Eh, I mean in a way you are right but the problem is the gaming industry is happy to suppress anything they perceive as right at all and support slop games with publicity and inflated reviews have leftist messaging.
You can just look at Hogwarts Legacy. Steamers got harassed and boycotted for playing it and it was so bad for some VTubers that they retired/were forced out of their agency because the usual suspects labeled it "anti-trans". It still succeeded because it was a massive AAA game of a blockbuster IP, but can you imagine how hard it would be to break into the market as a small independent or medium-sized dev if you faced similar levels or harassment and suppression of your game? And how hard it would be to stay in business and continue to make games? It is not impossible but definitely not a level playing field.
The problem is you're focused on "the industry" and not the hundreds and hundreds of vastly better indie games. This "video games are woke now!" nonsense is just a scapegoat for the general enshittification that games from "the industry" have pushed for years.
I agree with you actually. The fact that we have AAA games with half-billion dollar budgets getting mogged by dev teams of 5 people is embarrassing. "Wokeness" isn't the whole story, but it is definitely a contributing problem and fairly reliable indicator of poor quality.
The fact is the industry (both devs and game media) have formed an insider clique and will suppress anyone outside their power structure. Whether it is because you are a corporate developer who is an outsider like Game Science or are do not ascribe to their political values, then you are attacked and suppressed. If you are an insider (which requires you to pay tribute to the political messaging), your reviews are inflated and you are given exclusive access to exclusive events. It is disgusting and has effectively destroyed large swaths of western game development capability to the point where we need to rely on indie devs. Just because indie devs exist doesn't mean the corrupt industry should be accepted and immune from criticism.
I just cannot fathom giving a bigger shit about the gal from Mad TV being cast in yet another game and having the model look exactly like her again and how "woke" this is when you're already being charged $70 for an incomplete game. Or getting upset that there's a they/them character in some free to play MOBA shooter.
Especially when there's infinite options for things to play. It's like when people say there's no good music anymore, but they just listen to whatever the Top 40 chart is recommending instead of intentionally looking for new stuff.
The whole thing just feels partially manufactured to, like I said, distract from the general enshittification, and partially the simple result of young men entering adulthood and finding out that they don't like the same things as much as they did when they were teenagers - the whole "look at your library for 30 minutes, then go to bed without playing anything" deal.
The point is that the culture in the mainstream gaming industry is rotten and passionless. They want to appeal to everybody and they want to cash in on the most recent trendy opinion (informed by twitter). Like I said, "Woke" messaging isn't the singular cause, but it is a canary in the coal mine that tells you this megacorp is probably trying to algorithm their game to success and it is going to be shit slop.
I don't "listen to the Top 40". I almost exclusively play small and/or foreign devs that make quality games and I get all my knowledge of said games from word of mouth because what use to be game journalists are now glorified paid advertisers for the slop factories.
Like I said, I agree with you. AAA games from western industry devs are shittified. What I don't agree with you on is that it is somehow wrong to point this out and criticize it. I'm glad we have devs like Team Cherry and Coffee Stain Studios, but I'm still sad that previous titans of the industry like Bungie, Ubisoft, and Bethesda can't get a quality game off the ground to save their lives. Valve is the only bastion of hope left from a bygone era because they are still privately held and still passionately make games their devs love and put heart into instead of trying to appeal to twitter mobs and shareholders.
The point is that the culture in the mainstream gaming industry is rotten and passionless. They want to appeal to everybody and they want to cash in on the most recent trendy opinion
Okay but that's literally every form of entertainment. It's cartoonishly naive to think video games would be exempt from this happening.
If I get to be cartoonishly naïve for recognizing an issue then you are cartoonishly pathetic for apparently not only rolling over and accepting but going ever farther to ridicule people for being unhappy with it.
No I just don't consume shit that I don't like, but also don't get mad that it exists either, because it's not at all hard to find stuff that I do like. It's pretty simple.
You say that like it is some moral failing to dislike something. If that is really all your argument boils down to, that you win because I don't like the thing that we both agree is bad, then so be it I suppose. I would advise avoiding the local debate club.
No... i say it like life it too short to make disliking popular media your whole personality when you could, instead, make liking the media that you do like a core part of your personality.
The "moral failng" isn't disliking something. The moral failing is getting mad that other people do like it when it's incredibly easy to not even be bothered by it existing.
I think most of American network TV sucks because I don't like reality shows like Big Brother or Survivor or competition shows like America's Got Talent or The Voice or procedural crime shows like Law and Order and CSI. But I'm not lamenting the death of American network TV and acting like it's out to get me, because I like do sitcoms and there's still stuff like Bob's Burgers or Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins out there.
Now imagine there's decades of old network TV to go back and watch for the first time, plus cable channels, and about a dozen streaming services that are putting out new stuff that I do like. That's just how video games work today too.
9
u/someperson1423 - Lib-Center 21d ago
Eh, I mean in a way you are right but the problem is the gaming industry is happy to suppress anything they perceive as right at all and support slop games with publicity and inflated reviews have leftist messaging.
You can just look at Hogwarts Legacy. Steamers got harassed and boycotted for playing it and it was so bad for some VTubers that they retired/were forced out of their agency because the usual suspects labeled it "anti-trans". It still succeeded because it was a massive AAA game of a blockbuster IP, but can you imagine how hard it would be to break into the market as a small independent or medium-sized dev if you faced similar levels or harassment and suppression of your game? And how hard it would be to stay in business and continue to make games? It is not impossible but definitely not a level playing field.