Transcription
- “Look at how they massacred Harley by making her walk ‘like a normal person.’ Women do not walk like this.” - [NovemberHotel] DEI ensures less competent employees will be hired on for the job.
- That's not true. Like, seeing a workforce that is more racially diverse and assuming that the people of color aren't as highly skilled as the white people, that's just racism. Doing that for gender, that's just sexism.
- Hello, lovely people. My name is Emma. Welcome back to my channel. Welcome if you are new. “It's all too woke nowadays,” say some people. (Emma laughs)
- We've covered various members of the anti-woke brigade on this channel before, so for some of you, this will not be a new phenomenon. But it is definitely getting more widespread.
- First of all, what the heck is “woke”? I awoke this morning. I made myself a proper cup of coffee in a proper copper coffee pot.
- It is one of many words that has been sort of adopted more recently by right-wing conservativism, largely. As with much language that pervades kind of online discourse, in particular, the word has kind of been adopted and manipulated by those who are anti-the thing, anti-woke.
- It is not the people that created the term. It is not the people that are most frequently using the term to describe themselves or a particularly good position.
- It is the people who hate those people that have adopted the term and manipulated it to mean something slightly different that is easier to hate.
- In case you've not heard me describe this before, here is the actual definition of woke: “Woke is an adjective derived from African American Vernacular English, originally meaning alertness to racial prejudice and discrimination.”
- That was its original meaning. Very few people, basically nobody but the out-and-out proud racists, would probably have a problem with that.
- According to the internet, it was in the early 2010s when it started to be adopted for sort of broader usage, describing awareness of social inequality, such as racial injustice, sexism, and denial of LGBT rights.
- Again, I think it's going to be all but a very few out-and-proud bigots who we don't really care about, to be honest, are anti-woke in the sense of being actually against that original meaning and that general meaning.
- In the current, again, more right-leaning conservative slang, it is generally accepted to describe something that prioritizes diversity and inclusivity over, say, quality.
- Hiring women and people of color instead of the best person for the job, that sort of thing, is what they kind of mean by “woke” when they say it.
- For anybody out there who is watching this, feeling that they're a normal person, they're not racist or sexist or homophobic, but they do feel like it's all a bit much, it's all gone a bit mad, it is a bit just too woke out there, everything's political, I would encourage you to consider, just sit on the fact for a minute, that the majority of the mainstream biggest proponents of anti-wokism are racist, sexist, homophobic, et cetera.
- Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, basically anybody involved with “The Daily Wire,” Nigel Farage, and anybody involved with GB News.
- Just sit with the fact for a minute that this conversation around wokism gone mad is potentially using moderate people who feel the effects of a reduction of privilege that those anti-woke proponents are potentially using you, using those average would-be normal, non-hateful people, as part of a hateful agenda of racism and bigotry.
- I just want you to sit with that for a minute and just let the awareness exist.
- Because the term “woke” has been adopted to mean something different in all of this shocking clickbait material, et cetera, et cetera, and it's become so widespread, it is very possible that you can consider yourself anti-woke, a lot like people consider themselves anti-feminists who actually are feminists in terms of ideals, who actually agree in quality of rights, regardless of gender, for example, would actually not necessarily be anti-woke if you look at what the actual meaning of woke is.
- I would just... Yeah, just try and sit with the fact that there are people trying to manipulate and radicalize a moderate audience and this is a great way to do it.
- What I wanna do is look at some anti-woke videos (Emma laughs) because this has become so mainstream, so widespread that YouTube has become this, dare I say cesspool? ...cesspool of toxic nonsensical conversation that sees every dude, and it is a majority of...
- I mean, well, you've got the... There are Brett Coopers out there, there are Blaire Whites out there, but they are the minority of the anti-woke crowd that is largely men, seeing a brilliant opportunity to either be angry or pretend to be angry any time some mainstream media comes out with the main character being a person of color or a woman or, heaven forfend, both.
- I literally... I just typed the word “woke” into YouTube and selected, like, within the last month, and the choices are so many. (Emma laughs nervously)
- The options are limitless. I would just recommend, because I was very inspired by a D'Angelo Wallace video recently, in which he used a new YouTube account and wiped his search history, and he was trying to see how many clicks it would take to get into anti-woke content and it was, like, two. (Emma chuckles)
- Just from, like, mainstream movie stuff. I think he was looking at DC movie stuff.
- It's very good, but that kind of inspired me to take a look at the more general anti-woke discourse to have a break from, you know, the Ben Shapiros and the Matt Walshes who are playing to a large audience that expects a certain opinion of them.
- So we're looking at the anti-woke masses today. But do check out that D'Angelo Wallace video. You probably already subscribed to D'Angelo. He's much more famous than me.
- Also learned from watching something of his recently, frequently misgendered. So if you appreciate me as a handsome lady who is frequently misgendered, there's a pretty man for you to go and follow.
- Without further ado, NovemberHotel's “Yes, Woke Video Games are Bad Games.” - [NovemberHotel] Over the last few years, it feels like the gaming industry has been declining rapidly and the threats are coming from all angles.
- On this channel we've talked about many of the reasons for this decline, from overinflated budgets to awful monetization, bland and repetitive gameplay designs, a focus on graphics over gameplay—
- I agree with all of these points. So far me and NovemberHotel are on the same wavelength.
- I don't know if I would say there's an overall decline. Again, if you're not a gamer, don't even worry.
- If there's anything that you don't understand, if there's anything that seems like it wouldn't be clear to a non-#gamergirl like me, I will explain it.
- I don't think that games have been in decline. I think that AAA games are more heavily scrutinized and we're pushing back against things like overmonetization and prioritizing graphics over gameplay and stuff like that, and especially releasing unfinished games early and inflated budgets and all this sort of thing, I'd largely agree with that.
- But the space for indie developers and stuff has skyrocketed.
- If you're willing to just try something that isn't bland mainstream AAA studio, the gaming industry has exploded with choices over the last few years.
- There's some incredible stuff out there. There's some incredible stuff made by, like, solo indie devs.
- It's amazing out there. There's some really phenomenal, life-changing games that have come out in the last few years.
- That's just my opinion on games, in general. So far we're on the same wavelength when it comes to, like, AAA titles.
- - [NovemberHotel] ...myriad of glitches and buggy releases.
- Agreed.
- All of these are legitimate reasons why quality has declined in modern games.
- But not talked about nearly enough on my channel is one of the biggest and most critical reasons as to why modern games are failing.
- I was just about to say “hold on a second” when he said, “One of the things that is not talked about enough on my channel,” because if there is one thing that is overly talked about, it is how, “Games are too woke nowadays.”
- I feel like GamerGate really fucked up (Emma laughs) game responses and reactions and just, like, amateur games journalism, it just absolutely...
- GamerGate, if you're not familiar, I won't go into it in massive detail, but it was a sort of a period of intense harassment of specific female journalists.
- It was a very misogynistic movement that, again, is the sort of thing that had a legitimate origin, a legitimate complaint, although I believe it was misinformation, again, that sparked the biggest controversies, but there were legitimate complaints about maybe some games journalists being too cozy, receiving too much from game studios, to be able to give fair and accurate representations.
