2024 in Review: Winners and Losers - Article
by Taneli Palola , posted on 31 December 2024 / 6,016 Views
Another year is behind us, and as always it's time to take a look back at some of the best and worst things that happened in the video game industry in 2024. Naturally, as seems to be the case every year, filling in the losers list is easy, as there's never a shortage of options for that category, while the winners list takes a lot longer to come together. Still, even if it may at times seem that we only ever hear bad news when it comes to video games, there are still quite a lot of positives to take from this year as well. So, let's get to them first.
The Winners
Game Companies Raising Starting Salaries
The video game industry has been bleeding people for a long time now, and never more severely than in 2024. Holding on to the skill and experience of the workers who are responsible for creating the games we play is vital to the future of video games, and fortunately amidst the seemingly endless layoffs there are companies that are also still trying to improve their working conditions. For example, Capcom decided to raise its starting salaries by almost 28% earlier this year, saying in a statement that ”with this increase in starting salary, Capcom is pursuing further investment in human capital and the acquisition of exceptional talent.”
Investing in people with the skills and knowledge to create the products that you need to make in order to thrive? What a novel concept. Capcom also paid a one-time bonus to its existing employees, and is raising current salaries within the company by an average of 5% during the 2024 fiscal year. Another developer that has done a similar thing is FromSoftware, which announced in early October that it will also be raising basic salaries by around 12% starting next April.
Tango Gameworks Revived
In a story that we'll talk about in much more detail a bit later on in this article, earlier this year Microsoft decided to shut down Tango Gameworks - the studio behind Hi-Fi Rush, one of the biggest surprise hits of recent years - to the bafflement of just about everyone. Fortunately, unlike so many others stories of studio closures, this one actually had a happy ending, when the South Korean publisher Krafton announced it had acquired the studio and welcomed all of its employees back to resume work at the developer. Krafton also acquired the rights to the Hi-Fi Rush IP, which it plans to expand on with future projects. Sometimes nice things do happen in this industry.
Unionization Continues in the Video Game Industry
To say that workers' rights in the video game industry are somewhat lacking would be to put it lightly, so to see in recent years that the increased efforts to unionize within it have begun to take shape is a very good thing for the overall health of the industry. This is especially true considering the absolutely massive amounts of layoffs that have taken place within the last two years.
Notable examples of new unions formed in 2024 include an Activision QA testers union (formed in March), a video game workers' union at Zenimax (formed in early December), and others founded within companies such as Blizzard and Bethesda. The simple fact is that the video game industry has been, and continues to be, an awful place to work in for a lot of people, so any and all ways to make it a more humane environment for people to make a living in are welcome.
Baldur's Gate III Director Calls Out the Video Game Industry
In an industry all-too often focused on profits at the expense of everything else, it's nice to occasionally hear some more human perspectives from those in charge of game companies. One such individual is Swen Vincke, who has repeatedly talked about the layoffs within the video game industry, and essentially called them a failure of management that shows a lack of planning and foresight.
At the Game Developer's Choice Awards in March he called out the shortsightedness of publishers, saying "It's always the quarterly profits. The only thing that matters is the numbers. Then you fire everybody, and then next year you're gonna say 'Shit! I'm out of developers!' and you're gonna start hiring people again,” which according to Vincke just starts the same cycle again. He then continued, stating: "Slow down a little bit. Slow down on the greed. Be resilient, take care of the people, don't lose the institutional knowledge that's been built up in all of those people that you lose every single time… because it really pisses me off.”
He then doubled down on his opinion at The Game Awards when he was presenting the award for Game of the Year. Vincke said of the winning game, Astro Bot:
”A studio makes a game because they want to make a game they want to play themselves. They created it because it hadn't been created before. They didn't make it to increase market share. They didn't make it to serve the brand. They didn't have to meet arbitrary sales targets, or fear being laid off if they didn't meet those targets. Furthermore, the people in charge forbade them from cramming the game with anything whose only purpose was to increase revenue and didn't serve the game design. They didn't treat their developers like numbers on a spreadsheet. They didn't treat their players as users to exploit. And they didn't make decisions they knew were short-sighted in function of a bonus or politics.”
Smaller AAA Games Making a Comeback
One very positive development over the last 12 months has been the slow resurgence of smaller scale AAA games from big publishers. As much as I do very much enjoy huge games with massive worlds that feature enough content to fill over a hundred hours of playtime, I'm equally glad that we also get to see games like Astro Bot, Senua's Saga: Hellblade II, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, or Indiana Jones and the Great Circle get given the spotlight. For quite a while it's felt like one of the most important distinctions for a game has been the number of hours it takes to complete it, rather than the actual quality of those hours, so seeing even bigger publishers embrace these smaller scale titles is a very welcome change.
