Say what you will about the woke gaming agenda, I love to see a company brave enough to take this stance. It’s refreshing to see a publisher wear its beliefs on its sleeve because now I know that I don’t have to spend money on their trash games
Did Lord of the lidl 2 even feature any of that? If not it doesn’t seem the have helped them.
If it doesn’t, then it’s not really art, it’s it? It’s just a mass-market commercial product.
Even the Avengers movies, everyone’s favorite garbage media, include social and political commentary.
It’s already not art and just mass market commercial products.
Let’s be honest, the companies allowed inclusion of the DEI and social/political commentary because they didn’t think it mattered not becuase they actually care about such issues. Now they think it might affect the bottom line they don’t want their devs doing it anymore. But they were hardly marketing and selling games based on this stuff.
There is a difference between filling in a diversity checklist for mass appeal and “allowing” it.
Not allowing their teams to include the subjects goes against artistic freedom in the same way that forcing them does.
That’s just a pretty way of announcing you will be censoring your writers.
“While some videogames have recently taken the opportunity to embed social or political agendas within their experiences, it is clear that many players do not appreciate this, and as a result, we have seen a number of high profile releases underperforming commercially during the last year alone,” Hill said. “Our games will always be developed to maximise player enjoyment and commercial success, and as such, we will not be integrating any social or political agencies into these experiences going forward having observed the high risk this can present.”
Talk about journos making a mountain out of a molerat… If it in fact was written by a “journo” and not an AI. To be fair, journo is a stretch, journos have journalism degrees, there’s very little separating “gaming journalists” from bloggers. (Schreier and the like being the exception)
The trick is that if you made a good game, then in ten years idiots will point to your highly political game as being from the time when games weren’t woke.
Besides that “one weird trick”, the other is to just include a diverse sets of people/cultures in your game. There’s no need to push their agendas, just don’t misrepresent them. That’s actually what they’re asking for, even. It’s a lot more effective, IMO.
Trolls will still complain your game is woke, but they won’t have any teeth.
They thought Bluey was too woke and made “Chip Chilla”, which turns out to just be the same shit but uncreative, soulless, and blatantly agenda-driven. It turns out even treating kids as having agency and inherent value as people is too woke.