very likely going to end up spending more time down the line asking the same questions.
The talks were good. But their personal reflections were amazing. We really put these guys on a pedestal but we tend to ignore the emotional impact of solo development. The gratification when the project is finished is amazing but the journey there definitely seems like a rollercoaster.
Moving on is a great tip. I eventually came to realize how important it is to move on. Not only is it important to move on, but it's important to move on before it's too late. For me my cape was hair. I knew I should have just moved on but, I ended up ruminating on it for so long it knocked all of the wind out of my sails and demotivated me so much I stopped working on my project for months. As a solo dev moving on is a great way to give yourself small victories in other areas and to keep you motivated while you build momentum till you're ready loop back around and work on the more challenging areas.
This is something that really spoke to me aswell, I'm more of a newer game dev as I am focusing on a software dev career, but gamedev is something that I really aspire to do. Just in that small amount of time the amount of times that I've been stuck on something for days and just getting burnt out has killed many of my small projects. I wish you luck on your game dev journey!
@@drakebuentello2 Thanks, same to you. I actually flip-flopped from focusing on a software dev career to wanting to get into game dev, though focusing on software dev seems more reasonable. Hoping it will pay off one day.
@@lanceuppercut8220 oh it will man, learning most skills in cs will at least have jobs in the market if solo dev doesn't work out. Just keep on working and polishing your skills!
I had my second project planned before releasing the first game, which helped me skip that depressing stage after releasing. There's really no happiness at the end of the road no matter how many sales you make, so gotta enjoy the adventure and hop on the next one right away.
This is so great knowing the things I’ve felt are normal, ok and able to produce a game at the end of it. I hate planning which is why I love solo dev. No one to tell me different. And I’m super focused on what I want to do!
The common refrain is to use temp assets to prototype gameplay and systems, so that you don't waste time remaking assets if systems demand it. It sounds like for solo devs accepting that risk is worth the boost in confidence that having art first grants.
I can't speak for everyone but I definitely agreed largely with this presentation, it really had some truth nuggets there. & yeah I had a few prototypes that just felt "off" using borrowed assets. Found it motivating to meet personally to go and work on art for at least a full level, while still keeping to the design for the game's entirety. That's my opinion, make a level's worth of art, and you probably don't need all of it completed at once (depends upon your engine)to get started but that's where I always recommend anyone to begin.
It's also not just an all or nothing topic. It's not "best practice is to make everything else and then the art". It's more just about being cautious about spending a lot of time polishing art that may not be final. But both sides need to grow alongside each other because they need to inform each other. You can very well run into the opposite wall if you make the entire game with temp assets/placeholders and then you make the final art and realise actually you need a big part of the game to work completely different to work visually or your ideas slightly change and you need to change stuff. Best practice I think is really just to 1. work on what helps move your project along the best (which may be the part that motivates you right now) and 2. be aware of the level of polish you are working towards and the elements that might change so you don't end up wasting a lot of time on something that gets scrapped. The same thing can happen just in your code as well, getting super deep into a single mechanic too early and finding out once you work on the higher structure that it needs to look completely different. Sometimes that's just part of the process too, it's not always avoidable, if you just walk around being super careful to not get too deep anywhere you're just creating yourself a different form of roadblock.
@@kaboomsihal1164 Absolutely right. You have to push everything at the same time to the best of your ability to understand the interconnections and your own limits. I think of it this way: try building a 1:1 box prototype of HL Alyx for the first 10 mins of the game. You can probably get reasonably close, not much happening gameplay wise. Now try turning that into the Valve version. :)
That's the dream. Being able to create 3D art, code game mechanics and market it. I'll never have to work for someone else again. Working on my own terms at anytime, anywhere.
I'm absolutely stunned how much emotional i got with this speeches. Kind of like in the last public question I'm also doing a board game and I'm happy to hear that games take extremely long to port and that it is a rollercoaster of emotions and full of pitfalls to watch out for. But as long as I keep looking back at my younger self who started my "Streamers Ace Project" I can't make him sad and quit. Thanks for that amazing talk and all your effort you all put into it.
