When Woke Groupthink Takes Control

[ChloeTzang]

No idea if anybody else has been following the delectable self-destruction that's gone on here, but it's a truly beautiful disaster of epic proportions. This might be one of the wildest entries in the "Get Woke, Go Broke" chronicles, and naturally it came from the realm of video games, the most contentious battlefield in the culture war.

Let me first set the stage here. Concord was a first-person hero shooter game developed by Firewalk Studios and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. The game was released for PlayStation 5 and Windows on August 23, 2024. Set in a retro-futuristic sci-fi world inhabited by coexisting humans and humanoid aliens, it revolved around battles between teams of competing mercenaries. The game was intended as a tent-pole title by Sony, who believed it would eventually expand into a Star Wars-level franchise with numerous spinoffs. Firewalk Studios is (was? LOL) located in Bellevue, Washington (a clue), and founded in 2018. Firewalk was acquired by Sony Interactive Entertainment in April 2023. Sony’s head of PlayStation Studios, Hermen Hulst, noted in a PlayStation blog post that “we continue to be impressed by the team’s ambitions to build a modern multiplayer game that connects players in new and innovative ways.” In a press release, he added, “I think fans will be very pleased when they see what Firewalk has in store for them.” Firewalk Studios is led by Tony Hsu, who was GM and SVP of Destiny at Activision, and Ryan Ellis, previously creative director at Bungie.

Between Firewalk and Sony, it was six to eight years in development and it was finally released on PC and PlayStation 5 on July 23rd, 2024, marketed as the latest and greatest game of its kind in the market.

A developer from Firewalk Studios shed some light on Concord's production, stating that the game was reportedly pushed as "the future" of the PlayStation brand, along with an estimated cost of $400 million. $200 million already being invested by ProbablyMonsters (Firewalk Studios' original parent company) and another $200 million by Sony. According to the developer, Concord's alpha state was reportedly "horrible," so Sony spent the extra $200 million to get the game in a working state. It should be noted the budget of Concord is still actually unknown, so these figures should be taken with a grain of salt. Simply put, everyone internal expected Concord to launch a massive billion dollar franchise.

Here's where it gets really good: The game only lasted 8 days before they called it quits and pulled the plug.

What went wrong?

Well, to start with, according to Geeks and Gamers, hardly anyone played it: "Sony appears to be folding and walking away from the table. Their new first-person shooter, Concord, has been a bust since its launch on July 23, reaching only 697 peak concurrent players on Steam – an even lower number than that of its beta test, suggesting many gamers didn’t come back for the actual game. Sony and their in-house studio, Firewalk Studios, got desperate enough to remove the LGBT tags from Concord’s store page on Steam, which was funny considering how big a ballyhoo was made over Concord’s diversity and inclusion. But it appears not to have helped, and this morning, Sony dropped a big bomb when they announced that they will take Concord offline on September 6, which is this Friday, exactly two weeks since its release."

It didn't help that its developers were insufferable. Jon Weisnewski, the Lead Character Designer for Firewalk Studios is, like most radical leftists, an anti-white racist who believes white people have "privilege." There are also no white men in the game, despite it being branded as "inclusive." Like most things, the only people who seemed to be fans of the game were the ones who liked its messaging. With the game now sinking below the waves, the leftists and game journalists who heaped as much praise as they could on it are fuming. They're coming at it from every angle, too. For instance, jobs are on the line and if you don't buy and play this game they could be fired! Oh, so sad. Then there's the 8 year development cycle, there's active shooter games are so passé, Sony’s marketing for the game had a lot to be desired, the game’s price ($40 for the standard edition) was too high, Concord was released in a field already overcrowded with live service games. Excuses, excuses and more fucking excuses.

Earlier in the release cycle, Firewalk Studios appeared to confirm rumors that the company was shrugging off the massive backlash the game received after it was revealed during a PlayStation State of Play presentation that the game pushes pronoun nonsense and DEI character designs. In the PlayStation State of Play, Firewalk Studios’ Kim Kreines, who is the Director of IP, revealed a number of the characters for the game including 1-Off, Vale, Lennox, Emari and more. Each of the characters that she shows off features the character’s name, its role, and then their preferred pronouns. Many of the characters have clearly been created to adhere to woke, DEI character designs. One such character is Emari who is an obese black woman.
On top of this, Kreines also stated, “Every character brings their own unique personality, skills, and wide-ranging perspectives to the crew.” She also detailed, “Every week when you log in to Concord, you will be welcomed with a new cinematic vignette that will give you a chance to see our characters off the job. They will feature ongoing narrative arcs that grow the characters’ stories and relationships and unpack the broader Concord galaxy.” At that point, it wasn't hard to imagine that the game wouldn’t be pushing all kinds of disordered and degenerate lifestyles through these cinematic vignettes given it already lists the pronouns of the characters.

