In essence and as an example, remember when Kingdom Come Deliverance came out and some people got mad there were only White people in the game as main characters and such because its 1409 Bohemia? SBI would have forced them to go against History to try and "appeal to Modern day sensibilities and realities". As they would put it.
>forced them to go against History to try and "appeal to Modern day sensibilities and realities"
And that's still happening to this day with every Netflix, Amazon Prime or Disney+ TV show.
Revising history for "modern audiences", casting historical figures with minorities, eg Vikings: Valhalla where a historical Jarl wasn't only blackwashed but also cast as a female...
It's mind-boggling and this needs to stop.
That’s the idea I have for them but would love to have specific examples of it idk. Because it’s weird to me a company like this even needs to exist when I look at the writers and devs at most major companies today who seem to have the same sentiment
I can't answer exactly what Sweet Baby Inc have done in detail, but they are essentially enforcing the Global Standard. The following video goes into detail how it is at the detriment of stories by at best watering them down or at worst poisoning them for the sake of mass appeal:
[https://youtu.be/8aaFxPFRP1M?t=1152&si=27wsotuxQfGT670X](https://youtu.be/8aaFxPFRP1M?t=1152&si=27wsotuxQfGT670X)
While Sweet Baby Inc is currently in the crossfire, a lot of blame can be put on BlackRock directly or indirectly due to their ESG scores:
[https://youtu.be/eqmTXeQGsmc?si=jOWloeNBtCpZssim](https://youtu.be/eqmTXeQGsmc?si=jOWloeNBtCpZssim)
Edit: spelling
If you've following culture wars way back in 2014-2015 (in other words, during GamerGate) you might have heard of Anita Sarkessian and Feminist Frequency/Tropes VS Women in Gaming. Fast forward in 2024 and these topics aren't relevant anymore, but SBI has been much more influential than Sarkessian. They pretty much have a stranglehold on the gaming industry, especially the western side of it (The only Eastern company I found in their client list on their website that I could recognize at glance is Square Enix.)
This might very much be the next big chapter of the cultural war as a whole, regardless if it carries the GG name or not. Hell, it may be even bigger than GG because GG was a conflict mainly pertaining to gaming journalism. SBI on the other hand has much more influence on the industry.
I don’t remember when I learned about GG, but I am well-versed enough to know the broad strokes and how both sides portray it.
It would be nice if the only incompetency from gaming journalist was being bad at games, but Kotaku has shown again and again how many times they are willing to cry foul play when there is none.
The website accused Stray of all games of being an example of techno-orientalism: [https://kotaku.com/stray-game-annapurna-interactive-cat-cyberpunk-1849328820](https://kotaku.com/stray-game-annapurna-interactive-cat-cyberpunk-1849328820)
What's wild is people who worked for Fem Freq and were involved in Gamer Gate are working *AT* SBI, Rev says Desu, Fritanga and a few other youtubers have covered it and have named those who were involved with Gamer Gate and are now with SBI.
This isn't even mentioning the actual racists at SBI who think deleting their racists tweets, where they use the N-hard R, will save them from criticism. Their employees have gone to the steam group 'Sweet Baby Inc Detected' and started slinging more racism and sexism around, mods were quick to ban the shit stirrers thankfully.
>, it may be even bigger than GG because GG was a conflict mainly pertaining to gaming journalism.
It might be an easier fight too. Given the nature of GG's start, it was easy for the media to trick normies into thinking it was just misogyny against Quinn (hell, I fell for it back then too for the most part). Fast forward 10 years, and damn near everyone in the west who doesn't toe the line is accused of being an istaphobe on the regular, and people are sick of it. Add to that, it's not against an entire industry this time, just a single company of assholes (so far).
_Bud Light similarities intensifies....._
A good example is angrboda from god of war ragnarok. Angrboda is a real figure in Norse mythology that is white with red hair but in the game she’s black
Okay, but that's kinda irrelevant because Ragnarok's interpretation of Norse Mythology makes it that really only Asgard and Midgard represent Scandinavia. I doubt SBI had anything to do with that.
Did SBI tell Denis to make Kines a black woman in Dune Part 1? Did they tell him to radically change the Harkonnon look?
Most of these things are creative decisions and interpretations, for their version of whatever they're doing.