The Losers
Record Layoffs in the Video Game Industry
This is a tale seemingly without end, as layoffs in the video game industry reached new heights in 2024. 2023 was already the worst year in history for layoffs in the video game industry, and 2024 has outdone it by a considerable margin. In January alone over 6,000 video game workers lost their jobs, and by some estimates at least 14,000 people had lost their jobs by mid-November. In Europe alone around 21% of video game industry workers have lost their jobs due to layoffs in 2024.
The video game industry is bleeding talent and experience, and while many of those laid off will find new jobs within it, there are bound to be a significant portion of those fired who will simply leave the industry and take their skills elsewhere. This is to say nothing of the quite possibly hundreds of different video game projects that have been cancelled as a result of these thousands of studio shutdowns and layoffs.
In the end, the short term effect of all these people losing their jobs is more personal, but in the long term it will also impact the industry as a whole, as not only are there less skilled workers around to make games, but there is also going to be an inevitable drop in the number of new releases over the next several years as those cancelled projects will have left gaps that cannot be filled by new projects that quickly.
But hey, if you were indeed laid off in 2024, don't worry. You can just find a cheap place to live and spend a year at the beach, at least if former Sony executive Chris Deering is to be believed. It's good that none of the people laid off have things like families, mortgages, student debt, or anything else to worry about so they can just go ahead and take a year off.
Life Service Failure
The live service space has become massively overcrowded over the last five years, to the point that very few new titles can hope to make even a minor impression. It doesn't help that the vast majority of those newcomers are basically just copying existing successful games without doing anything unique to stand out, meaning there's no reason to even bother with them because the same kind of game already exists with much more content and an existing userbase.
Yet, studios and publishers keep on trying to strike gold because the hypothetical profits a successful title can reach go far beyond just about any other type of game these days, and also because every once in a while one of them does become a hit. That then goes on to encourage even more companies to try and shove yet another knock-off live service title into the bursting scene in the vain hope that it might be one of the lucky few to strike a chord with the audience, not realizing that the guitar has long since lost its strings and is missing half of the frets.
The Tiresome Woke/DEI Discourse
Woke really just means nothing at this point, it's basically become shorthand for ”the thing I don't like and want an excuse to critisize”. The rise of complaints about DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) also feel like people just discovered a shiny new term they can blame everything on without really giving it any more thought beyond the most surface level consideration. Whether it's the whining about female characters as protagonists, getting angry that a character in a video game isn't attractive enough, or just being unable to accept the fact that LGBTQ+ people actually exist and even work on video games, the whole discourse has devolved into meaningless nonsense being spew by people looking for things to hate and blame because they don't cater exclusively to them.
Over the last 12 months this has become increasingly more divisive. The Ghost of Yotei announcement instantly created ”controversy” for daring to have a female protagonist, the recent reveal of Naughty Dog's newest title Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet attracting a similarly over the top response from a certain section of the audience, and let us not forget the Lara Croft redesign that was shown in early 2024, which had some people saying she now looks like a man, which makes me wonder if such critics have ever seen a woman before.
Then there's Concord, a dated and derivative hero shooter with a failed marketing campaign trying to force its way into an overcrowded market on the strength of a massively inflated budget. Naturally, some people painted the failure as another ”woke” game crashing and burning, though considering nobody really liked the game regardless of personal beliefs I find that explanation quite unlikely. One character does use they/them pronouns, so I guess that's enough to make such claims. All this ever did was bury any meaningful criticism and discussion under a mountain of meaningless drivel.
On the other end of this silly argument, some people decided to champion Black Myth: Wukong as their rallying point for ”anti-woke” rhetoric. The game itself is, by most accounts, a very good action RPG and has clearly done very well for itself both critically and commercially, but a lot of the talk around it has sadly been mired in this woke vs. anti-woke debate, with some holding it up as a shining example of an anti-woke game. Underneath it all, the game itself has become lost and seemingly forgotten. I genuinely cannot tell you anything about the game beyond some surface level details, and yet I've heard more than I ever needed to know about the various stories surrounding the game's developer and fanbase.
I could go on listing examples, from Dragon Age: The Veilguard to the recent The Witcher announcement, but at this point it would just be repeating the same silly complaints over and over again. I'd love for everyone to move on from this in 2025, but that's far too much to ask for.
Microsoft Closing Successful Studios
This is more or less just a continuation of the layoff section, but I had to make a special mention of Microsoft for basically shunting a number of studios that had created numerous very successful titles, in some cases within the last 12 months no less. One of the victims, Arkane Austin, was shut down after its most recent game, Redfall, failed hard both critically and commercially, regardless of what the studio had done previously or how successful it had been. At least in that case there was some kind of valid excuse, even if it's just another example of the chronic short-sightedness that plagues the mainstream video game industry.