Gamers were not having any of it and expressed their displeasure with the game. YouTuber Endymion posted, “PlayStation’s new hero 5V5 PVP Shooter Concord is full of diverse character designs & they even have their pronouns listed below their name ( see top right ) Who is this game for exactly?” Following this backlash a rumor from former World of Warcraft Team Lead Mark Kern aka Grummz detailed that Firewalk Studios was shrugging it off. Grummz posted on X, “PlayStation owned studio Firewalk Studios has heard your complaints about Concord… And ignored them.” He added, “Sources tell me internal emails show the Concord team is shrugging off the criticism of their characters as ‘white noise,’ and dismissing it. Very much in their own bubble.” He then pointed out, “Meanwhile, their trailer has over 44k dislikes, and their lead character designer bashes white folks and is rumored to be the one who pushed for the character lineup to be super woke. They are in for a rude surprise.” “Meanwhile Sony will be forcing PC players to register for PSN with this game, and barring it from sale in 177 countries. Vote with you wallets,” he concluded.

Well, what happened? Seems Grummz read the market rather better than Sony, Firewalk and the woketards.

View attachment 2395282

 

[ChloeTzang]

What happened next?

The game went dark on September 6th, but the day before it was shut down, the company’s Senior Concept Artist Amanda Kiefer revealed that employees are “terrified of the future.” She wrote on X, “I was going to DM you after seeing this, but this site makes me pay to do that, so at the risk of getting dogpiled, I’m just going to say this here: a lot affected the art side of concord including design by committee, failure of some leadership to listen to the art team, etc.” She continued, “the character concept art team including myself is going through an extremely difficult time emotionally, and some of the team no longer want to work in games, design characters, or even do art anymore after this. Because of this, posts like yours, though understandable are unfortunately ill-timed. None of us know which way the wind will blow with the studio, we are worried sick and terrified of the future. Not only that, but we have been shouldering the brunt of the emotional labor as executives/directors dodge most of the blame.” Kiefer then added, “Behind the scenes of all this talk about concord and character designs, people’s livelihoods are at risk and there are very real financial consequences that might hurt us even more. She concluded, “That’s just what I can say from our point of view. I’m not saying change course or anything – us artists like being able to use social media to promote our work and get more jobs. But I am saying we see this, and it does absolutely effect us since we just got our teeth kicked in.”

Well, yes, you did, Amanda, but you didn't actually identify the reason did you? Because of course, what she failed to mention was that while the company and its employees have been shaken by the failure, one thing that is not shaking them and that they are not even acknowledging is the game’s embrace of woke ideology and diversity, equity, and inclusivity (DEI). It seems that the company and the game team did indeed have discussions beforehand about how heavly it would embrace woke ideology. As shown in the game’s final product it does not appear that dissenting voices were able to bring any reason to those wanting to insert the woke ideology and those, like Kiefer, are seeing the games failure as as "kick in the teeth" (which it is) for them and the woke ideology they pushed thru the characterization and gameplay. And epic fuck around and find out, truly, that your target market (yes, guys, and largely white and asian guys) are not into DEI and will avoid it like the plague. Let's just cut to the chase and say a toxic positivity feedback loop seems like a bad idea for an AAA gaming company.

The truth is, this game was always bound to fail. The repeated pattern of something going woke then swiftly going broke can't be denied, and I'm not sure how many times corporations need to learn this lesson before they finally get it. This is just one more example.

Enjoy the job search, guys. On the plus side, I guess you don't need to learn to code, but maybe learn Hindi or Urdu. Should make it easier to get that next coding job.

 

[deckardB26354]

Wrong forum.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Wrong forum.

Woke infestations are politics. So bite me.

 

[deckardB26354]

Woke infestations are politics. So bite me.