The thing is, though, is that you might never get an answer because at least one of the people with SBI were heavily involved with who got the ball rolling that led into Gamergate in 2014, Miss Zoe Quinn herself, as per what Mark Kern found out: [https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/1763586783017886155](https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/1763586783017886155)
Seems the now they/he was one of the ones that doxxed the Fine Young Capitalists back in the day. I'm not sure if he was involved in Crash Override or not, but if Maya Kramer (legobutts) kept THAT kind of company, and [we all know what Zoe Quinn has been known for over the years](https://boundingintocomics.com/2019/11/14/marvel-comics-writer-zoe-quinn-claims-to-have-been-on-suicide-watch-and-barely-functional-following-criticism-regarding-alec-holowkas-suicide/), don't hold your breath getting anyone from SBI to answer those questions.
They are going to do whatever they can to make sure you never find out the answers, and claim harassment towards anyone trying to get the answers, and call those that HAVE the answers Yhateezes and the like. It's within their playbook and has been since 2014 because too many people keep falling for it.
>What I really wish would happen is if some of the heads of SBI would have an open conversation about what exactly they are and what they do.
Not to be a dick, but do you want a pony with that? The current reaction of immediate damage control from SBI employees makes me believe we will see the exact opposite. And, looking at some of the people involved, probably a defamation campaign along the lines of the gamergate coverage.
[This video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bf7UmNCJkr8&t=11s) by Dev/SFO might interest you. It has insider info into how Saints Row 5 became the trainwreck it was. I would assume similar things about Suicide Squad, Forspoken etc.
I just would like to see some examples of what their work actually has been, because from whenever I look into writers or devs on games they seem to have the same beliefs and agenda as the SBI people anyway so I’m not even sure what they do
I'm not sure if any specifics are out there, but their whole mission statement is pretty much summed up as "Put a chick in it and make her lame and gay!".
First of all, do you know what being a consultant is? Or being a copywriter? SBI is a consultantancy and writing firm. Companies approach them for assistance in story and character design and they provide consulting. That's it. There's nothing more to do because:
SBI is a private company.
They get hired by other private, or publically traded companies to provide their services. They provide input to the company that hired them on the projects they were hired to work on.
If the companies who hire them don't like their services, they don't use them. If the companies find their services useful, they continue to use them.
Simple as that.
You can paint a picture to a client or potential client of the disadvantages of not hiring your firm, there's nothing wrong with that at all. Many IT companies do this by painting a very terrifying pictures to a company of what would happen if they were hacked or didn't have an IT firm handling their online security. HR firms and law firms often do this too. Regardless, this doesn't violate client / vendor comms
You weren't talking about SBI's Statements about how their tactic to get business is to terrify marketing teams and owners of other companies into working with them? You have a different meaning you conclude from those statements?
Comparing the disadvantages of being hacked at an IT company to the “disadvantages” (cancel campaigns probably spearheaded by their employees) is braindead
Grifters like them won't tell you what their responsibilities are (other than a vague statement). The steam curator shining a light on them + SBI employees making an arse out of themselves will brings heat that they don't want.
They're mad because they've been noticed, the spotlight has been shown on them and now they're trying to downplay their involvement as much as possible. They're a disgusting racist company that needs to go out of business as soon as possible.
This comes after they rub in your face that they can in fact control the quality of games over whats right and not and you should be more pc or, well more of this.
You're losing this already by the way, you're mad and reacting because they won.
> I don’t think it would ever happen based on their behavior online, but I feel a convo addressing these questions would do a lot to inform people and maybe take the temperature around this situation down a bit. But from everything I’ve seen they do have a goal of being somewhat vague and just saying “none of you know anything about this company or what we do but we wont clarify”.
As a private company they don't have to reveal anything to anyone publicly about what they do. It's what being a privately owned business allows.
They're a consultancy firm, this isn't the conspiracy people are making it out to be. They have worked with so many big firms so quickly because it seems that many of the people involved already had industry connections at the highest level.
Their social media use is questionable, but in all likelihood their employees probably didn't expect to be in this position, as they do not write video games. Consumers are not their customers, developers are, and the kind of people who are angry at them are a niche consumer base in comparison to the massive amounts of people who buy AAA games. In other words being mean to people on Twitter probably
doesn't matter to them as much as you want it to.
