Brother, you don't need to to put "Game Dev explains why" in your title. You already mention it in your intro. It's redundant and I think it may be better for you to have a more simplistic title for the algorithm.
It's in the title so people who are not familiar with my channel can know before clicking the video. That way they don't think I'm just another RUclips commentator. I appreciate the feedback though and I'll think about it.
i really hate how the defenders says we want attractive characters because that equates to porn. im like what??? what kind mental gymnastics do they do to think like that.
probably because half the online fanbase of stellar blade were triggered and cried censorship because two outfits were given additional cloth. When you look at comments under stellar blade videos you will find porn related innuendos, Marvel Rivals most recently too, so it's not hard to imgaine why defenders would come to said conclusions.
@dr_diddy it was a matter of principle. No censorship, period. There were more revealing costumes in the game already. If you can't understand that, you are far gone into a place I wouldn't like to be.
4:29 Perfect rendition of what the "inclusion" really means: American gender related stereotypes ONLY. Nothing that is genuinely diverse in the global cultural level.
My favorite example of TRUE diversity are the Ninja Turtles. 4 characters that aren't even human but they have 4 different temperaments and personalities. This is why people connect with the TMNT.
Exacly! I don't mind what's happening in America with the gender, "inclusivity" problems! As European I'm really bored: Not the whole world is interested in American cultural issues and visions and if this will ignored, It will mean that very soon consumers will turn elsewhere, perhaps to Eastern productions.
@@nuclearsun2001 they already are turning to eastern productions. 2024 was pretty much an eastern sweep when it comes to games (Palworld, Black Myth Wukong, Marvel Rivals, etc).
No, no, they learned that 400 million dollars isn't enough to gather the modern audience. Perhaps a studio with better reputation and maybe a whole silly billy of dollars can fix this problem.
I think it's more the connotations that shaving one's head has, usually signifies something bad happened, generally due to a relationship... so right off the bat, they're telling you she's depressed or angry, and has baggage that a gamer doesn't want to deal with, it's a game, not a drama movie.
Nowadays studios like Naughty Dog try to be provocative just to make them interesting and stand out, and they cleverly hide it behind excuses like “trying to make characters more diverse” etc. but it’s pretty obvious what they’re doing. Essentially like you said getting attention by being purposefully subversive. They don’t even try to make normal characters anymore.
@@clouds5 writers of uncharted and TLOU1 are gone after TLOU2 no one's there to talk to neil druckman, that's been reported before and also the a tiny rip of the problem started in uncharted 4 but we were still naive and ignorant of the situation at that time
@@nozenkyuzero that makes a lot of sense. Often in these studios it's like one or two good people that have a clear vision and once their gone everything changes :(
Subversion. You go to a shop. "Can I have a Coke please?" you say. The subversive man behind the counter says "Yes sir, here you go." You look at your beverage with a puzzles expression. "Um...this is Sprite sir." The shop keep looks at you and says "I was being subversive sir. It's popular nowadays. That's $13 please." Subversion.
@@kosmosXcannon RC Cola inside a Coke bottle would be really funny. Eventually, someone notices, and the clerk has to gaslight that customer that they're getting Coke.
I hate the current gaming industry so much. I criticized the gane's trailer for looking unappealing and full of product placements that make me went from "maybe I'll wait for more trailers" to "I'm not going to even think about the game because of all the product placement." Then someone goes "ugh, this is why I hate male gamers." As if I somehow shouldn't critique the first impression of said reveal.
The idea that people aren't allowed to critique trailers is hilarious and is always funny when corpo bootlickers try and claim that. It's a trailer. Literally, its entire purpose is to get us to be interested in the game. If it fails to get people interested in the game, then the trailer failed its job. There's a reason companies spend so much on marketing, because it's one of the biggest parts that will dictate if the game sells or not.
@1s3ngr1m That’s what it’ll take. There’s a zero percent chance that they ever receive criticism and actually acknowledge that it’s not what gamers want
@@caseyblankenship987We already see it happen. Layoffs at big game companies, mostly those infected by the toxic DEI virus, while smaller indie developers with good games thrive.
UgIy people with cluster B personality disorders: they jealously hate good looking people, as well as anyone who appreciates good looking people. They're about 10% of the population.
I am still completely lost on WHY devs, studios and publishers settled on that self-destructive path in the first place years ago. But maybe what we see now is just the reflection of the continental North American society and their incapability of talking to each other (meaning also their clients and customers) for good. Because I cannot find any other explanation anymore than these devs and CEOs having decided to live in an ivory tower of their former Twitter, now BlueSky universe, with their zero-emission homes, their electric cars, their veganism and constant strive to optimize every aspect in their completely spoiled and struggle-free existencies while around them the majoritiy of the world has to deal with much less abstract issues at hand. And thus they are completely decoupled and isolated from the reality of life and actual human interaction. Yes, sounds plausible. The only problem for me is: I still cannot believe it.
@saiyan-cowboy the thing is... selling "doesn't matter" in that case. Investors most of the time have no idea of what the heck is going on in the game industry. They just look at big ESG numbers and put their money on it because they were convinced this matters at all. That gives a huge incentive for CEOs and etc to go for DEI. Then, the money the studio gets comes from ESG funding. Then, when the game is released, most of the revenue money is used to pay back investors. If the game flops, investors are screwed (not only them, ofc, but others don't matter to my point). Then, we go back to the beginning: investors have no idea of what the heck is going on in the game industry. They don't know that if a high-ESG studio is flopping, that's because they are focusing on DEI instead of making good games. So they see it just as a failed investment instead of the whole idea of ESG being flawed. At least that's the way I read this situation from my own experience and from what I've heard from others. TL;DR: incentives are for CEOs to please investors, not customers. And investors care about ESG, and don't really bother to actually learn more about the gaming industry.
@@saiyan-cowboy TBF, one should remember that creating a video game is nothing that happens in 6 to 12 months from concept to development to release. What we see right now are the late symptoms of a disease that got hold of the industry back in at least 2016 with the 1st Trump administration or even 2014 with the first gamergate, both events causing a lot of turmoil and controversy in the gaming scene but also in general. If you check when most of these games have been developed, the Trump presidency was by far the biggest influence. The erratic kind of regimen, the chaos and the polarizing POTUS himself lead many to quite hardened opinions on both sides. This reflects strongly in the entertainment sector in particular. With the pandemic, the request for software services reachfs astronomical levels. This lead to a lot of mostly young people, inexperienced and full of ideals from universities being hired by mostly big names in the business with enough money to maintain such a staff like Ubisoft, EA, Microsoft, Blizzard, you name it. These of course put their idealistic perspectives on the world in their work because they simply lack any kind of other knowledge. And all of a sudden, you get the situation we have today. The thing I still don't understand is devs and publishers beating the same dead horse for DEI in games under any circumstances even now that it turned out to be a catastrophe so far.
These people can call me a "racist" or a "bigot" all they want, but the one thing they can't call me is a "customer." If I don't like it, I won't buy it. I detest how these people go to extremes when it comes to making their argument. Just because we don't want bald masculine women doesn't mean we want overly-sexualized characters. We just want better designs and better stories in our games. Divisive stories and designs make divisive games, and divisive games make divisive sales. Don't cater to what the people want, and they won't buy it. Concord died on the back of the designs alone. That should have been a Come-To-Jesus moment for modern day AAA developers, but these developers are doubling down. Why? Don't they WANT us to buy their games?
Hmm you don't want oversexualized characters? Okay explain the hate to ciri, or the new ghost protagonist, or the new assasins creed protagonist. All still got hate from you guys and none of them look masculine.
@@redninja3056ok sure to haters like myself Ciri’s new design is a massive downgrade to her TW3 version. Yotei replaces a beloved male protagonist for seemingly no reason at all. Dunno what you’re on about in terms of the hate Naoe’s character design got but her combat looks like absolute amateur trash. Each character got negative feedback from potential customers for different reasons. Except people like you love conflating nuanced conversations together into one dumbed down argument. You’re probably a Veilguard lover. Either way like bro said above they ain’t getting our money. I’ll love seeing the stuff you love go down in flames like TW4 and Intergalactic will. The devs that care about me like the Wukong, Space Marine 2 and Stellar Blade devs will only keep making more money
@ easy. Look at that image of Baldy with Ciri drinking masculinity tears, showing us middle finger. Ciri looks better in that drawing, like her previous self. Proving that no one likes a downgrade... it's a common self own by a "progressive" artist.
@@iamkurogane " seemingly no reason at all" dude the game takes place way after jin was alive are you dense? And of course ciri looks different she's not only older but the game was literally built in a different engine but I guess if she doesn't look like a sex doll those things don't matter, and of course you don't know the hate about naoes character, because you're clearly aren't informed enough to make an argument. So all I hear is bad because woman
That post about “strait white males protagonists for decades” and there’s been no uproar or boycott for “forcing politics into games” is just full of In accuracies and just low iq perception. First of all, it hasn’t been every game and for the last decade it’s certainly been not true. Just about every game, especially legacy ip, has had female protagonists and several have had “women of color” of various degrees. Second, there WAS an uproar over “white male characters.” Why do you think we are where we are? Activists and journalists(activists too) perpetuated the anti-white male narrative for years. They just didn’t call it an uproar. They labeled it “valid criticism,” and label the current uproar as “invalid criticism.” It’s part of their ideo-political tactics. 3rd, the reason no one said they were “forcing politics” into games when there were more white male characters is simple: making the characters white WASNT forcing politics into games. It was natural. They are drawing a false equivalency. These two things are NOT the same. It is not comparable to what they are doing now and to suggest otherwise is very bad faith. The people making the games were white; they created the damn industry by virtue of building companies and producing games. Why wouldn’t they make white male characters? The DEVS were WHITE. Almost ALL of them WERE white males. It’s as if they were supposed to have some responsibility to NOT make white characters? There was no political agenda they were just making games. But now there IS a concerted ideo-political agenda behind “inclusion” and dei. So it IS political now. The worst part is they constantly tell us it’s an ideo-political agenda, and then try to act like what they are doing is normal. GTFO.
Well said! And we can see this same phenomenon across nerd culture today. Much like older video games, comic books were created by (and for) _mostly_ white males, but this wasn't out of bigotry, it was simply demographics. I think diversity advocates would get more support if they abandoned their revisionist arguments and instead showed some respect for the people who created and supported these industries in the first place.
“strait white males protagonists for decades” Yup. People who are saying this are not real gamers. Because if they were real gamers, they'd know this is entirely not true.
So you're saying africans can't be game devs. We are not in the 90s anymore. Game industry is much bigger and if non-white people are in the teams they would want to make non-white characters.
As a woman and also from SEA country, all I want just a pretty/handsome characters to play. Be it blond hair, blue eyes, white as paper, I still want to play this character. I do not think that the character is me, and I don't want myself in game either.
One of the question people sometimes forget is "Does it fit the world" This choice of main character is obvious decided five years ago to go with the current GIRLBOSS wave. The problem is people are TIRED of girlbosses, and just want balanced characters again. Something that FITS! There have been leaks of potential stories for this game and... eh... I don't know. the story is pretty questionable too. So! If those leaks are true how this character looks isn't even the worst thing. Again, this all was decided FIVE YEARS AGO! That is modern game design for you. And I am not sure if this game is going to do IT. There are a lot of strange choices.