The one truly baffling decision was shutting down Tango Gameworks, a studio that had released one of the previous year's most beloved new titles (Hi-Fi Rush), before being unceremoniously closed without any clear reason. Then barely a day after the decision to close the studios was made public, Matt Booty, the head of Xbox Game Studios, held a town hall meeting with employees where he stated that ”we need smaller games that give us prestige and awards.” I wonder where they could get those?
Elon Musk Says He'll Save Video Games, With AI
Elon Musk, a man with net worth somewhere around $320 billion and who owns companies like X, Tesla, and SpaceX, has said that too many video games are owned by giant corporations, so to remedy this problem his giant corporation is going to start a video game development studio to, and I quote, ”make games great again”. While this may sound like a cheap parody of Musk's usual antics, or a satirical piece of news concocted because of his involvement with the Trump presidency, it's sadly very real. Oh, and he's apparently going to accomplish this task by using A.I, because of course he is.
If nothing else, it takes some impressive mental disconnect to say that the solution to the problem of big corporations controlling everything is another big corporation. Either that or Musk thinks his audience are idiots who won't notice the obvious issue at play. Whether anything actually comes of this is yet to be seen, but his statements are still excessively ridiculous no matter what the end result is.
The Rest
A Game's Release and Closure Announced Simultaneously
This one is mostly just funny rather than either great or horrible, but the story does kind of speak to the state of the video game industry in general. In January 2024, the admittedly niche rhythm action-adventure game Love Live! School Idol Festival 2 MIRACLE LIVE!'s global release was announced for February. In that very same Tweet the developer then went on to regretfully announce that this global version will end service on May 31, 2024, giving players a grand total of about four months of playtime, and prompting many to ask the question: what exactly was the point of this whole thing? I know a lot of games have seen their service end quite soon after launch, but I think this is the first and so far only time that a game's launch and impending shut-down were announced at the same time in the same social media post. Points for efficiency I guess.
And that's it for another year. As always, I obviously can't list every good and bad thing that happened in the video industry over the last year in a single article, so with that in mind, what were your winners and losers for 2024 in the world of video games? Who did well and who failed? Share them below in the comments.
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-"Woke really just means nothing at this point, it's basically become shorthand for 'the thing I don't like and want an excuse to critisize'. The rise of complaints about DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) also feel like people just discovered a shiny new term they can blame everything on without really giving it any more thought beyond the most surface level consideration."
You'd have a better point if you didn't utilize the same lazy generalizations you yourself are decrying. On this we can agree: terms like woke, DEI, and more can get recklessly shoehorned in to everything these days. That excessive overuse (especially for clickbait) tends to poison genuine discourse. Compare that to rationally analyzing a creative choice that doesn't sit well with you. It feels less trite and artificial by comparison.
But are we going to pretend as though the terms are like some elusive phantasm that can never be grasped or understood? Like, DEI in particular has been a go-to acronym for some of the biggest companies; in fact, Blackrock, the biggest asset manager on the planet, literally dedicates portfolio space around this concept. They have a scoring rubric that can influence potential investments. You're just a few clicks away from seeing the moneyed interest at play. And this attitude is deeply entrenched in many wings of higher academia. Dedicated loyalty oaths to DEI or required courses had been common practice for years, although 2024 marked the end of it across several colleges ( https://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/three-more-states-drop-dei-programs-at-their-public-universities/ ).
What about games, then? Aside from the aforementioned moneyed interest, there's a pernicious cultural aspect to it as well. Chris Avellone was right ( https://x.com/ChrisAvellone/status/1861842922766848510 ) for going after Obsidian after Avowed's Art Director emphasized that they're looking to hire black artists. So now we're just casually intimating to hire someone based on skin color on one of the biggest social media sites. That sort of openly illiberal attitude shines a light on today's current climate that many people feel when bandying around words like woke or DEI. Yes, they're consistently overused by many bad actors, but they still touch on a perceptible cultural shift.
Concerning the point anout DEI:
This reads to me as if there is just a small portion of people complaining. And they are really crazy. But given how bad Dragon Age sold (certainly in no small part because every conversation feels like HR is in the room), and given how The Witcher 4 and Intergalactic trailers are getting so far more dislikes than likes, perhaps it is time to stop infantalising gamers, to stop the meaningless, selfrightous virtue signaling and start to actually listen to what people want to play.
