Concord isn't even "woke". It's just being cherry picked since it failed, so certain people can claim they won their culture war. 

If it did even moderately well, almost no one would have said it was "woke". 

Black Myth Wukong was mentioned like 20 pages ago. I think the ironic part is that if the devs weren't openly anti-feminist, the game would have been massively celebrated by the "woke" people. The game is a huge deal to Chinese culture and the games success is a huge step for more authentic Chinese representation in the industry. 

I know it seems silly to suggest that console wars are responsible for it, but you can't forget just how intense it can get and how seriously people take it. Dan Stapleton gave Starfield a 7 and received a vile torrent of abuse for it. He was on twitter trying to defend his score and people like Angry Joe had to come out and defend him. Don't underestimate the extreme lengths people go to, to defend their console of choice. As you have said, so many games have DEI integrated into them into some form, that it wouldn't even make sense to get angry about it anymore because it's so common. 

I believe this is just a continuation of what happened to Sony when they said you now require a PSN account to play HD2 on PC. Sony and arrowhead received an extreme and vile torrent of abuse until they were forced to reverse their policy. I believe people just don't like Sony. Why else throw vile abuse at someone for requiring a PSN account? 

What does “pro-woke” even mean?

The way I understand the term “woke” or “pro-woke” is that its the African American class/group of people not trusting the intentions/motivations of white liberals/corporations who claim to be anti-racist.

But the way I see it used generally means “pro-groups of people I hate” - generally a dog whistle by racists, the same way they misuse the term “political” and “political correctness” as dogwhistles/right-wing hatred-based virtue signalling.

Or...Hear me out, Overwatch and Valorant succeeded because WOKE! (I don't seriously believe this, Lol).

Concord would have failed even if it had twenty white dudes in the cast, Lol. Nobody has actually explained why Concord itself is "woke" I mean we have complaints but as far as I can see, Concord doesn't have a single confirmed LGBTQ+ character, it only has one character who uses "They/Them" pronouns and it has a dude who looks white but people are saying isn't white so Idk if he's white but he looks white to me. I was told it has DEI writing consultants on it so I even wasted time checking the credits and found none.

Battleborn, Lawbreakers, Gigantic (Temp Back; Died Earlier), Crucible, Paragon all failed and none were "woke"

Concord is mid in an extremely competitive market with unappealing designs and shit marketing, I would bet anything that the vast majority of gamers haven't even heard about Concord let alone this "woke" stuff and they sure as shit ain't investigating like myself which character is LGBTQ+ and all that, Lol. Fuck they probably wouldn't even notice the "They/Them" pronouns

This is forum users seriously overestimating how much gamers at large give a damn about this stuff or even notice it.

Happened to TLOU2 as well though, that was largely TLOU fans as well. It's just dumb politics, us Xbox fans aren't all bad, Lol. And in fact I was defending TLOU2 from *certain* people as well. There COULD be some Xbox fanboys latching onto the political angle just to throw digs at Sony but I don't think it's the majority.

It's just a game which failed so it's being used in teh culture wars. Harder to make your point with games which sell millions, receive critical acclaim. Got to ignore them ones, then you see one which failed and BAM. It's like the other game which is being blasted right now, a game I literally never fucking heard of until I saw the anti-woke brigade complaining about it, if they weren't whining about it I literally never would have known it existed and nor would thousands of other people, Lmfao. I can't even remember its damn name right now but they just latch onto whatever they can find.

"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.

I am not making assumptions. I do not know why you think that. You have not given me an example, what you think is an assumption.

I am not claiming there are only two groups. 

"On the awareness part, most of what we talk about people is viewed through race and not ethnicity. We talk about broader groups of white people and black people, even if those things are poorly defined"

I do not know where you are from. Are you American? This point of view might or might not be valid in the USA. I am not American, so I cannot tell. If you are I do not blame you for the simplified racial representation of Black/White/Asian/etc and think this is how it goes everywhere. It has been over 15 years I visited the US and I remember on my landing card I needed not just share my Nationality but also there where boxes where I would checkbox my race. Those where those simplified Black/White/Asian/Etc checkboxes. I thought that was weird and have literally not seen that for any other country I visited. So if your government tells you this is how it is, I don't blame you to think that these are the major checkboxes to when it comes to representation.

Looking through the prism of the US though, does not make it universal. The world is a big place. I visited more than 50 countries on 4 continents. And no the differentiation/representation is not the simplified US race version with White/Black being the dominant discussion. It is about Nationality, ethnicity, cultural anchor points and depending where you are in the world those in different order.

So let me give you an example, where the simplified view is well meaning, but not effective.

A Korean, Japanese and han-Chinese can recognize which is which a mile off. Most westerners cannot, they can only see an east-Asian appearance. So if you make a character with a generic east-Asian appearance, the creator might believe they put representative diversity in the game for East-Asian gamers. But the truth is that no Korean, Japanese or han-chinese will find any representation in the game. They will find representation in the game, if you actually put a Korean, Japanese or han-Chinese looking character in the game.

That's why I say to just use the simplified Racial divide of Black/White/Asian/Etc is actually not supporting true diversity. It misses the target.

I don't know what you mean by Strawman. I do not know this word. What is wrong of me indicating that the cultural anchor point (my Aboriginal example) is more important to representation than skin color?

You're making this big assumption that there is some basic checklist of black/white/asian etc, that needs to be checked off. 

I'm sure on the level of media companies, a lot of them have something just like that. But that isn't the goal that people are pushing towards.

What is wrong with it, and what is a strawman requires the same answer:

No one is saying that skin color is more important than ethnicity. 

You're making an argument against something that doesn't particularly exist.

I feel like you completely misread my post. Because pretty much everything you're saying in here, agrees with my post.

There isn't a single white guy in the game, and that was on purpose (I think a dev said so?).
Instead theres black females with purple hair and stuff like that...
A robot with pronouns.... I mean common.

Yes its woke.
You can tell by the models and skins and Armour, they have for sale.

The game play isn't bad from what I heard... its just its 40$ (when other hero shooters are free), and has characters that are too generic and boring.
People want good looking characters and sexy ladies in games.... it sucks to hear but it sells. Esp if your game is free to play, and lives off of selling skins ect.
If you go a differnt route, and dont think you can recoupe costs that way..... and instead have to price yours way above the competition out there, it better be the best damn hero shooter ever made (if you want it to be successfull). Concord was just barely avg when it came to gameplay.

The woke spin, didn't do it any favors either.
(it probably didn't directly kill it, but overall I think its a net negative. You can't have fat black ladies with purple hair, as characters, and expect skin sales to be high imo. Look at Tracer from overwatch.... its like one of the most searched for porn terms on some porn sites lol. People wont even remember the names of the characters in Concord, in a month or two. It'll be "the fat black chick" "the robot" ect ect)

Anyways too many hero shooters out there already.
I wish they would drop makeing all these GAAS games, and instead do some single player ones.