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Gaming Journalists stepped in to defend Sweet Baby Inc. after curator page went viral

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violence

Member


Upper Echelon once again showing why he's one of the best actual journalists on you tube. If you like to follow stories like this, but would like your reporting to be more facts-based and less focused on a culture war / us vs them type of presentation, I highly recommend this content creator. He does a solid job of refuting most of the common claims being made to defend this company.

This got me to listen to the GDC talk with the CEO of sweet baby.🙄 I think there’s a reason she hasn’t started her own game company and instead wants to tell others what to do.
 
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Hudo

Member
Man. Imagine her trying to tell Yamauchi (RIP) how to make the next Nintendo game more """inclusive""".
 

Jaybe

Member


Upper Echelon once again showing why he's one of the best actual journalists on you tube. If you like to follow stories like this, but would like your reporting to be more facts-based and less focused on a culture war / us vs them type of presentation, I highly recommend this content creator. He does a solid job of refuting most of the common claims being made to defend this company.


Thanks for sharing. Probably the best video on the subject that clinically covers the Sweet Baby Inc’s attempted harassment campaign and the journalist cover-up from Kim Belair’s friends, to what Kim Belair actually has said in interviews.
 

violence

Member
Thanks for sharing. Probably the best video on the subject that clinically covers the Sweet Baby Inc’s attempted harassment campaign and the journalist cover-up from Kim Belair’s friends, to what Kim Belair actually has said in interviews.
Yeah, you have the media saying sweet baby doesn’t do what you think it does and then there’s a video of the CEO actually blatantly saying otherwise. This cult is more than willing to lie to achieve its goals. It’s snake oil.
 
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Jaybe

Member
Yeah, you have the media saying sweet baby doesn’t do what you think it does and then there’s a video of the CEO actually blatantly saying otherwise. This cult is willing to lie to achieve its goals.
I saw this too. Sweet Baby Inc admits to this recent PR campaign through journalists to try and minimize what their involvement is. (3rd paragraph)

v2K3WtO.jpg
 

Kacho

Member
I saw this too. Sweet Baby Inc admits to this recent PR campaign through journalists to try and minimize what their involvement is. (3rd paragraph)

v2K3WtO.jpg
All these people are disingenuous as hell. People are rejecting Sweet Baby and their ideology because it’s garbage. People aren’t trying to get rid of diversity, they want to get rid of forced diversity. Like, when I’m doing a quest in World of Warcraft and it tasks me with delivering a present to a gay boyfriend named Miguel. Get that shit out of here. It only exists to satisfy a small group of people in California.
 

Terenty

Member
Do these phoney pricks know anything about a little game called The Walking Dead that had two black main characters and how that game was a smash hit and praised by Nazi gamers all over the world?

The industry was doing just fine before these fuckers hijacked it, invented bigotry and racism where there were none and started offering their services to "fix" smth that wasn't there in the first place. Fuck them
 

Neon Xenon

Member


Upper Echelon once again showing why he's one of the best actual journalists on you tube. If you like to follow stories like this, but would like your reporting to be more facts-based and less focused on a culture war / us vs them type of presentation, I highly recommend this content creator. He does a solid job of refuting most of the common claims being made to defend this company.

This is a good video. It's refreshing to see a content creator cover this without feeling like they have do things like saying the word "woke" every five seconds.
 
This is a good video. It's refreshing to see a content creator cover this without feeling like they have do things like saying the word "woke" every five seconds.
He already made a video that addresses the trend in general. It's which is less about the subjective use of the word, and more about whether or not publishers, developers, and consultants have a current financial incentive to fill video games with this sort of thing. So in this instance, "woke" is ESG, rather than a nebulous worldview without an agreed upon definition. It's another solid video largely about how companies use diversity and ESG to shield themselves from horrible behavior and anti-worker actions.

 
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Draugoth

Gold Member


Upper Echelon once again showing why he's one of the best actual journalists on you tube. If you like to follow stories like this, but would like your reporting to be more facts-based and less focused on a culture war / us vs them type of presentation, I highly recommend this content creator. He does a solid job of refuting most of the common claims being made to defend this company.


There's no way they are a simple consultant company when their CEO clearly stated in a live recorded GDC interview that they threaten companies of they don't hire them. It's clear they have a lot of power in the development of games.

The gaming journalists defending them are simply delusional or want go to bed with the employees
 
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Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
I saw this too. Sweet Baby Inc admits to this recent PR campaign through journalists to try and minimize what their involvement is. (3rd paragraph)

v2K3WtO.jpg

Dude! Stop trying to gaslight the public!

We don't need to know the minutia of what you do, "sensitivity reading" and any and all services of that ilk are the enemies of art and creative freedom.

You are the Moral Majority just with different politics and a helluva lot more industry swing.

Your function is no less ideological, and no more noble, than those 80's right wing moral busybodies!

You explicitly state your intention to make gaming a better and more equitable space, how is this any different to Tipper Gore clutching her pearls and decrying us to "think of the children!" ?

