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Drama: Sweet Baby employees start fighting back against Steam curator

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This comic is trying to obfuscate the very real benefit of being able to see yourself reflected in the media that surrounds you. Take the Little Mermaid. Say what you will about the revisionism, but at the end of the day, I think it's an objectively positive thing for young black girls to be able to see representations of themselves. I can't imagine how wonderful it is for African American children to see someone like Black Panther on the big screen or to watch the phenomenal Moon Girl animated series. The second image in this comic doesn't really offer a valid counterpoint to that. The fact that people can enjoy and identify with characters that are not of the same race or cultural background as themselves is not an argument against an inclusive media landscape.

As someone that grew up loving comics, videogames, and movies, I had no problem finding heroes to admire and look up to. But, man, it would have been sweet to see a Mexican out there saving the day too. That would have been objectively good. Hell, it's such a drought out there sometimes that I am proud to be able to count Bender Bending Rodriguez as one of my people.

I think this oft-used comic makes the rounds because it confirms a lot of a person's bias against inclusion even though the comic doesn't really make a good argument against what it is criticizing. The juxtaposition of images is a tangential observation at best.
I consider myself a human, so when I see a human in media, I already see myself reflected regardless of the slightly different appearances of humans due to minute genetic differences that cause some humans to have darker or lighter skin.

Your problem is that you don't seem to consider anyone other than the people who look exactly like you to be human and therefore cannot identify with them unless they look exactly like you. This is the most debased and wretched form of racism that exists.

I think you need to look at yourself in the mirror and think about what sort of person you want to be, because I don't think it's quite what you imagined when you wrote this post.
 

SF Kosmo

Al Jazeera Special Reporter
Super dumb way to handle a situation. Never think you're bigger than the mob.

They are getting marketed for free. If their work is such an added value to the games, the community will be thrilled to know. Why so mad?
Well in fairness people are just kind of blaming them for shit without any particular information about what they have or haven't done.

They do have some original games which is the only reason I actually know their name, and they're not like, especially "woke" games or anything.
 
dlJn9Xo.gif

Why wouldn’t you be proud of the work your involved in………
 

StueyDuck

Member
We should take this further. Something like ESRB but for woke games.

E(Everyone) = No Woke references
L(Light) = Contains minimal or background references
D(Daddy) = Deals with woke social issues
R(Rainbow) = For games with woke as focus front and centre
can we distill it down even further. I propose a poop emoji for woke games and a nice cool guy smiley wearing shades emoji for games that just care about being games and nothing else.

so like Helldivers 2 would be a cool guy smiley, Spider-man 2 would have a poop.

i am willing to bend a knee for many poops depending on just how pandering it is, so spider-man 2 for instance would just be a box covered in poop emojis where as suicide squad will just have a few poops
 

Boss Mog

Member
What was woke about Ragnarok? Maybe I'm not remembering something.
Black characters representing Norse deities. Would these people ever use a white character to represent an African deity? No, and that's what makes it woke, respect for some cultures, but not others, all based on skin color. Pathetic really.

If you're so desperate to have darker skin people in your games for your precious DEI score, then just make Kratos go to Africa and tangle with Egyptian gods or something but if you're gonna make him go to the land of the whitest people on Earth, respect them and their culture enough not to race swap them.
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
This comic is trying to obfuscate the very real benefit of being able to see yourself reflected in the media that surrounds you. Take the Little Mermaid. Say what you will about the revisionism, but at the end of the day, I think it's an objectively positive thing for young black girls to be able to see representations of themselves. I can't imagine how wonderful it is for African American children to see someone like Black Panther on the big screen or to watch the phenomenal Moon Girl animated series. The second image in this comic doesn't really offer a valid counterpoint to that. The fact that people can enjoy and identify with characters that are not of the same race or cultural background as themselves is not an argument against an inclusive media landscape.

As someone that grew up loving comics, videogames, and movies, I had no problem finding heroes to admire and look up to. But, man, it would have been sweet to see a Mexican out there saving the day too. That would have been objectively good. Hell, it's such a drought out there sometimes that I am proud to be able to count Bender Bending Rodriguez as one of my people.

I think this oft-used comic makes the rounds because it confirms a lot of a person's bias against inclusion even though the comic doesn't really make a good argument against what it is criticizing. The juxtaposition of images is a tangential observation at best.
The thing people who share memes like this comic get upset about is how instead of entertainment and media making an effort to build genuine role models that people can identify with they take the low effort path of doing simple race, gender or sexuality swaps of characters that millions of people already identify with. In the name of identity politics they are taking characters away from one label, doing a palette swap to give them to another label, and telling people who are upset by the change that they are bigots.

