Exactly! Gaming devs spent too much time listening to people who don't even play games in the first place and never really would outside of maybe the occasional cell phone game. These people aren't going to buy your product and never were going to buy it.
Nah bro, the new revenue meta is to rely on Twitter users promising to buy games they don’t care about and won’t play just to spite actual gamers. I mean, it’s working so far, right? Right?😂😂
Its not about making games for people to enjoy. It's about cultural reingineering of society. The people in charge of the company got their payoffs, the executives will get taken care of. Therefore nothing will change. Expect it to get worse. Much much worse.
"Impacted by layoffs" is just a softer way to say "our executives took all the wrong turns and now the studio is losing money because of their stupidity!"
Nope. The executives were assured payoffs from those really in charge to do this. They got their cash, and will get high paying jobs somewhere else for doing what they were told. This all went according to plan. The game is rigged. Keep up.
Now that you mention that, I kinda feel sorry for the developer. Sub-Saharan African culture isn't as abundant in westerner's minds compared to European and even East Asian cultures. If the developers could've invested in game designers instead of a DEI consultant, this could've been an opportunity to introduce some Sub-Saharan African culture to pop culture.
@@Ability-King-KK or they know nothing of the actual culture their ancestors were part of. Seriously, so many people in the USA will say "I'm [nationality]" when they're 3 or more generations removed from the immigrants who came from that nation. It's usually the immigrant, then their children are first generation, grandchildren 2nd, exc. I personally know a bit about my ancestors, but that's through actually learning it. I also don't claim to be that nationality, I'm descended from German and Polish immigrants, not actually German or Polish. I'd need to do some serious research to make a story truly based on either nation's history and mythology, even though they both contributed quite a bit to the culture in the USA.
@@victornoel36 It isn't abundant because sub saharan africa literally does not have cultural exports. Beyond that, people from Africa are basically nonexistant in game development, and if anyone else were to try to make a game set in africa they would be called racist. IGN already did this to a potential RE5 remake.
Here's the real story to indie devs: Influencer friends, especially ones associated with gaming websites, can give you all the positive press you want but it won't make your game suceed. Those days are over. You'd have much better luck finding a popular streamer who likes your genre of games and giving them a free early copy.
I know for me, a game I might have had my eye on will get a substantial prestige boost if Civvie reviews it. Even if it's kinda trash, I might still enjoy it.
The sweet baby kiss of death is real, if you're a game developer/publisher, and you don't wanna end up in the negative. Then don't hire sbi or any other similar company for your game.
@@dimsumboy22 if that's the case, then it's a matter of calculation. How much money do you get from grants and funding from having these nitwits talk to your devs? And afterwards, just have the devs ignore them.
@@Ilyak1986 no price is too steep for indoctrination. Doesn’t matter if it fails. Push it into everything. It’s not for us. It’s for the next generation that grows up on it and then pushes back against us. This is indoctrination stuff. Also DEI companies are funded by the government like SBI. Which is funded by Canadian government
Funnily enough, this game had a whole section about it at the game award. Even with millions of people looking at your game, far more than vast majority of indie games could ever dream, the "Sweet Baby" touch is still stronger and will doom your game.
It's a Metroidvania in a sea of BETTER made Metroidvanias and it was obvious that they only cared about using a black main character more than anything else.
Yes and no, there are plenty of space for new metroidvanias. Or should I say good metroidvanias. The game could be more successful if they would actually thought and spend time on some marketing and developing. Maybe it would be a better idea to just release demo/early access. Instead they decided to sink money into SBI and paid the price. Oh, I would forget: If they would drop this terrible art style and character design it would help too.
"There's three ways to do things: the right way, the wrong way, and the Sweet Baby Inc. way." "Isn't that last one just the wrong way?" "Yeah, but it's faster."
that guy who said the game only needed a little more time in the oven and it wouldnt have been big cuz niche anyways. 1) SBI is an INSANELY expensive 'consultation' they lost that time by paying someone to tell them that there game wasnt offensive. 2) even niche tittles his into 4 didgets on the regular...hell even garbage games make 1k at least.
Ikr! Like Blasphemous is niche as f and look at how praised it is! Even the 2nd part which toned down a lot of what made the original stand out still got great reviews!
