I would argue that AAA gaming is now a term that means nothing anymore. Studios considered Indie or AA are mopping the floor with established AAA studios.
The marketing teams are sabotaging the games, the devs are sabotaging the games, and then they’re surprised Pikachu when they face the consequences of their own actions. I feel sorry for the devs that keep their heads down on social media; whether they agree or not, they’re at least smart enough to not shoot themselves in the foot.
The marketing teams, from Kim Belairs (the ceo of Sweet Baby Inc) own mouth, is that she tells the marketing people to basically use blackmail and bullying to coerce companies to hire them to "diversify" their games. It's one big racket by people who have no business to be in the industry at all, just leeching away funds and talent as they do it.
The devs that keep their heads down are the 1st to go. The want the ones that agree with the agenda because you still see them afterwards talking about why the game failed and blaming others. So they still have their job and moving on to the next game (maybe at a new same studio with a different name).
Yeah, I really hate how they use "The Games Industry" as synonymous with AAA game dev corporations. The video game industry includes countless indie developers who've made countless games, many of which are amazing, and even a few non-indie games that were great too. We don't need these woke-infested companies anymore, but they're trying their best to seem relevant anyway.
The best way of describing good writers i've heard is " You write what you know " So since most modern progressive writers only know how to be a racist, sexist narcasistic pricks, that's all they can write about. It's why Lord of the Rings written by Tolkien has so much grief and heroism. He went through the first and second world war and survived, so he saw men and women rise to be heroic in the face of despair. He saw people crippled by desperation leading to them dying on the battlefield. He had a very large box full of tools to write from based on his lived experiences, and it shows in the diverse characteristics of the whole cast, evil doers, heroes and those in between.
Not really literature but a good comparison is Star Wars more specifically the original trilogy vs the new trilogy. The original trilogy took inspiration from numerous sources like Vietnam, WW2, westerns, and sci fi. Vs the new trilogy which took its inspiration from Star Wars, there is no outside inspiration. I take this lack of inspiration as a sign that the writers lack lived experience and a varied pallet.
The Stellar Blade devs each got a PS5 and a bonus for their hard work. Goes to show that actually making a good game pays out more than just revenue for the company.
I've noticed that a lot of these people whether they're from hollywood, comics or video games who fuck around on twitter mouthing off at random customers assume that they have a secure job that will pay them and keep them on no matter what, and cannot abstract out the concept that if people start looking at your company negatively and stop buying from said company because of you then the company isn't going to have enough money to pay people like them.
Yes, I admit it! I confess! It was me all along. I ruined gaming in 2024. My dastardly wallet served as impossible barrier to legions of diverse characters and inclusive storylines. Untold games will never see the light of day thanks to my actions... And if I could do it all over again, I would! You may call me... Toxic Gamer.
“You suck! If you don’t buy our game you’re a bigot!” “We’re failing because the majority of Americans are bad people!” “You suck! If you don’t vote for me you’re a bigot!” “I lost because the majority of Americans are ists and phobes!” Same song different dance 😮💨
No-no. High Guardian Spice is not anime. It's not even one of the American cartoons that are heavily anime-esk. Teen Titans was more anime than High Guardian Spice. It's like Rey identifying as a Skywalker.
RWBY was more Anime than High Guardian Spice... Rey could never become a Skywalker because "They" removed Ben Skywalker and his Mom Mara Jade from Canon to promote "Strong and Independent Female" and that "The Force is Female"... Rey Palpatine...
LOL YT didn't like my comment about welcoming the purification of the gaming space. Profligate companies and activists committed multiple self-owns by wasting money on products that the market doesn't want, and they got a very hard lesson in economics. Edit: 28:15 I am tired of that nonsense as well. It reminds of the obnoxious trope nowadays that started with Marvel movies where every character has to have this forced sassy/snarky or lol-so-quippy attitude. Like dude, can you act like a normal human being for 10 min. and not be passive-aggressive all the time?
Nope, all of them are guilty, I've seen too many lower level devs who are activist and openly hate gamers. If you're a normal dev, you have two options: speak out and risk getting fire OR stay silent and watch the layoff hits after a flop woke game. Pick one.
Third option; keep your head down while you search for a different company/ start your own company. There are plenty of devs that have left and started their own businesses. I feel no remorse or sympathy for any of the devs at these companies that got laid off. If you’re a good dev you should have known the place was going to fail, and if you’re a bed dev then get of the industry. The only devs I’ll feel anything for are the ones that make good games but get shut down due to some BS from their parent company.
Games have always been an outlet for escapism. And they are among the most accepting people, as a culture, when they’re left to their devices just enjoying the games. In MMORPGS, you can be anything you want to be. Male, female, anthropomorphic, human, alien, and so on. Did gamers ever drive out people who enjoyed playing as “whatever”? Gamers mostly just let it be, encouraged people to explore their characters, and in these big MMOs they’ve made it possible for people to find their spaces and communities. “Art” today has smothered creativity. No one really reads books anymore. Reading encourages the mind to wander as it brings to life the settings and people etched in those words in ways no visual media can fully replicate. No one writes in paper anymore. Writing encourages the mind to organize together jumbled thoughts into cohesive, coherent order, or simply try to connect across time and space to someone who might find more meaning in it than on-demand texting. In other words, bring back creativity.
