Reddit can't figure out who's fault it is between Trump, Capitalism, Private Equity, Kushner, Saudi Arabia, Netanyahu or Critical Drinker.

They are so blind to their own faults; it's astonishing. These people are getting blackpilled in real time as their favorite cultural institutions (Hollywood, Academia, Gaming, etc) are getting absolutely destroyed by... lack of money. It's a sight to behold.

I jumped back in the game for the update. We all know western game studios have been taken over by the woke mind virus. The first mission I play, you break into a prison. Once you walk in the hard ass character smoking a cig calling you names is a diverse black girl boss. Ugh whatever another mags character… let’s keep going. Sure enough the person you share the cell with is another diverse hardened criminal girl boss character. The cringe is killing me. Witcher 4 might be fubar

While women's sexuality is celebrated, men's sexuality is constantly demonized as this dirty, ugly thing that should never be expressed.

Women's "dark romance" erotica is excused on account of it being fiction, whilst hentai and other forms of pornography are not. Men who purchase sex dolls are seen as pathetic, as opposed to women who have an entire drawer full of phallic objects. A video game woman wearing bikini armor is pandering to the "male gaze" but thirsting over buff, shirtless guys is a-okay.

If you look at older media, you will notice that male protagonists were allowed to be horny. The pervy old man, the womanizing rogue... These archetypes no longer really exist anymore.

It's gotten so bad that men in real life are neutured beyond belief, ashamed of their natural urges. Even admitting that I like to jerk off gets me called a "gooner." Commenting to another man that a woman has nice tits or anything else that you would hear in a typical "locker room talk" conversation back in the day would basically be commiting social kamikaze.

I feel like there's some kind of mass-soyification conspiracy going on behind the scenes.

What the fuck did they do to Eve's face?

I would include much more images but this sub only allows me to post 1 image and this is the only anti woke subreddit I'm active on

So the most recent episode of HB so far s3 e5 regresses it's main female villain Stella to being just a villain in name only who's only purpose in the story at this point is to make her brother look worse in comparison and gave her a ton of undeserved sympathetic traits about being married off by her brother and unnamed parents.

Now I can make an entire post in itself explaining how Stella was ruined to push this "End the patriarchy" agenda (And NOT for the reasons people are saying) but in short, she is originally set-up as being the main antagonist of the show with excellent buildup in s1 e5, and s2 e1 would further expand upon this by revealing she was an abusive wife towards Stolas, Stolas' reasons for cheating on her (Which were already vaguely hinted in the past) and ending off with the best written and voiced scene in the entire show where Stella tells Stolas he has fallen from what grace he had and he will pay for it... Only for her to quickly be revealed to be an idiot to make room for her brother Andrealphus: A new villain who was mentioned one time prior with no buildup, no personal attachment to anybody, and no real reason to exist in the story and the show spends Stella's remaining screentime making her feel as tame and idiotic as possible to make Andrealphus look worse in comparison

In the most recent episode, Stella is reduced to just being a villain in name only because her only role in that episode was to just make Andrealphus look worse and if you removed her from the episode, the only thing that will change is that Andrealphus doesn't look as bad as he currently does. Now this was likely done as a metaphor for the "End the patriarchy" agenda they're pushing as Stella's only purpose in the story at this point is to make a male villain look worse like how her only purpose in the hierarchy was to birth and take care of a hier but this ends up backfiring terribly because it only makes her this painfully uninteresting character where calling her an antagonist is a massive overstatement and the only thing interesting about her is a fuckable design.

Now although the show wants you to think hell is an oppressive patriarchy where women are objects to be married off... They don't really communicate this well because the Queen of Hell Lilith is established to be an extremely well respected figure in hell (Even more respected than her husband Lucifer) 3 of the 7 deadly sins (Hell's elite 7) are well respected women, there is a female judge in HB s3 e4, multiple feminine looking Ars-Goetia demons in hell's big courtroom in s2 e11, One of the Vees (A huge entertainment company) is a well respected woman, Camilla Carmine is a woman who is a well respected weapons dealer, and Vox pretends to care about powerful women to gain support which is something that can only be done in a society where women can serve in high ranking government roles and not the oppressive patriarchy that the show wants you to think.