- There was one specific story about a games journalist woman which wasn't totally true and was incredibly sexist and that sparked a movement of gamer bros that are very anti-woke to just be insanely harassing and misogynistic and I feel like that whole period was a real turning point where people either went, “Oh, some gaming stuff,” like, “Some of the gaming community really is misogynistic and we should maybe work a bit harder to protect women in this space,” and a lotta people went, “Yeah, I do hate women. They’re ruining my video games.”
- I really... I feel like that had a very polarizing, horrible effect on gaming news and, yeah, amateur journalism and conversations around gaming.
- But NovemberHotel hasn't talked nearly enough about how woke video games are ruining the gaming industry, so let's hear him out.
- [NovemberHotel] ...in fact, as sad as it is, many gamers have become more tolerant and accepting of these problems over here and they aren't as vocal about bad monetization or buggy releases these days.
- They've become too tolerant of these issues, in my opinion, to the point where it doesn't really impact sales like it used to.
- Again, when it comes to, like, AAA titles and these massive studios, studios that don't properly compensate their staff, studios where the environment is very unhealthy, I completely agree.
- There doesn't seem to always... Sometimes there is a sales dip for a company that has, like, a really bad microtransaction built into its service and sometimes the backlash is enough to make them change it and that's good.
- But there often isn't nearly enough backlash and we've kind of accepted this as a norm of AAA games.
- I don't... But I don't... (Emma stammers) I'm waiting for the woke news.
- [NovemberHotel] Instead, the biggest deterrent for modern gamers is game studios and publishers' disgusting focus on creating games for the nonexistent modern audience.
- "The nonexistent modern audience. (Emma laughs haughtily) Women don't play games.” That's so... What an interesting word. “The nonexistent modern audience.”
- [NovemberHotel] In other words, the obsession with creating woke video games.
- Look at this... It's like, “Look, see. In this, you're playing a woman of color. Isn't that fucking mental? Women of color don't play games.”
- I literally follow... I literally follow some groups of specifically Black female gamers who exist because of this perception that women of color don't play games and the abuse that they face online, especially in online gaming.
- Like— (Emma groans in frustration)
- [NovemberHotel] ...examples in 2024 alone do we have of that being the reality. Concord, Flintlock, Suicide—
- All right. Hold on. Suicide Squad? But that's based on the movie. Is it because Harley Quinn's a main character and she's a woman? Is it because you get to play as a shark?
- But hold on. Go back. I need to look up the other games. What's Concord? (Enderman whooshes) “It was a multiplayer first-person hero shooter.”
- It was a failed FPS that shut down that might be making a comeback, according to Google.
- I'm gonna have to type in “Concord woke.” This is gonna ruin my search history.
- What's woke about it? Ah, Steam community, can someone (Enderman wooshes) explain why this game was woke? Thank you.
- “Ugly characters, pronouns, black trans character.” So the game had pronouns in it? People are so fucking weird.
- He hasn't explained about this modern audience thing. I'm still really confused about this fake modern audience.
- Oh, Flintlock. Let's just have a quick look at Flintlock, see what's woke about that. “Flintlock woke.”
- I'm really typing in all these things. It's got a queer character. I think it has a queer character. We exist. (Emma wheezes)
- We're real. We play games. We're not a fake audience. I've literally played video games my entire life.
- Well, not when I was a baby. I couldn't even lift my head when I was a baby. You've gotta forgive me for that.
- [NovemberHotel] ...Squad, Dustborn, Star Wars: Outlaw, and the ones yet to—
- Star Wars: Outlaws? That had a protagonist who's a woman of color. (Emma groans in panic)
- It's so, like... You know the cartoon that's the bird that's like, “I am angry when we are not about me”? That's literally anti-woke men on YouTube.
- “The protagonist isn't a white man? I don't even have to say anything, right? You all understand why that's wrong. I’m the main character.” (Emma giggles)
- Anti-woke YouTubers all have main character syndrome.
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- [NovemberHotel] ...release are already looking like they're going to flop, like Assassin's Creed: Shadows, Dragon Age: Veilguard—
- “Assassin's Creed: Shadows. Oh, that's a brilliant example.”
- Oh, shut up. Dragon Age: Veilguard better be good or I'm gonna fucking riot.
- You know all the Dragon Age games let you be gay?
- I've gotta talk to you about this anti-woke controversy because it's so fucking stupid that it's...
- It's a great example of the fact that this is all built around knee-jerk reactions that people have when they see something that is not representing them.
- White men are not the majority in this game.
- So the thing with Assassin's Creed: Shadows, a lot of the more recent Assassin's Creed games have had you play as multiple protagonists, play as two different protagonists or choose between them.
- One of them is a samurai known as Yasuke, who is Black. (Emma gasps)
- “They're making the samurais gay! I mean Black! I mean...”
- So the anti-woke crowd immediately got all up in arms about how you're literally changing history to make it woke.
- Man's literally a real historical figure. (Emma laughs)
- I mean there's a discussion around whether that matters anyway in what is ostensibly a sci-fi series.
- But if you are simply an advocate for historical accuracy, for whatever reason, that character is absolutely historically accurate.
- So people got super angry, super worked up, super woked-up, am I right? (Emma laughs self-confidently)
- People got super angry, super worked up about the game featuring a character that is a real historical figure because he's Black.
- [NovemberHotel] ...and the Indiana Jones game.
- Wait, the Indiana Jones game? I hope that's good, too.
- That's another one that I really hope is good. “Indiana Jones and The Great Circle.”
- It's not a great title, but the Indiana Jones films don't have particularly great titles, if I'm being perfectly honest.
- Okay, so when I look this up, most people are saying... Oh, great.
- People are even saying this is woke, which is ridiculous. There's... This is... This is ludicrous.
- So the fact that— what's his name? November... NovemberHotel, who's unironically being like, “This Indiana Jones game featuring this well-known white male protagonist is so woke, it's ruining everything.”
- It's very bizarre. Most people seem to be angry that it's in first-person.
- I think it looks really cool and I'm really excited. But then, you know, I'm an idiot.
- Why are people's...? I don't even know why people are saying that's woke. I can't even find it when I search it.
- So god knows where the bar is.
- [NovemberHotel] Now I think it's important to note that a lot of these games are usually objectively bad or average games with or without the wokeness in them.
- But a company that prioritizes DEI and ESG scorecards—
- Okay. We're gonna have to go back to Glossary Corner, I'm afraid.
- I would say this is coded language, much like “woke” is kind of coded language now for people who are generally just sort of sexist and racist.
- DEI stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion.
- Again, the sort of thing that, when a normal person just hears that, they wouldn't have a problem with it.
- What's wrong with equality? Why are you angry about equality? You know?
- ESG stands for environmental, social, and governance.
- ESG is a weird one that's being adopted more, because as I understood it, it was more about being sort of environmentally conscious, as well as socially conscious, when you're investing and things like that.
- So it's a little bit strange to bring that into the woke conversation.
- But again, it's just more words for “woke,” basically.
- It means it's very bad and terrible for studios to focus on diversity and inclusivity, is what is being said here.
- Literally what is being said here.
