Is This Evil Company KILLING GTA 6? (Sweet Baby Inc. Controversy)

a rapidly expanding group of Gamers has crafted a hit list of video games which includes Spider-Man 2 and God of War Ragnarok with rumor swirling that the hotly anticipated GTA 6 will also fall under this list now why is this group of around 300,000 people boycotting these games all of a sudden what Sinister thread binds these seemingly disperate titles together the answer sweet baby Inc um why are Gamers freaking out about sweet babies all of a sudden good evening I'm bagu buns and you may be w

ondering what kind of evil company has the power to prevent a significant group of Gamers from wanting to play the most highly anticipated game of all time well people think that a certain company's involvement will ruin video game narratives entirely it might be a bit of an exaggeration to say that people are boycotting GTA 6 already but people are pretty worried that the game has been ruined Beyond fixing is this reasonable let's find out anyways this is sweet baby Inc which is an organization

founded in 2018 that works with game studios on the stories of their games more specifically with diversity and inclusion so this video is going to have one of those types of discussions I know I'm as disappointed as the next guy that we are going to talk about sweet baby Ray barbecue sauce okay so obviously the topic of diversity in entertainment is extremely nuanced and it's a tough topic to talk about is it necessary to have in gaming as video game players we usually take control of the char

acter and see the world from their eyes and the truth is people from different races ages and genders see the world in different ways and that can lead to some very interesting stories and worlds some mediums get it right and when it works it's great Miles Morales from the spiderverse movies benefits from being a mix of black and Latino and aspects of those cultures are incorporated into his character in a meaningful way but some mediums don't understand how diversity works and that's how we get

a lot of liveaction Disney adaptations um actually liveaction Dumbo is offensive because he comes from a herd of Asian elephants but he looks like an African elephant and is voiced by a white dude so now the question becomes is sweet baby Inc pulling a Disney on us and forcing on pandering rather than incorporating a diverse narrative that only adds to the game well let's find out if you are of any race ethnicity or gender then subscribe to the channel what is with this push for diversity all o

f a sudden I mean most of us never really cared right well significant portions of marginalized communities may feel isolated if they feel like their voices aren't being heard in The Gaming Community I'd say it goes a little further than just not being heard many games perpetuated some pretty negative stereotypes that probably didn't land for a lot of people so yes I think diversity is necessary but not always what do I mean by that well there are contexts where diversity makes more sense a lot

of exciting games spawn out of folklore or experiences unique to that culture of people I love the game Saka of rice and ruin which I talk more in depth about in my Desert Island games video however the game wouldn't make sense with the cast of characters that weren't from ancient Japan and didn't have traditional Japanese values because that's the whole vibe of the game it Tastefully portrays the architecture mythology and labor of that setting but if Nintendo decided to make link anything othe

r than what he currently is the decision probably wouldn't feel very necessary or well-intentioned in the lore of the game link can technically be Indian a furry and emo but we've had a good few Decades of Link being a pretty blond white dude so if they did that we would more likely be questioning their intentions rather than celebrating gaming was an expensive hobby back in the day adjusted for inflation a new game would be almost twice what Ubisoft is charging for their quadruple a experience

and historically white people were a core demographic of video games because they were more statistically likely to be financially well off enough to make gaming their hobby so that's probably why a lot of early video games featured white leads maybe there were some Hardware limitation thingies also but the point is that they catered to that audience but it's not like video games weren't diverse back in the day I think media in general has been steadily and naturally becoming more diverse since

MTV put Michael Jackson on for the first time I can think of multiple examples of beloved video games back in the day that had tasteful representation of other races and perspectives GTA has often offered a minority perspective and even though the setting is based on the gangs and street life of Los Angeles their characters don't feel like stereotypes they're all unique and clever in their own ways and have more depth to them than just being black but but also the fact that they are black is sig

nificant to their character if that makes sense here's another example Lara Croft may have been considered a sex symbol but she was always much more than what her mama gave her in the Tomb Raider games she was intelligent ambitious and courageous but she never gave off the I Don't Need No Man energy I mean even cho cho rocket was pretty diverse cho cho came in blue red yellow so many options there are countless more prominent examples of wellone diversity but I think you get my point how however

diversity in gaming falls under criticism if it gets in the way of the gameplay or message of the game inclusivity works if it's done with authentic intentions and it should serve to bring out the plot and gameplay cuz more often than not that's why we play game that should be why we play games at least despite the appearance of my pale 32x32 Avatar I'm part of The asian/pacific Islander community and I never really notice or care if the games I like don't have an asian/pacific Islander protago

