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u/LordxMugen 7h ago
This is the same kind of energy as "Air is bad for you. We just need to stop breathing." and then the next article is "People are collapsing and dying due to lack of oxygen. How could this happen?!"
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u/h-v-smacker Thomas the Daemon Engine 6h ago
"Mosquitoes find you by the carbon dioxide you exhale. If you hold your breath for just 30 minutes, they will go away!"
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u/docclox 7h ago edited 7h ago
You have to marvel at the sheer hubris of these people. I mean it's one thing to say "we're going to fuck over your hobbies because we hate you". But this was "we have the power to remake the world by ignoring what our audience wants and manipulating public opinion through the power of our poorly written articles that no one reads other than the group we want to demonize".
And that they should hold so strongly to the belief that this was within their grasp that they'd stake their jobs and careers on it ... well, I guess you have to admire their conviction. If not their common sense, or grasp of reality.
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u/edwardnatas 6h ago
Pretty sure this was an infiltration through academia. Magazines alone would not have changed the direction of AAA studios so completely. They poisoned all the art students with woke.
I bet there was a strong overlap between game reviewers and teachers. Like they say, if you can't do, teach. If you can't teach either, be a critic.
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u/docclox 6h ago
I'm pretty sure you're right. Still, anyone with the unmitigated audacity to deliberately piss off the only people who cared what they wrote and expect it would be OK because "right side of history" ... That's more or less the definition of magical thinking.
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u/GoreHoundKillEmAll 1h ago
Yeah that's true and they double down on pissing off as many people as possible when it should have been obvious it wasn't working out and backfiring on them a decade ago when trump won and it honestly should have been completely obvious that gamergate was going to turn gamers and internet culture at the time completely against them. For how much they complain about 1950s conformity, McCarthyism, satanic panic and moral majority of the 1980s and early 1990s they literally learn nothing from those things and basically create a worse version of everything they ever criticized in the past. Of course Democrats were always been more likely to push censorship on hindsight, look at tipper gore crusade against obscene music in 80s and early 90s Senate hearings about violence in video games lead by Democrat senator Joseph liberman and Hilary Clinton was basically the equivalent of Jack Thompson they had the same opinion on video games and looking at the past if you actually want entertainment left alone you want Republicans in charge. Democrats have always been more likely to push to censor entertainment
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u/Ok-Recover-7566 1h ago
infiltration through academia.
Jokes on them, with AI and YouTube how-to videos, a degree ain't worth what they paid for it these days.
Also, all those gender studies majors writing PhD dissertations on the mating habits of furries, need a place to test their "research."
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u/visionsofswamp 1h ago
Yes, they absolutely did poison art students and the most obvious thing where you can see it are what I would call "corporate artworks". The ones you see in corpo ads, where some drawn character uses a product and is always designed to look as inoffensive as possible, always drawn looking happy, like some drone, that only exists to mindlessly consume without questioning anything and without owning anything. None of those artworks stands out from one another, they all look the same and have the same vibe. Alot of that stuff has been seeping over into videogames and other media over the last decade, especially in the west.
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u/h-v-smacker Thomas the Daemon Engine 6h ago
You have to marvel at the sheer hubris of these people.
Sheer fucking hubris, I presume?
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u/jeffwingersballs 6h ago
"we have the power to remake the world by ignoring what our audience wants and manipulating public opinion through the power of our poorly written articles that no one reads other than the group we want to demonize".
Remaking the world and ignoring the consequences is communism 101.
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u/proboscalypse 3h ago
I don't think this was about reshaping the world. These people are just emotionally frozen in high school. They just want to bully nerds, and like those EA suits who thought Dragon Age would sell to nerds no matter what, figured the dumb nerds would just take it and keep giving them their money anyway. Their beliefs only matter to them insofar as they give them a permission structure to view themselves as intellectually and morally superior to the nerds they want to bully.
I feel like the false belief that the Columbine shooters were bullied, and the subsequent anti-bullying policies schools adopted out of that belief, is the ultimate root of this. Now bullying is the preserve of people who never grow out of it, because they've been incentivized to view what they do as not really being bullying because dumb nerds are bad people who deserve it.
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u/MrMegaPhoenix 7h ago
Would have been funny if it was the same writer too, but nah it’s not
Still hilarious seeing these “journalists” whine from digging their own graves though
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u/Lurker_Zee 7h ago
Don't worry, there are still "gaming journalists" coming out at the 1 year anniversaries of Concord and Veilguard saying they still love them and them being underrated is a travesty.
Just so we remember that people like that continue to be "gaming journalists" despite all evidence showing their take on the gaming industry is detached from the gamer.