- This is what gets me, always, with this conversation, especially, again, in the hiring in the workplace and that sort of thing, is the idea that, no, it should be the best person for the job, and I wonder why they have this instinctive reaction that the best person for the job couldn't be somebody who isn't a straight white man.
- They've put these characters in for the sake of wokeness.
- A woman of color can't be a complex and interesting character to play. She's just there as a symbol of wokeness, you know what I mean?
- There's something really, well, just bigoted and horrible about that sort of perspective.
- Like, I just don't get it. I just don't get how you can be so sort of openly horrible. (Emma laughs) I guess.
- [NovemberHotel] ...will almost always create a mediocre product. DEI ensures less competent employees will be hired on for the job.
- That's not true. Just because a company is not prioritizing straight white men doesn't mean that they will be hiring people less competent.
- This is so upsetting and I come from a male-dominated industry, right? I worked in VFX.
- Very male-dominated, especially in the senior roles. Part of it is in training and education, right?
- Without knowing that they can be in these industries without seeing women in these industries to look up to, it's harder for young women, it's harder to encourage young women into those industries in the first place, to become competent.
- But the problem is that there are all of these women, queer people, people of color who are highly trained, talented professionals that don't get opportunities that are given by default to people with a certain level of privilege.
- The idea that straight white men of a certain age are all the ones that are competent and have worked hard over the years, and that, if a company employs, like, an even gender split, then those women were all chosen just for being women and they are going to be incompetent and not...
- Like, excuse me? Why would you assume that a diverse workforce is less... That's just being racist and sexist, et cetera.
- Like, seeing a workforce that is more racially diverse and assuming that the people of color aren't as highly skilled as the white people, that's just racism.
- Doing that for gender, that's just sexism. It's gross, dude.
- The problem with a lot of these industries, in terms of getting employment, is that there are way more qualified people than jobs and the problem that diversity and inclusivity helps, hopes to solve is the majority of those jobs going to people of certain races and et cetera.
- It's not that there's all of these competent white people, and then we've got to hire some Black people who don't know what they're doing.
- Like, that's insane. “We've had to hire this Asian woman who doesn't know what she's doing just for the diversity points.”
- Of course not. You've got a huge pool of talented people who have the qualifications, who have the skills, who have the background.
- DEI equals incompetence is just pure bigotry. It's just racist. It's just sexist.
- There is no other way of looking at that. It's crazy.
- So this is just factually wrong and I'm gonna guess that it doesn't come from any kind of looking at studies, looking at industry breakdowns, looking at who the employees of these companies that make these bad games actually are.
- The reason that games are bad, most of the time, is because of investors, production companies, et cetera.
- It's a top-down thing. “We need to make money so we need to release by this date. But we also want to save money, so we're not going to hire people.”
- It's not the fact that companies hire women that makes games bad because women don't know how to... That is just crazy.
- [NovemberHotel] ...and ESG funding means more time will be spent on hitting the woke criteria throughout every aspect of the game.
- Why would hitting woke points, aka why would including people of color and, you know, queer relationships and stuff, what's that taking time away from?
- That's just so bizarre. That doesn't mean anything.
- Like, “Oh, we were going to improve the gameplay, but instead we put two men kissing.” That's not what's happening.
- That's not real.
- Fuck, dude. This is actually kind of upsetting. (Emma laughs)
- [NovemberHotel] In other words, woke ideologies are the priority of development. Taking—
- Sure. Citation needed. NovemberHotel says it and he's a man on the internet, so I believe him.
- [NovemberHotel] ...precedent over game design in its traditional sense. Let's just take a look at a few of these woke flops of 20—
- This is so indicative of the mindset that I'm, like, I was trying to describe earlier, where, if you're, like, a certain type of person with a certain level of privilege, you view yourself as the default.
- So, like, making games starring straight white men, straight white men in their 30s, is the default and doing anything else takes extra time and effort because women, people of color, queer people, they're all different from the norm.
- So you have to put some special extra effort into writing their stories, designing their characters. That's just crazy.
- [NovemberHotel] ...starting with Concord. Removing all the wokeness for a second, the game was average on its own.
- A game that didn't bring a whole lot of new things to the hero shooter genre, keeping simple game modes and basic gameplay, a terrible pricing model.
- Yes, Concord made many mistakes in that regard.
- Yeah. So everything that he's mentioned earlier, it didn't do well because it didn't really add anything new to the genre, it had a terrible monetization package.
- But actually, it was the wokeness that destroyed it?
- [NovemberHotel] ...but there was a foundation that could've been built upon.
- However, with some of the most hideous woke character designs on top of these problems, it only—
- There are always the anti-woke, especially gamers, right?
- The anti-woke gamers are always trying to say these aren't complex characters, these aren't complex, interesting characters.
- But then they boil their reactions down to such a basic, like, “There are women in this game that I'm not attracted to and therefore they are bad characters and that destroys the game.”
- Are you supposed to be attracted to every video game character?
- I loved Tomb Raider as much as the next person. I made sure she did that little flip so you could see her bum.
- That didn't give me the expectation that I'd be attracted to every character in every video game.
- Just the reaction to, like, (Emma imitates gamer scoffing) “Ugly people in my game?”
- Which is so subjective.
- Like, every game should conform to your specific desires, your specific romantic sexual desires, that's so...
- Why would games do that?
- The idea that this game had bad monetization, it was kinda lazy, it didn't add anything new to the genre, but what really killed it was ugly women?
- That's so fucking funny. (Emma laughs)
- How shallow a person can you be?
- [NovemberHotel] ...plummeted any chance it had of survival.
- That was what ruined its chances of... “People would've given it a chance if the characters hadn't been ugly.”
- There are so many games that prove that completely fucking wrong.
- That's an... Like, this almost feels like it should be ironic because that's such an insane take.
- What's...? What's ugly here? Is it the armor? The massive armor? The blue lipstick?
- Like, grow up. (Emma laughs)
- [NovemberHotel] ...gonna take a wild guess and say that, if the characters didn't look like your average ESG checklist and they didn't make you wanna vomit—
- It's crazy. If they... “If the characters looked like me, the game would be better.
- “The game would do better, if the characters looked like me. “Because I represent the average gamer.”
- Unfortunately a large proportion of the gaming community is built of just toxic, bigoted white men. It just fucking sucks.
- [NovemberHotel] ...at the sight of them, I'd guarantee the game would've received a much more favorable view.
- It's an FPS, like, multiplayer game. You barely see the characters.
- You're all in armor and you're running and jumping around, shooting each other.
- How much is your game impacted by the ugliness of the characters?
- Were the characters in TF2 particularly attractive?
- Was that what made that game brilliant? That they were all super hot?
- No. Of course not. It was good gameplay and funny design.
- This is mind-boggling. It's gotta be ironic. It's gotta be clickbait, right?
- This... People can't be this shallow.
- [NovemberHotel] ...in the eye of gamers, and potentially could've garnered at least some sort of community.
- Video games are a visual medium and good character design does sell games.
- Some video games are not purely a visual medium and visually impaired people can enjoy video games that are well-made in multiple areas.
- This is very, “Men are very visual creatures,” (Emma laughs) you know?
- When it's like, “Women need to be beautiful all the time.” That's crazy.