Oof. Some big, good advice here that I was not prepared to hear. Don't risk my own money. That's going to be tough. Great, great discussion, thank you to all the speakers.
Work on something every day... Even if it's small. Some days you'll get caught up in it and six hours magically passes... other days you may finish that one little project in an hour and check the box, "Okay, I worked on it today." But the biggest challenge is always initially sitting down to work.. If you can just open blender, gimp, ue4, whatever, you've accomplished half of the battle for that day. But the thing that gets me the most in my depressed stage with solo development is that nothing gets done if you don't do it. So, yeah, try to work at least once a day no matter how much time that involves.
I really like this advice. I equate it to exercising. It can seem so daunting, but if you just put on your gear and get moving, the rest of the process takes care of itself. I've been forcing myself to sit down daily and open up Unity, and my level of productivity has skyrocketed in the past few weeks.
Bravo. Been saying similar things for a few years too. Haven't published yet but I've been on a journey lol eventually it'll be completed, but yes a lot of great tips/recommendations here. Ive kept a lot of the early stuff to myself so as not to confuse the game's "target audience ", while legalities are quite barbaric for small indies whom are worried about IP, still yet I know about expectations of buyers and having been a "gamer" for my whole lifetime and a mod maker for a long while too, it's important to me that prospectively players of my game(s) will be satisfied that they got what they expected it to be. The fact that im also trying to make a game that feels very different from existing games, pretty much means I can't really show much of anything until a demo is ready. No backers or employees so I could unfortunately still punk out before its complete lol but I just keep myself enjoying the process by taking breaks when needed while generally making something daily towards the goal. It's a lot to do though haha. I actually spent so much time in pre production trimming the scope down and making sure I could personally figure out how to implement each thing that would "make the cut" for first game... But yes, definitely consider keeping some of those good ideas for a "game 2" and that's fine, but also if you feel like learning what works by just doing it that you still should congratulate yourself in that regard, as yes some devs like me will spend more time in pre production trying to find bugs or inconsistent game promises to the player and etc when I probably could have eventually gotten it to work by now if I had brute forced a few of those ideas (at the cost of later having to redo a lot of things). Haha best of luck to other independent developers and prospective developers. ~ Keep at it if you are passionate about it. Take breaks. Watch a lot of GCD but remember that it's your game and your choices.
So many great tips and amazing personal stories here in this session.. Thanks to everybody for sharing your experience! This really gave me the boost I needed right now! - Love & Gratitude -
the guy who asked about tabletop games might want to know about The Game Crafter, which is a print-on-demand storefront (like Red Bubble for example) for board games.
I hope he sees your comment. I've never tried what you recommending to know if that is good imo but I have heard of "print on demand" or whatever. That's where the customer orders the product and generally it is made for their order. Pretty sure this can be a good option for other artists using "print" media. Good recommendation though!
that really couldve been worded better, or at least the whole part shouldve been minimized in the talk to not show so obviously how few options exist. sounds weird to give advice that sounds like you only succeeded at the thing because you had a friend.
@@gamongames welcome to software dev, where 99% of job opportunities only open up if you know the right people who will go to bat for you. It's been that way for as long as I can remember sadly.
It's really just one way, not the only way. I mean, it is a HUGE way, which is why it needed to be mentioned, but I was able to get a deal from one of the other options. I made a concept that showed well in gifs and started creating buzz on twitter, attempted a kickstarter and got emailed by a publisher after it did well but failed. I was able to show them our twitter interest and some other things and was able to get the deal. Luckily more recently there's a waaay more diverse range of publishers, as in, more now than ever who publish small budget games. If you see a trailer of a game in the same scope of the game you want to pitch, find out who publishes it and email them your pitch!
