To be fair, devs talking down to customers has saved me a ton of money. Why give money to people who hate you when there are so many games made by people who don't?
Well western AAA companies are invested with messaging agenda, thank God East can make AAA games too and they only care about money, not the message. So we will always have something to play that is not infested with politics.
The story of No Man's Sky should be studied by every development team. When Hello Games was facing massive backlash over a bugged, unfinished mess that failed to deliver what it promised. Did they attack fans? Did they whine about how hard they worked? Did they heavily monetize it? Did they take the money and run? No. Instead they got off social media and got to work fixing the game, delivering what was promised and adding new content. In the end they saved the game and their reputation. The story of No Man's Sky and Hello Games is the greatest redemption arc in gaming.
This is the exact reason I will buy their new game Light No Fire. The product itself nearly doesn't matter anymore. I have tangible proof that they WILL do everything they can do make it the best game they can. The most important thing about a game to me is not its current state, but the will and ability to improve it to match their vision. Hello Games proved they have both in spades. Is No Man's Sky the exact game they promised at the beginning? No, but they did their very best and in many aspects surpassed their former vision.
to be fair they handled their blunder perfectly. But they only could deliever on their promise because they had residual income from their mobile/smaller games. That is not an option for many (mismanaged) studios.
I'm a software engineer for a mid-sized company. Among our day one training was responsible social media usage. Things like what sort of info we're allowed to share with others about our current projects, what sort of personal info we can divulge and how to professionally conduct ourselves online. I have a hard time believing these AAA studios actually had this sort of training themselves if this is the sort of behavior we keep seeing from them. How does someone reach these senior level positions without ever knowing that their words on social media have consequences? Hopefully, this is a wake-up call for the games industry at large because at this rate, almost every AAA studio is going to dig themselves into the ground. It really isn't worth it to ruin the livelihoods of all your co-workers just to own someone on Twitter with a petty insult.
I think people in senior positions might have gotten there (or where already in a previous position) before social media was as big a thing so didn't have to do specific training.
Because their arrogant pricks who think themselves as crusaders fighting against a “toxic” culture when in reality they are no different from the stereotypical Christian Right we envision when we think of the 1970s thru the 90s, this is also the reason the younger generation especially men are making a hard turn to the right as every generation rebels in it’s own way against the current culture which is currently on the left side of things. When your a moralist for your own cause and believe those that disagree with you are not only wrong but morally deficient for holding their views points why wouldn’t you feel then need to lecture others on the superiority of your beliefs? Especially when that corporate structure has been happy to support and even repeat ad nauesum woke positions as the way a responsible corporate business should develop their company culture? The corporations are stuck in a catch 22 where they supported in DEI trainings and other events all the things these developers support whom make up a significant portion of their employees whom they are now hostage to and have promoted into senior positions that hold influence and now they cannot just simply undo all this causing significant back lash within their own firm as no one in the Gaming industry (other than indie’s and Nintendo) has been doing very well and we could easily see another great Video game crash like we saw in true 2000s
"Tallentless freaks" always gets me. You poured 8 years in to Concord, and it was delisted in less than a month. I spent 20 minutes in the 2nd grade drawing a picture and its still on my moms fridge. Who's the talentless freak now?
Well, their parents probably did the same and that's why ended up with games like Concord. Parents are meant teach their children instead of indulging their mistakes.
"The customer is always right, in matters of taste." I don't know what it takes to make a hostess twinkie. But I do know what it's supposed to taste like.
"Urg. This Twinky is shit!" "Can you do any better? Do you know what it takes to make a Twinky?" "No, but this Twinky is literally has diarrhea instead of the regular filling. Do you know how to make a Twinky?"
It's like they want the gratification of 'subverting expectation' without the work behind to give more than what the customer want and not just something else. to retake the metaphor 'I couldn't just give you a twinkie, you would have expected it, so instead we filed it with pasta, no where is my money ?'
Yep, if a Twinkie is supposed to be in date but is stale, I know something has gone wrong somewhere in the production process and have every right to complain. I don't have to know exactly where along the line the problem occured...
Nope, considering everyone has different tastes. Can't please everyone, especially the insecure whiny males of today who think they are the center of the universe at that all video games should be from their PoV, and who are apparently massively threatened by anyone who doesn't fall in line behind them.
Game dev here. PREACH. These people are often minor cogs in their studios, too, which is really crazy. It's almost never a developer, it's some fluffy title person who, at most, sits in a lot of meetings with the people who actually do the work, or has a Marketing job like "community manager" (the idea that somebody whose whole role is essentially marketing is engaging with their community in that way is totally disgusting- people like should be blacklisted, imo). I strongly suspect that all studios are going to put their employees into iron-bound social-media contracts upon employment. Imagine being on the boards of these firms and learning that a project that cost millions, where most of the decisions were good, they were on time and within budget... was destroyed by a handful of tweets. The big money people who Producers call every day to secure funding for these projects are going to demand huge changes after the debacles of this year.
Mouthwash dev is actively encouraging to pirate his game. The game is good, no one asked that adult man to go cry online to ruin his own product, yet he did and he always will be remembered for this.
I wish this applied to people and sports. It's funny how fans will buy tickets, jerseys, pay for extra TV channels for an organization that despises them, their way of life, and donates to politicians who want them gone.
As a software developer with experience in game development-having worked on engines and tooling for companies like id Software-it's never been my primary domain, which makes all of this utterly insane to me. If someone in my industry tried to pull this kind of stunt with an enterprise product, they’d be flayed alive-assuming they weren’t in a C-suite position (and even then the investors and the board of directors would likely throw a huge fit). That said, I can empathize with where some of the defensive or hostile behavior in game development comes from. When you’ve worked on a project for years, often as part of a large team, it becomes deeply personal. If it’s met with lukewarm or negative reception upon release-especially when your own ideas are central to the final product-it’s hard not to take it personally. This is also why you rarely see junior developers lashing out on social media; they typically don’t have as much creative investment or “skin in the game.” The ones speaking out tend to be team leads or C-suite executives who have significant input and, by extension, greater exposure. The problem is exacerbated by the bubble that exists in the games industry. Prior to release, developers often hear endless praise from reviewers who hail their game as groundbreaking. Then, when the game gets trashed in user reviews or fails to meet expectations, there’s a jarring dissonance. This disconnect leads to blaming consumers rather than reviewers. After all, reviewers have a symbiotic relationship with these companies-they can’t be fully honest without risking future access to games. Consumers, on the other hand, are simply paying customers with no such dependencies. Take the recent "Dragon Age" game as an example. Reviewers hyped it up as a "return to form," but it turned out to be a lackluster product. The discrepancy between what “industry experts” claim and what players experience is stark, and it’s easy for developers to side with the experts. Breaking this toxic cycle would require massive systemic change, but I doubt it’ll happen unless the entire industry collapses. That collapse might not be a bad thing-AAA studios are already being outperformed in many ways by indie developers who deliver innovative, polished experiences. The saddest part is that the individuals engaging in these behaviors represent a small, vocal minority. Most developers just want to do their jobs and create something they’re proud of. But imagine being a new dev, signing on with a dream AAA studio, only to find yourself underpaid, overworked, and stuck in a crunch-heavy environment. You also have to deal with fragile egos at the top while struggling to get your ideas implemented. Sometimes, the tools themselves are a nightmare, and the workplace culture can be outright toxic. Yet you persist because it’s your dream-what you’ve always wanted to do. It’s no wonder the industry fosters so much cynicism. For many, it’s akin to being in an abusive relationship: you stay because you love what you do, even as the reality of your situation erodes that passion bit by bit. And then of course you blame the consumers because they are just neck bearded gamers after all... It couldn't be that the problem is with you and the culture that has been fostered by these toxic companies.
These companies fostered these relationships with reviewers though. An individual developer might not know or recognize this but Bioware WANTED reviewers to say that VG was a 'return to form'. They wanted this because they knew that it would play over well with an audience that wanted that to be true. Reviewers said this because Bioware wanted them to say it. These companies created the bubble and they did it with intent because it was actually beneficial for a few years before it became too obviously predatory to the consumer-base. It's unfortunate that there are devs at these companies that don't understand that their own company has created the toxic positivity feedback loop that they are experiencing the shock of but that's the reality of the situation and their actions are only further entrenching those underpinnings.
This is the real reason why I want to make games independently. I have encountered bad corporate clients, they are fragile and they have 0 skills. If you work for someone else, there will be a situation where personal goals are not in line with the company's goals. The irony is that people with power do not have skills. They will influence others in a personal way. Then everything will become worse and worse. I like to give opinions and criticize, but because of this, I found that I am not suitable for working in a company. Because the company has a rule not to criticize. If you criticize it, you will be fired. It's a bad situation.
You're not wrong, but this highlights a deeper issue within the industry as a whole. The symbiotic, and often parasitic, relationship between reviewers and game developers has been entrenched for decades. Many developers entered the field long after these dynamics became standard, assuming this was simply how the industry operates. In gaming, a single negative review can make or break the reviewer's career-a level of impact not seen in many other fields (though they aren't entirely immune to similar corruption). At its core, the idea of reviewing a product received for free is inherently flawed. No matter how well-intentioned the reviewer, some level of bias is inevitable.
"Reviewer" opinions aren't worth used toilet paper. These people are ass kissers who often don't even have to pay for the games they review. They're shills. The only opinions you should be concerned with are of us real players out here paying for this stuff. Thats it. You guys are gonna learn this one way or another.
No, you are not the only one who thinks so. I honestly cannot understand why so many developers (especially AAA) would deliberately suffocate their own game.
It’s easy. They think being “trendy” on X is good for them, but completely forget writing something stupid can tank sales for your ENTIRE COMPANY. Hope mid management and publishers realise dumb people deserve to get fired.
@@abhayprabhu8951 It has nothing to do with being trendy. They were paid handsomely for pushing the agenda. They don't care much about sales numbers. They care more about brainwashing as many people as possible. That's why they're hijacking the most loved franchises.
there is a disconnect with workplace groups anyone who has ever had a fulltime job with a ton of forced overtime they become your family for a wile and workplace culture becomes normal and they think thats everyone else aswell so when your only around that ll the time they think its normal
@@Knights_of_the_Nine fair enough! But an org has to PR train their employees. I’ve worked for around about 5 years now, and in both companies I worked with, we were allowed to criticise internally, but never on public platforms. This goes for both internal company issues, and customers + competitors.
“By the power bested in me, I now pronounce you: Blocked and Deleted! You may now Kiss my Ass!!” Was an amazing phrase I heard from a friend several years ago, and is so much more prevalent now due to all the BS that has arisen from Modern social politics
I truly don't understand how the HR dynamics work on the gaming industry. I work in IT and I'm 100% sure that I could get fired if I insult a client, but these people always get away with it. HOW?!
Because it literally doesn't matter if their games sell. These companies get obscenely huge investments from venture firms and AMC's like Blackrock, Fidelity, etc.
Anyone ever noticed that those people lashing out against their audience are never actual programmers but always Art Directors, Narrative Design, Community Managers etc.? Just a strange observation I noticed.
Probably the same ones forcing shitty narratives in games, cause their voice is loud, while the actual ground team like the programmers, just want to go to work and do the job
No, it makes sense. An artist would rather destroy their work of art than have it exposed to people they deem undeserving of their artistic genius. It is a special sort of selfishness, or as LD said, narcissism.
They're just people more adjacent to the audience. Joss Whedon and many of the Diablo 3 team saying 'Fuck that loser' toward the man who created the frachise, David Brevik, on Facebook, is one of those things. The ego of Blizzard guys is sky high - they feel like they're already at the apex on account of where they work. Do note these are the geniuses who constantly failed to make a PvE mode for Overwatch. For some insane reason they kept trying to make it like World of Warcraft with levels and progression, like little 7 year old Suzie that makes up the audience would be interested in that. All they had to do is make DOOM using their game's assets. And they couldn't even manage that. Alignment is hard, but some guys are more out of touch than others. Concord's leading green guy looks like he has insect eggs embedded in his arms - that's possibly the least pleasant thing to look at in a lead character that I've ever seen.
One thing I've noticed over the past few years is that politics is increasingly resembling a religion for many people. There has always been some level of blind fanaticism in politics, but it has gotten worse. It’s no longer about aligning yourself with a set of ideas you believe are good for the development or future of the country. Now, it’s become your identity, and changing your opinion or retracting a statement feels like betraying your very essence. Political ideologies are climbing higher and higher on the priority list for these people, surpassing friends, family, partners, and, as we see now in the world of entertainment, even their work. It doesn’t matter if their family has always been good to them or if they’ve spent eight years working on a project-if any of these things clash negatively with their ideologies, they’ll abandon them and condemn them with all their might. We’re living in an era of growing and normalized fanaticism, and it’s no longer even tied to religion. Honestly, it’s frightening.
You know it's all about politics when people start wanting to kill you if you keep insisting that something that is absolutely, positively, absolutely NOT about politics is indeed about politics rather than about being, hoist the flag, blow the trumpet.... JUST A DECENT HUMAN BEING!
This started around 2016. The majority of people are not like that. It's just that the industry of screaming about everything being woke has become a multi-billion dollar industry.
@@khrishpyour comment is useless and addresses none of the excellent points above. Political ideologies ARE becoming a cult and it’s terrifying bc it’s leaving less room for those not politically inclined or logically leaning
It's a cult and an infection that is spreading through our education system and through the Mainstream Media and Hollywood and Big Tech etc etc all powered by entities such as Blackrock with bastards like George Soros making companies have DEI departments etc or they loose money and opportunities. It's a very small minority who have shpit tons of money and power and they have their tendrils in anything that is powerful such as the aforementioned entities above.
For almost 15 years now, any job ive had warned me of what i say and do on the Internet because they can fire anyone of what we said or did and they did not want that to representative of the company. How has devs, writers, actors, etc... been so immune for so long?
As long as it's the "correct" opinion, there are no repercussions. Conservative leaning people get fired all the time in this industry for having the "wrong" opinion.
Look at stellar blade. Gamers wanted the sexy outfits back. The devs gave the sexy outfits. The fans wanted a NieR DLC. They gave a NieR DLC. They wanted a photo Mode, they gave a photo mode. The game is over a year old and people are STILL playing the hell out of this single player story game because the devs keep. adding. wanted. Content. Its not hard!! I don't know why other devs just don't get it.
Funny how a "goonerslop" game has better pr team and developers than most AAA title companies nowadays. All they did is just shut up and listen to the fans.
Far-leftists being hired by the developer plus DEI being required to comply with ESG criteria. Coporations and financial institutions have to maiintain an ESG score as part of a "financial sustainability" criteria. DEI is a big boost to an ESG score. It's no doubt much cheaper than other options for boosting ESG scores.
@DezaltOfTheDreg its not a gooner slop game though. Women just get inannely jealous when another women fictional or not is prettier than them. Nier and stellar blade have phenomenal gameplay and story. Just because they have sexy outfits doesnt mean its gooner game.
22:10 the other reason BG3 didn't get dragged into the culture war is because there was no insistence by the game that the audience is bigoted or ignorant. They just let it be in the game, a GOOD game.
Also, Larian was fairly well able to distance themselves from the extreme DEI components of the game but not putting it in there until WOTC became more involved. Consumers could rationalize that "Dame" Alyin was so insufferable because of WOTC. Also, the No Alphabets mod removed the vast majority of that nonsense, and left canon gay characters as they are. Larian needs to be very cautious with their next game, and do 0 virtue signaling and 0 DEI preaching in their game. They will end up on the chopping block all the same I'd they do.
Bg3 focused on gameplay first then added their degenerate content later. Thats why it didn't have as much of a drawback. However I'm now more weary of their games given the kind of people they got working there.
@@hardbrocklife2 You think Dame Aylin is insufferable? I kinda liked her. She's a Korra-type character, burly lesbian, not really sure what you don't like about her. Real shame that the male conversion mod got removed from NexusMods though.