Roflmao. "Wasn't offensive." When they treat gamers like fools, I wonder if it's because they think that gamers are an acceptable casualty...or if they believe that they are the anointed ones and gamers are obviously too st*pid to think for themselves. Whatever the case, it's in your face and not fun at all.
"Papers, Please" is probably about as niche as it can be, given the elevator pitch for that game is "You review paperwork and give a red or green stamp", and yet it has 500 people playing it right now, 10 years after its release. Being a niche game has NEVER stopped a game from being successful as long as you do it well. This shit honestly reminds me of SUNSET, which was so woke, one of the selling point of their game was "it use traditional gaming controls such as WASD to move"
there's this..... trend that i've noticed where game companies started to focus their attention on "modern audiences" is that on its own, minus all the labels of "modern audiences" that we clearly can see, bad? not really it's normal for companies to attract more people to buy their product, that's how marketing works, and that in and of itself, isnt too bad what most of these companies dont realize (or maybe they did, but ignored it anyway, i'm not sure which these days) is that: by using aggressive DEI methods that is forcefully injected into a game, they are inserting political agenda into a media that is not news, but a hobby. and by doing that, *they are ignoring, or even pushing away their old audiences for "potential" audiences* most gamers play these games as a hobby, not to go into real world politics, but these companies make games to cater to people who wants real life political validation. this is like..... gambling 100 dollars, to potentially have a 50/50 chance to win 10 dollars, repeatedly.
Another part of the issue is that they are way late to the social media party. It took them years to understand that they could use the internet for market research... And now they believe that Twitter is a good representation of the market. They seem to have not realized that the only things very active on twitter are bots and hate-filled people with nothing else to do. And that includes all the Kotaku/polygon/ign writers. Even without consulting firms, big game companies are completely disconnected with their player base. Blizzard is a perfect example of it.
@@fnors2that's exactly what they mean when they say they cater to the modern audience. This alleged modern audience consists entirely of activists on twitter and these people just don't play games.
The whole “wider audience” thing sounds good on paper but is a terrible idea in practice anyways. A lot of people, including a lot of game company execs, seem to view video games as almost homogenous across the board. They try to broaden their game to everyone and then get surprised when no amount of dumbing down and changes will attract golfers to a bowling alley.
Yeah. From what I can see from the reviews, the game would have a good potential but there is a lot of bugs and unbalanced stuff. The polish of a game is really important.
@@ThePopo543 🙄 he can go cry a river. He made bad choices aboth the direction the game took, used SBI 'help' and then crys about the game tanking. Its not like gamers havent been complaining vociferously about DEI and politics gettin unnecessarily shoehorned into games. He knew EXACTLY what minefield he was waltzing into and he chose to do it anyways.
Considering the extortion type prices these "consultation" groups demand, I'm sure the company could have saved some jobs if they had some of the money used to hire SBI. Like seriously what expenses does a consultant business have to demand over $500,000?
Well apparently nothing if the game flops. But it's the people that give them the 500.000 who are in the wrong, I too would accept 500.000 if I thought I knew what I was doing even though I was actually clueless, it's the person paying the money who is dumb and poor now.
@@fernie-fernandez That is the narrative that establishment industry journalists want to promote. It is categorically false. Gamers were attacked by the gaming press and outspoken leftists in the industry for not tolerating their slop, and gamers simply stood up to them like the bullies that they are. That some of those leftists happened to be women is inconsequential. They are idiots first, and women second. Gamers stood up to them for being idiots, not for being women. This is because Gamers treated the male leftists with the same contempt as they did the female leftists. Their gender was irrelevant, only the absurdity of their ideology mattered.
@@fernie-fernandez That's what absolute pathetic morons think. GamerGate is simply people who realized you had to gatekeep your games, or the woke freaks will come in and gatekeep YOU out of them, while pretending they're not.
I will never understand how -an actual Kenyan person- a person of Kenyan descent who's making a game based on his own life would need a ragtag of French-Canadians who've never even set foot in Kenya (or Africa for that matter) in their lives to tell him what his own culture and folklore and life experiences are. Srsly Abubakar, why? That would be like an Arab hiring some Canadian DEI clowns who've never set foot in the desert cuz they'd drop dead at a mere 40 celsius to help him make a game about a sheikh hunting witches and demons in his own irl hometown.
The best way to describe this shit is "a toxic combo": an useless (and bad) MetroidVania clone that no one wanted (especially when in that specific genre there are dozens of little masterpieces every year) + SBI and their crap. It was a failure since the beginning.