I have a library of 400 books, both fiction and nonfiction, not including the five encyclopedias. I'm also in the process of writing a novel longhand with a mechanical pencil. It must be because I have Asperger's, but I've always preferred pencil and paper for writing. Computer programs like WordPerfect and Word felt sterile.
the screaming at GDC 24 is why game dev is getting fired... because the industry is filled with those kind of incompetent people... i remember a story told by the industry veteran that complain about how working with new generation of game dev is pretty much impossible, asking them to code a standard damage table, took them a week. that veteran code it up in 10 minutes and he got reported to HR for hostile work environment.
as someone thats been following indie games since playing liero as a kid, to watching bytejacker on rev3 and totalbiscuit to now, its the perfect time for indie games to REALLY come in a sweep up. fps hasnt been a strong suit for indies but theres games like splitgate 2 coming, at the very least more AA companies that are private would kill right now
6:40 Because they thought they weren't insulting the vast majority of their audience, thats what i've come to believe. They thought they were actually insulting a small group of people, still do from what i've seen, and now its just that this small group has so much influence in their eyes. Not realizing that they are talking and insulting the majority
44:45 I also think the argument that you have to experience something to write about it is pretty much a logical fallacy. You don't need to have fought a dragon, experienced drowning or been through a horrible relationship in order to write a compelling and gripping story. All you need is empathy, logic, imagination and writing skill. The issue is a lot of the people writing "diverse" stories lack two or more of those factors, with empathy in particular being in short supply in an industry that insists on arguing that it's impossible to relate to someone that isn't literally you.
I thats why research was brought up, but it has to be good research. People will know if your game was put together based on post cards and misinformation (AC Shadows) or had extensive consultation and collaboration with experts or people who know or lived in their field of knowledge (Watch Dogs 1, GTA 4 / GTA 5, Ready or Not as examples).
lol The 2014 Gamer Gate "Hate" movemment was about ethics in game journalism. Of course, the journalists thought it was hateful that people thought they shouldn't be getting gifts, invites to parties, and/or sex and then reviewing games from those companies. How dare we believe those things might bias their reviews? Of course Gamer Gate also realized the companies were also at fault by holding future review copies ransom if scores were too low. There are ways to fix this though. Like companies issuing codes through a raffle, simply having to issue codes to all game journalists or none at all.
We are not. This took years and years to get to this point and gamers still buy this crap like nba and fifa games every year which are the worst kind of money grab games. Hell people still pre order digital games. There is a lot more we can still improve on.
Leaflit you hit the nail on the head around 16:15. When you see the telltale signs of a certain kind of political messaging in a game (or movie for that matter), you know that the game is being made by *those people* and we are so effing tired of them and their out of touch luxury beliefs.
29:40 So the character that we were supposed to root for in that show could only compete in a sport by taking performance enhancers and who treated the "bad guys" worse then they treated them and made them appologise for bringing to them?
The whiff of diversity is the footprint of failure according to the repeating formula that just won't work. If a diverse game did succeed, it was because it didn't shove it into every orpheus of its story, characters, and world.
> Bring in people with no/little game development or directing experience. > They hate the product/game; almost literally everything about it. > Give them unlimited scope, budget, and "creative" license. > Grant them permission to force out dissenting, reasonable voices for BS reasons. > Product/Game is fundamentally altered and unrecognizable to the target audience. > Obviously, the audience doesn't like it, and it doesn't sell. "How could gamers do this to us? 😥"
I mean thanos was the villain, but the dude was right. Doom was a despicable person, but Bast literally couldn't find a flaw with his horrifying ideals. At this point, being the villain is just being the hero in disguise
games are also a non essential in life, we as humans can live without them, and when the developer/creator didn't put in the time to make it worth our cash thats slowly dwindling by the day, we start to become a lot more picky about the things we spend money on.
I think they write it for themselves, to feel good and rigeus about it. They just don't have the guts to stand by it when people don't like it, and cope by throwing insults like kindergardeners.
This is why Kuzco from Emperor’s New Groove is an asshole character done right. Yes, he’s a selfish, he’s a man baby, self centered, narcissistic SOB that ever was animated…but he’s funny! That to me is what separates him from the characters today, you can be an unlivable ass but at least be funny! None of these DEI characters have Kuzco’s charm, comedic timing, likability and a redemption arc.
If you have ever seen Crunchyroll's video of high guardians spice all female writing team, caring only about people being m/f you could tell it was going to be subpar garbage.
When the first words marketing a game are about the character or people on the team's gender, color, orientation, race and/or bed room preferences, etc, it's a sign that those things took priority. When those things take priority, other things like gameplay and story get less attention. Much of the attention they do get is spent trying to call as much attention to the aforementioned things as possible. That's the issue. Also, The Suicide Squad was just a bad game, and then treated the death of one of the most iconic super heroes like a joke. Actually, it wasn't funny, so it was worse than a joke. That made the already bad game even worse in the eyes of gamers. EDIT: I was a game tester for 15 years. I left when this crap was just starting. I actually saw Alpha versions of Suicide Squad and Gotham Knights. Both games were restarted many many many times. Gotham Knights was also supposed to use the Nemesis system and the video pitching Gotham Knights focused a lot on Batgirl's really really nice butt.
"Man. This guy has some based opinions. I like how he lays it all out." *Spots Nagatoro sticker on his water jug* "BASED! BASED! THIS MAN IS BASED AF!!!"