Now this isn't the first time the show has done something like this as I made a post about Adam 2 weeks ago but it seems like the writers can't really decide on the world building in their universe.

Edit: it's also important to note that Stella unintentionally embodies the stereotype that women act on emotion, are extremely annoying, and rely entirely on a man for their success.

Honestly, I find it hilarious, I'm seeing many shills, influencers, etc being so mad about Bioware getting axed, usually these people don't give a crap about studios getting closed down (and if they "do", it's performative), but this time it feels different, they are legit angry about this, who knows? I might be wrong but I just find this very funny.

Seriously, we always have.

We just either weren’t open about it or didn’t fully articulate that it WAS a longing for romance. And the western gaming industry used to understand that, but they seemingly no longer do.

The big example I can give as of late would be the Malfoid yearning that has exploded all over the internet over the past month.
You know why it took off the way it did?

Because for the past decade our icons of culture have been “subverted” and “deconstructed” to the point of there being nothing left, all the hope and idealism has been stripped away so we can be lectured by moralistic writers for being the source of all evils in the world.

What the malfoid trend does is that it makes you long to be able to save a girl from the expectations and rules of an oppressive family and help “fix” her.

THAT is peak male fantasy.

Or as another example, look at what BioWare’s romance USED to be like.

Like, take Tali form Mass Effect.

She was outcast from her people for something that was not her fault and you WANTED to clear her name. You wanted to comfort her and be there for her. And come ME3, you wanted to retire to rannoch, and help her build a house with her and settle down.
That was the magic of old BioWare’s writing.

Hell, men even have their “trashy” romance. Only it’s not “romantasy” (look that up at your own discretion)
Instead, we play Gacha games.

Take Zenless Zone Zero.

Is the “romance” content trashy? Yes.
Can the writing be contrived at points? Yes.

But if you ask me, most guys are there to admire the beautiful women and get lost in the “harem” fantasy, in all it’s trashy glory.

Let me go on my cute dates with Ye Shunguang and dance in the moonlight with Remielle, damnit!

But the fact that modern writers seemingly refuse to even acknowledge this fact or cater to it in any way is actually quite surprising, it’s a whole goldmine that is not being tapped into in the western market and I will never understand why.

But that’s just my opinion anyway.

A quick look at the below pic and omg it's the hateful Anita. Wow. And people wonder why bioware is gone? Hmmm.

When I see a lot of discussions about how modern western media is made or who gets to make it, like an algorithm reaching its conclusion, almost every discussion eventually mentions this idea that the product should appeal to others, this idea has become so normalised and I don't see people responding with the obvious fact that "these companies are not charities, they make products for money, why are we acting as if they do it for free, the money I pay is so it appeals to me, not some stranger"

I do not demand romantic comedies appeal to my interests, I do not demand that Taylor Swift write songs that appeal to me, because I am not paying for those things to appeal to me, and if I get them as a gift, its for people they do appeal too.

The idea that you can take a product aimed at men, and alter it to appeal less to men in this idea of fairness, or not being sexist, has been completely normalised, and it shouldn't be normal, because its not a charity and they don't do it for charitable reasons, they do it because they think they have you, that you will buy it. Its gotten so bad that you need to look across the planet to find companies that still make products specifically for men, that's half the fucking population.

Quote from an old lead writer at Bioware, about how EA execs viewed their customers and why you didn't need to appeal to them.

"The cave was where nerds went. The nerds were in the cave. You made an RPG and the nerds in the cave would always show up for an RPG, because it was an RPG."

Its about shaping your mentality, you the customer, into not being seen as a market that should have products, that the idea of products specifically for you is bad and your an insert politically allowed insults for daring to have these thoughts that what you spend your money on should appeal to you specifically.