Ghost of Yotei is a good example. Sure there are real mysogonists simply complaining because the protagonist is a woman. But the fact that the studio specifically hired a rainbow activist smashing the patriachy in her freetime to play the protagonist goes completely unmentioned. This is seriously offputting for many. For me certainly. I would never want to be around such a person. And I don't want to play a character when I know what the actor stands for. And what does this say about the story they wanna tell? I might be wrong on that last point, but we will see.
And there are also serious story constraints when devs insist to make all the playable characters holier than thou and always have the moral high ground and are opressed by bigots who cannot see their wrongdoings. This is done to death. It might be some empowerment fantasy for children. But it bores me to tears and I would like something challenging for a change. (Look no further than Aloy, who managed to be even more defiant against a swarm of idiots and moustache twirlers in her second outing.)
The more you ignore or lambast your actual fanbase, the more layoffs we will see. And as long as journalists insist that "woke" is not a far reaching real problem, but just a way for persona non grata to spew their garbage into the ether, devs will not listen. That is until their wallets hurt enough and they lost enough people.
The "woke" part of the article does not give a proper representation of the woke question at all and it won't change reality. The more people dive into their echo chamber, the harder reality eventually hits. The reality is that the more companies follow the woke agenda, the more the projects and companies fail, it's very easy to see.
For the record, woke generally means, among other things: replacing white male characters by either black males or females, making females look like strong men or at least stronger than white males in the same movie or game, making white males look weak or getting dominated by women or mansplained, making characters non-binary for no important reason and making the pronoun confusion part of the script, making characters gays and lesbians just for the sake of it, and usually at the expense of proper substance, and most of all, disrespecting established lore in respected franchises.
"making characters non-binary for no important reason", "making characters gays and lesbians just for the sake of it". Why do you think that there has to be an important reason for a character to be gay, lesbian or non-binary?
Indeed! So why even mention it in a game or movie. It adds nothing
Yet straight characters never have to justify themselves.
Nathan Drake can have a scene where he is making out with a woman. No one cares.
No reason needed as fas as I am concerned. But padib is right that sexuality (non-hetero, non-cis) feels like a real story talking point, even though it is utterly uninteresting most of the time. Devs use it as cheap sympathy points instead of real substance. And it can be lore breaking. I don't play Dragon Age (so correct me if I am wrong), but the fact that a monster-esque character there has a coming out as non-binary feels so out of place, so cheap and so pandering, that I first thought this had to be a fan-voice-over.
This..i support this comment
" But the fact that the studio specifically hired a rainbow activist smashing the patriachy in her freetime to play the protagonist goes completely unmentioned.....
... And what does this say about the story they wanna tell? "
It says nothing, it says they hired an actor to do an acting job. Actors don't write the script/plot.
"The Witcher 4 and Intergalactic trailers are getting so far more dislikes than likes..."
They are trailers, nothing else. We had bloody Lara Croft murdering men 25 years ago and no one gave a flying then but most of the bullshit reaction to Intergalatic is because the cocky bounty hunter has a shaved head? So?
The issue comes from the fact that people think and are deceived by internet rhetoric to assume that for some reason the game is only about that when it's clearly not. Any legitimate concerns are washed under a sea of idiots (and they are idiots) that think it somehow affects their wank material.
And here I was thinking for ages people wanted a Witcher game with Ciri, they get it and complain?
"They are trailers, nothing else."
--It is a quite good way to gauge an audiences positive or negative response. And these are millions of people watching. I would not discard that so easily. We will see about the actual game. But initial response to your style, your setting, your genre, you protagonist is not nothing. And the trailer was weak for me too.
"We had bloody Lara Croft murdering men 25 years ago and no one gave a flying then but most of the bullshit reaction to Intergalatic is because the cocky bounty hunter has a shaved head? So?"
It was a different time. I am not sure you can easily compare Lara Croft and her fans with the response to Intergalactic. I just know that I have way higher standards now than back in the 90s.
"The issue comes from the fact that people think and are deceived by internet rhetoric to assume that for some reason the game is only about that when it's clearly not. Any legitimate concerns are washed under a sea of idiots (and they are idiots) that think it somehow affects their wank material."
I would be careful to assume people stupid or perverted just because they don't like the same thing for the same reasons. There might be more legitimate concern than you think there is. I have seen a lot. But perhaps I am overestimating the general youtube/gamer audience for these trailers. I for one don't use video games as wank material, but have legitimate concern. This inludes concerns about the character, her attitude, her personality, the actor who plays her, the people making it. Naughty Dog knew as much. That is why they turned off the comments from the start.
It seems either you have to think that Naughty Dog has lost the plot. Or the people (big majority of the people who watch their commercials) have lost the plot. I want to trust in gamers more than in one studio I have not much enjoyed a single game in the last 11 years. When I make a commercial and a big majority of the people watching it is telling me that this is not it, I might want to look at what I produce.
