Concord is Sony's biggest failure in gaming history.

[Gettysburg4]

"Woke" when it comes to gaming or the output of Hollywood is about engineering or making primary "diverse" perspectives or representation *for the sake of that representation*. I.e when the representation *is the purpose*, but the product is intended for a mainstream audience and mainstream success.

Concord at a design level, and on a marketing level was put together with that purpose. Locked into the game from an early phase was the concept "let's make a game that showcases a diverse character set" in a modern progressive sense, and they leaned into that. And that *can* work. Particularly if the output is of high quality.

But the ask is very large for such content to do well when such things will not endear it to the majority of the audience base for competitive shooters, which, relative to other genres, are going to skew more male, more hardcore gamer, and more conservative and White (and then perhaps Asian male following as another segment).

Just break down who plays shooters, and who owns a PS5 or a high end PC globally. What percentage of those owners live in majority White nations, or majority Asian nations? I mean even if Black gamers *per capita* in Europe/USA/the Anglosphere are over-represented, they still demographically make up a small percentage of the whole. Same with LGTBQ gamers so described. Relative to other genres *progressives* are also likely under-represented. And now note, I am talking about relative weights, not whether such gamers exist at all, but if we ran through the relative numbers of each 'slice' of the market we'd find some are larger than others.

And like I said, people can play games where the design focus *was not appealing to them in particular*, especially when a game is brilliant, but obviously for a game that is average, having a game that hits all the other buttons you are looking for thematically, stylishly etc can carry it a long way.

Take a Conan game. It might be generally rubbish, but for people hard-core into Conan they might buy it and back it and do their best to love it regardless. But make it into a romance game where Conan's love interests are gay.. and what do you think will happen? Sure there is a subset that will love it, but the market such a game would primarily appeal to "gay people that love Conan" is getting pretty small, even if lots of gay people love Conan.

There is a large and diverse market out there and the best way of reaching most of it is via a product that is priced right, and of high/decent/compelling quality. The more you cut the quality or mass market appeal and the more you'll need to lower price to maintain wide reach, or you'll need to price higher and go for niche appeal.

So when you are marketing a competitive shooter but not designing it around the principles and themes the majority of that market want you are going to struggle, particular if that smaller market segment you are appealing to is already well served.. as you mentioned the LGBTQ theming in Overwatch.

I have kids in school (3 gen alphas) and I don't think the millennial woke brigade know quite what is happening at the *edge* of culture these days (like gen x before them they are now past the cultural setting edge and now represent more the *establishment* than that edge). The kids are pushing back. Teach them anti-racism and they embrace r*. Teach them to accept pro-LGBTQ and they react to do the opposite (at least the boys).

Unlike gen x which was mildly accepting, and millennials which were embracing, from my personal experience the next generation through is going to be rejecting (gen z perhaps is 50/50). When people are brow beat Soviet style about certain issues there can be a reaction to reject the premise. And lets face it.. when Google and Nike and your teachers and the Democrats and the law and Disney and CNN are all pushing the same line, how on *earth* do you think that is going to be perceived as *cool*?
By *becoming* the mainstream LGBTQism made itself uncool. Only the uncool people now want to be associated with it. Young kids (especially boys) are going a different way.
The cool teacher that is subversive isn't the "gay English teacher" that used to overlook the kids smoking outside his class.. that guy is now the principal browbeating kids that being gay is equal to being heterosexual. You do the math.

And if you doubt any of the above find a White progressive pro-LGBTQ woman that teaches grade school and ask her how she is going with the boys in her class. I bet the answer will worry you.