- “I need all my fictional women to be hot because I've never touched a real woman and I never will.”
- [NovemberHotel] ...isn't the only important factor, but it's far more important than some of these brainwashed people in denial over all these game failures will ever admit.
- And if the Concord devs didn't devote so much of their 8 years and $400 million Black Rock budget to woke game design, maybe that dev time and money could've been used to actually create something ground—
- Yeah, again, he genuinely thinks it takes more time to design ugly characters who are queer and people of color and women. (Emma laughs)
- He genuinely thinks it takes more time and effort away from development than making generic straight white people in video games.
- That's fucking mental. That's actually unhinged.
- [NovemberHotel] ...breaking in the hero shooter genre, which characters that were recognizable, badass, and heroes people would wanna cosplay as or buy a poster of.
- But instead it became the biggest flop in video game—
- It's like the laziest view of marketing, making hot characters, just as a...
- Surely what he's describing here is exactly what he's also trying to argue against.
- He's saying they should've wasted time making their characters hot to encourage people to buy merchandise instead of focusing on the gameplay, and there's no sense of the irony there.
- God, what a moron. (Emma wheezes) Sorry. But not that sorry.
- Yeah, the big things to take away: $400 million loss.
- The game was in horrible shape as of 18 months before release, not even monetization—
- This guy at the bottom is doing a real stellar job of looking interested in the conversation.
- [Podcaster] The game was in horrible shape as of 18 months before release—
- Mediocre men on the internet with microphones. Just a plague.
- ...no onboarding. Most content not even there.
- The game was in such bad shape at that point that they spent the budget of it again in urgent outsourcing to get the game finished.
- Biggest... So Concord is Sony's biggest released game by budget to date.
- None of the problems there are wokeness. None of the problems there are ugly characters.
- That's just, like, that's purely a failure of planning.
- Have I got a little piece of hair sticking straight up? I do. (Emma laughs)
- ...and it is the biggest loss that they've ever had, as a company, on a project before. (podcasters wheezing)
- [NovemberHotel] Next, let's take a look at Dustborn.
- ♪ We're the dust-born (lively music) ♪ This bug is airborne
- ...a Black kid, dresses like a writer, does he know anything?
- You are racist. (NovemberHotel sighs)
- I don't even need to say anything about this game.
- It sounds like it, this is his sort of thing, like, it's making fun of this sort of wokeness.
- Okay, a film I saw recently that did this really well that kind of took the sort of youthful overuse of this kind of language and sort of made fun of that but in a way that is, like, good-hearted was “Bodies Bodies Bodies.”
- Some really funny jokes in there with people saying that they're triggered and traumatized and stuff and people telling them to shut the fuck up.
- Like, the kind of thing that an anti-woke person would love.
- I think you can do that and you can make it funny and sort of just poke fun at the, you know, evolving of slang rather than making fun of the people.
- This surely is exactly what he wants.
- Like, “They're getting triggered to...” I don't understand. Is it because he's playing as a person of color?
- I mean that's it, isn't it?
- [NovemberHotel] ...Dustborn is repulsive to 99% of gamers.
- The game was funded by the Norwegian Film Institute, an EU Creative grant, and also the US government to be a new counter-disinformation game.
- I mean the main character's superpowers are literally being triggered and the ability to cancel people she doesn't like.
- How anyone thought this would sell is beyond me.
- And no, I'm not the target audience.
- But the target audience is practically nonexistent and often don't play games in the first place, which is—
- Ooh. He hasn't specified what that audience is.
- Much like earlier he didn't specify what the nonexistent modern audience is.
- He's saying without saying that people of color, that women, that queer people don't really play games, but without having to actually say it out-loud by saying the words.
- It's all coded language, baby.
- “Games are for straight white men and some men of color, but not enough that we're gonna stop saying the N-word in online game lobbies.” (Emma laughs)
- [NovemberHotel] ...why this game peaked at only 76 players.
- A really sad example of a woke flop is with Rocksteady's Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, a live service nightmare filled to the brim with Tumblr-level humor and left-wing propaganda, some of the most atrocious race- and gender-swapped characters, and it's honestly shocking that this project was greenlit in the first place.
- A $200 million loss that leaves Rocksteady's future unknown.
- And some will only attribute this game's failure to the fact that it was a live service, but new live service games are constantly releasing and plenty of them are succeeding.
- New IPs, even.
- This game could've been good, but instead the narrative and dialogue was very obviously Sweet Baby, Inc.-influenced—
- “Sweet Baby's a story-writing company hired to supplement video game studios' writing staff,” and, “The company is transparent about their goals of approaching writing with a focus on representation and marginalized groups.”
- And so straight white men are angry about it.
- Anti-woke brigade is very angry.
- It's so crazy to me that they highlight the real problems with a game, like, the big problems, like, again, live service issues and bad development and, you know, whatever, and then they're like, “But it's the liberal woke stuff that is, that ruined it.”
- As if these companies aren't 100% money-focused.
- Lemme tell you, we live in a society. (Emma laughs)
- And that society is capitalist, and as much as there are usually smaller companies doing their best to actually promote some diversity and inclusivity, which is a good thing, okay?
- Stop being a racist.
- Big AAA studios are interested in one thing and that is money.
- If woke game design, whatever the fuck that is, was really the number one thing destroying games and ruining their sales, they wouldn't do it.
- They wouldn't do it because they want your money.
- They don't get anything out of social consciousness points.
- They want cold, hard cash.
- So this whole idea is just rooted in a fantasy world of nonsense. It's very bizarre.
- [NovemberHotel] ...and some might say it would fail either way, but want to compare Suicide Squad with a game called The First Descendant.
- There's a lotta similarities, actually.
- Both are third-person live service looter-shooters.
- In fact, looking at gameplay side-by-side, most people would say that Suicide Squad looks like a higher budget version of The First Descendant, and that's because that's what it is.
- But why does The First Descendant have 30,000 players right now and Suicide Squad has 300?
- I have a strong suspicion that character design has more to do with it than gaming journalists would have you believe.
- Gaming journalists, aka the woke agenda.
- If this was true, if it was only, like, super attractive character design that made a game popular, no one would play Kirby.
- No offense to Kirby.
- Who would be playing Super Monkey Ball? Or Pikmin?
- What about Spore? (Emma laughs)
- It's just so crazy and also openly equating attractiveness with being skinny and white and straight and having no shame about saying that publicly, on the internet.
- [NovemberHotel] ...Descendant is not that great of a game.
- It's dumb fun, just like Suicide Squad.
- But people want to play as these characters and people do not want to play as these characters. (megaphone blares)
- “Look at how they massacred Harley by making her walk ‘like a normal person.’”
- Look. I'm a woman. I've been a woman despite, what? Some in the Comments section doubtless will claim I've been a woman for 29 years of this Earth.
- Well, I've been, I was like a baby, again, for a bit of that, but that's fine.
- Women do not walk like this.
- We would have such terrible hip problems, probably really fierce gluts, though, if we walked everywhere like this.
- That's just not... Imagine...
- Have you seen the thing relevant to this, actually, because we're talking about DC characters?
- Have you seen the thing where somebody swapped out Cat Woman's model in a video game for Batman and Batman walked like that and it looks ridiculous?
