After a recent online encounter with a former millennial colleague, I have come to the realization that the state of the AAA video game industry is far worse than I thought. Much of the industry if not all, is dominated by a deranged cult of radical feminist activists, LGBTQ thought police, and emasculated males that white knight for them. I am not overstating this in the slightest. It’s probably worse than you or I can even imagine.
It turns out that this “man” who I once respected, is now a servile, sniveling, craven, cuckhold who lives on the scraps of digital validation that his fellow female developers allow him to eat. This simping snake is completely okay working for a rapacious oligarch (who forces his employees to urinate in bottles and does all he can to thwart the unionization of his employees) but at the same time is extremely sensitive to the psychological needs of all of his female co-workers.
Like most of the people who work in the video game industry, he’s a go along to get along automaton with no moral compass and as a result is like a ship adrift at sea susceptible to the whims of the ever-changing zeitgeist. His mind, thoroughly addled by years of digesting unquestioned feminist, Marxist, and LGBTQ propaganda is for rent to any false god and government.
My former colleague bandies about terms like “representation” and “diversity” like a smirking child who just discovered a new curse word at the school playground. Mindlessly adopting the latest leftist fad is his way of staying relevant and ensuring that his superiors see how woke he is. This sexually frustrated, millennial game designer, does everything he can to get win the approval of the many young queer non-binary types and feminists who are entering the ranks of gamedev at alarming rates, all thanks to years of misguided diversity hiring initiatives.
Probably the best public example of this type of a simping male dev is former Blizzard developer Jeff Kaplan. Once a proud leader of the masculine EverQuest guild “Legacy of Steel”, Kaplan is a mere shadow of his former self and has become a pitiful beta male thirsty for the approval of pansexual weirdo females. Kaplan once received a personal letter from a posturing black female activist who decried the lack of black female representation in Overwatch. Naturally, Kaplan replied with an equally performative and obnoxious response about diversity at Blizzard.
The Problem: Art No Longer Reflects Life
By and large, millennial game designers live in an hermetically sealed test tube of popular culture fueled by the nitrous oxide of fantasy, comic book culture, and combat video games. Protected by snowplow parents, they have little to no connection to the realities of the real world. I doubt there are few game designers that have spent a day working on an assembly line, a farm, or any other kind of normal job that a self-respecting man would do. As a result, they have lost complete touch with reality and the hardships that average people face.
Instead of art reflecting life, art is now reflecting art in an vicious downward spiral of repetitiousness. This is why Hollywood cannot create anything new and endlessly reboots super hero films. Chris Gore makes this point in the following video which I highly recommend:
What is happening in the motion picture industry is also happening in the video game industry. No area of endeavor is safe from the virus of wokeness and the millennial super spreaders that propagate it.
The Wrong Stuff
The first generation of video game designers back in the 1970s and 1980s were not teenagers or young males weaned on years of console gaming because consoles barely existed. Raised by normal parents, these guys were mature men that had life experience in other fields. There was no such thing as nerd or gamer culture back then. The most common form of applicable qualifications for game design was that they had read Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, played Dungeons & Dragons and liked to hang out in pinball arcades.
Today’s typical male in the video game industry does not surround himself with legitimate male role models that exhibit any form of authentic masculine energy. Instead, many are effeminate, sedentary, out of shape, neckbearded slobs who could never find a real job if it weren’t for the rise of video games and the myriad of careers that accompany them. It is only natural that these male miscreants, totally incapable of attracting high value women, must resort to simping for the nearest human with breasts and a vagina.
It is no wonder then that this motley crew of cowardly male losers are utterly incapable of defending the video game industry from the infiltration of fanatical woke females who will destroy everything they touch and when they are not ruining video games with their bullshit, will be doing all they can to get male developers fired for dubious charges of sexual harassment.
Conclusion
For decades, despite having no proof, radical feminists have claimed that something to the effect that the world would be a far better place if women ran it. The COVID pandemic has shown us the opposite. Females in positions of power can be every bit tyrannical as males and often much worse.
I can not over stress the catastrophe of unintended consequences of female intrusion and ultimate dominance in every field what women are allowed admittance to. It was recently revealed that Disney plans on having 50% LGBTQ characters in their future content. This is madness that will ultimately kill the company.
What does this have to do with video games?