"Does it fit the world" This game takes place in a futuristic 80s. Back in the 80s, shaving your head meant you're a skinhead. Not sure if they thought that through.
@@SabrPath So, all that means she is just missing the Nazi symbol on her neck. Skinheads were known to have a nazi tattoo on their body in the 80's. Here in Australia, that is.
When I was younger I thought she was supposed to be modeled after Ellen DeGeneres. So I looked up who voiced her, and her voice actress, Emily Rose, is extremely attractive. Didn't make sense to me as to why they made her look the way they did. Then they kept changing her face in UC 3, UC 4 and the remakes. The only two games she looks like the same person is UC 1 and UC 2.
@SabrPath it's difficult for me to believe that the "uglyficiation" of female characters goes back that far but who knows when ideology is involved and we now know that subversion is subtle and gradual. I find it interesting that your family said that she was ugly and I'm curious how much of their opinion is based on cultural norms. Which I think lends well to the criticism of these characters in general; the predominant culture dictates things like attractiveness, for instance, which proves subversion is actually happening within the industry.
Yeah, I’m not sure about that either. I didn’t think she looked ugly in UC1 or UC2. She just looks like slightly blocky due to graphical limitations to me.
Ever notice most of the people that defend subversive characters like attractive characters themselves? A lot of those people have cute/attractive anime character pfps or have a more attractive cartoon version of themselves, they like or share cute/attractive fan art, and may even over sexualize many people and/or things in general?
I just came across your channel. Wish all devs thinking like you. The mass audience come first if you want to make profit of your development but these big AAA studios live in echo chambers so they seek themselves which leads to alienating mass audience of the world, for modern audience that don't exist.
I appreciate the words of support! I hope that my message can encourage other game devs from being silent about this "us against the audience" mentality.
The mass audience aren't constantly online, they don't care about half the shit people say here lol, that's the audience buying games. Intergalactic will likely sell well regardless of slapping a known petite womans head of bodybuilder shoulders 😭
@@dr_diddy I don't believe that myself. 2016-2023 era is over. We have alot of games flop, studios shut down. Masses laysoff. This year prove the majority of gamers around the world they are basic just want to have fun. if something is preaching and put a 'message' over fun they move away. Dragon age as example big name and shallow fun so It Fell hard on face.
@@dr_diddy Sure, same as Veilguard sold wonderfully while having the base with a strong presence of Dragon Age franchise... oh wait, but Intersex Prophet isn't a franchise yet...
People forget gaming is a VISUAL medium and appealing characters sell, male and female. We wouldnt have even half of the iconic gaming characters since the 80s that are beloved if this modern day ideology was pushed back then. The characters would not stand the test of time. Female characters such as Lara Croft, Bayonetta, Alyx, Rayne, Terra, Fran, Tifa Lockhart, Yuna, Jill Valentine, Jade, Faith, Bastilla, Mileena, Chun-Li, Cammy White, Nina Williams, Kasumi, Mai Shiranui, Shaundi, and Meryl. Male characters like Nathan Drake, Link, Kratos, Tommy Vercetti, Cole MacGrath, Master Chief, Doom Guy, CJ, Cloud Strife, Sora, Sub-Zero, Marcus Fenix, Solid Snake, Marth, Mario, Travis Touchdown, Leon Kennedy, Ryu Hayabusa, Jak, and Ryu.
I don't have problems with some fetish but when a character is a musical mommy and has scar and he/she/is and ugly and bald, That's too much of fetish for me. I don't know what kind of pervert they're trying to get at with this, but it's definitely not me.
I think you should design questions that elicits the readers behaviour and not the expected behaviour of others to get less bias findings. For example the statement "this will not sell well" is an expectation of other people's expected behaviours. what would make it more accurate is "would you buy it with this character?" which will give you insight to people's personal opinions and not their stereotypes.
honestly alot of these "modern audience" games tend to make rather cut and dry character designs. like even the villains need to deliver a large monolog about why they are evil and so on (alot of bloat really), sometimes the appearance if a figure can easily just say " Villain" and them not needing to say anything. I myself love to design models/write story material. But whenever i make something, i tend to think of what does their appearance, posture and general attitude exude. outside of that i even start to think of potential voice and even smell (smell is in some designs). i mean the Nexus defenders designs do kinda tell what you were saying, Deathbringer does sell the whole "fight me and you die" sort of thing, But for Ironbourne, it did require you explaning their gimic with the whole "Big game hunter", it could be tweaked to that they wear some trophies on their body or has a few of scars on their face/body that they are proud of like saying "each scar is a testiment to my ability, each a worthy and glorious battle" that sort of deal, even just wearing tokens from their defeated foes. The designs are however still cool and imposeing however (still i like Deathbringer the most XD)
Thanks for the feedback. I'll keep that in mind for my future games. One thing I noted to myself after making Nexus Defenders was the lack of accessories on the characters. Things like a belt with pouches, a holster with a knife, etc can tell the audience more about that character. I want to eventually come back to the Nexus Defenders world by making Nexus Tactics. And when I do that, I'm bringing back some of the characters and I'll make some changes to them.
@@SabrPath i love makeing characters too. mainly the models i make are in this online miniature tool known as "Heroforge" and ive been doing it for close to 3-4 years. i kinda just hope deep down that my creativity could be used in games or books. However i do kinda lack the skill for both makeing a game or books (since my artisinal skills are abit limited when it comes to drawing or litteracy when writeing a story). Either way i am gonna look up "Nexus defenders" just to see how the game is. cause i am kinda interested in seeing how the characters are. After all a character's looks can be changed but the personality is often hard to really get right. Either way i am happy for you noticeing the feedback i gave. Even if it might just be heavly limited
The people defending these characters are more racist than the people not liking it. Because not liking them isn’t based on the race. Although all the people can focus on when defending these characters is the race.
Hey man as a non muslim you’re doing the Islam value integration stuff amazingly in your game art. It reminds me of how Asuras Wrath made its Hindu influence into a space epic.
Thanks. My religion is important to me, but I also understand not to be heavy-handed with implementing it in my games and content. No one likes to be lectured. Nuance is key.
As a Muslim aspiring to be a pro indie artist with similar ideas of integrating it in a variety of ways, thank you for your service and inspiring work@@SabrPath
I think the redesign is interesting because, I suspect, the side which calls the consumer bigots would complain about the hijab in the same context that we complain about her official design. You have a more nuanced perspective on this topic than most and I appreciate that
It's become a pattern. At this point, when a gamer sees a character that goes against what they want, they then question "what else has the game developer put into the game that I don't want?"
I'm glad there are still Game Devs out there willing to raise their voices on this subject! I heard someone say that most of the games we're seeing released today started development during 2019-2020 when it was peak "diversity" times and will take a few years before they realize there's is no market for these games and these characters. I'm hoping that in the next few years this nonsense will go away and hopefully without taking the entire games industry with it.
The internet’s constant noise has worsened the discourse around video games. Despite this being one of the best years in gaming, internet culture insists we hate every AAA studio. Instead of simply ignoring bad games and putting our money into the gardens of the games we love to help them grow, we’ve turned to endless criticism, attacking every new release. Now, with the latest game, people act like it’s the only option, pouring all their attention into it. We’ve convinced ourselves that shouting into the void will "save" the industry. But aggression only breeds more aggression. Attacks provoke defensive reactions, escalating into pointless conflict and division. If we had focused on supporting the wealth of amazing games released this year, most of this drama could have been avoided. Instead, camps were formed, battle lines drawn, and the issues in gaming have been needlessly prolonged. I really like your perspective on this, and I’ve noticed more people are beginning to share this sentiment. The industry can truly start to heal when we, as players, focus on supporting healthy games and let the toxic ones wither from neglect.
Thank you for being the ONLY person to see this! Our year of gaming is actually not as bad as we think it is, and we can simply not buy these bad games instead of raging at them. A lot of gamers and developers are being pulled into a battlefield they didn't ask for, and that's alarming. It was never like this back in my day, and I feel that both sides are to blame for the state of things as they are.
Most drama is manufactured by grifters alot of "issues" are non issues that only affect a fraction of released games. For example, "DEI/ESG is ruining games..." Fromsoft, Capcom, Bandai etc the beloved eastern game studios all have those policies 🤣 because in reality it means fuck all with games. 😭 But certain demographics have convinced an echo chamber that because of a couple bad releases that these are the problem, it takes away from real conversations and dealing with real problems which you've mentioned.
I think we're starting to shift back to normalcy. I'm seeing an increasing number of my former colleagues agreeing with my posts on LinkedIn. I'm sure most are afraid to interact with my posts due to fear of backlash, but the backlash is starting to fade.
"But aggression only breeds more aggression. Attacks provoke defensive reactions, escalating into pointless conflict and division"...Meh, it seems to work, the culture intruders don't know how to box
Yes, I agree, but I mention those countries specifically for their large video game market. There are many countries that have no impact on the gaming industry.
I don't know where these Devs and higher-ups making decisions keep getting there analytics but that so called "small vocal minority" is actually the majority
You lost me immediately by using Elena from Uncharted as an example of an ugly character. In what fucking world, by whose stratospheric standards, is that character ugly? Ridiculous.
I really love how at the 6:55 mark your teacher said no one wants to play a game you made for you. All the worst games, shows, comics and movies over the last 5 years are absolute proof of that. I am Not Starfire, Dustborne, Velma and the lot of all the rest. All self inserts. All pure vanity projects, of one person self satisfied and unable to absorb any critique. Not only does it make a bad product, no one wants to pay for? It makes a bad creator, who is almost physically unable to accept critique, to grow, change and adapt to success.
Technically she was just talking about creative works because it wasn't a video game class, it was a creative thinking class. But yes, you get the point.
6:25 Most important takeaway- when you are making art only to please yourself, don’t be surprised when everyone else doesn’t like it. And that was a big waste of time and money in a AAA game
This is by far the most balanced and on point take I've seen on the entire subject. I wish more of the industry felt as you do, maybe we wouldn't have lost so many good development teams over the last 5 years.
Thanks for the support! I think a lot of people in the industry feel the same as me, but management was to push for nonsense. When I was at Zwift, they were getting awards like "most inclusive company in Long Beach" which encouraged them to go more crazy, but every single year we had giant layoffs. It was more important for management to pander rather than job security for the employees.
The thought of women sitting around and grumbling about this in Arabic was funny for a moment, then sad when you realize there's a concerted effort to make people unhappy all over the world.
And that's one of the biggest problems with Dei as it stands today. Developers today seemed to believe that just because they have a diverse character who fits their narrative and aesthetic. They believed that they are owed the same type of success that games of the past received. They completely ignore the work and the writing that went into creating those characters and that game. At the end of the day they want equality of outcomes as much as they want equality of opportunity and that's not true equality. Moreover, true equity and inclusion are the fact that any person can identify with a character regardless of their aesthetic. Regardless of race creed or religion, we are all humans and have a human experience. Saying that a character only has to look a certain way or act a certain way for all people to be able to understand their plight basically undermines a diverse person's human experience. To you give an overly simplistic example, if a straight white male fell and hit his knee on the sidewalk. Does anyone hear really think that anyone of any race would not feel or sympathize with his pain just because he's a straight white male?
