The fact that I'm relaying something that happened between me and a former friend means it's a lot less genuine?  Seriously?  Okay.  Gotcha.  That works for me, because I feel the same way about your "followers of Satan" comment, which is just as phony as your "suggestion" comment.

I see people get called racists, misogynists, or transphobes because they criticize a movie or a video-game, even if their complaints are about some other aspect entirely.  And I'm supposed to believe that you don't see that? 

Yeah, I don't find you to be genuine at all. Condescending?  Yeah.  Genuine?  No.

You are breathtakingly dishonest, disingenuous and bad faith when having a discussion. You either ignored everything that has been said to you or are wilfully ignorant. You bring up so many different things, from suicides to “conservatives not liking gays holding hands on tv” to saying you’re pretty sure what UK law is and what has happened here when you’re told the contrary by an actual citizen of said country, and this just in this reply to me. To others you’ve ignored, gaslit, strawmanned and generally done everything but address the point pretty much all of us have had as the thing we care about most - being compelled or forced to use language or face pretty serious consequences.

I don’t think you care about trans people at all; I think you care about appearing on the “right side of history” and in the process make life more miserable for trans and non trans people alike. The only people who seem to glean joy from this shit show are trans activists who for the most part aren’t even trans themselves. You said “ There's a billion things i wish I didn't have to hear about. But I live in the real world, where people do all kinds of things.” Again, wow, this is staggeringly bad faith. Why? Because, and I can’t believe I have to say this yet again, but whether you believe me or not, I DO NOT CARE what people do AS LONG AS IT DOESNT INFRINGE ON MY RIGHTS OR FREEDOMS. The moment it does, I take notice and I care. 

Also, I am a gay man whose partner is non white. Why do I mention this? Just so that you may understand that this isn’t about anything else (you brought up conservatives) EXCEPT for being compelled to use language that I do not want to use. That’s it. And it is a hill I, and many others, will absolutely die on. I’m absolutely happy to live in a world where people have all kinds of ways of living and ideas, but I refuse to live my life under the boot of some nasty little characters who, in their own misery want everyone else to be miserable as well. 

Finally, unless you miraculously begin to respond to my actual point and just fire off the replies ready in your head, which often aren’t actually a response to anything I’ve actually said, I won’t respond to you directly anymore. Have an honest, open and frank discussion or else there is no use in having any dialogue between us.

People, this is all about money in the end. BlackRock and other similar giant companies offer their DEI funding benefits to companies, and suddenly overnight the companies are so very concerned about the plight of the marginalized people. It's hilarious to watch. And there's always a bunch of useful idiots in the population, who rush in to take part in this virtuous saving of the world, believing that companies actually care about people. Many are in it just to keep their heads down and save their jobs and careers, because dissent is not tolerated at the moment.
It's just money versus money, do I take the DEI benefits at the risk of losing sales by alienating my core customer base with this bullshit? I think they are slowly finding out that this crap isn't worth it in the long run, they might destroy their whole foundation with this.

How many games out there without black or Asian or Latino characters?! Why is it important to have a white male as a character? 

What did the designers say exactly that robbed people off the wrong way? Would be nice to know

The game mechanics and gameplay seem solid, it’s not broken from a technical point of view, a highly polished product with no bugs. There are no scummy micro-transactions despite the genre’s predatory behaviours being normalised by gamers and even desired, this sort of trend bucking is refreshing to see and I hope devs, at Firewalk and elsewhere, don’t learn the wrong lessons from this failure. 

Non of this excuses the game for not clicking with its intended audience, but it’s also not an excuse for us to push our baseless narratives about why it failed either just because it flopped massively. 

We live in a world where a lack of white male characters is somehow more troubling than a bullying campaign that targeted the studio and devs relentlessly for months just because a group of entitled people feel like every game has to appeal to them? Talentless hackery. 

Diversity to most western developers just means Black, let's be honest. There's sooooo few games with Latino man protagonist for example.

Supply and demand - that's why it's important.  A majority of the west is white males.  The majority of the audience for shooters is white males.  It's a numbers game, this should be obvious.

These things are almost never about token devs getting up their own ass politically.  A single developer or two can proclaim to hate all game players and white males but people generally won't care if the game is appealing.  It happens but it's fundamentally not the point.  These things are implicit persuasion, pathologically.  Concord's designs speak directly to the audience and the audience spoke back.  Not only are the designs unappealing in sexuality, the choices in color range are visual mud.  

It would be refreshing to have a live service game without bugs and MTX if the game we're talking about didn't look so damn boring.  It doesn't get more complicated than that on the development/gameplay side.  

If we rationalize this and not think of this emotionally, the white male option should always be available.  They play games, they play shooters, they have disposable income and if you're marketing to the west - and you always are - you have room temperature IQ if you believe you shouldn't always be trying to make them happy.

Video games are entertainment.  They should be entertaining.  And if you want to make money while making them, you supply for the demand for entertainment.  There's no demand for video games in the LGBT crowd, the pronoun crowd, the fat acceptance crowd or the DEI crowd.  Yes, white men are quite entitled to entertainment because they pay for an experience that pleases them, over and over again.  I don't know what happened to half the world that game developers/publishers(and more broadly, Hollywood and entertainment at large) don't have to do absolutely everything to please their audience.  If anyone are talentless hacks it's the morons who greenlight shit like Concord and the utter bootlickers who defend them.

I said in my post that there is nothing inherently wrong with a non-white cast; the thing is though, white males make up a huge portion of the gaming population, so its not smart to leave them out if you want to appeal to a broad audience.

What the character designer said that rubbed some folks the wrong way was that white people must confess their privilege. In that context, many felt that the game had an air of "hey straight white males, this game's not for you."

Now, whether that was the intention I cannot say, but that's how it came across to some people.

The bigger issue at the end of the day is that the game really appeals to nobody; regardless of race or gender, gamers universally rejected these awful characters.

Not just confess that privilege but if you are white you must somehow use your privilege to change the system.  If you don't then you are also guilty of racism.

Personally, I don't care if an original game like this excludes me.  They can make their game with whatever characters they want as long as they aren't changing an existing property.  However, DO NOT exclude me or say/imply that a game is "not for you" to me then expect me to support it.  

I'm not questioning the authenticity of your story. 

I'm questioning the genuineness of your feelings/motive.

You're claiming to have made a genuine mistake, while being dismissive about their feelings on it.

Like "I accidentally called Stacy a bitch. She's being a real bitch about it now."

It doesn't exactly feel like a genuine mistake. 

Yeah, if someone is complaining about why all the characters are black, then yeah that's kind of racist. The same questioning doesn't happen with white majority games. 

Because these are literally things I've seen in my own family. 

My brother in law came out as gay, and his dad is upset because he doesn't want his son going to hell. 

My wife's uncle made a public announcement that he hated a kids show, because one of the characters was gay.

People are frequently wrong about what the law is, anywhere. Even their own citizens. 

A lot of US citizens complain about the same thing, despite the fact that it's not.

It doesn't help that people are misunderstanding what I'm saying. 

I try to be deliberate about my language usage, but I'm not perfect. People also interpret things differently. 

When I say "I think", I am very deliberate about that. I'm open to being wrong, and if you feel I'm wrong, instead of feeling shot down, you should take it as a chance to provide the law that makes it illegal to misgender someone. Not a random article about someone getting arrested for it. 

I'll come back to the rest of your post later. I'm not ignoring.