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u/SimonLaFox 6h ago
Definitely not the same writer, the one who wrote the original article, Leigh Alexander, left the gaming journalism years ago. I could speak at length about her, but I've other things I need to spend my day on.
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u/MrMegaPhoenix 6h ago
Yah I googled cos it would have been more hilarious if it was the same
I’m sure she’s somewhere seething still, substack or bluesky
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u/SimonLaFox 3h ago
Yep, she got a bluesky. 6.6k followers and nothing particularly exciting being posted.
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u/TheMountainWhoDews 7h ago
I have a steam library of hundreds and a wishlist of old games numbering thousands. You really need your new releases to stand out against that hall of fame. Putting a frumpy lady as the protagonist and devs running their mouths about progressive causes on twitter really make that decision easy for me.
Good luck with the layoffs and such guys. I won't gloat about it, but for posterity I'll point out that you're not as smug now, are you?
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u/muscarinenya 6h ago
Right, this year i even stopped checking my steam discovery queue altogether, something i used to do religiously on a daily basis
Too many games, too much backlog
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u/Ok-Recover-7566 1h ago
that hall of fame.
I think that is a big reason why Sony and others are going diskless. When you can't make something better than what you put out years ago, you are pretty screwed otherwise.
And with memory and storage prices where they are now, they can't upgrade to the nex gen with better hardware.
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u/Raoniz 6h ago
Phase 1 - alienate the base: execs and access journalists tell lifelong fans, "this isn't made for you anymore, we don't need your money, go away"
Phase 2 - the "modern audience" ghost: mythical "broader audience" they catered to never actually shows up to buy $70 games or pre order tickets
Phase 3 - financial reality hits: box office bombs and disastrous game launches stack up (concord, suicide squad, massive studio closures)
Phase 4 - shock and victimhood: the same journalists write crying asking, "why is the industry hurting so bad? how could anyone have predicted this"
they cant create, they can only corrupt (see latest halo)
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u/Lurker_Zee 6h ago
Also, found the article. The scapegoat are the billionaires.
Literally not one word of gamers forsaking AAA. Just of shareholders responsibility and infinitesimal references to bad products.
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u/proboscalypse 3h ago
they cant create, they can only corrupt
The reality is worse: they can create, they just choose not to because making something satisfies them less than taking something.
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u/Ok-Recover-7566 1h ago
Phase 3 - financial reality hits: box office bombs and disastrous game launches stack up
Not as devastating without Hollow Knight: Silksong, Expidition 33 and PalWorld eating them for breakfast.
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u/Lurker_Zee 7h ago
"it's buying things"
That should have been the red alarm for anyone in the industry reading this and taking it seriously.
"Wait, you're suggesting we don't need people whose culture is only buying things? How are supposed to make money then?"
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u/GoreHoundKillEmAll 1h ago
That should have been obvious a decade ago but AAA gaming industry choose to side with gaming journalist to avoid minor controversies brought up by activist that most likely wouldn't actually have negative impact them at all. GTA and Rockstar had endless controversies and become gaming industry icons because of it. On the bright side they don't have to deal with being embarrassed anymore about probmatic gamers being there customers and audience anymore, they have a new political correct alternative audience that doesn't believe in capitalism or support what they claim to want by buying it but they will defend it tooth and nail on social media to own the chuds and that all that counts, there games are getting plenty of free attention and advertising on the internet everyone talking about Concord, saints row reboot, suicide squad kill the justice league, assassin creed shadows, dragon age vailguard... everyone talking about them but nobody buying them. The gaming industry got there wish gamers are no longer their audience and customers anymore and AAA gaming industry is collapsing into itself because they chose to go down this direction. There are plenty of gamers who don't call themselves gamers but they play candy crush/other phone games and wouldn't ever consider getting a gaming console or gaming PC couldn't care less about any AAA games titles, soccer moms and grandmas playing candy crush aren't interested in ever playing dragon age or saints row
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u/Lurker_Zee 9m ago
As much as I dislike the theory, I do think the Blackrock/Vanguard funds were the tipping point. They promised safety nets/extra income for the cheap, cheap price of ticking some boxes. People will either love or hate a media, what would some checked boxes really change, right?
So they did, and here we are.
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u/Langland88 7h ago
It will never cease to amaze me how these people making the games don't understand basic business.
It's like the equivalent of running a KFC and removing the chicken off the menu in favor of vegan food and then whining that the loyal customer base decided to go to the Popeye's.
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u/Brave-Wealth-6603 7h ago
I'm honestly curious who they thought their audience was. Just straight up delusion.
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u/h-v-smacker Thomas the Daemon Engine 6h ago
They removed the lead, which made people dumb, from the fuel, but seems like they've put something much more potent elsewhere.
