Madflavor
Member
Western Game Studios have had a serious PR problem these past few years. Publishers used to be super careful about what was in a game, and what was said by the marketing/development team, in order to avoid offending people. "Offending" could be the classic case of saying or doing something insensitive, but it can also mean offending "the fans". She brings up Veilguard as an example of this, of a game doing things that upsets the core fanbase and loses sales as a result.
Lately however, companies have been more reckless on what's done with their games, and what gets said on social media. She brings up Avowed as an example, where that guy started talking shit about Elon Musk and "gamers". She sees this as an issue because these people represent their game and their team, and the negative attention doesn't just affect them, it affects their project and everyone around them. I've personally brought this up a few days ago in another thread. Western Game Studios in particular has a real issue with members of their teams taking to social media, and make a bunch of statements about hating gamers, wanting to physically assault them, etc. That one guy who's in charge of the lore for TW4 also came out doing something like this.
This kind of problem doesn't seem to happen with Eastern Game Studios. Sure there are some examples (see Kamiya), but it is not as rampant as it is in the West. It's created an Us vs. Them mentality, and many of these developers are forgetting that Gamers = Consumers, and shouldn't forget that.
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