Even worse than that, they say absolutely nothing after the sales are revealed, pretend that they were a success and just jump onto another DEI game to defend against The BiGoTs.
Expensive Feminist Propaganda, hence why I am happy with classic consoles and games and I will never give modernity a chance until they mend their ways
It's worse when you know who the director was. The whole misgendering and the mirror bs makes sense. Literally wasting millions of dollars and ruined the careers of the people in Bioware just to make a Tumblr rant.
Not JUST them using the 'Players' metric over the 'Sales' metric, but ALSO that 3,000,000 projected sales number is always under what the company is actually hoping for. The reason for this is simple: the company is actually expecting like 5 million, but reports to the ignorant yet rich shareholders they expect 3 million; they lowball the shareholders to always look good. This is devastating, because they couldn't reach half of their LOWBALL.
I've noticed and said this before, the shareholders are definitely a part of the problem. Management has been tanking companies and stock with DEI for years, yet the shareholders keep them there like lemmings. There's some level of collusion there.
Not every shareholder is rich. Some might have a 401K or other retirement account, and all they want is to retire with enough to survive on. Most shareholders only want to know if they should buy, hold, or sell. It looks like for a lot of people it was sell.
Ya no, not how it really works. Without some significant reason for a drastic deviation of sales, that is reflected in the rest of the market - or, stands out as a clear benefit, if your target estimated sales is significantly higher or lower then your target (and 20% qualifies, let alone 40%) - is so out of wack that it actually suggests you have no idea about the market you are dealing with, or consumers, and so on. And that is exactly what is showcased here. Edit: A good reason to be way over sales target - Achieving Game of the Year in one or more game awards. A good reason for being under: An unexpected depression state of the economy reducing people's disposable income.
Yes. They were expecting to sell 10 million, which was just a little less than the previous Dragon Age title had sold. The failure to even sell 1.5 million copies is incredible.
Three thing that are killing modern day western AAA in my opinion: 1.Making products that are "decent enough" to sell, but not actually good. 2.Engaging in predatory monetization. 3.Making changes based on contemporary ideological craze.
The first 2 they could get by barely, have been since they found out how much mobile games make with less effort, but now they have a product no one wants because of ideology
it's going to be like music inevitably. Taylor Swift is probably the most popular artist right now but I wouldn't exactly call her the best musician, or someone who writes the best music. A majority of radio rock/pop is all not that good to me but is super popular. same with games.
The first 2 was never problem. In fact, it's how they made bank. The 3rd one is an issue but it's not that big, either. The problem of modern AAA is that they focus on the wrong things. Like graphics, acessibility, etc... When the most important thing is still the gameplay.
In that 1.5 million number is Gamepass players, and people that got the game for free from buying a graphics card. So, the actual sales numbers would be lower... How much is the question
What is frustrating is that BioWare had 10 years, a great antagonist and the perfect setup from DAI. Instead of giving us fans what we wanted. They decide to make a lecturing simulator with poor gameplay, sideline Solas and shame us for not using the proper pronouns.
You wouldn't get a good game out of them because it was stuck in developement hell for these 10 years. If they had a good product in oven it would be out way sooner.
Inquisition was trash. It was a shell of the game that origins was. It was generally thought of as mediocre at the time and had plenty of the trappings of dei in it.
The best part was when they dropped trou' and took a big ol' deuce on the established lore by saying all the prior antagonists were being mislead by whispers from the Forgotten Ones. Completely assassinating their character writing.
I think the biggest noticeable thing with DEI is that it led to pipelines where we couldnt tell if the devs actually played the final product long enough to understand whats going on with the player. Now we have Fallout Dev yelling at us for not knowing what we want, but heres the thing we never had to describe it before. we got things that felt right because we trusted the devs played it til it felt right for them too. now we have to describe game-feeling to those that do not feel their own product or feel other products weve consumed. we all have to rediscover fire TOGETHER AND REINTRODUCE IT TO PROMETHEUS by showing HIM how he used to cook. We are picking up where Cheff Gusteau left off like its fuckin ratatoulie. we gotta fix the recipe or he boomed emself in vain. We dont know how to cook either but we are piloted by rats that know by-sense what shit in gaming is supposed to smell, feel and taste like, without being able to explain it to the sous chef.
Man, this is a really great analogy brother, I'm putting this in my back pocket. Another point tangentially related to this that is worth bringing up; it feels like most of the directors/writers for these modern AAA games don't even _want_ to work in gaming, what they _really_ want is to be working in Hollywood, and they are attempting to use games as a springboard to advance their career into what they actually wanted to do all along, presumably because they didn't have what it takes to make it in Hollywood (which is apparent when you look at these abysmal narratives). What gets lost in all this? GAMEPLAY. These are GAMES, they need to be FUN, if I want an incredible story I will watch a movie or read a book. /endrant
@ yeah bruh its like “ur John Fire… what do you mean you dont know how to use it or what we’d try and use it for? you didnt like….. play with it urself?”
@ yeah too many games are being produced by John RPG who forgets roleplay games are supposed to have roleplay elements and not just shit tons of number interactions and encumbrance management. or by a failed writer games dont feel like they are being made by players anymore. and if they are. its a “write what you know” but “code what you know” type scenario where lame devs that make lame games are lame players who got inspired by other lame games. every genre of game is part of a generational cycle. but memetic instead of genetic in terms of the game’s DNA cool shit inspires ppl to make cool shit lame shit inspires ppl to make lame shit and think its cool
The devs don't even play their games anymore. Most devs nowadays are contractors whose job is to get a certain task done. Many are done and out, which is how you end up with teams of 1000 and a a game like Concord.
32, my first game was probably on the NES, when I was maybe 3. Probably SMB or SMB3, but it coulda been Duck Hunt, Fester's Quest, or Batman. I've kind of tapped out of AAA games for a long time now, they kinda peaked with 7th console gen IMO and there has been little that is interesting or innovating for the past 8 years in that end of the industry, it's very stagnant. Even back in 2018, my GOTY experiences then was a game from 2013 and a game from 1994. It really feels like the future of videogames is going to be spearheaded by AA and the most ambitious and talented of indies. Nobody fucking wanted Veilguard, not even the lefties, and Ubisoft are collapsing under their own excess bloat, but then a guy puts out a Roguelike game about playing Poker, and EVERYONE loves it. 2024 was a year of contrasts.
Nearly 50, started gaming on the 2600 and the C64. These companies are so foolish it beggars belief. I've worked my way in to a high paying engineering role, I pay inordinate amounts of money on collectables and hardware, yet I won't spend a single penny on anything that contains gender politics. I saw a clip from this new DA where one of the characters openly states "okay, so I'm non-binary" and I had to close the video. I just stared at the screen for 5 minutes wondering how we got here, fired up an A500 emulator, and started smiling again. Games are for fun, they're not for lecturing, if I want to take a class in something it will be something worthwhile like STEM and not underwater lesbian basket weaving theory.
Everything conservative has been and is always shit. The trick is being progressive but respectful to the art. Many big companies lose the respect they should have and treat fans as statistics.
@@myrchantkobold8268 you people really like to think about things in a black and white metric. Not everything conservative is bad, not everything progressive is bad.
@@myrchantkobold8268 wym everything conservative is sht tho Everything has its flaws the conservative thing included but the majority still holds up very well even nowadays but rn the focus of so many videos is "[progressive item] is [bad adjective]" both conservatives and progressive thing can be crappy but progressive tends to fail more often than conservative does in the current "meta"
When I was at the VA earlier, the staff was talking about how they already received notice that all Federal hiring has been halted until the DEI practices have been removed.
Please let us hope getting some of the non-working gunk out of the chain makes the VA more efficient. There are far too many "paper pusher" jobs that pretty much LITERALLY push a paper from one place to another at the VA (having been a patient with them since 2008, and having worked at one for a bit in 2011/2012)
@@myrchantkobold8268fewer workers can be a good thing if it eliminates positions that get paid to literally do nothing, people in those positions are not "working" or contributing
Omg, go on his bluesky account and read the replies to his Veilguard underperformance post. The delusion is so strong that it's _almost_ blackpilling me on the future of gaming as a medium; I say almost because I have some faith in the suits seeing these numbers and making a _drastic_ course-correction, not on GaaS or mtx necessarily, but _at least_ on the woke grandstanding
It really is simple math. There is clearly a large overlap between people with this ideology and those who shit on gamers. Their marketing departments must have been under the DEI umbrella.
