Zen Of Design

The design and business of gaming from the perspective of an experienced developer

The True Impact of SJWs on Game Development

November 11, 2014 /

Gamergate, So-Called Humor, Social Media

43 Comments

  1. Damion Schubert (Post author)

    This list was much shorter before I got some drunken friends at other companies involved with it.

    • Dan

      Loved it. Hilarious. Especially the shit rolls down hill part. I think we can all identify with that.

  2. Shjade

    Part of me wishes this chart and list were part of a TVTropes-style page wherein each bullet point had a short (or way, way too long) list of example cases one may waste an entire day browsing through.

    It is a larger, more persuasive part than I should probably admit.

    I may have a problem.

    • Damion Schubert (Post author)

      There’s a limit as to how specific/bridgeburning I wanted this article to be. =)

  3. Aura

    I came *this* close to spitting milk out my nose. Well done!

  4. Joel

    This was awesome.

  5. Josiah

    Wait, there’s people in the industry who actually believe ANYTHING wouldn’t be exploited?

    We’re talking about gamers, right?

    • Kevin

      No designer is ever, *ever* as vicious and nasty as an actual group of players. It’s hard to anticipate all the horrible shit real players will do with the game once it’s in their hands. Because you just can’t be evil enough. No one person can.

      • Talarian

        In D&D there’s a saying: “No plan survives contact with the players.”

        One DM vs. 5 players, they will always do something unexpected. Imagine that exploded to like 30 designers/developers vs. millions of players. You just can’t think of everything.

        • Josiah

          That’s why I’d generally just assume every system has some arbitrary minimum number of exploitable features, and assume they’ll all be exploited.

          And no, I in no way expect the poor devs or QA guys to catch everything, because sometimes you just need a massive sample size to set up the right situation that suddenly breaks shit.

          It was just the wording that shocked me, as it implied that someone, somewhere in the industry, had a shred of faith in humanity left, to believe things would ever not be exploited.

      • Greg

        Maybe there’s some value to scouring message boards for the most terrible people and putting more psychopathic fuckheads in QA testing.

        Unleash the rats, and they’ll find the cheese.

        • Josiah

          I’ll take $18/hourly, work from home only.

          • Damion Schubert (Post author)

            Can confirm, Josiah is a pyschopathic fuckhead. Makes him great fun to board game against.

  6. Sam Lewis

    Absolutely true, through I think the “guy who owns the company…” is a bigger segment.

  7. Bull Durham

    Well said. Um, illustrated. Ship it!

  8. Syuk

    As someone with defective colour-vision… You should feel bad 😉
    Had a good laugh though, thanks.

  9. JJ

    This hits too close to home. Holy cow.

  10. Ernest W. Adams

    This is a scream. If the GG clowns had the faintest clue how game development actually works, they would recognize the deep truth here immediately.

  11. Andrew Crystall

    Ah, that’s great.

    I some of my game design students need to see that 🙂

    …
    Well
    …
    Okay, ALL my game design students.

  12. Dahakha

    HAH! So you admit it, the SJW’s ARE influencing our games! WE KNEW IT!

    RABBLERABBLERABBLE!

  13. Rocket

    It’s a good job gg are talking about the press not games development were no one has an issue with your views.

    But yes well done making an intellectually dishonest comparison.

    • Demon Investor

      The worst part is that he’s not even making any point with that. It’s literally the same argument NRA makes about guns – “Look there are more deaths caused by cars, drugs, […], so we don’t need to speak about better gun control, du-uh!”

      • Dahakha

        Oh my glob it’s people like you two that just keep demonstrating the idiocy of gg. The whole POINT of going after women in gaming – er, I mean, the press – was because you’re scared that the “evil SJW’s” are going to influence developers and thereby ruin your precious games. Damion, as a developer, has shown just how much influence those SJW’s have in the real world.

        Jesus TF Christ, the fact that this shit needs to be spelt out to you just proves how badly GG needs to die a horrible death yesterday.

        • Demon Investor

          Watch your language, you know, otherwise you might demonstrate who’s the harassing here 🙂

          Damion has neither provided and reliable data – as he most often don’t do when he speaks about how prevailing something is – nor didn’t he how anything other than a diagram produced by (as he self claimed) literally drunk people.

          And it still stands, it’s the same argument used by the NRA or so many other, trying to tell us that something isn’t an issue, just because there are biger issues.

          • Joel

            Because in this case, the answer is self-evident.

            Show me the AAA title where gameplay was harmed or damaged by a slightly more inclusive viewpoint, or where a game was significantly overhauled pre-release because of concerns about misogyny or violence. I’m not talking about a slight art change — I’m talking about a game where the fundamentals got shifted because the game community said things were misogynistic.

