“ The studio made their game because they wanted to make a game that they wanted to play themselves…above all, they cared about their game, because they love games, ” said Larian CEO Swen Vicke at the 2024 Game Awards. If you are a gamer, then you more than likely felt how deep those words were. Bit by bit, we are losing what was once a way to forget how unforgiving life is to a forced reality full of propaganda, politics, and “controlled perspectives.” Elon Musk was right; we need to make games great again. The billionaire might be onto something, but I do not believe he knows how dire the problem is. Assassin’s Creed Shadows’s release date is just under two weeks from now, and what is the gaming community criticizing the game for? Historical inaccuracy. Not graphics, not poor gameplay, not delays, just the good ol’ “Yasuke was never a Samurai.” Ubisoft finally clapping back at those grifters is so satisfying. There are a billion things to criticize game companies for but the genuine racism campaign against AC Shadows has been beyond disgusting, here’s hoping for massive success for this game just so they shut up https://t.co/eKmMXogZK6 — Synth Potato🥔 (@SynthPotato) March 6, 2025 Do we really need a video game to be historically accurate? If the game is good, who cares if Ubisoft lied about Yasuke? When it comes to video games, we all just want to have fun. A change is coming: Is gaming still a sweet escape? The Sims, Super Mario Bros, Crash Bandicoot, Ratchet and Clank, Legend of Zelda, Metal Gear Solid, and Grand Theft Auto; these are all franchises popular in the early 2000s that carry multiple generations of gamers. There’s no in-between; every installment from the names mentioned was either good or an instant classic. Back then, developers did more than giving us what we wanted; they scratched their heads to give us what we needed. I still remember booting up Super Mario Bros 2 on my dad’s NES. I can’t forget how fun it was seeing a pixelated plumber bouncing to dodge ducks, eggs, and balls of fire, and for hours, I was lost in a world with zero words, just music, and skills. No lectures, no analyzing where characters were and what “flag” they represented, just pure, unadulterated fun. Not saying that games stopped being fun 20 years ago or that they do not need stories at all. The Last of Us Part 2, Silent Hill, CyberPunk, and The Witcher are all titles that tell riveting tales. I might catch the heat for mentioning TLOU2. How is it any different from the “diversity, equality, and inclusion” narrative that gamers are being forced into, you ask? One word: gameplay. Rudimentary gaming in 4K: It’s never enough We have come a long way since William Higinbotham’s Tennis for Two was played in 1958 on an oscilloscope; you can now choose to enjoy your gaming experience on a PC or consoles. Which is better? That depends entirely on what you are looking for, but let’s just focus on the latter for now. The PlayStation 5 (PS5) and Xbox Series X are the top consoles on the market right now. Both use custom-made AMD RDNA 2 Graphics Processing Units. The PS5’s GPU runs at up to 2.23 GHz with 10.28 teraflops, while the Xbox Series X has a 12-teraflop GPU running at 1.825 GHz. All can perfectly handle native 4K rendering, though some games use dynamic resolution scaling to jump between three picture quality modes: balanced, fidelity, and performance. The consoles also support ray tracing, HDR, and use artificial intelligence (AI) upscaling like AMD’s PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) for the PS5 Pro and FidelityFX Super Resolution 2 for Xbox, to boost frame rates of games to 120 frames per second (FPS), all in 4K. Aloy's first adventure, enhanced for PS5. Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered launches on October 31, complete with previous save data compatibility: https://t.co/Npg1mCku5B pic.twitter.com/yMPaucXOjq — PlayStation (@PlayStation) September 24, 2024 So, with all these operational capabilities in hand, why are games still coming out very glitchy and buggy to the extent that months of patches can not be fixed? Because developers are concentrating on stories, more than how the game plays itself, or they simply want to make a quick buck. Batman: Arkham Knight was released in June 2015 by Rocksteady Studios, and Star Wars: Outlaws was launched in August 2024, almost 10 years adrift, more than enough time to know what “not to do” in matters of graphics. Guess which game looks and plays better on the PS5 and Xbox X? Gotham’s finest. It’s no wonder gamers want the PS5’s backward compatibility to cover PS3 games. Politics invade the controller I understand just as well as anyone that politics define