Woke Gaming Culture: Why Western Developers Are Failing Their Players

And welcome to a new episode of Digital Coffee Marketing Brew, and I'm your host, Brett Deister. If you could please subscribe to this podcast on all your favorite podcasting apps and leave a five star review, it really does help. But this week we'll be talking about a whole slew of things that are going on, plus path of exile Two apparently is taking off. Surprise, shocker, or whatever you might say about that. I'm gonna give my impressions of Delta Force and Marvel rivals 'cause they came out this week because that's what you do. You just come out this week, just a whole bunch of free to play games and then we'll kinda match them to their corresponding game that's similar to them. So Marvel rivals to Overwatch two, Delta Force two. Battlefield 2042. Also, Intel's new second gen XESS two. Talking about that and how it actually might be better than A-M-D-F-S-R. Basically, it's just a, it's just a frame generation downscaling upscaling to make your game. Run a lot quicker. So we're gonna be talking about that as well. And then my main thing of like why Western Gaming developers and publishers don't understand gamers and why Chinese developers are winning right now. It's gonna be a fun thing with a bunch of interesting things going on, but let's get on with the show. Mm, that's good. Alright, so first up, steam has set a new record with over 39 million concurrent players. There's a lot of players playing a lot of different games. Yes, it's a new milestone for them and it's great to see it, even though a lot of people, or a lot of businesses are, I won't just say Epic hates steam because it won't play by their rules. Everything like that, it is a good indicator that it is a healthy ecosystem within Steam because this is a new milestone for them. Plus, with all the. New games coming out. And new games actually here, including Marvel rivals. We also have Delta Force. We also have Path of Exile too. We also have Indiana Jones that people are playing that are not, I really don't know, have no interest in whatsoever. But the most plays games currently are Counterstrike two, followed by Dota two, path of Exile two. And that's just a bunch of them plus. You got games like Marvel rivals and Delta Force that are in the, at least Delta forces in a hundred thousand Marvel rivals is in around the 400,000. Yeah, over 400,000 marks, so it's doing quite well. Also, Delta Force is doing well for its particular genre. Your shoes are the bigger ones, but this is specifically. What we are looking for is great. Now, Delta Force was number 18 as opposed on STEAM db and then Marvel rival's top seller was number three. You can see where I'm going with this. Yeah it's quite interesting where this is all going, but it's good to see that STEAM is actually doing really well. Moving on. So moving on to Path of Exile two, and it tops the steam chart as the best seller. I just checked on STEAM DB and it was number one as a top seller when it actually was officially launched. It is what people are thinking of. Dark Souls meets Diablo fours, or Diablo specifically is. One of those very intricate games that a lot of people are just looking for. It is going to be free to play, but if you wanna play it right now, the second one, not the first one. You can play the first one for free, but the second one you'll have to purchase, it'll be $30 or more, depending on which I guess I. Which, which tier you get for that one. So if you do want to play this game, it is, you have to purchase something as of now. But once it does come out, out of early axis, it will be free to play. So that's a great thing for that. But for. It is beating everything out of the water. It is funny just how these non, these just regular games that gamers like are doing really well, and all these developers that seem to want to be very woke for being woke are doing terribly because they don't understand gamers as opposed to table four right now. Has only 9,771 players playing at this moment. This all time peak was two months ago at 55,561. So again, your terrible MO monetization stuff. This is happening in Blizzard two. Overwatch two has terrible MO monetization. It's very predatory. We don't like it. Stop it. You do know you can do better than this, and this is the problem that a lot of people are having right now is why are you being so predatory on a lot of your things that I have to purchase A bunch of different things. If you guys were just better at it and just look at Marvel rivals. Marvel rivals. Monetization is actually pretty good. You could, it's a one-to-one for the free credits to the premium credits. You can't, the ballot passes never expire, so I won't, so no one ever has fomo and it's a more fun game, but this is where we're at. It's the problem with. Western developers now is they're trying to figure