Get woke, go broke is not just a mantra, it's a rule, and the epic woke failures keep piling up in 2024 as the majority of consumers continue to reject DEI in movies, streaming, marketing and gaming.
Video games in particular have been aggressively targeted by NGOs and far-left governments for the dissemination of progressive propaganda, ostensibly because they are by far the most popular media for the younger demographic. From childhood to early adulthood the average western consumer will spend more time on video games than all other entertainment combined, making gaming a ripe venue for ideological grooming.
As we noted in recent articles on queer activist games like Dustborn, there is a vested interest by some very powerful people to dictate messaging in the video game sphere. The US government and the EU have been actively influencing gaming through ESG-like subsidies; offering developers millions of dollars if they plant woke content into their projects.
It's hard to say if Sony's latest gaming disaster, Concord, was partially paid for with ESG cash, but the content sure feels like it was drafted up by a bunch of blue-haired weirdos in the bathroom of a progressive think-tank.
Concord, a relatively generic competitive shooter with some obviously "borrowed" plot aesthetics from Marvel's 'Guardians of the Galaxy' , has all the indicators of a DEI game. This includes pie-chart diversity, no straight white males, lots of minority women, lots of fat positivity, at least one trans-woman and plenty of gender fluid pronouns. Sony spent at least eight years and $200 million (including marketing) on Concord with high expectations for the AAA title, only to discover no one wants to play as a clinically obese woman or a transgender.
Concord launched with disastrous results. Gaming service Steam logged a maximum of only 697 players for Concord and initial sales show only 25,000 units purchased. The lack of player interest has led Sony to treat the project as a total loss and the company is scrapping the entire game - Pulling it offline after only two weeks and giving customers full refunds. In other words, Sony just took a $200 million dollar loss on a game that they are throwing down the memory hole, possibly forever.
For those that might not remember, movie studio Warner Bros. did something very similar in 2022 when they scrapped the $100 million 'Batgirl' film before its release . Reports indicate that the flick was so woke and so unwatchable that WB decided it would hurt the company more to release it than it would hurt to dump it and move on.
This kind of scorched Earth response to product failure is rare from media conglomerates, but it might become more frequent as customers continue to develop a zero-tolerance policy for woke content.
Diversity in gaming seems to specifically promote the delusional premise that "anyone can be an action hero", from grotesquely overweight fat-body females, to the disabled, to 90 pound "non-binary" beta-males. The leftist controlled entertainment industry asserts that modern players "need to see themselves represented" in movies and games in order to relate to the characters on the screen, and if the media doesn't provide inclusivity for every obscure minority in our society then they are somehow missing out on an untapped slice of the market.
Activists also claim in dramatic fashion that to not include these minorities is a form of cultural genocide.
The problem is, companies have forgotten the basic rules of the free market - Know your primary customer base and give them what they want. Don't try to tell your customers what you think they should want. Don't try to shame them into buying your product, or they will destroy your business. The primary customer base will make or break you.
Fat positivity people can't be action heroes and the vast majority of players don't want trans propaganda and gender fluid pronouns shoved in their faces. These DEI tropes will never become popular; they will never succeed.
Companies like Sony seem to have completely forgotten to follow the most fundamental rules of marketing that made them popular in the first place. Or, they have simply chosen to ignore the rules and arrogantly assume they can make their own.