"And here I was thinking for ages people wanted a Witcher game with Ciri, they get it and complain?"
Perhaps these are different people.
So, not liking a trailer because you think it weak fine but a weak trailer is not what feedback we are seemingly getting, it's "I don't like the protag because she's got a shaved head."
Your legitimate concerns are lost in this thinking. For everyone who downvotes because they had you play as not Joel in their last game, you don't like the setting (alt future space), genre (play something in a genre you do like?) or the protag doesn't seem interesting (all we have is a trailer to go on) there are also a weird amount of people trying to "fix" the protag by editing stills of the trailer and giving her hair. You don't see the issue here?
"I want to trust in gamers more than in one studio I have not much enjoyed a single game in the last 11 years. When I make a commercial and a big majority of the people watching it is telling me that this is not it, I might want to look at what I produce."
Right, so what you are saying is that Naughty Dog should bow down and make a game they don't want to make to appease the masses? That's not how art works.
" Perhaps these are different people."
Witcher 4 trailer on IGN and their own channel has 90% likes to 10% dislikes btw, I checked. The people complaining about how Ciri looks weren't going to buy the game anyway.
I still think you are strawmaning the general audience. I also heard people complain about her hair. And I think it is a weird move to edit pictures of her to give her longer hair. That is superficial nonsense criticism. (But potentially also funny, depends.) But I still believe a lot of people want a more sympathetic, endearing, likable hero to play as (and who knows what we might yet see from Jordan).
You are raising an interesting and quite convincing point about art. It should not be what the audience demands, but what the creator wants it to be. I agree. But I talked about a commercial product that needs to sell millions of copies to be profitable and people don't lose their job. I still agree with that too. A video game is both of these things, unfortunately. And it is made by hundreds of people. So aditionally, it becomes increasingly difficult to say what "Naughty Dog" wants it to be in the first place. Ask any of the people working their, you might get lots of answers, visions and declined pitches. I am all for artistic freedom. But I am also for people keeping their jobs. All I say is: eff around and find out. People don't like what ND put out. And their reasons might not just be short hair. Again, I have seen a lot of people dismayed by their legitimate concerns being not heard. And they are not just getting silenced by a sea of "buzzcut"-screamers, or whatever. They are also silenced by the constant and immediate opinion of counter-critics, that this is all there is to the criticism: a sea of idiots, nothing else to see here.
And thank you for checking the like/dislike-ratio. I heard something different. Perhaps this was on another upload. Or just the very initial response and now it is more positive than it was. Anyways - you wondered how people demanded a Ciri-Witcher-game and now they complain about it. I guess these really are different people and the complainers are a small minority in this games case and something you get with anything reaching a certain kind of popularity.
"But I still believe a lot of people want a more sympathetic, endearing, likable hero to play as (and who knows what we might yet see from Jordan)."
A cocky bounty hunter who happens to be female is all we know. You cannot judge an entire game just on that and as you say, she might well be all of what you want. I just don't think the majority of those voting are looking beyond what they saw and are not voting based on potential but rhetoric.
As for what game companies make (art), I'm more than happy to let them make what they want, whether or not it's for me or even any good. Not for me to judge as it's not my money being invested. Sony generally don't see to chase the popular with their output and make games which become popular through sheer quality. Different to say Activision, who has spent years just making all their studios making 1 franchise.
"...eff around and find out. " I just don't get this mentality, what are they fucking with? They are making a game, it's a space adventure, probably 3rd person with a narrative.
"People don't like what ND put out."
They don't? You mean 1 title where they didn't like playing a certain character over another? From what I generally understand, ND's output of games is some of the best received games in the history of gaming (one winning GotY from numerous publications).
Prehaps, you are right. I did not like The Last of Us (played but did not buy), found it rather generic and found Joel to be, frankly, a dick, so did not purchase the sequel.
But have faith that the team can make a great well polished game but I won't judge it based on what little we saw because a CG teaser trailer is nothing to judge anything on really.
EDIT: Except prehaps theme, which I think looks cool.
It is fun talking to you about this. You got thoughtful, real responses, even if we don't exactly agree.
"Not for me to judge as it's not my money being invested."
-I get the sentiment. Even though it is a commercial product and it's success is important for the people working there and no company is immune to layoffs, I also see a video game first and foremost as art. I suppose, as you wrote, ND and Sony often (or at least sometimes) seem to have similar viewpoints, not chasing trends. But we can and should judge art. Us here more so than most people, since this is our milieu. We should not be too hasty. That is why I judge simply the trailer in conjunction with the latest output of ND. I even think art is a bit boring without critical reception, without trying to engage with it as deeply as possible.