nist yeah Doom is great but Doom Slayer isn't Filipino so actually zero out of 10 game but I do notice and care if my culture is represented in a distasteful or inaccurate way for the sake of pushing diversity well I don't have a video game reference ready for this one I could think of a pretty prominent and controversial example the liveaction Mulan movie not only missed the entire point of the original Mulan but they also misrepresented the architecture clothing and mythology of Chinese cultur

e and and this is just one screenshot at the beginning of the movie Man Disney fell off when diversity is forced or prioritized over plot or gameplay it can feel stereotypical and detract from the overall quality of the entertainment and when it's done well then it shouldn't impact anything if you want to make or enjoy gameplay featuring a cast of white people then that's totally valid and fair even using diversity to make the game's NPCs not as boring looking is fine as well but if you're tryin

g to make it a selling point to have a diverse cast then it should be done in a meaningful way for a wide range of players so where does this leave our subject sweet baby Inc in all of [Music] this sweet baby Inc has been around since 2018 and it wasn't always welcomed in with open arms in fact I'd say that this baby was dropped on its head by the general public I mean it was founded by guys from Ubisoft who weren't exactly the most respected guys in the business back in 2018 sweet baby Inc is k

nown online as an ESG consultant which stands for environmental social and governance consultant but sweet baby rejects this identity and describes themselves as narrative Consultants you can view their relationship with the game as the game developers writing the script and sweet baby making the storyboard and polishing up the script their level of involvement varies from game to game but that's generally how they operate I know that ESG consultant immediately sits off alarm bells on a lot of p

eople but I'm willing to give sweet baby Inc a chance before associating them with investors and stakeholders obviously investors play a role in everything but hopefully that's not the only reason sweet baby Inc exists I could be wrong though now having an entire company that manages video game story writing is a pretty recent development because for a good while video game plots were made to be pretty simple to Aid the development of gameplay many games just give you an intro to the world and t

hen sort of drop you in your experience becomes the story you can infer what happens by looking at the set design or whatever and games like Dark Souls still do this however games like Las ofus Bioshock or Uncharted provided interesting ways that narratives can stand out in the context of gameplay but they also expose the challenges that come from doing this kind of Storytelling well I watched a recording of one of Sweet Baby inks workshops where they provide an introduction to game scripting as

the game goes on the player has a a lot more choices which complicates the story if it were my job to review this mess I'd probably make a Bowser kidnaps Peach plotline as well so sweet baby helps to streamline that process and iron out some Kinks and I don't think sweet baby is the first of its kind to do something like this but their claim to fame is to promote diversity and inclusion not only in the games but in their company as well they're big Advocates of letting women and other marginali

zed groups have a career in game writing and also get paid fairly for it well that's pretty nice we've already seen how something like this can end up a total disaster if they focus more on inclusion than competency and love for the projects they work on High Guardian spice was a cartoon series that was given crunchy R's blessing but its main claim to fame was that was made completely by women it wasn't very good but that was probably to be expected since the initial trailers didn't show off any

thing about the show except that would be made by women I'm getting flashbacks to the mighty number n Kickstarter disaster and to be fair to Sweet Baby Inc they have worked on some absolutely brilliant pieces of fiction three of the games sweet baby Inc worked for were heavy contenders in the game awards and SBI was awarded for their work on Allen wake 2 story and I know that the game awards isn't exactly the most respected for their opinions fantastic and now the game of the year award The Last

of Us Part Two but the players all really love these three games as well until they found a sweet baby inside all their bellies buckle up this is where things get really [Music] messy at the beginning of the video I mentioned a hit list of games that people are boycotting and review bombing over on Steam this is a work of a steam group called sweet baby Inc detected which detects the sweet baby I think it's over here the group saw some AB absolutely explosive growth and is currently sitting at

one of the top 50 largest steam groups ever but this growth was actually self-inflicted by the sugary infants themselves one of their team members basically tweeted out hey guys stop harassing us on the steam group to which the general public went damn there's a steam group sign me up this is known as the strien effect which is when trying to hide something inadvertently draws more attention to it while I believe everybody has the right to like or dislike companies the fact that this list of gam

es was born out of spite rubbed me the wrong way though some people dislike the games for more reason than just sweet baby Inc a lot of them just hate the idea of diversity typing in sweet baby Inc as a steam review isn't a valid critique of the game but it sure is rewarded as if it were one Liberals are smelly and are ruining gaming shut up and take my steam points oh you're so funny this review was a work of poet this statement deserves a Nobel prize it's hard to know how many of these reviews

