Truly a discourse between two preeminent men:
“Hey, what is the deal with women? You know what I mean, fellas?”
“Yes. Women are like sandwiches.”
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The presentation is silly but it is a good back-to-back demonstration that the market and tastes haven’t changed, many companies just aren’t catering to it.
Blizzard should take note too. There’s a bigger market out there if you jettison the baggage.
The reason they have trouble doing though is a secondary reason. These games are expensive to make and if you can come up with more financing by putting identity politics in it as some banks want, many CFOs will tell them to do it. Might change depending on how much Microsoft wants to invest in gaming, as they can easily make bigger products without needed to ask for outside financing.
It’s not a demonstration of anything other than the fact that Saber Interactive made a good game and Concord wasn’t a good game lol
I don’t understand. Is being woke a profitable avenue or not?
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So anyone ever explain why they’re so angry that women exist in a game?
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Yeah the thing that wasn’t good was that it leaned so heavily into identity politics the character models and artwork look terrible and cringe. And everyone knows it.
Who said anything about profit? If you want to make a $100M AAA game you need capital and often outside financing. That used to be easy to get in ZIRP, but not in the current high interest rate environment. But there is more financing available if you put ESG themes into the content. That’s why it’s in so many products even though its obvious it’s not popular with customers.
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Sony doesn’t need external capital to fund their games, nor does Blizzard. Sony is literally one of the largest market share holders in the industry lol
You need capital because they don’t want to use their own money. That is how rich companies stay rich, they never use THEIR money, they use the money of investors.
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No, but it’s not that simple. DEI being added is a requirement for companies to receive investment funds from the likes of Black Rock, Vanguard, etc. Games are expensive to make, so those holdings companies made it easy to get the investment funds, so long as their requirements are met. I strongly doubt that it’s the creative minds that want this material forced into their product, which is evident by the usual incredibly bland caricatures that we usually get. No, it’s likely the CFO and Banks Moneyman calling the shot on this, and the creative team does the bare minimum to check items off the check list.
ESG at face value isn’t bad. If we didn’t have environmental regulations, our lakes and rivers would look like India and China’s. It sucks that it’s all packaged together, though, as the “S” of ESG is really hurting creative media for the sake of the finance management team. Companies are going about ESG score maxing the wrong way, I think. The irony of ESG is that by designing the requirements to make a company more safe to invest in by future-proofing it against government regulations, it’s severely hindering (or in some cases, outright killing) the revenue streams of companies.
Fortunately, the ESG funding is slowing down, as it’s being realized that it’s not economically viable after seeing the fallout. Like many other dumb financing schemes in the past, this too shall pass.
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Well, in my very humble opinion, DEI reigns at Blizzard and most likely Microsoft. What a shame, too
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Sony didn’t develop Concord, it was developed by Firewalk independently and they acquired it at a late stage of development. Firewalk was owned by ProbablyMonsters which got a series A round from private equity.
Blizzard absolutely gets investment from banks and other investors, and Acti-Blizz most recently did a large equity raise in 2021.
Banks have absolutely been putting DEI and ESG stipulations on funding in recent years.
Just seems like you have no idea how these projects are funded or produced. Blizzard doesn’t care about any of this actually. They’ll put in this stuff as long as it’s a necessary for financing projects, as soon as it doesn’t matter they’ll drop it. Which is why it might change with Microsoft, because Microsoft actually can fully finance a large project if they want to, unlike Activision, though Microsoft is also subject to investors and large banks and they risk more antitrust action if they don’t tow the line with what the current admin wants.
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Okay, but you understand that investment isn’t a black hole, right? Investors don’t throw their money at Sony or Blizzard with the expectation of never seeing that money again. They put money into companies like Blizzard and Sony with the expectation of seeing a return on investment.
So my question remains: Are DEI politics profitable or not? How can you celebrate the death of Concord chanting “go woke, go broke” and then subsequently claim that investors and banks require DEI politics to reinforce profitability? Is it the investor’s intention to destroy their equity?