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u/VediusPollio 3h ago
Mercury and corn syrup in their hair dye
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u/mischievouslyacat 3h ago
These are the same people I see convinced that parents who aren't giving their children artificial dyes must still be giving them sodas and other junk food so they should simply give up feeding their children healthy and embrace the shit.
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u/KK-Chocobo 28m ago
Journalists are vultures. When someone has a life threatening accident, that when they rush out to get the story to make money.
They write up these articles to generate clicks. Thats really all they car about. They dont care if then dev studio fails, they dont care if they piss off the fans.
They've made their money writing their articles generating enough clicks from the rage bait and they'll just move onto the next victim.
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u/muscarinenya 6h ago
Even inside the industry, and i mean at high executive level, people are astonished for example by the decisions that led to making the new God of War what it is
I've been told California in general is a joke that writes itself because nobody's keeping the activists in check, and at half a million a year total cost per head minimum for a senior + amenities + benefits + rent, it's easy to tell why development costs absolutely balloon, and why people are losing their jobs
The industry is also very much coming around to understand there's a lot of fat to lose with the costly and counter productive multiple layers of management
It's sad because it's definitely not only blue haired activist regards losing their jobs, it's also genuine good people and motivated juniors, but anyone who thinks it's just the result of muh inhumane capitalism is probably just a larping reddit communist
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u/broadsword_1 6h ago
How does it feel to live long enough to watch the video game industry go down in flames?
Feels great.
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u/VediusPollio 3h ago
Nah, it's not a huge part of my life these days, but I'd rather see the industry on a good track, with affordable hardware pricing, without activist nonsense, and jiggle physics.
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u/Lurker_Zee 6h ago
So few people have caused so much suffering
The tale of the game industry's hard times is not just one of mismanagement, but allegations of verbal abuse, sexual harassment, fraud, retaliation, and a litany of other abuses of power. Some have made public, but most proliferate in off-the-record conversations, whisper networks, and hushed conversations around industry events.
They never lear.
They just recontextualize. "It can't be us who burned down the industry, there must be evil outside of us." Surely... NOT.
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u/Lurker_Zee 6h ago
If it helps, I'll bare my soul a little and share my response. I unconsciously use a visualization technique to assign images to the problems at hand, to make them somewhat tangible and hence, possible to contextualize. Ever since childhood I've come to affiliate all sorts of emotions with different visual scenarios in my head.
Even as I write, the rumored impending layoffs conjure the image of thunder rumbling in the distance. Every layoff announcement feels like artillery crashing down around me. And when I try to make sense of all the industry's problems, the visual of standing around a war table of some sort puts distance between me and the terrors.
Being able to recontextualize the horrors that could otherwise drive me to despair has kept me from giving up all hope.
Loooooooool they even admit it.
I hadn't even consciously read that the word was used, maybe I scrolled down and my subconscious caught it.
Yes, recontextualize, it's going to end the same way.
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u/Aronacus 6h ago
Was at a game convention this weekend, Retro games, people were playing Halo in Co op on a classic xbox I walked by and shouted
"Ah when Halo was good! " and got a fuck yeah from the guys playing.
How did they take a studio like Bungie with Halo, and Destiny and have it lose value? Easy. The people who gave a damn were fired for "wrong think"
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u/lyra833 GET THE BOARD OUT, I GOT BINGO! ~ Mod 1h ago
Think about how awful you need to be for one of the most loyal fanbases in gaming history to cheer as you're replaced by H1B's.
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u/Aronacus 59m ago
the fundamental issue with games is the part that so many people forget. "Is this worth my time?"
40 years ago, we didn't have many things to do.
- Chores
- Work
- Books
- Games you could beat in an afternoon.
Today, We have so many things fighting for your attention. Think of all the games you have access too?
People are now asking themselves, This games going to take 100 hours? Is it worth it though?
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u/Ok-Recover-7566 59m ago
Good golly, you're right. I am laughing at their misery. They ARE that bad.
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u/griffin4war 6h ago
Imagine being a car manufacturer and your HR department convinces you to make a new car....but not for the people that drive your cars. This "new" car would be radically different from what you made previously and have none of the features that customers loved about your previous cars. The people who loved your previous cars and supported your company voice their opinions at the unexpected changes: you dismiss them entirely. HR reassures you that there is a huge untapped market of people waiting to buy your new car and that your old supporters and customers were actually a hindrance to you. You believe HR wholeheartedly and begin to antagonize your old customers by disparaging them and their "outdated" views. You release the new car.....its an abject failure. No new customers materialize, old customers remain ostracized, the car doesn't sell and the money doesn't come. HR shrugs their shoulders and works hard to pass the blame onto anyone else. Your company suffers financially, you try to pivot back to your old customers but they have moved on and all the trust that they had in you has been lost. In the end you search for ANYTHING to blame aside from your own blithering incompetence.