I agree. I love to bring up the TMNT. 4 characters that aren't even human, yet boys have related to them for generations since the 80s because they have 4 distinct personalities and temperaments.
As an outsider who is also a Muslim, I do think I want somewhat balance between "Sexualized" and "Beautiful" in terms of designs... I like the characters curvy and beautiful. Not exactly "sexualized" but the character designs can be either quite sexy or temptatious or alluring depending on their needs. I like those characters. So I disagree a bit of not wanting "Sexualized" designs but I don't want it to be a borderline a "Pown Game" or Hentai game. That's different. If I want to do that, I would've bought those games. What I want are the character designs to be allowed to be those types. Not censorship. I hate censorship. One example, Zenless Zone Zero. Their characters, are beautiful. Their proportions are amazing. They're very beautiful characters. Even a little "sexualized" in terms of curvyness. Their body types are very sexy and curvy. Those designs are great and should not be gone or censored. There is a reason why Genshin Impact, Zenless Zone Zero and Honkai Star Rail have the characters designed that way. It sells. People want to see those types. If you don't, walk away. It isn't for you. It clearly is for most other people. Just not for you. That's simply it. There's a market. Character from that ND game? No. None of that, please. Not many people are attracted to that. That's just the cold hard truth. She's unappealing in every way.
I don't think the Hijab makes a difference in her attitude, but it's still a realistic design wise and she achieves her goal of looking different enough but I don't want people to take it as if she's now a Muslim from that. Maybe just use a simple hood would've done the job.
In my Marvel Rivals video, I highlight Scarlet Witche's design. They found a good middle ground with her. She isn't wearing a swim suit like her original comic design, but she also still looks very pretty. I think more female characters should be designed like her, to be covered up but still look attractive.
I wasn't suggesting she should wear a hijab in the game. My point was to counter the people who kept saying "I like her design" to the bald look. It doesn't matter what "I like" when it comes to a AAA game. What matters is what the core audience likes.
I don't know much about muslim culture, but I have to say I'm really mind blown at how well you implemented that into the character 0_o. To me, while it wouldn't have sold me on the game, had I never known the OC was some bald he woman, I'd of never known that this wasn't original. That is some incredible work man, good on you. I agree with everything you'd stated here. Very level headed, very logical.
I just worked administration there. I left because they didn't move me into level design. The experience was still very valuable since I got feedback from devs.
No one complaint about Lara croft, or AC Odyssey Kassandra or Last of US Ellie. Because they showed womanhood behaviour but also being badass. And yet studios think gamers are racist.
“Subversive” is a word that these people latched on to as a way of telling us “we dont care what you want, we do what we want”…fine by me, my money doesn’t like you either.
I understand that mentality, but the people who are making this decisions that will shut down studios, will end up getting hired very quickly by their buddies at the other studios. The people on the bottom who had no input on those choices are the ones who get hurt the most. This was my experience.
Just found your channel and honestly, your opinions are pretty awesome. Every Opinion you say you backup very well. I Hope your words can reach people truly, could help this failing industry these days.
Finally, a balanced and mature opinion. I’m not convinced that many of the people in the AAA industry are creative people, they think they are but the reality is they are activists. I’ve tried to ignore the insults from the studio aimed at the customer. My patience has run out now and I will no longer buy a game if I’m insulted by the studio, regardless if the game is “good” or not.
Tbh, i think it's just Neil Druckmann pushing his vision. He loves trans and lesbians, he also said he doesn't intend on being in video game development much longer. He's probably happy to get his team fired so long as he can push out his vision
@SabrPath I think that was always his intention tbh. He sees game development as a means to an end. More than likely, he's going to try to pursue TV when he quits naughtydog, assuming he doesn't make the studio go bust. I miss the old naughty dog
What makes art, Art, is the intent to communicate with other people. If you are the target audience of your art, then it's masturbation. That's fine, but you shouldn't do it in public.
USA here. With the current climate in gaming, and our culture, and customers being ultra sensitive to certain imagery, the hijab design is just as polarizing as the "lesbian" and "radical feminist" aesthetics. Many will immediately associate these design choices with pushing an agenda. I think that we would need a year or two of really great, mass appeal games to soften people's reactions to such imagery and aesthetics.
Yes I agree. At this point, everything is assumed guilty until proven innocent when it comes to token characters and stereo types. There's been such an on going pattern of everything being used to fill in a quota, that to the masses, it gives a negative message right off the bat.
Out from nowhere, I remembered about Najd from the game King of Fighters 14. She uses a hijab but her whole design don't make her look like a "bland" character.
The only people I've seen mentioning this character's race are the journos and insiders saying that other completely unspecified "toxic gamers" are upset about a "mixed race" character. I've not seen one actual gamer bring that point up. I'm thinking that the journos and insiders are the only ones obsessing on the character's race.
I didn't know what to expect when I clicked the video but was thoroughly impressed and definitely had to sub because you made all the points that are usually in my head and you made them better than I ever could while citing examples the whole way through.
I do NOT agree with your teacher. The PROBLEM with today's AAA industries - is that the devs aren't making games they themselves want to play, but they are making games they WISH people WOULD be playing. But - if you don't want to play your own creation - then why TF would anyone else?!?!
I hate games as a service, so I've stopped buying new AAA titles by 2015. I keep in contact on what industry is making and it is a total freefall in almost every aspect. I dropped "Neutered Dog" after the release of The Last of Us. The game is loved by the whole world, but I simply hated every aspect of this game in its core. So I'm not the target audience for a long shot. I care for graphic quality, beauty expressed in art, game mechanics quality and an outstanding story-telling script to bring all together in full sinergy. That's not what has been happening in the last decade, doesn't matter what gamers, haters or fanboys have to say, industry has been making BS on purpose. Alienating your public is asking for trouble and they'll be feeling the trouble by 2025 onwards. There is no such thing as "mOdErN aUdIeNcE". These people don't play games, they don't buy games. They watch on YT and build their opinions soon after, as well they show how clueless they are, for some even consider bragging on social media their experiences on watching gameplay of some major release.
Let them keep calling the audience bigots bro. Things will not change until the wheels fall of the car and the engine burns out. The only way things will change is when they lose enough money.
I get your point, but I don't think I agree. Zeno Clash has very ugly characters. The only reason why I played it because many gaming podcasts were talking about it at that time. Otherwise, I would have never played it.
@SabrPath yes that's for sure, but I'm talking about people saying we only want oversexualized characters, which isn't our message, we just want to get rid of the DEI infestation, if Nico Bellic in GTA4 was a good looking guy, it wouldn't fit his character, and yet he's my all time favorite character,
People have preferences, and theredore I propose that every game, from here on out, where you can see your character, the developers give us an extensive character creator where we can customize our character as we see fit, from Shreks to beach babes.
What's more important for people to connect, are the internal traits of the character. Personality, values, their mission, their actions. See my video on character development with the ninja turtle on the thumbnail.
@@justaquietpeacfuldance Not talking about self inserting. Customizing to ones own preferences is very different. For example the Intergalactic lead character: I can tolerate a janky story, annoying personality, feminist values, repetetive missions, and confusing actions, if we could customize her looks so that she'd look traditionally attractive. (I'd still be annoyed, but I would most likely buy and play the game through instead of skipping/refunding it).
No, you can’t impose strict limitations on the art people create. Every piece should be what it was intended to be. Besides, that theory wouldn’t work anyways as most people simply pick the default. Also as someone who absolutely loves character creators, I absolutely do not want that in everything. Characters still need to be created and imagined.
@@JayPeaTea not exaclty what I'd like to align myself with. I'd rather have a based character, solid gameplay, and consistent level of writing, forget the looks...
Great take on modern gaming. I don't like either political nonsense. I don't mind diversity, I criticize it when it's very panderish. The protagonist's design from Intergalactic looks alright.
I respect your opinion, and it's fine for you to like that character design. I just think it's disingenuous when people try to deny her design is subversive.
I've whishlisted Nexus Defenders on Steam as a way to support your work but to be honest, since the Steam Deck (SD) became my primary gaming device, I have lost interest in buying games (specially indie games) which are not SD compatible. I already have a backlog of 250 + games, most of which I'm never going to play. I don't know whether there is a significant barrier to entry into this segment, but in my pov if devs don't care to optimize their game for the SD than I don't care to buy or play their games.
Thanks for the support. A friend of mine told me that Nexus Defenders works fine on the Steam Deck, I need to look into finding out how to get it "Verified" with Valve on Steam. This is my first game I published so I'm still learning how to do everything in the Steam Partner Admin Panel.
Good video. Tackles the problem pretty well, the issue isnt that every character isnt sexualised anymore, the issue is that they are made subversive and uninteresting and unappealing. You dont need to be half naked to be attractive or cool looking, but what we are getting nowadays is every female character looks not even attractive from their silhouette or body language, thats the biggest issue in my understanding. And characters that have their origin in sexualised designs should also not be changed (Harley Quinn) when thats clearly part of the character.
I understand your last point, though I don't agree. Reason why is because I think it's fine to change characters if they are bad characters and need improvement. For example, Hideo Kojima didn't like how fans hated Raiden, so he wanted to make Raiden extremely cool in MGS 4 just to spite them. Or Mr. Freeze is another example. He was a bland snow villain but then Batman TAS turned him into a compelling character with depth. So I understand when fans don't want a character changed from what made them popular. But I also think it's fine to change characters if that character hardly worked to begin with.
I've come to the conclusion western devs are going to ride their moral superiority complex into the unemployment line before they admit they were wrong.
One would think that game devs should be past the whole "subverting expectations", but they continue to do it, without realizing they are dooming themselves in the end. They can't blame gamers for their low sales when the devs done nothing but insult them, change lore, and other things. Honestly, even with the hijab, Intergalactic won't sell well, since Naughty Dog stepped on too many toes with TLOU2.
Certain game developers have been listening to a select few who are insatiable, hypocritical and self-righteous. This is one reason a number of AAA games are commercial duds today.
Appealing characters sell. It's a visual medium. If we list the most iconic and beloved characters, male and female, from the 80s to 2010s I guarantee all of them are appealing in some way. Whether that is by looking cool, hot, sexy, cute, fun, fit, attractive, beautiful, badass, etc it doesn't matter. What we want to see in male and female characters usually varies but appeal is a big category of variety and any of those categories fit in some way. Appealing is appealing. And appealing sells.
@iraford5788 Well people have been calling out Lucia because of recent western trends. Here's hoping they don't push her as some girl boss while making her boyfriend some beta that has to be helped a lot in the story.
@@SnipingIsFun At the end of the day the majority of people who are going to buy GTA 6 don't care or even pay attention to any of that stuff like the majority of people on the internet do, as even if Lucia is a girl boss that game is still objectively going to sell millions when it comes out.