The game director jumped on board, ruined a beloved franchise & what was left of Bioware's credibility, potentially losing hundreds of people their jobs in the process with their nonsense, and then dipped out the moment it was obvious the game is a failure. Calling them a roach is an insult to roaches tbh
I get where you're coming from and generally agree, but I am SO SICK of this "devs losing their jobs!" narrative. If you make a GAME where the GAMEPLAY isn't fun, and the product subsequently flops, losing your job is perfectly reasonable. If I royally fk up a marketing campaign as a marketing manager, I should expect to at _least_ be reprimanded somehow. This idea that all devs, and specifically AAA devs no less, are perfect artisans, all deserving of their positions, is absurd.
its not just woke stuff as woke stuff was in bg3 and that has 61000 people still playing right now and 70000 this week, it had body type 1 and 2, it had male gnomes running around screaming about its husband, it had a random lesbian god/demigod i personally think bg3 would have been better with out this stuff, least we can mod it all out DGV has 3000 people right now playing its peak is 89000, so it can only just compete with bg3s left over players
DEI ironically made it harder for people of whatever minority identitys to be seen as valid to be there. Shows that modern liberals are simply not up to the task.
Players understand that “DEI” is shorthand for “DEI is more important than this thing we’re making, and that’s all we as creators care about.” It’s not racist, sexist, bigoted, phobic, or even adjacent to those things to believe that programs which explicitly prefer, not favor, one group over another are inherently wrong. No one is going to complain about something made for [INSERT] audience. They’re complaining when something is made to flatter one audience and disparage another.
It's even simpler than that. It's not even a moral issue. Any one person, as a customer, has the legal and moral right to choose what they do and don't buy with their own time and money. Rejecting a game with DEI in it is no different than rejecting a game with centipedes in it. You are allowed to not buy things, and nobody can tell you otherwise.
Agreed, but I think the more nuanced take is that this wouldn't even be a problem if these devs put their politics _in their own, new IPs._ What they have been doing the past half decade+ is worming their way into these organizations and corrupting tried-and-true franchises with passionate fanbases. Not only will the games flop, but you will produce massive sh-tstorms from those fans; if it were all in new IPs, at least the sh-tstorm part wouldn't happen and the games would flop in obscurity, like that "Unknown 9" game (perfect name as well).
Concord will unfortunately be remembered as, "That's what happens you try to make a new IP". It won't be remembered as what happens if you put in a bunch social issues into the game. Veilguard might be remembered as an example of what happens when you put in a bunch social issues into an beloved IP. More likely it will be used as another example of how "Single-player story driven games don't sell."
I think the biggest problem for Concord by far was cosmic overspending, DEI was just a smaller part (relatively speaking). If you look at the new Marvel superhero game everyone is playing, or Overwatch before Blizzard wrecked it, those probably didn't have even a fraction of that kind of budget behind them for development and advertising combined. I would not be surprised to learn that some of the massive budget alotted to Concord's development was in actuality embezzled by someone at Sony, because the game really doesn't look like it cost the reported astronomical sum behind it, and I can't remember seeing any marketing for it even once.
This wasn't a "divisive" issue, it was a hated issue. It was 50-50, except like this: 50%: "It's another Dragon Age, I must play it no matter what" + Asmongold-like "I don't even listen to the dialogs, but the combat is ok" 50%: "I'm not touching this shit writing / give me a refund"
Asmon "liked" the combat, but ignored how he's always down to 1 health and not dying. That's an immense red flag even when you only care about combat, what do you mean failing in a battle has no consequences on the character?
So it was a divisive issue, they divided the entire possible customer base on what you said, these devs know people will sell out anyway due to branding, so they chose to split up the entire customer base to spread their idealogical messaging, while knowing the entire idealogical messaging (dei "woke" etc) was allready a hot topic to put it lightly to begin with
Note that the report said "Dragon Age ENGAGED approximately 1.5 million players during the quarter." Emphasis mine. As such, that 1.5 million includes people who played the game through their subscription service, and since it's for the quarter a ratio of that engagement is through when the game was on sale. So yes, definitely that number is best case scenario, which to me signals that Mass Effect 5 is going to be in BIG trouble.
I really hope you are wrong cause dam that first trilogy was amazing besides the ending of course. Andromeda definately had potential but they just fumbled. Let's hope they don't this time or the franchise will be absolutely dead.
It was in big trouble since the moment we saw the first ad for Veilguard, now the trouble has went from "Wow this is going to be DEI slop" to "Wow the studio might close before their next DEI slop gets made"
That "engaged" would also include people who immediately refunded it. It might even include people who cancelled their pre-order and never actually played it, depending how loosely they use the term "engaged". It includes people who downloaded it through Xbox Live but never played it, or played for 5 mins and then deleted it. I doubt if even half is legitimate sales.
All you have to do to save your company is pull up the list of every job title and Ctrl+F for *DEI,* *Diversity,* *Equity,* and *Inclusion,* and fire every person with one of those words in their title. 100% guaranteed fix.
There's always a market for games that represent modern social issues. But bringing that crap to popular established IPs and FANTASY SETTINGS is batshit crazy.
There's also a right way and a wrong way to do it. When you bring it into a fantasy world, it needs to make sense in the context of the game's world. Trails of Cold Steel ironically dealt with a lot of DEI issues like divisions between ethnicity, economic class, and social class. But, it made sense in a world that was rapidly mechanizing and integrating people of different backgrounds and tribes as they dealt with the threat of new wars.
Shoving it in estabilished IPs and ruining their lores is the issue. I don't have any problem with devs that decide to make an original game of their own with those messages. I could safely ignore it (or not), but I can't ignore when they ruin an IP I like.
Movies are starting to stand up to DEI too. I saw Nosferatu last night and i was shocked at how good it was and how they avoided all the aspects of modernity.
@mikeben4584 Bro that scene was amazing. I was so happy that they didn't shy away from showing that. The sound engineering in the movie was fantastic, the set design and the casting was so immersive. Real prosthetics, real sets. Man Johnny taught his daughter how to act too!
Even considering that Veilguard is a singleplayer game, you can simply compare it to Witcher 3, Skyrim and Cyberpunk 2077. 14 years later Skyrim still has 46k 24h peak on Steam, 10 years later Witcher 3 has a 23k 24h peak. Cyberpunk is a little newer but still older than Veilguard and has a 33k 24h peak. Veilguard? 4k peak.
Facinating, good to know. Reminds me of Yuji Horii Interview on Dragon Quest III HD Remake, about religion, the concerning rise of western idolatry and Japan's vigilance against it due to past experiences.
One thing I'd like to add to the "It's a single player so once people finish they're done" bit; with a big RPG, you're more likely to have people play through more than once to see what other choices/decisions/outcomes they can have. Older bioware games had quite a few variations of things. Baldur's Gate 3 kept quite a few players for a while after it came out for a few months, obviously the game being extremely large, plus coop being added and such helped a lot with the player count, but it's still pretty dang high, and I still hear people saying "Trying this weird idea on this playthrough". Obviously not everyone is going to playthrough a longass singleplayer game multiple times, but I still think it's a factor when you look at the drop-off rate because it shows people don't care enough to go through it more than once.
Its not gone, just going into hiding. DEI is the tool and not the goal. The people pushing it still have the money and power, and are considering their next approach.
@@filidhdeklend893 All Trump is doing is playing his part. He acts like he is shutting down DEI but they shut it down and have already rebranded it last YEAR!!!!!
As a german It's always funny to hear "Bluesky", as here in Germany Blue is the color of the AfD party. Thats the party getting called nazis every time they are mentioned. I knows there isnt really a correlation, but i do think its funny.