Still the wrong forum, Ching Chang.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Speaking of woke infestations, this is an example of how politically woke and out thee the games dev team was. One of the developers for Firewalk Studios’ demanded her co-workers refer to her as “professor,” pushed “extreme politics,” and demanded that her unvaccinated colleagues be fired. One of their devs came out as ‘non-binary’ & forced everyone at the company to call her ‘Professor,’ – She would regularly have meetings w/cheesy phrases like “Teaching/learning with the Professor” – She pushed extreme politics, hated guns & wanted unvaxxed staff fired.” This just illustrates in part how Concord came to be such a delusional mess…

“The source was telling me that if people would not want to refer to her as at or didn’t feel comfortable with it then their job would be in jeopardy. Meaning that this person had their pronouns pushed to the point of calling them something that they have not earned before. They didn’t have any agrees or accomplishments to be called Professor. They just decided one day when they woke up saying, ‘I’m a professor now and people should start calling me that.’ This change, according to the source, had led to a companywide enforcement on adjustments in addressing and interactions. Meaning that people were required to address people how they demanded to be spoken to. And meetings from this developer when they had these scrums together at the office would be titled really weird things like: “Meeting with the Professor” or “Teaching learning with the Professor,” which as the source had reported to me were not well-received by the staff there universally.”

“Like many of the people at Firewalk Studios felt uncomfortable around this person, but also felt like they’d be retaliated against if they tried to speak up and say anything because the overwhelming architecture of the company especially when it comes to HR was very left leaning,” he added. “Meaning that it was very sympathetic to pronoun bias and how people are addressed and exactly how you need to report to people and if you don’t give them that respect then you’re the person in the wrong.” Listen to how authoritative this type of personality is where they demand to be addressed a certain way, they demand people respect what they wake up and feel like and they’re non-binary one day and have to be addressed as the “Professor,” work on a game that has guns, but they don’t like guns, but then also don’t want people in the office that aren’t vaccinated to the point of complaining about them wanting them to get fired because of it.”

The whole point here is that the internal culture was so woke that it led them down this delusional path that they were building a game with mass market appeal, and they sold this delusion to the extent that $400,000,000 was invested in building and marketing this game - and it sold 25,000 copies at $40 each before sales dropped away. Companies that go down this path are just delusional. You can force people to comply by threatening their jobs, but you can't force customers to buy.

And this game just proved that.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Still the wrong forum, Ching Chang.

Ying Yang Yawn. LOL

 

[SmokingFap]

No idea if anybody else has been following the delectable self-destruction that's gone on here, but it's a truly beautiful disaster of epic proportions. This might be one of the wildest entries in the "Get Woke, Go Broke" chronicles, and naturally it came from the realm of video games, the most contentious battlefield in the culture war.

Let me first set the stage here. Concord was a first-person hero shooter game developed by Firewalk Studios and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. The game was released for PlayStation 5 and Windows on August 23, 2024. Set in a retro-futuristic sci-fi world inhabited by coexisting humans and humanoid aliens, it revolved around battles between teams of competing mercenaries. The game was intended as a tent-pole title by Sony, who believed it would eventually expand into a Star Wars-level franchise with numerous spinoffs. Firewalk Studios is (was? LOL) located in Bellevue, Washington (a clue), and founded in 2018. Firewalk was acquired by Sony Interactive Entertainment in April 2023. Sony’s head of PlayStation Studios, Hermen Hulst, noted in a PlayStation blog post that “we continue to be impressed by the team’s ambitions to build a modern multiplayer game that connects players in new and innovative ways.” In a press release, he added, “I think fans will be very pleased when they see what Firewalk has in store for them.” Firewalk Studios is led by Tony Hsu, who was GM and SVP of Destiny at Activision, and Ryan Ellis, previously creative director at Bungie.

Between Firewalk and Sony, it was six to eight years in development and it was finally released on PC and PlayStation 5 on July 23rd, 2024, marketed as the latest and greatest game of its kind in the market.

A developer from Firewalk Studios shed some light on Concord's production, stating that the game was reportedly pushed as "the future" of the PlayStation brand, along with an estimated cost of $400 million. $200 million already being invested by ProbablyMonsters (Firewalk Studios' original parent company) and another $200 million by Sony. According to the developer, Concord's alpha state was reportedly "horrible," so Sony spent the extra $200 million to get the game in a working state. It should be noted the budget of Concord is still actually unknown, so these figures should be taken with a grain of salt. Simply put, everyone internal expected Concord to launch a massive billion dollar franchise.

Here's where it gets really good: The game only lasted 8 days before they called it quits and pulled the plug.

What went wrong?

Well, to start with, according to Geeks and Gamers, hardly anyone played it: "Sony appears to be folding and walking away from the table. Their new first-person shooter, Concord, has been a bust since its launch on July 23, reaching only 697 peak concurrent players on Steam – an even lower number than that of its beta test, suggesting many gamers didn’t come back for the actual game. Sony and their in-house studio, Firewalk Studios, got desperate enough to remove the LGBT tags from Concord’s store page on Steam, which was funny considering how big a ballyhoo was made over Concord’s diversity and inclusion. But it appears not to have helped, and this morning, Sony dropped a big bomb when they announced that they will take Concord offline on September 6, which is this Friday, exactly two weeks since its release."