Hey Sabr, I know you've been getting a lotta comments, so not sure if you'll see this. But I really gotta commend you on your video. For one, you made a way to mesh your conservative religious values with characters that still look appealing, yet still make Astrea look somewhat womanly, badass and attractive, despite all the shadows. Two, you have a GREAT, baseline sense of business. Unfortunately, you can't always be yourself because it's BUSINESS. And money is involved. Give the customers what they want, and the money will follow. Something drastically lost on modern game devs. Third, you make these reasonable takes while still being chill and made an awesome call to action. Way too much damn positivity in the industry, lives ruined, and devs not understanding that art isn't just a personal passion. Lastly, you've hit all the points on why games these days feel so shallow. I grew up on NES, brand new N64, and there's just been something that's been lost, and it all perfectly explains why I just haven't been interested in games. And to be honest, it makes me sad, because I absolutely loved videogames. I've got a family and would love to relax with good games, but I haven't been able to do that because there's way too much crap and not enough time to find good games. You're doing the whole industry a service, and you've managed to bring a unique blend of your personal values, yet still understanding the core reality. A game's gotta make money. Hopefully more people see your video. Take care man, we're here at the 1k subs, and we'll be here at the 10k and 100k subs as we continue this fight we're all in. 🤝
I'm glad you enjoyed the video and thanks for the support! I understand how you feel about games and family. My oldest kid is 4.5 years old and I'm introducing him to games, mainly racing games and we're playing Super Mario Galaxy on the Switch. We're having a blast playing that together especially since I never played Mario Galaxy on Wii since I didn't own one. It's definitely a challenge finding the games that are suitable for my kids.
It was funny when in TLOU 2 i saw Ellie knocking down or strangling to death a 6.6 ft tall men and they couldn't even break the submission, like its literally impossible even if she is trained by the mma standards (which is not the case i suppose), even if we consider that the Abby was a trained and physically large "women", i never saw a woman irl that could sustain such a muscle mass without exogenous steroids
I have a similar complaint about Bill in the first game. He's clearly obese. Obesity is a modern day problem due to an overabundance of food and processed foods with sugars and high fructose corn syrup. With scarce food and lack of processed foods, he shouldn't be obese.
I hear lots of people complain that AAA games don't take risks, but frankly, there's only so much they can do to take risks because they need to appeal to a much larger audience. Indie games can get away with much more due to audience size and their budget size.
@@SabrPath So true! It works for indie developers, because little by little they earn their own fans and audience by the quality of the game that they create, so the character design becomes a secondary concern. With Intergalactic, Naughty Dog seems to be trying to predict that their large established fan base and other more casual players will like and play the new game. Calculated risk or not, the sales of their new IP could be affected by their decision. Very good video, by the way!
Since most people today simply follow the majority, perhaps Naughty Dog could have made a poll(s) with a few different main protagonist designs and let the gamers themselves decide which character design is most appealing, and then use the majority vote as the main protagonist character design. This way, the character design backlash would be minimal, and the minority of gamers who disagree would become voiceless and ultimately drowned out by the majority all the while Naughty Dog gets highly praised for their recent comeback along with the Intergalactic teaser trailer. I personally am open to viewing different perspectives on matters, but the above supposition should suffice for the general satisfaction of today’s majority.
Using Zwift as an example, no matter your real-life weight, your avatar will never be chubby with a big belly. I already have my real-life belly; I don’t need a chubby avatar to feel represented.
Zwift was obsessed with "representation" for pandering points. They added a hand cycle so the game wouldn't be "ableist" against paraplegic people. I want to know what percent of their customers does that represent.
The Obi Wan series was different. Reva's acting was trash and she shouldn't have even been in the show. However, she was being literally racially attacked online.. People weren't attack the show. They attacked her.
I didn't see a sterotypical "lesbian" or "feminist" but a military soldier (possible ex soldier since she's now a bounty hunter). She regularly shaves her head, wears combat fatigues and DOGTAGS. If anything she's a version of a stereotypical action hero. A grunt soldier. However... If she DOES turn out to be a lesbian, I really don't care as long as the story is well told and the gameplay is fun.
I don't have much experience with Blueprints since I focus on Unity right now. I used Playmaker 10 years ago when I was in college. At the time I was interested in it because I wasn't very good at coding, but it was a bit clunky and there werent many resources on how to do certain things. I stopped using Playmaker because I didn't want to be dependent on it and prefer to use C# when I need to. I'm sure Playmaker has improved since then but I haven't used it recently.
It is pretty baffling to me that they refuse to take a break and truly analyze what is really wrong in their product. Especially when the audience is doing most of the work of pointing out the different issues. Also your hijab redesign freaking slaps!
It's the mental gymnastics used by the CEO that I mention in this video who messaged me. All gamers are bigots. At the same time, it's just a vocal minority that's not part of the core audience.
Games that you know specifically are gonna piss people should not have big budgets. Games that have a big budget should specifically not try to piss off gamers as that is usually the biggest demographic, and will lead to a giant backlash that will massively effect sales. I think Naughty Dog, has already tarnished their brand from TLOU2, as many did not like what was done to Joel in that game, and the narrative direction of that game and that will hurt future sales, not current (now past) sales, but future sales of Naughty Dog games. People thought that because TLOU2 sold well, that that meant the game was well recieved, but that isnt how a tarnished brand works. It is future sells that will dictate how well recieved a game was, and if the studio has built up resentment from an audience that will be reflected in future sells of future games. That means that the game currently being talked about will be the indicator of if people actually liked TLOU2 or if they absolutely hated it. I think most people dont seem to realize that what goes on online, is not really represative of the average consumer. Most consumers, arent involved in online discussions about games, so they often wont be aware of controversy or arguments about a game. They will probably just see a trailer, and decide to purchase a game based off that, or it will be entirely based on past experiences with a publisher. Naughty Dog had a good reputation up until TLOU2, especially becauee of it being a sequel to a beloved game, and that reputation is what was likely ensured that game was a success, regardless of the qaulity of the game. It also means, that we will see now if players lf that game felt burned by it, and Naughty Dog now has a bad reputation. I dont think people are ready to be confirmed or denied in their biases, when this next game flops or succeeds. Im personally leaning towards it will not be a financial success.
When I show this character design to women who are out of the loop with what goes on online, such as my wife, my mom, my mother in law, sister, etc, they are all repulsed by the character and say she looks like a man.
@SabrPath I think it goes deeper than that. She displays character traits and body language that most people are replused by. Even if she was male, I think she would've still been disliked. In fact if that had been a young man, most adult males woildve felt the need to smack him upside his head. She also portrays herself as a basic feminist stereotype that most people have developed a severe dislike for. That problem is further compounded because the actual actress fulfills that stereotype, and her comments alone, in response to criticism of the character, guarantee that that's what people view the character as. I do not think that it is a coincidence that the character looks like a radical feminist icon, though.
The character design doesn’t matter. The narrative they tell does matter. Sigourney Weaver looked like a lesbian in the Alien movies; absolutely nobody has ever complained because the movie was never trying to message about wokeness or gay rights. Also, I see no problem with the character wearing a hijab if it indicates a certain background. I think what would bother people is if the character wearing a hijab was proselytizing to the audience. In many cases, art should be an expression of the artist’s perception of reality. Great art always expresses a perspective. The problem with what the woke ideology has become is that it’s become transparently, a corporate and political ideology pandering to political correctness.
The Alien movies is not a good comparison to this because you need to take account for the state of society and pop culture. At that time, it was truly for subversion of expectations. The creators understood what rules were, and were able to break the rules because of that understanding. With these modern games on the other hand, it's not the case. They aren't breaking the rules because they understand the rules. They are breaking the rules to set the new norm. I agree with your second point, pattern recognition is a thing. These character designs don't just happen in a vacuum. Same for other aspects such as the choice to pick character pronouns, having Body Type A/Body Type B instead of Male/Female, bad story and dialogue writing, and even dumbed down gameplay. These things aren't just happening on their own. They're all happening together. The audience is recognizing the pattern, so when they see one of these things, they will assume it's all in there. So I agree that it's become transparent at this point.
Let me know in the comments. Do you think my hijab redesign will help the game sell better or worse?
Brother, you don't need to to put "Game Dev explains why" in your title. You already mention it in your intro. It's redundant and I think it may be better for you to have a more simplistic title for the algorithm.
It's in the title so people who are not familiar with my channel can know before clicking the video. That way they don't think I'm just another RUclips commentator. I appreciate the feedback though and I'll think about it.
Injecting politics/religion into a fantasy/scifi game is never a good idea. People play to escape, not be reminded of the real world.
@@MaximumPayine Nope, his title is actually the best way to gain attention to his video, your preference isn't.
for T* and G* and L* people their sexuality is the most important thing.
i really hate how the defenders says we want attractive characters because that equates to porn. im like what??? what kind mental gymnastics do they do to think like that.
It feels more like a self report tbh
trauma caused by 3rd wave feminism, it affected whole generation.
probably because half the online fanbase of stellar blade were triggered and cried censorship because two outfits were given additional cloth.
When you look at comments under stellar blade videos you will find porn related innuendos, Marvel Rivals most recently too, so it's not hard to imgaine why defenders would come to said conclusions.
When accusations are made without any evidence, it's usually self projection.
@dr_diddy it was a matter of principle. No censorship, period. There were more revealing costumes in the game already. If you can't understand that, you are far gone into a place I wouldn't like to be.
4:29 Perfect rendition of what the "inclusion" really means: American gender related stereotypes ONLY. Nothing that is genuinely diverse in the global cultural level.
My favorite example of TRUE diversity are the Ninja Turtles. 4 characters that aren't even human but they have 4 different temperaments and personalities. This is why people connect with the TMNT.
Exacly! I don't mind what's happening in America with the gender, "inclusivity" problems! As European I'm really bored: Not the whole world is interested in American cultural issues and visions and if this will ignored, It will mean that very soon consumers will turn elsewhere, perhaps to Eastern productions.
@@nuclearsun2001 they already are turning to eastern productions. 2024 was pretty much an eastern sweep when it comes to games (Palworld, Black Myth Wukong, Marvel Rivals, etc).
they learned nothing from the massive failure of concord
If anything, it made them want to triple down
No, no, they learned that 400 million dollars isn't enough to gather the modern audience. Perhaps a studio with better reputation and maybe a whole silly billy of dollars can fix this problem.
Okay, brainbox. What is the appropriate pronoun for an alien sentient fungus?
@@____uncompetative Fungi
To be fair, it was probably 80% done by the time concord failed.
At least the hijab design adds color and more definition to the silhouette.
That's one thing that all the Muslim women in my life love about hijabs, is that they love to color coordinate with them.
@@SabrPathHijab is Oppression.
@@SabrPath Probably the only thing they love about it
@@misberave yeah sure they wouldn't love being beautiful in their modesty and submitting their will to their creator. That is true femininity.
I think it's more the connotations that shaving one's head has, usually signifies something bad happened, generally due to a relationship... so right off the bat, they're telling you she's depressed or angry, and has baggage that a gamer doesn't want to deal with, it's a game, not a drama movie.
Nowadays studios like Naughty Dog try to be provocative just to make them interesting and stand out, and they cleverly hide it behind excuses like “trying to make characters more diverse” etc. but it’s pretty obvious what they’re doing. Essentially like you said getting attention by being purposefully subversive. They don’t even try to make normal characters anymore.
Because it's all helmed by college educated women and Neil who's a whipped man.