- [Cat Woman/Batman] Fresh air, freedom, and darkness. How should we celebrate? I know a couple of poor, defenseless museums.
- Similarly, people have redrawn, like, Marvel comic book front pages with the male characters in traditional female character poses.
- It's just not realistic. It's just silly.
- But it appeals to this specific male fantasy.
- So because he is not as attracted to the way this character walks, he thinks that's ruining video games.
- Why aren't all our main characters super muscly, oiled men with no shirts on in tiny, tight pants?
- If it's only about what's visually attractive in the most conventional mainstream sense, why don't all my male characters in video games look like that?
- Because we never considered that male characters exist for people to drool over, for people to masturbate to.
- Whereas women characters, that's how they're viewed by people like this.
- It's gross. It is genuinely gross.
- And again, I say that as someone who grew up with the confusion of being very attracted to Lara Croft.
- You can have exaggerated sexiness in a game, especially if it's done with humor.
- Again, I grew up with games like Lollipop Chainsaw and stuff like that.
- You can do it.
- I think, personally, it's a more consistent overall experience if you make the men stupidly conventionally sexy, as well, and over-the-top in the same way.
- But the idea that every game has to have massively overly sexualized women just to be good, just to be enjoyable?
- They've “massacred” Harley because she doesn't wave her ass in your face like she's walking the catwalk when she's walking down the street like a normal human.
- How do you think that that's an okay position to have?
- “We want complex characters,” they say, and what they're actually mad about is this.
- How they've changed Harley Quinn's ass to be less appealing to their sexual fantasy.
- At least this part is honest. “I am upset because this does not fulfill my sexual fantasy.”
- At least that's fucking honest.
- Stop pretending it's an industry-wide problem, it's to do with, “The woke design is sucking up all the resources instead of game design.”
- Stop with that bullshit.
- Be honest that you want your women characters to be sexy to you.
- You're still dumb and sexist for having that opinion, but at least you're honest. (guns firing)
- Oh, my god. How long is this clip? (Emma laughs)
- Do you think he was jerking off while he was editing? Probably, right?
- [NovemberHotel] The same types of examples continue with Star Wars: Outlaws and Flintlock: Siege of Dawn, Pokémon Go receiving a more inclusive character design which made everyone look like a flat piece of cardboard, and with upcoming games like Fable and Dragon Age showing its very strong woke influence on character design, the future of those—
- (Emma sighs) Well, people don't have pronouns.
- Presumably NovemberHotel wants us to just, I don't know, not refer to them at all.
- (Emma sighs) I just used a pronoun to describe them.
- It's almost like it's impossible to talk to or about people without using pronouns.
- I don't understand the anger around customization, right?
- People will literally boycott a game if you're allowed to change your pronouns.
- But you can get this game and you can pick a traditional male-presenting character and give him he/him pronouns and make him male.
- Or if you want the voyeurship experience, you can make a traditionally sexy female-presenting character, give her she/her pronouns and, like what's...?
- It's just a choice. What's the harm in people who aren't you getting the choice of having a character that looks and feels like them?
- It's so selfish to be like, “I'm angry that people can make characters that look like them instead of being forced to play characters that look like me.”
- Character design is one of the most fun things about a lot of the game series I like.
- I am someone who has benefited from a level of privilege in gaming in the sense that the kind of games I play have a lot of character design, there is always a character who looks like me.
- Sometimes they don't have my hair in the female character options.
- Aside from that, my sort of generic size, body shape, skin tone is pretty much always represented and it was a long time before I realized that, like, a lot of games don't even let you change your body size or anything like that and that must really suck for a lot of people.
- It doesn't hurt me for other people to be able to make characters that look like them, too.
- Why would it? I can still make a character that looks like me.
- But now other people can have the same fun as me.
- And it would be weirdly selfish for me to have a negative feeling about that.
- Just bizarre, man. Just totally bizarre.
- [NovemberHotel] I mean with the latest Dragon Age, they're touting their most inclusive character creator.
- But you can't create anything that resembles real people.
- [AI-generated Voice] I am a 108 pounds woman who sits for 15-plus hours a day.
- I am not even in my prime here and you're telling me this is your 100% on the bum slider?
- Explain how this is your most inclusive character creator yet because I can't even make my skinny bum in the game.
- I don't get it. Who was this character creator made for?
- “I'm a really conventionally attractive white woman and I can't even make my bum the right size in this game.”
- NovemberHotel realizes that's bait, right?
- [AI-generated Voice] ...because it certainly wasn't made for me.
- That's the ass? Are you kidding me? Are you fucking...?
- Is this...? This is a joke.
- Why is...? Okay, I don't know who this is because NovemberHotel uses a lot of footage without crediting whoever the footage has come from.
- I'm assuming he didn't record all of this footage himself.
- But why does he look like exactly the sort of person that would watch this video and complain about not being able to make the women's bums bigger?
- I do think that you should be able to make bigger characters.
- I don't think it is particularly inclusive if you have, like, a range of good skin tones and body shapes and stuff like that, but you can't be anything more than just skinny, generically skinny.
- But that kind of man— you know exactly what I mean— is pissed off that the bum doesn't go bigger is just so hilariously cliché.
- It's like gamer dudes are trying to double-down.
- They're like, “Okay, we've been perceived as, like, neck beard, basement dwelling gross dudes who just wanna fap to hot women and we're gonna double down.
- “We're gonna say, 'Yeah, that is us and this is our community and games are for us 'cause we're gross.'”
- It's so weird, dude.
- That's a 100? No, it's not.
- [NovemberHotel] Apparently the global population has no butt and everyone has A-cup boobs, and I'm not sure how that's inclusive, but it seems like someone as BioWare is offended by natural anatomy.
- But at least you select pronoun—
- But he wants all of his characters to have big boobs and butt.
- That's not inclusive, either.
- That's, again, we're just going by what you perceive as attractive.
- I agree that you should be able to make your characters...
- I think the funniest character designers are where you get all the sliders are allowed to go up and down so you can have, like, the biggest thighs you've ever seen, and then a tiny waist, and it's, you can create the most incredibly insane-looking characters.
- That's funny and inclusive.
- All character, like, sliders should be like that, in my opinion.
- But stop pretending that you weren't just showing Harley Quinn's ass for five minutes on the screen because you're upset that you can't fap to it.
- (Emma laughs) “At least you can put your pronouns. But I can't jerk off if you got pronouns.”
- [NovemberHotel] ...and have top surgery scars now.
- You can have... This is the new Dragon Age game.
- You can have top surgery scars turned on.
- I cannot imagine anything more intellectually devoid and creatively bankrupt than this.
- This is a fantasy world and the only way to remove a person's breasts are the exact same way that we have in real life?
- It's not that deep, bro.
- People just want to make characters that look like them.
- Some people have scars.
- Most games like this, especially BioWare games, have scar options.
- You have lots of scar and tattoo options, famously, in these games, typically.
- Some people have top scars and they want to feel seen and attractive and beautiful with those scars because that's a part of their body.
- You just don't turn on the slider.
- If you want your character in your imaginary head canon to have had top surgery in a fantasy world where you don't have scars, then just don't tick the button.