The customer is always right in matters of taste. Push in front of me a hardcore DEI game with bad gameplay, poor writing, aweful character designs and I rejected it, don't double down and tell me I'm wrong for not wanting it. Do that last part and the door shuts forever because you've made it so unpleasant to even look out that door anymore.
"Concord largely considered a flop" Largely considered, all those softening words. No Concord was objectively a flop. It's the flopiest flop to ever flop. It was a flop by which all other flops can be judged. Every developer that worked on Concord got paid salaries for 8 years, the better part of a decade, to turn out a massive pile of shit, literally just given money to make absolute garbage. No I don't feel sorry for any of the people that got 8 years worth of game dev welfare.
We're just following the advice that they have been spouting at us for 6+ years at this point. "Don't like it, don't buy it" and they're making it sooo easy to not like the product. From the CMs and marketing people telling us how they openly despise us for our immutable characteristics, to the developers that are at best not given enough time to flesh out gameplay or at worst flat out incompetent and actively sabotaging the game and the storyteam caring more about shoving in their agenda, even when it doesn't fit the setting, no matter how you spin it.
4:20 Yup a void will be made and they'll look for those who will provide what they want. And even if they do stick around for the slop it doesn't mean they'll pay more. Just how the others are willing to spend else wear instead of saving it, the ones sticking around won't increase what they are already used to paying
i also like the return to form slogan they know things are bad and getting worse in triple ayy so they try to bait people back with nostalgia for products they then mock
Baldur's Gate 3 is my favourite game to bring up when journalists cry about "People blaming DEI is at the fault for games failing!" BG3 has a *ton* of diversity. The difference to the slop we were served this year is that BG3 did not shove the stuff in your face and you could choose to not engage it almost at all and people (myself included) ADORE that game!
@@toomanyaccounts As far as I can determine, the complaints are that there's a black noble in a European coded city, and all of the main characters are bisexual. Both complaints are tiresome; and at any rate, the first complaint is invalidated by more than two decades of precedent.
@robertbryant4669 it's a fantasy setting so the skin color doesn't really make sense since dark skinned humans in Faerun while rare aren't unheard of. It would be more shocking and out of place for a surface city to have a undisguised mind flayer openly being a noble unless it was a Zhent or Thay city for instance. The characters all being bisexual logically doesn't make sense since human sensuality doesn't work like that.
You have to kill an angel at the behest of an evil God to avoid a lesbian kiss. The first act is a bunch of half demons whose biggest moral failure is thievery. I feel like the goalposts have shifted or people aren't paying attention, but then that's the point of the boiling frog, we get slop, so when we get quality, we're so desperate it gets to normalize their agenda.
Oh yeah the other thing... there's this bizarre entitlement and smugness from a lot of modern game devs that just wasn't the case back in the day. A lot of people, myself included, have decided to go back to the old stuff where people figured out what they wanted to make and put it out there. Like sure gamers play games free or otherwise, but at no point are they entitled to our dollar if we don't want to play what they put out. What bugs me honestly in comparison to the old to the new is just how OFTEN a lot of modern gaming are chasing trends rather than making new ones. Like... you'll hear this super success story and then memory of it is gone within like 2-3 months. It wasn't that way back in the day with blockbusters and master pieces or disasters. Making a separate comment to ensure it reaches as many people as it can. Good reaction, Leaflit.
12:42 I’ve seen people just blame the higher ups to many times. Devs do have a fair bit of control over the projects, and are often the reason games fail. They are the ones who are actually making the shitty games, shoving in needless diversity, terrible characters, terrible stories and terrible gameplay. It’s not solely higher ups to blame, it’s often the incompetent devs instead
I think 2024 was around the time a lot of normal people started to notice just how bad things really were for gaming, AAA more so than anything else. The GDC scream thing is still pretty funny that reminds me of that one lady who screamed in agony over The Donald winning in 2016. I'm also pretty sure that the whole "screaming" treatment does more damage to the brain than actually helping it. Gaming is in probably its bleakest it has been for a long time for a vast variety of reasons that I hope gets better soon. Whether we're making what we want to see just as people did back in the 2000s and 90s or witnessing it first hand. However, what isn't said is the sheer amount of sludge that got released across many platforms. It's wild.
The real effects will surface in 2025 With the next few big flops. Some of the biggest game studios of the world will go down in flames, because of DEI and ESG bs and Sweet Baby Inc. will go out of business. We are up for a great year and a restart of the industry.
On the note of successful indie games, I have to make a shout out to Book of Hours. The House of Light DLC is a great addition to a great game. As someone who doesn't often replay games, I find it particularly ironic that Alexis Kennedy, one of the main creators of the game, didn't think anyone would replay the game at all, but I've gone and done it around 8-9 times on just the base game.
12:40 - its not just the higher ups though. theres a ton of game devs that are ideologically corrupt also having a hand in all of this, and influencing companies. we've seen a lot of them talking on X over the years too. A lot of them support this stuff too. I feel bad for any of the good or decent devs who dont deserve this stuff but there needs to be a draining of the swamp and sometimes these decent devs will fall through the cracks. but its a necessity to fix the gaming environment.
18:54 The whole thing about "owning something" is not just about gaming industry, it's a crazy motto of people (based on my experience) at least for 20 years. It's a part of toxic positivity I think. I think first time I noticed that at age of 13 when I start reading manga. And what surprised me is amount of people that praising bad translation and cursing people that criticized it. And they did it just because translator made an effort. It was so crazy to me. Like isn't the whole point to judge the work by the result and not just by the time or effort spent? And then while I growing up I noticed more and more of that "trend" in every aspect of the life. For some reason people start thinking that if you just put enough effort in the work the result is doesn't matter and people need to buy or even price your work/product for that. That's why fro many people now criticism = unreasonable hate. Crazy times we live in.
