Concord Sucks And It Is Your “Fault” For Being A Bigot

Concord is a gift that keeps giving, not simply because of the game itself but also because of how the community has reacted to it. On the one hand, the fans did not enjoy the experience. On the other hand, developers and studio heads are running defense. While I understand the impulse from different developers and studio heads to defend their fellow developers, sometimes it can come across as out of touch. Fellow studio heads, writers, and developers always say the same thing.

We need to give the creators of games some slack, as they work extremely hard. While that might be true, it will not matter to a consumer. We know how hard developers work and the time that they put in. However, when you go to a restaurant with expired or bad food, you do not want to hear how hard the chef worked. The product is terrible. The amount of time you put in does not matter to the consumer if the result fails to meet expectations.

By now, we already know the story. Concord was released, sold 25,000 copies, and got shut down within two weeks. Most people agree that the monetization was relatively fair, and the gameplay mechanics were not bad. However, not being bad is still bad, and you must go above and beyond and be outstanding in an exaggerated market. However, certain insiders disagree about where the guilt lies. They believe that it is the bigots that are making games fail.

Do Not Believe Your Eyes And Ears: DEI Is Fake

All this leads us to Vida Starčević, the senior community manager for Remedy Entertainment, calling for bigots to be removed from games. Now, at face value, I agree with what she says. We do not want bigots in the gaming industry. However, we need to note how she says it and to whom. That is where my disagreement starts. Concord did not fail due to bigots not wanting to play the game. Regardless, let’s hear what she has to say and respond accordingly.

We need to take a few steps back to follow along with the dialogue. There is a person called Daniel Ahmad. He is the Director of Research for Niko Partners. He initially responded to Concord’s shutdown by saying, “The comments around Concord from right-wing gamers show the power of collective self-deception. If you say delusional stuff about DEI enough times and build a conspiracy-focused narrative, they start seeing that false narrative everywhere. I guess we have to live with this now.”

I do not know if he thinks we are blind of stupid. You are consulting with DEI firms. You are actively making poor designs to pander to people. Additionally, you are telling stories that are attached to certain political and social agendas. You cannot simply do things like this and expect us not to notice. You cannot sincerely look at the design of these characters and tell me that there was no DEI motive behind them. He is saying, do not believe your eyes and ears. DEI is fake.

Daniel Ahmad Continues

He continued by saying, “And, of course, the underlying emotional response is just standard bigotry and nothing new. Except now there are grifters putting on a four-act stage play about how capital owners have gone woke and therefore no longer care about profit motive for some reason.” Now, this is another line of cope that he is spitting out. He suggests here that it is silly to think Big studios will go with DEI and mess with their profit margins. Firstly, it is not crazy at all. Many of these studios are no longer run by gamers. They are run by Corporate executives who know nothing about gaming.

They are hired social activists who could not get work on CNN. Instead, they spin their political and social beliefs on the entertainment space. They did not study game development but graduated with a social or political studies degree or some other gender-based qualification that no one cares about. You cannot simply tell us these practices are not happening because they are right before us.

Is having a strong woman, a gay person, or a black person DEI and bad for gaming? No, it is not. I believe in representation and inclusion. I just do not believe in how it is used. Most of the time, it is these highly white-owned studios with a bunch of white men who call themselves male feminists making these inclusions. They include a few fat women and gay characters, and then they focus the entire narrative on how stunning and brave they are for doing it. These are not some black-owned studios that create characters that look like them.

The Response

In response to this, another commented and said, “Prune all your gardens Push out bad actors, prepare your teams for the current conversation zeitgeist. Give your community and social teams autonomy and resources to battle against toxicity. Relay how all of this can impact the bottom line early to investors.” To be clear, if you honestly tell investors how this will affect their bottom line, then none of them will invest. Now, I will say this. I do not think that Woke or DEI is destroying games.

There are plenty of successful games that include those things. There are also a lot of games that can be considered woke and succeeding. I believe the combination of poor gameplay mechanics and storytelling hidden behind DEI is destroying gaming. I mentioned this earlier, but the issue is that you have a bunch of people who design games this way to highlight how stunning and brave they are. Almost all of the interviews that the developers at Concord did focused on how inclusive and diverse their cast was.

These people want to be patted on the back for their greatness. The creators of Concord are but one example of this, but let’s use them. Look at their studio, Firewalk. This team is whiter than I am. You will find almost no diversity or inclusion here to save your life. It is white women and white men who made a subpar game in an exaggerated field and now want us to applaud them for including fat girls and people of color. They use diversity as a shield against criticism and they are not helping DEI. They are hurting it.

Alan Wake, Director, Responds

So, finally, it brings us to the gift of Vida Starčević. She responded to all of this by calling for bigots to be removed from gaming. Again, at face value, I agree. But things are never that simple. In an interview, she responded, “Uplift the good eggs. Protect and support those who need it. twitter has never been this full of accounts who are peddling hate 24/7, but it’s still where a lot of the good parts of the games community happen. prune your gardens and let flowers grow.”

In a subsequent post, she added, “Getting bigots out of your communities is a bandaid and not a permanent solution! modelling desired behaviours and championing the kinds of community members you want to be the majority in your community takes effort & time: start early, practice often, small steps are steps too.” The truth of the matter is that this is not a problem. No One wanted to touch Alan Wake 2 because it was infested with Sweet Baby Inc. Additionally, no one wanted to touch Concord for the same reason. Not every character design needs to be a supermodel, but if you do not put effort into your product, no one will buy it.