• Hal-5700X@lemmy.worldOP
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      10 months ago

      A curation page is made to inform users if Sweet Baby worked a game or not. Sweet Baby employees started to harass (mass flag campaign) the curation page and it’s maker.

        • Stamau123@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          They have been gaining a reputation for poor writing, ‘wheadonesque’ if you know the term. Some lowlights on the game Forspoken that they worked on being a recent funny example. I don’t like them because I do find the writing bad, but some people don’t like them for their politics.

          • takeda@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            They are contractor writers, if a company is using such services for their games instead of hiring their own staff writers, then they are not that interested in quality.

          • CileTheSane
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            10 months ago

            wheadonesque

            I thought Joss Wheadon was known for good writing and snappy dialogue?

            • BluesF@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              Snappy, witty, but ultimately shallow. Good lines, not necessarily great stories.

                • CileTheSane
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                  10 months ago

                  Are we pretending that Buffy, Firefly, and Doll House weren’t great stories?

                  No, you see, all of these stories have women in positions of power. That makes the story of a magically super strong hero fighting vampires unrealistic.

                • Cypher@lemmy.world
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                  10 months ago

                  There’s no pretending, they’re all middling trash.

                  Firefly gets by solely on the setting.

                • MolochAlter@lemmy.world
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                  10 months ago

                  Speaking as a huge fan of firefly, I’m not even gonna pretend that the writing doesn’t have a very specific set of issues, and that cancellation might have saved it from becoming aggressively mid and boring.

                  If Serenity was more or less the intended ending to the season (specifically revealing the alliance actually created the reapers and are unequivocally villainous) I’m actually happy they didn’t get to put that in the show.

                  Same for the Shepherd Book backstory comic where he was actually a brown coat double agent in the alliance, because god forbid we have to accept that your enemy isn’t ontologically evil.

                  But the best criticism I’ve seen of Whedon is that all his dialogue has over time exceedingly forgone character voice in favour of funny quips.

                  So much of his later production’s quotable lines are almost impossible to attribute correctly just from the lines themselves.

        • CileTheSane
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          10 months ago

          Apparently they don’t like Sweet Baby’s focus on “promoting inclusivity”, so just some bigot getting their panties on a twist that the “out-group” is being treated with a basic level of human dignity. They then spent a bunch of time and effort to let the world know they think inclusivity is bad.

          • turkishdelight@lemmy.ml
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            10 months ago

            people should be free to know who worked on the game they buy. If they don’t like sweetbaby’s products, then they are free to not pay money for them. Transparency is good.

            • CileTheSane
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              10 months ago

              And is this information hidden in some way?

                • CileTheSane
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                  10 months ago

                  It’s not a plugin, and as far as I know it uses publicly available information.

                  I just don’t understand the use case. So people look for a game they’d like to try, then go and check that list, then go back and purchase the game if it’s not on the list? Why? If they make games bad the reviews will tell you the game is bad.

          • beaxingu@kbin.run
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            10 months ago

            yes of course because inclusivity always just means inclusivity and not that you want to shove your political agenda into places where it does not belong. games have always been inclusive sweet baby are essentially just sensitivity readers for games. and by that totally missing the point of what games are. showing they should have nothing to do with video games in the first place. nobody said inclusively is bad. what is bad is using inclusively as shield for your own politics. and its also bad to mischaracterize what the argument is really about.

            • CileTheSane
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              10 months ago

              and not that you want to shove your political agenda into places where it does not belong

              Do you have any direct examples instead of just names of games (screenshots, quotes, etc)? What specific"political agenda" is being pushed, and is this falling into the pit of “everything is politics, but this is politics I don’t like?”

              games have always been inclusive

              That’s just a lie. It’s always telling when on Steam discussion pages I see people complaining that they can’t customize their character and to play a certain class they have to be female or a minority, as if for 99% of games the protagonist doesn’t have to be a white male. “I feel included so it’s inclusive.”

              its also bad to mischaracterize what the argument is really about.