out how to fleece the customer instead of saying, Hey, let's make the game fun first, and then put in monetization options that don't seem so predatory. Problem is they keep on doing this and they will always lose. Gamers don't like this. Moving on to Intel's second gen or new XESS two. It's basically DLSS or FSR. It's a, it's the competitor to those two, and supposedly it's supposed to be pretty good. It's gonna be better, supposedly better than FSR right now 'cause it will use. Similar to what DLS is using for ai. So it's gonna be using AI to frame generations and doing a better job of that as opposed to a D'S FSR three. I think a new AMD's new one, whenever it's coming out, it's gonna be AI as well, but right now it looks like Intel is going to be better at it than a MD, but we'll see how good it is against DLSS. It could be on par with DLSS. We're not quite sure about that until they actually fully come out, but supposedly it's supposed to be really good. It's supposed to help with just gaming at high frame rates instead of low frame rates, which is always a good thing. Now, I don't know how many games are actually using Intel's actual XESS. God I hate when they do these things. These are so bad. This like tech companies. Can you please just make better names like these X-E-S-S-D-L-S-S-F-S-R is just super annoying to say. Anyways. Intel claims the total performance uplift are startling and the highest performance model running. F1 24 at 2K SEXS two upskilling, combined with the new frame generation feature. Boost performance from 40 frame 48 frames per second to a faintly stag staggering. 186 frames per second. That's a 3.9 x uplift even using the highest visual quality performance. Jeff jump. By 2.8 x to 136 frames per second. So basically it was doing a really good job of having the highest, profile for whatever graphics you wanted to and on 2K, and, but still making it playable because that's where we're always having, we wanna see the pretty game, but you can't see a pretty game if it's a resource hog. But if EXS. Two and DLSS and FSR can help us with that. We'll try to do that now. I'm always saying this for like probably single player games, competitive games. Usually just want to keep it on low just to make sure you have the best frame rates. I put Marvel rivals on Medium because I tried high and it froze every time. Scarlet Witch did her Ultimate, it just froze and I had to get out of it and it's you shouldn't, you should try to reconnect. I'm like I couldn't because you already found somebody else. Anyways, moving on to my impressions of Marvel rival. So I played Overwatch since it came out in 2016. It was a fun game. No one knew how to play it. It was just, it was that fun newness of a game where nobody cares what you play. You just wanna win. You just wanna have fun. Now, Overwatch two is basically, I. All about metas, all about picking the right thing, all about. It's all your fault. It's not my fault, it's your fault. There's a little bit of that Marvel rivals to run into a few people on day two, but it's that feeling again. Plus Marvel rivals have done interesting things with it. They've have destructible environments, which I actually I think it's fun to add a new gameplay loop to it. We also have a slew of characters. I do think they need to add. As always would seems to be with his games, add more tanks and add more support slash healers because they just don't have enough Everything's in the DPS, but the thing they get right is that it's open queue and I feel like they should just leave it at open queue. I feel like that's more fun that way. 'cause when once Overwatch left open queue, they it wasn't as fun anymore because you couldn't figure out the best way of doing things and it just left it bare. The great thing about Marvel rivals is that they haven't dumbed down all the characters to make 'em accessible. A lot of them have a high skill ceiling, which you have to learn how to do it right to do well in the game, and some are low skill ceilings where you can just do just because they're easy to pick up and go. And I like that dichotomy because that actually brings a certain set of, nuance to it where you. You want to be an expert in these types of characters so you can be really good at them, but if you're new to the game, there's enough of them to be accessible where you don't have to feel like you have to grind to figure out how to play this game. There is this really great balance of it. I do that a lot of the game modes are similar to the original Overwatch done compared to the new one, but. There's no super tanks. You can play more than one tank. Thank God it, which is rare, but the greatest thing is the. I don't know. I don't know what the term for it, but if you pick one hero and you pick another hero, there's like this synergy between them and you get an extra bonus to it. I actually