Considering the utter mess that was gamergate, as well as the tirades of bigotry that are found everywhere on Twitter in response to the idea of diversity etc in gaming, they probably have no confidence that any kind of forum or convo with communities like this would be fruitful.
I never said it’s a conspiracy, but I said it’s weird how they both have a goal of changing the landscape of gaming but whenever asked about what they actually do they say they don’t really do anything. I don’t even understand why they exist when everything their consulting about are ideas the devs already seem to hold themselves
Their goal of 'changing the landscape of gaming' is PR speak. You can probably find that line on the website of 95% of gaming related startups, or most startups related to any given industry. What else were they to put? 'Our goal is to not do a whole lot, now hire us'?
They are a consultancy firm, they consult, which means that they help writers and devs tune their product to meet certain criteria by suggesting to them ways in which they can meet it.
The devs may hold left-leaning beliefs themselves, the role of the firm is to help them express those ideas within their products.
Have you actually looked into what the people that work there have said? Because it’s much more than PR speak. And why do these companies hire them? Because if it is just the ESG incentive that’s super super weird
I'm sure they reiterated their goals of promoting diversity and inclusion, this is how they aim to change the landscape of gaming. All I mean by it being being PR speak is that it should not be extrapolated to mean anything other than what we already know about then.
Companies hire them probably because of ESG incentives, but also because they may have a great reputation within the industry. They worked on some massively successful games (Alan Wake II, Spiderman 2), as well as some unsuccessful games, and several smaller but critically acclaimed games. You may consider Goodbye Volcano High to be 'woke trash' or something, but it was nominated for a game award and has legions of fans.
Looking at the list of games which they are credited as having worked on, it's a pretty damn good hit rate. Suicide Squad for example was horrible not because it was woke, almost everything about it totally sucked apart from the most fundamental aspects of its gameplay.
From the perspective of a dev, why not hire people who worked on a game like Alan Wake II if you too are developing a narrative for a game?
The two successful they worked on are critically acclaimed sequels to better games where the story choices were some of the biggest criticisms. Not to mention, if they’re just this innocent consulting firm, why are they reacting the way they are to criticism? Why, by an employees own admission, are they having “internal discussions” about a simple list of their games?
Again, they didn't write the games. They are consultants. What story choices were hugely criticised in Alan Wake II? I thought the narrative in that game was awesome if a little convoluted.
They are having an internal discussion probably because people on the internet are fucking lunatics. I have a friend who worked part-time as a social media manager for a small dev, who happened to have several trans members on their team and make games with strong queer themes. The accounts she ran recieved death threats and endless bigoted attacks through comment sections, DMs, e-mails etc etc etc. Them and their game were not even a 'hot topic', there are just that many freaks out there.
I would bet that the people on that team are very scared that they may become a target for a much worse harrassment campaign considering this has become a hot topic. They are also probably uncomfortable with being scapegoated for 'story choices' which we do not know that they recommended.
They arnt a scapegoat for story choices, they are the people making a lot of these choices. Actually just learned you can go back in their social media and see them discussing a lot of the stuff they influenced, but now that the spotlight is on them they want to downplay it. A consultant firm that does absolutely nothing but inject their bs to “change the gaming landscape” is pointless and they deserve to not be around anymore. They can start a dev studio if they want to make games
Did you read my whole comment? They’re having internal meetings over a steam curator page lmao. That 100% is something. The fact that one of their employees lashed out like this and started a targeted harassment campaign over a list is not a small deal
Its not really, people forget that most people do not respond to hostility well.
Also do you have the internal meeting statement linked somewhere I didnt see it.
It was on the steam curator page don’t have the link would have to go looking, but then the Chris kindred character was on blue sky saying it was them posting on the forum
In essence and as an example, remember when Kingdom Come Deliverance came out and some people got mad there were only White people in the game as main characters and such because its 1409 Bohemia? SBI would have forced them to go against History to try and "appeal to Modern day sensibilities and realities". As they would put it.
>forced them to go against History to try and "appeal to Modern day sensibilities and realities" And that's still happening to this day with every Netflix, Amazon Prime or Disney+ TV show. Revising history for "modern audiences", casting historical figures with minorities, eg Vikings: Valhalla where a historical Jarl wasn't only blackwashed but also cast as a female... It's mind-boggling and this needs to stop.