I think because this was a hybrid presentation with speaker and moderator being physical in a space with audience they preferred it this was so that the local audience could both see the remote speaker and their presentation. for fully remote sessions this wasnt an option so it was a single stream of speaker/slides
@@NeverUseAnApostrophe come on, it's a guy who picked his own name to be Megan Fox, it's not someone who just has the same name as a popular actress, it's someone who specifically attributed themselves the name of a popular individual
i often am surprised to find out about close-minded artists, but it hardly is a unique phenomenon still, such a shame to discover that this community still has its share of bigots, even when this particular passion is so full of tribulations
"Woke" just means something that doesn't center on white, straight men with a single-minded agenda, so it literally makes up 99% of all other content. Being afraid of something different is infantile and bigoted; grow up.
The first talk was great. Solo developers can get caught up following professional project management methods but forget the factor of individual motivation. E.g., it might be faster to first deal with the most complex problem, but making small wins working on art or marketing along the way helps you to stay motivated.
Glad you liked it!
A good point I learned from another indie dev is that motivation management is just as important as time management
@@SongofIron I thought your talk had some of the best and most practical advice! The talk of motivation, momentum, art from the beginning, is all very real. My project that was initially supposed to be maybe 1 year long, turned out to be 1.5 yrs+, and when I looked back, I realized that momentum got stifled by lack of direction, and the direction was stifled by lack of art from the beginning/middle of the project.
During month close to the end of the development, I did the most work I ever did, I had all of the assets ready, knew exactly the scope of the system, and everything came out so fast, very little bugs, and is probably one of the best parts of my game. When I reflected on it, I came to the same conclusions that you talked about, which was art first.
I have already started planning out the second project during wait times of App Store reviews for this finished one, and this time I am frontloading ALL of the planned art assets, music, sfx. I think it's going to streamline development so much, and I am planning on making a game that is 2x-4x as big, in less than half the development time of this one.
Great advice all around from everyone! But yeah, thanks for confirming my thoughts, because this project is going to be a big time investment!
@@SongofIronp
46:24 This is actually insanely important and probably underrated advice. There was a time in my life where I ended up stifling all of my random ideas in the name of "higher priorities", and it unwittingly spiraled me into 2-3 years of burnout and depression. This is all in retrospect, because at the time I thought I was doing the right thing, but it's extremely clear to me now that you *need* to give yourself the freedom to create and explore; eventually you'll find the balance of how much time you should set aside for those tangents, and sometimes those tangents turn out to be a core part of your final work! (Sometimes they turn out to be nothing too, but don't be discouraged, just have fun!)
Overall I loved all of these speakers, really excellent session!
@@orangestapler8729 Yep! Time-boxing your exploratory/research tasks is important, and the amount of time you set aside depends entirely on your circumstances.
1-2 days is a good place to start. Taking the limited time seriously is critical: limiting your time will help you focus in on what you’re really trying to explore, and not just end up aimlessly exploring the possibility space. Always go into exploratory tasks with specific questions you’d like to answer.
A couple other things:
1. Focus. If you’re going to spend time exploring, commit to doing only that. Don’t let your core work distract you during exploration - you’ll get back to it right after the time box!
2. Make lots of notes! If you explore something for 2 days and make no notes, you’re very likely going to end up spending more time down the line asking the same questions.
Damn that’s so true. This is one of the best comments i’ve ever seen on a YT video. Thanks
Was amazing to be involved in this! Hopefully you all can get some good nuggets out of it, along with being more prepared for the hidden pitfalls!
its very inspiring as a student who is just starting out in gamedev to see someone who has completed a game by themself. thanks for the great talk!
amazing talk, thank you (an all developers) so much for this!
Thank you. Really well done! Congrats.
Your talk was so good. Would love if you could expand on it. Very insightful on the process of any project. Great job
Were you trying to subliminally state that "art limits momentum"?