Uncharted and TLOU1 were peak video game writing... How can you fall so hard so fast? :D
@@clouds5 writers of uncharted and TLOU1 are gone after TLOU2 no one's there to talk to neil druckman, that's been reported before and also the a tiny rip of the problem started in uncharted 4 but we were still naive and ignorant of the situation at that time
'Cause in Uncharted and TLOU1 there was Amy Hanning as writer.😉 @clouds5
@@nozenkyuzero that makes a lot of sense. Often in these studios it's like one or two good people that have a clear vision and once their gone everything changes :(
Subversion. You go to a shop. "Can I have a Coke please?" you say. The subversive man behind the counter says "Yes sir, here you go." You look at your beverage with a puzzles expression. "Um...this is Sprite sir." The shop keep looks at you and says "I was being subversive sir. It's popular nowadays. That's $13 please." Subversion.
😂
Real subversion would be them giving you RC Cola and you second guessing if it is coke or not.
@@kosmosXcannon RC Cola inside a Coke bottle would be really funny. Eventually, someone notices, and the clerk has to gaslight that customer that they're getting Coke.
I hate the current gaming industry so much. I criticized the gane's trailer for looking unappealing and full of product placements that make me went from "maybe I'll wait for more trailers" to "I'm not going to even think about the game because of all the product placement." Then someone goes "ugh, this is why I hate male gamers." As if I somehow shouldn't critique the first impression of said reveal.
The idea that people aren't allowed to critique trailers is hilarious and is always funny when corpo bootlickers try and claim that. It's a trailer. Literally, its entire purpose is to get us to be interested in the game. If it fails to get people interested in the game, then the trailer failed its job. There's a reason companies spend so much on marketing, because it's one of the biggest parts that will dictate if the game sells or not.
I actually think Elaina from Uncharted is more attractive than most girl boss characters nowadays.
Standards were set much higher back in 2009
The Boss is more attractive than all these girlboss.
@@KABLAMMATSthe Boss is one of the best female characters and characters in general I’ve seen in a game.
Is not any better. It is about attitude. She doesn't seem likable.
The people making these new games hate truth and beauty, and for some reason, they want everyone else to hate it, too.
Misery loves company.
@@SabrPath Than they will die alone...because gamers simply decide with their wallet...for normal games, made for gamers
@1s3ngr1m That’s what it’ll take. There’s a zero percent chance that they ever receive criticism and actually acknowledge that it’s not what gamers want
@@caseyblankenship987We already see it happen. Layoffs at big game companies, mostly those infected by the toxic DEI virus, while smaller indie developers with good games thrive.
UgIy people with cluster B personality disorders: they jealously hate good looking people, as well as anyone who appreciates good looking people. They're about 10% of the population.
I am still completely lost on WHY devs, studios and publishers settled on that self-destructive path in the first place years ago. But maybe what we see now is just the reflection of the continental North American society and their incapability of talking to each other (meaning also their clients and customers) for good. Because I cannot find any other explanation anymore than these devs and CEOs having decided to live in an ivory tower of their former Twitter, now BlueSky universe, with their zero-emission homes, their electric cars, their veganism and constant strive to optimize every aspect in their completely spoiled and struggle-free existencies while around them the majoritiy of the world has to deal with much less abstract issues at hand. And thus they are completely decoupled and isolated from the reality of life and actual human interaction. Yes, sounds plausible. The only problem for me is: I still cannot believe it.
The management at the top do it for ESG. The people at the bottom who support it, likely live in echo chambers.
@@SabrPathThere is no way the quanity of ESG funding is greater than the amount money earned from selling millions of copies of a game.
@saiyan-cowboy the thing is... selling "doesn't matter" in that case.
Investors most of the time have no idea of what the heck is going on in the game industry. They just look at big ESG numbers and put their money on it because they were convinced this matters at all.
That gives a huge incentive for CEOs and etc to go for DEI. Then, the money the studio gets comes from ESG funding.
Then, when the game is released, most of the revenue money is used to pay back investors. If the game flops, investors are screwed (not only them, ofc, but others don't matter to my point). Then, we go back to the beginning: investors have no idea of what the heck is going on in the game industry. They don't know that if a high-ESG studio is flopping, that's because they are focusing on DEI instead of making good games. So they see it just as a failed investment instead of the whole idea of ESG being flawed.
At least that's the way I read this situation from my own experience and from what I've heard from others.
TL;DR: incentives are for CEOs to please investors, not customers. And investors care about ESG, and don't really bother to actually learn more about the gaming industry.
@@saiyan-cowboy TBF, one should remember that creating a video game is nothing that happens in 6 to 12 months from concept to development to release.
What we see right now are the late symptoms of a disease that got hold of the industry back in at least 2016 with the 1st Trump administration or even 2014 with the first gamergate, both events causing a lot of turmoil and controversy in the gaming scene but also in general.
If you check when most of these games have been developed, the Trump presidency was by far the biggest influence. The erratic kind of regimen, the chaos and the polarizing POTUS himself lead many to quite hardened opinions on both sides. This reflects strongly in the entertainment sector in particular. With the pandemic, the request for software services reachfs astronomical levels.
This lead to a lot of mostly young people, inexperienced and full of ideals from universities being hired by mostly big names in the business with enough money to maintain such a staff like Ubisoft, EA, Microsoft, Blizzard, you name it. These of course put their idealistic perspectives on the world in their work because they simply lack any kind of other knowledge. And all of a sudden, you get the situation we have today.
The thing I still don't understand is devs and publishers beating the same dead horse for DEI in games under any circumstances even now that it turned out to be a catastrophe so far.
ESG/DEI is your answer
They’re trying to double down on it via BRIDGE now that more people notice ESG
These people can call me a "racist" or a "bigot" all they want, but the one thing they can't call me is a "customer." If I don't like it, I won't buy it.
I detest how these people go to extremes when it comes to making their argument. Just because we don't want bald masculine women doesn't mean we want overly-sexualized characters. We just want better designs and better stories in our games. Divisive stories and designs make divisive games, and divisive games make divisive sales. Don't cater to what the people want, and they won't buy it. Concord died on the back of the designs alone. That should have been a Come-To-Jesus moment for modern day AAA developers, but these developers are doubling down. Why? Don't they WANT us to buy their games?
Hmm you don't want oversexualized characters? Okay explain the hate to ciri, or the new ghost protagonist, or the new assasins creed protagonist. All still got hate from you guys and none of them look masculine.
@@redninja3056ok sure to haters like myself Ciri’s new design is a massive downgrade to her TW3 version. Yotei replaces a beloved male protagonist for seemingly no reason at all. Dunno what you’re on about in terms of the hate Naoe’s character design got but her combat looks like absolute amateur trash. Each character got negative feedback from potential customers for different reasons. Except people like you love conflating nuanced conversations together into one dumbed down argument. You’re probably a Veilguard lover. Either way like bro said above they ain’t getting our money. I’ll love seeing the stuff you love go down in flames like TW4 and Intergalactic will. The devs that care about me like the Wukong, Space Marine 2 and Stellar Blade devs will only keep making more money
@ easy. Look at that image of Baldy with Ciri drinking masculinity tears, showing us middle finger. Ciri looks better in that drawing, like her previous self. Proving that no one likes a downgrade... it's a common self own by a "progressive" artist.
@@redninja3056 you're in a cult so you wouldn't understand
@@iamkurogane " seemingly no reason at all" dude the game takes place way after jin was alive are you dense? And of course ciri looks different she's not only older but the game was literally built in a different engine but I guess if she doesn't look like a sex doll those things don't matter, and of course you don't know the hate about naoes character, because you're clearly aren't informed enough to make an argument. So all I hear is bad because woman
That post about “strait white males protagonists for decades” and there’s been no uproar or boycott for “forcing politics into games” is just full of In accuracies and just low iq perception.
First of all, it hasn’t been every game and for the last decade it’s certainly been not true. Just about every game, especially legacy ip, has had female protagonists and several have had “women of color” of various degrees.
Second, there WAS an uproar over “white male characters.” Why do you think we are where we are? Activists and journalists(activists too) perpetuated the anti-white male narrative for years. They just didn’t call it an uproar. They labeled it “valid criticism,” and label the current uproar as “invalid criticism.” It’s part of their ideo-political tactics.
3rd, the reason no one said they were “forcing politics” into games when there were more white male characters is simple: making the characters white WASNT forcing politics into games. It was natural. They are drawing a false equivalency. These two things are NOT the same. It is not comparable to what they are doing now and to suggest otherwise is very bad faith. The people making the games were white; they created the damn industry by virtue of building companies and producing games. Why wouldn’t they make white male characters? The DEVS were WHITE. Almost ALL of them WERE white males. It’s as if they were supposed to have some responsibility to NOT make white characters? There was no political agenda they were just making games. But now there IS a concerted ideo-political agenda behind “inclusion” and dei. So it IS political now. The worst part is they constantly tell us it’s an ideo-political agenda, and then try to act like what they are doing is normal. GTFO.
And there it is Cognitive dissonance at its best
Well said! And we can see this same phenomenon across nerd culture today. Much like older video games, comic books were created by (and for) _mostly_ white males, but this wasn't out of bigotry, it was simply demographics. I think diversity advocates would get more support if they abandoned their revisionist arguments and instead showed some respect for the people who created and supported these industries in the first place.
“strait white males protagonists for decades”
Yup. People who are saying this are not real gamers. Because if they were real gamers, they'd know this is entirely not true.
So you're saying africans can't be game devs. We are not in the 90s anymore. Game industry is much bigger and if non-white people are in the teams they would want to make non-white characters.
Then what kills me the most is that they have the nerve to come and reproach us that it is us who are politicizing everything.
As a woman and also from SEA country, all I want just a pretty/handsome characters to play. Be it blond hair, blue eyes, white as paper, I still want to play this character. I do not think that the character is me, and I don't want myself in game either.
I don’t know why, but the hijab makes her a lot more friendly. 19:11
Because she looks less masculine.
The design looks 50% cool cuz you hide the masculine body, but the ironic face still there.
Because you can no longer see that she's bald lol
One of the question people sometimes forget is "Does it fit the world"
This choice of main character is obvious decided five years ago to go with the current GIRLBOSS wave.
The problem is people are TIRED of girlbosses, and just want balanced characters again.
Something that FITS! There have been leaks of potential stories for this game and... eh... I don't know. the story is pretty questionable too. So! If those leaks are true how this character looks isn't even the worst thing.
Again, this all was decided FIVE YEARS AGO! That is modern game design for you. And I am not sure if this game is going to do IT. There are a lot of strange choices.
"Does it fit the world"
This game takes place in a futuristic 80s. Back in the 80s, shaving your head meant you're a skinhead. Not sure if they thought that through.
@@SabrPath So, all that means she is just missing the Nazi symbol on her neck. Skinheads were known to have a nazi tattoo on their body in the 80's. Here in Australia, that is.
She might. It looks like she has lots of different tattoos.
I wish was a true 80s reference. I prefer a female hero like Ripley or Sarah Connor than a dude like girl.
I never once thought that she looked ugly when I played Uncharted as a teenager, lol.
When I was younger I thought she was supposed to be modeled after Ellen DeGeneres. So I looked up who voiced her, and her voice actress, Emily Rose, is extremely attractive. Didn't make sense to me as to why they made her look the way they did. Then they kept changing her face in UC 3, UC 4 and the remakes. The only two games she looks like the same person is UC 1 and UC 2.
@SabrPath it's difficult for me to believe that the "uglyficiation" of female characters goes back that far but who knows when ideology is involved and we now know that subversion is subtle and gradual.