25:00 The people who actually make good games used their pain, struggles and turned it into entertainment that is understandable, relatable and shines awareness. The people who aren't and just trying to push a massage over gameplay have never struggled. So much so that they have to be offended on other groups behalf and turn on them when told to stop. They even make up their own weird marginalized groups to play victims or highjack other movements
To the editor, thanks for the not doing those crazy intrusive edits. The older videos were super bad. Around 95% of the edits were pointless and takes away from the entire point of the video, which is Leaflit.
41:04 That is wrong, what happens is they get these "outsourcing inclusion" companies (-like S.B.I) and pay hundreds of millions of united States dollars just so "no hate" will be received on social media. THEN they make the story board of the game, then the concept art (- btw they DO make these steps separately for some genius reasons) then characters design AND FINALLY the game mechanic and gameplay. That is why a 2 years game takes 8 frikin years to complete.
Honestly, the problem with all the game companies shutting down is the cycle of hire-and-fire that these triple-A companies utilize. They overhire for a game, pick up way too many devs than they need, then clean house every time a game launches. No one stays employed in these triple-As because no one can.
You worked on the original Diablo? And at the start of League? That's quite a resume. Glad to see some older devs aren't jumping into this weird social cult. ...I mean, it's amazing seeing so many 20 year olds!
21:10 interesting. And yet things like Kill the Justice League, Skull and bones and Concord could afford to throw around hundreds of millions of dollars willy-nilly.
Basically... You 'need' to have an amount of empathy inversely proportionate to both the quality and quantity of your lived experiences to write about things you haven't lived though. (Quality in this case being a stand in for how closely matched your lived experience is to what you want to write.)
18:21 THIS Game developers nowadays are going around everytime a game flops they go to social media blaming gamers for their game failing like they're ENTITLED to our hard earned disposable income, like we have an OBLIGATION to buy and consume their slop
I feel robbed. I watched Leaflit on twitch back in 2020 when she was a slime girl, but stopped after the mods kept refunding/rejecting my redeems. So much time lost.
I think it's even crazier that at the end of the day, not only will the ones in charge not take even remotely any responsibility, but they're going to have extremely loud people online defending the multibillion dollar company for free.
This happened live on stream! Don't miss this and other things that never make it to RUclips on my Twitch channel! (Link in the description)
legendary drops loves ESG/DEI
Gamers did not ruin 2024, gamers tried to stop games from being ruined in 2024.
I didn't expect to read this from the pippa addict
I'm proud to be part of why AAA gaming is failing
Non-buynary gang, rise up!
based, let us toast marshmallows on the flames of the current AAA industry brother
No no no, its not AAA games, its AAAA Games. I have no idea what that means, but I'm 100% sure those idiot CEOs don't either.
I would argue that AAA gaming is now a term that means nothing anymore. Studios considered Indie or AA are mopping the floor with established AAA studios.
Same here. Also, based pfp.
gamers ruining the lives of subversive developers and activists?
unfathomably based, lets hope 2025 is even harsher 👑
For a second, I thought you wrote subverse developers, lol.
The marketing teams are sabotaging the games, the devs are sabotaging the games, and then they’re surprised Pikachu when they face the consequences of their own actions.
I feel sorry for the devs that keep their heads down on social media; whether they agree or not, they’re at least smart enough to not shoot themselves in the foot.
The marketing teams, from Kim Belairs (the ceo of Sweet Baby Inc) own mouth, is that she tells the marketing people to basically use blackmail and bullying to coerce companies to hire them to "diversify" their games. It's one big racket by people who have no business to be in the industry at all, just leeching away funds and talent as they do it.
The devs that keep their heads down are the 1st to go. The want the ones that agree with the agenda because you still see them afterwards talking about why the game failed and blaming others. So they still have their job and moving on to the next game (maybe at a new same studio with a different name).
it was ME Barry! I ruined 2024!
😂
Thank you.
"I'm every bad day you ever had."
- me, to the AAA studios' CEOs, probably
Thanks 😳👍🏻
If a game fails because "it has a whiff of diversity" then why did Black Myth Wukong and Stellar Blade succeed???
“Becuse only china bought wukong and stellar blade buyers are porn addiction, pedo , and hate women “
Same with Baldurs Gate 3. That game is every liberals dream game.
It's not the right kind of diversity obviously.
Probably because Asians don't count for diversity with these people. Gotta be brown to be diverse.
BG3 doesn't force that fever dream upon you like tHa vEiLgUaRd. Except for sneaking in pronouns post pre orders.
Uh oh, I ruined the year by playing good games made by people who don't hate me. I'm sofa king awful and toxic. 😂
Couch master Lyfe
Yeah, I really hate how they use "The Games Industry" as synonymous with AAA game dev corporations. The video game industry includes countless indie developers who've made countless games, many of which are amazing, and even a few non-indie games that were great too. We don't need these woke-infested companies anymore, but they're trying their best to seem relevant anyway.
The best way of describing good writers i've heard is " You write what you know " So since most modern progressive writers only know how to be a racist, sexist narcasistic pricks, that's all they can write about.