It didn't help that its developers were insufferable. Jon Weisnewski, the Lead Character Designer for Firewalk Studios is, like most radical leftists, an anti-white racist who believes white people have "privilege." There are also no white men in the game, despite it being branded as "inclusive." Like most things, the only people who seemed to be fans of the game were the ones who liked its messaging. With the game now sinking below the waves, the leftists and game journalists who heaped as much praise as they could on it are fuming. They're coming at it from every angle, too. For instance, jobs are on the line and if you don't buy and play this game they could be fired! Oh, so sad. Then there's the 8 year development cycle, there's active shooter games are so passé, Sony’s marketing for the game had a lot to be desired, the game’s price ($40 for the standard edition) was too high, Concord was released in a field already overcrowded with live service games. Excuses, excuses and more fucking excuses.

Earlier in the release cycle, Firewalk Studios appeared to confirm rumors that the company was shrugging off the massive backlash the game received after it was revealed during a PlayStation State of Play presentation that the game pushes pronoun nonsense and DEI character designs. In the PlayStation State of Play, Firewalk Studios’ Kim Kreines, who is the Director of IP, revealed a number of the characters for the game including 1-Off, Vale, Lennox, Emari and more. Each of the characters that she shows off features the character’s name, its role, and then their preferred pronouns. Many of the characters have clearly been created to adhere to woke, DEI character designs. One such character is Emari who is an obese black woman.
On top of this, Kreines also stated, “Every character brings their own unique personality, skills, and wide-ranging perspectives to the crew.” She also detailed, “Every week when you log in to Concord, you will be welcomed with a new cinematic vignette that will give you a chance to see our characters off the job. They will feature ongoing narrative arcs that grow the characters’ stories and relationships and unpack the broader Concord galaxy.” At that point, it wasn't hard to imagine that the game wouldn’t be pushing all kinds of disordered and degenerate lifestyles through these cinematic vignettes given it already lists the pronouns of the characters.

Gamers were not having any of it and expressed their displeasure with the game. YouTuber Endymion posted, “PlayStation’s new hero 5V5 PVP Shooter Concord is full of diverse character designs & they even have their pronouns listed below their name ( see top right ) Who is this game for exactly?” Following this backlash a rumor from former World of Warcraft Team Lead Mark Kern aka Grummz detailed that Firewalk Studios was shrugging it off. Grummz posted on X, “PlayStation owned studio Firewalk Studios has heard your complaints about Concord… And ignored them.” He added, “Sources tell me internal emails show the Concord team is shrugging off the criticism of their characters as ‘white noise,’ and dismissing it. Very much in their own bubble.” He then pointed out, “Meanwhile, their trailer has over 44k dislikes, and their lead character designer bashes white folks and is rumored to be the one who pushed for the character lineup to be super woke. They are in for a rude surprise.” “Meanwhile Sony will be forcing PC players to register for PSN with this game, and barring it from sale in 177 countries. Vote with you wallets,” he concluded.

Well, what happened? Seems Grummz read the market rather better than Sony, Firewalk and the woketards.

View attachment 2395282

What a pathetic thread.

 

[PaxNurgle]

I do understand how often times people (filmmakers, industry, etc.) does try too hard to be "politically correct" and (for example) include token minorities merely for the pure sake of including token minorities. I mean I get it; they try too hard, to the point where it is a distraction.

But let's be honest here. The O.P. isn't talking about "trying too hard." He simply hates people of color, gays, and minorities, and uses any excuse he can to promote discrimination and hate speech. Thus, this thread really isn't condusive to a reasonable discussion.

 

[coati]

So, an electronic game bit the dust. Cry me a river over this terrible tragedy in another attempt to draw people into a virtual world

Go find something to do in real life.

 

[MajorRewrite]

More new games flop than succeed.

Only a loon would pretend the flop of a video game means anything in the greater context.

 

[ll74]

Poor white giys

 

[Bray123]

Source?

Never mind, TL;DR.

 

[Rightguide]

What a pathetic thread.

Yet here you are all lonesome and shit.

 

[Rightguide]

Woke infestations are politics. So bite me.

Has he had a rabies shot?

 

[SgtSpiderMan]

I do understand how often times people (filmmakers, industry, etc.) does try too hard to be "politically correct" and (for example) include token minorities merely for the pure sake of including token minorities. I mean I get it; they try too hard, to the point where it is a distraction.