Sweet Baby is not guaranteeing failure, because their impact generally is too small potato to even matter most of the time. However, it does gives you indicator where the developer's priorities lie during development. Mostly if company hire group like SBI, is because their company culture is align with them.
Which is dumb and pointless in this case cuz the developer is already of Kenyan descent and he based the game on his own life, like why did he even need those clowns for anything??
Why did they choose the name Sweet baby anyways. It would make you think they are related to baby products and yet they are dealing with games like Suicide Squad. Without context and only knowing the names those two names are definitely something you shouldnt put together
If I remember correctly, it was a sort of "cute" way to say say all people who work with them, will be their sweet babies so to speak. From my point of view there is a good amount of Condensing tone coming from the person who said the reason in video form. The first sentence is what I remeber from the video.
@@thecompareablezombieIts creepy, in that bad touch sort of way. 😬 Why would anyone want to use a name that sounds like somthing a creeper would call their would be prey?
So, when these "indie" studios close down after releasing a game. It's because they failed to pitch a production studio on a new game. "Hey we have this cool game, it's going to cost X and you may make Y back." if the production studio isn't impressed by the game. By the types of games the market likes (a side scrolling 2d platformer). By the past performance of the studio (which it was lack luster). By the attitude of the studio. They say "nah we'll pass" and the studio has to shut down. So which aspect of this studio failed? I've seen game studios fail to make a profitable game but go on to make subsequent games. Probably because they had excellent pitch skills. I've also seen excellent games fail to get follow on because their team was terrible. Or they were able to keep the budget down enough that studios were willing to let them take the risk. I personally didn't here much about this game. One of the reviewers I follow said it was an up coming title. That was it. So I would say they were "expensive" in that they didn't have a reasonable budget and failed to make sales or gain traction at launch. This game is clearly pushing a political agenda. Was that it's downfall? I don't know. I see it as just another side scroller. The fluffy sheep game is free and probably ten times more fun. So I would say this Zau game is just shuvel ware in that crank out as many as you can. Which is why I say it's expensive. They probably gave it the full treatment which costs more than it's worth. Definitely going up against free games of similar quality.
As Asmond says, "DEI won't make a good game bad, pause for dramatic stare at the camera/chat, but it will make a bad game worse". XD It's just a shield for their bad game.
What were their sales as opposed to their player count? I don't expect the defenders to play but just purchasing an unplayed game could be the extent of their support. Beyond that, nothing of value lost.
Well what did they expect attaching SBI to work. The guy who started the company was from SBI and went full in on it while also slandering consumers. Of course they failed.
One thing that confused me about Zau is why a game about Kenya culture needed a Canadian to tell them what there local culture was all about. Also on of the head Devs on the game was a co-founder of SBI so that was mostly why they got used to get a "boost" from friends
I read that one of the game designers were from Kenya so I am not sure why they felt they needed to pay SBI consultant fees, they are pretty expensive and I don't think they brought anything of worth here, the studio already had someone understanding the protagonist better then some Canadians so it basically just meant that the game would have to sell better to go even while linking the game to other games SBI worked on like SS: KtJL. Yeah, there are situations when you might need to hire consultants but they have to bring something you don't already have or you are just wasting company money. They probably should have hired someone to improve the gameplay instead.
@@arkbien9303 That is still a poor excuse to spending a few millions on a service he clearly could have performed himself. That means it was either a very poor decision or a scam that he got a cut from. In either case, when a company makes such stupid decisions it is no mystery they had to fire people.
@@loke6664 oh no, I wholeheartedly agree with you. I was just pointing out one of the dev's was already a part of SBI and agreed with their ideology. I have no sympathy for them or the company. They 💩 in their own bed and other people had to suffer. And further more, I heard that they specifically fired and laid off employees with light skin, you know, r a c i s m.
They tried to appeal to the mythical creature known as the Modern Audience. On account of the fact said creature is not real, they set themselves up for failure. Learn from their mistakes. Don't go chasing rainbows.
SBI always asks for hefty payouts like they wanted 7 million to work on wu kong. If they didn't go full SBI simp mode then maybe it would have been easier to eat this loss.