I find it interesting that your family said that she was ugly and I'm curious how much of their opinion is based on cultural norms. Which I think lends well to the criticism of these characters in general; the predominant culture dictates things like attractiveness, for instance, which proves subversion is actually happening within the industry.
Yeah, I’m not sure about that either. I didn’t think she looked ugly in UC1 or UC2. She just looks like slightly blocky due to graphical limitations to me.
@@panzer00 Culture definitely played a large part. Old Iraqi women have no filter when judging others.
Elena isn't ugly... Wut?
I am with you on that, she is not what I would call ugly
Elena looks way better than any modern female character by standard.
someone pls show that vid to our balding sage
We must summon The Bald One
RUclips do your thing
Just curious, who's the balding sage? I'm out of the loop.
@@SabrPathThe Old Man of Trash Mountains, The Roach King, Sultan Asmongold!
@@SabrPath Asmongold
Game devs, if you subvert my expectations I'll have to subvert your sales expectations.
Sounds good! My sales expectations are very low!
Ever notice most of the people that defend subversive characters like attractive characters themselves? A lot of those people have cute/attractive anime character pfps or have a more attractive cartoon version of themselves, they like or share cute/attractive fan art, and may even over sexualize many people and/or things in general?
I just came across your channel. Wish all devs thinking like you. The mass audience come first if you want to make profit of your development but these big AAA studios live in echo chambers so they seek themselves which leads to alienating mass audience of the world, for modern audience that don't exist.
I appreciate the words of support! I hope that my message can encourage other game devs from being silent about this "us against the audience" mentality.
The mass audience aren't constantly online, they don't care about half the shit people say here lol, that's the audience buying games.
Intergalactic will likely sell well regardless of slapping a known petite womans head of bodybuilder shoulders 😭
@@dr_diddy I don't believe that myself. 2016-2023 era is over. We have alot of games flop, studios shut down. Masses laysoff. This year prove the majority of gamers around the world they are basic just want to have fun. if something is preaching and put a 'message' over fun they move away. Dragon age as example big name and shallow fun so It Fell hard on face.
@@dr_diddy Sure, same as Veilguard sold wonderfully while having the base with a strong presence of Dragon Age franchise... oh wait, but Intersex Prophet isn't a franchise yet...
She looks like Krillin
😂
People forget gaming is a VISUAL medium and appealing characters sell, male and female.
We wouldnt have even half of the iconic gaming characters since the 80s that are beloved if this modern day ideology was pushed back then. The characters would not stand the test of time.
Female characters such as Lara Croft, Bayonetta, Alyx, Rayne, Terra, Fran, Tifa Lockhart, Yuna, Jill Valentine, Jade, Faith, Bastilla, Mileena, Chun-Li, Cammy White, Nina Williams, Kasumi, Mai Shiranui, Shaundi, and Meryl.
Male characters like Nathan Drake, Link, Kratos, Tommy Vercetti, Cole MacGrath, Master Chief, Doom Guy, CJ, Cloud Strife, Sora, Sub-Zero, Marcus Fenix, Solid Snake, Marth, Mario, Travis Touchdown, Leon Kennedy, Ryu Hayabusa, Jak, and Ryu.
Travis Touchdown is a good subversive character. He's a hero, but he's also an asshole. Triple A has no excuse.
I don't have problems with some fetish but when a character is a musical mommy and has scar and he/she/is and ugly and bald, That's too much of fetish for me.
I don't know what kind of pervert they're trying to get at with this, but it's definitely not me.
I think you should design questions that elicits the readers behaviour and not the expected behaviour of others to get less bias findings. For example the statement "this will not sell well" is an expectation of other people's expected behaviours. what would make it more accurate is "would you buy it with this character?" which will give you insight to people's personal opinions and not their stereotypes.
honestly alot of these "modern audience" games tend to make rather cut and dry character designs. like even the villains need to deliver a large monolog about why they are evil and so on (alot of bloat really), sometimes the appearance if a figure can easily just say " Villain" and them not needing to say anything. I myself love to design models/write story material. But whenever i make something, i tend to think of what does their appearance, posture and general attitude exude. outside of that i even start to think of potential voice and even smell (smell is in some designs). i mean the Nexus defenders designs do kinda tell what you were saying, Deathbringer does sell the whole "fight me and you die" sort of thing, But for Ironbourne, it did require you explaning their gimic with the whole "Big game hunter", it could be tweaked to that they wear some trophies on their body or has a few of scars on their face/body that they are proud of like saying "each scar is a testiment to my ability, each a worthy and glorious battle" that sort of deal, even just wearing tokens from their defeated foes. The designs are however still cool and imposeing however (still i like Deathbringer the most XD)
Thanks for the feedback. I'll keep that in mind for my future games. One thing I noted to myself after making Nexus Defenders was the lack of accessories on the characters. Things like a belt with pouches, a holster with a knife, etc can tell the audience more about that character. I want to eventually come back to the Nexus Defenders world by making Nexus Tactics. And when I do that, I'm bringing back some of the characters and I'll make some changes to them.
@@SabrPath i love makeing characters too. mainly the models i make are in this online miniature tool known as "Heroforge" and ive been doing it for close to 3-4 years. i kinda just hope deep down that my creativity could be used in games or books. However i do kinda lack the skill for both makeing a game or books (since my artisinal skills are abit limited when it comes to drawing or litteracy when writeing a story). Either way i am gonna look up "Nexus defenders" just to see how the game is. cause i am kinda interested in seeing how the characters are. After all a character's looks can be changed but the personality is often hard to really get right. Either way i am happy for you noticeing the feedback i gave. Even if it might just be heavly limited
The people defending these characters are more racist than the people not liking it. Because not liking them isn’t based on the race. Although all the people can focus on when defending these characters is the race.
Glad I clicked on this video. As a fan of Defense Grid I have already bought your game.
I appreciate the support!
I didn't know some people thought Elena was ugly in Uncharted 2. She looked completely fine to me to be honest.
maybe the technicals limitations make she more "bigger" than expected ?
Hey man as a non muslim you’re doing the Islam value integration stuff amazingly in your game art. It reminds me of how Asuras Wrath made its Hindu influence into a space epic.
Thanks. My religion is important to me, but I also understand not to be heavy-handed with implementing it in my games and content. No one likes to be lectured. Nuance is key.
As a Muslim aspiring to be a pro indie artist with similar ideas of integrating it in a variety of ways, thank you for your service and inspiring work@@SabrPath
I think the redesign is interesting because, I suspect, the side which calls the consumer bigots would complain about the hijab in the same context that we complain about her official design.
You have a more nuanced perspective on this topic than most and I appreciate that
Thanks!
Even if she become a nun, you won't be better. The essence of the character is corrupt.
It's become a pattern. At this point, when a gamer sees a character that goes against what they want, they then question "what else has the game developer put into the game that I don't want?"
Elena is not ugly in uncharted 2 your aunts must be crazy bro.
I'm glad there are still Game Devs out there willing to raise their voices on this subject! I heard someone say that most of the games we're seeing released today started development during 2019-2020 when it was peak "diversity" times and will take a few years before they realize there's is no market for these games and these characters. I'm hoping that in the next few years this nonsense will go away and hopefully without taking the entire games industry with it.
The internet’s constant noise has worsened the discourse around video games. Despite this being one of the best years in gaming, internet culture insists we hate every AAA studio. Instead of simply ignoring bad games and putting our money into the gardens of the games we love to help them grow, we’ve turned to endless criticism, attacking every new release.
Now, with the latest game, people act like it’s the only option, pouring all their attention into it. We’ve convinced ourselves that shouting into the void will "save" the industry. But aggression only breeds more aggression. Attacks provoke defensive reactions, escalating into pointless conflict and division.
If we had focused on supporting the wealth of amazing games released this year, most of this drama could have been avoided. Instead, camps were formed, battle lines drawn, and the issues in gaming have been needlessly prolonged. I really like your perspective on this, and I’ve noticed more people are beginning to share this sentiment. The industry can truly start to heal when we, as players, focus on supporting healthy games and let the toxic ones wither from neglect.
Thank you for being the ONLY person to see this! Our year of gaming is actually not as bad as we think it is, and we can simply not buy these bad games instead of raging at them. A lot of gamers and developers are being pulled into a battlefield they didn't ask for, and that's alarming. It was never like this back in my day, and I feel that both sides are to blame for the state of things as they are.
Most drama is manufactured by grifters alot of "issues" are non issues that only affect a fraction of released games. For example, "DEI/ESG is ruining games..." Fromsoft, Capcom, Bandai etc the beloved eastern game studios all have those policies 🤣 because in reality it means fuck all with games. 😭
But certain demographics have convinced an echo chamber that because of a couple bad releases that these are the problem, it takes away from real conversations and dealing with real problems which you've mentioned.
I think we're starting to shift back to normalcy. I'm seeing an increasing number of my former colleagues agreeing with my posts on LinkedIn. I'm sure most are afraid to interact with my posts due to fear of backlash, but the backlash is starting to fade.
"But aggression only breeds more aggression. Attacks provoke defensive reactions, escalating into pointless conflict and division"...Meh, it seems to work, the culture intruders don't know how to box
@@justaquietpeacfuldance Lots of wasted energy for the same outcome.
People didn't like the original Sonic design? 😮
I was wondering why it changed.
There was a big uproar about it.
3:32 the majority of any country will not accept that design.
Yes, I agree, but I mention those countries specifically for their large video game market. There are many countries that have no impact on the gaming industry.
I don't know where these Devs and higher-ups making decisions keep getting there analytics but that so called "small vocal minority" is actually the majority
You lost me immediately by using Elena from Uncharted as an example of an ugly character. In what fucking world, by whose stratospheric standards, is that character ugly? Ridiculous.
Think so? You don't think she looked like a young Ellen DeGeneres in the first two games?
I really love how at the 6:55 mark your teacher said no one wants to play a game you made for you.
All the worst games, shows, comics and movies over the last 5 years are absolute proof of that.
I am Not Starfire, Dustborne, Velma and the lot of all the rest. All self inserts. All pure vanity projects, of one person self satisfied and unable to absorb any critique.
Not only does it make a bad product, no one wants to pay for?
It makes a bad creator, who is almost physically unable to accept critique, to grow, change and adapt to success.
Technically she was just talking about creative works because it wasn't a video game class, it was a creative thinking class. But yes, you get the point.
She evens has the same type of tattoo as Ellie from the last of us part 2 lol
People think Elena is ugly??
Is she not? Back in the day, before I looked up who her voice actress is, I assumed she was modeled after Ellen Degeneres
@@SabrPath She's not. I mean seriously?
6:25 Most important takeaway- when you are making art only to please yourself, don’t be surprised when everyone else doesn’t like it. And that was a big waste of time and money in a AAA game
Exactly!
This is by far the most balanced and on point take I've seen on the entire subject. I wish more of the industry felt as you do, maybe we wouldn't have lost so many good development teams over the last 5 years.
Thanks for the support! I think a lot of people in the industry feel the same as me, but management was to push for nonsense. When I was at Zwift, they were getting awards like "most inclusive company in Long Beach" which encouraged them to go more crazy, but every single year we had giant layoffs. It was more important for management to pander rather than job security for the employees.
