You can’t really gauge its Steam reviews because there are only 13(!) total so far, reflective of a game that has launched with just a few hundred players. 224, as I’m writing this article. Sub-Concord levels. Yes. Concord is a unit of measurement now.
The Concord legacy lives on.
I follow gaming news pretty closely and I’ve never even heard of this one. Wouldn’t be surprised if the low engagement, at least in part, comes down to poor marketing.
Same here, and frankly, what kind of title is “Unknown 9: Awakening” supposed to be? That reads like an internal Codename they forgot to change pre-release:
It’s part of a transmedia push. It started with a podcast, and they were pushing out a video game, a comic book, and I think a TV show? So they’re trying to keep everything a part of the same brand that hasn’t had time to breathe yet, perhaps rushing out the video game.
I remember it from one of the recent game conferences, but basically only because of the actress that played in the Witcher show too. Pretty much forgot about it immediately.
Besides the actual quality of the game, it seems like (stupid) people are complaining about DEI in this game? Why?
People are the worst.
From what I know Sweet Baby Inc. is involved. Which is a studio that focuses a lot on DEI when it comes to narratives/story in games.
They already did not have the greatest track record, some good games, but a lot of mediocre and even bad games. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the game scores are related to DEI, but the fact it keeps happening to games they’re involved with says at least something.
The good games they’ve worked on have included some of the most praised games in recent years. If you want to ask why this keeps happening, you have to have massive blinders on to ignore the likes of God of War: Ragnarok and Alan Wake II, both firmly in recent memory, and also realize that basically no writer on earth could save something like Suicide Squad from its criticisms.
No…TRUE Scotsman uses Sweet Baby Inc!
Like I said, some good games. Which by the way still received criticism from people about certain DEI related involvements, whether you agree or disagree with that is different thing, but the criticism was there too.
Anything not about straight white men will have people complaining about DEI bullshit. It’s never a reason a game has failed. They fail because they’re bad games. They might also include DEI stuff, but it’s not the cause.
Edit: correction, those games listed are about straight white men. Anything that includes a character that is not a straight white man will have those people complaining. They’re the most fragile people in the world.
“Criticism” is a charitable word for what that is.
What does “focuses on DEI” even mean? That it has non-white people?
Some stories don’t have straight, white people. That doesn’t mean there’s some agenda going on.
It means exactly what DEI is. So yeah, predominantly focusing on non-white people and non-straight people.
They are a studio that consults on specifically this in games they’re collaborating with.
They are contract writers for hire, and you have been misled, either intentionally or unintentionally, by the YouTubers you follow. Both Sweet Baby and their clients have denied this interpretation of what they do.
Not sure what I’m being misled over? It literally says on Wikipedia as well:
Sweet Baby Inc. is a Canadian narrative development and consultation studio based in Montreal. Founded by former Ubisoft developers, including scriptwriter Kim Belair and product manager David Bédard, the company consults on video game narratives during development to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion within game narratives and studios.
Also, in every game they’ve worked on it’s quite obvious which part they’ve been involved with, based on the above.
But people on this sub really just like to keep shooting the messenger huh 🙄
You know that in the wake of Suicide Squad and Saga from Alan Wake II, they stated quite clearly that what was “obviously” their contributions were totally wrong, with Remedy confirming on their end? It may not be inaccurate to state that sensitivity reading or consulting for authenticity when writing diverse characters are services that they offer, but their contributions to each game are not itemized. It’s like when a bad port happens and people see Iron Galaxy in the credits, they want to see this pattern of Iron Galaxy being responsible rather than <beloved creator of game you like> and then throw out any evidence of Iron Galaxy actually being a really good port studio. I get that you want to form patterns of why something you perceive to be wrong is happening, but the truth is that these companies’ contributions are not itemized, because video games work more like a traditional business than Hollywood, and it’s no one’s policy to break out which work was done by a contractor versus in-house, so you’ll actually never know. Instead, Endymion, or whoever it is you watch that picked up on the week’s trending rage bait topic, cosplays as a journalist and infers a whole lot of what Sweet Baby does that they just didn’t do, whereas an actual journalist would get quotes from sources to confirm that it’s true.
