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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   28890 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

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I don't really play AAA games very much, so the actual effect of Sweet Baby on those games is not very salient to me, but when reading and hearing about it, I can't help but notice that they usually aren't giving many examples of of aspects of these games that people really think are bad because of Sweet Baby. In fact, before this controversy, the main thing gamers were complaining about was in-game transactions.

I think there's no actual way to know what Sweet Baby Inc influenced in these games unless you work for SBI, the company, or there are leaks. Before SBI was put on as a face to the concept, though, the "woke" direction of the industry had been criticized for a long time, so the issue was never SBI specifically or even companies like SBI, but rather that devs actually seemed to want their narratives to receive influence from the type of ideology espoused by people working at or defending SBI.

One recent fairly prominent example of a game that SBI had worked on according to that curator (but whose exact influence is a mystery AFAIK) was Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League which, as the title implies, involved killing the Justice League heroes, where the one heroine Wonder Woman apparently got a noble and dignified death with the male heroes getting fairly muted or pathetic ones (apparently there was some extra controversy cuz the Batman VA died before the game was released, and he got a rather unceremonial death). The game was apparently shit for many non-narrative-related reasons, and this kind of thing could easily be chalked up to coincidence, but it does fit very neatly into a pattern we've seen in a lot of visual media of legacy franchises the last 5-10 years.

There have been a number of mini-controversies over patterns like this, such as (mainly western) devs making heroines more masculine/ugly than players tend to prefer seeing, with the Horizon games, The Last of Part 2, and even the aforementioned Suicide Squad with Harley Quinn compared to her depiction in the old Arkham games by the same dev, being examples. Last year's Resident Evil 4 remake was criticized for cutting out 2 of the best lines in the game: "Well, if it isn't the bitch in the red dress" and "I see the president has equipped his daughter with ballistics," but the game was well received for being good. On the other hand, the previous year's Saints Row reboot was criticized for making the protagonists soft 20-something roommates getting into crime to pay back their student debt while rebelling against the current societal order or whatever, along with censoring in-game stores like Freckle Bitches to FB's.

I don't think any of these rose to the level of being a major, or anything more than a tiny, controversy, and it was the rare person who was actually worked up over any of it, but certainly lots of people noticed the pattern of the direction things seemed to be going and were making some noise about how devs were just making games worse for no good reason. The SBI Detected curator probably created a focal point where players who were noticing this could direct their ire, but, again, the issue was never SBI specifically or even the specific devs that they worked with.

What people are mostly talking about is how their employees conduct themselves on social media. And even though the way they often conduct themselves is unprofessional and dumb, It's also understandable when there's a hundred thousand people telling you how bad your work is and trying to stop people from doing business with you.

I actually don't think it's understandable. Like you said, they're conducting themselves in an unprofessional way. They are industry professionals, and there's a standard of conduct they ought to hold themselves to as professionals. I'd say it's understandable only from a cynical perspective, as an attempt to build a "we're getting harassed" narrative out of whole cloth to build sympathy.

I think there's no actual way to know what Sweet Baby Inc influenced in these games unless you work for SBI, the company, or there are leaks.

Isn't that the point of the complaint, though? Sweet Baby Inc didn't do anything of substance, they just grifted their way through "let us do the DEI box-ticking, be a shame if you got cancelled for being -phobes and -ists". They're just parasites latching onto games studios and offering nothing really helpful.

Pretty much isn't a good look either way; either they're just grifting, or they're having a direct, concrete impact (and by the words and deeds of their founder and employees, they sure seem like they are).

the Horizon games

She looks like a pretty-ish redheaded woman (without makeup, she'd be conventionally hot with it because redheads tend to need mascara and more defined brows to be conventionally sexy, plus lipstick would go a long way for her). Just earlier someone was lamenting that media had been systematically avoiding the depiction of redheads, Aloy is a relatively 'feminine' portrayal, she doesn't come off as hugely masculine in the games, her face model is pretty etc.

She got subtly uglied between game 1 and 2. She also ditched all her (masculine) friends and allies from game 1 and replaced them with PoC simps.

And after going through the effort of making a post-racial future with new societies to be the cast of heroes and antagonists (the 1st game bad guys were Carja political extremists being manipulated by an AI) , in the 2nd game they brought in DBZ floating space hwite people to be the villains, complete with a floating crew-cut southern-accent straight white male goon. Everything about 2 just fucking bugged me.

Also, how many spunky oseram wrench-wenches who are way better at engineering than the men but are fighting against patriarchy do you need? I'd say two, three max, because I like wrech wenches. You dont need 8.

"Uglier" is not the fitting word in the vast majority of such cases. It's loaded and implies the end result is below average. Going from 8 to 7, or even from 7 to 6 is hardly "uglification".

2 points:

it's uglyer, if the word was ugly you would have a point.

she now looks like a wester Muk Bang Youtuber

Yes, I've seen this cherry-picked frame before. An actual comparison doesn't quite fit that narrative.

interesting that they gave her rosacea, or at least it is more pronounced in your link. At 3:21 she still looks like Nicado, at 3:23 not so much, so lighting may be a contributing factor to the imitation.

I think there's no actual way to know what Sweet Baby Inc influenced in these games unless you work for SBI, the company, or there are leaks. Before SBI was put on as a face to the concept, though, the "woke" direction of the industry had been criticized for a long time, so the issue was never SBI specifically or even companies like SBI, but rather that devs actually seemed to want their narratives to receive influence from the type of ideology espoused by people working at or defending SBI.

Realistically, yes, SBI is only a symbol here. There's no way of knowing what SBI is actually responsible for, or if it was bad.

But sometimes the symbol is enough. The point is "wokeness in games is bad", and SBI consult on games and are (or at least the SBI employees who post on Twitter are) woke, so they stand for the whole fuzzy concept. If there's any kind of strategy here, I doubt the aim is to specifically end SBI influence on games, but rather to send a general message that the audience disapproves of wokeness. The goa may not be for SBI to change, but for the next developer to think to themselves quietly, "Hm, my audience doesn't like woke stuff, I guess I won't include that."

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