don't like diversity and how many just don't like the way diversity is handled but it's still not very fair to the developers of these games that the most awarded critiques of their Works don't say anything some of these games aren't even outright ruined by whatever sweet baby Inc may have done this company's involvement doesn't always make the game bad it just made people look for Flaws in the game where it may or may not be a big deal most of these games are just mediocre it's pretty easy to

exaggerate the flaws of sable or Assassin's Creed Valhalla even though their stories weren't the glaring issue in those games of course you have games like suicide squad I'll get to you soon you little rat but if good games like Spider-Man 2 God of War Ragnarok or Allan Wake 2 were on Steam they would most likely get a fat thumbs down as well and these are award-winning titles that people are pretty positive about going on to Metacritic confirms this people thought that spider Man 2 should have

won game of the year over balers Gate 3 and after the sweet baby ink tweet blew up in their faces the bulk of the negative reviews on this game won't shut up about the baby Allan Wake 2 received a lot of push back for winning best narrative at the 2023 game awards despite their frankly amazing story but of course sweet baby Inc was involved so they obviously ruined the game right well let me tell you fellas they truly went too far with this one they have cross bound Aries that were never meant t

o be crossed when they added in a whole entire black woman Alan Wake 2 more like Alan woke to H got him okay as you probably guess there being a black character in the game isn't the only reason why these people got their panties into a Twist the character in question in Allan Wake 2 is named Saga Anderson and she serves as a secondary protagonist alongside Allan however in a trailer from 7 years before the game was released this same character was depicted as not a black woman the outrage proba

bly stems from the fact that Gamers believe that sweet baby in forced the developers remedy entertainment to compromise on the original vision of the game in order to shoehorn and a black character but like a lot can happen in 7 years I don't even think the full version of the story was even written out at The Point it's not like the plot of the game suffers because Saga went from white to black I don't know how much it benefits but it it's not distracting just because a company focuses on diver

sity doesn't immediately make the end result garbage SBI detectors think Miles Morales was only added to Spider-Man 2 to give the game a different code of paint without considering the fact that he can also be a compelling character worth including it wasn't even sweet baby Inc that introduced miles into the PlayStation games there was an entire game revolving around the guy at the launch of the PS5 and the sacchar infants didn't lay a finger on it they're probably busy making gotam kn but don't

take this as a defense of Sweet Baby Inc because despite the harmless elements of these games there's even more evidence to back up the fact that the ink is staining the gaming [Music] industry they don't know how many of us there are so they make it up they don't know what we do so they make it up they don't know the impact our work has on the studios that hire us so they make it up this is a post from a sweet baby inloes blue sky which is like Twitter but for people who believe that America i

s run by fascists what they are claiming is that they don't actually have that much of a hold over the games industry and we are misrepresenting the work that they are doing first of all this is a company that publicly bragged about being involved in Grand thieving automatic 6 and then try to hide it once the reputation went into the dirt sweet baby is involved in some of the hottest and most industry breaking games ever they're above the level of some simple little narrative designers and belie

ve it or not not all of us hate diversity some people just hate the way sweet baby Inc handles it exhibit a Webby wrists only one of the most profitable and recognizable superheroes ever we're just a tiny rag tag team of Freelancers sweet baby's role in this game is story consultation story Consultants have a working relationship with the developers and producers of the game to make sure the vision of the artists get across they make suggestions to make sure the story and characters are consiste

nt and represented well so in Insomniac Spider-Man 2 the flag in miles's room is a Cuban flag miles is Puerto Rican look at the size of that thing it's massive they eventually fixed it but this should not happen in the first place this game was one of the fastest selling games in PlayStation history within the first 24 hours which meant that on day one potentially over 2.5 million people saw this oopsie that is a a massive red flag from a company that claims how much they care about this kind of

stuff sure the two flags look similar but if it's your job to know the difference then there is no excuse surely it takes more work to insert an asset of a flag in a room than it is to run a simple Google search and maybe you can argue the extent to which that was sweet baby inc's fault I mean maybe the folks over at Insomniac Games need to get a little more sleep but still it's a mark against s baby inc's image of diversity and inclusion but to be fair that was probably the game that sweet bab

y Inc was the least involved in let's look at exhibit B self die gang yet another high-profile AAA game that sweet baby INC now actually has full control over they wrote the entire script of the game and this is where sweet baby Ink's true colors bleed through now I'll be honest there were a lot of enjoyable moments between the characters it wasn't n as fun or cool as James gun's Suicide Squad but there were moments when I exhaled a bit quicker than usual but if we zoom out from these few moment