It's why Lord of the Rings written by Tolkien has so much grief and heroism. He went through the first and second world war and survived, so he saw men and women rise to be heroic in the face of despair. He saw people crippled by desperation leading to them dying on the battlefield. He had a very large box full of tools to write from based on his lived experiences, and it shows in the diverse characteristics of the whole cast, evil doers, heroes and those in between.
Good writers are often well read too and understand literature not just superficially but in a more technical and philosophical way.
Not really literature but a good comparison is Star Wars more specifically the original trilogy vs the new trilogy.
The original trilogy took inspiration from numerous sources like Vietnam, WW2, westerns, and sci fi. Vs the new trilogy which took its inspiration from Star Wars, there is no outside inspiration.
I take this lack of inspiration as a sign that the writers lack lived experience and a varied pallet.
The Stellar Blade devs each got a PS5 and a bonus for their hard work. Goes to show that actually making a good game pays out more than just revenue for the company.
Damn at least they got something worth money because the ps5 surely isn't
I've noticed that a lot of these people whether they're from hollywood, comics or video games who fuck around on twitter mouthing off at random customers assume that they have a secure job that will pay them and keep them on no matter what, and cannot abstract out the concept that if people start looking at your company negatively and stop buying from said company because of you then the company isn't going to have enough money to pay people like them.
Yes, I admit it! I confess! It was me all along. I ruined gaming in 2024. My dastardly wallet served as impossible barrier to legions of diverse characters and inclusive storylines. Untold games will never see the light of day thanks to my actions... And if I could do it all over again, I would!
You may call me... Toxic Gamer.
Beautiful.
You villain! >:0
Insert here Greta Tumberg's How dare you meme.
At the end of the day, it's just more woke nonsense..
"You suck! Btw, Buy our product."
"You suck! Btw, vote for us."
“You suck! If you don’t buy our game you’re a bigot!” “We’re failing because the majority of Americans are bad people!”
“You suck! If you don’t vote for me you’re a bigot!” “I lost because the majority of Americans are ists and phobes!”
Same song different dance 😮💨
“The media covers the industry but now I’m realizing it’s more like they cover FOR the industry” Yep, that one quote sums it up perfectly
No-no.
High Guardian Spice is not anime.
It's not even one of the American cartoons that are heavily anime-esk. Teen Titans was more anime than High Guardian Spice.
It's like Rey identifying as a Skywalker.
RWBY was more Anime than High Guardian Spice...
Rey could never become a Skywalker because "They" removed Ben Skywalker and his Mom Mara Jade from Canon to promote "Strong and Independent Female" and that "The Force is Female"... Rey Palpatine...
Old cartoon network was peak. Now it's garbage
High Guardian Spice is a little more comparable to Steven Universe... and the fanbase for that show is just... Ugh. 🤮
LOL YT didn't like my comment about welcoming the purification of the gaming space. Profligate companies and activists committed multiple self-owns by wasting money on products that the market doesn't want, and they got a very hard lesson in economics.
Edit: 28:15 I am tired of that nonsense as well. It reminds of the obnoxious trope nowadays that started with Marvel movies where every character has to have this forced sassy/snarky or lol-so-quippy attitude. Like dude, can you act like a normal human being for 10 min. and not be passive-aggressive all the time?
Nope, all of them are guilty, I've seen too many lower level devs who are activist and openly hate gamers. If you're a normal dev, you have two options: speak out and risk getting fire OR stay silent and watch the layoff hits after a flop woke game. Pick one.
Third option; keep your head down while you search for a different company/ start your own company. There are plenty of devs that have left and started their own businesses. I feel no remorse or sympathy for any of the devs at these companies that got laid off. If you’re a good dev you should have known the place was going to fail, and if you’re a bed dev then get of the industry. The only devs I’ll feel anything for are the ones that make good games but get shut down due to some BS from their parent company.
Games have always been an outlet for escapism. And they are among the most accepting people, as a culture, when they’re left to their devices just enjoying the games.
In MMORPGS, you can be anything you want to be. Male, female, anthropomorphic, human, alien, and so on. Did gamers ever drive out people who enjoyed playing as “whatever”? Gamers mostly just let it be, encouraged people to explore their characters, and in these big MMOs they’ve made it possible for people to find their spaces and communities.
“Art” today has smothered creativity. No one really reads books anymore. Reading encourages the mind to wander as it brings to life the settings and people etched in those words in ways no visual media can fully replicate. No one writes in paper anymore. Writing encourages the mind to organize together jumbled thoughts into cohesive, coherent order, or simply try to connect across time and space to someone who might find more meaning in it than on-demand texting.
In other words, bring back creativity.
I have a library of 400 books, both fiction and nonfiction, not including the five encyclopedias. I'm also in the process of writing a novel longhand with a mechanical pencil. It must be because I have Asperger's, but I've always preferred pencil and paper for writing. Computer programs like WordPerfect and Word felt sterile.
They made garbage i refused to consume, that's why they lost their jobs. Not my problem.
the screaming at GDC 24 is why game dev is getting fired... because the industry is filled with those kind of incompetent people... i remember a story told by the industry veteran that complain about how working with new generation of game dev is pretty much impossible, asking them to code a standard damage table, took them a week. that veteran code it up in 10 minutes and he got reported to HR for hostile work environment.
as someone thats been following indie games since playing liero as a kid, to watching bytejacker on rev3 and totalbiscuit to now, its the perfect time for indie games to REALLY come in a sweep up. fps hasnt been a strong suit for indies but theres games like splitgate 2 coming, at the very least more AA companies that are private would kill right now
6:40
Because they thought they weren't insulting the vast majority of their audience, thats what i've come to believe.