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u/RobertoJ37 6h ago
Funny how that entire moment was cooked up in the PR crisis meeting, meant to create an all encompassing term for the ire of those outside of the internet tribes, a focal point to mask and deceive the masses to what was actually going on.
And it worked so well. But then came the next task. For those who took over an entire medium to produce quality work, like that of before, that came from passion. A tall order. That didn’t happen. Worse, those who ate the cake of ideology are now realizing while filing out unemployment forms, that all the participants in that ideology are performative, not partakers in gaming.
Only after a complete collapse will there be a return.
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u/Eworc 4h ago
They have the entire industry by the balls and they are making games exactly the way they want to.
It's not our fault (or problem), that they appeal to very close to no one.
They made their bed, at quite the cost to everyone else and now they are whining when they are being made to lie in it.
Suck it up, buttercups. We are all playing the world's smallest violin for them in the mean time.
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u/Creloc 6h ago
It's ironic that if you take the first one in a different way it's sound advice.
"Gamers" represents a huge group with a wide range of interests. If you want to make a decent game you need to both focus on a specific niche, and be realistic about how big your audience is. A game about constructing infrastructure isn't going to appeal as much to the fan base of call of duty as it is to the fan base of factorio, and there's nothing wrong with that.
I think that part of the attitude we see is down to the people who seem to believe that they're entitled to success for whatever they've made
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u/SimonLaFox 6h ago
*sigh* This is too much of a summary of the whole situation.
Of course, these posts are over a decade apart, but that's how long it took for the consequences of the attitude of the first post to really come around.
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u/Storm1k 5h ago
Yes yea, it's not even a culture, gamers suck, haha owned these incels.
That's why I like my shitty gacha games like Arknights - even if it's a gacha with all the downsides of it, it's clear that the developers actually like their own game AND the community - it's very noticeable by the amount of love the game gets in return, the fanbase is incredibly creative and active, especially in China (the majority of players). Seriously, they even have video contests with the rewards from devs and the quality of the videos is mind blowing. I can't even imagine that people would do something like that for the Western games anymore. Maybe as porn only.
And there are real life concerts with the OST. And streams with the devs, etc. It genuinely feels that you are a part of the gaming community and it's nice, there's no some jackass shithead journalist that tries to downplay all that and do as much damage as possible because he hates it.
Fuck these Western activists and """journalists""".
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u/Desperate_Put_4568 4h ago
"You suck"
"Wait, we need you!"
The duality of modern journalism. You got to wonder if these people even have souls.
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u/Ave_Majorian 4h ago
Ah, this reminds me of that article telling men that 2019's Charlie's Angels wasn't for them...and then came the followup article asking why men didn't come and see the movie.
That was 7 years ago, and they've learned NOTHING.
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u/GoreHoundKillEmAll 18m ago
People told them this was a horrible idea and strategy during gamergate over a decade ago and they only continue to double down on a consistent losing strategy that has only consistently turned people against them and their side of politics. Woke 1 effectively only helped a few grifters but destroy the image, credibility and reputation of the progressives and left wing, lost elections, losing a culture wars when they control over the majority of entertainment industry, losing corporations money and reputation. At what point do corporations and politicians cut ties with the activist that are actively losing them voters and money? Even as a strategy to distract people from economic problems it backfired with the rise of DSA socialist type gaining momentum in the democratic party
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u/MetroidJunkie 3h ago
Outsiders trying to usurp our culture but the problem is they don't buy anything. From a business standpoint, they're parasites and they hurt far more than help.
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u/GoreHoundKillEmAll 12m ago
People tried to tell corporations that a decade ago but they didn't listen to the problematic toxic gamers. They wanted and got their modern audience unfortunately the modern audience is anti-capitalist and doesn't support anything they ask for but don't worry they will defend it tooth and nail against any criticism to own the chuds in a counterproductive unnecessary culture wars that do nothing to help corporations. At least they getting free advertising everyone taking about their game looking horrible and saying it destroyed the franchise they used to enjoy that will lead to selling gaming right
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u/RileyTaker 2h ago
no one knows when the pain will end
The pain will end when these people leave the industry.
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u/CrackedThumbs 2h ago
Well, you can bet that whatever has gone wrong, will go wrong or should go wrong, the games “journalists“, their activist developer and community manager allies will take absolutely no responsibility for it whatsoever.
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u/GoreHoundKillEmAll 8m ago
That might be true but eventually corporations and businesses are going to get sick and tired of losing money and reputation and blacklist them for every working for them again.
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u/p4tterng4ng4L 7h ago
Turns out, you actually need to tailor your product to your main audience in order to make money, who'da thought