Look, a monkey!

Black Myth: Wukong or how I started worrying and found myself in a weird fragile alliance with the ‘anti-DEI’ crowd

Would you like your DEI with a side of bad writing and shallow characterization?

First let me start up by stating this from the get-go: I am ALL for diversity in video games. After playing video games for upwards of 30 years, you kind of get bored of the white male main characters, but here is the catch: I would take a well-written white male main character to a shallowly written ‘diverse’ character any day. To reinforce this point, let me tell you about a game I tried called Flintlock, a ‘diverse’ title so to speak, on Xbox Game Pass a few days ago. And my experience has been far from a good time, unfortunately.

At least the creature design is interesting.

The game starts medias res with the main character, called Nor, who is a good looking black woman mind you and I would have no problem having her as the main character to a proper game, fighting in trenches with other soldiers who are her allies against an undead army. So far, it is kind of interesting as I like the stories that start medias res. Nor goes up to a female general called Sama and asks about if she sent two of her allies -and presumably friends, telling from the tone of her voice- named Baz and Haalin to the Great Door Below.

In other words, a general that has very little to do with the introduction cutscene is shown on the first two minutes of the game just because she is a black female authority figure and this is just so on the nose and devoid of any kind of subtlety whatsoever. This is just a crude imitation of diversity and/or feminism, a child’s understanding of it. Does having a female as an authority figure and shoving it in the eyes of the players in the first two minutes of the game say something interesting about feminism or the game world that I might be missing? You realize that this time could be used to properly introduce the main character, her allies and the world around them, rather than just be used to introduce another female soldier in a higher position than her (who will again disappear from the intro in around 30 seconds anyway since there is zero point to this character’s apperance in the intro) and she could be introduced a bit later into the story with more gravitas, because, you know, she is this big commander? You really feel like you need a barrage of black strong female characters on screen every two minutes to show how diverse and inclusive your game is? In an industry where hamfisted writing/storytelling and shallow characterization reigned supreme for years, this is how you ‘revolutionize’ it or make it more progressive? By adding on top if it even more?

The general writing and world building of Flintlock is absolutely bare bones anyway. The way the story is told can be summarized as ‘meh’. The traversal mechanics are cool, but cannot cary the bad animations (even for an AA game), bad to mediocre combat and just the general feeling of “what am I doing in this world that I know nothing and do not care about at all” due to the terrible worldbuilding alone. Also, the men in this world are not characterized at all, which feels very, very weird. They act like animatronics devoid of any character rather than real people.

It all falls into place when you know that -allegedly, so take this with a grain of salt- Flintlock was once a very promising project from the developers of Ashens, but something happened to it akin to development hell: The game started with having a white male character, then a DEI implementation focused narrative consultation company called Sweet Baby Inc. was involved after “COO (and Casting Director) Andrea Topps Harjo joined the studio” and the game was made to be more diverse. But after that, devs not liking the stuff they put into the game, they supposedly tried to scrub it clean, and here we are: A game that is clearly underbaked in all the ways imaginable. Yes, the game is diverse in a very crude way, but at what cost? Clearly this development time could actually go to, you know, developing the game. If you want your game to be diverse, how about you making it diverse from the get-go (like Alan Wake 2 and the Last of Us II, which are actually good examples of including a diverse cast of characters).

Look, another live service hero shooter! REJOICE!

Another ‘DEI focused’ game that has tanked quite hard recently is Concord, a hero shooter. Guys, listen, we are so progressive and this is how revolutionize video games: By creating and/or plastering our name to another live service hero shooter in an already incredibly oversaturated market of them. Amazing idea. That is all I am going to say about this project in this article (maybe we can expand upon this game and the implications of its failure on an another one). The ingenuity of this idea is simply unmatched. Yeah, this is definitely how you turn the gaming climate to a diverse and inclusive one. Way to go.

One of many boss fights featured in Black Myth: Wukong.

Time to finally move onto Black Myth: Wukong. Black Myth: Wukong is a Chinese game that takes place after the conclusion of 16th century Chinese novel Journey to the West and in a God of War-esque twist, the main character is bored of Buddhahood and because of this he is hunted down by the gods of the Celestial Court (it actually can be interpreted as a story of defiance to the forces that be, so it can be viewed as progressive in that way). I own Black Myth: Wukong on PS5 and it is a decent Chinese game with interesting mechanics and ideas with its own various shortcomings like incomplete/shoddy texture work and weird input queueing or lag issues on console that I actually wish not to get into in this article. What is interesting about Black Myth: Wukong was that it was approached by the consulation company Sweet Baby Inc. well after the game was in development and the company simply said no. Allegedly, this was when the IGN article “How Black Myth: Wukong Developer’s History of Sexism Is Complicating its Journey to the West” by the IGN writer Rebekah Valentine was published. In the article, as you can also understand from the title, Rebekah argues that developers of the game is sexist and this may have problems in sales in the western market.