The talks were good. But their personal reflections were amazing. We really put these guys on a pedestal but we tend to ignore the emotional impact of solo development. The gratification when the project is finished is amazing but the journey there definitely seems like a rollercoaster.
its a balancing act between imposter syndrome and superiority complex lmao
You watch enough of these GDC talks and you begin to ask yourself, "Why am I doing this?" But then you go right back to doing it.
Moving on is a great tip. I eventually came to realize how important it is to move on. Not only is it important to move on, but it's important to move on before it's too late. For me my cape was hair. I knew I should have just moved on but, I ended up ruminating on it for so long it knocked all of the wind out of my sails and demotivated me so much I stopped working on my project for months. As a solo dev moving on is a great way to give yourself small victories in other areas and to keep you motivated while you build momentum till you're ready loop back around and work on the more challenging areas.
This is something that really spoke to me aswell, I'm more of a newer game dev as I am focusing on a software dev career, but gamedev is something that I really aspire to do. Just in that small amount of time the amount of times that I've been stuck on something for days and just getting burnt out has killed many of my small projects. I wish you luck on your game dev journey!
@@drakebuentello2 Thanks, same to you. I actually flip-flopped from focusing on a software dev career to wanting to get into game dev, though focusing on software dev seems more reasonable. Hoping it will pay off one day.
@@lanceuppercut8220 oh it will man, learning most skills in cs will at least have jobs in the market if solo dev doesn't work out. Just keep on working and polishing your skills!
Independent developers should bookmark this + "Cursed Problems in Game Design" also hosted by GDC.
2 of the best imo
agreed completely. always rewatching those two during my journey.
I had my second project planned before releasing the first game, which helped me skip that depressing stage after releasing. There's really no happiness at the end of the road no matter how many sales you make, so gotta enjoy the adventure and hop on the next one right away.
I'm two years into working on my own indie solo project while juggling life and work and this is gold and a big jolt of energy.
I love how they all highlight different spectrum of solo development!
This is so great knowing the things I’ve felt are normal, ok and able to produce a game at the end of it. I hate planning which is why I love solo dev. No one to tell me different. And I’m super focused on what I want to do!
Everything about this was amazing, and couldn't be more relevant to what I'm doing. Thank you so much!
The common refrain is to use temp assets to prototype gameplay and systems, so that you don't waste time remaking assets if systems demand it. It sounds like for solo devs accepting that risk is worth the boost in confidence that having art first grants.
I can't speak for everyone but I definitely agreed largely with this presentation, it really had some truth nuggets there. & yeah I had a few prototypes that just felt "off" using borrowed assets. Found it motivating to meet personally to go and work on art for at least a full level, while still keeping to the design for the game's entirety. That's my opinion, make a level's worth of art, and you probably don't need all of it completed at once (depends upon your engine)to get started but that's where I always recommend anyone to begin.
It's also not just an all or nothing topic. It's not "best practice is to make everything else and then the art". It's more just about being cautious about spending a lot of time polishing art that may not be final. But both sides need to grow alongside each other because they need to inform each other. You can very well run into the opposite wall if you make the entire game with temp assets/placeholders and then you make the final art and realise actually you need a big part of the game to work completely different to work visually or your ideas slightly change and you need to change stuff.
Best practice I think is really just to 1. work on what helps move your project along the best (which may be the part that motivates you right now) and 2. be aware of the level of polish you are working towards and the elements that might change so you don't end up wasting a lot of time on something that gets scrapped. The same thing can happen just in your code as well, getting super deep into a single mechanic too early and finding out once you work on the higher structure that it needs to look completely different. Sometimes that's just part of the process too, it's not always avoidable, if you just walk around being super careful to not get too deep anywhere you're just creating yourself a different form of roadblock.
@@kaboomsihal1164 Absolutely right. You have to push everything at the same time to the best of your ability to understand the interconnections and your own limits. I think of it this way: try building a 1:1 box prototype of HL Alyx for the first 10 mins of the game. You can probably get reasonably close, not much happening gameplay wise. Now try turning that into the Valve version. :)
Damn, the part with Tomas Sala got real. Mad respect.
