2 employees went to twitter to harass a steam group admin for listing the games Sweet Baby Inc. wrote for/were consulted with.
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group offers diversity inclusion consulting, whatever that means
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steam user curates list to tell people to avoid games solely because a diversity consulting group was onboard.
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I go to curated list and click on games to check on reviews
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People review bomb random games with shred of involvement with said company, including smaller devs
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Many reviews say the game is too ‘woke’. These people’s profiles are inflammatory or bigoted
i fucking hate gaming magazines
group offers diversity inclusion consulting, whatever that means
It usually means ensuring a lot of small details. For example if you have a native american character, they’d make sure you do not randomly pick a culture that doesn’t fit what the character does or their background, that you don’t show some non-native stereotypes, that you don’t idolize them like in stories unless your specific story calls for that, etc etc.
You’re supposed to work with consulting companies like these when you don’t have people who can judge this on your own team, because it’s so easy to get so many details wrong. Of course it’d be easier if your team already knows how to do it, sure. But if you can’t, then it’s the right step to get someone external who can help you not make a joke out of a character. Again, unless they’re suppsoed to be a joke.
thank you for clarifying
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This reads so weird.
The company is… just a consultation company? The kind of one you’re supposed to hire when working on a script including minorities et al to ensure you’re not accidentally getting something wrong or presenting it in a stereotypical or atypical way?
And for some reason they’re angry about someone listing games they’ve worked on, as if any kind of exposure would ever be bad for a consultation company that, by its very nature, usually works in the background and hence finds it a bit difficult to get exposure?
And at the same time, someone makes a Steam curator list because they’re somehow pissed some devs are doing something devs ought to do, hire a company specialized in character writing instead of letting someone less experienced do it?
Do people really, in 2024, not have any bigger issues so they 're busty with this shit?!
(edit)
Ah, it’s a very biased “article” that clearly just wants to riff on the consulting company further as if they’re responsible for games being bad, not the devs actually making the games. I also frequently blame the visual marketing ad designer for the graphics driver crashes, aye.Because Sweet Baby Inc is known for forcing a narrative and tokens into the writing, for the sake of diversity on the cost of quality of the story and the characters. A lot of people don’t like that.
Now the issue is much bigger than that and I don’t like to involve myself with it much, as the controversy attracts a lot of truly bigot people, who also want to stop SBI. So one automatically gets shoved into that corner. And this is exactly what SBI is abusing to their advantage. No one can stop them from destroying good games in fear of getting burned on the stack.
I struggle to think of an otherwise good game they have “destroyed” by “forcing” a narrative or token characters.
That is to say, I don’t think I can point to a case where the game would have been otherwise good. Adding badly written characters to bad games does make them if anything marginally better (at least they’re consistent 😅), plus unless the devs completely lost control of their own project the consultation company would not actually implement the characters. They’d give you background stories, profiles, example interaction scenes where they took scenes and re-did them with their characters, or example lists of character archetypes to utilize this profile in.
The actual (bad) writing, (bad) characters and (bad) narrative are still up to the devs to (badly) add.
(edit)
I mean just going by their official project list, I can only personally mark out Suicide Squad, BattleShapers and Sable as bad, and none of these games needed their inclusionism - such as it is, you could argue Suicide Squad makes a mockery of it anyways - to be terrible games, they were plenty able of being that on their own. Plus again, it’s the devs doing that, not the consulting company.One of the examples I’ve seen of SBI “forcing inclusivity” was making Saga in Alan Wake 2 black. I’m not familiar enough with SBI’s work to do make a real judgement, but if this is one of the examples being used to say that SBI is making games worse, then the curator list is dumb.
Fwiw, this is bigots harassing developers and then posting articles like this, avoiding all the details about their bigotry
Safe bet. If the Sweet Baby employees never talked about this. The curation page and group would have lost traction early and remained in obscurity. Looks like nobody learns about the Streisand Effect anymore.
EDIT I’m still on the curation page and group side of this btw.
deleted by creator
Please stay civil or I’ll have to remove your comment.
Edit : No change, comment removed.
Aside from all the evidence that says otherwise? Why do you think it’s fine to change/ race swap the culture of another country? Isn’t this exactly the same thing that was found to be offensive when white people did it?
Hi fellow Gamers Lemmings.
This thread was bought to our attention as possibly breaking rule 2 (No Bigotry/Harassement).
First, some context. The article comme from a right leaning website, with mixed factuality and medium credibility.
This means the content of this article shouldn’t be taken as is and should be complemented from other, more neutral/factual websites.For now I didn’t find this story on any verifiable sources with such requirement.
On the other hand, the comments seem to be a lot more neutral than the OP link, and raise some interesting points. As such, I’ll keep this thread, but will keep it under close watch to keep the conversation civil.
Thank you for your understanding.
Dremor, c/games mod.