how we live today in more than one way. That said, everything has a limit; DEI, just as it is walking on the walls of offices in the American government, now dictates game design. This is infuriating 😡 https://t.co/zBkUvMku8r — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 27, 2025 Resources poured into forced inclusivity, consultants, sensitivity readers, mandated diversity, and drain budgets that could refine mechanics or visuals. The heart of gaming suffers when polish takes a backseat to politics. Avowed is giving players pronoun options in character creation because, apparently, medieval fantasy needs to have gender debates. Concord flopped hard, and Sony just saw a $400 million budget go down the trenches just for “copy pasting” existing hero shooter games. “ The problem with the DEI and woke mind virus is that it kills the art. It kicks you out of the story because you feel you’re being lectured ,” said Elon Musk, and sorry for saying this for the second time; he’s not wrong. To some extent, we can accept having pronouns in fantasy games, but not at the expense of good gameplay and graphics. Without that, the game is just inexcusably “utter woke nonsense.” Don’t take my word for it. If there’s anything we learned from the 2020 game of the year, The Last of Us 2, it’s that when agendas feel forced, even a good game will get a 4-5/10 rating. The Last of Us Part II wins Game of the Year at #TheGameAwards ! Congratulations, @Naughty_Dog 🎉 pic.twitter.com/S7UIcmezCl — PlayStation (@PlayStation) December 11, 2020 Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League squandered its premise on live-service bloat and heavy-handed themes, tarnishing Rocksteady’s legacy built by a strong foundation of Kevin Conroy’s voice, in the Batman Arkham series. Contrast that with Black Myth: Wukong , a hit lauded for its mechanics and mythical story, no ideology required. But some unmentionable parts of the gaming community (Gaming Journalists) still found a way to criticize the game for “not including women.” Reviewers simply didn’t play the game past the first chapters, Wukong has plenty of female figures and bosses; they just blatantly lied to force an agenda. "There's no women and no diversity in Black Myth: Wukong" – Screen Rant Review Real life model for 2nd Sister Spider Yaoguai in Black Myth: Wukong, Uyghur fashion model Zulayati Abdulla from Xinjiang. pic.twitter.com/9vJ8d92cPk — Carl Zha (@CarlZha) August 27, 2024 Female characters have been well-represented in games and will continue clinching even bigger roles in the coming years. Horizon’s Aloy, Elden Ring’s Melania Blade of Miquella, The Witcher’s Cirilla Fiona Riannon, Resident Evil’s Jill Valentine and Ada Wong, just to name a few, are all female leads and antagonists that show how to tell a story through a woman’s eyes, without too much politics. We need to go back to the drawing board, not ask for more money Game developers need to understand two things: the customer will always be right, and players should never come second. Larian Studios’ Vincke made us proud twice at the Game Awards last December, once for Baldur’s Gate 3 and lastly for a heart-felt cryptic message that made gamers realize their worth. The reason why we hold Hideo Kojima closer to our hearts is because he makes games not because of market shares, to exploit users through micro transactions, to beat deadlines because the people in charge said so, or to serve a certain “brand.” He builds them so people can have fun. the way the crowd popped off when Kojima declared “I’m back” will forever be a legendary E3 moment https://t.co/amqMLKK2wO pic.twitter.com/XhfKmYYQKh — Radec (@realradec) March 5, 2025 If you make a great game, trust the gaming community, and please have faith in us that the revenue you have worked so hard to look for will come running. Do that often? And we will always forgive you when things go wrong, no doubt. It is disgraceful how publishers now “hope Grand Theft Auto VI’s retail price will be 99$.” Let’s not forget this is the most highly awaited video game, more than 10 years in the making. And given how high the standards of GTA are, some people won’t afford the price, but they definitely won’t complain if it retailed for that on release date. Would I pay $100 for a game like Avowed if I used $60 to get a copy of Black Myth Wukong ? Respectfully, no chance in this Trumpian world. If previously released games were that good and didn’t charge as high as some publishers want the prices to go, they can forget to hit sales targets. It’s really that simple. Let’s bring gaming back to where it belongs: in the hands of players, not preachers. Gamers want their games back, or nothing at all.