              When trying to get a direct answer as to what the argument is really about is like pulling teeth, then people are going to misunderstand. Even in your post you’ve provided no sources to show that Sweet Baby lowers the quality of games, but you *do" complain about inclusivity. So the only “fact” that I can actually pull away from your post is that you don’t like them because of their focus on inclusivity. You say it’s because it makes the games worse, but you have shown no evidence of that.

              • beaxingu@kbin.run
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                10 months ago

                i have as much examples as you have examples of just saying inclusivity is good means its actually good. its a stupid tactic and i don’t appreciate it. keep your debate tactics to yourself. talk like a normal person im not in a plant debate with you. if you really want sources use some yourself first but we all know that would just be stupid in a comment section.

                inclusively does not just mean that you can create a character that looks like you that’s very superficial it also means that everybody can appreciate a story and like it because its a good story and has good characters no matter what race minority status or sexuality. if you need to focus on superficial characteristics your doing wrong

                like i already said sweet baby does never make there own games they leech of other peoples games and get payed for it. people are making educated guesses from what the company says and what the people who work there say. they create the problem that they are the Solution to. they focus on representation as business model and they represent it in the most superficial performative hollow fake way this will never help anybody actually have good story’s in games it just helps sweet baby make money by riding the wave of fake performative hollow inclusivity

                • CileTheSane
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                  10 months ago

                  if you really want sources use some yourself first

                  “This company does bad work! Everyone needs to avoid anything they’ve work on!”

                  “Okay… can you give me some examples of their bad work?”

                  “No! First YOU prove that the work they are trying to do is good!”

                  How hard you work to deflect the conversation speaks volumes towards what the real issue is here.
                  I tried going to the Sweet Baby Inc detected page to see what the actual issue is but nothing is explained. Just a list of games and the comment “SBI worked on this.”
                  Why should I care? It’s never explained. You say they do bad work, and when I ask for an example you give a long winded no. For someone who feels so passionately about them being bad you are very reluctant to actually back up your claims.

                  You are upset that I “mischaracterize[d] what the argument is really about” but it is impossible to find any direct statements as to what the argument is really about. Any clear statements of the curation page would help prevent “mischaracterization”, but people are twisting themselves in knots in order to not make direct statements.
                  I have no strong opinions about SBI, I could be convinced that they are bad and best avoided, but nobody wants to present any actual arguments no matter how much people ask. Makes it really sound like a group of people too afraid to say the quiet part out loud because it wouldn’t be acceptable.

                  sweet baby does never make there own games they leech of other peoples games and get payed for it.

                  You mean games hire them for a service? Lots of games do that. I’ve yet to see any example of the service they provide being bad.

                • Gamoc@lemmy.world
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                  10 months ago

                  That first paragraph is the most cringe inducing thing I’ve ever read. If you had written guttural sounds and whines you’d have sounded less stupid. Go and learn something you embarrassment.

            • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              Could you please stop shoving your political agenda into places where it doesn’t belong, like this thread?

        • Hal-5700X@lemmy.worldOP
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          10 months ago

          Like Why Sweet Baby employees started to harass? Hurt feelings or to make themselves to be the victim.

            • Hal-5700X@lemmy.worldOP
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              10 months ago

              Because they want people to boycott games made by Sweet Baby. That’s what the curation page basically is, an boycott list.

              • echo64@lemmy.world
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                10 months ago

                Your dancing around the answer says more than you being open and honest about this ever could

                • ampersandrew@kbin.social
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                  10 months ago

                  You know how most people never heard of this company or care that it exists? My understanding is that they consult on games to make them more inclusive. So you have a gay character written into a game, perhaps the result of this company’s contributions or perhaps not, and then a bunch of people complain that Sweet Baby made the game woke or some nonsense. How did I hear of this? Steam forums became a cesspool for people crying about this company. If Suicide Squad bombs, it’s because they consulted with Sweet Baby and went woke. Indiana Jones maybe features a woman in the trailer who looks like more than a damsel in distress? Sweet Baby’s doing.

                • beaxingu@kbin.run
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                  10 months ago

                  its curation list of games that sweet baby has worked on. this is made more difficult because sweet baby never makes there own game. because they consult leech off other peoples games and get payed for it. and that the work they do is shit and is associated with bad games so nobody wants to buy them. but as said above its not always easy to find out on what game they worked.

