Neil Druckmann is the studio head of the game developer company Naughty Dog, the company that developed some of the best-known best-received video games such as The Last of Us and the Uncharted series.
While the company leadership has probably always been left-leaning, they never tried to inject modern politics into their games, which no doubt helped creating some of the most memorable and well-received games in history. Well, up to about 2012 give or take (with the original The Last of Us game possibly being the last of their games that was spared far-leftist messaging. Unfortunately its expansion pack published just a year later was already full-on far-leftist SJW slop, so... sigh.)
Recently Neil Druckmann gave an interview about their upcoming game Intergalactic. In that interview he comments a bit about The Last of Us Part 2:
Druckmann: "And we spent, like, years just coming up with a timeline, and it's dealing with... it's funny, like, I joke about this with the team, oh, we made a game that with The Last of Us 2 we made some creative decisions that got us a lot of hate. A lot of people love it but a lot of people hate that game."
Interviewer: "Who gives a shit."
Druckmann: "Exactly!"
And this demonstrates perfectly what's wrong with many modern western "woke" game studios.
They are not making video games that appeal to as many people as possible, with the goal of selling as many copies as possible. They are approaching the entire thing as if video games are sociopolitical statements rather than commercial products aimed at as many consumers as possible.
They seem to think of themselves as some kind of rebellious indie punk rock band who is fighting against the Man, fighting against the system, composing songs and lyrics with strong anti-establishment messaging, and who don't give a flying fuck about whether those songs will sell or not. In fact, many such rebellious punk bands outright don't want to sell a lot and become mainstream, because that goes against their very image of being underground rebels fighting against the mainstream. They want to express themselves, song sales are a very, very far secondary thing.
The thing is, that kind of mentality might be ok for a small indie punk band who do it in their free time. That kind of mentality does not really work for a multi-billion-dollar corporation that's trying to stay afloat by being successful in the market.
It may be perfectly fine for a small indie punk band to say "who gives a shit." It is most definitely not fine for a major corporation.
Your company does not exist to make a sociopolitical statement. It exists to make money. Angering people and having a "who gives a shit" attitude is not a very good strategy to achieve that goal.
It's just the perfect example of what's wrong with the modern western gaming industry.
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