@@TickleFight94 never saw anything , can you clarify bro ? Wanna know, if u have time to explain. Or was ist "funny" comment cause of the Pose Elon Musk did ?
i agree with removing DEI but you're the same people that hate h1b visas despite them bringing competence to the nation. be a little more consistent lil bro
@Asmongold, the EA statement says "1.5M engagement". Does even say players. People that bought and refunded without playing are being counted as well. EA also reported a loss of between $400M and $550M for Q3.
The problem with the access Journalism that companies don't seem to get is, if you rate a game favorably to maintain good credibility with the companies who give you those sweet delicious early access review opportunities and it sucks; you lose reputation and less people will traffic to your site. Which, eventually, will lead the game companies to slowly favor you less regardless because giving you that early copy won't bring them the Pre-Orders and Day 1 buys they're looking for.
Which is why he's such a threat to them. They want you to either be cheering them on, or one of the bad guys that they can stand against. It doesn't matter which, so long as you're a resource they can take advantage of. Asmon isn't either: all he does is give a matter-of-fact explanation of things as he sees it, no more no less. It undermines their entire "good guys vs bad guys" narrative, which is an existential threat to it since you can't radicalize supporters without it.
I think it'll be remembered because it's the first "big name gamer darling" franchise to destroy itself. It also is very hard to pretend its not due to the hamfisted messaging.
“The trouble with movies as a business is that it is an art. The trouble with movies as an art is that it is a business.” Apparently, Charlton Heston is attributed with this quote, and I think the same thing could be said about video games. Developers have this vision on what game they are going to make, and they simply don't care if they piss off their customers. They'll go so far as to insult and demean most of their player base to see that vision through.
I believe their is one reason to play the game. If you rush the main storyline and do NONE of the side quests/relationship quests or whatever you call it, all of the main characters die at the end. So if Veilguard has one thing going for it, it's a great speedrunner game and you still get the best ending.
Jason gets to be an industry insider because he is their plant. He covers of crazy shit and goes to bat for devs because its his job. He leaks stuff to promote sales & to get news traffic.
You know they're lying when they say it only performed at 50% of what they projected. They probably expected it to hit more like 5-8 million, at least.
the sales number was over 10 million they had projected. so no they are indeed gaslighting the shareholders. thing is a lot of them are now smelling the methane and dumping the stock
Thank god. Maybe the western gaming industry will actually focus on better story telling and hire real talent now rather than solely focusing on what that person identifies as their gender or the color of their skin. Not all western gaming companies were doing this but you'd have to be completely ignorant to believe none were. Dragon Age died because of this sadly
i dont think western culture will be able to recover from democrat leadership. hollywood is both physically and metaphorically gone. our games look old and stale, while china/japan's games look inspired and exciting. even american music has had a major recession during the woke times. sad that a whole ass generation of american kids grew up with shitty art, because millennials decided that there wasn't enough institutional racism and that we needed more of it lol
I remember losing a job to a DEI hire. Buddy of mine was a recruiter at the company and didn't have a choice. They had three years less experience and were from my previous company as well after being fired for incompetency
I think most gamers, irrespective of their political or social beliefs, generally prefer that video games remain separate from real-world issues, serving as a form of escapism. When an ideology is pushed as an agenda, it ruins the experience.
So it cost them 240 million and they made 90 million in sales. Not counting how much they have to give to video game stores and promotions. They prolly took home about 45 to 60 million doesn’t sound like I’d want to invest in them
Are you think 1.5 million was a sales number and then multiplying that by $60? The report said 1.5 million players ENGAGED. It said nothing of sales numbers
At my old job, there was this guy that was always walking around the facility and calling people racist. He also kept talking about how nobody liked his ancestry, and the entire planet wanting his people to die. This guy got canned very fast.
The most ridiculous cope I've seen from the Veilguard sub is one person who was insisting that when it says "engaged players", that actually means players who get really into the game, because they think that's what they really care about, and so the actual sales number is probably way higher. Just the most insane copium.
5:26 they didn’t know it was divisive, they live in bubbles. all of their friends think just like they do and if they don’t they cut them out of their life
I was 100% going to buy Dragon Age Dreadwolf. I loved Inquisition and wanted more. When the game got rebranded to Veilguard and unveiled the purple softcore image, I was still fine with it, more Inquisition type game is fine with me Week of release I was ready for a single player RPG, hyped to have something for the winter months. Early review videos were positive and I was feeling good. But then I watched a video that didn't say what was bad about the game, but had a huge buyer beware warning So then I dug deeper and looked for more reviews, and heard there was a lot of sjw type shit in there. I messaged a friend 'Veilguard can't be THAT bad can it?' and he told me to just wait and see, and I'm fuckin glad he did. Then the video of the pushups as punishment for misgendering someone came out. And I am so happy I am $70 and 10 hours richer. Rip bozo
I played DAI and it was such a great game but I was not that deep into the franchise like a friend of mine is. He was looking forward to another DA but he showed me the trailer of veilguard and was upset. At first I didn't see a problem with it, it just looked average, no gameplay or anything just a cutscene. Little did I know the game was littered with bs. He unfortunately bought it day one as a fan but was very dissapointed in it lol I on the other hand saved myself from this catastrophe.
16:15 cognitive dissonance is a hell of a drug. This is what the intelligent-yet-stupid/ignorant people are experiencing: the pain and shame of being wrong about something. It’s too much to handle for some people. That’s why there’s been mass exoduses to Bluesky since Trump won.
Why would you ever do anything in your game other than make players happy and profit max? Why would you want to pump any ideology into your game if it’s hurting either of those things? It’s actual insanity and against their own best interests. You should only subtract from one (profit or fun) to boost the other. You should never subtract from one to hurt your game. Actually psychotic logic. 😂
Because it takes less effort and you can pocket a ton of money for yourself with donations from DEI investor funds like Blackrock. They don''t care if they earn money or not. This is exactly what happened with Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. The boss of Warhorse got a massive money bonus from Embracer group to add in checklist elements and historical revisionism.
This is the mentality for most established IPs. They think that the old players will buy the game no matter what and they feel like they can get away with doing anything with it. But more often than not, these franchise overhauls end up as disastrous failures that end up alienating the old fans and doesn't gain the new fans they think it will. This problem has hit the JRPGs pretty hard since the late 2010s as most legacy franchises went from turn based to action rpg and people just left.
This is the game HR makes people play when they need "inclusivity training". I'm so proud of my fellow gamers for throwing this garbage in the trash where it belongs.
Electronic Arts stock fell 19% today, mainly because of FIFA, but Veilguard was namechecked. Baldur's Gate 3 did it right, Veilguard did it wrong. This shall be studied.
I’m ok with it as long as you have the option to kill the bear as well. Both sides need to be told not just one that’s how you make a great game is you allow anything and everything not just one side with a lecture.
The only part Asmon got wrong there is at the end: No, people will not look back saying "Man, maybe we shouldn't make games like that." No, they will say "What the hell were they even thinking when they tried that bs?"
"The issue with Veilguard is it was rebooted three times..." So was Duke Nukem Forever, with multiple studios and changeovers. Doesn't change that it was still sh¡t. And yet three other Dragon Age games were made in a smaller timeframe.
That chart at 4:16, compared to Dragon Age Origins, this quick sad death death, was only the point the original purchasers were telling allllllll their friends, "You gotta get this game!" and then expansions, and mods, it was alive! This one fake on that ruined the story has actual better connected technology and is dead as a door nail.
Guys, I know how to make Veilguard good: make a mod so that when you start the game it takes you to DA Inquisition and you just play through that game.
When you leave in 50 percent of the agenda you lose 50 percent of the player base. The other 50 percent will see no one is playing that game and will move on.
Think of ESG and DEI like a wildfire sweeping an old forest. It burns up all the old growth (old inefficient publishers, game studios, and abused IP) and makes room for new life. In this case, new game studios with passionate young developers ready to create new unique games. With the old growth gone, there's more sunlight reaching the forest floor for new life to take root and take over.
i don't even have any malice but i wont be a part of anyones social engineering project and if they are focusing hard on DEI then its a highly correlated point to a game being bad so i nope out without prejudice
50% miss on bookings is AFTER they cut sales forecasts. They were probably expecting 5-6 million copies originally, cut that down to 3 million, and only got 1.5 million.