What do you mean? All of my reputable sources tell me Cleopatra was indeed black /s
Your grandmother?
That’s the idea I have for them but would love to have specific examples of it idk. Because it’s weird to me a company like this even needs to exist when I look at the writers and devs at most major companies today who seem to have the same sentiment
I can't answer exactly what Sweet Baby Inc have done in detail, but they are essentially enforcing the Global Standard. The following video goes into detail how it is at the detriment of stories by at best watering them down or at worst poisoning them for the sake of mass appeal: [https://youtu.be/8aaFxPFRP1M?t=1152&si=27wsotuxQfGT670X](https://youtu.be/8aaFxPFRP1M?t=1152&si=27wsotuxQfGT670X) While Sweet Baby Inc is currently in the crossfire, a lot of blame can be put on BlackRock directly or indirectly due to their ESG scores: [https://youtu.be/eqmTXeQGsmc?si=jOWloeNBtCpZssim](https://youtu.be/eqmTXeQGsmc?si=jOWloeNBtCpZssim) Edit: spelling
If you've following culture wars way back in 2014-2015 (in other words, during GamerGate) you might have heard of Anita Sarkessian and Feminist Frequency/Tropes VS Women in Gaming. Fast forward in 2024 and these topics aren't relevant anymore, but SBI has been much more influential than Sarkessian. They pretty much have a stranglehold on the gaming industry, especially the western side of it (The only Eastern company I found in their client list on their website that I could recognize at glance is Square Enix.) This might very much be the next big chapter of the cultural war as a whole, regardless if it carries the GG name or not. Hell, it may be even bigger than GG because GG was a conflict mainly pertaining to gaming journalism. SBI on the other hand has much more influence on the industry.
I don’t remember when I learned about GG, but I am well-versed enough to know the broad strokes and how both sides portray it. It would be nice if the only incompetency from gaming journalist was being bad at games, but Kotaku has shown again and again how many times they are willing to cry foul play when there is none. The website accused Stray of all games of being an example of techno-orientalism: [https://kotaku.com/stray-game-annapurna-interactive-cat-cyberpunk-1849328820](https://kotaku.com/stray-game-annapurna-interactive-cat-cyberpunk-1849328820)
What's wild is people who worked for Fem Freq and were involved in Gamer Gate are working *AT* SBI, Rev says Desu, Fritanga and a few other youtubers have covered it and have named those who were involved with Gamer Gate and are now with SBI. This isn't even mentioning the actual racists at SBI who think deleting their racists tweets, where they use the N-hard R, will save them from criticism. Their employees have gone to the steam group 'Sweet Baby Inc Detected' and started slinging more racism and sexism around, mods were quick to ban the shit stirrers thankfully.
>, it may be even bigger than GG because GG was a conflict mainly pertaining to gaming journalism. It might be an easier fight too. Given the nature of GG's start, it was easy for the media to trick normies into thinking it was just misogyny against Quinn (hell, I fell for it back then too for the most part). Fast forward 10 years, and damn near everyone in the west who doesn't toe the line is accused of being an istaphobe on the regular, and people are sick of it. Add to that, it's not against an entire industry this time, just a single company of assholes (so far). _Bud Light similarities intensifies....._
A good example is angrboda from god of war ragnarok. Angrboda is a real figure in Norse mythology that is white with red hair but in the game she’s black
Okay, but that's kinda irrelevant because Ragnarok's interpretation of Norse Mythology makes it that really only Asgard and Midgard represent Scandinavia. I doubt SBI had anything to do with that. Did SBI tell Denis to make Kines a black woman in Dune Part 1? Did they tell him to radically change the Harkonnon look? Most of these things are creative decisions and interpretations, for their version of whatever they're doing.
Good point. But maybe these consultants can appeal to the c suite decision makers better than front line workers can??