- It's there for people who do have those scars and want to see that represented, and that makes them, that makes people feel better about themselves.
- Again, the fact is simply that it's not for you.
- “I am angry when we are not about me.” That's 100% of this discussion.
- Hey, lovely people. Editing Emma here. No Makeup Crazy Hair Edition. Character Design Ruining the Game Edition. (Emma laughs)
- While I was editing this, I just felt really compelled, I couldn't leave without saying to anybody watching who is trans, who is nonbinary, who has top scars which can include cis people, to anyone who has experience in gaming being left out of things like character design, I'm so fucking sorry that you can't just enjoy these simple changes, these harmless...
- I'm actually... I'm weirdly upset. (Emma laughs)
- I'm just... I'm so sorry that there are enough mediocre white men with microphones making podcasts and streaming and hitting the top of the charts on all of those things.
- I am so sorry that those people are there to interrupt what should just be a nice moment.
- You should be able to see a gaming announcement and go, “Amazing. I can make a character look more like me. That makes me feel good.”
- I am so fucking sorry that that news cannot exist without you also seeing people like this crying about how your inclusion, our inclusion, people's inclusion is ruining gaming.
- It's fucking atrocious.
- I'm so upset and angry that there are people that are so shallow, so self-centered, some of them just make up being angry for the sake of money and clicks, as to flood regular gamers' experiences with these just toxic, hateful opinions.
- It's not fucking fair.
- While GamerGate, and again, the top streamers and YouTubers and whatever show us that this kind of person unfortunately does make a large enough part of the gaming community to cause disruption, to cause harassment.
- I feel it necessary to remind everyone that that is not the average person's opinion.
- They're loud and obnoxious and hateful and they're constantly having their views reinforced by an equally hateful, toxic audience.
- But to use a term that I would typically hate and never use, real gamers don't give a fuck about different pronouns being included.
- Real gamers will click the pronouns that they want, they'll check out the scar options, turn them on or off, and then carry on with the game quietly, excited to actually play the game and see what it's like.
- Most people are not frothing at the mouth, getting immediately online to scream about the fact that you might be included.
- And I'm sorry that people like this make it seem that way.
- It's just not fucking fair.
- The majority, I think, of the gaming community is good-natured, wholesome.
- We see you. I see you. I know you're there and I'm glad that there exists an option for you to see yourself represented in a video game.
- It doesn't impact me or my playing.
- I'm so sorry that there are people that pretend that it does, or that have such a shallow appreciation of video games that it genuinely affects their playing that there is a pronoun option in the character creator that you see once at the beginning of a game.
- If you're excited about the pronouns options, if you have top scars and you're excited about the top scar options, I see you, I love you.
- You are really beautiful and appreciated and I am just so fucking sorry that so much of this community, that most of the time I love, can be so fucking toxic.
- And I'm gonna go away now 'cause, for some reason, that's made me weirdly emotional.
- Back to Regular Emma, who has her life put together.
- This is crazy. Absolutely fucking insane.
- I still don't know who this guy is.
- Why you fuck would you need top surgery scars in a game that has fucking magic?
- This is a world where people are able to change into other animals, but somehow you can't change into the other gender?
- This is the most surface-level—
- I bet... I bet he has never, ever had this problem with facial scars.
- “It's a world of magic and you have a scar on your face? Excuse me?”
- He's never had a problem with that.
- It's because the majority of people who have scars from top surgery or breast reduction, things like that, would be trans people and, “Those aren't me so I'm very pissed off that it's an option.”
- ...basic, completely devoid of any creativity, a way to virtual-signal that you care about—
- It's not to virtual-signal that you... You don't give yourself top surgery scars to prove that you're an ally.
- It's for people that have the scars that want to make a character that looks like them.
- It's not that fucking deep.
- “This is creatively devoid.”
- How can he pretend...? That's just... That's so dumb.
- There's one person in the comments saying, “It's just immersion, though.”
- Yes. If somebody has those scars and they want the character to look like them, they can turn it on.
- The end. End of conversation.
- There is no, like, weird, like, anti-creative storytelling blah-blah-blah, because then you'd have a problem with other scars, and you don't and you never have because you're not using your fucking brain because you're just talking about “what makes me horny.” (Emma groans)
- [NovemberHotel] Despite what games journalists and fencing YouTubers might tell you, influence from companies like Sweet Baby, Inc. are easy to spot from a mile away and they're extremely offputting.
- Games with woke character design are so painfully obvious.
- And again, what games journalists will never admit is that character design matters—
- “Oh, people don't like this character because she's not sexy enough.
- “She's not a super conventionally attractive white woman with blonde hair and big boobs and, like, permanent makeup in this fantasy world, so that means it's woke and bad.
- “If they don't look like me or I don't want to masturbate to them it's deliberately woke and bad.
- “It's not just that there are people out there who don't look like me, and so seeing representation of them makes sense because they, you know, exist.”
- It's just so...
- I feel like I use this phrase a lot, but it's so often true: It's so intellectually dishonest to phrase this as a big conversation about ruining games, about trying to force in diversity, when, realistically what it all boils down is that.
- “I want people to either look like me or I want to be able to jerk off to them.”
- That is incredibly shallow, bigoted. It's ludicrous.
- This whole time he's kept up saying that certain people, the perceived audience, modern audience, don't exist.
- He's never gone on to describe those people, because, as soon as he does, then we can look it up and see that those people do exist.
- Hello. I exist. I am a gamer. I always have been.
- As gaming becomes more accessible and more mainstream, more people who aren't just crusty white men in basements are playing games.
- Soon they ought to be reflected in the games.
- It's no deeper than that.
- It's not some crazy woke agenda for people of color to exist, for people who aren't super skinny to exist, for people who aren't super skinny with huge boobs and huge butt.
- It's also fine for those people to exist, and they do.
- So much. In so many games.
- You are still the majority representation in gaming.
- If you really just want to see white dudes that look like an attractive version of you or super hot white women that you want to jerk off to, there are plenty of games for you.
- Why can't you just say, “Okay. This is so that people who don't look like me see people who look like them in media”?
- It's just... It's very creepy.
- [NovemberHotel] Nobody would wanna play as Geralt of Rivia if he looked like this and nobody would wanna play as Lara Croft if she looked like this.
- You'd never catch anyone—
- Why is her belly button bruised?
- ...cosplaying as a Concord character or making fan art of a Concord character.
- I wonder if that's true.
- Past Concord fan art.
- Oh, look. There's some fan art.
- Oh, look. There's some fan art.
- Oh, look. There's some fan art.
- Here's some fan art.
- What do you know?
- Fan art of these characters does exist because not everyone has the same opinion as you.
- Not everyone is a gross, sexist white man gamer dude.
- Wow. Took one second to prove him wrong there.
- [NovemberHotel] ...unless it's people trying to improve the character design because the originals were that bad.
- “Improve.” Sexier equals better.
- [NovemberHotel] But for some reason people can't get enough of Overwatch characters.
- Gamers, and honestly people in general, wanna see beauty and masculinity in their media.