Great timing for this - been struggling the past few weeks with burn out on a long time project.
Such a great and relevant session! Each of the panelists had a ton of valuable insights to offer. Thank you!
This is quite wholesome, especially the second part.
Great format and great speakers. I saw bits of myself in all of them. Especially on the mental health side.
That's the dream.
Being able to create 3D art, code game mechanics and market it.
I'll never have to work for someone else again.
Working on my own terms at anytime, anywhere.
I'm absolutely stunned how much emotional i got with this speeches. Kind of like in the last public question I'm also doing a board game and I'm happy to hear that games take extremely long to port and that it is a rollercoaster of emotions and full of pitfalls to watch out for. But as long as I keep looking back at my younger self who started my "Streamers Ace Project" I can't make him sad and quit. Thanks for that amazing talk and all your effort you all put into it.
i totally agree with art from the start. it really does help get you grounded a developer having your own identity and whatnot
Thank you for sharing this, I hope it helps me with my own project!
Thank you for such great content for free.
"That makes you want to do another game..."
"It doesn't"
Cuts deep
Needed this today. Thanks for the truthful & practical insight.
glab all this information is noe easily available compared to having to learn everything by yourself years ago
Im the dev of REMOTE LIFE...im solo dev...it was really hard...but i was lucky.Thanks GOD it was succesfull...
The game is amazing, you did a great job.
@@alex-qn5xp thanks so much mate
Tomas Sala is such a cool dude
I guess I had to wait till I was 45 to hear that phrase ;)
Yes, all of this I have already faced before.
thanks for the super cool videos that are so helpful
Another day, another indie experience.
Love it.
Oof. Some big, good advice here that I was not prepared to hear. Don't risk my own money. That's going to be tough. Great, great discussion, thank you to all the speakers.
Work on something every day... Even if it's small. Some days you'll get caught up in it and six hours magically passes... other days you may finish that one little project in an hour and check the box, "Okay, I worked on it today."
But the biggest challenge is always initially sitting down to work.. If you can just open blender, gimp, ue4, whatever, you've accomplished half of the battle for that day.
But the thing that gets me the most in my depressed stage with solo development is that nothing gets done if you don't do it. So, yeah, try to work at least once a day no matter how much time that involves.
I really like this advice. I equate it to exercising. It can seem so daunting, but if you just put on your gear and get moving, the rest of the process takes care of itself. I've been forcing myself to sit down daily and open up Unity, and my level of productivity has skyrocketed in the past few weeks.
Bravo. Been saying similar things for a few years too. Haven't published yet but I've been on a journey lol eventually it'll be completed, but yes a lot of great tips/recommendations here.
Ive kept a lot of the early stuff to myself so as not to confuse the game's "target audience ", while legalities are quite barbaric for small indies whom are worried about IP, still yet I know about expectations of buyers and having been a "gamer" for my whole lifetime and a mod maker for a long while too, it's important to me that prospectively players of my game(s) will be satisfied that they got what they expected it to be.
The fact that im also trying to make a game that feels very different from existing games, pretty much means I can't really show much of anything until a demo is ready.
No backers or employees so I could unfortunately still punk out before its complete lol but I just keep myself enjoying the process by taking breaks when needed while generally making something daily towards the goal. It's a lot to do though haha. I actually spent so much time in pre production trimming the scope down and making sure I could personally figure out how to implement each thing that would "make the cut" for first game... But yes, definitely consider keeping some of those good ideas for a "game 2" and that's fine, but also if you feel like learning what works by just doing it that you still should congratulate yourself in that regard, as yes some devs like me will spend more time in pre production trying to find bugs or inconsistent game promises to the player and etc when I probably could have eventually gotten it to work by now if I had brute forced a few of those ideas (at the cost of later having to redo a lot of things). Haha
best of luck to other independent developers and prospective developers. ~
Keep at it if you are passionate about it. Take breaks. Watch a lot of GCD but remember that it's your game and your choices.