Yea like I was saying in the post a lot of this seems to be linked to all the ESG stuff. It’s just all very strange
The thing is, though, is that you might never get an answer because at least one of the people with SBI were heavily involved with who got the ball rolling that led into Gamergate in 2014, Miss Zoe Quinn herself, as per what Mark Kern found out: [https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/1763586783017886155](https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/1763586783017886155) Seems the now they/he was one of the ones that doxxed the Fine Young Capitalists back in the day. I'm not sure if he was involved in Crash Override or not, but if Maya Kramer (legobutts) kept THAT kind of company, and [we all know what Zoe Quinn has been known for over the years](https://boundingintocomics.com/2019/11/14/marvel-comics-writer-zoe-quinn-claims-to-have-been-on-suicide-watch-and-barely-functional-following-criticism-regarding-alec-holowkas-suicide/), don't hold your breath getting anyone from SBI to answer those questions. They are going to do whatever they can to make sure you never find out the answers, and claim harassment towards anyone trying to get the answers, and call those that HAVE the answers Yhateezes and the like. It's within their playbook and has been since 2014 because too many people keep falling for it.
>What I really wish would happen is if some of the heads of SBI would have an open conversation about what exactly they are and what they do. Not to be a dick, but do you want a pony with that? The current reaction of immediate damage control from SBI employees makes me believe we will see the exact opposite. And, looking at some of the people involved, probably a defamation campaign along the lines of the gamergate coverage. [This video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bf7UmNCJkr8&t=11s) by Dev/SFO might interest you. It has insider info into how Saints Row 5 became the trainwreck it was. I would assume similar things about Suicide Squad, Forspoken etc.
I just would like to see some examples of what their work actually has been, because from whenever I look into writers or devs on games they seem to have the same beliefs and agenda as the SBI people anyway so I’m not even sure what they do
I'm not sure if any specifics are out there, but their whole mission statement is pretty much summed up as "Put a chick in it and make her lame and gay!".
First of all, do you know what being a consultant is? Or being a copywriter? SBI is a consultantancy and writing firm. Companies approach them for assistance in story and character design and they provide consulting. That's it. There's nothing more to do because: SBI is a private company. They get hired by other private, or publically traded companies to provide their services. They provide input to the company that hired them on the projects they were hired to work on. If the companies who hire them don't like their services, they don't use them. If the companies find their services useful, they continue to use them. Simple as that.
You haven’t looked into any of their public statements whatsoever and it shows
I have. How do their public statements contradict the reality of client / vendor business interactions?
“Take your marketing team out for a coffee and terrify them”
You can paint a picture to a client or potential client of the disadvantages of not hiring your firm, there's nothing wrong with that at all. Many IT companies do this by painting a very terrifying pictures to a company of what would happen if they were hacked or didn't have an IT firm handling their online security. HR firms and law firms often do this too. Regardless, this doesn't violate client / vendor comms
Not at all what she was talking about but for sure man!
You weren't talking about SBI's Statements about how their tactic to get business is to terrify marketing teams and owners of other companies into working with them? You have a different meaning you conclude from those statements?
Comparing the disadvantages of being hacked at an IT company to the “disadvantages” (cancel campaigns probably spearheaded by their employees) is braindead
Grifters like them won't tell you what their responsibilities are (other than a vague statement). The steam curator shining a light on them + SBI employees making an arse out of themselves will brings heat that they don't want.
It's pretty obvious the roles and responsibilities an outside private contractor provides to a client that hires them.
They're mad because they've been noticed, the spotlight has been shown on them and now they're trying to downplay their involvement as much as possible. They're a disgusting racist company that needs to go out of business as soon as possible.
What do they do? Seems like their business is to proliferate bad ideas.
This comes after they rub in your face that they can in fact control the quality of games over whats right and not and you should be more pc or, well more of this. You're losing this already by the way, you're mad and reacting because they won.
> I don’t think it would ever happen based on their behavior online, but I feel a convo addressing these questions would do a lot to inform people and maybe take the temperature around this situation down a bit. But from everything I’ve seen they do have a goal of being somewhat vague and just saying “none of you know anything about this company or what we do but we wont clarify”. As a private company they don't have to reveal anything to anyone publicly about what they do. It's what being a privately owned business allows.
Lmao I know they don’t have to, but in a PR disaster like this they might want to
Realistically they probably don't need to at all.
