Diversity: To imply diversity needs to be specifically enforced suggests that some races aren't as smart or hard-working as others. If you have evidence that Blizzard are intentionally sabotaging their own products, that's a far more serious accusation, and should be handled by the shareholders via the court system. But you don't. Affirmative action is racism. Squarely. Neatly. Objectively.
Inclusivity: Again what does “including everyone” have to do with making a good product? I wouldn't want a surgeon operating on me if I knew the principle behind his employment was “inclusion” as opposed to “excellence”. And I'm sure the surgeon would probably feel a bit weird about it as well. Forever wondering if he deserves to see eye-to-eye with his white male peers, or if he's just a charity case or pity hire.
Equity: What does this even mean? Everyone gets paid the same regardless of skill, output, position? Equity of what?
“When you create a people-first environment where teams feel safe, valued, and work together toward a shared purpose, everyone thrives–the employees, the players, and the business.”
Oh well that sounds just peachy. And how're you going to do that exactly? With “safe” (read: anonymous) accusations? Race-based job security? Patronising anti-racism training? Obligatory admissions of bigotry? Microaggression committees? Company wide censorship of insensitive terms? Invasive privacy policies? Total banning of all physical contact? Eye contact time limits? (These are all real and currently existing in many large US-based corporations). One day you get that e-mail from HR and your career is over, without even knowing who accused you. That's how it goes.
The assumption is that this person has a higher standard for morality, because she's not white and not male. And we're going to trust her based on those credentials alone, (not to mention the system of judgement that put her there) because you can't be racist if you're not a white male, right? Or, your racism is the good racism. Or something. I'm not quite sure.
When you let these DIE people in, they're like weeds. They'll slowly wrap themselves around you, all the while calling it a hug, until by the time you realise what they're about, they've basically supplanted upper management and have more executive power than you do, especially publicly-traded companies. They become judge, jury, and executioner, and they'll eat you alive if you try to question them later.
Remember that neither Tomb Raider nor Deus Ex ended on high notes.
I'm not a huge Tomb Raider fan, but the first reboot back in 2013 was a decent game. I liked it. Then the next game was basically the same thing again. It was fine. Safe. But fine. Then the next game was the same thing again, and was feeling tired in its own right. At one point its reviews were in the 60-70% range, before a deep sale pulled them back up again. Remember how deep the sales on this series went when looking at the sales figures. I think I bought the 2013 game just a year late for like $5 or something. Massive sale. If I owned the series I wouldn't really know what to do with it at this point. I wouldn't want to make essentially the same game for a 4th time. They've pretty comprehensively squeezed it for its potential, imho.
Then with the Deus Ex series, which I've been a huge fan of for over 20 years, they didn't have much faith in their Human Revolution team, who then totally knocked it out of the park with an incredible game. Then Mankind Divided had dirty corporate hands all over it. The team were basically told, “Now do that again and fill it with microtransactions this time.” I think the team resented the looming, peering execs while they were making that one. It was awkward and clumsy, had worse animations, a way scaled back story, unbalanced augmentations, etc. etc. and of course unprecedented microtransactions.
The Deus Ex games require an enormous amount of man hours to arrive at the consumer with a level of polish fans demand. This costs the studio a lot of money, and Deus Ex is still more niche than people realise. Mankind Divided only has 25,000 reviews on Steam, after some very deep discounts.
Without microtransactions, these games don't make back huge profits. With microtransactions, gamers are repulsed and don't buy the game. That's what happens when keeping old, iconic, single-player franchises alive in 2022. The people saying this is a ridiculous, stupid deal, and they're crazy, whatever, they're speaking out of emotion and haven't thought it through. Iconic does not necessarily equal profitable. If you can invest in a new IP that no one is emotionally attached to, and fill that with multiplayer and microtransactions, whatever, that absolutely eclipses and dwarfs any legacy, golden age IP profits you'll ever make.
@GalvatronType_R: Closing a loophole is “nickel and diming sheep” ? And what will you call it when GamePass increases its prices as soon as they reach a predefined number of subscribers? Which is absolutely guaranteed to happen, by the way, at least twice. Nothing. You'll look the other way. Because some people have to latch on to other entities like games companies to have an identity.
Interesting. But I had no problem with the vanilla game's visuals. So many people have complained about them at such length. It's such a drag.
There's way more important things than the technical aspects of a game's visuals in 2022. Extremely realistic, ultra-high-definition 8K textures and effects, is a certain look, which I'm sometimes in the mood for, a la Demon's Souls remake, and then at other times, I want to play something which looks like Majora's Mask. Not just cause it's cute or different, but because it's almost a relief in some ways.
When you read a book, that's about as low a resolution image of a character's surroundings as it gets, almost regardless of how much detail is on the page, and the science behind the benefits of that for your brain, is rock solid and extremely positive. So higher number isn't always better. And that even includes number of man hours slaved away into making a product.
Elden Ring is already so beautiful in every other visual aspect, and you'd think, even given the slightly outdated technicals, people would let it slide for a 10/10 game.
@Sound_Demon: . Yeah but it's not worth getting so angry about. When someone gets genuinely angry at a fictional TV show, it either means they just like being angry, or it means TV plays too central a role in their life.
I want it to be good as much as you do. But if it sucks... ignore it. And if you can't ignore it, think of smart ways to make people laugh at it so at least it's not totally wasted.
It's not going to affect Tolkien's reputation, believe me. The last season of Game of Thrones didn't affect G.R.R. Martin's. Good or bad it'll bring more people back to the books, and that's a positive as I see it. People already hate Amazon. Things'll work out either way. There's no need to preach more hatred from the rooftops.
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