--Of course you are right that the sorry people who simply say "oh no, a woman", are not engaging deeply. But there is even something to be said about this poorly articulated sort of criticism: there is a clear woman-problem in pop culture, in modern entertainment, in geek-culture. Look at Marvel. Look at their comics and their movies. The casting of that many female heroes neatly coincides with the brand going down the shitter. I am actually dying to get something female lead that is good. I absolutely devoured Blue Eye Samurai. But given the recent years of flops, female lead entertainment (art, sure) is not a good predictor for quality.
And there is even another wrinkle to it. Most action/fantasy/sci-fi games/movies are played/watched by men. And have historically starred mostly men. Writers are in a difficult position to do female characters justice. Often it feels like they think they have to proof something, overcompensate, like a female cop. Also making something female lead and making something for women are two different things still. I don't see anybody trying to get the male perspective in rom-coms, melodramas, musicals, romantic periode pieces, and other stuff mostly women watch. Perhaps these things just take time and the writing will improve. But all I can see in that landscape is how dei and woke are interfering with that hoped for improvement. Again, I absolutely loved Blue Eye Samuray. And the female hero was not sexualised one bit. Sex played a part, but respectfully handled and fitting for the time. She is not conventually hot. And the plot was rather standard revenge. -So there is a way to do it right. And I very much get how people won't trust ND to do it right.
That is also what I meant when I wrote: eff around and find out. ND fumbled the ball, so trust and good-will is gone for many people. TLoU2 sold significantly less than part 1, and it is unfair to chuck that up to misogynists. But I think you misu derstood my "People don't like what ND put out." - I just meant the new trailer with that. -I will totally judge the trailer though. Not the game, not the story - we don't know that. But the trailer missed the mark for me. From the first trailer of TLoU2 I thought something might happen to Joel and we mostly play as Ellie. But I loved that trailer. Was really hyped. The Intergalactic trailer does nothing for me.
Disagree on your points about Intergalactic and the Witcher 4. I feel like most of the reception towards Witcher 4 has been positive i'm not too familiar with the series but from what i gather she was kind of being set up as the protagonist from the previous game? And the comments about her appearance are strange considering she looks very much like the last game.
i think the hate towards Intergalactic stems more from the general hate toward Naughty Dog in recent years rather the reveal itself. people seem to be coming up with any excuse to hate on their games no matter how absurd not to mention the harassment and name-calling of employees. What exactly is the problem with the trailer for Intergalactic? The protagonist shaved her head so what? We don't know why yet. Could it possibly be to hide her identity? "No! It's an agenda by Naughty Dog to make women ugly!" I guarantee if this game had been revealed in a different era it would get no where near this level of hate.
And as someone who thinks Dragon Age the veilguard is a dumpster fire of a game. Though i attribute it's failure more to bad writing and shallow gameplay rather than diversity or inclusion(plus the awful character design). Look at another game that has diversity Baldur's gate 3. That is loved by many.
Anyway I would advise people to approach these kinds of topics with a level head. And not just echo opinions spewed by fools on the Internet.
Last I checked the Witcher 4 trailer had more dislikes than likes. Don't exactly know how much that implies. I also don't like Ciris look and think she is ugly. But I can play as ugly characters. Plus, I thought Dante looked super ugly in the very first reveal trailer of dmc5. But he turned out hot anyways. So who knows.
I do agree with the sentiment, that Naughty Dog is hated by some and Intergalactic would have had a rough introduction, no matter what. But I don't like playing as cocky girl-bosses. So - dislike. I don't have a problem with her shaved head, just with how she holds the machine upside down. I don't even think she is ugly. Her attitude though, no thanks. And Naughty Dog has proven with their previous outings that they have a very fringe political agenda to implememt in their games. They seem proud of that. But to no surprise, this is not the right thing for many people. If the game was revealed in a different era, Naughty Dog still might have had the benefit of doubt. But after the cancelled multiplayer project, tlou2, lost legacy and uncharted 4 that benefit is long gone for me.
To your point about Dragon Age: it is bad writing, yes. But it seems not just bad in general, but a certain kind of bad, dei-bad, woke-bad. Duke Nukem Forever also had atrocious writing, yet very different in how it was bad.
I also agree that there are potentially many ways to do diverity and inclusion in palatable ways. Baldurs Gate 3, yes. I would also name Mirrors Edge (not a beautiful character at all in the first game imo), tlou1, left behind, life is strange series, walking dead games and a whole lot more. I can never be a friend to the principle of equity. That shit is just vile. But the other stuff depends on implementation, game, context.