Everything.
As female developers continue to displace male developers, the video game franchises you know and love will be get progressively worse and will focus more on identity politics than good gameplay which is of paramount interest to the males that purchase them. You will see the overrepresentation of “strong women” and LGBTQ characters. Of course, you can be sure that only positive depictions of LGBTQ people will be allowed, and none of them will have any faults or will allowed to be villains that are killable by players. This is why, you’ll never see LGBTQ NPC enemies in any video game.
This is already happened to Blizzard’s World of Warcraft where one of their main characters in their Shadowlands expansion — named Pelagos — conveniently decided she wanted to be male in the afterlife.
Pelagos was a biological woman in her mortal life but currently a transgender man in the afterlife, Blizzard went out of their way to ensure that she/he was voiced by a transgender male actor name Elliot Fletcher. Pelagos who bears a striking resemblance to Blizzard developer and LGBTQ activist name Johnny Cash, is a saintly Mary/Gary Sue that is so perfect and selfless that they ascend to the rank of arbiter — a sort of demi-god. Here’s the part of the bizarre new cinematic that reveals Pelago’s fate:
We can thank Blizzard’s Steve Danuser, Johnny Cash, and the Blizzard LGBTQ advisory council for this gratuitous bit of audacious transgender propaganda. Pelagos is probably the first character in Blizzard lore expressly created for the purposes of woke virtue signaling.
This is just only the beginning as Danuser and Cash proudly boasted in a 2021 interview that more diversity, inclusion, and representation will be forthcoming from Blizzard in future patches and expansions of World of Warcraft. The sodomites at GLAAD have taken notice and have expressed their approval.
Like a proud father, part-time narrative director and full-time propagandist Danuser is beaming with joy that the “fruits” of his labor have been recognized by the powerful elites/bullies that run the entertainment industry:
The bad news is that this virus in the video game industry will have to play itself out. There’s no amount or logic and reason that we can use to convince these religious fanatics to cease their obsession with wokeness and social engineering, so they can get back to making great video games. The good news is the Darwinian reality of the marketplace will have the last laugh as video game studios see declining sales (players voting with their feet) that will result in layoffs and studio closures. Until then, prepare yourself for a few more years of identity politics insanity in your video games.
Lots of Epsilon males at the helm of Blizzard these days and they got rid of any leader type.
Did you notice nobody even knows who is boss at Blizzard anymore, besides the not so beloved Bobby Kotick these people are just nobodies. They got rid of their old “toxic masculinity” guard that produced genre defining games.
It would be interesting to have some insights how over the years Blizzard changed for the worse. When Brack suddenly started riding the rainbow pony hard and their designers were no longer quite terrible juvenile loudmouths challenging authority, but with talent and skill, and rather changed into the total opposite, bowing to the unculture starting to dominate social media and trying to influence the entirety of society. The infection of the gaming sphere is already strong, unfortunately.
I watched this video. This is such a bull, I cringed.
Some comments I can only agree to:
“This game looks familiar. It vaguely reminds me of a game I deeply loved, called World of Warcraft. But… most surely, it can’t be it…”
“The whole package is so awful it genuinely feels like a low tier fanfic led by Danuser. What a disaster of an expansion. At least BFA was still set in the Warcraft universe.”
“god every time i click on a cinematic i get about 30 secs in and im just like….what the fuck have they done to this game…this is World of Warcraft now lol??? Shadowlands is the biggest trash and story expansion ever holy fuck.”
I know a currently very popular game, Elden Ring. It has quite some design issues, but is a smash hit nevertheless. The director Hidetaka Miyazaki is doing his very own thing for quite a while by now and stood up to his design against criticism. From the weird control scheme to the way quests are presented. You can miss the tutorial completely, you are not guided on a nose ring, you are not gently told what to press when, you can fail, die and some decisions are irreversible or very hard to change, you are not given warning. The game has issues, but that all doesn’t matter, it still delivers in spades. It is basically not a pony parade game. I almost refunded it because the PC controls were frankly awful and weird. But I got back and didn’t regret it.