They thought they were actually insulting a small group of people, still do from what i've seen, and now its just that this small group has so much influence in their eyes.
Not realizing that they are talking and insulting the majority
44:45 I also think the argument that you have to experience something to write about it is pretty much a logical fallacy. You don't need to have fought a dragon, experienced drowning or been through a horrible relationship in order to write a compelling and gripping story. All you need is empathy, logic, imagination and writing skill. The issue is a lot of the people writing "diverse" stories lack two or more of those factors, with empathy in particular being in short supply in an industry that insists on arguing that it's impossible to relate to someone that isn't literally you.
LoTR is based on a true story???!!! Writer experienced it all first hand
I thats why research was brought up, but it has to be good research. People will know if your game was put together based on post cards and misinformation (AC Shadows) or had extensive consultation and collaboration with experts or people who know or lived in their field of knowledge (Watch Dogs 1, GTA 4 / GTA 5, Ready or Not as examples).
lol The 2014 Gamer Gate "Hate" movemment was about ethics in game journalism. Of course, the journalists thought it was hateful that people thought they shouldn't be getting gifts, invites to parties, and/or sex and then reviewing games from those companies. How dare we believe those things might bias their reviews?
Of course Gamer Gate also realized the companies were also at fault by holding future review copies ransom if scores were too low. There are ways to fix this though. Like companies issuing codes through a raffle, simply having to issue codes to all game journalists or none at all.
Helldivers 2 is considered AA I think because they are indie but backed by Sony, at least I think that’s how that works.
AA because they have more funds and resources than indie but not as much AAA game studios.
Why are gamers so good at recognizing patterns?
We are not. This took years and years to get to this point and gamers still buy this crap like nba and fifa games every year which are the worst kind of money grab games. Hell people still pre order digital games. There is a lot more we can still improve on.
I had no idea Leaflit created Lux, that's going to be one of the biggest mind blown starting 2025. Thank you Leaflit!
this "gamer's dont owe you shit" is the most beautiful line there is
Thanks!
Thank you so much I really appreciate it.
Leaflit you hit the nail on the head around 16:15. When you see the telltale signs of a certain kind of political messaging in a game (or movie for that matter), you know that the game is being made by *those people* and we are so effing tired of them and their out of touch luxury beliefs.
29:40 So the character that we were supposed to root for in that show could only compete in a sport by taking performance enhancers and who treated the "bad guys" worse then they treated them and made them appologise for bringing to them?
The whiff of diversity is the footprint of failure according to the repeating formula that just won't work.
If a diverse game did succeed, it was because it didn't shove it into every orpheus of its story, characters, and world.
> Bring in people with no/little game development or directing experience.
> They hate the product/game; almost literally everything about it.
> Give them unlimited scope, budget, and "creative" license.
> Grant them permission to force out dissenting, reasonable voices for BS reasons.
> Product/Game is fundamentally altered and unrecognizable to the target audience.
> Obviously, the audience doesn't like it, and it doesn't sell.
"How could gamers do this to us? 😥"
I’m just tired of being painted as a villain just for simply existing
I mean thanos was the villain, but the dude was right. Doom was a despicable person, but Bast literally couldn't find a flaw with his horrifying ideals. At this point, being the villain is just being the hero in disguise
It's so hard to have quality enemies these days. It's all trash mobs.
I watched the original video from LegendaryDrops, but I see some extra super valid points being raised here. Nice job!
games are also a non essential in life, we as humans can live without them, and when the developer/creator didn't put in the time to make it worth our cash thats slowly dwindling by the day, we start to become a lot more picky about the things we spend money on.
someone in the chat said house was a bad character the hell he was an awesome character
Who tf are they writing this garbage for? Surely they don't still think we can be can gaslit, so who exactly are they trying to convince.
I think they write it for themselves, to feel good and rigeus about it.
They just don't have the guts to stand by it when people don't like it, and cope by throwing insults like kindergardeners.
This is why Kuzco from Emperor’s New Groove is an asshole character done right. Yes, he’s a selfish, he’s a man baby, self centered, narcissistic SOB that ever was animated…but he’s funny! That to me is what separates him from the characters today, you can be an unlivable ass but at least be funny! None of these DEI characters have Kuzco’s charm, comedic timing, likability and a redemption arc.
I’m doing my part
Ghost of wokei you next!
We ain’t forgot about you for a damn second and don’t you forget it
That one guy in chat: She's responsible for that thing Riot did after she left the company!
Leaflit I really appreciate that you share all the work you did in the industry.
I had this video on my feed and at first i thought i've read the title wrong
I see this as a total W, let these companies complain and crumble, I'll spend my money where I'm not pandered too
If you have ever seen Crunchyroll's video of high guardians spice all female writing team, caring only about people being m/f you could tell it was going to be subpar garbage.
When the first words marketing a game are about the character or people on the team's gender, color, orientation, race and/or bed room preferences, etc, it's a sign that those things took priority.
When those things take priority, other things like gameplay and story get less attention. Much of the attention they do get is spent trying to call as much attention to the aforementioned things as possible. That's the issue.
Also, The Suicide Squad was just a bad game, and then treated the death of one of the most iconic super heroes like a joke. Actually, it wasn't funny, so it was worse than a joke. That made the already bad game even worse in the eyes of gamers.