And once again, you would be incorrect.
Part of my job requires drafting legal argumentation about capital funding, venture capital funding, etc. etc. I spend several days at my job just reading investment agreements.
You’re 0-2 on making assumptions about me that are wildly incorrect. Try again lol
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Yeah I’m sure bro.
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Very true, you are 100% right on this.
That is the conversation that is happening now with Investors. With how Sony is doing, Lucasfilm, Ubisoft, now the investors are seeing the writing on the walls.
You gotta remember, these people live in a whole different world than us, they don’t care what the consumers think about DEI or what not. THey just thought that the new generation of children love that stuff, so they pushed for it. They didn’t care what grown men said about their product, they just cared if people were buying it.
And for a time, they were. But now they aren’t, so now they are thinking “is this profitable”. But here comes the problems, they have contracts already signed. So they need to think about a lot of stuff before they move on.
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Ever since Gilgamesh this world has had 1 story; A hero has a problem, he has to go on a journey to find themselves, and then return to win.
You on the flip side appear to want no story at all. Hero goes straight to the win, and that is really boring.
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It’s not my job to convince you, and I don’t really care to. I just thought I’d correct you lol
Maybe you shouldn’t make assumptions about people you know nothing about, and then you wouldn’t have egg on your face.
I don’t think DEI is profitable, but I don’t think it’s not profitable, either. In the case of Concord, it failed because it was a game attempting to penetrate a market where games of its ilk (multiplayer hero shooters) don’t really exist anymore, and Sony failed to market/support it in any capacity. Neither of those things can be attributed to DEI, would you agree?
Conversely, Space Marine 2 succeeded not because of spite against DEI, but because it’s just a good game with beautiful graphics, unprecedented carnage and action and setpiece moments, and fun moment-to-moment gameplay. Would you agree that none of these facets have anything to do with DEI?
At the end of the day, I don’t think your average player cares at all about whether or not “DEI politics” are in a game. I think they care if the game is good. The DEI nonsense only concerns people who exist terminally in online spaces and want something easy to blame when a game turns out to not be good, because it fits their narrative that DEI ruins everything.
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i’m not sure they need to bother with a “next”.
Also anyone notice how they forget the main hero of 3/4 zones are a dude as well?
Dwarf guy first zone
Magni second zone
Anduin third zone
But yea, nothing but them wamen
Where have all the good men gone
And where are all the gods?
Where’s the streetwise Hercules
To fight the rising odds?
Isn’t there a white knight upon a fiery steed
Late at night, I toss and I turn
And I dream of what I need
I need a hero
I’m holding out for a hero 'til the end of the night
He’s gotta be strong, and he’s gotta be fast
And he’s gotta be fresh from the fight
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100% agree, Concord was a game that wasn’t needed at all and not because of DEI, but that hero roster literally did not help.
Of course not, which is why some people are getting mad at it, because “how can such a toxic male game get blah blah blah” when in reality, a good game will just sell. Why?? Because word of mouth and it being a good game.
Bingo, Investors don’t care about DEI, they put DEI in because of an incentive from the government or because they actually believe that is what the younger generation wants. They forget the main purpose though, consumers will buy your product if it is GOOD.
Take Star Wars Outlaws, a very mid game. Way too expensive to make for a game that feels like it came out in 2014. But there are bones in there that could have been great. The game didn’t fail because of “DEI WOKENESS”, but it failed because of the bugs, the terrible stealth gameplay, the wacky animations of a skinny arm hitting a stormtrooper in the helmet once and knocking them out. The story, while not great, was still better than some of the live action shows, which says a lot.
Outlaws could have been great, but it’s ubisoft and ubisoft got lazy, not because of wokeness, but because they got lazy.
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So. What?
Men have dominated this story for 20 years. Why can’t one expansion be female-centric?
See, this is why no one takes men’s rights advocates seriously.