So basically what you're saying is unless a female can be eye candy for you they aren't worth anything?
I don't see the cocky girlboss character that you see. Just seems eager to get on with the job is what i got watching the trailer. Does someone having a bit of confidence offend you? You can see a picture of her and few other people where she has hair. It seems she shaved it for a reason. Please tell me what "agenda"(if you wanna call it that) they had making TLOU2 that wasn't already present in their previous game. Also You implying that Uncharted 4 or lost legacy being bad make me not want to take you seriously.
When it comes to diversity in media the only time i have an issue with it is when it destroys historical accuracy or when race swapping characters. All other instances of diversity are great and welcome. I say that as someone who got annoyed at the sjw rage towards certain games Red Dead 2, Kingdom Come deliverance etc. Or forcing certain groups into historical settings that don't fit like in Battlefield V or Assassin's creed games. Although recently The Anti-woke crowd has become just as irritating and irrational as those sjws on top of that they are extremely rude in online discussions. Doesn't make me feel very sympathetic towards them.
As a whole i don't follow far left or far right groups as i think extremist views are harmful regardless of which side it's on.
I am disappointed by this comment, especially because i liked your last one so much. Did I say anything wrong? It is an absolute bad faith interpretation of what I wrote, when you ask if female characters are worth nothing to me, as long as they are not beautiful. Come on, I specifically said that I don't mind playing ugly characters.
And how people see the Intergalactic trailer is surely subjectiv. If you don't see a girl boss character here, fine. But the eyepatch-women literally said that Jordan is the boss. Again, who knows whats coming, but judging the trailer in conjunction with NDs output the last decade, I can see how people are pessimistic. (And to answer your question: confidence does not offend me. It is not exactly the most endearing quality in people, does not tend to make them likable, but I am not against confident characters of any sex. This is actually a difficult matter and there is more to the equation than woman + confidence = girl boss.)
And you ask what agenda ND had in TLoU2 or prior?
-- Modern day Californian wokery. And how is that noticable in their games? Nadine is not only physically in combat the equal to Nathan and Sam combined (absolutely laughable, even for highly trained and super fit women), she is also portrayed as morally superior to Nathan, Sam and the bad guy, since she saw how those treasure hunt obsessions lead to misery, while the others were blind to it. -Completely leaving out, that she trapped them in the ship to kill them; and her being a mercenary, just killing people for a quick buck. There is a disconect between how she is presented and what she is actually doing. Painting her in any way sympathetic could only ever be tried because she is a woman. But this is only scratching the surface. Ellie is a lesbian in a relationship with a South American jewish woman, who got impregnated by an asian. In Wyoming, that now still consists of 92 % white people. I am not even saying it is terribly important to me or that it irks me to no end. Had no problem with 100 % asian cast in Tsushima by the way. But it is noticable. And for a game that wants to be grounded, it comes off heavy handed at best. The leader of the Seattle military group is black. The two main characters from the cult (female lead and founded) are asian. Abby is a hulk. A pregnant doctor gets cleared for an armed combat run and almost gets killed. The main personal conflict coming out of the heavily teased cult revolves around too rigid gender norms and a trans kid not fitting in. They could have done anything with this, but chose that. I don't think it is healthy at all to tell kids that they are born wrong and can become the other sex. That is a harmful extremist view (to use your words), woke to the bone and honestly deplorable.
To end with some agreement: I also think that people who complain about too many white people in Kingdom Come Deliverane are silly. Just as much as people who cry woke at anything and everything. But it is not a simple task to find something more woke than TLoU2.
My bad if i misunderstood your comment. It just seems like there is so much focus on physical traits when it comes to discussion about female characters that it sometimes seems like that's all that matters to people.
Yes, i actually do agree about Nadine in Uncharted 4 i feel like they didn't do a good job making her likable and her wins against Nathan and Sam felt cheap and absurd. But the Uncharted series in general is really absurd if you think about it. It's the same series where Nathan got a gunshot wound but still manages to climb up a train hanging off a cliff and proceed to fight off waves of goons in freezing cold weather before finally collapsing and miraculously being found in the snowdrift. There's plenty of other things like that i could mention. It's not meant to be a realistic series. I don't really agree that she is shown as morally superior to Nathan as his goal was not the treasure in the end. Anyway her character is much more likeable and fleshed out in lost legacy. Uncharted 4 is great despite her character in that.
"Ellie is a lesbian in a relationship with a South American jewish woman, who got impregnated by an asian. In Wyoming, that now still consists of 92 % white people. " It's an apocalyptic setting where people are going to move around. It may be based on the real world but it's still very much a piece of fiction. None of that matters to me personally.