EDIT: I was a game tester for 15 years. I left when this crap was just starting. I actually saw Alpha versions of Suicide Squad and Gotham Knights. Both games were restarted many many many times. Gotham Knights was also supposed to use the Nemesis system and the video pitching Gotham Knights focused a lot on Batgirl's really really nice butt.
It was me. I ruined the AAA industry. And I would do it again!
Thank you modern audience for somehow granting me this power.
Editor does a wonderful job with the captions.
"Man. This guy has some based opinions. I like how he lays it all out." *Spots Nagatoro sticker on his water jug* "BASED! BASED! THIS MAN IS BASED AF!!!"
I love the editor's comments so good.
The customer is always right in matters of taste. Push in front of me a hardcore DEI game with bad gameplay, poor writing, aweful character designs and I rejected it, don't double down and tell me I'm wrong for not wanting it. Do that last part and the door shuts forever because you've made it so unpleasant to even look out that door anymore.
Toilet technology might not have improved in the west. But Japan... Japan is living in the future.
Or the present if the rest of the world got their stuff together.
Nobody is entitled to my meager money. I identify as non buynary.
"Concord largely considered a flop" Largely considered, all those softening words. No Concord was objectively a flop. It's the flopiest flop to ever flop. It was a flop by which all other flops can be judged. Every developer that worked on Concord got paid salaries for 8 years, the better part of a decade, to turn out a massive pile of shit, literally just given money to make absolute garbage. No I don't feel sorry for any of the people that got 8 years worth of game dev welfare.
We're just following the advice that they have been spouting at us for 6+ years at this point. "Don't like it, don't buy it" and they're making it sooo easy to not like the product. From the CMs and marketing people telling us how they openly despise us for our immutable characteristics, to the developers that are at best not given enough time to flesh out gameplay or at worst flat out incompetent and actively sabotaging the game and the storyteam caring more about shoving in their agenda, even when it doesn't fit the setting, no matter how you spin it.
4:20 Yup a void will be made and they'll look for those who will provide what they want.
And even if they do stick around for the slop it doesn't mean they'll pay more.
Just how the others are willing to spend else wear instead of saving it, the ones sticking around won't increase what they are already used to paying
i also like the return to form slogan
they know things are bad and getting worse in triple ayy so they try to bait people back with nostalgia for products they then mock
Baldur's Gate 3 is my favourite game to bring up when journalists cry about "People blaming DEI is at the fault for games failing!" BG3 has a *ton* of diversity. The difference to the slop we were served this year is that BG3 did not shove the stuff in your face and you could choose to not engage it almost at all and people (myself included) ADORE that game!
I love asking people how BG3 is woke when they claim it is. They never reply
@@toomanyaccountsHalsin's existence. But I forgave them for that because you can leave him to rot away.
@@toomanyaccounts As far as I can determine, the complaints are that there's a black noble in a European coded city, and all of the main characters are bisexual. Both complaints are tiresome; and at any rate, the first complaint is invalidated by more than two decades of precedent.
@robertbryant4669 it's a fantasy setting so the skin color doesn't really make sense since dark skinned humans in Faerun while rare aren't unheard of. It would be more shocking and out of place for a surface city to have a undisguised mind flayer openly being a noble unless it was a Zhent or Thay city for instance. The characters all being bisexual logically doesn't make sense since human sensuality doesn't work like that.
You have to kill an angel at the behest of an evil God to avoid a lesbian kiss. The first act is a bunch of half demons whose biggest moral failure is thievery. I feel like the goalposts have shifted or people aren't paying attention, but then that's the point of the boiling frog, we get slop, so when we get quality, we're so desperate it gets to normalize their agenda.
Gamers didn't just stop buying games full stop, major studios just made too many games that gamers didn't want to buy.
Oh yeah the other thing... there's this bizarre entitlement and smugness from a lot of modern game devs that just wasn't the case back in the day. A lot of people, myself included, have decided to go back to the old stuff where people figured out what they wanted to make and put it out there. Like sure gamers play games free or otherwise, but at no point are they entitled to our dollar if we don't want to play what they put out. What bugs me honestly in comparison to the old to the new is just how OFTEN a lot of modern gaming are chasing trends rather than making new ones. Like... you'll hear this super success story and then memory of it is gone within like 2-3 months. It wasn't that way back in the day with blockbusters and master pieces or disasters. Making a separate comment to ensure it reaches as many people as it can. Good reaction, Leaflit.
they say they want representation and diversity but everyone must conform to the same mindset and accept tokenism.
You made Lux? Congrats on creating one of the most popular LOL characters!
Imagine if she got royalties from all those juicy skins.
12:42 I’ve seen people just blame the higher ups to many times. Devs do have a fair bit of control over the projects, and are often the reason games fail. They are the ones who are actually making the shitty games, shoving in needless diversity, terrible characters, terrible stories and terrible gameplay. It’s not solely higher ups to blame, it’s often the incompetent devs instead
My money is certainly better spent on fun games like Helldivers or Miiside instead of slop like Failguard
I think 2024 was around the time a lot of normal people started to notice just how bad things really were for gaming, AAA more so than anything else. The GDC scream thing is still pretty funny that reminds me of that one lady who screamed in agony over The Donald winning in 2016. I'm also pretty sure that the whole "screaming" treatment does more damage to the brain than actually helping it. Gaming is in probably its bleakest it has been for a long time for a vast variety of reasons that I hope gets better soon. Whether we're making what we want to see just as people did back in the 2000s and 90s or witnessing it first hand. However, what isn't said is the sheer amount of sludge that got released across many platforms. It's wild.