15:43 They know this, they are not only fully aware of it, they are DOING IT for this precise reason. In their minds they legitimately do not want people to engage with """THEIR""" content because they are so lost - ideologically - so massively radicalized, that they see red. And genuinely believe in their heart of hearts that this is the correct way to act because we are all supposed to be disgusting in their view. This is the issue with placing activists (or fostering an environment for them such as is visible within Ubisoft) within these studios. Shameless tiny-channel self plug but I made a video on this.. unfair "Demonization" of gamers a couple of days ago for anyone interested. I think I even used a screenshot from a video of yours from that ubisoft insider you spoke to. Thanks for all the great work you do for the industry & community. 💙
They can think that way. More power to them. But when they are out of a job or even on unemployment, that is their reward. Customers always got options. Devs usually don't. 1 or 2 bad products and that's it
Some people will say, "Why does it matter? just play the game. " For me, the answer is TIME. I have a full-time job and a family, so I can only play so many games (if any at all). So I want to make sure not only am I not wasting my time with the experience, but I'm not giving my money away to people who hate players. I could, for example, use that money and buy a POE2 early access, or buy a copy of Wizardry (haven't played the older ones). There's a lot of options, not enough time, so I'm always cutting loses.
@@Dragor33-rg7xj I'm talking old ass games, not the next cod bro. I'm talking about all the final fantasy previous 14, all metal gears previous 5 all the shooters of the past, og Baldur's gate planescape torment icewindale, I'm talking about all the monster Hunter games previous world
@PadreMaronnolo I do enjoy a lot of the older games, especially rare releases you can only find sailing, but I'd never pirate games, of course. None of us do. Ever.
The major factor that ensured that I would never touch The Last Of Us part 2? Was Neil Druckmann’s online behavior. And I absolutely loved part 1, now because of him? I have ZERO interest in the IP now.
Also, you can't depict two healthy opposite sexual individuals having romantic interactions. You can have a man chick taking it in the booty thought. At least Deckmans behavior made their agenda readily apparent.
Same background, loved the first game, but the reason I won't touch the second one, was their use of fake cutscenes in order to sell a story that wasn't in the game.
@@wizardwolf1020 After the huge success of LoU 1, something happened behind the scenes during the development of Uncharted 4 resulting in Amy Hennig (a former writer/director from Uncharted 1-3 and Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1, 2, and Defiance) leaving Naughty Dog. Multiple articles reported a rumor that she had been pushed out. And then Bruce Straley also left very early into the development/announcement of LoU 2 with only the thin explanation "needing some time off".
Nothing new but now it's worse. Nintendo has always hated its customers after all. Their only saving grace is they make great games that work properly at launch. Well 9 times out of ten. Animal Crossing and Pokemon have had issues.
Whoever thought in this modern era of consumerism that the popular approach to poor product sales was to blame your customer, they need to be fired asap. And then the executives that somehow thought it was a tactic worth doubling down on, despite constantly hemorrhaging sales, also need to be fired.
They must of watched the south park episode of cartman land where he has a theme park "and you can't come". Everyone in town wanted to go there as a result.
As a gamedev I also think this; 1. If you make a niche game or fail to market your game and reach the audience - that is on you. 2. If you can't make something that connects with your required audience - that is on you. 3. If you won't listen to your audience and are not willing to take in their feedback - that is on you. 4. If the audience leaves you because you insult them - that is on you. Studios don't deserve any sympathy at all. You are responsible for your own success. If you want to kill your own bussiness, everyone is more than happy to oblige...
It's peak irony: Many games would have sold so much more if the devs did not insult their audience. You don't need to praise me, just avoid insulting me
I'd like to bring over some marketing managers from the '90s. They'd probably think there must have been a communist revolution or something because there's no way those guys could be so sure of their profit if their studio was not state-owned.
Yep the worse part is that they never learn from other people mistake. I keep black listing any company that bad mouth people like this. Im not going to give a single penny to people that hate their consumers or cant accept any form of criticism. They are not entitled to my money.
Being a game developer is often a thankless job. But blaming the players only stokes the fires of self-destruction. Look at games like Stardew Valley, Terraria, and Hollow Knight. The developers just can't help make free, amazing updates. Hell, Terraria had like 6 "final" updates. These games are still loved and not soon to be forgotten.
Not soon, if ever. There always are 'landmark' games for lack of better term and I always hope they'll be immortalized. Like the grandpapi of shooters Halo Combat Evolved or the ubiquitous Command and Conquer from when I was a kid. Even if you didn't like them, even if you didn't play games. You knew about them. Terraria and Stardew is def up there. Hollow Knight? Maybe? I love that game so much, I'd be elated to find out the love is that grand. Even with the whole Silksong thing.
When I was in the Marine Corps, we were regularly lectured about we need to look our best and be on our best behavior everywhere we go, even when home on leave, off-duty, not in uniform, wearing civilian attire. "Everywhere you go, you represent the Marine Corps. Even when you're not on duty. So you WILL dress and behave appropriately at ALL times, even if you're not on duty or in uniform." Ever since the Marine Corps, I've come to have that same view for ALL people of all job titles in ALL industries. For example, and pardon the ramble here: but there's a local restaurant in my neighborhood. The culinary director of the restaurant is a younger progressive woman. Early 30s. She's super stuck up. You know the type. Nose up in the air, acting like her sh*t doesn't stink and like she's better than everyone around her. Smile at her or try to say "Hello" in passing and she will stick her nose up at you and blatantly ignore you. And all this has done is made me not want to buy anything from the restaurant in which she's the culinary director. And I want to yell at her: "You know, even when you're not on the clock and on your own time, you really should be friendly and nice to people in public. The restaurant you work at is very popular in the area and you are publicly known to be the culinary director. So you represent that restaurant, even when you're on your own time. Your stuck up attitude only makes me think: 'F*ck this stuck up person and the restaurant they represent as culinary director.'" Anyways, pardon the wall of text.
Yes if I ever create a product myself I'll be darned sure to NOT hire any crazy political whackos. Also I would try my best to not use real life politics in my product too! Fantasy is for escapism from the real world. You must have some serious main character syndrome to think fantasy has to incorporate your shitty real life political opinions...
Fair trade to me. I dont care being called racist by actual racist and idiots and I got to save 60 or 70 dollars. Only one that wins is people like myself lol.
That tweet with the line "I mean, I can guess what it takes to make a Hostess Twinkie, but I don't work in the factory, so what the hell do I really know? Not a lot." Got me thinking, so let's play this game: I don't work in a bakery, I barely know the steps necessary to make bread, so if you asked me to do so I would probably fail spectacularly at making a loaf of bread. At the same time, however, I know that there is a vast difference between a loaf of bread and a brick painted to look like bread. The same logic applies to games: I may not know how to make a game, but I do know the difference between a proper video game and a piece of propaganda trying to preach a message to me under the guise of a game.
Agreed. Someone else said "I may not know how to make a Twinkie, but I sure as hell know what one should taste like." Which fits basically every product, really. Its not for the consumer to understand the process, all that matters for us is the end result. And if the Twinkie maker is caught spitting into the mixer, you should maybe think twice about eating it.
Game devs talking down to their customers was learned from movies like Star Wars doing it almost a decade ago. It's always obnoxious but, it's saved me plenty of money.
I can remake that exact same tweet from my perspective as a consumer/gamer: "eh, I don't really care. it was a huge labour from me and a lot of other talented people to earn they salary at their jobs making a steady income. Why would I care about a bunch of self-inserted narcissists hating on us gamers? I'm sure I saved money not buying your propaganda piece-of-crap, and I wouldn't trade it for nothing."
I think the reason for this behaviour is very simple: emotional immaturity. Instead of thinking and acting logically, they let their emotions dictate all their actions. These people never grew up.
Let's not underestimate the influence of the YT culture. For some reason, I believe corporations genuinely bought into their employees being allowed to talk crap about their audiences was actually "charming" because that's what dem kids like doing nowadays.
These ppl took an "Emotional Intelligence" class in college and now think they are masters of the human psyche. So sad that they still don't know how to interact with common desiciency.
OK I'm going to go on a bit of a rant here, because I'm an old fart who was trained very strictly to follow the old "customer is always right" chestnut and to *understand* what it actually means. I think a lot of the problem is the old phrase "Rule 1: The customer is always right, Rule 2: if customer is wrong, see rule 1" is taken too literally. It's not and never was, mean to gaslight customer service workers to insinuate the customer is literally correct all the time. That's just stupid. Thing is, modern CS workers don't see the nuance of that "golden rule" of customer service. It does not and has never meant the customer is literally right and can do no wrong... it means you have to ... HAVE TO... act in a way that makes the customer FEEL like they are right. It takes care, nuance, compassion and sometimes the ability to throw the darkest of shade and make it sound like a compliment. It means being flawlessly respectful even if you DON'T respect the customer.. Why? Because those snotty Karens and outright assholes PAY YOUR RENT. If you drive your customers away by giving them those richly deserved serves, they simply - and rightly - stop giving you money. If you spit in their salad, they stop buying your fucking salads. ANYONE in customer service (and this includes healthcare, food prep, recreation, game development and media) needs to understand and fucking accept that as shitty as some customers are, they need customers FAR more than the customer needs them. As much as it sucks, your customers (often) reprehensible personality or political stance is none of your business, you still have to be respectful. That's just how it works. Even if they yell, even if they bring the politics up, even if they show disrespect, YOU (the CS rep) have to lead by example. And not for nothing, but if you FALSELY accuse your customers of being "porn brained bigots" when they ARE the minorities you're pretending to represent, you not only alienate THAT customer, but also their *entire* community. I can't count the amount of customers and patients I've literally hated with ever fibre of my being, but by being polite and making THEM feel like the priority they are, they not only stayed loyal to the practice I worked at, but also started to become better human beings because I treated them like people instead of the trash they were emulating. Most people aren't actually that evil, they just want to be heard. As a customer service worker (and yes devs fit this as much as they want to think they are 'godly artistes') your job is to make THEM happy, not to 'own the chuds'. Does it suck being polite to an asshole? Absolutely. But they might just learn from your example while you keep your temper, and at least you get their money. And if all else fails, the satisfaction of a burn that only becomes apparent two days later while they sit on the loo is MUCH more satisfying then yelling at them in the moment and becoming just as bad as they are. TLDR: Most customers will refuse to buy from customer service people who make it obvious they hate them. End rant.
It's because the customer isn't always right in the literal sense, but they are always right when it comes to what they want from the product. If gamers say they want (insert game feature), then going against what they want is just pissing away your own time and money. It doesn't matter what the game devs want, it's what gamers want that matters.
The full saying (allegedly) is "The customer is always right in matters of taste", i.e. the customers know what they want and selling them something they don't want or shaming them for not buying as-is won't work.
Games companies I've worked for that are successful all have internal policies that basically say "you don't work for us on social media. if you say you work for us and make claims for the company, you're fired". Only people with the training and subsequent contract can claim they work for the company.
companies letting their employees go online and say whatever they want under the company banner even though "opinions my own" has been nothing but a disaster for studios, i miss when I had no clue what the developers of a game thought and just let the art speak for itself, but they seem hellbent on not allowing that to happen anymore
"companies letting their employees go online" wtf Why are you soft? if you cant handle an employee talking about their individual frustrations on their individual accounts, you cant handle life. You can dig into every company's employees social media see every kind of person venting about criticism. Who cares? lmao
@@dondahighhh12you don’t understand at all, developers shouldn’t be able to go out and say whatever they want when using a company account, and these developers should realise that what they say can negatively effect the product.
@@dondahighhh12 when leftwingers do insane shit is no big deal, when rightwingers do it they need to get fired Instantly right ? Stop fucking Jewing thank god Gen Z and Alpha are waking the fuck up.
@@dondahighhh12 Bruh, you're out here acting like public relations isn't a legitimate way to make or lose millions of dollars and ruin the livelihood of every other employee just because the low iq actual softest one couldn't handle their feminized need to share their feelings as a hater.
I think what's most important with this is that the guy has a leadership position. If a random developer, even a senior or minor lead says stupid things on twitter that can pass. But as the art director? You're the boss of other people. You have to show respect not just to your customers but your coworkers. If you want to talk smack do it under a pseudonym not under the same name that is connected to your company.
Saying that as a creative myself, the "I don't want people who don't share my opinions to enjoy what I've created" attitude is the most egotistic thing ever. It's supposed to be a humbling privilege to successfully craft something and being able to share it with the world. Plus, once you've done that, it's not "yours" anymore. You can't control what people will do with it /say about it. That's the risk that all artists have to live with. If you can't handle that, then don't share what you create.
Besides why would you not want the people who disagree with you to enjoy your art? Maybe your art might subtly encourage them to see things the way you do, as long as it's not actively trying to in a militant and hamfisted way. The real problem is most artists are insufferably full of themselves.
@@prettycool_guy3516 "The real problem is most artists are insufferably full of themselves" That's not really my experience. Most great artists I know are chill, sensitive, always open to constructive criticisms, and often introverted. When you get to a certain level, you *have* to put your ego aside and listen to your peers and art directors, for instance, if you want to grow and succeed. Real artists know that learning is never over. In a thriving creative environment, there's something to gain from everyone around you. The full-of-themselves insufferable ones, again in my experience, are these: - Those that gain a certain level of notoriety/fame in the industry or on social media, and make that persona more important than the art itself (back to ego again) - "Idea people", ie. those that have little to no practical skills, so they cope by acting like their big brain ideas and concepts are groundbreaking (tons of extroverts here) - Marketing people. Actual scum of the creative world. They're like the "idea people" pushed to its limit. Truly insufferable.
@@thisisfyne "The full-of-themselves insufferable ones, again in my experience, are these: - Those that gain a certain level of notoriety/fame in the industry" Ok so basically any successful artist? :D
Nothing beats when New World developers told us that they wouldn't add mounts because they spent a lot of time designing the environment and they wanted us to "experience it" on foot.
Game devs are overly cocky these days, they act like Consumers are being held at gun point to buy their slop. But when we don't and their slop inevitably fails, they're genuinely aghast as to how it possibly could've happened and sit there scratching their heads for the next handful of years until the next slop comes out.
" Consumers are being held at gun point to buy their slop." What does this even mean? What game do you feel so threatened that you have to buy? If anyone is threatening you for not buying a game, report it to the police
The counter-argument to "this movie is not for you" is "a thing for everyone is a thing for no one." If you need to alienate one potential audience to more fully engage the one you want to be your rabid fans, that's an acceptable sacrifice.
Tbf its completely valid to make movies that are not for you. What isnt though, is taking franchises you like and THEN remaking them to not be for you.
Only one thing you got wrong, Baldur's Gate DID get alot of "anti-woke" backlash before it came out. From all the youtubers you would typically expect, the only difference between that game and alot of others is that once it came out it was SO good that public perception would quickly turn against you if you tried to complain about it being too "woke" so they stopped and moved on. I've been a Larian fan for a LONG time, since Divinity 2 (not original sin 2, I mean like the old original xbox game) and I was there for the entire Baldur's Gate 3 beta/early access period and there was plenty of "anti-woke" discussion and plenty of "Wow all their female characters are hideous" discussion. Again it all changed once the game came out and it was actually amazing, all the praise drowned out the anti-woke grifters. The ones that weren't grifting, like Synthetic Man, are still adamant to this day about BG3 being a woke dumpster fire and it's very funny to see x3 But at least he's honest in his beliefs I guess and not just grifting for views.