The thought of women sitting around and grumbling about this in Arabic was funny for a moment, then sad when you realize there's a concerted effort to make people unhappy all over the world.
And that's one of the biggest problems with Dei as it stands today. Developers today seemed to believe that just because they have a diverse character who fits their narrative and aesthetic. They believed that they are owed the same type of success that games of the past received. They completely ignore the work and the writing that went into creating those characters and that game. At the end of the day they want equality of outcomes as much as they want equality of opportunity and that's not true equality.
Moreover, true equity and inclusion are the fact that any person can identify with a character regardless of their aesthetic. Regardless of race creed or religion, we are all humans and have a human experience. Saying that a character only has to look a certain way or act a certain way for all people to be able to understand their plight basically undermines a diverse person's human experience.
To you give an overly simplistic example, if a straight white male fell and hit his knee on the sidewalk. Does anyone hear really think that anyone of any race would not feel or sympathize with his pain just because he's a straight white male?
I agree. I love to bring up the TMNT. 4 characters that aren't even human, yet boys have related to them for generations since the 80s because they have 4 distinct personalities and temperaments.
@@SabrPath that's a great example
As an outsider who is also a Muslim, I do think I want somewhat balance between "Sexualized" and "Beautiful" in terms of designs... I like the characters curvy and beautiful. Not exactly "sexualized" but the character designs can be either quite sexy or temptatious or alluring depending on their needs. I like those characters. So I disagree a bit of not wanting "Sexualized" designs but I don't want it to be a borderline a "Pown Game" or Hentai game. That's different. If I want to do that, I would've bought those games. What I want are the character designs to be allowed to be those types. Not censorship. I hate censorship. One example, Zenless Zone Zero. Their characters, are beautiful. Their proportions are amazing. They're very beautiful characters. Even a little "sexualized" in terms of curvyness. Their body types are very sexy and curvy. Those designs are great and should not be gone or censored. There is a reason why Genshin Impact, Zenless Zone Zero and Honkai Star Rail have the characters designed that way. It sells. People want to see those types. If you don't, walk away. It isn't for you. It clearly is for most other people. Just not for you. That's simply it. There's a market. Character from that ND game? No. None of that, please. Not many people are attracted to that. That's just the cold hard truth. She's unappealing in every way.
I don't think the Hijab makes a difference in her attitude, but it's still a realistic design wise and she achieves her goal of looking different enough but I don't want people to take it as if she's now a Muslim from that. Maybe just use a simple hood would've done the job.
In my Marvel Rivals video, I highlight Scarlet Witche's design. They found a good middle ground with her. She isn't wearing a swim suit like her original comic design, but she also still looks very pretty. I think more female characters should be designed like her, to be covered up but still look attractive.
I wasn't suggesting she should wear a hijab in the game. My point was to counter the people who kept saying "I like her design" to the bald look. It doesn't matter what "I like" when it comes to a AAA game. What matters is what the core audience likes.
Elena's pretty. Weird take lol
It's idiotic. In what wa is Elena ugly? WTF
I think subversive is a very good word to explain why these design get so much rejection. The audience sees them as a personal insult.
I don't know much about muslim culture, but I have to say I'm really mind blown at how well you implemented that into the character 0_o. To me, while it wouldn't have sold me on the game, had I never known the OC was some bald he woman, I'd of never known that this wasn't original. That is some incredible work man, good on you.
I agree with everything you'd stated here. Very level headed, very logical.
Thanks for the support!
They know no sort of accountability. Like clockwork, when and if the game fails, they will blame the gamers instead of the modern audience.
This guy worked on one of the most underrated CODs, so cool
I just worked administration there. I left because they didn't move me into level design. The experience was still very valuable since I got feedback from devs.
No one complaint about Lara croft, or AC Odyssey Kassandra or Last of US Ellie. Because they showed womanhood behaviour but also being badass.
And yet studios think gamers are racist.
They say all gamers are bigots, but yet it's also a "vocal minority."
“Subversive” is a word that these people latched on to as a way of telling us “we dont care what you want, we do what we want”…fine by me, my money doesn’t like you either.
Hijab redesign is actually way better.
Let them learn the hard way.
The harder the lesson, the longer will the learning effect last.
I understand that mentality, but the people who are making this decisions that will shut down studios, will end up getting hired very quickly by their buddies at the other studios. The people on the bottom who had no input on those choices are the ones who get hurt the most. This was my experience.
I wouldn't call that character subversive. It's more like someone posing as.
Just found your channel and honestly, your opinions are pretty awesome. Every Opinion you say you backup very well. I Hope your words can reach people truly, could help this failing industry these days.
Thanks! I'm glad you enjoy my channel. I appreciate the support!
Finally, a balanced and mature opinion.
I’m not convinced that many of the people in the AAA industry are creative people, they think they are but the reality is they are activists.
I’ve tried to ignore the insults from the studio aimed at the customer.
My patience has run out now and I will no longer buy a game if I’m insulted by the studio, regardless if the game is “good” or not.
Thanks for the support.
Such a great way to put a point across that makes so much sense, you would have to be ignorant to not understand this
Call me ignorant then because I still think you guys are just sexist
Tbh, i think it's just Neil Druckmann pushing his vision.
He loves trans and lesbians, he also said he doesn't intend on being in video game development much longer. He's probably happy to get his team fired so long as he can push out his vision
I think the Last of Us HBO series gave him a taste of Hollywood and now he's more interested in Hollywood than video games.
@SabrPath I think that was always his intention tbh. He sees game development as a means to an end.
More than likely, he's going to try to pursue TV when he quits naughtydog, assuming he doesn't make the studio go bust.
I miss the old naughty dog
What makes art, Art, is the intent to communicate with other people. If you are the target audience of your art, then it's masturbation. That's fine, but you shouldn't do it in public.
You get it!
The hijab version is DEFINITELY the better one 😂
Agreed. But what do you think about sales? So you agree with my assessment?
USA here. With the current climate in gaming, and our culture, and customers being ultra sensitive to certain imagery, the hijab design is just as polarizing as the "lesbian" and "radical feminist" aesthetics. Many will immediately associate these design choices with pushing an agenda. I think that we would need a year or two of really great, mass appeal games to soften people's reactions to such imagery and aesthetics.
Yes I agree. At this point, everything is assumed guilty until proven innocent when it comes to token characters and stereo types. There's been such an on going pattern of everything being used to fill in a quota, that to the masses, it gives a negative message right off the bat.
Out from nowhere, I remembered about Najd from the game King of Fighters 14. She uses a hijab but her whole design don't make her look like a "bland" character.
The only people I've seen mentioning this character's race are the journos and insiders saying that other completely unspecified "toxic gamers" are upset about a "mixed race" character. I've not seen one actual gamer bring that point up. I'm thinking that the journos and insiders are the only ones obsessing on the character's race.
I didn't know what to expect when I clicked the video but was thoroughly impressed and definitely had to sub because you made all the points that are usually in my head and you made them better than I ever could while citing examples the whole way through.
Thanks! I appreciate the support.
I do NOT agree with your teacher.
The PROBLEM with today's AAA industries - is that the devs aren't making games they themselves want to play, but they are making games they WISH people WOULD be playing.
But - if you don't want to play your own creation - then why TF would anyone else?!?!
For me, its the fact she is shaving the hair in the wrong direction. Its shows me that the detail in the game is not there.
🤣
I hate games as a service, so I've stopped buying new AAA titles by 2015.
I keep in contact on what industry is making and it is a total freefall in almost every aspect.
I dropped "Neutered Dog" after the release of The Last of Us.
The game is loved by the whole world, but I simply hated every aspect of this game in its core.
So I'm not the target audience for a long shot.
I care for graphic quality, beauty expressed in art, game mechanics quality and an outstanding story-telling script to bring all together in full sinergy.
That's not what has been happening in the last decade, doesn't matter what gamers, haters or fanboys have to say, industry has been making BS on purpose.
Alienating your public is asking for trouble and they'll be feeling the trouble by 2025 onwards.
There is no such thing as "mOdErN aUdIeNcE". These people don't play games, they don't buy games.
They watch on YT and build their opinions soon after, as well they show how clueless they are, for some even consider bragging on social media their experiences on watching gameplay of some major release.
Im a customer, if they encourage me not to buy it then I'll keep it in my wallet
Let them keep calling the audience bigots bro. Things will not change until the wheels fall of the car and the engine burns out. The only way things will change is when they lose enough money.
Wow, I thought you have way more subscribers considering the video has over 10k views, you certainly deserve more subs.
Thanks. I hope to keep building the audience.
We don't care about how those characters really look, the real problem is why they look like that
I get your point, but I don't think I agree. Zeno Clash has very ugly characters. The only reason why I played it because many gaming podcasts were talking about it at that time. Otherwise, I would have never played it.
@SabrPath yes that's for sure, but I'm talking about people saying we only want oversexualized characters, which isn't our message, we just want to get rid of the DEI infestation, if Nico Bellic in GTA4 was a good looking guy, it wouldn't fit his character, and yet he's my all time favorite character,
People have preferences, and theredore I propose that every game, from here on out, where you can see your character, the developers give us an extensive character creator where we can customize our character as we see fit, from Shreks to beach babes.
No. Self inserting is also not important if the story is good.
What's more important for people to connect, are the internal traits of the character. Personality, values, their mission, their actions. See my video on character development with the ninja turtle on the thumbnail.
@@justaquietpeacfuldance Not talking about self inserting. Customizing to ones own preferences is very different.
For example the Intergalactic lead character:
I can tolerate a janky story, annoying personality, feminist values, repetetive missions, and confusing actions, if we could customize her looks so that she'd look traditionally attractive.
(I'd still be annoyed, but I would most likely buy and play the game through instead of skipping/refunding it).
No, you can’t impose strict limitations on the art people create. Every piece should be what it was intended to be. Besides, that theory wouldn’t work anyways as most people simply pick the default. Also as someone who absolutely loves character creators, I absolutely do not want that in everything. Characters still need to be created and imagined.
@@JayPeaTea not exaclty what I'd like to align myself with. I'd rather have a based character, solid gameplay, and consistent level of writing, forget the looks...
Great take on modern gaming. I don't like either political nonsense. I don't mind diversity, I criticize it when it's very panderish. The protagonist's design from Intergalactic looks alright.
I respect your opinion, and it's fine for you to like that character design. I just think it's disingenuous when people try to deny her design is subversive.
are San Francisco looking elves panderish?
Hey brother, asalaamu alaikum, just found uour video in my feed and I'm impressed. Earned a sub!
Walaikum salaam! Thanks for the support! Please tell your other Muslim gamer friends about this channel.
I've whishlisted Nexus Defenders on Steam as a way to support your work but to be honest, since the Steam Deck (SD) became my primary gaming device, I have lost interest in buying games (specially indie games) which are not SD compatible. I already have a backlog of 250 + games, most of which I'm never going to play. I don't know whether there is a significant barrier to entry into this segment, but in my pov if devs don't care to optimize their game for the SD than I don't care to buy or play their games.
Thanks for the support. A friend of mine told me that Nexus Defenders works fine on the Steam Deck, I need to look into finding out how to get it "Verified" with Valve on Steam. This is my first game I published so I'm still learning how to do everything in the Steam Partner Admin Panel.