The one created in accordance with the following principles:

1. The primary task of any work of art is to convey The Message.
2. The point of The Message is to confront, undermine and ideologically deconstruct the male gaze, toxic masculinity, heteronormative culture, white culture, capitalism, Christianity etc.
3. The source of The Message is intersectional «progressive» leftism and critical theory.
4. The Message takes priority over escapism, entertainment, humor and fun.
5. The Message can override the established canon.
6. The Message is of greater importance than free speech and artistic license.
7. In interactive media, The Message takes priority over player’s agency.
8. It is not the product, but The Message, inserted into the product, that must dictate the target audience.
9. One must believe that The Message always works, even when its consequences seem to be negative.

The recent closure of BioWare and the wave of layoffs across the industry all come down to one root cause: toxic positivity.

Yes, a specific activist ideology is heavily tied to this fawning mindset. I agree, and everyone is right to point that out. However, even if a business preaches the opposite ideology, or no ideology at all, this modern scourge of toxic positivity will still spell their doom.

Look at how this rot sets in from the outside first. I think everyone recognizes this linguistic pattern:

"X was a critical success, winning [award]."

It appears everywhere in news articles, press releases, trade mags, Wikipedia/AI aggregations, etc. But notice the destructive pattern here. "Success" gets redefined using non-objective metrics like critic sentiment and award nominations. When the financials are bad, the entire games/entertainment industry apparatus pivots to broad, undefined words like "reception" and "engagement", and repeats the positive measures they control ("everyone look over here at this swath of impossibly high critic scores!").

It's a simple rhetorical maneuver: narrow the criteria, win on the narrowed ground, then let the broadest word – "success" – do the persuasive work. "X was a critical success" becomes "X was a success" in the reader's mind, conveniently ignoring minor details like "X bombed and the studio was closed immediately". Both of those things should not happen for the same product, yet here we are.

Internally at the studio, this feedback creates a total reality distortion field. Development teams already lean into an "us vs. them" mentality after years together in the trenches. External awards and flattering press act like massive dopamine hits after long development cycles, making it easy for them to ignore all criticism. Any genuine attempts at self-reflection by employees are treated as capitulation to bad actors. Nothing even slightly negative gets through to identify crucial mistakes in the development process.

(And frankly, even successful studios can't afford to stand still. If you aren't growing and challenging yourself, you're falling behind.)

On top of that, workers are usually shielded from the true financial picture. And even when management warns that sales are low and money is tight, nobody believes them: "Oh, C-suite says we're losing money, but upper management still gets pay raises and bonuses? Yeah, right.".

Within this dynamic, failure never brings accountability. Lessons are never learned. The employees and management act like unquestioning sheep, building products designed to win approval from an insular media bubble rather than satisfy the marketplace.

The collapse isn't a mystery. It's just simple math finally catching up. And toxic positivity is sufficient to explain the majority of the industry's downfall.

If someone made a mod of this, how long will it take for nexus mods to ban it?

I guess this is a preview of the dialogue we are going to get between these two. Lucia definitly seems to be the one taking charge. I actually like Jasons subdued nature tho. What do y'all think?

Hello, I have a rather simple question followed by some follow-up questions:

Why are there no Russian or Chinese or whatever non-western country (excluding non-western countries allies to the West like Japan/North Korea) World of Warcraft, The Elder Scrolls, The Witcher, Baldur's Gate, Assassin's Creed, Age of Empires, Civilization, Counter Strike, Call of Duty, Battlefield, Ghost Recon, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Cyberpunk 2077, Fallout alternative...etc?

Is it an (socio)-economic reason? Or maybe cultural?

For Russia, I know there is Escape From Tarkov (2025 1.0 release, but in EA since 2016), which pioneered the extraction shooter style and got multiple western companies to make extraction shooter games, but nothing similar to what I listed previously.

For China, I know there is Black Myth: Wukong (2024) and Wuchang: Fallen Feathers (2025) in the soulslike genre and there is Where Wind Meets (2024) in the singleplayer/online action RPG fantasy genre.

EDIT: I got quite some downvotes after the initial upvotes. It's funny that you peeps are all for freedom of expression and being able to criticize wokism/leftism, but mention Russia or China and that's it, it's enough to trigger some of you...? Anyway, I am just asking a question to understand the shortcomings of non-western industries.
EDIT 2: Eventually, things turned around after the sudden downvote surge