What does DEI stand for? Urbandictionary was completely unhelpful with it
Diversity, equality, and inclusion. All very terrible things, as you can see…
What is the actual quality of the game?
Did you know about this game? Did you buy and play this game? Did you actually like this game?
Are you one of the ~220 people who bought this game and didn’t spread the word to their friends.
It sounds to me like this game sucks. Maybe it was rotten from the start. Maybe they were forced to hire a bunch of mentally ill people with a massive chip on their shoulder to ‘advise’ and change the game to tick some boxes on a list. ( don’t you just love having fun according to a list of prescribed requirements? ) I bet the people working on it like that. Talk about a soul sucking job without passion. We will probably never know the truth.
You’re parroting the line of dumb conspiracy theories known as Gamergate 2 pushed by a bunch of grifters farming engagement on YouTube.
Narrative consultancy companies like SBI don’t force you to hire them, and if you choose to hire them, you don’t have to follow all of their advice.
If you’re interesting in curing yourself of the mindworms the YouTube algorithm has planted in your brain, please check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGmESJM6BFQ
The article honestly reads like they are glad the game failed.
I haven’t played it but, from reviews, it seems to be a pretty decent AA game with poor marketing.
The article is tongue in cheek, but I’m not sure where you’re getting “pretty decent AA game” from. It got scathing reviews and has a worse average score than Forespoken. It’s currently mostly negative on Steam so from what it sounds, it seems like a bad game that got zero advertisements because the studio gave up on it.
Forespokens hatred train was beyond-the-pale ridiculous. If every game was judged / brigaded as harshly as Forspoken was, the AAA game industry would collapse.
And honestly, Forspoken was a really fun game if you focused on what you were doing 99% of the time, which was traversal and combat. The story, quest design and characters were lackluster, but it wasn’t nearly as horrible as people made it out to be.
People robbed themselves.
People robbed themselves.
Are you fucking kidding me? It’s 79.99€ on Steam and you’re talking as if the opportunity to experience it is lost forever. If it’s worth a cat shit, I’m looking forward to its proper release in 2026 at 15€ or less.
Lol, I’m not gonna contest you on the price point. But that’s an issue with every AAA+ game imho. Even I snagged it on sale.
But that’s also not even close to what the review bombing was about.
*AAAA industry.
They tried to market it as the first AAAA game.
“Scathing” feels like too strong of a word for this game or Forspoken’s reviews. The majority of them seem to be right around that 7/10 range, and even the 5s share similar language more often than not.
Just got this for free with my new GPU. This game runs like (and looks like) shit. The 2012 Tomb Raider reboot literally looks better with very similar mechanics and runs at a higher frame rate all while using 1/10th as much hardware.
Whenever I turn a corner, my whole system freezes for a few seconds, and this is a near top of the line system. Characters look super robotic, and the special superpowers look like they’re running at 144p resolution.
This is literally the first time I heard of it
Sweet Baby strikes again
Remember that when Indiana Jones comes back with 8s and 9s.
That feels like very optimistic wishful thinking.
Does it? It’s the people who made two very highly regarded Wolfenstein games making another game like those but with Indiana Jones.
Fuck I hope not, Indiana Jones absolutely should not be a shooter.
I think it’s pretty clear what the game is from the trailers, and it looks awesome. Hopefully the temple puzzles are actual puzzles, as opposed to something like Uncharted where Drake always has the answers in his deus ex machina book.
Anyone that employs Sweet Baby deserves to fail. Good thing people are waking up to that.
Sorry, folks. We’re still working on the browser plugin that automatically hides/downvotes all social media content that raises the topic of Sweet Baby Inc. You’ll just have to do it manually for now.
I would be careful with such generalizations - not because I’d be downvoted into a hole (I’ve turned the scores off and just DGAF), but it’s epistemologically a bad habit. However, whatever I’ve seen so far that SBI had their fingers in does have a certain fellow-kids, safe-edgy, corporate-approved, plushie-anarchist tone, the dialogues are atrociously bad and disjointed from their theme (Sable’s postapocalypse, for instance). They can do a less funny version of Joss Whedon’s relaxed banter and they tend to stick it everywhere. But what I really dislike about SBI is that it’s obviously a grift, making developers cough protection money to add pronouns and hair colors to characters.