Good products get anti-woke backlash, but it tends to die out when there isn't a wider negativity for them to leech off of. It's why Star Wars' "The Acolyte" is still getting anti-woke backlash every now and then, while Andor, which is arguably more woke in a more substantial way (ie, progressive political messaging rather than just POC characters), barely gets any. The Acolyte is just not a great show, so the anti-woke types have negativity to latch onto and leech off of, while Andor is a very good show, with the only major legitimate complaint coming from people without the attention span to watch a slower paced show like it, so there isn't much negativity for anti-woke types to feed on. We see the same thing with games. BG3 may have gotten anti-woke backlash, but it's a great game (at least it seems like it, I haven't played it yet), so there isn't enough negativity for this backlash to live on in the wider gaming community, so it's banished to the shitty chud spaces instead. The Last of Us 2 had more genuine issues, and more genuine negativity around it, so the anti-woke people had a disgruntled audience to leech off of. Some other examples, since the comment currently below this one reminded me: Celeste, Stardew Valley, and Hollow Knight all have "woke" content. Celeste's protagonist is trans, kinda decided after the fact, but in a way that makes sense, considering the lead dev based Madeline's struggles on her own struggles, which she later realized were caused in great part because she is trans. Stardew Valley has all romance prospects basically being bi, but beyond that some have a bit of a content specifically related to being gay (like Alex, if you romance him as a male character). Hollow Knight has at least two gay relationships (Nailsmith and Sheo, and Ze'mer and the Traitor's Child). Yes how much anti-woke backlash do these games get? I haven't seen a lot, personally. Celeste got some, but positivity seems to have pushed all that out quite effectively. Ultimately, most of the anti-woke complaints are horseshit. Sure, sometimes things genuinely get too preachy, or it's clear that the creators have forsaken quality in favor of being inclusive or something like that, but most of the time, that isn't the case, so then anti-woke backlash NEEDS wider negativity to sustain itself, because if people enjoy the product, they'll stop and think about the anti-woke backlash, and realize it's bullshit.
@@katxiii3660 Popular anti-woke views are interesting because they generall present themselves as only caring about it because it makes the product bad. It makes for an interesting self-fulfilling prophecy: woke thing failed because woke people shoehorned it in with bad quality! This other things was good despite its wokeness due to high quality so we don't care! The worst part is when someoen claims "well no one ever hated X thing because X thing was good!". That seems to not be true much of the time but it's easy to accept as a throwaway line that is actually central to the thesis. I don't want political views to undermine quality of products or content. I also don't think we can always tell when it will until after the fact.
About Mouthwashing, from what I understand Martin is a freelance composer that made the music. Him saying that it's "His game" is like John Williams saying he made Star Wars or Jaws. Did he help? No doubt about it, but it's not his game. He's just some freak connected to the company that doesn't know when to shut up. The actual devs went after people for harassing an artist, and then Martin came in and undermined everything they said.
@@chriswihulua decomposing raccoon provides vital food and resources to multiple parts of the ecosystem. It's far more than could be said for many of the leeches in the game industry.
Never forget that one of these "consultants" had in his mission statement was "to destroy the games industry" like everyone would glaze over that tidbit like he was some genius super villain. If they can't put their agenda into our games, then they'll buy the rights for beloved IPs (which mind you, the FUCKING GOVERNMENT IS FUNDING THIS HORSESHIT!!) to commit character assassination after character assassination and wear beloved characters in games like they are a cosplay for them to self insert themselves and force us to like how toxic these basketcases are. ...they hate us for existing before them in their new obsession. A community that has a more dedicated following for the lore of a series than these tourists have for letting a traditional franchise stay "stagnant" for a "modern audience"
@@SimuLord The nature of indie games invites diversity. There are games made by one dude or a small group of hobbyists. So, of course you'd find all types of games. You would have activist games as well as dark, 18+ games. They are not trying to sell millions of copies anyway. For someone hoping to sell 1000 copies as a sign of success, the modern audience might just be enough. However, if you are a big company with dozens, or hundreds of employees, you should have other priorities and a far better control over loud-mouth employees.
@@khosrowzare8301 Very true, and I am glad that those small niche groups have games they can play the same way I can play games that overlap with my interests and likes. But in cozy games specifically, there's starting to become a real problem with low-effort games that leverage that niche audience for easy money (there's an entire subgenre of Gaming TH-cam making video essays fretting about the decline in quality of Stardew-likes over the past couple of years that says a lot of the same things the "chuds" do but from the angle of being offended over being blatantly pandered to at the expense of getting actual good games.)
@@SimuLord This is mostly the product of the technological advancements. 10-15 years ago, if you wanted to make any game, you had to make most assets by hand. That meant a significant time investment that prevented someone from doing it on a whim. Even activist games had to be made by actual serious activists who were willing to spend months of their time to prove a point. Now, you have access to vast libraries of ready-made assets at a pittance, free-to-use game engines (at least for the scale of these games), and now even AI to make a lot of the code and art for you. So, it is possible for someone to get drunk, get in a fight on Twitter and decide to scrab together a "game" to prove a point (a bit of an exaggeration but ...). And there will be someone milking it for clicks on TH-cam or Tiktok, probably earning more than the one who made the game. It's the same for everything: stories, news, art, movies, clips, music, and even opinions on the internet: a vast quantity, most of which are garbage. You just have to be clever enough to find the gems and ignore the rest. If you can't? Well, remember that there were people who bought Concord and Dustborn. Media literacy skills have never been more important than right now.
@@khosrowzare8301 To your last point, that needs to be screamed from the rooftops. As for people who bought Concord, if the estimate of "a million bucks at $40 a pop" is to be believed, that's roughly the population of the small town I grew up in (~25,000; my hometown had a population floating around 24,800 for fifty years before a recent slate of new housing was built in the 2010s.) Compared to the overall gaming market, as with my hometown compared to the United States or even the state of Massachusetts, that's a speck of dust on a telescope looking at deep space.
If I owned a dev studios, or any company period......I would have a policy written in the employee handbook that stats that you as an employee are a representative of the company no matter what roll you have, and if it is found out that you as an employee are not represent the company in a professional manner online on any social media account or website the consequences would be immediate termination. People can ultimately say what they want on social media, however when your comments result in potential loss of business you also have to suffer the consequences of your actions.
Not sure what the law is about someone intentionally causing damages in potential sales when it comes to these devs alienating their audience through politics.
well in the normal world it's already the case. If you fuck up on social media and bring the company image down with yourself, you can generally pack. But apparently in the videogamedev sphere it's not normal?
The problem with this is that HR can then claim you "violated their social media policy" and leave you fighting the state unemployment office in the middle of a pandemic for four solid months before finally winning your case and getting a large lump-sum back unemployment payout just in time for the rent payment that would've left you homeless if there weren't an eviction moratorium in place due to said pandemic. Not that I have any personal experience with a scenario like that, oh no...
That's ArenaNet. It's a very progressive company that inserted same-sex marriage and a non-binary NPC into a fantasy MMORPG, but attacking a player in the community on social media? A writer in ArenaNet did exactly that in 2018 and she got publicly fired. A (male) colleague who defended her got fired in the same way too.
The digital footprint training comment is very good advice. When I was in the military, we were explicitly told that we represent the military, even when out of uniform because the people who live around military bases learn how to tell. So many devs think that they're invincible because "my opinions are my own" while actively advertising that they work for whatever company, and end up costing their employer massive amounts of goodwill, which leads to loss of sales.
And Microsoft has already been shutting down studios as well. The Avowed devs can't afford for their game to not do well. Yet the art director is driving players away from the game.
@@fall-neckthetallneck2977 To be fair, I see it only as a minor factor. They do drive away SOME players, but most of "lost revenue" is gonna be the "day one on GamePass" thing, in my opinion. Who in their right mind would pay 90 dollars when you subscirbe for 15 and have whole month to finish it. Also: most customers don't care about politics. The market always corrects itself so in the end, the only thing that matters is if the game is good or not. GTA V had tons of controversies, Hogwarts Legacy, even Baldur's Gate was dragged into "it's so woke" ""controversies"", yet the only thing that mattered in the end was the quality.
A lot of creators don’t understand that “my opinions are my own” doesn’t really mean anything. People know that creators put part of themselves into their work even if they don’t intend to. Creator’s feelings, thoughts, views, etc all affect how and what they create. So if they say stuff on social media that reveals views and intentions that people don’t like, people are going to assume that some of that is in their creation (games, movies, etc) and then distance themselves from it.
It's the same for a lot of jobs. If you are wearing your name badge or your place of employment was known, you speak on behalf of the company. This is why cancel culture was so destructive. Saying even the most mildly offensive thing got people fired from their jobs. In many of those cases, people had to active search their public social media's if it wasn't immediately available. It's honestly amusing that this is something that doesn't affect the games industry. Amusing but distressing.
Every job role I went into, there was always an initial performance introduction done where expectations were set on both sides. I've had bosses who were on the other side of the country supervising my performance. One of my bosses flew into my location to even welcome me into my role. I will never forget what he said, "[Insert name], my first visit is for free and to meet you. If I have to fly out again here, there's a problem and we will have to deal with that problem." He was a very supportive supervisor, but set the expectation that we are professionals in a professional field. Unfortunately, passive aggressiveness reigns in many areas and too many leaders apply a swath of changes to address 1-2 folks not adhering to policy. I've never agreed with that because you are punishing the good folks with that bad, which only erodes morale and productivity. For the people who are out-of-control using social media and destroying the company, make an example out of them to set discipline back. Before anyone says this is harsh, those out-of-control individuals are affecting the livelihoods of their co-workers, many of which have families too.
The mouthwashing incident is even more mind blowing than Avowed one. I mean, you literally have a guy with 3.2 million subscribers saying he wants to try your game and promoting it for free. Instead of engaging with him and thanking him you attack him and call him anti-gay? When he has literally defended gay people on hundreds of separate occasions!? These people are so ignorant, obnoxious and annoying man. It’s one thing if you don’t wanna thank him. It’s another to attack him for no freaking reason when he just promoted your game for absolutely no reason. No reason at all. That’s the crazy part. Until these companies and Studios start letting people go for doing this it’s going to continue. If I was running a studio and one of my employees did that I would immediately fire him. Because that creates more audacious employees. You have to set an example.
It's not good enough for these people. Asmon need to go above and beyond the call of duty to defend gay people at his own expense. They are the only people who deserve it in their minds.
The thing is, this honesty while devastating for them is only of benefit to us, because the ones who do this also tend to be the ones making bad games, because everything else takes second seat to their "message".
Well, let’s be real: First, except for the cases where small teams are making the games, any inclusion of DEI stuff in games is driven by executives listening to marketing. They’re doing it because they think they will make more money. They’re wrong, but they weren’t doing it out of ideology. Second, there absolutely is a cult in this country, and we just made its leader president.
the Right wing def has their moments...but as someone who is pretty much right down the middle, the left is losing their fucking minds and are acting like the moral police and it's disgusting because they cant see themselves
It's not really intentional - it's a part of a greater symptom of narcissism, echo chambers, and mental illness. The art being produced is developed under a philosophy of projection instead of a philosophy of aesthetics. This is a common phenomenon from a historical context. Read "Political Ponerology" for a deeper dive.
Before Hanson opened his mouth, Obsidian had probably one of the best reputations in the industry. Avowed would have sold wall based entirely on that reputation.
@@aaronschmitz241 These tags are put in by the community. If enough people give a game a tag, it will appear on the shop page. The dev can choose to have it removed, though, as far as I know.
I mean their recent gaming products weren't outstanding and there are nearly zero people still there who made Fallout New Vegas, but Avowed had both hype and potential. Too bad they flushed it all down the drain. I've heard that they even completely revamped the game halfway through development. Just looking at their first trailer the mood is way more dark and gritty. Now we have a cartoon pronoun orgy, so I believe it. Obsidian probably already got got rid of everyone not enthusiastically woke who even had the ability to make a good game. To bad so sad. On the other hand I cannot wait for more info on the Wayward Realms, a spiritual successor to TES: Daggerfall made by actual leads of that game.
@@dojelnotmyrealname4018 This, no one was talking about the game after a month after release, this doesnt happen with great games. Probably because most of the core devs left, so its Obsidian in name only, like Bioware.
@@redninja3056 Brainlet take to equate being lambasted for being part of an unaffiliated demographic and people not buying your game because a leader at the company making the game actively hates a majority segment of your would-be audience.
@@redninja3056 Difference is, my money is important to him, whereas their opinions are not important to me. See how that works? People on the internet can scream, rant, and call ME every ist and phobe in the book and I just shake my head and move on with life, unaffected because I am not representing a service or product for sale. HE, on the other hand is representing a product for sale, and by attacking his customer base, HE is the one who is affecting his entire company's bottom line, therefore HE is affecting his team far more negatively than anyone else. All I have done is called him a dumbass, and decided to withhold any financial contribution to further his career. The fact that his team is silent or has come out and supported tells me that they too are unworthy of my future business. His team is not MY concern...he's the one that threw them under the bus, not me.
Back in the days companies told their employees to shut their mouths and not cause damage to the company to get fired. It's best to keep it neutral or not say anything at all.
Its really weird to me how some random composer is just willing to sacrifice potential sales because a streamer they dont like shows interest in playing the game and thinks that harrasing artists is bad
Back in the day there was a certain amount of professionalism required to work on massive projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars… There is nothing wrong with keeping you’re mouth shut, in fact it’s a bit of a lost art nowadays haha
It's not like I'm refusing to buy a game because a dev is being an ass hat online, it's just pattern recognition. I get a whiff of certain things around a game and I can safely assume that game is going to be bad. It just happens that these narcissistic devs are often that first whiff.
That's one of the things that really got GamerGate rolling - the sudden realization that gaming and the adjacent gaming media is somehow the only industry on the planet that lets you get away with openly insulting your own audience to its face. Can you imagine if the editor-in-chief of, I dunno, the Cat Fancy magazine turned around and openly blasted its audience by calling them childless alcoholic hags? She's get strung up on pitchforks and immediately fired+blackballed from the industry along with the rest of the editorial staff who went along with this. But for journos and devs, it's practically normal to call their audience mahoganist incels and tell them to not buy their game. It's practically a surprise when a dev is NOT being an asshole on Twitter. Madness.
> the only industry on the planet that lets you get away with openly insulting your own audience to its face This is not true. No one should do this but it happens a lot. Food companies call people fat to try to pimp their low fat diets, book companies call people stupid if they don't like books, car companies imply their car is the only manly car to buy, etc. It takes advantage of insecurity to rip off customers and it's done all the time. If you make up a problem you can sell the answer to it.
To be fair, it was also the first time that that particular brand of activist ran into any meaningful opposition to their attempts to colonize a hobby. I think the insults were more of an act of desperation after Plan A failed than anything else. Problem is, they keep trying to boil the frog, despite the frog now being intensely aware of what they are trying to do, so again desperation and, again, insults.
@@jadak100 Depends what you mean by madness. Personally, I think the AAA segment of the industry (and the 'mainstream' games journalism media) is cooked beyond repair. Mourn the loss of the companies that made your favorite games now, get ready to support the companies that rise to the top in the vacuum it creates. The people responsible for the madness will continue to try to proliferate it so we, as conscientious consumers, just need to be vigilant about it and continue to vote with our wallets. I think that the best we can hope for is that the madness will be effectively quarantined into the least relevant corners of the internet and even that may take some time.
What did he do? And also like.. does one art director really 86 an entire game? Ubisoft is pure cancer, so I won't ever give them a dollar. But one dude wiling out doesn't necessarily get a boycott from me. For whatever that's worth.
@@josephpaine9195 started rambling about how he couldn't wait for 'his' game to get under Elon's skin, meanwhile he was schizo posting on twitter, after the backlash he ran back to Bluesky. No, one dude doesn't speak for the whole game but have you not been seeing the pattern recently?
@redninja3056 You and the dozens of other people like you will surely make the game a success, just like Concord! We don't hate you guys, we pity you.
As gamers, we also need to hold ourselves accountable on our feedback. We must not be too toxic with our approach. These developers are human beings too and anyone who gets thrown slurs at them would react in a predictable manner.
I love how in every industry if something fails, it fails, a movies fails, bang, movie sucks and people move on, if a music sucks, it sucks and people move on, but in video games, somehow we have to empathize with developpers because it's hard, what? do they send me heart emoji messages after i come from work? do they think we all live in a peaceful life with no responsibilities and inifinte money? i couldn't careless, all i care about is if a game it's good enough for me to invest my time and money in it, i have no respect for developpers who keep bring out the victim card, they always putting the blame on players nowadays and now they're getting what they deserve, it's simply reaction from their actions.