            Last I checked, Grand Theft Auto, Saints Row, and numerous other titles are still getting shipped and selling like hotcakes. Fighting games still doll their female characters up to the nines. All these things still happen — they’re still baked into the culture, because they still help sell titles.

            As long as sex and violence help sell things to humans, games and movies will continue to feature sex and violence.

          • Demon Investor

            @Joel
            Why should i show you a AAA title? The gaming industry doesn’t solely consist of AAA titles. Mind you, as far as i know AAA titles are currently generating the biggest percentage of revenue in the industry, that doesn’t mean though they’re the only thing to concentrate on – in the same manner we shouldn’t concentrate solely on the biggest problems on earth (be it having limited resources which are most likely not enough to give everyone the same comfort we live in the western world, or not being even enough to uphold our current comfort without causing quite a few problems in the future).
            Now let’s see, we had Bethesda bringing in immortal children, because it wouldn’t have been right to have people kill children. Which really is intersting as a lot of other games seemingly simply choose to not have children at all, to dodge that bullet. Living in germany i could name some other games being preventively cut. Now that’s no sexism, i give you that. And at first i wouldn’t even have pointed these examples out, as i’ve personally not the biggest problem with them and a lot of these changes aren’t all to horrible. But there’ve been Devs claiming having run into some problems and i’ve read of people feeling it have been a problem with Mighty No. 9 – can’t judge those really.
            What i could name is media coverage that might have been harmful. Saddest example for me was the Tomb Raider case, where i thought Rhianna Pratchett and the rest of the writting team was doing a great job of writting most likely the best Tomb Raider of all times – though i’ve again to be honest only plaed Tomb Raider I for like 5 minutes and mostly watched a let’s play of this new one.

            But see, that wasn’t even the point of my post. My point was if the graphic is Damions argument, than he’s not making any point that holds up at all.
            And if it’s just a “trolololo” post of Damion, than congratulation on that Damion.

          • Joel

            This was clearly just a joke post in the first place. Not a scientific breakdown.

            Regarding other types of censorship, I know that certain things — Nazi memorabilia in Germany, skeletons in China — are censored, while others areas like unkillable children are subject to cultural norms. I can also see the point of the discussion: “Should we have unkillable children (unrealistic) or no children at all? (Also unrealistic, but in a different way).

            The argument of the frothing anti-SJW crowd, however, is not that these conversations are occurring, but that some evil twisting of the game industry has *already* occurred.

            I can’t say much about Mighty No 9 or Tomb Raider. I’m only slightly aware of the former, and I hated the latter with a passion after realizing that bad PC controls had turned it into a snuff film. The fifteen time in a row that I got torn apart by wolves I uninstalled in a fit of disgust.

          • A person

            There is a certain type of liberal that thinks a funny image wins every argument.

            This is closely aligned with why Republicans did so well in the midterm elections btw.

            This type of liberal does a terrible job advocating for liberal causes – they don’t use factual information, come off as smug, and constantly shoot themselves in the foot, allowing their opponent to win for free simply by waiting patiently for inevitable self-destruction.

            Anyone can make a funny image. This image doesn’t even make sense. People aren’t concerned that developers are putting features into games thanks to SJW “cultural critics”, they’re concerned that developers are leaving features out, changing characters and presentation, that certain games aren’t being made, or localized, or are having their sales sabotaged. (Though these sabotages usually result in more sales – these crusaders tend to not be very bright)

            “Damion, as a developer, has shown just how much influence those SJW’s have in the real world.”

            He didn’t “show” anything. He made a funny graphic not based on actual data.

            Now, I believe that SJWs are a bunch of ineffectual entitled whiners who have very little real influence over anything outside their obnoxious in-group, so I basically agree with the spirit of the graphic. But the graphic doesn’t “show” anything, any more than a drawing of Anita Sarkeesian taking a bath in $100 bills shows that she’s greedy.

          • Demon Investor

            @Joel
            Reading that is and was somewhat funny, but it still seemed as he wanted to make it an argument.. so well…

            Oh germany (or better said developers for germany) also cuts a lot of voilence against humans.
            Just a few examples – Command and Conquer most of the time (if not even nerver) had humans. Westwood choose to exchange them for Robots. Half-Life also had no human enemies. Than seemingly the standards became lower somewhat, because in Fallout and Fallout NV (also Skyrim i think), like the Conan MMO and Team Fortress 2 had you killing humans, but cut most of the dismemberment (Valve exchanged gore elemnts spewing out of exploded characters for coil springs, rubber ducks and other somewhat funny stuff).