This game was like finding out your kid was gay out of nowhere. You were not sure about it at first and tried to give him the benefit of the doubt because he’s your son. You still love him and respect his decision but your relationship falls off and you just slowly stop communicating except on Christmas for 5 minutes.
I think if they went into a meeting with the board of directors and showed them the cut scene where they “have to do a barve,” the whole studio would be immediately laid off
1,5 million players very likely includes people who used the timed trial or the separate character creator. It's(or was at least) part of geforce now for which you can bet they counted those keys sold in bulk as separate players even if they weren't activated. Not to mention the game was being sold 50% off like 2 months after the release. All in all the actual sales are likely way less than 1,5 mil x 70 bucks.
@@keiththompson4300 yeah dude and the meme coin stuff was super dodgy. Most of us voted for the guy but after that idek anymore. Notice how I didn't say president trump just Trump.
The problem of modern games is not that they include DEI content, but they hire DEI people who turn out to be extremely incompetent (who would have thought)
4:07 Dragon Age is extremely popular with us women, and i can tell you from my perspective that we tend to replay a GOOD rpg about ten times on release because we want to roleplay several different characters and romance other companions etc. the Dragon Age Inquisition tag on tumblr was heavily flooded with fan content (gifs, discussion/, new playthroughs, etc) up until 2018 bc so many people were STILL replaying it. the fact that only 3k players are doing that for Veilguard right now, says everything. even female gamers are sick of this woke slop.
I work for a major worldwide corperation that has been doing terrible these past few years. All because of DEI hiring and allowing people to fail upwards. The cracks have been showing for a while having managers based upon skin color and what they identified as instead of being qualified and performing well. This company will fail eventually if they don't turn this around now. The cracks are massive and showing...
As Eminem would say "snap back to reality, ope, there goes gravity ope, there goes rabbit, he choked" pretty much encapsulated the whole woke dei garbage
Never forget: Jason Schreier didn't report on
Blizzard sexual misconduct until it was financially expedient
I wish they would bring the bro culture back wow sucks ass now
@ true brother.
@@karndorbad6536 Right on brah!
The last name says it all... one of THEM
@@idonuttylikezenorship4547 German or German Jew?
Lets be honest. Asmon played a huge role in making it ok to criticize DEI on public platforms without being called a racist
the roach king strikes again
He has also just focused on the negative outcomes and never really addressed why DEI exists and how it could/should have been done.
True
@@moqopeople should not be treated differently bc of their race, that wpuld be racist
I miss Ray ❤
They always say *"The game wasn't made for you"* and then wonder why it doesn't sell well.
The game was only made for 0.0003% of you, says the publicly traded company. Would explain the 18.73% drop in their value in 24 hours.
Even worse than that, they say absolutely nothing after the sales are revealed, pretend that they were a success and just jump onto another DEI game to defend against The BiGoTs.
Developers: The game wasn't made for you!
Gamers: Okay. (Closes wallet)
Developers: :| >:|
Each time anything goes woke, it is automatically out of touch with reality
It's great when they tell me this because it lets me know the money i made isn't for them 😊
I'm not going to spend 60 dollars to be lectured by HR.
TransHR simulator
good way to put it
Expensive Feminist Propaganda, hence why I am happy with classic consoles and games and I will never give modernity a chance until they mend their ways
Nailed it! Exactly this.
It's worse when you know who the director was. The whole misgendering and the mirror bs makes sense. Literally wasting millions of dollars and ruined the careers of the people in Bioware just to make a Tumblr rant.
Not JUST them using the 'Players' metric over the 'Sales' metric, but ALSO that 3,000,000 projected sales number is always under what the company is actually hoping for. The reason for this is simple: the company is actually expecting like 5 million, but reports to the ignorant yet rich shareholders they expect 3 million; they lowball the shareholders to always look good. This is devastating, because they couldn't reach half of their LOWBALL.
I've noticed and said this before, the shareholders are definitely a part of the problem. Management has been tanking companies and stock with DEI for years, yet the shareholders keep them there like lemmings. There's some level of collusion there.
Not every shareholder is rich. Some might have a 401K or other retirement account, and all they want is to retire with enough to survive on. Most shareholders only want to know if they should buy, hold, or sell. It looks like for a lot of people it was sell.
Ya no, not how it really works.
Without some significant reason for a drastic deviation of sales, that is reflected in the rest of the market - or, stands out as a clear benefit, if your target estimated sales is significantly higher or lower then your target (and 20% qualifies, let alone 40%) - is so out of wack that it actually suggests you have no idea about the market you are dealing with, or consumers, and so on. And that is exactly what is showcased here.
Edit: A good reason to be way over sales target - Achieving Game of the Year in one or more game awards. A good reason for being under: An unexpected depression state of the economy reducing people's disposable income.
Earlier they said that they expected 11 million sales, they were delusional.
Yes. They were expecting to sell 10 million, which was just a little less than the previous Dragon Age title had sold. The failure to even sell 1.5 million copies is incredible.
Three thing that are killing modern day western AAA in my opinion:
1.Making products that are "decent enough" to sell, but not actually good.
2.Engaging in predatory monetization.
3.Making changes based on contemporary ideological craze.
The first 2 they could get by barely, have been since they found out how much mobile games make with less effort, but now they have a product no one wants because of ideology
The 3rd is the 1st.
it's going to be like music inevitably. Taylor Swift is probably the most popular artist right now but I wouldn't exactly call her the best musician, or someone who writes the best music. A majority of radio rock/pop is all not that good to me but is super popular. same with games.
The first 2 was never problem. In fact, it's how they made bank. The 3rd one is an issue but it's not that big, either. The problem of modern AAA is that they focus on the wrong things. Like graphics, acessibility, etc... When the most important thing is still the gameplay.
I think 3 is a WAY bigger issue then only making it to 3 on your list. It's number one, no contest.
1.5 million is still way too many people that tried this crap...
Exactly.
What’s worse is that I can’t believe some people say it’s the best dragon age in their opinion ….
This is why I call gamers stupid and very slow.
In that 1.5 million number is Gamepass players, and people that got the game for free from buying a graphics card.
So, the actual sales numbers would be lower... How much is the question
It had a franchise reputation. That reputation was set on fire. Pronoun. Stuggle. Sessions.
They farmed their brand name. People will be more cautious next time.
What is frustrating is that BioWare had 10 years, a great antagonist and the perfect setup from DAI. Instead of giving us fans what we wanted. They decide to make a lecturing simulator with poor gameplay, sideline Solas and shame us for not using the proper pronouns.
The revisionist history is kinda bothering me a little dragon age Inquisition had a lot of controversy with the game itself coming from the last title
You wouldn't get a good game out of them because it was stuck in developement hell for these 10 years. If they had a good product in oven it would be out way sooner.
Agreed. Total disgrace
Inquisition was trash. It was a shell of the game that origins was. It was generally thought of as mediocre at the time and had plenty of the trappings of dei in it.
The best part was when they dropped trou' and took a big ol' deuce on the established lore by saying all the prior antagonists were being mislead by whispers from the Forgotten Ones. Completely assassinating their character writing.
I think the biggest noticeable thing with DEI is that it led to pipelines where we couldnt tell if the devs actually played the final product long enough to understand whats going on with the player.
Now we have Fallout Dev yelling at us for not knowing what we want, but heres the thing
we never had to describe it before. we got things that felt right because we trusted the devs played it til it felt right for them too.
now we have to describe game-feeling to those that do not feel their own product or feel other products weve consumed. we all have to rediscover fire TOGETHER AND REINTRODUCE IT TO PROMETHEUS by showing HIM how he used to cook.
We are picking up where Cheff Gusteau left off like its fuckin ratatoulie. we gotta fix the recipe or he boomed emself in vain. We dont know how to cook either but we are piloted by rats that know by-sense what shit in gaming is supposed to smell, feel and taste like, without being able to explain it to the sous chef.