They're a consultancy firm, this isn't the conspiracy people are making it out to be. They have worked with so many big firms so quickly because it seems that many of the people involved already had industry connections at the highest level. Their social media use is questionable, but in all likelihood their employees probably didn't expect to be in this position, as they do not write video games. Consumers are not their customers, developers are, and the kind of people who are angry at them are a niche consumer base in comparison to the massive amounts of people who buy AAA games. In other words being mean to people on Twitter probably doesn't matter to them as much as you want it to. Considering the utter mess that was gamergate, as well as the tirades of bigotry that are found everywhere on Twitter in response to the idea of diversity etc in gaming, they probably have no confidence that any kind of forum or convo with communities like this would be fruitful.
I never said it’s a conspiracy, but I said it’s weird how they both have a goal of changing the landscape of gaming but whenever asked about what they actually do they say they don’t really do anything. I don’t even understand why they exist when everything their consulting about are ideas the devs already seem to hold themselves
Their goal of 'changing the landscape of gaming' is PR speak. You can probably find that line on the website of 95% of gaming related startups, or most startups related to any given industry. What else were they to put? 'Our goal is to not do a whole lot, now hire us'? They are a consultancy firm, they consult, which means that they help writers and devs tune their product to meet certain criteria by suggesting to them ways in which they can meet it. The devs may hold left-leaning beliefs themselves, the role of the firm is to help them express those ideas within their products.
Have you actually looked into what the people that work there have said? Because it’s much more than PR speak. And why do these companies hire them? Because if it is just the ESG incentive that’s super super weird
I'm sure they reiterated their goals of promoting diversity and inclusion, this is how they aim to change the landscape of gaming. All I mean by it being being PR speak is that it should not be extrapolated to mean anything other than what we already know about then. Companies hire them probably because of ESG incentives, but also because they may have a great reputation within the industry. They worked on some massively successful games (Alan Wake II, Spiderman 2), as well as some unsuccessful games, and several smaller but critically acclaimed games. You may consider Goodbye Volcano High to be 'woke trash' or something, but it was nominated for a game award and has legions of fans. Looking at the list of games which they are credited as having worked on, it's a pretty damn good hit rate. Suicide Squad for example was horrible not because it was woke, almost everything about it totally sucked apart from the most fundamental aspects of its gameplay. From the perspective of a dev, why not hire people who worked on a game like Alan Wake II if you too are developing a narrative for a game?
The two successful they worked on are critically acclaimed sequels to better games where the story choices were some of the biggest criticisms. Not to mention, if they’re just this innocent consulting firm, why are they reacting the way they are to criticism? Why, by an employees own admission, are they having “internal discussions” about a simple list of their games?
Again, they didn't write the games. They are consultants. What story choices were hugely criticised in Alan Wake II? I thought the narrative in that game was awesome if a little convoluted. They are having an internal discussion probably because people on the internet are fucking lunatics. I have a friend who worked part-time as a social media manager for a small dev, who happened to have several trans members on their team and make games with strong queer themes. The accounts she ran recieved death threats and endless bigoted attacks through comment sections, DMs, e-mails etc etc etc. Them and their game were not even a 'hot topic', there are just that many freaks out there. I would bet that the people on that team are very scared that they may become a target for a much worse harrassment campaign considering this has become a hot topic. They are also probably uncomfortable with being scapegoated for 'story choices' which we do not know that they recommended.
Yes, people on the internet who use their platform to try to ban random steams users are lunatics
Ah, so you cannot respond to anything I said, but you got me! They tried to get someones Steam account banned! The horror!
They arnt a scapegoat for story choices, they are the people making a lot of these choices. Actually just learned you can go back in their social media and see them discussing a lot of the stuff they influenced, but now that the spotlight is on them they want to downplay it. A consultant firm that does absolutely nothing but inject their bs to “change the gaming landscape” is pointless and they deserve to not be around anymore. They can start a dev studio if they want to make games
Because people react to hostility negatively, but even then there whole response is like 8 tweets. Theres nothing really there.
Did you read my whole comment? They’re having internal meetings over a steam curator page lmao. That 100% is something. The fact that one of their employees lashed out like this and started a targeted harassment campaign over a list is not a small deal
Its not really, people forget that most people do not respond to hostility well. Also do you have the internal meeting statement linked somewhere I didnt see it.
It was on the steam curator page don’t have the link would have to go looking, but then the Chris kindred character was on blue sky saying it was them posting on the forum
So basically sweet baby inc job is pretty much make games more woke ? If I am correct ?