The face of the gaming industry has become bruised and battered over the course of the past few years, and they have no one but themselves to blame. Individuals have come out of their shells, taking to social media in order to berate and shame their own customers in some feeble attempt to guilt them into buying games that are clearly undercooked and under developed. These individuals think that, just because their games feature "represented characters" and "forward thinking ideas for a modern audience", they can hide behind a shield of identity politics in order to shame anyone who would point out their flaws.
It has been proven time and time again that these people have bought into an idea that has nothing to do with gaming. They accepted money from a certain company or companies that push agendas that have nothing to do with the game and they are willing to steer their titles in some new direction that undermined their previous efforts. The games have become shallow shells of themselves and characters we once loved have become nothing but symbols of a narrative that has no place in escapism. These beloved characters will now gladly step aside for brand new characters to take up their mantles and replace them as the new poster child for their properties while the originals fade into the background.
Such an idea that games would accept these ill-gotten millions of dollars just to preach a message to the audience is akin to Popeye eating spinach when a fight is going bad, only to start punching himself in the face. Rather than trusting the game designers to push out a decent product, publishers trust that all of this money would bolster their chances of gaining new fans of a new audience that does not really exist. Once the game becomes ill received, it now becomes publishers' and developers' jobs to run damage control. They proceed to call their fanbases and audience names such as "racist", "sexist" or any other word with "ist" or "phobic", in order to play the victim and make people think they are under attack. What is actually happening is fans of the intellectual property are not liking what they are seeing in game trailers and abstaining from buying the games because they have tastes that are not being met.
It is not a hard concept to hire writers to write a story that goes along with the lore and the plot of the original and continues it in a natural way. It is not difficult to imagine developers working toward a goal of making a game with controls and graphics that suit a certain standard for the game they are creating. In many cases, it sounds more like games either run out of money or do not have the budget they were aiming for, so they turn to people that offer them the money at the expense of the game itself.
Suddenly, character designs will change to a more watered down version or unappealing rendition of what they once were. Characters that fans loved suddenly needed to cover themselves from head to toe, get breast reductions and gain a holier than thou attitude toward any want of sex appeal. Characters are race swapped in order to go along with trends and many of them are gender swapped, resulting in becoming unrecognizable. This is not because this company actually cares about this demographic, but because they think that they will be praised with sales from pandering to a more widespread audience. Instead of creating something new for their narrative or creating a whole new property, they feel the need to change what is already there to suit the points they didn't need to make in the first place.
The simple fact is that the ones who were once willing to pay for these games are left scratching their heads at these decisions. The more they look into these changes, the more it becomes obvious that companies have gone out of their way to please a minority that never wanted the game to begin with. Then, when sales go bad, it is suddenly up to everyone involved with the project to either to run interference on this trending failure or go completely silent as they struggle to meet expectations with their patches and/or downloadable content in order to try and bolster interest.
When you stand back and look at the forest for the trees, you can see the blatant detriment that this has had on the industry. Audiences are now left wondering why these companies are not seeing it for themselves. The heads of the company are not listening to their own player base and the ones at the management level take all of the flak because they need to be vocal in their disdain to any opposition and even their own clientele. They are unwilling to have any self-reflection and only look at the numbers as they dwindle into the red, hoping that throwing more money at it will fix the problem. They are only feeding the fire that is burning the industry down while continuously accepting large amounts of money in the name of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.
Beloved characters have become shells of their former selves. Now they wholly embrace the idea that they talk in ways they never did. They make decisions that go against the very foundation with which they were created. Characters can suddenly be changed however the "creatives" want them to be changed and anyone who questions any of these changes are no longer allowed to speak on the fans' behalf. Fans who question it with logic are instantly labled as "toxic fans".
People once devoted to a gaming franchise are being silenced for their devotion. Their loyalty to a wide spread franchise is being over-looked. AAA Gaming Publishers needed a pay raise and didn't care what kind of commity they were inviting into their writing room. This has caused their games to become unrecognizable in a lineup to previous titles in their respective franchises. The tone deaf beaurocratic big wigs of these companies keep telling their teams to go full steam whilst never listening to a word of criticism from fans who once paid their bills.
If any of this sounds familiar, then you know what I'm talking about. Audiences are no longer allowed to negatively comment on the look of characters, nor they allowed to comment on any of the changes. Fans of long-running intellectual properties are only supposed to praise them for their physical identities and anything they don't like about their personalities are nothing but white noise in the eyes of whoever is pushing this way of thinking. Whether they're pushing it for money or some shallow need for opposition is irrelevent. This is a trend that is killing brands that fans once loved.
This is an expansion of the previous article that stated you should never bow down to this idea and surrender your sense of standards. If it is obvious that the greed and hubris of a company has stepped in a direction not to your liking, you have no obligation to humor them. Point out what is wrong with these changes. Give your opinions of how a story could have been better and what plotholes they so obviously ignored. If you don't like a character, it does not matter why you don't like that character, reject them. That is your perogotive. You do not need to scream and shout at people who disagree with you. If they are unwilling to coexist with you because of your opinions or your stance on a subject, then they are not worth your time and most certainly do not deserve your hard-earned money.
Companies will churn out whatever they want in terms of how a game is made and very few of them will compromise with logic and/or reason. If someone is sitting there defending these large corporations in opposition to their middle class customers, that sounds like a big bag full of not your problem. They can cry about people taking to youtube and podcasts, picking apart their obvious agendas all they want. In the end, it is up to you to make the call of what side you're on in this fight, even if that means you are not part of the fight. You don't need to be there to defend either side, you can make your own decisions and pick who you trust. If AAA companies really think online reviews are brainwashing you or controlling your opinions, it honestly sounds like they are bitter because they were unable to do so. Do not accept undercooked games that are below your standards and do not change your mind just because a game publisher says you should do so because, "just trust me". You have a brain and you are fully capable of using it, unlike certain individuals that think they can sweeten your "babyish mind" while hiding behind a coporation. Save your money for the game you truly want and remember to drink water.