Good video. Tackles the problem pretty well, the issue isnt that every character isnt sexualised anymore, the issue is that they are made subversive and uninteresting and unappealing. You dont need to be half naked to be attractive or cool looking, but what we are getting nowadays is every female character looks not even attractive from their silhouette or body language, thats the biggest issue in my understanding. And characters that have their origin in sexualised designs should also not be changed (Harley Quinn) when thats clearly part of the character.
I understand your last point, though I don't agree. Reason why is because I think it's fine to change characters if they are bad characters and need improvement. For example, Hideo Kojima didn't like how fans hated Raiden, so he wanted to make Raiden extremely cool in MGS 4 just to spite them. Or Mr. Freeze is another example. He was a bland snow villain but then Batman TAS turned him into a compelling character with depth. So I understand when fans don't want a character changed from what made them popular. But I also think it's fine to change characters if that character hardly worked to begin with.
The hijab redesign was cool ngl, but I still think that her "design" isn't what everyone's mad about.
I've come to the conclusion western devs are going to ride their moral superiority complex into the unemployment line before they admit they were wrong.
One would think that game devs should be past the whole "subverting expectations", but they continue to do it, without realizing they are dooming themselves in the end. They can't blame gamers for their low sales when the devs done nothing but insult them, change lore, and other things. Honestly, even with the hijab, Intergalactic won't sell well, since Naughty Dog stepped on too many toes with TLOU2.
Certain game developers have been listening to a select few who are insatiable, hypocritical and self-righteous. This is one reason a number of AAA games are commercial duds today.
Appealing characters sell. It's a visual medium.
If we list the most iconic and beloved characters, male and female, from the 80s to 2010s I guarantee all of them are appealing in some way.
Whether that is by looking cool, hot, sexy, cute, fun, fit, attractive, beautiful, badass, etc it doesn't matter. What we want to see in male and female characters usually varies but appeal is a big category of variety and any of those categories fit in some way.
Appealing is appealing. And appealing sells.
Trevor from gt5 destroys your entire argument, but it's okay if it's a male, so that shows the double standard
@@redninja3056yep people tend to forget about GTA 6 lmao.
@@redninja3056 It's not a double standard when what is seen as appealing in male characters and female characters is in fact DIFFERENT.
@iraford5788 Well people have been calling out Lucia because of recent western trends. Here's hoping they don't push her as some girl boss while making her boyfriend some beta that has to be helped a lot in the story.
@@SnipingIsFun At the end of the day the majority of people who are going to buy GTA 6 don't care or even pay attention to any of that stuff like the majority of people on the internet do, as even if Lucia is a girl boss that game is still objectively going to sell millions when it comes out.
Hey Sabr, I know you've been getting a lotta comments, so not sure if you'll see this.
But I really gotta commend you on your video.
For one, you made a way to mesh your conservative religious values with characters that still look appealing, yet still make Astrea look somewhat womanly, badass and attractive, despite all the shadows.
Two, you have a GREAT, baseline sense of business. Unfortunately, you can't always be yourself because it's BUSINESS. And money is involved. Give the customers what they want, and the money will follow.
Something drastically lost on modern game devs.
Third, you make these reasonable takes while still being chill and made an awesome call to action. Way too much damn positivity in the industry, lives ruined, and devs not understanding that art isn't just a personal passion.
Lastly, you've hit all the points on why games these days feel so shallow. I grew up on NES, brand new N64, and there's just been something that's been lost, and it all perfectly explains why I just haven't been interested in games. And to be honest, it makes me sad, because I absolutely loved videogames.
I've got a family and would love to relax with good games, but I haven't been able to do that because there's way too much crap and not enough time to find good games.
You're doing the whole industry a service, and you've managed to bring a unique blend of your personal values, yet still understanding the core reality. A game's gotta make money. Hopefully more people see your video.
Take care man, we're here at the 1k subs, and we'll be here at the 10k and 100k subs as we continue this fight we're all in. 🤝
I'm glad you enjoyed the video and thanks for the support! I understand how you feel about games and family. My oldest kid is 4.5 years old and I'm introducing him to games, mainly racing games and we're playing Super Mario Galaxy on the Switch. We're having a blast playing that together especially since I never played Mario Galaxy on Wii since I didn't own one. It's definitely a challenge finding the games that are suitable for my kids.
It was funny when in TLOU 2 i saw Ellie knocking down or strangling to death a 6.6 ft tall men and they couldn't even break the submission, like its literally impossible even if she is trained by the mma standards (which is not the case i suppose), even if we consider that the Abby was a trained and physically large "women", i never saw a woman irl that could sustain such a muscle mass without exogenous steroids
I have a similar complaint about Bill in the first game. He's clearly obese. Obesity is a modern day problem due to an overabundance of food and processed foods with sugars and high fructose corn syrup. With scarce food and lack of processed foods, he shouldn't be obese.
@SabrPath yeah, that's right, even if he is thriving both on food and supplies, the amount of physical activity he has wouldn't make him obese
I was thinking Intergalactic would face less rejection if the game was from an indie dev
I hear lots of people complain that AAA games don't take risks, but frankly, there's only so much they can do to take risks because they need to appeal to a much larger audience. Indie games can get away with much more due to audience size and their budget size.
@@SabrPath So true! It works for indie developers, because little by little they earn their own fans and audience by the quality of the game that they create, so the character design becomes a secondary concern. With Intergalactic, Naughty Dog seems to be trying to predict that their large established fan base and other more casual players will like and play the new game. Calculated risk or not, the sales of their new IP could be affected by their decision. Very good video, by the way!
Since most people today simply follow the majority, perhaps Naughty Dog could have made a poll(s) with a few different main protagonist designs and let the gamers themselves decide which character design is most appealing, and then use the majority vote as the main protagonist character design.
This way, the character design backlash would be minimal, and the minority of gamers who disagree would become voiceless and ultimately drowned out by the majority all the while Naughty Dog gets highly praised for their recent comeback along with the Intergalactic teaser trailer.
I personally am open to viewing different perspectives on matters, but the above supposition should suffice for the general satisfaction of today’s majority.
Using Zwift as an example, no matter your real-life weight, your avatar will never be chubby with a big belly. I already have my real-life belly; I don’t need a chubby avatar to feel represented.
Zwift was obsessed with "representation" for pandering points. They added a hand cycle so the game wouldn't be "ableist" against paraplegic people. I want to know what percent of their customers does that represent.
The hijab was on point, except she should be accompanied by a male relative and not alone.
That's why she's trying to find Kumail Nanjiani. He's her husband.
The Obi Wan series was different. Reva's acting was trash and she shouldn't have even been in the show. However, she was being literally racially attacked online.. People weren't attack the show. They attacked her.
I didn't see a sterotypical "lesbian" or "feminist" but a military soldier (possible ex soldier since she's now a bounty hunter). She regularly shaves her head, wears combat fatigues and DOGTAGS. If anything she's a version of a stereotypical action hero. A grunt soldier.
However... If she DOES turn out to be a lesbian, I really don't care as long as the story is well told and the gameplay is fun.
Are you a programmer, how did you go about building video games?
I'm a game designer. I'm not a very good programmer. Since I'm solo developing games right now, I'm using Unity and assets to develop my games.
@@SabrPath Do you use tools like Playmaker or blueprints?
I don't have much experience with Blueprints since I focus on Unity right now. I used Playmaker 10 years ago when I was in college. At the time I was interested in it because I wasn't very good at coding, but it was a bit clunky and there werent many resources on how to do certain things. I stopped using Playmaker because I didn't want to be dependent on it and prefer to use C# when I need to. I'm sure Playmaker has improved since then but I haven't used it recently.
It is pretty baffling to me that they refuse to take a break and truly analyze what is really wrong in their product. Especially when the audience is doing most of the work of pointing out the different issues.
Also your hijab redesign freaking slaps!
It's the mental gymnastics used by the CEO that I mention in this video who messaged me. All gamers are bigots. At the same time, it's just a vocal minority that's not part of the core audience.
Games that you know specifically are gonna piss people should not have big budgets. Games that have a big budget should specifically not try to piss off gamers as that is usually the biggest demographic, and will lead to a giant backlash that will massively effect sales.
I think Naughty Dog, has already tarnished their brand from TLOU2, as many did not like what was done to Joel in that game, and the narrative direction of that game and that will hurt future sales, not current (now past) sales, but future sales of Naughty Dog games. People thought that because TLOU2 sold well, that that meant the game was well recieved, but that isnt how a tarnished brand works. It is future sells that will dictate how well recieved a game was, and if the studio has built up resentment from an audience that will be reflected in future sells of future games. That means that the game currently being talked about will be the indicator of if people actually liked TLOU2 or if they absolutely hated it.
I think most people dont seem to realize that what goes on online, is not really represative of the average consumer. Most consumers, arent involved in online discussions about games, so they often wont be aware of controversy or arguments about a game. They will probably just see a trailer, and decide to purchase a game based off that, or it will be entirely based on past experiences with a publisher. Naughty Dog had a good reputation up until TLOU2, especially becauee of it being a sequel to a beloved game, and that reputation is what was likely ensured that game was a success, regardless of the qaulity of the game. It also means, that we will see now if players lf that game felt burned by it, and Naughty Dog now has a bad reputation.
I dont think people are ready to be confirmed or denied in their biases, when this next game flops or succeeds. Im personally leaning towards it will not be a financial success.
When I show this character design to women who are out of the loop with what goes on online, such as my wife, my mom, my mother in law, sister, etc, they are all repulsed by the character and say she looks like a man.
@SabrPath I think it goes deeper than that. She displays character traits and body language that most people are replused by. Even if she was male, I think she would've still been disliked. In fact if that had been a young man, most adult males woildve felt the need to smack him upside his head.
She also portrays herself as a basic feminist stereotype that most people have developed a severe dislike for. That problem is further compounded because the actual actress fulfills that stereotype, and her comments alone, in response to criticism of the character, guarantee that that's what people view the character as. I do not think that it is a coincidence that the character looks like a radical feminist icon, though.
The character design doesn’t matter. The narrative they tell does matter. Sigourney Weaver looked like a lesbian in the Alien movies; absolutely nobody has ever complained because the movie was never trying to message about wokeness or gay rights. Also, I see no problem with the character wearing a hijab if it indicates a certain background. I think what would bother people is if the character wearing a hijab was proselytizing to the audience. In many cases, art should be an expression of the artist’s perception of reality. Great art always expresses a perspective. The problem with what the woke ideology has become is that it’s become transparently, a corporate and political ideology pandering to political correctness.
The Alien movies is not a good comparison to this because you need to take account for the state of society and pop culture. At that time, it was truly for subversion of expectations. The creators understood what rules were, and were able to break the rules because of that understanding. With these modern games on the other hand, it's not the case. They aren't breaking the rules because they understand the rules. They are breaking the rules to set the new norm. I agree with your second point, pattern recognition is a thing. These character designs don't just happen in a vacuum. Same for other aspects such as the choice to pick character pronouns, having Body Type A/Body Type B instead of Male/Female, bad story and dialogue writing, and even dumbed down gameplay. These things aren't just happening on their own. They're all happening together. The audience is recognizing the pattern, so when they see one of these things, they will assume it's all in there. So I agree that it's become transparent at this point.