That Prometheus explanation is pure poetry
Man, this is a really great analogy brother, I'm putting this in my back pocket. Another point tangentially related to this that is worth bringing up; it feels like most of the directors/writers for these modern AAA games don't even _want_ to work in gaming, what they _really_ want is to be working in Hollywood, and they are attempting to use games as a springboard to advance their career into what they actually wanted to do all along, presumably because they didn't have what it takes to make it in Hollywood (which is apparent when you look at these abysmal narratives). What gets lost in all this? GAMEPLAY. These are GAMES, they need to be FUN, if I want an incredible story I will watch a movie or read a book. /endrant
@ yeah bruh its like “ur John Fire… what do you mean you dont know how to use it or what we’d try and use it for? you didnt like….. play with it urself?”
@ yeah too many games are being produced by John RPG who forgets roleplay games are supposed to have roleplay elements and not just shit tons of number interactions and encumbrance management.
or by a failed writer
games dont feel like they are being made by players anymore. and if they are. its a “write what you know” but “code what you know” type scenario where lame devs that make lame games are lame players who got inspired by other lame games.
every genre of game is part of a generational cycle. but memetic instead of genetic in terms of the game’s DNA
cool shit inspires ppl to make cool shit
lame shit inspires ppl to make lame shit and think its cool
The devs don't even play their games anymore. Most devs nowadays are contractors whose job is to get a certain task done. Many are done and out, which is how you end up with teams of 1000 and a a game like Concord.
I'm 44, I play PC games since I was 13. If any game studio came up with this bs DEI, they'll never get my money. Period.
39 here, almost the same story but with the exact same ending. Only difference with me is if i want to check it out, it gets pirated and modded 😂
24 but same
32, my first game was probably on the NES, when I was maybe 3. Probably SMB or SMB3, but it coulda been Duck Hunt, Fester's Quest, or Batman.
I've kind of tapped out of AAA games for a long time now, they kinda peaked with 7th console gen IMO and there has been little that is interesting or innovating for the past 8 years in that end of the industry, it's very stagnant. Even back in 2018, my GOTY experiences then was a game from 2013 and a game from 1994.
It really feels like the future of videogames is going to be spearheaded by AA and the most ambitious and talented of indies. Nobody fucking wanted Veilguard, not even the lefties, and Ubisoft are collapsing under their own excess bloat, but then a guy puts out a Roguelike game about playing Poker, and EVERYONE loves it. 2024 was a year of contrasts.
Nearly 50, started gaming on the 2600 and the C64. These companies are so foolish it beggars belief. I've worked my way in to a high paying engineering role, I pay inordinate amounts of money on collectables and hardware, yet I won't spend a single penny on anything that contains gender politics. I saw a clip from this new DA where one of the characters openly states "okay, so I'm non-binary" and I had to close the video. I just stared at the screen for 5 minutes wondering how we got here, fired up an A500 emulator, and started smiling again. Games are for fun, they're not for lecturing, if I want to take a class in something it will be something worthwhile like STEM and not underwater lesbian basket weaving theory.
"Everything woke turns to shit."
i wise man once said.
Everything conservative has been and is always shit. The trick is being progressive but respectful to the art. Many big companies lose the respect they should have and treat fans as statistics.
@@myrchantkobold8268 you people really like to think about things in a black and white metric. Not everything conservative is bad, not everything progressive is bad.
@@younmefrien *Anyone with eyes said.
@@myrchantkobold8268 wym everything conservative is sht tho
Everything has its flaws the conservative thing included but the majority still holds up very well even nowadays but rn the focus of so many videos is "[progressive item] is [bad adjective]" both conservatives and progressive thing can be crappy but progressive tends to fail more often than conservative does in the current "meta"
When I was at the VA earlier, the staff was talking about how they already received notice that all Federal hiring has been halted until the DEI practices have been removed.
Please let us hope getting some of the non-working gunk out of the chain makes the VA more efficient. There are far too many "paper pusher" jobs that pretty much LITERALLY push a paper from one place to another at the VA (having been a patient with them since 2008, and having worked at one for a bit in 2011/2012)
@@msihcs8171 It will do the opposite, now you end up with fewer workers.
@@myrchantkobold8268 please refer to the comment above yours. Aside from that did you forget about Twitter? Fewer employees is not always bad.
@@myrchantkobold8268fewer workers can be a good thing if it eliminates positions that get paid to literally do nothing, people in those positions are not "working" or contributing
all its doing is eliminating the waste. they will hire more workers as needed and train them properly. @@myrchantkobold8268
Jason Schreier literally just posted about ACshadows. Ubi is paying and he is willing to take the check every time 😂😂😂😂
He also posted about Veilguard's failure despite his claim that it "owned the chuds" just a month ago lol. Dude is a clown.
He is doing gods work on his own reputation. His attitude sucks from what little I know of this guy.
Member of the tribe...
Love to see “journalists” own-goaling themselves publicly online, way to go for your “career”
Omg, go on his bluesky account and read the replies to his Veilguard underperformance post. The delusion is so strong that it's _almost_ blackpilling me on the future of gaming as a medium; I say almost because I have some faith in the suits seeing these numbers and making a _drastic_ course-correction, not on GaaS or mtx necessarily, but _at least_ on the woke grandstanding
What you need to realize is, a big brand AAA game that was marketed to hell and back, debuting with only 58,000 peak player count IS ABYSMAL
Compare that to halo 3 which had over a million concurrent players at its peak
DEI stands for:
Discrimination
Exclusion
Indoctrination
*Incompetence
Donald Ended It 💃🕺
Didn't Earn It
This is what happens when you make a game for 1% of people who are the 1% of people who don't play games.
It really is simple math. There is clearly a large overlap between people with this ideology and those who shit on gamers. Their marketing departments must have been under the DEI umbrella.
The media is to blame. Gaming media pushed DEI,because the journalists themselves were likely DEI hires,or just blindly woke.
Bashing gamers on forums while their simps artificially inflate the numbers.
0.1
It's not even 1%! This is only for like less than 100 people, out of millions of gamers.
The game director jumped on board, ruined a beloved franchise & what was left of Bioware's credibility, potentially losing hundreds of people their jobs in the process with their nonsense, and then dipped out the moment it was obvious the game is a failure. Calling them a roach is an insult to roaches tbh
Unless there's evidence of employees speaking up and trying to stop bad mechanics and wokeness in their game ....
Good
More like a wasp. Insert your ideology in their victims and move on once the victim explode.
But she/her did such a job
I get where you're coming from and generally agree, but I am SO SICK of this "devs losing their jobs!" narrative. If you make a GAME where the GAMEPLAY isn't fun, and the product subsequently flops, losing your job is perfectly reasonable. If I royally fk up a marketing campaign as a marketing manager, I should expect to at _least_ be reprimanded somehow. This idea that all devs, and specifically AAA devs no less, are perfect artisans, all deserving of their positions, is absurd.
A leech is the correct term.
It’s not extinct. It’s dying but can come back again. We need to make sure it never comes back even in generations to do so
It will be replaced with * children Privileges.
Far from dying, KCD2's studio, Warhorse, got captured by them.
its not just woke stuff as woke stuff was in bg3 and that has 61000 people still playing right now and 70000 this week, it had body type 1 and 2, it had male gnomes running around screaming about its husband, it had a random lesbian god/demigod
i personally think bg3 would have been better with out this stuff, least we can mod it all out
DGV has 3000 people right now playing its peak is 89000, so it can only just compete with bg3s left over players
DEI ironically made it harder for people of whatever minority identitys to be seen as valid to be there. Shows that modern liberals are simply not up to the task.
You can expect me, a normal gamer, be part of the anti-woke movement for my entire life.
Players understand that “DEI” is shorthand for “DEI is more important than this thing we’re making, and that’s all we as creators care about.”
It’s not racist, sexist, bigoted, phobic, or even adjacent to those things to believe that programs which explicitly prefer, not favor, one group over another are inherently wrong. No one is going to complain about something made for [INSERT] audience. They’re complaining when something is made to flatter one audience and disparage another.
