Gaming

I will be honest I stopped after about 12 minutes, so perhaps he says something of value later on... but I doubt it. :P

I didn't really want to have to watch any more of this dude, but I wanted to make sure I gave him a fair shake... and hoo boy.

Just look at it for what it is, and realize it’s going to fail. And then plan accordingly.

This is just victim blaming, bruh. Even if a developer sees a project is going badly, it's not like there are infinite jobs out there that need filling. Changing jobs is not fast and easy, some of the workers are likely on work visas that don't allow them to just change employers, game companies aren't all in the same small area such that it won't require moving homes which is a huge expense, and there's no guarantee that the project you're moving to will be any better.

This is a failure of worker protection laws. Framing it as workers just needing to hustle smarter, while executives run companies and families into the ground, is peak corporate apologism.

He’s literally reading off one of this articles, that goes off on a tangent that a few people on Twitter said something about games being “too woke” and tries to counter that.

If you don't think that alt-right-lite is a huge problem in gaming circles, I don't know what to tell you. Go play literally any multiplayer game and you will find plenty of gamers spouting anti-DEI/ anti-woke/ right-wing talking points in no time flat. And yes, they absolutely do avoid games based on it. And the problem with just ignoring this is that you're ceding the narrative to them. Young white men have seen a shift rightwards precisely because alt-right-lite chuds like JonTron capture them via gaming-focused content, and then shift them over to politics-focused guys like Tate/ Shapiro/ etc. It's a pipeline, that often starts in gaming spaces.

Ideological soapboxes are very real things that games “journalists” push on a daily basis.

He wasn't talking about ideological soapboxes in reference to journalists, he was talking about developers. And he is using that as a direct euphemism for "DEI"/ "woke" content.

And yes, the comments are agreeing with him, that's the point of a dogwhistle. There are a bunch of comments being anti-diversity/ anti-woke, referencing another video of his about game companies hiring people who supposedly despise gamers.

Here is a video of his called "The Real Impact of DEI in Gaming". He uses rainbow/pink/diversity-washing being bad to then ultimately conclude that DEI is a net negative that he (no joke) BLAMES ON OVERREGULATION by the government. He then goes on to suggest that DEI actually is about dividing people in order to (also not a joke) feed a DEI-consulting industry.

"They're hiring in people that don't have the merit, that don't have the skill" (8:40) Classic. He then goes onto blame "DEI hire" developers for games being buggy or releasing too early, as though that is their choice (once again, he clearly doesn't understand what developers do or do not control).

It's frustrating seeing these chuds get wiser about the number of levels they couch their ultimate anti-diversity rhetoric in, because clearly it's working on some people. Instead of saying, "diversity in gaming companies bad", he says, "regulations force execs to hire diverse devs who lack merit (which is bigoted bs on its own), who then over time lower the quality of games, ** and also** evil DEI consultants intentionally push devs to make diverse games without being sincere about the portrayals and stories... so in the end we should stop pushing devs to be diverse and make diverse games, and just let each group of people make games for themselves (which is back to square one where big companies just hire white guys)."

He's literally just taking all the Republican anti-DEI rhetoric and applying to to gaming.

Obviously, nobody looked at a game and thought “oh, well, that’s too woke, so I’m not going to buy it”. They didn’t buy it because it was a shit game with shitty microtransactions.

Except these people are out there, and we've known this since GamerGate happened over a decade ago. One of the top Steam curators is called "Sweet Baby Inc detected", and exists to identify games that are "too woke":

Clearly there are at least 468k losers out there that avoid specific games because "that’s too woke, so I’m not going to buy it".

But, it’s been mostly the AAA studios that produced massive, massive high-budget flops, and then they laid off a bunch of their staff.

Those are still failures on the publisher's part. This isn't 30 years ago. Most game studios are not independent, they're owned by the publishers, and the publishers have immense creative control.

No, but when developers and the rest of the teams see that it’s “live-service schlock”, they should start looking at their resumes, instead of thinking “well, my job is safe because it’s a large corporation”.

Really easy to say, but, believe it or not, during a time where the tech industry is actively shedding 10s of thousands of jobs, looking at your resume doesn't actually do anything for you.

Honestly, you seem to be saying "it's developers fault because I refuse to understand power dynamics". You may as well just scream "bootstraps" over and over.

My instance doesn't show any of that, and neither does my app. So if anyone has that info automatically, it's because their instance admin or app dev did that for their specific case.

yes, using a smaller platform means forgoing some of the conveniences you are used to on a larger platform. but we all make do because we're here for the community, not the features.