"Abby is a hulk" female bodybuilders exist. buffer than she is even. You haven't seen hulk.
The conflict around the trans kid i'm mixed on as it's an issue i have conflicted views on myself. That's all i will say on that.
I think this whole conversation just proves what is seen as problematic will vary by person more than anything. We will disagree but if we can at least understand each others point of view i think it's great progress.
Thank you for this reply. And I think I get it. With that huge portion of the response being about hair, more relevant and serious criticism might be left unheard. What's funny is that I hardly ever see any of the racists and misogynists. I guess part of that is algorithms, showing people different stuff. I don't know.
I think you had a great point about Uncharted being absurd enough that the cheap wins of Nadine are not that far fetched. I am not quite there with you, but cannot deny that this is convincing. Still had a hard time with her in Lost Legacy, probably more because of part 4, than what they did with her in the LL itself.
"It's an apocalyptic setting where people are going to move around."
-- Not to say I know what I am talking about, but I would imagine that in an apocalypse like in TLoU, moving around becomes much more dangerous and way less frequent, than what it was before.
""Abby is a hulk" female bodybuilders exist. buffer than she is even. You haven't seen hulk."
--Absolutely agree. But they are not a frequent sight. And it will be much harder to be or meet a female body builder in the apocalypse. And I only really mentioned Abby as part of a bigger picture TLoU2 draws - the picture of a perfect rainbow.
I think I can understand your point of view better now. And I am very glad that you responded the way you did.
We can continue the discussion later. when i have time I'll message you.
"perhaps it is time to stop infantalising gamers, to stop the meaningless, selfrightous virtue signaling and start to actually listen to what people want to play."
Maybe gamers should stop infantalizing themselves. Mature people don't spend 5 years complaining, coming up with conspiracy theories and send death threats to developers, because someone made something they didn't like.
"But the fact that the studio specifically hired a rainbow activist smashing the patriachy in her freetime to play the protagonist goes completely unmentioned"
Most people are never going to be aware of that, except for people who are actively wanting to spread outrage.
"The more you ignore or lambast your actual fanbase, the more layoffs we will see."
Except back in reality, most of the layoffs were a reversal of a major covid boom.
”A studio makes a game because they want to make a game they want to play themselves. They created it because it hadn't been created before."
Given that this is IMO unfortunately a business, it may be an idealistic thing to say, but this, to me, is what game development is all about at its best. I truly do believe that games are the most fun or meaningful to play when you can tell that they were fun or meaningful to make, and I think the given examples of "smaller AAA making a comeback" exemplify that principle quite well. Or at least the three examples named that I own (Astro Bot, Senua's Saga, and Indiana Jones) certainly do. This medium is, by contrast, only for the worse to the extent that it instead centers money-making or fear-driven, lazy acquiescence to whatever politics or cultural attitudes may feel in-demand at the moment. Make something out of sincere belief in it, not out of what you think I want or will plunk down my hard-earned money for because I CAN tell the difference. That is the absolute firmest conviction about video game creation that I have and I'm glad someone prominent is saying it. (And no, that principle cannot be followed by machines.)
Biggest losers were XBOX and Microsoft
Sony had a big L with Concord but having one game fail and one studio shut down comparison to Xbox releasing buggy shitty games and then closing studios who actually do good wasn't even close to what Sony experienced last year lol
the biggest winner of 2024 was Concord.
Yeah, it won the record of being the fastest high-profile game to be shut down. It'll go down in history thanks to this win!
I enjoyed the “woke” section of the article.
The conversation is boring to me, but I thought you
succeeded in doing something enjoyable with it.
Financial loses they may be, but I think from a gamer perspective a hit to live service titles is an absolute win. Not that they are inherently bad, it's just nice to see players (as a whole) do have some standards and won't accept just any slop.
Also, didn't the DEI crap around Wukong really start snowballing after journalists were found to be docking it points in their review for diversity related reasons? I definitely agree the buzz words of 'woke' and 'DEI' are starting to lose meaning though with their excessive and often non-sensical usage.
Oh I wasn't trying to deny what the journalists were doing was idiotic, because it absolutely was. Journalism of all types have become less about being informative and more about pushing agendas. I don't know if in the end it's some 5D chess move (doubtful), but all the negative articles they post just seem to have the opposite effect and gets the word out to gamers who would have been otherwise ignorant of new IP releases from largely unheard of (in the western world) studios.
I don't understand for games like LL on why they don't just put the game offline and charge an entry price for it, it's not like rhythm games need to be always online. This happens a lot with Japanese games from games like these to VNs. You already have the assets made, kind of a waste to just let it die.
Elon doesn't know how to be human. No wonder he's trying to shove AI down our throats.
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