- “They wanna see beauty and masculinity, but only masculinity in the male characters.” (Emma chuckles)
- 'Cause as soon as there's a woman with muscles in a character, all the anti-woke brigade comes out, even though, realistically in these games, the things they're doing, the female characters should have muscles.
- Like, really.
- Sometimes we pretend it's about historical accuracy and realism.
- Sometimes we say it's about having beautiful, attractive characters.
- A lot of this is just fatphobia, which, it's hard to know what to say about that.
- [NovemberHotel] We are visual creatures and this, right here, isn't grabbing anyone's attention or has anybody say—
- I think that's cool design.
- I guess I'm just a woke lib moron 'cause I think that design is cooler and more interesting than the same generic female characters I've seen my whole life.
- I'm happy to see those, too.
- But why not both?
- Why can't we have both?
- You don't have to be able to masturbate to every character for it to be good.
- Very weird.
- [NovemberHotel] ...saying, “Yeah, that hero looks awesome. I can't wait to buy a poster of that train engine.”
- I don't judge all of the characters I see in things based on whether I want to buy a poster of them or not.
- Do people actually do that?
- Is anyone really that shallow?
- [NovemberHotel] ...who are willing to play The First Descendant really speaks to how much character design means to gamers.
- Tons of people played Stellar Blade that probably wouldn't even think twice about it because Eve was a total babe.
- And some journalists don't understand that and think Stellar Blade sold on its gameplay merits alone.
- That's because these journalists are brain-dead.
- If this was the main character of Stellar Blade, it would've sold zero copies.
- That's 100% not true.
- [NovemberHotel] One of the biggest problems with woke media is how sanitized everything—
- That is an objectively attractive person, so I'm not sure what is going on here other than racism with this game being too woke, the character design here being too woke.
- That is objectively a very conventionally attractive person.
- [NovemberHotel] Just listen to the dialogue in modern gaming, especially in the latest Star Wars: Outlaws, and you'll understand what I mean.
- Everything has become so— (Emma sighs)
- It's so crazy, saying things like, “Could you mod a turret onto an EML-850.”
- Fucking woke agenda.
- [NovemberHotel] Every NPC has to be so overly cheery and fake.
- It feels like uncanny valley at every turn because god forbid a character actually offends someone.
- Main characters have to be so—
- Well, that character just swore.
- Is it...? What do you want?
- Do you just want people to be able to say the N-word all the time in your games' lobbies?
- Like, just say that.
- Just admit being a big fucking bigot instead of making up this weird nonsense.
- [NovemberHotel] ...boring and have no morals of their own because what if the player doesn't agree with them?
- Morality choices in games are practically nonexistent so players don't accidentally side with an evil faction.
- The hand-holding and the juvenile design behind every quest, line of dialogue, and character design makes me question why these games are even being rated M for mature.
- NovemberHotel, I gotta tell you something.
- This... You might not have noticed this.
- You might not have realized.
- You can buy porn games.
- In fact, if you get yourself a VR headset, you're gonna be set for life.
- You don't need to stress out about mainstream games not being a constant fap-fest for you.
- You can just look at porn.
- You can skip the middle man and just go straight to the pornography.
- Not all of us are that shallow in our choices.
- Some of us prefer actually complex characters and interesting stories and good gameplay.
- But if all you want is someone to masturbate to, you can do that.
- There are options out there for you.
- [NovemberHotel] ...squeaky clean and sterile that they'd probably cry if being subjected to watch late-'90s Nickelodeon cartoons.
- Genuine adult themes and realistic dialogue, you know, mature dialogue, does not exist in modern games.
- What does he...? What do you mean?
- That, again, that's just not true.
- There's no modern games with mature dialogue?
- Is it because the smoking dame in the slinky red dress on the cover is giving you a hard-on?
- Yes, it is.
- The bulge in your pants is embarrassingly obvious.
- He must just mean offensive dialogue.
- He must just mean there are less people being, like, saying horrible sexist and racist things in video games and getting laughs out of it.
- I can't think of what else he would mean because that just sounds crazy.
- [NovemberHotel] Again, despite what the lying games media will tell you and what some YouTubers refuse to say, woke games fail because they are woke.
- And they'll say, “What does woke even mean? Isn't Baldur's Gate 3 woke? Isn't Elden Ring woke?
- “Oh, so a female protagonist makes a game woke?”
- No. It doesn't.
- And these people—
- “A female protagonist that isn't sexually appealing to me makes a game woke.”
- [NovemberHotel] ...shouldn't be taken seriously.
- They aren't trying to engage in good faith.
- Obviously a game with a female protagonist doesn't make it automatically woke.
- A game with a Black protagonist—
- “It's only if it's a female Black protagonist that I'm not attracted to.”
- He's literally said that earlier in the video.
- He literally had two side-by-side screenshots saying, “Look how they massacred Harley because she doesn't have as big a bum anymore.”
- And now he's...
- Oh, god, the dishonesty.
- The intellectual dishonesty is so— (Emma groans in frustration)
- It's so pervasive in everything he says.
- This is one of the most cursed things I've ever seen.
- [NovemberHotel] ...doesn't make a game woke.
- A gay character in a game doesn't make a game woke.
- But somehow we're all able to tell the difference between a naturally diverse game and one that is clearly propaganda.
- So I think this is to do with perceptions of diversity.
- I think a lot of the time, again, if you're a person who experiences a certain level of privilege, you're used to seeing majority people like you, majority white people, majority people of a certain age, majority straight people, whatever.
- So in the old days it wasn't too woke to have a gay character because there was one gay character that was a minor character or there was one Black character that was a minor character.
- If a game is more diverse, if there are simply a higher number of characters of color and women, et cetera, then that throws your perception off.
- Suddenly you feel like you're the minority and that doesn't feel normal, that doesn't feel safe, “So I don't like it and I'm scared.”
- No one is more easily triggered than anti-woke men.
- They see a game, even a game that they acknowledge that is not absolutely not directed at them or they see a game that has, like, character options that you can choose not to turn on and they freak the fuck out like they're precious, you know, like the gaming community belongs to them:
- “This is mine because I am a straight white middle-aged man and you're taking it away from me by making other people feel included.”
- It's so childish.
- [NovemberHotel] ...don't even have to describe what woke is.
- You can see it as clear as day and its influence in the games.
- He's never described it, though.
- Just like he's never described the imagined modern audience, he's never described what the difference between having gay and Black characters and being woke is.
- You don't even have to describe it, because, “That way, whatever you, the audience, perceive as being woke is what I'm saying so that you agree with me.
- “Because if I had to describe it, I would sound bigoted because it would come out that I was being clearly racist and sexist,” et cetera.
- [NovemberHotel] ...you watch a trailer for a new game during a showcase and can immediately pinpoint the woke games and know how to avoid it like the plague.
- Then, months later, that same game will get insane amounts of press from gaming—
- The footage we're using now, the footage he has chosen to put over him saying, “You can immediately tell it's woke.”
- I can see a person of color.
- Is that what's making it woke? 'Cause again, he won't say.
- [NovemberHotel] ...news outlets, but come time for the release, it majorly flops.
- People can see it. They can sniff it out and avoid it.
- You take one look at some of these studios and know immediately that—
- “Rainbow on the shirt. This is clearly a woke studio making a bad game that's gonna fail.”
