The Deconstruction of Western Game Development (RIP BioWare)
I'm going to tell you guys a sad little story. It starts all the way back in 2011, and ends with the closure of one of the west's most beloved RPG developers: BioWare.
15 years ago, some weird shit started happening in game development. I'll skip the frivolous details and I won't bother naming names, it's already a long story, but essentially it involves certain left-wing activists campaigning for social justice.
You see, these activists noticed video games due to their surging popularity and cultural relevance, and boy let me tell you, they were not happy about this! "How dare these silly little games that men love have such a massive impact on our culture?! Are the video games influencing elections?!"
Once this was noticed, there was no turning back. These activists knew how important gaming was, and they also knew that nobody cared if they personally liked them or not. We can't have that! How non-inclusive..!
There was only one thing for them to do: change video games into something they could personally be proud of. So they got started by declaring various things about video games "problematic."
"Does this camera angle show up a woman's skirt? Why is it focused on this fictional character's scrumptious rump for more than 7.2 seconds? How absolutely and utterly objectifying! Does this game actually incentivize killing strippers and hiding it? Is this fictional character just a little too curvy and attractive? Are men having too much fun?! How many women have been told to 'get back in the kitchen' in a Call of Duty lobby? Wait a minute, there's only two black guys..?"
🤬😡🤬
Meanwhile, the west was being introduced to a little something called "cancel culture." You see, a lot of people had the audacity to publicly voice opinions that leftists weren't fond of. This was one of the most severe possible social crimes. If convicted, you could potentially face cry-bullying, friend-group ostracization, deplatforming, and in more severe cases... losing your job or being debanked.
Naturally, nobody wanted that. Some even feared "getting canceled" more than death itself, as evidenced by some rather tragic suicides. "If we are going to change video games, this is the perfect weapon for us to utilize," the aforementioned activists thought to themselves. But if they were going to pull this off: they needed to break out the big guns. A caped crusader so fearsome, that none would dare oppose them...
..Polygon and Kotaku.
Anyways, I promise I'm getting to the point. As activists started their campaign to "change video games," journalists everywhere rallied to their cause. You see, they were very angry at gamers after they had the audacity to call a woman a "whore" for... literally sleeping her way into the industry and publicly bullying her ex-boyfriend into suicide. From this point on, gamers were the enemy. Problematic bigots, and misogynists, oh my. 💫
The mission? Simple: bring social justice to video games at any cost, make the industry more politically correct and inclusive. Punish those brave enough to resist our efforts with left-wing cancel culture. Make video games more "diverse," aka more in line with our political ideology. There was just one problem: the gamers were starting to notice. 🫥
You may have heard of a little movement called "Gamergate." While you probably heard that this was little more than a white supremacist, anti-women hate campaign orchestrated by 4chan, the simple reality of this movement is that it was a collective of individuals from various cultures, ethnicities, and backgrounds who all shared one thing in common: they actually liked video games and didn't want activists to bastardize and change them for political reasons.
The message of Gamergate was simple:
"If you allow these activists to politicize game development, it's going to lead to lesser quality products, and potentially the downfall of video games as we know them."
That's right. Fifteen years ago, those silly little bigots, aka "Gamergate 4chan trolls," (🥵) predicted...
..Dragon Age: The Veilguard!
It may sound like I'm joking, but I'm not. You see I was right there with Gamergate predicting the downfall of video games. I knew that games like 'Veilguard' would be the inevitable result of the left-wing politicization of game development. I tried to warn you, I really did... but so many of you simply refused to listen.
Yes, dear reader. You were so caught up in your Tumblr-tier performative social optics, that you ignored our warnings. You joined in with game journalists to write us off as bigots. You told us we were overreacting, that we didn't know what we were talking about, and that "the only reason we could possibly not want left-wing politics in game development is because we hate black people and wahmen."
You called us trolls, white supremacists, Nazis, white nationalists, alt-right, sexists, misogynists, homophobes, transphobes, gooners, incels," and every other name under the sun to discredit us as opposition: blindly taking the "activists" side. But you know what we didn't hear a lot of..? Arguments quantifying what, precisely, that we are wrong about. I distinctly remember there being an acute lack of those responses. I digress.
The problem with politicizing video games and their development is not a difficult concept. Time and development resources are finite. When you spend $500/hr on an "inclusivity consultant..." that is several thousands of dollars that you could've spent elsewhere, on something that actually matters to your players. When you hire activist game developers who ignore your player's preferences and/or create in spite of them, you're not going to have the most appealing product.
It's not rocket science:
When activists come along, look at the last twenty years of blockbuster success stories in gaming, then tell you "hey, um... actually... all of this is a problem, and if you do not change your problematic ways, me and my progressive friends will cause you... problems..." you're dealing with literal snake oil salesmen. Rather than hiring them, you should either tell them to fuck off, or just fucking run. But so many of you idiots made it a point to ignore our warnings and tell publishers, "this is actually what we want." So publishers listened. And then you got Veilguard.
Today, we learned that BioWare is shutting down. The end of an era. What was once one of the most beloved and celebrated RPG developers in the west, is now little more than a cautionary tale of what not to do in game development. And it all started fifteen years ago when those of you who took the activist's side ignored our warnings about the downsides of politicizing video game development.
I hate to say we told you so, but we told you so. We reeeally did warn you guys.
I'd ask you politely to actually learn something from this, but I never claimed you guys were smart, or honest. It's been fifteen years, and yet creators like @AngryJoeShow are still crashing out whenever we criticize something, while brilliantly ignoring the entire fucking point of our arguments. Who knew..? No... really! Who knew that politicization, censorship, sanitization, social justice, trigger warnings, inclusivity seminars, and zoom calls where game developers spend eleven minutes explaining their pronouns would be something of a problem in an industry that is supposed to be about interactive entertainment and fun?
Rest in Performative Left-Wing Social Optics, BioWare.