Just like them you are offering ethical guidance and protection in service of a goal that on-its-face is unimpeachable! This is not a difficult thing to grasp conceptually, as is the historic precedents that ensure that its ultimately doomed to failure as and exercise in social engineering.
 
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Part 2:

Mark Kern explains how ESG money comes with strings attached inside corporations and is used to make companies partner with DEI consulting companies like Sweet Baby Inc:

"Everyone needs to realize is that it's not that these Studios are funding the games out of their own pocket; that would be very expensive for them. Cash is king. They will preferably go out and get money from other sources if it's cheap enough to help spread the risk of these massive titles, and so you have a lot of quid pro quo happening, and I can tell you that developers have been approaching me and giving me some inside baseball on what's been happening, and there are deals funding deals out there for studios—and I can't get too specific; I don't want to out sources—that have certain strings attached like a company will suddenly sign with a developer and now that developer needs to hire a DEI director and needs to go out and hire consultancy firms to gender balance."

"Their staff quite specifically go out and hire companies like SBI to consult on their writing and do sensitivity reading and changes for that, and what does, all this does, it boosts their ESG score. It allows them access that funding so ESG is not going away entirely."

"It's [ESG] become an evil brand. People are waking up to this... You have you have a rebranding going on right now. They're not calling it ESG, but it's still out there."

 
Doubling down on the victim card, while dismissing the growing critique as 'far-right conspiracy theory" to garner sympathy. Zero sense of accountability. Typical.
 

Pejo

Member
Part 2:

Mark Kern explains how ESG money comes with strings attached inside corporations and is used to make companies partner with DEI consulting companies like Sweet Baby Inc:

"Everyone needs to realize is that it's not that these Studios are funding the games out of their own pocket; that would be very expensive for them. Cash is king. They will preferably go out and get money from other sources if it's cheap enough to help spread the risk of these massive titles, and so you have a lot of quid pro quo happening, and I can tell you that developers have been approaching me and giving me some inside baseball on what's been happening, and there are deals funding deals out there for studios—and I can't get too specific; I don't want to out sources—that have certain strings attached like a company will suddenly sign with a developer and now that developer needs to hire a DEI director and needs to go out and hire consultancy firms to gender balance."

"Their staff quite specifically go out and hire companies like SBI to consult on their writing and do sensitivity reading and changes for that, and what does, all this does, it boosts their ESG score. It allows them access that funding so ESG is not going away entirely."

"It's [ESG] become an evil brand. People are waking up to this... You have you have a rebranding going on right now. They're not calling it ESG, but it's still out there."


This makes so much sense, having it laid out all at once like that. My biggest misunderstanding was about how ESG got into the entertainment industry to begin with. Basically it's litereally always been about the money. I assumed (wrongly) that these corpos were chasing trends and social media likes with the heel turn towards inclusivity and pandering, but it turns out it's just been cheaper-than-usual loans.

I mean it's pathetic that entertainment has suffered for a few percentage points, but when you take a step back it makes total sense from a CFO standpoint on why they'd do it.
 

T-0800

Member
Do these phoney pricks know anything about a little game called The Walking Dead that had two black main characters and how that game was a smash hit and praised by Nazi gamers all over the world?

The industry was doing just fine before these fuckers hijacked it, invented bigotry and racism where there were none and started offering their services to "fix" smth that wasn't there in the first place. Fuck them
Doesn't count because that's the only game with black characters that has found success. Don't you remember that GTA SA had a black main character and sold really badly. Oh wait.
 

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
Are you guys writing letters to those that hired them or just to Sweet Baby Inc. for doing what they were hired to do?
Giant gaming companies won't care about letters. I'm personally doing what the original Steam curator group was designed for - purposefully avoiding games that Sweet Baby Inc. were hired to work on. I suspect a big percentage of the group's growing 300k followers will do the same, collectively sending the only message that matters to these people: that hiring companies like this will ultimately decrease your game's sales.
 

JaksGhost

Member
Giant gaming companies won't care about letters. I'm personally doing what the original Steam curator group was designed for - purposefully avoiding games that Sweet Baby Inc. were hired to work on. I suspect a big percentage of the group's growing 300k followers will do the same, collectively sending the only message that matters to these people: that hiring companies like this will ultimately decrease your game's sales.
But in reality only a fraction of those will actually follow through making this sort of pointless especially since this is just one platform while the majority remain clueless.
 

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
But in reality only a fraction of those will actually follow through making this sort of pointless especially since this is just one platform while the majority remain clueless.
Probably. The reality of the situation also looks like those same executives might see 300K people in this Steam group and say: "fine, we don't want to sell our game to those alt-right bigots" (or whatever they're calling us on any particular day).