do that quite a bit. For example, you could play Hulk with Ironman or Dr. Strange and get Extra Health. You can play Hulk with Wolverine and you can launch Wolverine across the map. You can play. Thor with Storm and Captain America and you get like this extra like electricity thing. There's little extra things you get with it, but not game breaking things with it. And the alts feel great. They don't, a lot of 'em, you still have to, I said you still have to figure out them out, but they're great. Jeff. The shark is the most annoying alt ever. He knows the hell out of me. But fair enough. Like he, he basically his all you have, you can gobble up your whole team into him. The whole, all the enemy team, plus your team too. And you can throw him off the side or suicide yourself and suicide. Either the whole team or majority of the team, which is great. If you're on the opposing team, then it happens. And that happens to your enemy team, but sucks if you're on that team. Hulk is great. Hulk is like a Winston in a way, but not really. It's like a Winston Diva type of mesh up. We don't make our black widow, excuse me, black widow is not overpowered. Hulk, I might be a little overpowered. Might only need to tweak that a little bit more, but. There are other characters to get around to deal with it. There are no, as I know of real stealth characters, I think Loki might be one in a way, but there's not really any quote unquote stealth really in the game or stealth like somber, stealth, because Slog does have a stealth, but it's a time stealth, so there's none of that. So it all seems right now balanced. It doesn't seem like it's very predatory. I can buy skins that I want to, the characters for the most part. Most of the major characters like Wolverine, Magneto, Ironman, Thor, captain America, winter Soldier, like the Scarlet Witch, you know these. And plus they have skins that you can buy from the movies as well, which is very interesting. It just feels like a fun game. Hearkening back to the Overwatch one days where it was fun to play this, the game. It's not so fun to play it now because they changed it so much. They made it worse. And I do think Blizzard has to get it together, reduce the extreme monetization, and just the flagrant I feel like you just care about my money, not care about how fun I'm having. Just bring back six V six. I'm sorry. You gotta bring back six V six five. V five does not work. I've said it since the launch of Overwatch two. It's not going to work. You have to rework too many characters. This just doesn't seem like a good idea. Tanks, basically, they have to survive and live, or you get flamed on and it just isn't fun anymore. There's no synergy. It's just a big. Team death match, it feels like a lot of time. So you need to work on that. Now, moving on to Delta Force. Now, Delta Force is a mashup between battlefield and escape from tarko leader shooters type of a thing, and it, it does it pretty well. I'm not saying everything's great, but it does it pretty well. Now this is another one, and from another Asian developer, I think net ease is Korean and then the Delta force one is Chinese. And so there is some controversy about the kernel level anti chiet system, but the problem is that a lot of the cheats are kernel level in the game, so you have to beat it out by doing that in a way. But beyond that. It's still a fun, great game. I think the destruction's a lot better. I think most of the maps are pretty good. For the most part, I've been learning the other two new maps. Three I. I think there's five total if you're playing the battlefield side of it. I've only played the attacking defenders. I haven't played King of the Hill, which I think is conquest. I'm not really quite sure if that's conquest or not, but it's called King of the Hill. So you have two different modes on that one. You also have and I haven't played yet, the leader shooter side or the escape from Tarko side where it's three people inserting in and you got a loot. Find loot and then leave, and then hopefully you don't die because if you die, you get rid of it. So I gotta play that side of it yet. But my impression of the battlefield side of it is that it is, it's good, it's frustrating at times because you want, you wanna win, you want your team to win. I gotta be better at that. But you usually keep a lot of things to myself. But for the most part, it's. It's good. Like I've had literally no problems. When I played Battlefield 2042, I had a lot of problems. You had to put it on the low setting just to make sure you had consistent frame rates. There was a lot missing from Battlefield 2042, which means that EA probably should have kept it in development longer, probably a year or two extra for it. But the other problem is that. At Launch Delta Force beat out Battlefield 2042. Battlefield 2042 Peak 14 months ago was one 107,376, and