s well hello there Metacritic score I can almost assure you that a lot of these negative reviews aren't from the gameplay of this game because it's not the worst thing ever when it works the way it's intended to however the overall story is irredeemably bad and it completely messes with the cannon of the Justice League and what not and while inconsistent lore is frustrating and already a massive red flag that was hardly the most toned deaf thing that they did in the game for that we mainly have

to just look at the characters that are a combination of white straight and male more specifically Batman Superman and the Flash let me just read another blue sky post before getting into all that they're mad at market conditions they're mad at Studio decisions they're mad at the world changing away from their fascist beliefs fascist beliefs huh well let's see how sweet baby Inc is ending fascism once and for all the full name of this game is Suicide Squad kill the Justice League and appears tha

t this Justice League is a commentary of a corrupt and overly controlling government and you know it's probably not even sweet baby inc's fault for portraying them this way I blame Zack Snyder his movies completely misrepresent the Justice of the Justice League and brainwash the general public into thinking that these superheroes are heartless murderers no other form of media does this not the Arkham games not the cartoons not the comics not even the Lego Batman movie but this is the most promin

ent lens through which the Justice League is viewed nowadays and sweet baby Inc clearly views them in this way as well the boss fights turned the Flash's arrogance up to 11 and they made Superman just unpleasant the cutcenes of the deaths are even worse we see that the race and genders of the characters makes a difference in the way that they die and the way that they're treated once they die once flash is dead Boomerang urinates on his corpse to my massive and disappointingly male fan base I do

n't like what they did with Boomerang I mean taking down Superman sounds super important right you know Superman the guy who travels faster than light is almost invulnerable to everything and dies by getting shot with a bullet and the squad barely even reacts they celebrate for like 5 seconds and then move on worst of all was how they handled Batman's death Kevin Conroy has been Batman's voice actor across all different mediums since 1993 unfortunately this legend died at the age of 66 and this

video game was probably the last project that would have his voice as Batman I mean even Mark Hamill gave up playing joker out of respect for the guy so how did the Suicide Squad game handle this Monumental sendoff by making Batman get shot on a park bench in the most anticlimactic way possible that is an unbelievable amount of disrespect just in order to push a really twisted image of Batman oh good on Harley Quinn for standing up to this monster that apparently oppresses serial killers Batman

Superman and the Flash get the shortest and most disrespectful Death Scenes while Green Lantern scene holds very significant implications in the rest of the Game's plot and Wonder Woman is given the most heroic sendoff in the entire game even Scott CN writes more consistent stories than these guys sweet baby Inc making the straight white male characters lesser within the context of the game isn't a good image of diversity and inclusion this is both racist and misandrist yes you can be racist to

white people and you can discriminate against men an inclusive representation of characters does not push away white men even if they are the historically privileged group that's the meaning of inclusivity making everybody as equal as possible you're fixing Nothing by making the pendulum swing the other way you're just repeating history I can fully understand the backlash against this company but I also can't agree with the SBI detected mindset I strongly denounce the gamergate 2 movement but I

also don't think that sweet baby Inc has well-intentioned people on their staff it's hard to definitively say that this company is ruining gaming since the amount of control they're given from game to game varies and also the quality of the writing varies from game to game however it is more than clear enough that they don't fully understand diversity and inclusion and they know they have the power to push their disillusionment across a wide market and you can't just say something like if you do

n't like it then don't play it because despite their gaslighting over on Twitter they're working with boundary pushing games they are working on the narrative and the characters of games like GTA 6 for crying out loud and if they maintain the same level of negligence as with the narrative and characters a suicide squad or Spider-Man then that is admittedly quite worrying for the future of gaming I think we have to accept that games and movies can be diverse without trying to be there will always

be games that are culturally insensitive but hijacking Legacy IPS and trying to change them to fit a supposed new model of diversity is not how this should be done this isn't progressing anything we just took one step forward and three steps back we can't blame the failures a sweet baby Inc on diversity we have to blame it on their lack of care for the games they work on maybe The Suicide Squad game was always going to have a diverse and colorful cast of characters but they distort all the stra

ight white guys and undo years of characterization if this isn't forcing diversity and if this is all natural Kotaku then our perception of what diversity should be needs an UNO reverse card and if you have any arguments against that well I'm a minority and I am right about everything so uh thanks for watching good night [Music] everybody