But even before this Steam group existed, games like Suicide Squad were bombing - hard. Before this controversy, they might have just concluded something dumb like "I guess people don't like Batman Arkham games anymore" or "Maybe Harley Quinn was TOO sexy in this, let's make her more ugly in the next one" or "maybe we should have made Wonder Woman black". Now they'll hopefully get the message that people are sick of shoehorned diversity - or at least acknowledge that it's a problem a large segment of their target demographic is worried about.

When one person votes with their wallet, the company won't feel a thing. When lots of people band together and vote with their wallets, that's when real change can start taking place.
 
But in reality only a fraction of those will actually follow through making this sort of pointless especially since this is just one platform while the majority remain clueless.

Probably. The reality of the situation also looks like those same executives might see 300K people in this Steam group and say: "fine, we don't want to sell our game to those alt-right bigots" (or whatever they're calling us on any particular day).

But even before this Steam group existed, games like Suicide Squad were bombing - hard. Before this controversy, they might have just concluded something dumb like "I guess people don't like Batman Arkham games anymore" or "Maybe Harley Quinn was TOO sexy in this, let's make her more ugly in the next one" or "maybe we should have made Wonder Woman black". Now they'll hopefully get the message that people are sick of shoehorned diversity - or at least acknowledge that it's a problem a large segment of their target demographic is worried about.

When one person votes with their wallet, the company won't feel a thing. When lots of people band together and vote with their wallets, that's when real change can start taking place.

I replied to someone the other day who posted a picture of that boycott Modern Warfare 2 image and explained why I feel this is a very different situation:

It is far, FAR easier to avoid a single player game purchase when there are indications that the game is going to be preachy and divisive in their storytelling, than it is to avoid a mutliplayer game that all your friends are playing. There are hundreds of great single-player games out there. I think that's the difference here, and I think that's why this image doesn't mean a lot in this situation.
 

Fake

Member
Part 2:

Mark Kern explains how ESG money comes with strings attached inside corporations and is used to make companies partner with DEI consulting companies like Sweet Baby Inc:

"Everyone needs to realize is that it's not that these Studios are funding the games out of their own pocket; that would be very expensive for them. Cash is king. They will preferably go out and get money from other sources if it's cheap enough to help spread the risk of these massive titles, and so you have a lot of quid pro quo happening, and I can tell you that developers have been approaching me and giving me some inside baseball on what's been happening, and there are deals funding deals out there for studios—and I can't get too specific; I don't want to out sources—that have certain strings attached like a company will suddenly sign with a developer and now that developer needs to hire a DEI director and needs to go out and hire consultancy firms to gender balance."

"Their staff quite specifically go out and hire companies like SBI to consult on their writing and do sensitivity reading and changes for that, and what does, all this does, it boosts their ESG score. It allows them access that funding so ESG is not going away entirely."

"It's [ESG] become an evil brand. People are waking up to this... You have you have a rebranding going on right now. They're not calling it ESG, but it's still out there."



This is insane...
 

violence

Member
Part 2:

Mark Kern explains how ESG money comes with strings attached inside corporations and is used to make companies partner with DEI consulting companies like Sweet Baby Inc:

"Everyone needs to realize is that it's not that these Studios are funding the games out of their own pocket; that would be very expensive for them. Cash is king. They will preferably go out and get money from other sources if it's cheap enough to help spread the risk of these massive titles, and so you have a lot of quid pro quo happening, and I can tell you that developers have been approaching me and giving me some inside baseball on what's been happening, and there are deals funding deals out there for studios—and I can't get too specific; I don't want to out sources—that have certain strings attached like a company will suddenly sign with a developer and now that developer needs to hire a DEI director and needs to go out and hire consultancy firms to gender balance."

"Their staff quite specifically go out and hire companies like SBI to consult on their writing and do sensitivity reading and changes for that, and what does, all this does, it boosts their ESG score. It allows them access that funding so ESG is not going away entirely."

"It's [ESG] become an evil brand. People are waking up to this... You have you have a rebranding going on right now. They're not calling it ESG, but it's still out there."



Good God. So that’s the game. We had a good run.
 
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John Marston

GAF's very own treasure goblin
I get my twitter stuff from GAF because I got zero social media.
My philosophy has always been as long as stuff doesn't interfere in my daily life I don't care.

But my question to you all is do we have to actually worry about this or is it just a handful of twitter twats just making noise?
 
I get my twitter stuff from GAF because I got zero social media.
My philosophy has always been as long as stuff doesn't interfere in my daily life I don't care.

But my question to you all is do we have to actually worry about this or is it just a handful of twitter twats just making noise?
At the beginning, I was like, 'this is not a big deal.' But it is. Now, is it going to affect your life in a meaningful way? Probably not
 

bender

What time is it?
I get my twitter stuff from GAF because I got zero social media.
My philosophy has always been as long as stuff doesn't interfere in my daily life I don't care.

But my question to you all is do we have to actually worry about this or is it just a handful of twitter twats just making noise?

It's a Steam group with 100,000 members versus a consulting firm that touches a handful of games. Both are easy enough to ignore but everything needs to be drama.
 
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