It's even simpler than that. It's not even a moral issue. Any one person, as a customer, has the legal and moral right to choose what they do and don't buy with their own time and money. Rejecting a game with DEI in it is no different than rejecting a game with centipedes in it. You are allowed to not buy things, and nobody can tell you otherwise.
Agreed, but I think the more nuanced take is that this wouldn't even be a problem if these devs put their politics _in their own, new IPs._ What they have been doing the past half decade+ is worming their way into these organizations and corrupting tried-and-true franchises with passionate fanbases. Not only will the games flop, but you will produce massive sh-tstorms from those fans; if it were all in new IPs, at least the sh-tstorm part wouldn't happen and the games would flop in obscurity, like that "Unknown 9" game (perfect name as well).
@@Wolfgang_von_Caelid they did put politics in their own IPs like Concord and Dustborn...lmao
Concord will unfortunately be remembered as, "That's what happens you try to make a new IP". It won't be remembered as what happens if you put in a bunch social issues into the game. Veilguard might be remembered as an example of what happens when you put in a bunch social issues into an beloved IP. More likely it will be used as another example of how "Single-player story driven games don't sell."
oh definately
I dont know i think concord will be remembered as a woke pos new ip. There is just to much that it had to not be in my opinion
@@IronD-12to many it will be, but 10 years from now it will be on lists like 'top 10 great games that weren't given a chance!'
persona 5 is all you need to point at when people way single player story games don't sell or that turn based games are dead
I think the biggest problem for Concord by far was cosmic overspending, DEI was just a smaller part (relatively speaking).
If you look at the new Marvel superhero game everyone is playing, or Overwatch before Blizzard wrecked it, those probably didn't have even a fraction of that kind of budget behind them for development and advertising combined.
I would not be surprised to learn that some of the massive budget alotted to Concord's development was in actuality embezzled by someone at Sony, because the game really doesn't look like it cost the reported astronomical sum behind it, and I can't remember seeing any marketing for it even once.
This wasn't a "divisive" issue, it was a hated issue. It was 50-50, except like this:
50%: "It's another Dragon Age, I must play it no matter what" + Asmongold-like "I don't even listen to the dialogs, but the combat is ok"
50%: "I'm not touching this shit writing / give me a refund"
unfortunately shit writing impacts even those that don't pay attention as the situations encountered in the game are far more mediocre
Asmon "liked" the combat, but ignored how he's always down to 1 health and not dying. That's an immense red flag even when you only care about combat, what do you mean failing in a battle has no consequences on the character?
@markusramikin the mage combat was good imo.
The writing was awful. Especially with the companions.
Solas was the best character in the entire game.
@Lurker_Z Do you prefer Dark Souls or Tarkov for your failure consequences?
So it was a divisive issue, they divided the entire possible customer base on what you said, these devs know people will sell out anyway due to branding, so they chose to split up the entire customer base to spread their idealogical messaging, while knowing the entire idealogical messaging (dei "woke" etc) was allready a hot topic to put it lightly to begin with
Note that the report said "Dragon Age ENGAGED approximately 1.5 million players during the quarter." Emphasis mine.
As such, that 1.5 million includes people who played the game through their subscription service, and since it's for the quarter a ratio of that engagement is through when the game was on sale. So yes, definitely that number is best case scenario, which to me signals that Mass Effect 5 is going to be in BIG trouble.
I really hope you are wrong cause dam that first trilogy was amazing besides the ending of course. Andromeda definately had potential but they just fumbled. Let's hope they don't this time or the franchise will be absolutely dead.
It was in big trouble since the moment we saw the first ad for Veilguard, now the trouble has went from "Wow this is going to be DEI slop" to "Wow the studio might close before their next DEI slop gets made"
That number also included people who played and got a refund on it.
That "engaged" would also include people who immediately refunded it. It might even include people who cancelled their pre-order and never actually played it, depending how loosely they use the term "engaged". It includes people who downloaded it through Xbox Live but never played it, or played for 5 mins and then deleted it. I doubt if even half is legitimate sales.
Andromeda showed us there is no chance they do a good job bringing Shepard back.
All you have to do to save your company is pull up the list of every job title and Ctrl+F for *DEI,* *Diversity,* *Equity,* and *Inclusion,* and fire every person with one of those words in their title. 100% guaranteed fix.
They are changing the titles like ATF just did for theirs.
a quick check for blue/pink/green hair and/or pronouns wouldn't hurt either
Blizzard or w/e the fuck the company is called now needs to do this
And this is why none of you people run a company.
*DEI* _"didn't earn it"_ and it's true meaning was always *'Division Exclusion & Intolerance'* 👌
There's always a market for games that represent modern social issues. But bringing that crap to popular established IPs and FANTASY SETTINGS is batshit crazy.
There's also a right way and a wrong way to do it. When you bring it into a fantasy world, it needs to make sense in the context of the game's world. Trails of Cold Steel ironically dealt with a lot of DEI issues like divisions between ethnicity, economic class, and social class. But, it made sense in a world that was rapidly mechanizing and integrating people of different backgrounds and tribes as they dealt with the threat of new wars.
Shoving it in estabilished IPs and ruining their lores is the issue.
I don't have any problem with devs that decide to make an original game of their own with those messages. I could safely ignore it (or not), but I can't ignore when they ruin an IP I like.
Movies are starting to stand up to DEI too. I saw Nosferatu last night and i was shocked at how good it was and how they avoided all the aspects of modernity.
The way count orlok dropped the little girls body 😂 edit dragon age: veilguard over that kids head
@mikeben4584 Bro that scene was amazing. I was so happy that they didn't shy away from showing that. The sound engineering in the movie was fantastic, the set design and the casting was so immersive. Real prosthetics, real sets. Man Johnny taught his daughter how to act too!
Not including DEI isn't the same as standing up against it.
@MorMacFey-v2g did you see movie? Seemed like they stood up to it. They took that award checklist and burnt it up.
@@gslang3489 I don't have to see any movie to know that. Did the movies from the 1980s stand up to DEI or did they just not have it?
Even considering that Veilguard is a singleplayer game, you can simply compare it to Witcher 3, Skyrim and Cyberpunk 2077. 14 years later Skyrim still has 46k 24h peak on Steam, 10 years later Witcher 3 has a 23k 24h peak. Cyberpunk is a little newer but still older than Veilguard and has a 33k 24h peak. Veilguard? 4k peak.
Lmao good lord
Sheesh, i knew it was bad but I didn't expect it to be THAT bad.
Skyrim has multiple versions also.
Dei is Latin for God. Like Agnus Dei or Gloria In Excelsis Deo. I found it fascinating that DEI acts like a new religion and it calls itself god.
And their followers are reverse flash level haters with Solomon Grundy intellect
I’m not the only one who noticed this. I’m not sure what it would mean but it’s definitely not coincidence.
Dragon age: the Fail-god.
Facinating, good to know. Reminds me of Yuji Horii Interview on Dragon Quest III HD Remake, about religion, the concerning rise of western idolatry and Japan's vigilance against it due to past experiences.
It also isn't a coincidence that it shares the same acronym as the Roman practice of "Divide and Conquer", Divide Et Impera
It’s okay to be Anglo Saxon
Not if you're hoping to survive the next few centuries...
dats racist
Yes! Proud Anglo Caucasian. I can finally say this without fear!
DEI IS SO DONE THANKS TRUMP!
Cool story bro, say something more original than a copy pasta.
One thing I'd like to add to the "It's a single player so once people finish they're done" bit; with a big RPG, you're more likely to have people play through more than once to see what other choices/decisions/outcomes they can have. Older bioware games had quite a few variations of things. Baldur's Gate 3 kept quite a few players for a while after it came out for a few months, obviously the game being extremely large, plus coop being added and such helped a lot with the player count, but it's still pretty dang high, and I still hear people saying "Trying this weird idea on this playthrough". Obviously not everyone is going to playthrough a longass singleplayer game multiple times, but I still think it's a factor when you look at the drop-off rate because it shows people don't care enough to go through it more than once.
Games like Baldur's Gate 3 and Stardew Valley have surprisingly good retention because of it.