Reminds me of the Writers' Strike last year. They really wanted to rally the movie-going audiences to their side. Who gives a hoot? Do I get anything out of either the Hollywood writers or Hollywood producers winning the negotiation? I don't see any change in movie quality, that's for sure.
Normally the market would sort itself out, but the staggering amount of DEI money they got prevented it. At least until now. It got to a point that even the infinite money well might dry out, and people legitimately abhor them. And if a few more studios go down, it will be crystal clear even to the most oblivious shareholder that they have to thoroughly clean house. And it will come. Ubisoft is already dead and they absolutely know it. Bioware will be closed after the next Mass Effect flops. Bungie is on borrowed time, and Sony will butcher them when (and not if) Marathon flops.
I’m old enough to remember when the movie Water World came out with the biggest budget ever, at that point, and bombed. Kevin Costner never came out and called me racist or phobic lol.
wdym that's not how it works with movies at all nowadays lmao. This level of egotistical entitlement came from Hollywood if you have been paying any attention over the past 14~ years. It has only in the past 10~ years come to games. Like I don't know what fantasy world you live in where actors and directors for movies are accepting mass criticism on the chin and being like "you know what, yeah we could have done this better know that I see your perspective and understand it more" fuck no. These "me! me! me!' individuals are calling anyone who doesn't agree with X person being casted as a character as racist/bigoted/homophobic/etc. Or if you thought a movie was just bad you're just showing your bigotry and hatred, etc. Like dude did you not see the Minecraft movie drama with Jack Black? The dude is lashing out saying "I just think the backlash we're getting is ridiculous, especially from grown men who don't get that this movie isn't just for them." The movie making industry does in no size shape or form handle criticism well. They do not "move on" they cry and scream and stomp their feet because people dare to criticize their performance in a movie or the movie as a whole.
@@yhormthemidget There is no money infusion in DEI. Not like literally none, but compared to actual costs, income etc in movies DEI is insignificant. They go after these initiatives on the insane promise that it will bring the whole community they pander to into the theater. This never happens. This is a self correcting problem though. When the money continues to not materialize they will move on to the next thing they can try to sell to the studio that will bring all the people in to theaters. to be clear the "they" doing the selling is primarily consultants and some studio execs that get promoted on initiatives like this.
AAA devs are usually overly confident and make unneeded changes to their game or extremely lazy and make zero changes to their game. There’s no in between
@@furrygeckoand yet many of them defend these bad calls with passion. Not just merely nodding your head when your boss talks just so you can keep your job, but going online to defend these bad calls and belittling those who point it out.
@@alexanderchristopher6237True, although often times they have to, if you’re talking about unnecessary changes. If you’re talking about culture stuff, 🤷♂️. I’ve never been on a game that was controversial in a culture war sense.
I wonder who's entitled here if developers are expecting only people they agree with to play their games. This is some off-putting behaviour that I'm astonished no company has made them take responsibility for.
i will never understand why anyone would put their work place in an social media account bio, do people hate having their own information private that much?!
It would appear so. Same kind of people that get fired or let go from a job and post on linked-in how much they love that company and what an honour it was 😂
At one point I was working on a team of four people for a fortune five hundred company - this team of people were hand selected tech support agents that were allowed to speak online about the company - something even the board of directors wasn't allowed to do. That's because we'd been trained on how to deal with internet interactions, how to not get wound up and get personal, etc. Anyone else doing it was a fireable offense. When did these companies, especially the ones under the umbrella of a global megastudio like Microsoft, just allow people to shoot their mouth off every chance they get about any dumb thing that runs through their brain?
I'm a relatively low-ranking corpo rat. I'm afraid to as much as give a like to an innocuous LinkedIn post for fear of some professional consequences. Meanwhile...
Just remember that "devs" is a generic term we use to talk about a development studio. Most of those things come from the company itself and are business related, not necessarily reflecting the developer's (or any other member) vision or opinion. There is always a hierarchy and almost every time the ones that actually make the game have no saying on what will be in the game.
Yeah, I think this is one of the larger things lost in translation during these discussions. Without the transparency to know exactly what each and every person contributed to a given project, it's not like we can ascribe specific game elements to specific individuals. So 'devs' has become a catch-all term for the collective because we simply can't speak with more granularity than that in most cases.
I noticed that these people had the title of developer. But they didn't actually do the work of a developer. It was another group of people who actually did the work.
I work at a reputable brand. The general rule of thumb for social media and the brand? Don’t. They have the marketing and PR budget. They don’t need you to muck things up. Sharing directly posts from the official page/post is fine, but the fact remains that your personal opinions can also affect the brand.
15:30 here is one who thinks that way. I used to love Obsidian. I even played Pentiment and loved it. Outerworlds? Very nice for what it is by my standards. Played all the DLC. If I tell you that now I couldn't care less about Avowed you know you did something messed up.
What's happening in gaming is basically failed chefs yelling at customers for not eating their terrible food. It's Amy's Baking Company, on a massive industry-wide scale.
What these devs don't understand is that if players don't buy their studio's game, they'll simply buy a game from another studio with no strings attached. The devs' outrage won't disrupt anything in the players' gaming schedules. Meanwhile, if the game doesn't sell and fails, the studio will hardly have any opportunity to try again with the next one (unless you're called Fntastic-those guys always come back like cockroaches). Now, these games with outrageous budgets have no wiggle room. So it baffles me that these devs are on such loose leashes when studios gamble their entire existence on each release.
This can be summed up in one concept using dragon age origins vs veilguard. Let's say you meet a controversial character in both games. In one game you could have befriended them, told them to get lost or kill them. In the other game your only option is varying degrees of i love you. A developer who can right a character they don't like or a character they do like but give players freedom to hate them is a good developer.
Developers and publishers nowadays have this inflated sense that their games are masterpieces. They think they're on the same level as Picasso or Van Gogh. Have they forgotten what happened to John Romero and Daikatana? Maybe we should remind them what the price of arrogance is.
I no longer care if I like the studio or the series. If the devs talk shit, I don’t buy the game. Nobody as weak minded as these modern devs deserve success.
@@redninja3056 okay but how do you know that's what Neptunedirect129 is complaining about? it seems to me that it isn't. I wasn't interested in veilguard because there was no actual ROLEPLAY options in a ROLEPLAYING GAME, instead it's kind of just all rollplay, for example. so I lost my mind because you could choose to be trans? nah, I lost my mind because you can't actually roleplay it while having it be an "option". a fake option if you will, and a blindingly obvious fake option at that, given that they didn't even try to hide it. Like seriously, I miss it when games would actually have consequences for being different from the norm like, say, Mount and Blade, and the fact that you are actually disadvantaged if you decide to play a woman, since it's based on medieval times and a woman leader? that's going to be looked down upon. And that's shit's cool, because it lets me experience something negative I otherwise wouldn't have been able to, you know?
15:08 -> 1000% agreed! I was optimistically hopeful on the game with initial previews from some trusted channels, but then I saw what the Art Director said and I just can’t support that 🤷🏻♂️
What they failed to realize is that the way to reach both sides is to take neither side. This is not a complicated problem to solve, but activists are going to do what activists do, so as long as they are deliberate about hiring activists for one side or the other, they're going to get activism in their games
I finally understand why gamers have been attacking game developers over the last few years. I had no idea that developers are just as nasty, if not worse than the gamers who play their games. I don't trust game developers anymore and defending game developers should never happen. While not all developers are god awful, the vast majority of these AAA developers are as disgusting as you think. When a development team starts attacking potential customers is when you know this is not a company who deserves your time. This Matt guy is godawful. Matt's behavior is unacceptable. Microsoft needs to acknowledge that this is a dude who is not adding any value to their company, and should be canned for his wacko ideologies. He is a liability and has to go.
No, a minority of gamers are tired of their hobby, but can't switch to another hobby combined with obsession about their status on social media like Twitter is a problem in my opinion. They don't represent gamers, but are loud and flashy, because of how social media pushes information. Thus they create an image of only negativity about a game on a given platform even though that game is good and enjoyable. They shit on the floor, don't clean afterwards and later complain about stinky air in the house like it is made by someone else.
22:38 "These people try to act so righteous in front of everyone else. And I think a lot of people have grown to detest this." Yes, exactly. Whenever I hear the self-righteous rhetoric of these types of people, it NEVER seems authentic. Always performative and pretentious. Their self-righteous words come off as: "Hey everyone! Look how good of a person I am! Aren't I such a good person? I'm amazing, aren't I? Tell me I'm a good person. Tell me I'm a good person! TELL ME I'M A GOOD PERSON!!!"
Coffee Stain is another example, their CS with Satisfactory has been flawless. There's a reason I NEVER tell my employer what my social media is, and will never reference my employer on that social media. They will ALWAYS be separate
I remember when the only peek at upcoming games was Game Informer magazine showcases. No politics, no humiliation rituals, just developers making complete games for all players to enjoy.
Right? I remember buying a game at EB Games, basically Canadian Gamestop, and getting a little magazine with it. In the music it showed Megaman ZX Advent. There was no trailer, no text talking about the game just, "This is a Megaman game that is coming out." There was no dev screaming at me that I had to buy the game or I was a bad person just, "This is a game soon to be released."
A perfect game doesn't and can't exist. Gamedevs can only focus on specific groups, not all groups. Focusing on that illusive 1% non-existent group only loses money. Just be glad to appeal to a existing 60 - 80% group, instead of the whole 100% cake. Games made by real gamers for gamers, should be the norm in this industry.
When I had a retail job I knew I was representing the company. I was literally the face of the company at that moment. I can’t believe these people don’t get that. They must have never worked anything but an office job their whole life or something.
This video isn't for you. jk, it is.
Based 😂
When any company fails, what happens? Stock prices in that company plunge right? Think about that.
that is as much as i can say without the algo blocking my comment.
they are not ment to work there they are not real game devs they are fake woke queer men. that created stuff that noone wants to by
How bout that Wu Kong.......DOMINATING isn't it.... Checkin all the boxes where the others fail....that country is just so friendly.
To be fair, devs talking down to customers has saved me a ton of money. Why give money to people who hate you when there are so many games made by people who don't?
I agree. Let them be passive aggressive and show off. Karma is a b1tch.
Agreed, just like movies, stores and large companies.
Well western AAA companies are invested with messaging agenda, thank God East can make AAA games too and they only care about money, not the message. So we will always have something to play that is not infested with politics.
Also when studios do nothing about such devs, it tells you everything you need to know about said studio.
Also, I have never had so much time to work on my backlog. Rare silver lining, honestly. Happy gaming.
The story of No Man's Sky should be studied by every development team. When Hello Games was facing massive backlash over a bugged, unfinished mess that failed to deliver what it promised. Did they attack fans? Did they whine about how hard they worked? Did they heavily monetize it? Did they take the money and run?
No. Instead they got off social media and got to work fixing the game, delivering what was promised and adding new content. In the end they saved the game and their reputation. The story of No Man's Sky and Hello Games is the greatest redemption arc in gaming.
No mans sky the redemption arc that keeps giving and giving. Thank you hello games.
They’ve reached the point people are (jokingly) begging to give them money!
This is the exact reason I will buy their new game Light No Fire. The product itself nearly doesn't matter anymore. I have tangible proof that they WILL do everything they can do make it the best game they can. The most important thing about a game to me is not its current state, but the will and ability to improve it to match their vision. Hello Games proved they have both in spades. Is No Man's Sky the exact game they promised at the beginning? No, but they did their very best and in many aspects surpassed their former vision.
to be fair they handled their blunder perfectly. But they only could deliever on their promise because they had residual income from their mobile/smaller games.
That is not an option for many (mismanaged) studios.
They also had a flood & lost half of their work about 6 months before release, so you gotta cut them some slack.
I'm a software engineer for a mid-sized company. Among our day one training was responsible social media usage. Things like what sort of info we're allowed to share with others about our current projects, what sort of personal info we can divulge and how to professionally conduct ourselves online. I have a hard time believing these AAA studios actually had this sort of training themselves if this is the sort of behavior we keep seeing from them. How does someone reach these senior level positions without ever knowing that their words on social media have consequences?
Hopefully, this is a wake-up call for the games industry at large because at this rate, almost every AAA studio is going to dig themselves into the ground. It really isn't worth it to ruin the livelihoods of all your co-workers just to own someone on Twitter with a petty insult.
They were concentrating on a different type of training, one most people call indoctrination.
I work at ea I literally just finished the training for this today
When you fill the entire position with wannabe politicians and champagne socialists, you get people like them.
I think people in senior positions might have gotten there (or where already in a previous position) before social media was as big a thing so didn't have to do specific training.
Because their arrogant pricks who think themselves as crusaders fighting against a “toxic” culture when in reality they are no different from the stereotypical Christian Right we envision when we think of the 1970s thru the 90s, this is also the reason the younger generation especially men are making a hard turn to the right as every generation rebels in it’s own way against the current culture which is currently on the left side of things. When your a moralist for your own cause and believe those that disagree with you are not only wrong but morally deficient for holding their views points why wouldn’t you feel then need to lecture others on the superiority of your beliefs? Especially when that corporate structure has been happy to support and even repeat ad nauesum woke positions as the way a responsible corporate business should develop their company culture? The corporations are stuck in a catch 22 where they supported in DEI trainings and other events all the things these developers support whom make up a significant portion of their employees whom they are now hostage to and have promoted into senior positions that hold influence and now they cannot just simply undo all this causing significant back lash within their own firm as no one in the Gaming industry (other than indie’s and Nintendo) has been doing very well and we could easily see another great Video game crash like we saw in true 2000s
"Tallentless freaks" always gets me. You poured 8 years in to Concord, and it was delisted in less than a month. I spent 20 minutes in the 2nd grade drawing a picture and its still on my moms fridge. Who's the talentless freak now?
Underrated comment. Had me chuckle real good.
Bro I laughed so hard at that comment my back pop and I coughed literally make roll on the floor laughing
Well, their parents probably did the same and that's why ended up with games like Concord.
Parents are meant teach their children instead of indulging their mistakes.
The drawing in 2nd grade is a free win it's the equivalent of make the the Mona Lisa for your mom of she gonna keep it(if she is a good mom ofc)
Hol up let me confirm with your mom
"The customer is always right, in matters of taste."
I don't know what it takes to make a hostess twinkie. But I do know what it's supposed to taste like.
"Urg. This Twinky is shit!"
"Can you do any better? Do you know what it takes to make a Twinky?"
"No, but this Twinky is literally has diarrhea instead of the regular filling. Do you know how to make a Twinky?"
The customer is always right, especially when the customer is wrong.
It's like they want the gratification of 'subverting expectation' without the work behind to give more than what the customer want and not just something else.
to retake the metaphor 'I couldn't just give you a twinkie, you would have expected it, so instead we filed it with pasta, no where is my money ?'
Yep, if a Twinkie is supposed to be in date but is stale, I know something has gone wrong somewhere in the production process and have every right to complain. I don't have to know exactly where along the line the problem occured...
Nope, considering everyone has different tastes. Can't please everyone, especially the insecure whiny males of today who think they are the center of the universe at that all video games should be from their PoV, and who are apparently massively threatened by anyone who doesn't fall in line behind them.
Game dev here. PREACH. These people are often minor cogs in their studios, too, which is really crazy. It's almost never a developer, it's some fluffy title person who, at most, sits in a lot of meetings with the people who actually do the work, or has a Marketing job like "community manager" (the idea that somebody whose whole role is essentially marketing is engaging with their community in that way is totally disgusting- people like should be blacklisted, imo).
I strongly suspect that all studios are going to put their employees into iron-bound social-media contracts upon employment. Imagine being on the boards of these firms and learning that a project that cost millions, where most of the decisions were good, they were on time and within budget... was destroyed by a handful of tweets. The big money people who Producers call every day to secure funding for these projects are going to demand huge changes after the debacles of this year.
Well when your stuido dies because the Publisher pulled the plug. At least you know who to blame.
Welp, more often than not, those games aren't good. So nothing of value is lost in that case.
