I was just thinking about the sorry state of modern gaming, and that video of the Diablo 4 level designer chicks (trying to) play the game they helped design popped into my head.

This also ties in to a comment I made somewhere recently about being tired of anything "white" or "male" or "straight" or just generally normal being derided, and the destruction of those things being celebrated.

"Dude bros" is generally just code for passionate young white men. Now, sure, there are some negative aspects to young men of any race (usually overshadowed by the never talked about positives), but it was weaponized as a smear by fucking race communists to try to invade and take over...well, everything.

Things were better when "dude bros" ran (or at least contributed) to things. Back in the day, these creative innovators were genius nerd gamers who were hyper-passionate about their work, and it showed. They were rockstars, who actually played and cared about the field they were contributing to, and pushing forward.

Today, we have a bunch of diversity hires (anyone non-white and/or non-male, and/or non/straight) who often clearly have never seriously played a video game in their lives, much less the game they're spending their time designing. They're not passionate about the field, they're not passionate about the project. They're either just there for a paycheck or, worse, they're there to take shots at the imaginary "dude bros" in their minds that haunt their every waking hour. They're out for revenge, and to rub it in the faces of the dude bros that came before, and the dreaded largely straight white male demographic their games are still appealing to. I'm not even sure they have the self-awareness to realize their own work will never even hold a candle to that of the dude bros.

TL;DR: Put nerdy White/Asian male gamers back in charge of game design, and kick out the harpies and queers. Simple as. Same goes for society, probably.

Ninja Edit: The dude bros could make really impressive shit run on a calculator. Modern game design makes supercomputers sweat doing basic fucking shit. Save me from this nonsense.

One More Edit: Excellence used to be rewarded. Now it often gets hitpieces written against it by jealous journos working for the megacorps who churn out the shit games. If you don't pay the tithes, you don't get attention.