  • atrielienz@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Not gonna lie. It sounds like Sweet Baby should be putting their name on things they work on. Their reputation should reflect their body of work. If their poor writing is the reason people are disappointed in games, then people have a right to know. The problem is that it sounds like what they actually do isn’t writing, it’s some sort of EO QC. From what I have been able to find online, it seems like they get hired by game developers to sanitize games in a way that would appear (to some people) to be inclusive ways. However, just because you’re not a fan of their choice to make a male character female or vice versa, doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a bigot. This sounds like the same sort of thing WoTC is doing with their own IP by trying to change Drow etc. I don’t agree that Drow are problematic.

    I don’t intend to spend money on new IP made products that seem to want to change lore and such with the intent of “being more inclusive” or less problematic.

    Specifically because I feel like this wasn’t a conversation people were having until some people who are not negatively effected by the black = evil stereotype in media have all the sudden decided to white knight a movement against it in the most ham fisted way possible and it’s often pretty insulting.

    I have said repeatedly that inclusivity works when the differences aren’t highlighted and there is a successful and not forced way to make that a part of most media, but making it the singular feature of a character in any media (that their existence is there just to fill a quota) is just tokenism.

    • Eyck_of_denesle@lemmy.zip
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      10 months ago

      They also write. But regardless of what they do, it doesn’t directly go into the game. Developers still gave the final say. A lot of gamers are missing this. But if I was a game developer I wouldn’t want to work with a consultancy company created by a racist/sexist. Hopefully the company makes changes or developers choose a better firm.

  • MolochAlter@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Looking at the curator list, whatever the intent, it’s actually a very handy list of titles with mid to astoundingly poor writing, a lot of which apparently even SBI seems to disown, since they’re not on their website (but they are credited by the games themselves).

    So yeah, I don’t think I need it cause I already didn’t waste my money on any of those on their own merits, but it’s funny to see there’s a common thread.

  • PLAVAT🧿S@sh.itjust.works
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    10 months ago

    They really put the Streisand effect to good use here, huh? Nichegamers screenshot showed 9,000ish followers and they’re at 87,000 at the time of this comment.

  • brsrklf@jlai.lu
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    10 months ago

    No idea who Sweet Baby were, or I thought so.

    They worked on the writing of quite a few famous things, and surprisingly, they made one niche full game themselves that I have played, one of the playdate’s initial games.

    Yeah, that curator’s crusade against them doesn’t smell too good, very gamergate-y. That said the call to flag the curator en masse could get them in trouble. Probably not the right solution.

    • Hal-5700X@lemmy.worldOP
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      10 months ago

      Yeah, that curator’s crusade against them doesn’t smell too good

      All they want to do is boycott games made by Sweet Baby. Let them. They’re not trying to get the games removed from stores, or stopping people from buying them. Hell pro-Sweet Baby people can use the list to know that games do buy.

      • brsrklf@jlai.lu
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        10 months ago

        I’ve seen their discussion board. So yeah, intent counts too, and I’d advise anyone who may want to join/use that group to carefully consider why it was made.

        My personal opinion : they’re terrible people.

        • beaxingu@kbin.run
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          10 months ago

          you are very predictable. how can you be this predictable. they’re terrible people because you don’t like what they say. that does not make terrible people that means they disagree with you. that seems very childish. it just seems you cant handle people disagreeing with you.

          • brsrklf@jlai.lu
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            10 months ago

            They’re terrible people because they use transphobic slurs out of nowhere and label anything they don’t like “woke”. Only took reading a dozen messages to get to that point. Also, welcome to the block list.

            • Cybersteel@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              It’s the woke agenda gone mad. You either die a hero or see yourself go woke until you’re broke or something.

            • beaxingu@kbin.run
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              10 months ago

              oh no have you ever used the internet or live in the real world hehe blocklist the irony.

    • beaxingu@kbin.run
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      10 months ago

      who are you kidding you knew exactly who they where. that’s just funny.