I take a firm stance on not buying games from people who actively hate me.
Mouthwash dev is actively encouraging to pirate his game. The game is good, no one asked that adult man to go cry online to ruin his own product, yet he did and he always will be remembered for this.
Very easy decision tbh.
they want to see you depopped actually
wise decision.
I wish this applied to people and sports.
It's funny how fans will buy tickets, jerseys, pay for extra TV channels for an organization that despises them, their way of life, and donates to politicians who want them gone.
One would assume those devs would know: Social media likes from your peers will not pay your bills once the studio gets dissolved.
Pride cometh before the fall. Many people can't see past their pride to see something logically.
I think they know 100%, they just don't care because the have deluded themself into thinking that it's the "right" virtuous thing to do.
Sky is the limit when you don't give a shit! -Johntron
You would think indie companies would know better than stupid corpos. But no.
Sadly there is a sizable portion of society that thinks “clout” will somehow put food on the table.
As a software developer with experience in game development-having worked on engines and tooling for companies like id Software-it's never been my primary domain, which makes all of this utterly insane to me. If someone in my industry tried to pull this kind of stunt with an enterprise product, they’d be flayed alive-assuming they weren’t in a C-suite position (and even then the investors and the board of directors would likely throw a huge fit).
That said, I can empathize with where some of the defensive or hostile behavior in game development comes from. When you’ve worked on a project for years, often as part of a large team, it becomes deeply personal. If it’s met with lukewarm or negative reception upon release-especially when your own ideas are central to the final product-it’s hard not to take it personally. This is also why you rarely see junior developers lashing out on social media; they typically don’t have as much creative investment or “skin in the game.” The ones speaking out tend to be team leads or C-suite executives who have significant input and, by extension, greater exposure.
The problem is exacerbated by the bubble that exists in the games industry. Prior to release, developers often hear endless praise from reviewers who hail their game as groundbreaking. Then, when the game gets trashed in user reviews or fails to meet expectations, there’s a jarring dissonance. This disconnect leads to blaming consumers rather than reviewers. After all, reviewers have a symbiotic relationship with these companies-they can’t be fully honest without risking future access to games. Consumers, on the other hand, are simply paying customers with no such dependencies.
Take the recent "Dragon Age" game as an example. Reviewers hyped it up as a "return to form," but it turned out to be a lackluster product. The discrepancy between what “industry experts” claim and what players experience is stark, and it’s easy for developers to side with the experts. Breaking this toxic cycle would require massive systemic change, but I doubt it’ll happen unless the entire industry collapses. That collapse might not be a bad thing-AAA studios are already being outperformed in many ways by indie developers who deliver innovative, polished experiences.
The saddest part is that the individuals engaging in these behaviors represent a small, vocal minority. Most developers just want to do their jobs and create something they’re proud of. But imagine being a new dev, signing on with a dream AAA studio, only to find yourself underpaid, overworked, and stuck in a crunch-heavy environment. You also have to deal with fragile egos at the top while struggling to get your ideas implemented. Sometimes, the tools themselves are a nightmare, and the workplace culture can be outright toxic. Yet you persist because it’s your dream-what you’ve always wanted to do.
It’s no wonder the industry fosters so much cynicism. For many, it’s akin to being in an abusive relationship: you stay because you love what you do, even as the reality of your situation erodes that passion bit by bit. And then of course you blame the consumers because they are just neck bearded gamers after all... It couldn't be that the problem is with you and the culture that has been fostered by these toxic companies.
And that’s why you don’t work for a publicly owned company. Stuck between a rock and a hard place
These companies fostered these relationships with reviewers though. An individual developer might not know or recognize this but Bioware WANTED reviewers to say that VG was a 'return to form'. They wanted this because they knew that it would play over well with an audience that wanted that to be true. Reviewers said this because Bioware wanted them to say it. These companies created the bubble and they did it with intent because it was actually beneficial for a few years before it became too obviously predatory to the consumer-base. It's unfortunate that there are devs at these companies that don't understand that their own company has created the toxic positivity feedback loop that they are experiencing the shock of but that's the reality of the situation and their actions are only further entrenching those underpinnings.
This is the real reason why I want to make games independently. I have encountered bad corporate clients, they are fragile and they have 0 skills. If you work for someone else, there will be a situation where personal goals are not in line with the company's goals. The irony is that people with power do not have skills. They will influence others in a personal way. Then everything will become worse and worse. I like to give opinions and criticize, but because of this, I found that I am not suitable for working in a company. Because the company has a rule not to criticize. If you criticize it, you will be fired. It's a bad situation.
You're not wrong, but this highlights a deeper issue within the industry as a whole. The symbiotic, and often parasitic, relationship between reviewers and game developers has been entrenched for decades. Many developers entered the field long after these dynamics became standard, assuming this was simply how the industry operates. In gaming, a single negative review can make or break the reviewer's career-a level of impact not seen in many other fields (though they aren't entirely immune to similar corruption). At its core, the idea of reviewing a product received for free is inherently flawed. No matter how well-intentioned the reviewer, some level of bias is inevitable.
"Reviewer" opinions aren't worth used toilet paper. These people are ass kissers who often don't even have to pay for the games they review. They're shills. The only opinions you should be concerned with are of us real players out here paying for this stuff. Thats it. You guys are gonna learn this one way or another.
No, you are not the only one who thinks so. I honestly cannot understand why so many developers (especially AAA) would deliberately suffocate their own game.
It’s easy. They think being “trendy” on X is good for them, but completely forget writing something stupid can tank sales for your ENTIRE COMPANY.
Hope mid management and publishers realise dumb people deserve to get fired.
@@abhayprabhu8951 It has nothing to do with being trendy.
They were paid handsomely for pushing the agenda. They don't care much about sales numbers. They care more about brainwashing as many people as possible. That's why they're hijacking the most loved franchises.
They're just developers. They only survive in the workplace if they toe the line.
Most developers just do what they're told. It's just a job to them.
there is a disconnect with workplace groups anyone who has ever had a fulltime job with a ton of forced overtime they become your family for a wile and workplace culture becomes normal and they think thats everyone else aswell so when your only around that ll the time they think its normal
@@Knights_of_the_Nine fair enough! But an org has to PR train their employees. I’ve worked for around about 5 years now, and in both companies I worked with, we were allowed to criticise internally, but never on public platforms. This goes for both internal company issues, and customers + competitors.
From the wishlist onto the ignore list.
same.. same.
good one
100%
“By the power bested in me, I now pronounce you: Blocked and Deleted! You may now Kiss my Ass!!” Was an amazing phrase I heard from a friend several years ago, and is so much more prevalent now due to all the BS that has arisen from Modern social politics
thanks for reminding me lol, it's on my wishlist right after the announcement. Not anymore.
I truly don't understand how the HR dynamics work on the gaming industry. I work in IT and I'm 100% sure that I could get fired if I insult a client, but these people always get away with it. HOW?!
They pick and choose is why. Which means HR is worthless.
Because it literally doesn't matter if their games sell. These companies get obscenely huge investments from venture firms and AMC's like Blackrock, Fidelity, etc.
Anyone ever noticed that those people lashing out against their audience are never actual programmers but always Art Directors, Narrative Design, Community Managers etc.? Just a strange observation I noticed.
Because programming is a logic based field, and so programmers think logically
Probably the same ones forcing shitty narratives in games, cause their voice is loud, while the actual ground team like the programmers, just want to go to work and do the job
No, it makes sense. An artist would rather destroy their work of art than have it exposed to people they deem undeserving of their artistic genius. It is a special sort of selfishness, or as LD said, narcissism.
They're just people more adjacent to the audience. Joss Whedon and many of the Diablo 3 team saying 'Fuck that loser' toward the man who created the frachise, David Brevik, on Facebook, is one of those things. The ego of Blizzard guys is sky high - they feel like they're already at the apex on account of where they work.
Do note these are the geniuses who constantly failed to make a PvE mode for Overwatch. For some insane reason they kept trying to make it like World of Warcraft with levels and progression, like little 7 year old Suzie that makes up the audience would be interested in that. All they had to do is make DOOM using their game's assets. And they couldn't even manage that.
Alignment is hard, but some guys are more out of touch than others. Concord's leading green guy looks like he has insect eggs embedded in his arms - that's possibly the least pleasant thing to look at in a lead character that I've ever seen.
Programmers don't have feelings.
One thing I've noticed over the past few years is that politics is increasingly resembling a religion for many people. There has always been some level of blind fanaticism in politics, but it has gotten worse. It’s no longer about aligning yourself with a set of ideas you believe are good for the development or future of the country. Now, it’s become your identity, and changing your opinion or retracting a statement feels like betraying your very essence.
Political ideologies are climbing higher and higher on the priority list for these people, surpassing friends, family, partners, and, as we see now in the world of entertainment, even their work. It doesn’t matter if their family has always been good to them or if they’ve spent eight years working on a project-if any of these things clash negatively with their ideologies, they’ll abandon them and condemn them with all their might.
We’re living in an era of growing and normalized fanaticism, and it’s no longer even tied to religion.
Honestly, it’s frightening.
You know it's all about politics when people start wanting to kill you if you keep insisting that something that is absolutely, positively, absolutely NOT about politics is indeed about politics rather than about being, hoist the flag, blow the trumpet.... JUST A DECENT HUMAN BEING!
This started around 2016. The majority of people are not like that. It's just that the industry of screaming about everything being woke has become a multi-billion dollar industry.
Atheists have a void that Nietzsche calls the God Hole and its often filled with Ideology possesing an indiviual into pathological hysteria
@@khrishpyour comment is useless and addresses none of the excellent points above. Political ideologies ARE becoming a cult and it’s terrifying bc it’s leaving less room for those not politically inclined or logically leaning
It's a cult and an infection that is spreading through our education system and through the Mainstream Media and Hollywood and Big Tech etc etc all powered by entities such as Blackrock with bastards like George Soros making companies have DEI departments etc or they loose money and opportunities. It's a very small minority who have shpit tons of money and power and they have their tendrils in anything that is powerful such as the aforementioned entities above.
For almost 15 years now, any job ive had warned me of what i say and do on the Internet because they can fire anyone of what we said or did and they did not want that to representative of the company. How has devs, writers, actors, etc... been so immune for so long?
It helps when your bosses all agree with the spicy posts you made.
Think about it this way. Concord Devs got paid for YEARS, on a product that didn't even sell. WHOS PAYING PEOPLE!?!?!
Because its aligns with main agenda. That's why. Their goal is to burn gaming industry to the ground.
As long as it's the "correct" opinion, there are no repercussions. Conservative leaning people get fired all the time in this industry for having the "wrong" opinion.
Look at stellar blade. Gamers wanted the sexy outfits back. The devs gave the sexy outfits. The fans wanted a NieR DLC. They gave a NieR DLC. They wanted a photo Mode, they gave a photo mode. The game is over a year old and people are STILL playing the hell out of this single player story game because the devs keep. adding. wanted. Content.
Its not hard!! I don't know why other devs just don't get it.
More concerned with pushing their agenda to a non existent audience than listening to the "actual" audience
Funny how a "goonerslop" game has better pr team and developers than most AAA title companies nowadays. All they did is just shut up and listen to the fans.
Far-leftists being hired by the developer plus DEI being required to comply with ESG criteria. Coporations and financial institutions have to maiintain an ESG score as part of a "financial sustainability" criteria. DEI is a big boost to an ESG score. It's no doubt much cheaper than other options for boosting ESG scores.
@DezaltOfTheDreg its not a gooner slop game though. Women just get inannely jealous when another women fictional or not is prettier than them. Nier and stellar blade have phenomenal gameplay and story. Just because they have sexy outfits doesnt mean its gooner game.
Is it dlc, like more gameplay?
22:10 the other reason BG3 didn't get dragged into the culture war is because there was no insistence by the game that the audience is bigoted or ignorant. They just let it be in the game, a GOOD game.
they did enough gender pandering with their trans charachters and so much sexual diversity, so they were allowed to do other stuff they wanted.
Also, Larian was fairly well able to distance themselves from the extreme DEI components of the game but not putting it in there until WOTC became more involved. Consumers could rationalize that "Dame" Alyin was so insufferable because of WOTC.
Also, the No Alphabets mod removed the vast majority of that nonsense, and left canon gay characters as they are.
Larian needs to be very cautious with their next game, and do 0 virtue signaling and 0 DEI preaching in their game. They will end up on the chopping block all the same I'd they do.
@@hardbrocklife2 lmao
Bg3 focused on gameplay first then added their degenerate content later. Thats why it didn't have as much of a drawback. However I'm now more weary of their games given the kind of people they got working there.
@@hardbrocklife2 You think Dame Aylin is insufferable? I kinda liked her. She's a Korra-type character, burly lesbian, not really sure what you don't like about her.
Real shame that the male conversion mod got removed from NexusMods though.
15:43 They know this, they are not only fully aware of it, they are DOING IT for this precise reason. In their minds they legitimately do not want people to engage with """THEIR""" content because they are so lost - ideologically - so massively radicalized, that they see red. And genuinely believe in their heart of hearts that this is the correct way to act because we are all supposed to be disgusting in their view.
This is the issue with placing activists (or fostering an environment for them such as is visible within Ubisoft) within these studios. Shameless tiny-channel self plug but I made a video on this.. unfair "Demonization" of gamers a couple of days ago for anyone interested.
I think I even used a screenshot from a video of yours from that ubisoft insider you spoke to. Thanks for all the great work you do for the industry & community. 💙
They can think that way. More power to them. But when they are out of a job or even on unemployment, that is their reward.
Customers always got options. Devs usually don't. 1 or 2 bad products and that's it
Some people will say, "Why does it matter? just play the game. " For me, the answer is TIME. I have a full-time job and a family, so I can only play so many games (if any at all). So I want to make sure not only am I not wasting my time with the experience, but I'm not giving my money away to people who hate players. I could, for example, use that money and buy a POE2 early access, or buy a copy of Wizardry (haven't played the older ones). There's a lot of options, not enough time, so I'm always cutting loses.
yeah its like people who say that don't have lives outside of video games or something
the answer is old games, dont even buy it, just download some emulators and enjoy real games
@@PadreMaronnolo sad you get potential legal trouble though. If not the user then the developer
@@Dragor33-rg7xj I'm talking old ass games, not the next cod bro. I'm talking about all the final fantasy previous 14, all metal gears previous 5 all the shooters of the past, og Baldur's gate planescape torment icewindale, I'm talking about all the monster Hunter games previous world
@PadreMaronnolo I do enjoy a lot of the older games, especially rare releases you can only find sailing, but I'd never pirate games, of course. None of us do. Ever.
The major factor that ensured that I would never touch The Last Of Us part 2? Was Neil Druckmann’s online behavior.
And I absolutely loved part 1, now because of him? I have ZERO interest in the IP now.
Also, you can't depict two healthy opposite sexual individuals having romantic interactions. You can have a man chick taking it in the booty thought. At least Deckmans behavior made their agenda readily apparent.
Same background, loved the first game, but the reason I won't touch the second one, was their use of fake cutscenes in order to sell a story that wasn't in the game.
Don’t the other developers at his studio also view him in a negative light? Like he was super controlling or something?
There is only 1 game in the last of us series 👍🏼 all other shit is just garbage
@@wizardwolf1020 After the huge success of LoU 1, something happened behind the scenes during the development of Uncharted 4 resulting in Amy Hennig (a former writer/director from Uncharted 1-3 and Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1, 2, and Defiance) leaving Naughty Dog. Multiple articles reported a rumor that she had been pushed out. And then Bruce Straley also left very early into the development/announcement of LoU 2 with only the thin explanation "needing some time off".
Hollywood tried this already, and it didn't work.
Game devs are just late to the party, because they're not used to being invited to them.
Unprofessionalism is rampant in the gaming industry.
Everywhere, really
Nothing new but now it's worse. Nintendo has always hated its customers after all. Their only saving grace is they make great games that work properly at launch. Well 9 times out of ten. Animal Crossing and Pokemon have had issues.