Why aren't writers and media companies writing genuine characters for people who don't feel included instead of swapping existing characters? Many of the stories that Disney tells where the character was non white from the start have been well received and loved. The stories where they just do a palette swap like The Little Mermaid are not. When you see something like the new Little Mermaid movie tanking and people saying it's because of racism you have to ask yourself if that's the case or whether it tanked because it was just straight up pandering and the people they were trying to extract money from knew it.

I'm with you that there are a ton of people who are so closed minded and batshit crazy that when they see people of different ethnicities or sexual persuasions in media they cry like children that it's being forced on them. I have no defense for them.
 
It certainly explains what the fuck happend to GoWR, Spider Man 2, Starfield, Rift Apart etc. All these game's stories and gameplay have been vandalized by Sweet Baby. It's no suprsing many of these games are flops.
Yes those games were pathetic in terms of what happened to the characters. Kratos became a mid life crisis dad whose son is being led by the nose by a little girl of color who isn’t interested in being his gf but instead just get into his head with her lame dialogue. Ratchet became a beta male cuck and Spiderman 2 reduced Peter Parker to the token white guy who just happens to be Spiderman who is being replaced by a black spiderman (surprise there…..) and MJ is more of a man than Peter and even fights better………..polluted ridiculous and sad all at the same time but this is what is happening in this world we live in due to groups like this and weak minded people and companies who bow to them instead of telling them to piss off.
 
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Gaiff

SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
No. Sweet Baby Inc. themselves shouted from the rooftops they'd worked on games like Alan Wake and Spider-Man 2 and those games have been taken from the curated list. No idea what's going on here.
Alan Wake 2 and Spider-Man 2 aren’t on Steam so I don’t think they were ever on the list. They did remove Miles Morales, Forbidden West, and Rift Apart though.
 

radewagon

Member
I consider myself a human, so when I see a human in media, I already see myself reflected regardless of the slightly different appearances of humans due to minute genetic differences that cause some humans to have darker or lighter skin.

Your problem is that you don't seem to consider anyone other than the people who look exactly like you to be human and therefore cannot identify with them unless they look exactly like you. This is the most debased and wretched form of racism that exists.

I think you need to look at yourself in the mirror and think about what sort of person you want to be, because I don't think it's quite what you imagined when you wrote this post.

Man, that's a great comment that overlooks a very important part of what I said. Here, I'll quote it for you. In my post, I very clearly stated:
As someone that grew up loving comics, videogames, and movies, I had no problem finding heroes to admire and look up to. But, man, it would have been sweet to see a Mexican out there saving the day too.

Now, it's possible that reading the first sentence there, you could assume that all those heroes I mentioned having no problem identifying with were Mexican (LOL cause, there was a huge problem finding Mexican heroes in media.... it's still crazy difficult). That said, the second part of that quote expresses that having a Mexican "too" would have been nice. That "too" implies that the heroes alluded to in the first sentence were not Mexicans. To be honest, I'm not sure why I'm breaking down the language. I felt it was pretty darned self-evident, but here we are.

So, yeah, there it is. I stated quite clearly that I had no problem identifying with... umm... humans (LOL). I then mentioned a preference to see representation of my race IN ADDITION to other races (which, again, I had no problem doing).

Like, I don't get it. Did you just want to pretend I was the thing you wanted to argue against? So you twisted what I said so that it would fit your attack? Completely ignoring that I am not that thing you are trying to tear down. Completely ignoring that you seem to want me to be some sort of archetype of a hyper-reverse-racist. You're fighting phantoms.

Maybe.... I dunno, you need to look at yourself in the mirror and think about the sort of person you want to be, because I don't think it's quite what you imagined when you wrote your post.
 

kruis

Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
Alan Wake 2 and Spider-Man 2 aren’t on Steam so I don’t think they were ever on the list. They did remove Miles Morales, Forbidden West, and Rift Apart though.

You're right. I do remember seeing R&C, Spider-Man and HFW on that list.
 

kruis

Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
Still, they sold, nonetheless. So technically, not flops. As much - again - as I hate that.

The tide is changing against the wokerati and it's slowly but surely effecting games sales. I played (and enjoyed)) the first Spider-Man but I didn't buy SM2 because of the woke elements. I disliked many story elements in the last R&C game and I really wasn't looking forward to even more woke elements in SM2. I don't think I'm the only one skipping games because of developers pushing "THE MESSAGE".
 
