I see people referencing ESG more and more these days and there seems to be a blatant and undeniable link now between shit, poorly disguised unreal asset flips which even the big studios are doing and them running off a check list of cringey woke talking points or characters that almost always look the same.
If we think about it all titles now seem to follow this type of pattern:
. Blatant Unreal world environment assets that they don't even try to hide or edit properly anymore
. Speed tree ( Possibly the most favourite overused tool of a big studio I love to frequently reference for doubters )
. Usually the most basic third person character controller you've ever seen
. Black woman with afro or dreadlocks heavily featured, usually with a white female in tow and several male background characters
. Possibly characters lifted straight out of metahumans? Difficult to tell, can't confirm properly as of yet but they all look suspiciously similar in terms of fidelity and the setup - see video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXuVqfasT90
This isn't what I'm interested in despite the lengthy post, all of these moves by big studios have one thing in common. That's to reduce production time, reliance on a large art team which would have been necessary back in the day and general running costs of maintaining a big studio.
No, what's activating the old weaponised autism on this issue we're facing as gamers is what is truly driving this? Are we looking at a situation where we're going to have something akin to big studios turning into zombie companies that maintain a skeleton crew of do nothing diversity hire employees while you have one or two real designers doing all the work in the background? It seems that if the ESG subsidies are as massive as people seem to think it could well be worthwhile for CEOs to operate their companies as minimally as possible and simply pocket this government money as long as they like and because it's allegedly Blackrock. Much like how hotels are being paid ridiculous amounts of money to house migrants rather than operate themselves as a legitimate business with infinite government money the business owners aren't going to give a shit about what happens as long as they get to keep pocketing their half a million in the bank every year and leave the community to rot.
This means that they can and will keep producing infinite amounts of shit at very little cost and even if gamers all get mad and jump ship it's not going to matter and they will still keep churning this out every year as long as they maintain their diversity quotas and keep getting money.
Yes everybody, I am going down a major conspiracy rabbit hole with this and my brain has been ticking away. I want to know if there are any kind of financial numbers or reports buried deep in the way that potentially supports all of this cringe mediocrity.
I keep wondering if free to play games often let bots run rampant in order to hide the amount of players they really have now you mention sales because weird segway, I know for a fact they're doing this with dating sites. Also yes, I too think this conspiracy does in fact go back much further than we might think, I'm thinking to the days when Westwood Studios as an example got bought out. I just don't know if there are potentially finances coming from a company like Blackrock that would date back to EA getting money and being able to buy out their competition as an example.
It would not shock me in the slightest given how the investors are behaving if Blackrock had in fact been involved in that and this was part of a long term game plan or perhaps a differently named subsidiary or some other shady behaviour. It's also clearly a loyalty programme as well, buy up company, fill it with woke tards to keep them on the payroll for doing activist work wherever they can even though they wouldn't ever be able to get a job anywhere else. Get ESG money for being woke so they can maintain their activism on top of everything else.
There are sexy AI in your area. Ever wonder how much AI is from stuff like chat bots from 'single ladies'?
Check vgchartz, and make sure to use archives to see all their numbers. Something happened and more than half the sales numbers for games disappeared.
Also, check Ultimate History of Videogames and Phoenix: History of Videogames. They tend to give names and tell stuff without saying it directly. The congressional hearings on violent video games had a public hearing and a closed one. The public hearing had the President of Nintendo of America argue with a Sega rep on sales numbers and who was buying them. The closed and back door dealing was telling companies to stop their fake sales numbers. Almost all the companies would go under by 2003.
This is true of some games. War Thunder is one such example that comes to mind. And you're right that investors are potentially being tricked into looking at the wrong numbers to determine a game or studio's value.
It's not exactly a new trend in how investors operate, like in other industries, but it's definitely been spreading like a cancer at an alarming rate.