The gaming industry is full of grown children
That's because Western games aren't made by actual gamers anymore, but by investors.
unprofessionalism? is that what they call mental illness these days?
Whoever thought in this modern era of consumerism that the popular approach to poor product sales was to blame your customer, they need to be fired asap. And then the executives that somehow thought it was a tactic worth doubling down on, despite constantly hemorrhaging sales, also need to be fired.
They must of watched the south park episode of cartman land where he has a theme park "and you can't come".
Everyone in town wanted to go there as a result.
As a gamedev I also think this;
1. If you make a niche game or fail to market your game and reach the audience - that is on you.
2. If you can't make something that connects with your required audience - that is on you.
3. If you won't listen to your audience and are not willing to take in their feedback - that is on you.
4. If the audience leaves you because you insult them - that is on you.
Studios don't deserve any sympathy at all. You are responsible for your own success. If you want to kill your own bussiness, everyone is more than happy to oblige...
It's peak irony: Many games would have sold so much more if the devs did not insult their audience. You don't need to praise me, just avoid insulting me
That this concept is so hard for them to understand, is honestly both sad and funny... Mostly sad I'd say.
Same with Hollywood. You can see the pattern there
I never understand this need to spread the cheeks to woke activists, when they were never going to buy or play the game anyway. It's utter madness.
Imagine you disrespect your customers and still expect them to buy your products.
They're the same kind of people who will bash a group of people and demand that they vote the same way as them.
I'd like to bring over some marketing managers from the '90s. They'd probably think there must have been a communist revolution or something because there's no way those guys could be so sure of their profit if their studio was not state-owned.
@@yarpen26 Ah. But there was a revolution and that revolution is still happening today. It's the era of social media after all.
Yep the worse part is that they never learn from other people mistake.
I keep black listing any company that bad mouth people like this. Im not going to give a single penny to people that hate their consumers or cant accept any form of criticism.
They are not entitled to my money.
Shut up and consume your slop, consumer.
Being a game developer is often a thankless job. But blaming the players only stokes the fires of self-destruction.
Look at games like Stardew Valley, Terraria, and Hollow Knight. The developers just can't help make free, amazing updates. Hell, Terraria had like 6 "final" updates. These games are still loved and not soon to be forgotten.
Not soon, if ever. There always are 'landmark' games for lack of better term and I always hope they'll be immortalized. Like the grandpapi of shooters Halo Combat Evolved or the ubiquitous Command and Conquer from when I was a kid. Even if you didn't like them, even if you didn't play games. You knew about them. Terraria and Stardew is def up there. Hollow Knight? Maybe? I love that game so much, I'd be elated to find out the love is that grand. Even with the whole Silksong thing.
When I was in the Marine Corps, we were regularly lectured about we need to look our best and be on our best behavior everywhere we go, even when home on leave, off-duty, not in uniform, wearing civilian attire. "Everywhere you go, you represent the Marine Corps. Even when you're not on duty. So you WILL dress and behave appropriately at ALL times, even if you're not on duty or in uniform." Ever since the Marine Corps, I've come to have that same view for ALL people of all job titles in ALL industries. For example, and pardon the ramble here: but there's a local restaurant in my neighborhood. The culinary director of the restaurant is a younger progressive woman. Early 30s. She's super stuck up. You know the type. Nose up in the air, acting like her sh*t doesn't stink and like she's better than everyone around her. Smile at her or try to say "Hello" in passing and she will stick her nose up at you and blatantly ignore you. And all this has done is made me not want to buy anything from the restaurant in which she's the culinary director. And I want to yell at her: "You know, even when you're not on the clock and on your own time, you really should be friendly and nice to people in public. The restaurant you work at is very popular in the area and you are publicly known to be the culinary director. So you represent that restaurant, even when you're on your own time. Your stuck up attitude only makes me think: 'F*ck this stuck up person and the restaurant they represent as culinary director.'"
Anyways, pardon the wall of text.
I love the way this was eloquently written and the message it sends. Well spoken, and thankyou for your service.
The Marines stationed in Okinawa need a refresher on that message. Given all the bar fights, DUI, and r@pes.
Oorah!
@@MakerInMotion That's not an Okinawa Marine trait. That's a "jack*ss who snuck into the military" trait. They would've done it as civvies too.
Pardon the wall of text? Hell no i encourage it. More please!
"You, the customer, not only owe us your time and money, if you don't like what we made, you're **insert random ist or phobe here**."
customers: [moves on to another company and is surprised by a way better product]
also customers: papa's got a brand new bag....
Literally the "Don't ask questions! Just consume product and get excited for new product!" meme.
Yes if I ever create a product myself I'll be darned sure to NOT hire any crazy political whackos. Also I would try my best to not use real life politics in my product too! Fantasy is for escapism from the real world. You must have some serious main character syndrome to think fantasy has to incorporate your shitty real life political opinions...
Fair trade to me. I dont care being called racist by actual racist and idiots and I got to save 60 or 70 dollars.
Only one that wins is people like myself lol.
The concord devs were the worst, calling the potential customers "freaks". Shocking!!
sounds like they're projecting
That tweet with the line "I mean, I can guess what it takes to make a Hostess Twinkie, but I don't work in the factory, so what the hell do I really know? Not a lot." Got me thinking, so let's play this game: I don't work in a bakery, I barely know the steps necessary to make bread, so if you asked me to do so I would probably fail spectacularly at making a loaf of bread. At the same time, however, I know that there is a vast difference between a loaf of bread and a brick painted to look like bread. The same logic applies to games: I may not know how to make a game, but I do know the difference between a proper video game and a piece of propaganda trying to preach a message to me under the guise of a game.
Agreed. Someone else said "I may not know how to make a Twinkie, but I sure as hell know what one should taste like." Which fits basically every product, really. Its not for the consumer to understand the process, all that matters for us is the end result. And if the Twinkie maker is caught spitting into the mixer, you should maybe think twice about eating it.
This is Emil Pagliarulo we are talking about, he is as smart and deep as the stories he writes.
We also have taste buds; kinda hard to bite into a brick and actually believe it's edible, let alone tasty.
“You don’t know what it takes to make a game!” -someone who doesn’t know what it takes to make a game that sells
I can't fly a plane, but if its spinning in a fireball 800km/h towards the ground, I think its fair to say ''Something ain't right''
When did "Customer is King" turn into "Gamers are Chuds" ?
in recent years, since 2019-ish i believe.
When their actions started having consequences.
To be fair? You guys have been assholes way before any kind of culture war.
@@milanbaros2005 Ill give you a clue, its starts with Z and ends in a quest of depression.
Since capitalist players started asking to be morally and emotionally recognised, not just serve the customers
Game devs talking down to their customers was learned from movies like Star Wars doing it almost a decade ago. It's always obnoxious but, it's saved me plenty of money.
I can remake that exact same tweet from my perspective as a consumer/gamer:
"eh, I don't really care. it was a huge labour from me and a lot of other talented people to earn they salary at their jobs making a steady income. Why would I care about a bunch of self-inserted narcissists hating on us gamers? I'm sure I saved money not buying your propaganda piece-of-crap, and I wouldn't trade it for nothing."
Exactly. Why should we care about the jobs of people who don't care about keeping it? If they cared about their jobs they wouldn't act like they do.
We have to care about the product, not the sexual orientation of the devs
I think the reason for this behaviour is very simple: emotional immaturity. Instead of thinking and acting logically, they let their emotions dictate all their actions. These people never grew up.
Let's not underestimate the influence of the YT culture. For some reason, I believe corporations genuinely bought into their employees being allowed to talk crap about their audiences was actually "charming" because that's what dem kids like doing nowadays.
Nobody is rational. It's all emotions, all the way down.
These ppl took an "Emotional Intelligence" class in college and now think they are masters of the human psyche. So sad that they still don't know how to interact with common desiciency.
OK I'm going to go on a bit of a rant here, because I'm an old fart who was trained very strictly to follow the old "customer is always right" chestnut and to *understand* what it actually means.
I think a lot of the problem is the old phrase "Rule 1: The customer is always right, Rule 2: if customer is wrong, see rule 1" is taken too literally. It's not and never was, mean to gaslight customer service workers to insinuate the customer is literally correct all the time. That's just stupid.
Thing is, modern CS workers don't see the nuance of that "golden rule" of customer service. It does not and has never meant the customer is literally right and can do no wrong... it means you have to ... HAVE TO... act in a way that makes the customer FEEL like they are right. It takes care, nuance, compassion and sometimes the ability to throw the darkest of shade and make it sound like a compliment. It means being flawlessly respectful even if you DON'T respect the customer.. Why? Because those snotty Karens and outright assholes PAY YOUR RENT. If you drive your customers away by giving them those richly deserved serves, they simply - and rightly - stop giving you money. If you spit in their salad, they stop buying your fucking salads.
ANYONE in customer service (and this includes healthcare, food prep, recreation, game development and media) needs to understand and fucking accept that as shitty as some customers are, they need customers FAR more than the customer needs them. As much as it sucks, your customers (often) reprehensible personality or political stance is none of your business, you still have to be respectful. That's just how it works. Even if they yell, even if they bring the politics up, even if they show disrespect, YOU (the CS rep) have to lead by example.
And not for nothing, but if you FALSELY accuse your customers of being "porn brained bigots" when they ARE the minorities you're pretending to represent, you not only alienate THAT customer, but also their *entire* community.
I can't count the amount of customers and patients I've literally hated with ever fibre of my being, but by being polite and making THEM feel like the priority they are, they not only stayed loyal to the practice I worked at, but also started to become better human beings because I treated them like people instead of the trash they were emulating. Most people aren't actually that evil, they just want to be heard. As a customer service worker (and yes devs fit this as much as they want to think they are 'godly artistes') your job is to make THEM happy, not to 'own the chuds'.
Does it suck being polite to an asshole? Absolutely. But they might just learn from your example while you keep your temper, and at least you get their money. And if all else fails, the satisfaction of a burn that only becomes apparent two days later while they sit on the loo is MUCH more satisfying then yelling at them in the moment and becoming just as bad as they are.
TLDR: Most customers will refuse to buy from customer service people who make it obvious they hate them.
End rant.
It's because the customer isn't always right in the literal sense, but they are always right when it comes to what they want from the product. If gamers say they want (insert game feature), then going against what they want is just pissing away your own time and money. It doesn't matter what the game devs want, it's what gamers want that matters.
I read every word of this, and I’ve never heard this summed up half as well as you have here. No notes, 11/10
The full saying (allegedly) is "The customer is always right in matters of taste", i.e. the customers know what they want and selling them something they don't want or shaming them for not buying as-is won't work.
Games companies I've worked for that are successful all have internal policies that basically say "you don't work for us on social media. if you say you work for us and make claims for the company, you're fired". Only people with the training and subsequent contract can claim they work for the company.
YES. This.
companies letting their employees go online and say whatever they want under the company banner even though "opinions my own" has been nothing but a disaster for studios, i miss when I had no clue what the developers of a game thought and just let the art speak for itself, but they seem hellbent on not allowing that to happen anymore
"companies letting their employees go online" wtf
Why are you soft?
if you cant handle an employee talking about their individual frustrations on their individual accounts, you cant handle life. You can dig into every company's employees social media see every kind of person venting about criticism.
Who cares? lmao
@@dondahighhh12you don’t understand at all, developers shouldn’t be able to go out and say whatever they want when using a company account, and these developers should realise that what they say can negatively effect the product.
@@dondahighhh12 when leftwingers do insane shit is no big deal, when rightwingers do it they need to get fired Instantly right ? Stop fucking Jewing thank god Gen Z and Alpha are waking the fuck up.
@@dondahighhh12 Bruh, you're out here acting like public relations isn't a legitimate way to make or lose millions of dollars and ruin the livelihood of every other employee just because the low iq actual softest one couldn't handle their feminized need to share their feelings as a hater.
@@dondahighhh12 Dumb ass detected, opinion ignored.
I think what's most important with this is that the guy has a leadership position. If a random developer, even a senior or minor lead says stupid things on twitter that can pass.
But as the art director? You're the boss of other people. You have to show respect not just to your customers but your coworkers. If you want to talk smack do it under a pseudonym not under the same name that is connected to your company.
18:58 jokes on him, I’m already comfortable not owning any Ubisoft games
Saying that as a creative myself, the "I don't want people who don't share my opinions to enjoy what I've created" attitude is the most egotistic thing ever.
It's supposed to be a humbling privilege to successfully craft something and being able to share it with the world.
Plus, once you've done that, it's not "yours" anymore. You can't control what people will do with it /say about it.
That's the risk that all artists have to live with. If you can't handle that, then don't share what you create.
Damn, well said sir/madam (/they?)
@@carlobighouse5434 Definitely not "they". But yeah thanks!
Besides why would you not want the people who disagree with you to enjoy your art? Maybe your art might subtly encourage them to see things the way you do, as long as it's not actively trying to in a militant and hamfisted way. The real problem is most artists are insufferably full of themselves.
@@prettycool_guy3516 "The real problem is most artists are insufferably full of themselves"
That's not really my experience. Most great artists I know are chill, sensitive, always open to constructive criticisms, and often introverted. When you get to a certain level, you *have* to put your ego aside and listen to your peers and art directors, for instance, if you want to grow and succeed. Real artists know that learning is never over. In a thriving creative environment, there's something to gain from everyone around you.
The full-of-themselves insufferable ones, again in my experience, are these:
- Those that gain a certain level of notoriety/fame in the industry or on social media, and make that persona more important than the art itself (back to ego again)
- "Idea people", ie. those that have little to no practical skills, so they cope by acting like their big brain ideas and concepts are groundbreaking (tons of extroverts here)
- Marketing people. Actual scum of the creative world. They're like the "idea people" pushed to its limit. Truly insufferable.
@@thisisfyne "The full-of-themselves insufferable ones, again in my experience, are these:
- Those that gain a certain level of notoriety/fame in the industry" Ok so basically any successful artist? :D
Nothing beats when New World developers told us that they wouldn't add mounts because they spent a lot of time designing the environment and they wanted us to "experience it" on foot.
And where is that game now? Oh yea....haha
lmao
Game devs are overly cocky these days, they act like Consumers are being held at gun point to buy their slop. But when we don't and their slop inevitably fails, they're genuinely aghast as to how it possibly could've happened and sit there scratching their heads for the next handful of years until the next slop comes out.
It’s almost as if they don’t realize the breadth of choice that their potential customers have nowadays when it comes to gaming. It’s pretty wild.
" Consumers are being held at gun point to buy their slop." What does this even mean? What game do you feel so threatened that you have to buy? If anyone is threatening you for not buying a game, report it to the police
that tis bcause thy know dc gov will force you to buy and sell, or go to jail. that is their world plan.
@@wonderwhyiwonder3458 Did you miss the "They act like" part of that sentence orrrr...
@@yosup7400 Okay, how do they act like that?
This is the case across all of entertainment. "This movie is not for you" is one of the dumbest things ever said prior to a new release.
Wait ? What movie ? That's dumb indeed
@BenMojo. Barbie, Wicked, She Hulk, honestly, can't do a big ass list because i memory hole that shit after reveling in their dumbness.
Movies and TV shows are made to try to win awards instead of winning viewers
The counter-argument to "this movie is not for you" is "a thing for everyone is a thing for no one."
If you need to alienate one potential audience to more fully engage the one you want to be your rabid fans, that's an acceptable sacrifice.
Tbf its completely valid to make movies that are not for you. What isnt though, is taking franchises you like and THEN remaking them to not be for you.
Only one thing you got wrong, Baldur's Gate DID get alot of "anti-woke" backlash before it came out. From all the youtubers you would typically expect, the only difference between that game and alot of others is that once it came out it was SO good that public perception would quickly turn against you if you tried to complain about it being too "woke" so they stopped and moved on.
I've been a Larian fan for a LONG time, since Divinity 2 (not original sin 2, I mean like the old original xbox game) and I was there for the entire Baldur's Gate 3 beta/early access period and there was plenty of "anti-woke" discussion and plenty of "Wow all their female characters are hideous" discussion. Again it all changed once the game came out and it was actually amazing, all the praise drowned out the anti-woke grifters.