I thought everyone had something valuable to say. Great talk!
So many great tips and amazing personal stories here in this session.. Thanks to everybody for sharing your experience! This really gave me the boost I needed right now!
- Love & Gratitude -
I missed the talks being hosted in physical place *.*
Enjoyed listening to this. Was burning out a bit today on working on my project now can keep coding :D
Awesome talk, needed this video
the guy who asked about tabletop games might want to know about The Game Crafter, which is a print-on-demand storefront (like Red Bubble for example) for board games.
I hope he sees your comment.
I've never tried what you recommending to know if that is good imo but I have heard of "print on demand" or whatever.
That's where the customer orders the product and generally it is made for their order.
Pretty sure this can be a good option for other artists using "print" media.
Good recommendation though!
Summary of platform talk: "know somebody. If you don’t know somebody who can vouch for you, good luck." 😂
Thanks for the information all, was very helpful!
@22:20 yeah I was thinking of making a game that when critics talk about they simply say "Genre killer".
Thanks for sharing this
Moonpath to elsewhere is such a good mod didn't know he made falconeer too
I must be a weirdo. I've just released my first game and all I want is to start working on the next.
I can only agree with everything said :)
Great talk!
It is very helpful
10/10
OUTPUT VOLUME 100
"How to get a deal: know someone already or I dunno I guess try to secure your career in under 5 minutes? haha good luck..." what a cool industry
that really couldve been worded better, or at least the whole part shouldve been minimized in the talk to not show so obviously how few options exist.
sounds weird to give advice that sounds like you only succeeded at the thing because you had a friend.
@@gamongames that's the only safe method. Everyone else who is ACTUALLY solo and was successful was also super lucky.
everyone successful is lucky anyway
still sounds weird to give "be the right person" as advice.
@@gamongames welcome to software dev, where 99% of job opportunities only open up if you know the right people who will go to bat for you. It's been that way for as long as I can remember sadly.
It's really just one way, not the only way. I mean, it is a HUGE way, which is why it needed to be mentioned, but I was able to get a deal from one of the other options. I made a concept that showed well in gifs and started creating buzz on twitter, attempted a kickstarter and got emailed by a publisher after it did well but failed. I was able to show them our twitter interest and some other things and was able to get the deal. Luckily more recently there's a waaay more diverse range of publishers, as in, more now than ever who publish small budget games. If you see a trailer of a game in the same scope of the game you want to pitch, find out who publishes it and email them your pitch!
Do I have to worry about these AI stuff while pursuing game dev?
Why didn't they just allow the presenters to do their own slides? This was a good talk but it was distracting hearing "next slide" over and over.
yeah esspecially given that there are previous talks that do that
I think because this was a hybrid presentation with speaker and moderator being physical in a space with audience they preferred it this was so that the local audience could both see the remote speaker and their presentation.
for fully remote sessions this wasnt an option so it was a single stream of speaker/slides
I wanna make a game with my girlfriend :D
Did it work? Did you make a game?
Davis Sharon Young Nancy Lopez William
Everything that isn't side scroller :D
Give Presenters their Slide Buttons
"Next Next Back Back Next one Next One"
Very Obnoxious
"Megan Fox" lmao okay bro.
Was looking for this
People have the same names as other people sometimes. Fucking crazy, right?
@@NeverUseAnApostrophe come on, it's a guy who picked his own name to be Megan Fox, it's not someone who just has the same name as a popular actress, it's someone who specifically attributed themselves the name of a popular individual
I'm not listening to anything Megan Fox has to say about game dev lmao. She panders to the woke, she's no developer.
You do sound like a clown
i often am surprised to find out about close-minded artists, but it hardly is a unique phenomenon
still, such a shame to discover that this community still has its share of bigots, even when this particular passion is so full of tribulations
"Woke" just means something that doesn't center on white, straight men with a single-minded agenda, so it literally makes up 99% of all other content. Being afraid of something different is infantile and bigoted; grow up.