Rule to note at this point for any game genre that has story and characters. If you are game dev do not hire a consultation company at all if possible, if you decide to anyway I suggest investigating consulting firms first. As well as checking actual reviews by gamers on any game the consultation firm is associated with.
I wonder if hero hei is gonna talk about the Team Fortress 2 backlash after valve announced the funko fusion dlc and tf2 becoming "overwhelming negative" in recent reviews
valve made a deal to allow TF2 characters be used in the game Funko Fusion as DLC. TF2 fans are vehemently angry about it because, amongst many issues, TF2 has a hidious problem with bots and cheaters @@venlocity2
As sad as the news of the studio having layoffs after their debut title, I hope this is a clear message and a warning to other game devs and studios. Still, I don’t think this will be the only case of this happening, unfortunately
It's not sad news, it's super happy news. I'm DELIGHTED. I am laughing as they're getting fired 😂 Just like THEY would laugh if you were homeless, because they hate people who don't think exactly like them. You think mostly like them but have one different thought? They still hate you. And I hate them with a burning passion too. And I'm a guy who wears dresses. But I'm not a disgusting woke bigot.
Yeah, they would have sold more copies if they didn't aconitate with SBI, but I'm doubtful it would have been that big of a change. Maybe a few more hundred at best.
An all game companies that want a kiss from sweet baby deserve everything that comes there games an all these con sultation groups needs the same treatment that the atari ET game got...
For me it's sad, the game looks great visually, has nice music, gameplay looks nice, and has great scores by players, with only criticism I heard were difficult controls and game breaking bugs, but I really never heard of this game before. It could be a good game diving into a culture that I know nearly nothing about, that unfortunately got drowned due to SBI involvement.
I really don't see the reason for why consulting firms like SBI exist. I ESPECIALLY don't see the reason for using consulting firms that only see gaming as some activism platform or power play, rather than what its supposed to be: Entertainment. None of what they are doing is entertaining, and the majority can see that.
There is no actual reason. It's literally just terrible people using a popular trend as a grift and bullying everyone into submissions in order to profit. That is the SOLE reason Woke Consultancy firms exist: to further weaponize social justice for cynical profit.
It came out literally a few weeks after Prince of Persia, which, despite being made by Ubisoft, is one of their best titles to date. The graphical style of this game looks too childish. SBI was just the nail in the coffin
Factors that also play in here besides the SBI DEI scam poison 🤢 - There are so many games for people to play. New and old. So, not many will not care unless the game offers something unique and is well-made. - The endorsements from big media sites mean nothing to most gamers. Often the very same sites and people who shame and hate the very gamers the devs try to sell their game to. - Another Metrovainia game, with nothing new to offer. People will just go back and play older and better ones.
Maybe I'm just childish, but if a company I worked with was mouthing off and my job got cut because of their jackassery they'd better hope I have an NDA. I'd say a lot more than how I'm out of a job.
I had played the Demo for Zau... it had some... story beats that felt jarringly out of nowhere. I'm unsure, nor will stay, if any DEI manipulation was going on. After all there are plenty of games without such influences that had sudden changes to their story for any number of reasons. But, yeah, the gameplay wasn't all that high, HOWEVER, it wasn't poor either. It was an upper mid range and could easily have gone either way further in to the gameplay. But, seeing SBI's little stamp on it, makes me worry where they did or did not touch. I'm no lover of this wave of BS trashing games, cartoons, and movies. But, to ignore how it was so easily for the big wigs to be duped by this, would invite it to happen in a different light. My hope is that other companies, indie or not, will take the time to look into their contacts and ensure that any questions are answered clearly. It might sound vague, but lets be real... that's the game's industry. It has mostly always been under a sheet on how things were done and, until as of late, they had more than a few dumb ways to keep their employees under thumb. I know more about how a movie is made nowadays than how most games were made over the last 2 years. Rant over, love the short and concise, but on topic, videos. I hope these will have some impact and spur some movement to free the games from these dumb money grubbing hands.
But how is the game, really? from what I seen of it so far it looks like a fusion between Ori and Prince of Persia. Is the game actually bad, or people just hating on it just because SBI is involved in some way?
When I saw this at the game award show I knew i wasn't going to play it anyways. What i think caused it to die was and not limited to: 1) limited intrest in theme/ story 2)POP was announced in the same night at the TGAS 3) and the black Pather movie hype trains was pulling into that station. 4) flashy gameplay
