I've jotted down some thoughts on Gamer Gate 2 and Sweet Baby Inc., but these topics are too complex for casual opinion-sharing. Fundamentally, I envision gaming as inclusive as possible, and honestly, I thought we had reached that point by now. Some of the discussions around these topics have brought up issues I hadn't considered in years - I thought we had moved past them. This isn't about 'wokeness' or anything like that, my gaming taste is somewhat abstract. For instance, I couldn't get into Baldur's Gate 3 because of the setting - talk about strange. While these consulting companies aren't necessarily ruining games, I find it somewhat amusing how important they seem to think they are. They could easily be replaced by checklists, and judging by what studios are doing now, they might be.
My main gripe is with movie makers and developers who proudly claim they don't know the source material and want to put their own twist on things - it feels like they're trying to upset a fanbase that's already been built up. However, I don't have any sacred cows. If a franchise I once loved starts heading in a direction I don't enjoy, I'll stop engaging with it fairly quickly. I don't let it upset me, but I give it a chance. I don't complain before I've checked them myself.
As for games, if it doesn't click with me within the first few hours, it's off to the Steam 'never play again' pit. But I can't speak for everyone. I know people who deeply identify with series or games; some even have tattoos of their favorite characters. Imagine telling a Batman fan how his idol got flatlined in 'Kill the Justice League'... Did you not anticipate the backlash? Or did you know but hoped it would stir up enough controversy to become a love-it-or-hate-it situation (at best)?
And a few words about 'Forspoken'... Was it really the main character that made the game a flop? Didn't it play into it that a new IP without an established fan base was asking for serious big money? For 80 eddies, I'm out already. I don't care what skin color the main character has. If anything, I prefer playing female characters, or if she's played sassy... I like that as well. In general, skin color was never a relevant criterion for my decision to buy or not buy a game. It's nothing I even thought about when I discovered that topic for myself.
But now, there are people claiming that SBI comes into a perfectly working team and throws it all together, reinventing the wheel. For real, that would be so expensive and almost undoable in a normal time frame. It's not gonna happen. A perfect game will be a perfect game when it is good, doesn't matter how 'woke' it is. On the other hand, a bad game will be blamed on external factors, and they have to take the blame. Some people will write 'go woke, go broke' everywhere they can comment.. that doesnt make it more true.
Then, on the next part... I did write about that before: the grim reaper is wandering through the gaming landscape, and we are at a point where Microsoft kicks out 'Tango Gameworks', the 'Hi-Fi Rush' developers. Nooooow... yes, that is a killer bad move. I can actually understand the thinking behind that. To play devil's advocate, Tango might have had nothing in the pipeline to generate quick money, but they had a very successful game out. One of the games that Microsoft needed to feed the GamePass goose. It seems a bit desperate in my eyes... I would think that Microsoft is not as stable as they want us to know. This is not Embracer Group, who needed every bit of reachable liquidity to exist in the future (which they did not, they split the business into three parts by now). We are talking about Microsoft. They need a filled game pipeline in the future. But they act like they've never developed or published a game before. To be honest, I expect way worse in the near future from them. And that makes me sad.
Aaahh, and when we are talking about big ones... Sony wasn't as stupid, but they were stupid enough to risk significant income with Helldivers 2 just for numbers they can print on papers that some people pretend to read at the end of the year. And not much more..
So... I'm done with reading gaming news for now. On the other hand, some interesting stuff has come to light lately. I'll dive into Star Citizen 3.23 for some time, maybe trying to play a little bit as a lone wolf. I like the idea of that. I also want to squeeze out some PlayStation One games with Duck Station. I'm curious how good I can make them look. Not much in Hardware, The 3Dfx Voodoo 3 3000 Build is standing behind me, but i don't want to do much hardware stuff at the moment. That's it for now. Cheers!