From Miyazaki’s Wikipedia page:
“The multiplayer mechanics of the Souls series were inspired by his own personal experience of driving up a snowy road as cars ahead began slipping back and were pushed uphill by other people in the area. As Miyazaki was unable to give his thanks before they left the area, he wondered whether the last person in the line had made it to their destination as he was unlikely to ever meet them again. This gave birth to the series’ multiplayer systems, with it attempting to emulate that same sense of silent cooperation”
Well, but there we go… I have seen already “body type” instead of gender and other western influences worming themselves into the design. A few days ago, I read “working conditions at From Software seem to be particularly poor for women” and so on, this negative influence is already trying to get into From Software…
Note I do not want to say that From Software could or should not pay more, nor do I condone exploitation and crunch culture. I do not think adding “diversity” to the team would make anything better. Quite the contrary, we have seen transgender activists poisoning their very own workplace atmosphere at Blizzard, continuing to do so long after being let go.
I would like to express again my gratitude for fearlessly showing what is wrong in the gaming industry and society nowadays. This blog started as EQ-WoW-MMO design blog, it is quite alarming to see how misdevelopments in society and culture worm their way into a beloved fantasy WORLD.
Culture is upstream from politics, games, literature, arts in general are influenced by culture. And this influence also goes downstream.
You risk a lot, criticizing so openly made you literally a Wolfshead in this industry. While many might agree, nobody will really support you, at least not openly. This is the state of the game right now, unfortunately. Thanks for your courage. I am not sure if the world has not to go entirely down the crapper before things turn around, but you at least tried to do something against it.
I also read your previous blog entry, there are some people who will lose their job. They lose customers and players in their wicked attempts to re-educate them and posture themselves as progressive. Didn’t work for Brack, won’t work for Danuser either. I rather think he is going with the flow than truly believing in anything or standing for it.
Google “Shadowlands has a fantastic story” and see the results, the entry “Shadowlands story is just TOO GOOD!” was pure sarcasm, followed by…
Shadowlands has destroyed my love of lore
Why are people so mad with Shadowlands story?
Does anyone still genuinely enjoy the story/think it’s good?
Shadowlands Story completely uninteresting
Shadowlands’ first year was so disappointing I’ve given up on WoW
… and after all that criticism you can see Danuser being LAUDED for the very same story in Forbes Magazine.
Google “How Warcraft: Shadowlands’ Story Unfolds, And Why It’s Not All Guest Stars” by Heather Newman, not sure if I can link right there or not in comments.
Games studios probably have forgotten that their bills are paid by gamers. People who would love to play a video game of this or that kind. Not by games journalists and mass media, critics or anyone else, like influencers on Twitch and Youtube.
Epic post! There is lots to digest here. Give me a few days to post some replies. Thank you for your loyalty to this blog.
I’m 53, I’ve been playing video games since they came out, and reading your articles is a breath of fresh air! The current state of wokeness in the video game industry is repugnant, and frankly, I’m close to giving up.
While I certainly loved the classic play alone games, like Civilization, I enjoy multiplayer gaming more. It’s the social aspect, and I have made some great friends over the years. But my good God in heaven, chatting online in most games today has become so politically correct, it’s not fun anymore! With many games having “report” features, if you dare to comment on someone’s gameplay, regardless of how politely you do so, you get reported. And EVERYTHING IS ENTERTAINED! Forget about expressing an opinion about LBGTQ folks, because if you get it wrong, you are gone!
God bless you and keep you strong sir. I’m bookmarking your site, and I’ll continue to read your articles. I hope that this wokeness burns itself out like the virus it is, but I’m not optimistic. Keep the faith brother!
Hi Louis, thanks for the thoughtful reply and the kind words.
Un until about 8 years ago, video games were one of the last refuges available to gamers where they could escape the madness of the real world. Then the millennials arrived and brought with them their social justice warrior disease. Now you can’t escape it as it has infiltrated all areas of human existence and leisure. For gamers, Gamergate was the canary in the coalmine event. It was the one time when gamers fought back against the interlopers like Anita Sarkeesian and others who say video games as a genre ripe for the picking for their civilizational cancer.
As I have noted in the past, the current AAA video game is unsalvageable and not worth saving. The only hope I see is the indie game development scene. Even then, many of the indio game developers are immersed in the identity politics mindset.
The only solution is to build a parallel video game industry, a parallel culture, and a parallel civilization. This was done by Benedict of Nursia as the Roman Empire fell into collapse. We must do the same.