But let's be honest here. The O.P. isn't talking about "trying too hard." He simply hates people of color, gays, and minorities, and uses any excuse he can to promote discrimination and hate speech. Thus, this thread really isn't condusive to a reasonable discussion.

The OP just copied and pasted from this site.
https://www.stripersonline.com/surf...oke-sonys-150mm-video-game-implosion-edition/

 

[ChloeTzang]

More new games flop than succeed.

Only a loon would pretend the flop of a video game means anything in the greater context.

Lol not many take $400,000,000 with them.

 

[colddiesel]

Lol not many take $400,000,000 with them.

Almost enough to pay the fines of a well known felon!

 

[IrezumiKiss]

The OP just copied and pasted from this site.
https://www.stripersonline.com/surf...oke-sonys-150mm-video-game-implosion-edition/

When CopypastaThink Takes Control.

https://media.tenor.com/XpRVuVoWi5YAAAAM/haha.gif

 

[RoryN]

Deplorables are currently resorting to plagiarism every day on the PB.

Smacks of desperation.

 

[ll74]

Deplorables are currently resorting to plagiarism every day on the PB.

Smacks of desperation.

Chloe consistently copy pastas on their posts. Most notably is her posts in the Ukraine thread.

Makes them feel smart

 

[HisArpy]

Woke infestations are politics. So bite me.

What does he get if he offers to only nibble a bit?

Axing for a friend.

 

[colddiesel]

Chloe consistently copy pastas on their posts. Most notably is her posts in the Ukraine thread.

I find her Ukraine posts quite interesting. Most of the information is pretty factual, albeit almost certainly supplied from the narrow focus of a military person - but still useful. What is missing is analysis of the political dimension from the west's point of view. It is most satisfactory, Both sides are bogged down, Russia is bleeding resources and money. Neither can win and if by some mischance the Russians were able to win the military engagement they will be looking at 100 years of guerrilla war fuelled by the hatred Putin has engendered. The West should do just enough to keep the conflict going - spin it out as much as possible.

The real cost to the West is reasonably modest and it has proved how cheap drones and superb intelligence can effectively cope with more traditional mobile armour. It has also enabled the West to get rid of a lot of mothballed second grade equipment which has proved reasonably adequate at keeping the Russians on the back foot. Over simplification, granted, but another cost benefit is that a lot of very expensive hardware has not performed too well, which may constrain the Pentagon's ambitions with regard to the military budget in future.

The downside risk is whether Russia emerges as a Chinese client state. I think that with that in mind, the West should do its utmost to encourage conflict between Moscow and Beijing.

Apologies for the thread Hi-jack !

 

[ll74]

I find her Ukraine posts quite interesting.

I do too...but they aren't her posts..they are copy paste from articles.

Most of the information is pretty factual, albeit almost certainly supplied from the narrow focus of a military person - but still useful.

From websites, not her words

What is missing is analysis of the political dimension from the west's point of view. It is most satisfactory, Both sides are bogged down, Russia is bleeding resources and money. Neither can win and if by some mischance the Russians were able to win the military engagement they will be looking at 100 years of guerrilla war fuelled by the hatred Putin has engendered. The West should do just enough to keep the conflict going - spin it out as much as possible.

The real cost to the West is reasonably modest and it has proved how cheap drones and superb intelligence can effectively cope with more traditional mobile armour. It has also enabled the West to get rid of a lot of mothballed second grade equipment which has proved reasonably adequate at keeping the Russians on the back foot. Over simplification, granted, but another cost benefit is that a lot of very expensive hardware has not performed too well, which may constrain the Pentagon's ambitions with regard to the military budget in future.

The downside risk is whether Russia emerges as a Chinese client state. I think that with that in mind, the West should do its utmost to encourage conflict between Moscow and Beijing.

Apologies for the thread Hi-jack !

The issue here isn't that she doesn't provide articles that are interesting and valuable but that she is openly stealing other people's work without credit or cite.. ..which not only is shitty.....but also against forum rules.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Chloe consistently copy pastas on their posts. Most notably is her posts in the Ukraine thread.

Makes them feel smart

Nah. Gives a bit of background and content and Ukraine is interestimg, but I'm sure not going to waste hours writing a post half a dozen people read and I'm not interested in 2 lines of opinion and vituperation which is what most of the posts here are.

As has been demonstrated here, people are perfectly capable of finding the source of they want. Of course I can provide links but honestly, who's going to follow them. If they're that interested they'll go read up on the subject anyhow. And I'm lazy. I prefer to sound off and then sit back and watch the fur fly. LOL. As it is. LOL LOL LOL