The ones that weren't grifting, like Synthetic Man, are still adamant to this day about BG3 being a woke dumpster fire and it's very funny to see x3
But at least he's honest in his beliefs I guess and not just grifting for views.
Good products get anti-woke backlash, but it tends to die out when there isn't a wider negativity for them to leech off of. It's why Star Wars' "The Acolyte" is still getting anti-woke backlash every now and then, while Andor, which is arguably more woke in a more substantial way (ie, progressive political messaging rather than just POC characters), barely gets any. The Acolyte is just not a great show, so the anti-woke types have negativity to latch onto and leech off of, while Andor is a very good show, with the only major legitimate complaint coming from people without the attention span to watch a slower paced show like it, so there isn't much negativity for anti-woke types to feed on.
We see the same thing with games. BG3 may have gotten anti-woke backlash, but it's a great game (at least it seems like it, I haven't played it yet), so there isn't enough negativity for this backlash to live on in the wider gaming community, so it's banished to the shitty chud spaces instead. The Last of Us 2 had more genuine issues, and more genuine negativity around it, so the anti-woke people had a disgruntled audience to leech off of.
Some other examples, since the comment currently below this one reminded me: Celeste, Stardew Valley, and Hollow Knight all have "woke" content. Celeste's protagonist is trans, kinda decided after the fact, but in a way that makes sense, considering the lead dev based Madeline's struggles on her own struggles, which she later realized were caused in great part because she is trans. Stardew Valley has all romance prospects basically being bi, but beyond that some have a bit of a content specifically related to being gay (like Alex, if you romance him as a male character). Hollow Knight has at least two gay relationships (Nailsmith and Sheo, and Ze'mer and the Traitor's Child). Yes how much anti-woke backlash do these games get? I haven't seen a lot, personally. Celeste got some, but positivity seems to have pushed all that out quite effectively.
Ultimately, most of the anti-woke complaints are horseshit. Sure, sometimes things genuinely get too preachy, or it's clear that the creators have forsaken quality in favor of being inclusive or something like that, but most of the time, that isn't the case, so then anti-woke backlash NEEDS wider negativity to sustain itself, because if people enjoy the product, they'll stop and think about the anti-woke backlash, and realize it's bullshit.
@@katxiii3660 Popular anti-woke views are interesting because they generall present themselves as only caring about it because it makes the product bad. It makes for an interesting self-fulfilling prophecy: woke thing failed because woke people shoehorned it in with bad quality! This other things was good despite its wokeness due to high quality so we don't care!
The worst part is when someoen claims "well no one ever hated X thing because X thing was good!". That seems to not be true much of the time but it's easy to accept as a throwaway line that is actually central to the thesis.
I don't want political views to undermine quality of products or content. I also don't think we can always tell when it will until after the fact.
games... created by geniuses, inherited by idiots
Ain't That the truth
the story of many businesses
Hence why they went from pale and male to "diverse" and female in the process lol.
About Mouthwashing, from what I understand Martin is a freelance composer that made the music. Him saying that it's "His game" is like John Williams saying he made Star Wars or Jaws. Did he help? No doubt about it, but it's not his game. He's just some freak connected to the company that doesn't know when to shut up. The actual devs went after people for harassing an artist, and then Martin came in and undermined everything they said.
Unfortunately, Martin is one of the co-founders of Wrong Organ, the team behind the game... so he has power within the company.
@@FrahdChikun God damn that's even worse. Company account says one thing, then the co-founder saying something else. Business sense of a dead raccoon.
@@cobnor at least a dead Raccoon can only do one thing - decompose.
@@chriswihulua decomposing raccoon provides vital food and resources to multiple parts of the ecosystem. It's far more than could be said for many of the leeches in the game industry.
Never forget that one of these "consultants" had in his mission statement was "to destroy the games industry" like everyone would glaze over that tidbit like he was some genius super villain.
If they can't put their agenda into our games, then they'll buy the rights for beloved IPs (which mind you, the FUCKING GOVERNMENT IS FUNDING THIS HORSESHIT!!) to commit character assassination after character assassination and wear beloved characters in games like they are a cosplay for them to self insert themselves and force us to like how toxic these basketcases are.
...they hate us for existing before them in their new obsession. A community that has a more dedicated following for the lore of a series than these tourists have for letting a traditional franchise stay "stagnant" for a "modern audience"
AAA developers nowadays no longer make game by gamers. They’re made by activists.
It's not just AAA games. If you think AAA games pander to the snowflakes, go on the forums for indie cozy games.
@@SimuLord The nature of indie games invites diversity. There are games made by one dude or a small group of hobbyists. So, of course you'd find all types of games. You would have activist games as well as dark, 18+ games. They are not trying to sell millions of copies anyway. For someone hoping to sell 1000 copies as a sign of success, the modern audience might just be enough. However, if you are a big company with dozens, or hundreds of employees, you should have other priorities and a far better control over loud-mouth employees.
@@khosrowzare8301 Very true, and I am glad that those small niche groups have games they can play the same way I can play games that overlap with my interests and likes.
But in cozy games specifically, there's starting to become a real problem with low-effort games that leverage that niche audience for easy money (there's an entire subgenre of Gaming TH-cam making video essays fretting about the decline in quality of Stardew-likes over the past couple of years that says a lot of the same things the "chuds" do but from the angle of being offended over being blatantly pandered to at the expense of getting actual good games.)
@@SimuLord This is mostly the product of the technological advancements. 10-15 years ago, if you wanted to make any game, you had to make most assets by hand. That meant a significant time investment that prevented someone from doing it on a whim. Even activist games had to be made by actual serious activists who were willing to spend months of their time to prove a point. Now, you have access to vast libraries of ready-made assets at a pittance, free-to-use game engines (at least for the scale of these games), and now even AI to make a lot of the code and art for you. So, it is possible for someone to get drunk, get in a fight on Twitter and decide to scrab together a "game" to prove a point (a bit of an exaggeration but ...). And there will be someone milking it for clicks on TH-cam or Tiktok, probably earning more than the one who made the game.
It's the same for everything: stories, news, art, movies, clips, music, and even opinions on the internet: a vast quantity, most of which are garbage. You just have to be clever enough to find the gems and ignore the rest. If you can't? Well, remember that there were people who bought Concord and Dustborn. Media literacy skills have never been more important than right now.
@@khosrowzare8301 To your last point, that needs to be screamed from the rooftops.
As for people who bought Concord, if the estimate of "a million bucks at $40 a pop" is to be believed, that's roughly the population of the small town I grew up in (~25,000; my hometown had a population floating around 24,800 for fifty years before a recent slate of new housing was built in the 2010s.)
Compared to the overall gaming market, as with my hometown compared to the United States or even the state of Massachusetts, that's a speck of dust on a telescope looking at deep space.
Maybe we do live in an idiocracy… At least they do.
We’ve lived in Idiocracy since 2016
No we do and the first sign was the rise in croc popularity
Reality is what you make of it
_their_ reality is idiocracy
_our_ reality is mad max
@@kitestar hell yeah
It's what plants crave!
Video starts at 7:15
If I owned a dev studios, or any company period......I would have a policy written in the employee handbook that stats that you as an employee are a representative of the company no matter what roll you have, and if it is found out that you as an employee are not represent the company in a professional manner online on any social media account or website the consequences would be immediate termination.
People can ultimately say what they want on social media, however when your comments result in potential loss of business you also have to suffer the consequences of your actions.
Not sure what the law is about someone intentionally causing damages in potential sales when it comes to these devs alienating their audience through politics.
well in the normal world it's already the case. If you fuck up on social media and bring the company image down with yourself, you can generally pack. But apparently in the videogamedev sphere it's not normal?
The problem with this is that HR can then claim you "violated their social media policy" and leave you fighting the state unemployment office in the middle of a pandemic for four solid months before finally winning your case and getting a large lump-sum back unemployment payout just in time for the rent payment that would've left you homeless if there weren't an eviction moratorium in place due to said pandemic.
Not that I have any personal experience with a scenario like that, oh no...
You have to have a education and degree to do any of that lol
That's ArenaNet. It's a very progressive company that inserted same-sex marriage and a non-binary NPC into a fantasy MMORPG, but attacking a player in the community on social media? A writer in ArenaNet did exactly that in 2018 and she got publicly fired. A (male) colleague who defended her got fired in the same way too.
The digital footprint training comment is very good advice. When I was in the military, we were explicitly told that we represent the military, even when out of uniform because the people who live around military bases learn how to tell. So many devs think that they're invincible because "my opinions are my own" while actively advertising that they work for whatever company, and end up costing their employer massive amounts of goodwill, which leads to loss of sales.
It should be common sense, but i guess that training is necessary at these companies too.
And Microsoft has already been shutting down studios as well. The Avowed devs can't afford for their game to not do well. Yet the art director is driving players away from the game.
@@fall-neckthetallneck2977 To be fair, I see it only as a minor factor. They do drive away SOME players, but most of "lost revenue" is gonna be the "day one on GamePass" thing, in my opinion. Who in their right mind would pay 90 dollars when you subscirbe for 15 and have whole month to finish it. Also: most customers don't care about politics. The market always corrects itself so in the end, the only thing that matters is if the game is good or not. GTA V had tons of controversies, Hogwarts Legacy, even Baldur's Gate was dragged into "it's so woke" ""controversies"", yet the only thing that mattered in the end was the quality.
A lot of creators don’t understand that “my opinions are my own” doesn’t really mean anything.
People know that creators put part of themselves into their work even if they don’t intend to. Creator’s feelings, thoughts, views, etc all affect how and what they create. So if they say stuff on social media that reveals views and intentions that people don’t like, people are going to assume that some of that is in their creation (games, movies, etc) and then distance themselves from it.
It's the same for a lot of jobs. If you are wearing your name badge or your place of employment was known, you speak on behalf of the company. This is why cancel culture was so destructive. Saying even the most mildly offensive thing got people fired from their jobs. In many of those cases, people had to active search their public social media's if it wasn't immediately available. It's honestly amusing that this is something that doesn't affect the games industry. Amusing but distressing.
13:14 - Boom. There it is, in a tidy, summarized package of truth. Devs would be well-advised to heed.
Every job role I went into, there was always an initial performance introduction done where expectations were set on both sides.
I've had bosses who were on the other side of the country supervising my performance. One of my bosses flew into my location to even welcome me into my role.
I will never forget what he said, "[Insert name], my first visit is for free and to meet you. If I have to fly out again here, there's a problem and we will have to deal with that problem."
He was a very supportive supervisor, but set the expectation that we are professionals in a professional field.
Unfortunately, passive aggressiveness reigns in many areas and too many leaders apply a swath of changes to address 1-2 folks not adhering to policy. I've never agreed with that because you are punishing the good folks with that bad, which only erodes morale and productivity.
For the people who are out-of-control using social media and destroying the company, make an example out of them to set discipline back.
Before anyone says this is harsh, those out-of-control individuals are affecting the livelihoods of their co-workers, many of which have families too.
The mouthwashing incident is even more mind blowing than Avowed one. I mean, you literally have a guy with 3.2 million subscribers saying he wants to try your game and promoting it for free. Instead of engaging with him and thanking him you attack him and call him anti-gay? When he has literally defended gay people on hundreds of separate occasions!? These people are so ignorant, obnoxious and annoying man. It’s one thing if you don’t wanna thank him. It’s another to attack him for no freaking reason when he just promoted your game for absolutely no reason. No reason at all. That’s the crazy part. Until these companies and Studios start letting people go for doing this it’s going to continue. If I was running a studio and one of my employees did that I would immediately fire him. Because that creates more audacious employees. You have to set an example.
It's not good enough for these people. Asmon need to go above and beyond the call of duty to defend gay people at his own expense. They are the only people who deserve it in their minds.
I think it’s completely reasonable to not wanna associate with that swamp troll
@@ananimeprofilepicture.9876 that "swamp troll" has more common sense then the composer.
@@Zettymasterdebatable
@@ananimeprofilepicture.9876maybe, but even if that’s true the dev tweeting about him associates him more with the game than just not saying anything
The thing is, this honesty while devastating for them is only of benefit to us, because the ones who do this also tend to be the ones making bad games, because everything else takes second seat to their "message".
Honestly, I'd rather focus on your rad range of metal band shirts than the current AAA gaming slop
I couldn't agree more Kind Sir!
Here here
It is a pretty sick shirt.
People will do literally anything for “The Message”(tm), it’s truly unbelievable cult-like behavior
Well, let’s be real:
First, except for the cases where small teams are making the games, any inclusion of DEI stuff in games is driven by executives listening to marketing. They’re doing it because they think they will make more money. They’re wrong, but they weren’t doing it out of ideology.
Second, there absolutely is a cult in this country, and we just made its leader president.
the Right wing def has their moments...but as someone who is pretty much right down the middle, the left is losing their fucking minds and are acting like the moral police and it's disgusting because they cant see themselves
That's because they are a cult.
HOW DARE YOU Not quietly and obediently consume the product. Thats what these psychos are saying, without saying.
It's not really intentional - it's a part of a greater symptom of narcissism, echo chambers, and mental illness. The art being produced is developed under a philosophy of projection instead of a philosophy of aesthetics. This is a common phenomenon from a historical context. Read "Political Ponerology" for a deeper dive.
Before Hanson opened his mouth, Obsidian had probably one of the best reputations in the industry.
Avowed would have sold wall based entirely on that reputation.
Maybe, but considering they put LGBTQ+ as the main tag on Steam, even in front RPG, is still a red flag.
@@aaronschmitz241 These tags are put in by the community. If enough people give a game a tag, it will appear on the shop page. The dev can choose to have it removed, though, as far as I know.
I mean their recent gaming products weren't outstanding and there are nearly zero people still there who made Fallout New Vegas, but Avowed had both hype and potential. Too bad they flushed it all down the drain. I've heard that they even completely revamped the game halfway through development. Just looking at their first trailer the mood is way more dark and gritty. Now we have a cartoon pronoun orgy, so I believe it. Obsidian probably already got got rid of everyone not enthusiastically woke who even had the ability to make a good game. To bad so sad. On the other hand I cannot wait for more info on the Wayward Realms, a spiritual successor to TES: Daggerfall made by actual leads of that game.
The funny thing is IMO The outer worlds was really mid, so I wasn't gonna anyway.
@@dojelnotmyrealname4018 This, no one was talking about the game after a month after release, this doesnt happen with great games. Probably because most of the core devs left, so its Obsidian in name only, like Bioware.
I was interested in Avowed, but it's been removed from my Steam Wishlist and placed on Ignore, exclusively because of the toxicity from the Devs.
Exactly, what I did as well... Sorry, but they do not deserve our time and our money
Crazy how you group an entire team together because of one guy but they group you together you get upset isn't that funny?
@@redninja3056 Brainlet take to equate being lambasted for being part of an unaffiliated demographic and people not buying your game because a leader at the company making the game actively hates a majority segment of your would-be audience.
The quality of the game may not be that good. The actual graphics are weird.
@@redninja3056 Difference is, my money is important to him, whereas their opinions are not important to me. See how that works?
People on the internet can scream, rant, and call ME every ist and phobe in the book and I just shake my head and move on with life, unaffected because I am not representing a service or product for sale. HE, on the other hand is representing a product for sale, and by attacking his customer base, HE is the one who is affecting his entire company's bottom line, therefore HE is affecting his team far more negatively than anyone else.
All I have done is called him a dumbass, and decided to withhold any financial contribution to further his career. The fact that his team is silent or has come out and supported tells me that they too are unworthy of my future business. His team is not MY concern...he's the one that threw them under the bus, not me.
Back in the days companies told their employees to shut their mouths and not cause damage to the company to get fired. It's best to keep it neutral or not say anything at all.