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StueyDuck

Member
Man, that's a great comment that overlooks a very important part of what I said. Here, I'll quote it for you. In my post, I very clearly stated:


Now, it's possible that reading the first sentence there, you could assume that all those heroes I mentioned having no problem identifying with were Mexican (LOL cause, there was a huge problem finding Mexican heroes in media.... it's still crazy difficult). That said, the second part of that quote expresses that having a Mexican "too" would have been nice. That "too" implies that the heroes alluded to in the first sentence were not Mexicans. To be honest, I'm not sure why I'm breaking down the language. I felt it was pretty darned self-evident, but here we are.

So, yeah, there it is. I stated quite clearly that I had no problem identifying with... umm... humans (LOL). I then mentioned a preference to see representation of my race IN ADDITION to other races (which, again, I had no problem doing).

Like, I don't get it. Did you just want to pretend I was the thing you wanted to argue against? So you twisted what I said so that it would fit your attack? Completely ignoring that I am not that thing you are trying to tear down. Completely ignoring that you seem to want me to be some sort of archetype of a hyper-reverse-racist. You're fighting phantoms.

Maybe.... I dunno, you need to look at yourself in the mirror and think about the sort of person you want to be, because I don't think it's quite what you imagined when you wrote your post.
the only problem with this thought process is that it's basis is still entirely predicated to a persons Self being mostly about race...

even if you do think everyone should see everyone and so on and so forth it still boils down to a very simplistic ideology of human beings = the color of their skin.

the question then is how deep the rabbit hole has to go before you or the example child in this theology feels like they themselves are being "represented" on screen.

I am more than "white", i am a white South African man with red hair and pale skin... if we are going to talk about the reflective nature of ones self in media then i get absolutely fuckall representation.

there is literally no one of what i believe is my self in media... but then we go deeper. im not religious, i am english speaking and not afrikaans or Zulu/Xhosa. I grew up in a very specific part of South Africa....

i can keep drilling down deeper and deeper and the more i do the less anything is going to represent "me" .

so we are now saying the very surface level of a human being, their skin color, is one of the most important aspects of ones self representation in media? isn't that a major issue with society if that is the case.

I love my national rugby team and being South Africa most of our best players are Black African men, but i grew up playing the sport and i can relate to those athletes and how they are handling a certain situation, admiring them for taking their skills to the next level, arguing that the pigment of ones skin color is even the slightest importance to ones character and self is essentially where the entire argument falls apart, even if you are meaning it in a small sense like (more mexican role models would be cool)... to me i would agree with that point, but not because i want mexican kids to feel part of the industry, but because i wanna see what creativity mexican people have to offer, I wanna see if my own character traits are in their characters so i can relate to them or if not, learn from them and how even though culturally we may be different, we may share similar values and so on and so forth.

the argument shouldn't be about "representation" and rather about expanding the industry so that mexican developers can make mexican games and those of us who aren't can enjoy as well. saying paint character A this color to make people happy is absolutely the wrong way for us to be handling this situation.

EDIT: just to clarify cause i know my thought process was allover there, basically yes we should see more people of all cultures, nationalities and so on in media, but not because of representation.
 
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Mister Wolf

Member
Alan Wake 2 and Spider-Man 2 aren’t on Steam so I don’t think they were ever on the list. They did remove Miles Morales, Forbidden West, and Rift Apart though.

Were those games legitimately confirmed to have Sweet Baby involvement?
 
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Nickolaidas

Member
The tide is changing against the wokerati and it's slowly but surely effecting games sales. I played (and enjoyed)) the first Spider-Man but I didn't buy SM2 because of the woke elements. I disliked many story elements in the last R&C game and I really wasn't looking forward to even more woke elements in SM2. I don't think I'm the only one skipping games because of developers pushing "THE MESSAGE".
I agree, and I did the same thing, but we're not the majority of buyers. I talk with normies at work, and most are unaware of the issue until it point it out. Then days or weeks later they come in my office and go, 'btw, I played / saw x/y/z and you're totally right about blah blah blah ...'
 

Nickolaidas

Member
If they removed them, then probably not. Apparently, they initially relied on the IMDB page to add those games to the list but they corrected it.
Or, they listed all games by devs who are included in the SBI homepage of groups they do business with.
 
We should take this further. Something like ESRB but for woke games.

E(Everyone) = No Woke references
L(Light) = Contains minimal or background references
D(Daddy) = Deals with woke social issues
R(Rainbow) = For games with woke as focus front and centre
That's actually a fantastic idea. We should help ourselves and so something about it, instead of waiting for the Sony gods or someone else to do anything. Chances are they won't do shit, given their track record.
 
Were those games legitimately confirmed to have Sweet Baby involvement?
They did post the list themselves. So I'd say it's true.