Why is the "most educated" group in the country complaining about this the most?
Merit based FINALLY benefits them.
Been held back too long ✊🏿✊🏿
lol
👻
Which country?
Its not gone, just going into hiding. DEI is the tool and not the goal. The people pushing it still have the money and power, and are considering their next approach.
And Trump put them on notice at Davos earlier.
DEI roach mode activated, better check under the cupboard
@@filidhdeklend893 All Trump is doing is playing his part. He acts like he is shutting down DEI but they shut it down and have already rebranded it last YEAR!!!!!
As a german It's always funny to hear "Bluesky", as here in Germany Blue is the color of the AfD party. Thats the party getting called nazis every time they are mentioned. I knows there isnt really a correlation, but i do think its funny.
It is also the party which Elon Musk is friends with - go look at some of the stuff they’ve said, it’s wild.
Scary shit
@@TickleFight94
never saw anything , can you clarify bro ? Wanna know, if u have time to explain.
Or was ist "funny" comment cause of the Pose Elon Musk did ?
@@TickleFight94it's the party led by a lesbian married to a Sri Lankan immigrant. They are not radical at all
@@TickleFight94 not wild, common sense, which is why they got my vote
What DEI really stands for: DIDN'T EARN IT. Bout time we brought back competance into the nation.
DEI IS SO DONE THANKS TRUMP!
i agree with removing DEI but you're the same people that hate h1b visas despite them bringing competence to the nation. be a little more consistent lil bro
oh my god i agree with you but can you puppets stop posting the same exact comment everywhere
Look up Julian Khater he was let out of prison by Trump. Cop killer. No big deal.
@@itariwasashi1645 Bots/NPCs telling Bots/NPCs to not be Bots/NPCs 🤣
@Asmongold, the EA statement says "1.5M engagement". Does even say players. People that bought and refunded without playing are being counted as well.
EA also reported a loss of between $400M and $550M for Q3.
The problem with the access Journalism that companies don't seem to get is, if you rate a game favorably to maintain good credibility with the companies who give you those sweet delicious early access review opportunities and it sucks; you lose reputation and less people will traffic to your site. Which, eventually, will lead the game companies to slowly favor you less regardless because giving you that early copy won't bring them the Pre-Orders and Day 1 buys they're looking for.
concord not even breaking 700 players was the moment
Asmon is a flashlight. He simply points stuff out and gives such a reasonable center explanation you cant put him on any side
Which is why he's such a threat to them. They want you to either be cheering them on, or one of the bad guys that they can stand against. It doesn't matter which, so long as you're a resource they can take advantage of. Asmon isn't either: all he does is give a matter-of-fact explanation of things as he sees it, no more no less. It undermines their entire "good guys vs bad guys" narrative, which is an existential threat to it since you can't radicalize supporters without it.
It’s a skill, I’m certain of it.
I think it'll be remembered because it's the first "big name gamer darling" franchise to destroy itself. It also is very hard to pretend its not due to the hamfisted messaging.
“The trouble with movies as a business is that it is an art. The trouble with movies as an art is that it is a business.” Apparently, Charlton Heston is attributed with this quote, and I think the same thing could be said about video games. Developers have this vision on what game they are going to make, and they simply don't care if they piss off their customers. They'll go so far as to insult and demean most of their player base to see that vision through.
I believe their is one reason to play the game. If you rush the main storyline and do NONE of the side quests/relationship quests or whatever you call it, all of the main characters die at the end. So if Veilguard has one thing going for it, it's a great speedrunner game and you still get the best ending.
Jason gets to be an industry insider because he is their plant. He covers of crazy shit and goes to bat for devs because its his job. He leaks stuff to promote sales & to get news traffic.
You know they're lying when they say it only performed at 50% of what they projected. They probably expected it to hit more like 5-8 million, at least.
and mathematically they needed 30+ million to make a single dollar. Sounds like open fraud to shareholders and charity to woke moron employees.
the sales number was over 10 million they had projected. so no they are indeed gaslighting the shareholders. thing is a lot of them are now smelling the methane and dumping the stock
Thank god. Maybe the western gaming industry will actually focus on better story telling and hire real talent now rather than solely focusing on what that person identifies as their gender or the color of their skin. Not all western gaming companies were doing this but you'd have to be completely ignorant to believe none were. Dragon Age died because of this sadly
Eventually. The executive order just went out. It's going to take some time.
i dont think western culture will be able to recover from democrat leadership. hollywood is both physically and metaphorically gone. our games look old and stale, while china/japan's games look inspired and exciting. even american music has had a major recession during the woke times. sad that a whole ass generation of american kids grew up with shitty art, because millennials decided that there wasn't enough institutional racism and that we needed more of it lol
@@CrimsonFIame All they care about is profits.. DEI was just an annoyance for them. I don't see this as a fix.. I hope I'm wrong.
I remember losing a job to a DEI hire. Buddy of mine was a recruiter at the company and didn't have a choice. They had three years less experience and were from my previous company as well after being fired for incompetency
I think most gamers, irrespective of their political or social beliefs, generally prefer that video games remain separate from real-world issues, serving as a form of escapism. When an ideology is pushed as an agenda, it ruins the experience.
So it cost them 240 million and they made 90 million in sales. Not counting how much they have to give to video game stores and promotions. They prolly took home about 45 to 60 million doesn’t sound like I’d want to invest in them
Well you should they run an awesome charity where they house unwanted devs doing what they like.
Are you think 1.5 million was a sales number and then multiplying that by $60?
The report said 1.5 million players ENGAGED. It said nothing of sales numbers
2:20 OMG logic? you can't use that! You'll get banned from reddit for that!
That sounds like a good thing to me.
You get banned for any contrasting opinion. Don't like a game mechanic? Ban
At my old job, there was this guy that was always walking around the facility and calling people racist. He also kept talking about how nobody liked his ancestry, and the entire planet wanting his people to die. This guy got canned very fast.
👃?
So they guy was right.
The most ridiculous cope I've seen from the Veilguard sub is one person who was insisting that when it says "engaged players", that actually means players who get really into the game, because they think that's what they really care about, and so the actual sales number is probably way higher. Just the most insane copium.
Bioware exemplifies the Theseus paradox. If you replace all the boards, it is indeed no longer the ship of Theseus.
5:26 they didn’t know it was divisive, they live in bubbles. all of their friends think just like they do and if they don’t they cut them out of their life
nailed it, also a good summary of "toxic positivity"
So EA has issued 264.000.000 shares. Crunching the numbers the stocks have dropped about 7,5 billion dollars in total.
“Every single DEI hire, including your friend, Obi-Soy Kenshill, is now an enemy of the gaming industry!” -Sheev Palpatine
"Nothing personnel, kid, todey yuo DEI" - Sonichu
@@SEThatered **Tips fedora**
I was 100% going to buy Dragon Age Dreadwolf. I loved Inquisition and wanted more. When the game got rebranded to Veilguard and unveiled the purple softcore image, I was still fine with it, more Inquisition type game is fine with me
Week of release I was ready for a single player RPG, hyped to have something for the winter months. Early review videos were positive and I was feeling good. But then I watched a video that didn't say what was bad about the game, but had a huge buyer beware warning
So then I dug deeper and looked for more reviews, and heard there was a lot of sjw type shit in there. I messaged a friend 'Veilguard can't be THAT bad can it?' and he told me to just wait and see, and I'm fuckin glad he did. Then the video of the pushups as punishment for misgendering someone came out. And I am so happy I am $70 and 10 hours richer. Rip bozo
Same. Won't touch that pile of crap. Sucks cuz DAO and DAI were damn awesome for modern RPGs
I played DAI and it was such a great game but I was not that deep into the franchise like a friend of mine is. He was looking forward to another DA but he showed me the trailer of veilguard and was upset. At first I didn't see a problem with it, it just looked average, no gameplay or anything just a cutscene. Little did I know the game was littered with bs. He unfortunately bought it day one as a fan but was very dissapointed in it lol I on the other hand saved myself from this catastrophe.
BlueSky at this point is doing us a favor. All the bears in one forest...