- [NovemberHotel] ...it is they're cooking should never be served.
- You just know something is off with their games because it's not natural and it feels very forced.
- It feels like there's money behind it to push an agenda, because there is.
- What agenda?
- The studio's agenda is making money.
- Every time.
- There will be people working for those studios that are actively trying to make something more inclusive.
- But there is no great cabal of queers trying to force their way into the games to change them and make them fail by being...
- They don't want the games to fail.
- They want the games to sell as well as possible.
- No one like this has ever been able to describe the agenda that they're talking about, the woke agenda.
- [NovemberHotel] ...and Vanguard and similar companies are behind almost all of these major flops because they're more concerned with pushing propaganda than making a profit.
- What propaganda?
- It is not propaganda to have characters that you don't find sexually attractive.
- He's not willing to go into detail on any of these opinions he's described, who this audience is, what the propaganda is, what the agenda is, why some people or studios are so aggressively pushing the woke agenda, like, what the purpose behind that is.
- He's not willing to actually explain any of these things because he can't, because it just boils down to, “I want to jerk off to the characters,” or, “I want to imagine myself as this sexy character that I can relate to.
- “Not because I'm sexy.
- “Because I'm similar enough to them that I can imagine myself being sexy, like them, as a fantasy fulfillment.”
- [NovemberHotel] They have more money than God and God's banker.
- They are instead focusing on changing the minds of gamers with these projects.
- And thank God—
- I mean some of them, hopefully, yeah.
- Because a lot of gamers are like you.
- Again, that is why, when you go into online gaming lobbies, there's a thousand, like, 13-year-olds yelling the N-word.
- I would love to change the minds of those gamers.
- I would love to change the minds of the gamers that are super weird as soon as they hear your microphone and realize that you're a woman, or are super sexist and horrible when they realize you're a woman.
- Again, I follow some gaming collectives of specifically Black women who have formed that collective because their experiences have been so impacted by how toxic some of the gaming community can be.
- Changing those opinions is a good thing.
- It is good to change the opinions of racist and sexist people and homophobic people.
- That's not a bad thing unless you are racist and sexist and homophobic and you want it to stay that way.
- But again, their primary agenda is making money.
- They want to make money.
- That is... That is it.
- [NovemberHotel] ...gamers are resisting it and seeing through their bullshit.
- People can tell when they're being fed inauthentic products, when the diversity of characters isn't done in a way that feels natural, when they're a race- and gender-swapping of old characters, when the developers' Twitter pages are full of hating white male gamers.
- And if you are still, for some reason, having a—
- “Straight white men are the most persecuted people in the world.
- “Especially gamers.”
- It's just a... It's just a cliché at this point.
- He's a parody of himself.
- He's a parody of the audience that he's trying to appeal to and it's kind of sad.
- [NovemberHotel] ...a hard time figuring out what woke is, let me spell it out for you.
- Please.
- Woke people are those who are engrossed by social justice and think of themselves as saviors with moral high grounds, obsessed with preaching their ideology, yet they will always remain willfully ignorant to the irrationality of their claims and the problems they create.
- They want to desperately change—
- Like what?
- Irrational about what?
- What's...?
- Again, what's bad about being aware and fighting against social inequality?
- What irrationality?
- [NovemberHotel] ...norms and facts in order to cater to—
- “And facts, like white people are more important.
- “Like white people and sexy people and thin people and straight people are more important and more special and should be in all the games.”
- What are you talking about?
- [NovemberHotel] ...the latest propaganda requires and continue to—
- “The latest propaganda, like people of color exist.
- “Like some people have top scars.
- “This propaganda.
- “Women exist and they don't walk like sexy supermodels.
- “Crazy propaganda.”
- It's like... It's unhinged levels of delusional, dude.
- [NovemberHotel] ...and mental illnesses as something to aspire to.
- But we've been doing—
- Do you think that was transphobic?
- I... Again, he's so deliberately vague when he talks about all of these things, but because he paired that just after saying, “They're denying facts,” and now he's saying, and he included that bit about top scars and pronouns, I think he's transphobic and that was coded language all referring to trans people being included in video games.
- Which would not be a surprise.
- [NovemberHotel] ...pretty good, lads.
- Every time we don't buy one of their propaganda slop games, we move a little bit closer to getting back to reality and reclaiming the games industry.
- “Reclaiming the games industry.
- “The games industry should belong to straight white men and we're gonna take it back because now it's appealing to other people, even though earlier I claimed that the modern audience doesn't actually exist.
- “So who are we taking it back from?
- “You know. The people that don't exist."
- You can't have your cake and eat it, too, November.
- You can't... (Emma laughs)
- You can't have it both ways.
- I had other videos lined up but that wound up being a whole thing and I have a lot to say about every point, so maybe we'll come back and do another about some other crazy anti-woke people.
- But wow.
- My battery died so I may have zoomed in or out and turned slightly and I don't know exactly how so I apologize if this is unsettling to you.
- There are so many huge games that are LGBT-friendly, that have people of color as main characters.
- You have stuff like the Life is Strange series, Dream Daddy, the dad dating simulator.
- That's so queer and amazing.
- Dragon Age: Inquisition, the Mass Effect games.
- A lot of these games go in the pile of, “Oh, these aren't woke. I accept these,” and I think it's because they have sexy female characters.
- Hades, Baldur's Gate 3.
- I mean Baldur's Gate 3 was put in the acceptable list just because the guy liked the game, again, and I guess it has sexy enough characters.
- If he can masturbate at some point during it, then it's not woke.
- Otherwise it's woke.
- It's very bizarre because these games that are inclusive and diverse are doing extremely well.
- And the reason he's not actually described woke as a specific thing, same as he's not described the audience, same as he's not described blah-blah-blah, the reason he's being deliberately vague is because the real answer is that, if he likes it, it's not woke.
- If he doesn't like it and it has characters that he's not attracted to, then it's too woke.
- And that's honestly pathetic.
- It's actually pathetic.
- So lemme know your thoughts down below. (Emma chuckles)
- Quick disclaimer: Any time we talk about the anti-woke crowd, we will incur the wrath of those people.
- There will be some people who come here deliberately to be horrible.
- People will come and scream about not knowing what gender I am at the same time as being upset that I have pronouns in my bio, you know?
- Just don't feed the trolls.
- Engage in polite, sensible discourse.
- But if people are just being assholes just for the sake of being assholes, just ignore them.
- Unless you have something bitingly funny to say.
- If you're a funny little fella, you get a pass.
- Obviously that is subjective, so if other people don't think that you're funny, they will let you know.
- So careful. (Emma laughs)
- Careful what you do with your power.
- I think that gaming, especially, seems to have a higher percentage of the anti-woke, just bigoted, horrible people purely because it has kind of these slightly toxic male origins, because gaming has tended to lean more to a specific audience.
- The fact that it is now becoming more inclusive makes those people upset.
- “This is my safe boys' club and I don't like that it's changing.”
- So I think that's why it seems even more saturated with this anti-woke stuff than usual.
- But realistically, these people are the minority.
- Most people are not so shallow and irrational to get upset when they can't masturbate to the characters they're playing in video games.
- Most people are just like