            Well discussions have occured before. As far as i remember the first discussion about sex in videogames has been quite some time before. But i wouldn’t necessarily label that as big influence or anything. Though im sure some people might label the discussion about the Coffee Mod for GTA ?? (was one i never played) as being initiated by SJW. Really wonder the media hasn’t exploded over all the Elder Scroll Series Mods…
            My oppinion is that we’ve now really entered the phase of discussion, with reasonable voices and as always unreasonable voices. And i’m thankfully for a lot of discussions i had. I’ve really to thank Damion for changing my mind in regards to Anita somewhat, as i realized i really pushed her to much into the direction of earlier gaming critiques – even though i still find her body of work to be lacking in quite some respects.

            Oh yes the death scences felt very burtal and horrible – guess i’d also deinstalled the game when the controls where that bad.

    • Christian

      This is an outright lie. Another gamergate lie. Gamergaters have been thundering through developers and demanding there be fewer social justice conversations – what the hell else are the attacks on Anita about if not presuming she can affect game development?

      You can’t just all rustle around and say ‘we believe x’ in one conversation and ‘we believe y’ in another. This is why ALL DEVELOPERS HATE GAMERGATE except for a handful of angry right wingers who hated the rest of us anyway

    • Damion Schubert (Post author)

      So, so, SO very much bullshit. A huge part of #gamergate is people who are angry that the press and anita are putting pressure on game developers in favor of feminist/progressive/SJW causes and points of view. Don’t try to whitewash it. We’re not fucking idiots.

      • Joel

        Admit it, Damion. You advocated for boob physics at BioWare!

  14. lululemon

    lol! I hope this list is supposed to be taking the piss out of #gg!

  15. Mizahnyx

    Yeah well let’s say an indie developer decides to make a game about… let’s say… an international task force of strippers in mecha exoskeletons… What are the odds of the identity zealots piling on such developer in a harmful way (Beyond, by example, what ‘Hatred’ creators got, that seem to be just some harsh articles about it in progressive-oriented game sites)?

    • Anon4GoodReason

      > game about… let’s say… an international task force of strippers in mecha
      > exoskeletons…

      Preorder link?

    • Damion Schubert (Post author)

      Feel free to point to me where that’s actually happened, and didn’t bring greater notoriety instead of threatening the project.

      Our games are STILL predominantly shootfests with tits galore. The GTA license is always going to be a massive moneywell for a reason, and lots of people are always going to try to go for that market. That’s OKAY. It’s in fact the kind of games I like to play.

      Freedom of speech comes with it the freedom for others to criticize. I spent years having to deal with irate Star Wars fans about what we did with the license on SWTOR. Some of those opinions were right (and we fucked up). Some of them were crazytown. And some of them were simply not doable with our resources and budget (very common).

      But there’s nothing wrong with them having an opinion. Hell, these opinions make my designs better.

      • Dan

        Not sure what you meant about GTA. But um that IP does well because they are great games.

        As for the hypothetical situation………… yeah that’s dumb *Freedom of Speech*.

        Where I take umbrage is the claim that “Our games are STILL predominantly shootfests with tits galore.”

        I mean have you looked on steam lately? Most games have little if nothing to do with sex.

        Though maybe I’m not seeing market sizes of different game/types.

      • Adam Ryland

        freedom to criticize….unless it’s someone that the gaming press agrees with. Then if you criticize you are “on the wrong side of history”

        This is idea that you guys want freedom to converse and debate is fucking laughable.

        • Damion Schubert (Post author)

          You don’t get to say your opinion without others pointing out that you’re wrong and the industry is moving past them =) Freedom of speech does not include protection from being challenged.

  16. Vhaegrant

    It’s always amused me how easy the armchair developers out there feel game design is. Come up with a ‘great’ idea, wave a magic wand (that has no concept of time, budget or compatibility) and before you can say ‘Abracadabra’ you have the perfect game.

    A nice insight into the sort of hazardous environment pretty much any large project has to deal with, although with the greatest of respect, I would have thought –
    ‘I’ll totally fix this later when I’m not drunk.’ – would merit a larger chunk of the pie 😉

    • Damion Schubert (Post author)

      To be fair, most of the other segments of the pie chart result in alcohol, although that’s usually at home unless we’ve hit crunch.

  17. ildon

    You forgot to add “Australia” to your list of countries where weird shit gets your game banned for no reason.

  18. Rebecca Richards

    The real irony is that at one point in a project I worked on, SJWs on Tumblr DID impact our development. Except in that one case, they made the game better because we’d been fighting our publisher on a certain topic for some time. Tumblr took the side of the devs, and we actually had some ammunition to show how the market would actually react compared to how the publisher assumed they’d react.

Find me on Mastodon

© 2024 Zen Of Design

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