D- Didn’t
E- Earn
I- It
Donald
Ended
It
@@theghostofmaximumvolume3414 My man 🤝🏽
@@theghostofmaximumvolume3414 I enjoy both definitions myself lol
DEI had to DEE. EYE. EEE.
16:15 cognitive dissonance is a hell of a drug. This is what the intelligent-yet-stupid/ignorant people are experiencing: the pain and shame of being wrong about something. It’s too much to handle for some people. That’s why there’s been mass exoduses to Bluesky since Trump won.
Why would you ever do anything in your game other than make players happy and profit max? Why would you want to pump any ideology into your game if it’s hurting either of those things? It’s actual insanity and against their own best interests.
You should only subtract from one (profit or fun) to boost the other. You should never subtract from one to hurt your game. Actually psychotic logic. 😂
Because it takes less effort and you can pocket a ton of money for yourself with donations from DEI investor funds like Blackrock. They don''t care if they earn money or not. This is exactly what happened with Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. The boss of Warhorse got a massive money bonus from Embracer group to add in checklist elements and historical revisionism.
They're evangelists of a religion.
@ Ah, now that makes sense. So they are making a profit, it's just not coming from the consumer. Weird!
im sure like 1 mil of the purchasers were already established dragon age fans who just wanted the game to be good and were gonna buy it no matter what
This is the mentality for most established IPs. They think that the old players will buy the game no matter what and they feel like they can get away with doing anything with it. But more often than not, these franchise overhauls end up as disastrous failures that end up alienating the old fans and doesn't gain the new fans they think it will. This problem has hit the JRPGs pretty hard since the late 2010s as most legacy franchises went from turn based to action rpg and people just left.
Yup have a friend like this, he was already uneasy before its release with the trailer and everything.
This is the game HR makes people play when they need "inclusivity training". I'm so proud of my fellow gamers for throwing this garbage in the trash where it belongs.
When I see these charts I get sad. Not for DEI dying but because of all my favorite IPs being sacrificed to get here.
Fun fact: Schreier in german means screamer. A very fitting name for Jason Schreier I think.
66 percent of my friends that have dragonage played less than 10 hours
The product doesn't even need to be bad "Make a product no one wants, people don't buy the product."
Can we please acknowledge Asmongold's great choice in background music? Skyrim and Witcher 3 is top tier
Electronic Arts stock fell 19% today, mainly because of FIFA, but Veilguard was namechecked. Baldur's Gate 3 did it right, Veilguard did it wrong. This shall be studied.
What happened with that Fifa? Don't really keep up with that shitshow.
Please no more furry stuff with a bear.
Yeah what happened with FIFA?
I’m ok with it as long as you have the option to kill the bear as well. Both sides need to be told not just one that’s how you make a great game is you allow anything and everything not just one side with a lecture.
Nfl and fifa doesnt sell well.
*DEI: Discrimination, Entitlement, Inequality*
1:57 Oops there goes rabbit
The only part Asmon got wrong there is at the end: No, people will not look back saying "Man, maybe we shouldn't make games like that." No, they will say "What the hell were they even thinking when they tried that bs?"
"The issue with Veilguard is it was rebooted three times..."
So was Duke Nukem Forever, with multiple studios and changeovers. Doesn't change that it was still sh¡t. And yet three other Dragon Age games were made in a smaller timeframe.
DEI: Divide, Exclude, Incite.
Didn't Earn It
That chart at 4:16, compared to Dragon Age Origins, this quick sad death death, was only the point the original purchasers were telling allllllll their friends, "You gotta get this game!" and then expansions, and mods, it was alive! This one fake on that ruined the story has actual better connected technology and is dead as a door nail.
DRAGON AGE: THE FAILGAURD
Guys, I know how to make Veilguard good: make a mod so that when you start the game it takes you to DA Inquisition and you just play through that game.
When you leave in 50 percent of the agenda you lose 50 percent of the player base.
The other 50 percent will see no one is playing that game and will move on.
The sad thing is that veilguard killed the ip, I don't see how dragon age is salvageable outside of remakes.
Think of ESG and DEI like a wildfire sweeping an old forest. It burns up all the old growth (old inefficient publishers, game studios, and abused IP) and makes room for new life. In this case, new game studios with passionate young developers ready to create new unique games. With the old growth gone, there's more sunlight reaching the forest floor for new life to take root and take over.
The world is healing
RIP Bioware
i don't even have any malice but i wont be a part of anyones social engineering project and if they are focusing hard on DEI then its a highly correlated point to a game being bad
so i nope out without prejudice
50% miss on bookings is AFTER they cut sales forecasts. They were probably expecting 5-6 million copies originally, cut that down to 3 million, and only got 1.5 million.
This game was like finding out your kid was gay out of nowhere. You were not sure about it at first and tried to give him the benefit of the doubt because he’s your son. You still love him and respect his decision but your relationship falls off and you just slowly stop communicating except on Christmas for 5 minutes.
my grandfather always said to never interupt when someone is showing you who they really are
Jason Schreier being exactly what you think he is.
I think if they went into a meeting with the board of directors and showed them the cut scene where they “have to do a barve,” the whole studio would be immediately laid off
1,5 million players very likely includes people who used the timed trial or the separate character creator. It's(or was at least) part of geforce now for which you can bet they counted those keys sold in bulk as separate players even if they weren't activated. Not to mention the game was being sold 50% off like 2 months after the release. All in all the actual sales are likely way less than 1,5 mil x 70 bucks.
But IGN told us it was 10/10????????
What the hell is Max33 and has been spammed like 15 times when the video just came out 30 seconds ago
Don't bother learning, just forget about it
เหมือนฉันไม่มีไอเดียเลย
นี่ไม่ใช่การส่งเสริมการขาย มันเพียงเพื่อความสนุกสนาน
ความแห้งแล้งของความเย่อหยิ่ง
เหมือนกับเนื้อหาที่สนุกสนาน
Trump just signed an executive order to declassify MLK and JFK files i was expecting that to be the next vid honestly.
Video released on the clips channel for that
He also signed a EO to let a cop killer out of prison.
Julian Khater
Epstein Files wen?
@@keiththompson4300 yeah dude and the meme coin stuff was super dodgy. Most of us voted for the guy but after that idek anymore. Notice how I didn't say president trump just Trump.
The real Bioware died when the Doctors retired
The problem of modern games is not that they include DEI content, but they hire DEI people who turn out to be extremely incompetent (who would have thought)
I'm surprised there wasn't a DEI coin pump and dump before it died
Reddit is still a DEI/Woke sanctuary. I was banned from the BG3 reddit, cuz I'm subscribed to r/Asmingold
4:07 Dragon Age is extremely popular with us women, and i can tell you from my perspective that we tend to replay a GOOD rpg about ten times on release because we want to roleplay several different characters and romance other companions etc. the Dragon Age Inquisition tag on tumblr was heavily flooded with fan content (gifs, discussion/, new playthroughs, etc) up until 2018 bc so many people were STILL replaying it.
the fact that only 3k players are doing that for Veilguard right now, says everything. even female gamers are sick of this woke slop.
DEI was always illegal and their needs to be class action suits against corporations they need to pay out for damages they did to people.
Jason Schreier, the official Jim Cramer™ of gaming
wasn't this game in "development" for like 10 years?
I still got banned on reddit for being sane!
5:40 Wasn't expecting an Office Space quote today....
Every day is good day for quote from Office space :) Except the cases of Monday...
I work for a major worldwide corperation that has been doing terrible these past few years. All because of DEI hiring and allowing people to fail upwards. The cracks have been showing for a while having managers based upon skin color and what they identified as instead of being qualified and performing well. This company will fail eventually if they don't turn this around now. The cracks are massive and showing...
If it sold 1.5m copies. Doesn't seem enough to even break even
As Eminem would say "snap back to reality, ope, there goes gravity ope, there goes rabbit, he choked" pretty much encapsulated the whole woke dei garbage
Yeah, well, Eminem is one of them. He doesn't even believe the things he raps about.
@@gaminacthemaniac6444 Em became an establishment puppet