Its really weird to me how some random composer is just willing to sacrifice potential sales because a streamer they dont like shows interest in playing the game and thinks that harrasing artists is bad
Apparently he’s one of the cofounders but I’ve only seen it on linkedin and not the credits
Hes not then@@merchant_of_kek5697
@@merchant_of_kek5697 It's not in the credits of the game? Mofo really grifting and is aware by claiming he's a cofounder.
Back in the day there was a certain amount of professionalism required to work on massive projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars…
There is nothing wrong with keeping you’re mouth shut, in fact it’s a bit of a lost art nowadays haha
Half of wisdom is experience. The other half is knowing when to keep your mouth shut.
It's not like I'm refusing to buy a game because a dev is being an ass hat online, it's just pattern recognition.
I get a whiff of certain things around a game and I can safely assume that game is going to be bad. It just happens that these narcissistic devs are often that first whiff.
That's one of the things that really got GamerGate rolling - the sudden realization that gaming and the adjacent gaming media is somehow the only industry on the planet that lets you get away with openly insulting your own audience to its face. Can you imagine if the editor-in-chief of, I dunno, the Cat Fancy magazine turned around and openly blasted its audience by calling them childless alcoholic hags? She's get strung up on pitchforks and immediately fired+blackballed from the industry along with the rest of the editorial staff who went along with this. But for journos and devs, it's practically normal to call their audience mahoganist incels and tell them to not buy their game. It's practically a surprise when a dev is NOT being an asshole on Twitter. Madness.
> the only industry on the planet that lets you get away with openly insulting your own audience to its face
This is not true. No one should do this but it happens a lot. Food companies call people fat to try to pimp their low fat diets, book companies call people stupid if they don't like books, car companies imply their car is the only manly car to buy, etc. It takes advantage of insecurity to rip off customers and it's done all the time. If you make up a problem you can sell the answer to it.
To be fair, it was also the first time that that particular brand of activist ran into any meaningful opposition to their attempts to colonize a hobby. I think the insults were more of an act of desperation after Plan A failed than anything else. Problem is, they keep trying to boil the frog, despite the frog now being intensely aware of what they are trying to do, so again desperation and, again, insults.
@@Ichthyodactylhonest question, will this madness ever end?
@@jadak100 Depends what you mean by madness. Personally, I think the AAA segment of the industry (and the 'mainstream' games journalism media) is cooked beyond repair. Mourn the loss of the companies that made your favorite games now, get ready to support the companies that rise to the top in the vacuum it creates. The people responsible for the madness will continue to try to proliferate it so we, as conscientious consumers, just need to be vigilant about it and continue to vote with our wallets. I think that the best we can hope for is that the madness will be effectively quarantined into the least relevant corners of the internet and even that may take some time.
@@jadak100 Just a few more high-profile AAA flops, and we might see a repeat of 1983 in our lifetimes.
I wanted to play Avowed but after that art director went crazy, I'll be skipping it. This is happening way too often.
What did he do? And also like.. does one art director really 86 an entire game? Ubisoft is pure cancer, so I won't ever give them a dollar. But one dude wiling out doesn't necessarily get a boycott from me. For whatever that's worth.
Was Buying it to support the Devs... yeah, no more of that 💩
@@josephpaine9195 started rambling about how he couldn't wait for 'his' game to get under Elon's skin, meanwhile he was schizo posting on twitter, after the backlash he ran back to Bluesky. No, one dude doesn't speak for the whole game but have you not been seeing the pattern recently?
Don't worry I hate you guys too so I'll buy it
@redninja3056 You and the dozens of other people like you will surely make the game a success, just like Concord!
We don't hate you guys, we pity you.
As gamers, we also need to hold ourselves accountable on our feedback. We must not be too toxic with our approach. These developers are human beings too and anyone who gets thrown slurs at them would react in a predictable manner.
Especially those idiots that will go as far to use death threats and doxxing they need to be held accountable
I love how in every industry if something fails, it fails, a movies fails, bang, movie sucks and people move on, if a music sucks, it sucks and people move on, but in video games, somehow we have to empathize with developpers because it's hard, what? do they send me heart emoji messages after i come from work? do they think we all live in a peaceful life with no responsibilities and inifinte money? i couldn't careless, all i care about is if a game it's good enough for me to invest my time and money in it, i have no respect for developpers who keep bring out the victim card, they always putting the blame on players nowadays and now they're getting what they deserve, it's simply reaction from their actions.
Reminds me of the Writers' Strike last year. They really wanted to rally the movie-going audiences to their side. Who gives a hoot? Do I get anything out of either the Hollywood writers or Hollywood producers winning the negotiation? I don't see any change in movie quality, that's for sure.
Normally the market would sort itself out, but the staggering amount of DEI money they got prevented it. At least until now. It got to a point that even the infinite money well might dry out, and people legitimately abhor them. And if a few more studios go down, it will be crystal clear even to the most oblivious shareholder that they have to thoroughly clean house. And it will come. Ubisoft is already dead and they absolutely know it. Bioware will be closed after the next Mass Effect flops. Bungie is on borrowed time, and Sony will butcher them when (and not if) Marathon flops.
I’m old enough to remember when the movie Water World came out with the biggest budget ever, at that point, and bombed. Kevin Costner never came out and called me racist or phobic lol.
wdym that's not how it works with movies at all nowadays lmao. This level of egotistical entitlement came from Hollywood if you have been paying any attention over the past 14~ years. It has only in the past 10~ years come to games. Like I don't know what fantasy world you live in where actors and directors for movies are accepting mass criticism on the chin and being like "you know what, yeah we could have done this better know that I see your perspective and understand it more" fuck no. These "me! me! me!' individuals are calling anyone who doesn't agree with X person being casted as a character as racist/bigoted/homophobic/etc. Or if you thought a movie was just bad you're just showing your bigotry and hatred, etc. Like dude did you not see the Minecraft movie drama with Jack Black? The dude is lashing out saying "I just think the backlash we're getting is ridiculous, especially from grown men who don't get that this movie isn't just for them." The movie making industry does in no size shape or form handle criticism well. They do not "move on" they cry and scream and stomp their feet because people dare to criticize their performance in a movie or the movie as a whole.
@@yhormthemidget There is no money infusion in DEI. Not like literally none, but compared to actual costs, income etc in movies DEI is insignificant. They go after these initiatives on the insane promise that it will bring the whole community they pander to into the theater. This never happens. This is a self correcting problem though. When the money continues to not materialize they will move on to the next thing they can try to sell to the studio that will bring all the people in to theaters. to be clear the "they" doing the selling is primarily consultants and some studio execs that get promoted on initiatives like this.
AAA devs are usually overly confident and make unneeded changes to their game or extremely lazy and make zero changes to their game. There’s no in between
Untrue. Both extremes you cited are almost always bad calls from people above them.
@@furrygeckoand yet many of them defend these bad calls with passion. Not just merely nodding your head when your boss talks just so you can keep your job, but going online to defend these bad calls and belittling those who point it out.
@@alexanderchristopher6237True, although often times they have to, if you’re talking about unnecessary changes. If you’re talking about culture stuff, 🤷♂️. I’ve never been on a game that was controversial in a culture war sense.
I wonder who's entitled here if developers are expecting only people they agree with to play their games. This is some off-putting behaviour that I'm astonished no company has made them take responsibility for.
What do they even gain from this? they just lose
he signaled to the pronoun brigade. So smart.
Brownie points from their 'friend group'
money from the j 0 0
Spite. Never underestimate it as a motivator
Perceived clout.
i will never understand why anyone would put their work place in an social media account bio, do people hate having their own information private that much?!
It would appear so.
Same kind of people that get fired or let go from a job and post on linked-in how much they love that company and what an honour it was 😂
in the past the occasional candid comment from a dev telling angry kids to fuck off was refreshing, now it's just an entirely different beast.
At one point I was working on a team of four people for a fortune five hundred company - this team of people were hand selected tech support agents that were allowed to speak online about the company - something even the board of directors wasn't allowed to do. That's because we'd been trained on how to deal with internet interactions, how to not get wound up and get personal, etc. Anyone else doing it was a fireable offense. When did these companies, especially the ones under the umbrella of a global megastudio like Microsoft, just allow people to shoot their mouth off every chance they get about any dumb thing that runs through their brain?
I'm a relatively low-ranking corpo rat. I'm afraid to as much as give a like to an innocuous LinkedIn post for fear of some professional consequences. Meanwhile...
@@yarpen26Stay Free in your Mind Samurai.
Just remember that "devs" is a generic term we use to talk about a development studio. Most of those things come from the company itself and are business related, not necessarily reflecting the developer's (or any other member) vision or opinion. There is always a hierarchy and almost every time the ones that actually make the game have no saying on what will be in the game.
Yeah, I think this is one of the larger things lost in translation during these discussions. Without the transparency to know exactly what each and every person contributed to a given project, it's not like we can ascribe specific game elements to specific individuals. So 'devs' has become a catch-all term for the collective because we simply can't speak with more granularity than that in most cases.
I noticed that these people had the title of developer. But they didn't actually do the work of a developer. It was another group of people who actually did the work.
I work at a reputable brand. The general rule of thumb for social media and the brand?
Don’t.
They have the marketing and PR budget. They don’t need you to muck things up.
Sharing directly posts from the official page/post is fine, but the fact remains that your personal opinions can also affect the brand.
i cant believe that we are at a point where I rather see some games Fail than succeed
15:30 here is one who thinks that way. I used to love Obsidian. I even played Pentiment and loved it. Outerworlds? Very nice for what it is by my standards. Played all the DLC. If I tell you that now I couldn't care less about Avowed you know you did something messed up.
What's happening in gaming is basically failed chefs yelling at customers for not eating their terrible food. It's Amy's Baking Company, on a massive industry-wide scale.
What these devs don't understand is that if players don't buy their studio's game, they'll simply buy a game from another studio with no strings attached. The devs' outrage won't disrupt anything in the players' gaming schedules. Meanwhile, if the game doesn't sell and fails, the studio will hardly have any opportunity to try again with the next one (unless you're called Fntastic-those guys always come back like cockroaches).
Now, these games with outrageous budgets have no wiggle room. So it baffles me that these devs are on such loose leashes when studios gamble their entire existence on each release.
This can be summed up in one concept using dragon age origins vs veilguard.
Let's say you meet a controversial character in both games. In one game you could have befriended them, told them to get lost or kill them. In the other game your only option is varying degrees of i love you.
A developer who can right a character they don't like or a character they do like but give players freedom to hate them is a good developer.
People seem to think they can use outrage to make up for quality. But those days are LONG gone (and thankfully so)
> A game is announced
> Trailers look bad
> Gamers give feedback
> DON'T BUY IT IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT REEEE
> The game flops
> THOSE TOXIC GAMERS REEE
I'd rather not financially support political extremists.
Developers and publishers nowadays have this inflated sense that their games are masterpieces. They think they're on the same level as Picasso or Van Gogh. Have they forgotten what happened to John Romero and Daikatana? Maybe we should remind them what the price of arrogance is.
was pretty interested in Avowed too since Skill'Up(HR quote guy) gave it a very good pre-release review. Now, i just wanna get away from it.
Idk what’s going on with Avowed but I’m still buying it because ignorance is bliss. 🤷🏽♂️
@dukeofgotham4311 only if you stay ignorant, which is a weird flex.
@@dukeofgotham4311 hey man, slop for the slopeaters i guess.
@@dukeofgotham4311 Better to stay that way towards American games.
"Nah you're wrong. It's completely okay to belittle your audience and expect your game to sell. Seriously who does this guy think he is ? Jesus?"
I no longer care if I like the studio or the series. If the devs talk shit, I don’t buy the game. Nobody as weak minded as these modern devs deserve success.
Same mindset for me. I'm prepared to attend lots of Beloved IPs Funerals. After Star Wars, Star Trek, Dr Who, idc if others Concord as well.
Ironic you call them weak minded
@@redninja3056 How so?
@neptunedirect129 because you guys lose your mind if a woman isn't a model, or If there's one to many gay people in a video game
@@redninja3056 okay but how do you know that's what Neptunedirect129 is complaining about? it seems to me that it isn't. I wasn't interested in veilguard because there was no actual ROLEPLAY options in a ROLEPLAYING GAME, instead it's kind of just all rollplay, for example. so I lost my mind because you could choose to be trans? nah, I lost my mind because you can't actually roleplay it while having it be an "option". a fake option if you will, and a blindingly obvious fake option at that, given that they didn't even try to hide it.
Like seriously, I miss it when games would actually have consequences for being different from the norm like, say, Mount and Blade, and the fact that you are actually disadvantaged if you decide to play a woman, since it's based on medieval times and a woman leader? that's going to be looked down upon. And that's shit's cool, because it lets me experience something negative I otherwise wouldn't have been able to, you know?
15:08 -> 1000% agreed! I was optimistically hopeful on the game with initial previews from some trusted channels, but then I saw what the Art Director said and I just can’t support that 🤷🏻♂️
Modern day game developers: "Am I out of touch? No, it's the; right-wing incel angry gamer bros, who are wrong."
"Also the left. Also the neutral. Also everyone who dares not 100% conform to my isolated beliefs"
What they failed to realize is that the way to reach both sides is to take neither side. This is not a complicated problem to solve, but activists are going to do what activists do, so as long as they are deliberate about hiring activists for one side or the other, they're going to get activism in their games
I finally understand why gamers have been attacking game developers over the last few years. I had no idea that developers are just as nasty, if not worse than the gamers who play their games. I don't trust game developers anymore and defending game developers should never happen. While not all developers are god awful, the vast majority of these AAA developers are as disgusting as you think. When a development team starts attacking potential customers is when you know this is not a company who deserves your time. This Matt guy is godawful. Matt's behavior is unacceptable. Microsoft needs to acknowledge that this is a dude who is not adding any value to their company, and should be canned for his wacko ideologies. He is a liability and has to go.
All I can tell you is that this isn’t true.
Microsoft welcomes them.
@@furrygeckoNo you are wrong, are you part of it?
@@furrygeckoyou said that but you can't state any proof can you?
No, a minority of gamers are tired of their hobby, but can't switch to another hobby combined with obsession about their status on social media like Twitter is a problem in my opinion. They don't represent gamers, but are loud and flashy, because of how social media pushes information. Thus they create an image of only negativity about a game on a given platform even though that game is good and enjoyable. They shit on the floor, don't clean afterwards and later complain about stinky air in the house like it is made by someone else.
22:38 "These people try to act so righteous in front of everyone else. And I think a lot of people have grown to detest this."
Yes, exactly. Whenever I hear the self-righteous rhetoric of these types of people, it NEVER seems authentic. Always performative and pretentious. Their self-righteous words come off as: "Hey everyone! Look how good of a person I am! Aren't I such a good person? I'm amazing, aren't I? Tell me I'm a good person. Tell me I'm a good person! TELL ME I'M A GOOD PERSON!!!"
Coffee Stain is another example, their CS with Satisfactory has been flawless.
There's a reason I NEVER tell my employer what my social media is, and will never reference my employer on that social media. They will ALWAYS be separate
I remember when the only peek at upcoming games was Game Informer magazine showcases. No politics, no humiliation rituals, just developers making complete games for all players to enjoy.
No dlc's but add-ons.
Right? I remember buying a game at EB Games, basically Canadian Gamestop, and getting a little magazine with it. In the music it showed Megaman ZX Advent. There was no trailer, no text talking about the game just,
"This is a Megaman game that is coming out."
There was no dev screaming at me that I had to buy the game or I was a bad person just,
"This is a game soon to be released."
@@animeking1357 when G4 TV was actually good, GameStop midnight releases, GI magazine, man the industry has changed so much.
A perfect game doesn't and can't exist.
Gamedevs can only focus on specific groups, not all groups. Focusing on that illusive 1% non-existent group only loses money. Just be glad to appeal to a existing 60 - 80% group, instead of the whole 100% cake.
Games made by real gamers for gamers, should be the norm in this industry.
When I had a retail job I knew I was representing the company. I was literally the face of the company at that moment. I can’t believe these people don’t get that. They must have never worked anything but an office job their whole life or something.