about four hours ago, all-time peak was 118,964. And it dropped quick like it, it was like, oh, all time peak. And then. It went to about 2000 players. And then when New Seasons came out, you got a bump. And then once, and then they got bump again. When I think they changed their maps is when they got a huge bump again on a hundred, 2000 players. But now you're not really seeing that anymore. You're seeing, oh, about 16,000 players playing it. Not great. The problem is that it's not really being supported anymore, so a lot of people aren't playing it anymore, but it's not great that's there. But Delta force, all in all, are the operators cringe. Yeah. I'd rather not have operators, to be honest with you. I think it's just a bad idea to merge hero shooters with. This type of military shooter. I think the gadgets should just be gadgets and there shouldn't be abilities. That's probably my biggest problem with this. So is Delta force almost like a really weird carbon copy of Battlefield 2042? Yeah, it is a little bit and it's a shame, but I think it's actually a really good, great game. I think it's, it will have a long. As long as they can keep this up or this level of polish and make sure that they add more maps to it, add different types of like maps for each of the modes, and maybe add more single player options. There is a single player option that I haven't played yet as well. I think it will do well because you probably have a year or two before the new battlefield comes out and. At that point, you can make sure that you are solidified in regular updates and maybe eventually going to Unreal Five Engine. I know it's on the real Unreal four engine right now, which it's not a bad, I mean it's a good engine. It's the engine that's pretty consistent 'cause Unreal five is just not a good engine. I don't know what Unreal did. Maybe got too woke with their Don't use blacklisting. Don't use whitelisting anyways. I move on. All in all, I think these two, free to play games are a testament of knowing what gamers want and executing on that, and then making sure your game is polished. You have enough betas and alphas to test it out and make sure that it is good. And then you release it, unlike ea, which basically goes, Hey, we're gonna have a quote unquote beta before it releases. And then everybody's like, why is this game broken? Oh, we're gonna release it. And you're like, okay, no one's gonna play it. Bye. But I digress. All right, so I really wanna talk about the issue with Western developers and why Asian developers are winning and indie studios are winning as well, and it comes up time and time again. In the past year, we've had games just not. They've sacrificed gameplay design story to quote unquote wokeness, which basically means pronouns, making sure you say the right pronoun, caring about pronouns, caring about women being ugly for some odd reason, making women ugly in your games. Hating on gamers. Hating on gamers. Hate your game because we told you we don't want this. Then you decide to make it, and then you wonder why no one's playing it and it's just ideology over. Fun is never a good business strategy. You want, especially in this industry. You want fun as the pinnacle for it, and you want to understand your customer. I. The problem is that Western developers do not understand their customers anymore. They hate their customers, actually, which is weird to hate your customer when your customer is the one playing your game and buying your game, making sure your game is supported for years. If you hate your customer, why are you in this? Why are you in this industry? I don't understand why the people are in this industry. Let's just look at Star Wars Outlaws. All right, so the the 24 hour peak or the amount of players playing right now is 1,519. Let's look at Star Wars Old Republic now. Star Wars Old Republic is, was, came out in 2012, I think. Has 5,581 players. This game is an old game. This is not new in any comparison, but, and it didn't come out on steam at launch either, but it has a higher player count than the game that came out a few months ago. There's a problem here. Look at Dragon Age. The veil guard It has right now, 13,241 players playing it not good. When your game came out on Halloween, like both these games came out in October and they have abysmal player counts. Your game in two months should not be this. Far down, but the problem is, especially with Dragon age, you said, you know what? We don't want your choices to matter from the past three games. We'd rather you make sure that your pronouns are good, that you can add top surgery scars, and make sure that we. Preach to you the value of saying the correct pronoun over good writing, good story development, and making sure your game is fun. But instead, no let's make sure that it, that that mispronouncing someone is bad. Because people love that