“I am a bad boy, baby. I even play SBI games.”

If this is not a “hitpiece” as the anti-DEI crowd calls it and the publication of this article was a coincidence, I think Rebekah is being very naive and does not know about the gaming industry and landscape at large at all (which does not speak greatly for her journalistic ambitions, to be honest). When most people are making gaming purchases, they decide solely on the qualities of the game, not the controversies surrounding it. So, no, as all of us seen from the sales numbers, sexism of the developers will not increase or decrease the sales numbers of a game. A game’s quality, premise, setting, characters may. This is the cold, harsh reality of the situation (as a person, I am in favor of a more egalitarian world and I would like sexism to be a non-issue too but we are not living in our ideal worlds). The small number of people on Twitter might make one think otherwise, and most progressive creative types have unfortunately started to exist in strict echo chambers as far as I can see and it is a bit saddening to see how detached they are from the reality rest of us exist in.

While it is a bit far-fetched, if the allegations are true and if it is a hitpiece and it is indeed extortion from Sweet Baby Inc. to get money from Game Science, the developers of Black Myth: Wukong, then the narrative changes. It means the progressive types in the gaming industry (or entertainment at large) is becoming the greedy, fascistic authority figures they were fighting against in the beginning, and as most of you know, it is really easy for a group of people to start with more or less good intentions and then become the fascists themselves in the long run, so maybe this is what is happening here.

If a company needs to absolutely, positively work with a ‘narrative consultation company’, they should either work with them from the beginning of the project, or should not let them meddle at all, especially in the late development stages. In reality, the idea of a narrative consultation company in gaming is not that ideal, as it implies another set of people who will make changes on a game in a medium where it is the hardest to make narrative changes on a whim, so it is especially important for these kind of companies to be onboard from the very beginning. And, of course, they need to hire better writers (I know I said that Alan Wake 2, an SBI project, was a good example for diversity, but Remedy’s writing was always not that great, and SBI’s involvement didn’t change this fact in any meaningful way, but rather it simply did not have any bad effect on the game’s quality or how it played).

For the anti-DEI crowd, I also have certain criticisms (aside from the very obvious ones). Saying ‘no politics in a game’ is also quite political, which means that you do not want anything to change and keep the status quo as is. Every type of media is political. Even Shakespeare’s works are reflective of the politics of their time and they were the biggest, most crowd pulling entertainment event back then. Also, one of the most common anti-DEI sayings is “just give the people what they want, and you will make money”. If the developers just gave people what they want, we would be swimming in mediocrity in no time as all games would be very similar. What the developers need to do is give the people something that they do not know they want, like creating a new genre or introduce completely new mechanics and so on (and no, what people want is not badly and hastily implemented DEI). The masses actually do not know what they want, until they get it.

Dustborn: Twitter/X, The Game

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and are not concepts one can solely base a game around. Neither are politics (if you have any doubts about that, just look at what happened to Red Thread Games’ Dustborn in terms of player count, 21 players as of speaking, with an all time peak of 83). First rule of thumb when creating any game project should be creating a good game in general with an interesting world, characters and mechanics; everything else comes second. If you put DEI and politics on the forefront, (and utilize subpar combat, for example as is the case with Dustborn) people will think that these are the only things you care about and not making an actually enjoyable and interesting game, or rather they will think that you are just making a game as a statement and not much else. You don’t want only 83 people to see the beautiful art you created for your game, right (yeah, I am a sucker for this kind of Telltale aesthetic I guess)?

As a ‘sort of’ progressive person that values actual, good kind of diversity, which is diversity that is complimented with good writing, I simply do not think this is it, chief. What we have in the industry (in the AAA and AA spaces, not indie) right now is some shoddy writing coupled with a child’s understanding of DEI, and nothing more. Until I am sure that these companies got their act together (both developers and consultation companies in terms of working in tandem), I will also be extra cautious when it comes to games with SBI or that kind of consultation company attached to its name. You may write “good riddance” on Twitter/X all you want about people like me, and feel free to do so, but the sales numbers and the overall industry’s stance indicate that this may not be the best stance for you to take as this industry is known for very swiftly cutting out everything that doesn’t make enough money (or should I have said ‘that doesn’t literally print money’). Best of luck.