We know they did work on Suicide Squad is there any mention in the end credits about them? I didn't play it so dunno, I honestly dunno if this game has any end credits tbh 🤣

If not, you know they are hiding stuff. So doing the undo post button and demending proof, when obviously there can't be none, is slimy as f- if they start to go with this narrative that is.

If there is a mention in Suicide Squad and not in Sony games well there might be some grain of truth but in that case why post the list and then remove it? It makes it extra fishy. Just my two cents and a bit of common sense.
 
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jason10mm

Gold Member
This comic is trying to obfuscate the very real benefit of being able to see yourself reflected in the media that surrounds you. Take the Little Mermaid. Say what you will about the revisionism, but at the end of the day, I think it's an objectively positive thing for young black girls to be able to see representations of themselves. I can't imagine how wonderful it is for African American children to see someone like Black Panther on the big screen or to watch the phenomenal Moon Girl animated series. The second image in this comic doesn't really offer a valid counterpoint to that. The fact that people can enjoy and identify with characters that are not of the same race or cultural background as themselves is not an argument against an inclusive media landscape.

As someone that grew up loving comics, videogames, and movies, I had no problem finding heroes to admire and look up to. But, man, it would have been sweet to see a Mexican out there saving the day too. That would have been objectively good. Hell, it's such a drought out there sometimes that I am proud to be able to count Bender Bending Rodriguez as one of my people.

I think this oft-used comic makes the rounds because it confirms a lot of a person's bias against inclusion even though the comic doesn't really make a good argument against what it is criticizing. The juxtaposition of images is a tangential observation at best.
This is a very insightful post and this discussion really could merit its own thread.

Taking established characters and transplanting them into (for lack of a better phrase) "other cultures" to see what happens is a legit writing tool and something that I usually don't object to as "woke" or whatever. Take Superman, for example. Red Son had him in the USSR and explored how things could have played out differently with a specific political contrast. So having him crash in rural 1930's Georgia and being found by black sharecroppers or whatever (and having Supes look similar so he would have a shared youth experience) going up against the KKK or urban Atlanta in a more modern setting and putting him into a BLM situation, those could be interesting stories. But it pre-supposes that there are immutable characteristics of SUPERMAN (loyalty, humanity, courage, etc) that are the focal point in the story, not just making a lazy power fantasy of a black Superman that beats up Trump and enshrines Obama as King or something silly like that.

So when a character is race, gender, or culturally swapped, it is important to retain the core qualities that make the character interesting and popular to begin with. James Bond is my favorite example. There is a lot of brouhaha from some areas that INSIST "it's time" for a woman or POC to play Bond. But why? What would that bring to the story? What parts of Bond need to stay and do they work if he is a woman or POC? I think having him be indian or Hong Kong would work just fine. Afro-carribean possibly, though I think that limits his ability to integrate in certsain nefarious groups as easily. A woman though, I think that would be a writing disaster.

Same with Batman. I don't think he would work as a black man in America. But a story where Bruce Wayne (wang?) is a chinese man in communist china after WW2 during the revolution...that could work. The CHARACTER needs to be part of the establish "old money" of wherever the story is set and he needs to fight injustice. So in America at least, I think a black billionaire is already unique enough that adding vigilante would make it too obvious. Maybe have him be an ex-NFL player and hubbie to some lady on Real House Wives of Atlanta....could be a story there. But these are the things you need to consider and work out before you just do a palette swap for the sake of diversity.

So The Little Mermaid, for example, I don't think they did anything different with the story, so it's basically taking a Northern European story and race swapping in a way lot of folks complain about (often rightfully so) when it happens to other stories from other cultures.
 

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
Yup, there you go. You people are incapable of having an honest conversation about this.

If you want to make a game with a female/minority main character, go for it.

If you make it your goal to fill your game with bland, boring, stereotype-defying Mary Sue minorities, while making all the white dudes either assholes or soy beta dorks, then you’re getting propagandistic.

If you hire a company to inject this shit into your game and help you meet your DEI quotas, then you can just get fucked.

And when someone objects to this stuff and calls them out on it, you don’t get to casually throw around accusations of racism. Who the hell do you think you are?
 

VulcanRaven

Member



There is no explicit indication as to why it changed, but it's pretty obvious that real artists/writers are having their works vandalized by strangers.
Maybe Square Enix just wanted it.
 

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
Protip: If you're going to make fun of the woke, maybe don't portray yourself as a fascist lmfao
Oh shut up, you people are fucking insufferable.

Lol I see you edited your post to say “fascist” instead of “racist”, maybe you’re just so used to reflexively hurling accusations of racism/fascism at everyone that you mix them up from time to time.
 
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