"Non-buynary" 😂perfection. Dont ask question to the atf really💯
They have learned nothing as usual
Leafy spitting with this one
The financial beatings will continue until morale improves.
I refuse to spend money on a game whose developers seem to actively hate me and my preferences.
What have they done to my girl Sabrina?
Gamers returned the hope to gamers in 2024 and likely helped revive gaming.
The real effects will surface in 2025 With the next few big flops. Some of the biggest game studios of the world will go down in flames, because of DEI and ESG bs
and Sweet Baby Inc. will go out of business. We are up for a great year and a restart of the industry.
On the note of successful indie games, I have to make a shout out to Book of Hours. The House of Light DLC is a great addition to a great game. As someone who doesn't often replay games, I find it particularly ironic that Alexis Kennedy, one of the main creators of the game, didn't think anyone would replay the game at all, but I've gone and done it around 8-9 times on just the base game.
12:40 - its not just the higher ups though. theres a ton of game devs that are ideologically corrupt also having a hand in all of this, and influencing companies. we've seen a lot of them talking on X over the years too. A lot of them support this stuff too. I feel bad for any of the good or decent devs who dont deserve this stuff but there needs to be a draining of the swamp and sometimes these decent devs will fall through the cracks. but its a necessity to fix the gaming environment.
18:00 Blaming capitalism is like blaming the clothes you wore that day.
18:54 The whole thing about "owning something" is not just about gaming industry, it's a crazy motto of people (based on my experience) at least for 20 years. It's a part of toxic positivity I think. I think first time I noticed that at age of 13 when I start reading manga. And what surprised me is amount of people that praising bad translation and cursing people that criticized it. And they did it just because translator made an effort. It was so crazy to me. Like isn't the whole point to judge the work by the result and not just by the time or effort spent? And then while I growing up I noticed more and more of that "trend" in every aspect of the life. For some reason people start thinking that if you just put enough effort in the work the result is doesn't matter and people need to buy or even price your work/product for that. That's why fro many people now criticism = unreasonable hate. Crazy times we live in.
"Didn't tell reviewers what to say..."
Literally told them to have "return to form" in their review...
25:00 The people who actually make good games used their pain, struggles and turned it into entertainment that is understandable, relatable and shines awareness. The people who aren't and just trying to push a massage over gameplay have never struggled. So much so that they have to be offended on other groups behalf and turn on them when told to stop. They even make up their own weird marginalized groups to play victims or highjack other movements
"Getting sh*tted on builds character"
-Leaflit
That's why I'm into scat.
26:44 They'll never learn. In order to get to that step, they have to admit they fucked up.
Your brother tricked you into watching High Guardian Spice XD
"Their boss took them out for vacation or something."
That's a funny way to say pizza party.
I watched all four seasons of the Chilling adventures of Sabrina. I still remember that episode. I try not to think about it. It was bad.
well on point steam had like a record number of cc users few weeks ago
To the editor, thanks for the not doing those crazy intrusive edits. The older videos were super bad. Around 95% of the edits were pointless and takes away from the entire point of the video, which is Leaflit.
36:34 Appeal of action RPGs?? I started playing LoL because it reminded me of Diablo 3, my favorite game at the time.
41:04
That is wrong, what happens is they get these "outsourcing inclusion" companies (-like S.B.I) and pay hundreds of millions of united States dollars just so "no hate" will be received on social media.
THEN they make the story board of the game, then the concept art (- btw they DO make these steps separately for some genius reasons) then characters design AND FINALLY the game mechanic and gameplay.
That is why a 2 years game takes 8 frikin years to complete.
So much lore today.
Honestly, the problem with all the game companies shutting down is the cycle of hire-and-fire that these triple-A companies utilize. They overhire for a game, pick up way too many devs than they need, then clean house every time a game launches. No one stays employed in these triple-As because no one can.
I did it, it was me the whole time. I ruined AAA game companies to make them produce awful trash for an entire year....and I'll do it again this year!
You worked on the original Diablo? And at the start of League? That's quite a resume. Glad to see some older devs aren't jumping into this weird social cult.
...I mean, it's amazing seeing so many 20 year olds!
21:10 interesting. And yet things like Kill the Justice League, Skull and bones and Concord could afford to throw around hundreds of millions of dollars willy-nilly.
Basically... You 'need' to have an amount of empathy inversely proportionate to both the quality and quantity of your lived experiences to write about things you haven't lived though. (Quality in this case being a stand in for how closely matched your lived experience is to what you want to write.)
18:21 THIS
Game developers nowadays are going around everytime a game flops they go to social media blaming gamers for their game failing like they're ENTITLED to our hard earned disposable income, like we have an OBLIGATION to buy and consume their slop
I feel robbed. I watched Leaflit on twitch back in 2020 when she was a slime girl, but stopped after the mods kept refunding/rejecting my redeems. So much time lost.
32:50 Nintendo power was amazing back in the day. Had a subscription for a couple years.
New Blood: "We hate money"
Well, good news everyone! There is an easy fix for that! **closes wallet**
I think it's even crazier that at the end of the day, not only will the ones in charge not take even remotely any responsibility, but they're going to have extremely loud people online defending the multibillion dollar company for free.