so much so that your peak couldn't even, couldn't even go over a hundred thousand players. The all-time peak of Dragon Age Veil Guard was 89,418. Couldn't crack the a hundred thousand, which is not good. It shows that it was a major failure. Star Wars outlaws when it finally came out on Steam all time Peak was 2,492 and Ubisoft's mad at steam for allowing player counts. And it's maybe you should just made a better game You think? But these old games are showing the developers what gamers want, what the quote unquote modern audience wants, and even the new ones coming out. Path of Exile Two players right now is 568,170. All time Peak is what it is. What I just said is crazy. Actually. All time Peak was over a million. Marvel rivals. It peaked at a little over 450,000. It's right now at 437,000 Delta Force. It peaked 118,000. Right now it's 116,000. Like these things blew it out of the water. And these are free to play games. These are supposed to be those games that like monetize the crap out of you and it's such a chore to play that you don't wanna play it anymore. I. Instead, the premium games from the Western developers are the chores to play, and these games are not. They're the fun games to play because they don't beat you over the head with what's right or what morals that they want you to have, which really aren't true anyways. But we try to do it, and then we have, oh, we just avowed. Because Microsoft and Xbox really wants you well, just to be terrible and have no fun in this game, which by the way, I was excited when this was announced. Now I just don't wanna play it at all. So there's some questions from the. Everyone's product inclusion, our gaming for everyone's product inclusion framework. Some of these questions include what steps have you taken to ensure characters are represented respectfully and authentically? We haven't, 'cause we just write characters to how the story's made or how the gameplay design is, and then we use them in a respectful way that is to the story. Are you reinforcing any negative gender stereotype? Absolutely. Because that's funny. Are you unnecessarily introducing gender and gender barriers into your code or design? Absolutely. Because f you, are you creating playable female characters that are equal and skill and ability to their male peers? Absolutely not, because male and females are not the same. Are your FA female characters equipped with clothing armor that fits their task? Absolutely not, because I'm the game designer and I decide what it is that is correct for my game. Do they have any exaggerated body proportions? Absolutely, because I'm giving players a choice. When the story allows, do you show male characters to display a full range of emotion, including joy setting and vulnerability? Absolutely not, because I'm trying to actually make masculinity cool again, and you're just trying to make it stupid. These are the things that need to end, and again, Asian developers get this. I don't understand why western developers are just shooting themselves in the head going look. I survived a murder. It's no, you did it to yourself. Please, for the love of God, Western developers grow a pair. Understand that this is wrong. Understand that gamers do not want this, and if you do not stop. You will lose business and you will go out of business. Iof is learning a very hard lesson on this one right now since it's a reported that they probably will be pri privatizing it and then selling it off, because guess what? Creating games that nobody wants to play, that scream like this. Marxist hell hole. We've been living in at least the United States of the past four years. Nobody wants it. Nobody gamers just want to play games. We don't want you to tell us how terrible we are. Nobody wants to tell. Nobody wants you to tell people how terrible they are just because they're gamers. Because they're mostly male, so males must be hated. Like what? In what world is this a great marketing tactic? It's a great marketing tactic. If you want to kill your business, stop. Like just make a game and stop the insanity. I'm begging you. No more girl bosses. No more pronouns, no more trans ideology. Make great characters that are male and females actually make the females attractive. Actually make the males masculine and leave us alone or. You can go outta business, your choice, but I've had it with this and a lot of gamers have had it with this. I'm not the only one that's not ha, that's not been happy with this anyways. I would like to thank you for listening to Digital Coffee Gaming Brew, and as always, please subscribe to this podcast and all your favorite podcasting apps and leave a five star review. You'll just help and join me next week as I talk to what's going on in the gaming industry. Alright guys, stay, I see. Get the games you want play, even if they're old or not. And see you next week later.