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[Tedenden @Tededeben]

We don't want all western developers we've loved over the years to commit suicide by erasing their internal culture and creating slop as we've seen many times before in the last decade. Soon there will be none left because of their blindness. Creating games for audiences that don't exist while neglecting their core fanbase. And somehow Asian developers keep thriving because they have a better understanding of what their audience wants.

[Tedenden @Tededeben]

We don't want all western developers we've loved over the years to commit suicide by erasing their internal culture and creating slop as we've seen many times before in the last decade. Soon there will be none left because of their blindness. Creating games for audiences that don't exist while neglecting their core fanbase. And somehow Asian developers keep thriving because they have a better understanding of what their audience wants.

[Tedenden @Tededeben]

The gaming industry has seen a massive decline in the kind of high-quality, ambitious titles that used to dominate the market. I mean deep, mechanically heavy action-adventure games like Halo, God of War, Metal Gear Solid, Gears of War, Doom, or The Witcher series. The reality is that the core customer base buying high-end console and PC hardware and games consists heavily of men. They want solid power fantasies, visceral combat, systems that reward mastery, and unapologetically masculine themes like brotherhood, sacrifice, or raw physical stakes.
When the creative leadership, writing, and design shift away from people who actually share those instincts, the final output changes completely. Whether it is driven by corporate DEI initiatives, cultural pressure, or self-selection in creative fields, the result is the same. Games get safer, homogenized, and watered down. Violence gets toned down, mechanics get simplified, and characters lose their depth to clear space for mandatory inclusivity messaging. Instead of brutal stakes and a clear power progression, priorities shift toward surface aesthetics, emotional drama, or broad accessibility, completely diluting the core elements that male players actually look for.
Men and women simply have different preferences in entertainment, and the market data proves it. Men dominate competitive, violent, or systems-heavy genres, while women generally prefer narrative, social, puzzle, or casual experiences. When you pack a development team with people who do not naturally get or prioritize male-oriented power fantasies, or who view traditional masculine tropes as problematic or toxic, you get a massive creative mismatch. The protagonists feel neutered, the writing lectures the player instead of immersing them, and the combat feels completely weightless. It is design by committee to avoid offending anyone, and it completely alienates the core demographic that has funded big-budget gaming for decades. That is why we see falling enthusiasm, review-bombing, and lower sales across major AAA titles.
The economics of this are straightforward. If you ignore or actively alienate your largest paying audience, the product will fail. You cannot reshape market demand through top-down ideology; creators have to cater to what the audience actually wants. There is a massive, underserved market for bold, masculine games made by people who actually live and understand that worldview. Look at the enduring popularity of older titles, remasters, or non-Western studios like FromSoftware and certain Japanese developers. They are still delivering exactly what the audience wants, and the numbers show it.
Getting more talented men back into writing, design, coding, and leadership roles isn't about exclusion. It is about restoring the supply to match a proven demand and recapturing the raw passion, risk-taking, and authenticity that drove gaming's golden eras. Let a thousand flowers bloom, but nobody should be surprised when a forced push for diversity in the creator pool produces an output that feels totally disconnected from the actual audience.

[Tedenden @Tededeben]

The gaming industry has seen a massive decline in the kind of high-quality, ambitious titles that used to dominate the market. I mean deep, mechanically heavy action-adventure games like Halo, God of War, Metal Gear Solid, Gears of War, Doom, or The Witcher series. The reality is that the core customer base buying high-end console and PC hardware and games consists heavily of men. They want solid power fantasies, visceral combat, systems that reward mastery, and unapologetically masculine themes like brotherhood, sacrifice, or raw physical stakes.
When the creative leadership, writing, and design shift away from people who actually share those instincts, the final output changes completely. Whether it is driven by corporate DEI initiatives, cultural pressure, or self-selection in creative fields, the result is the same. Games get safer, homogenized, and watered down. Violence gets toned down, mechanics get simplified, and characters lose their depth to clear space for mandatory inclusivity messaging. Instead of brutal stakes and a clear power progression, priorities shift toward surface aesthetics, emotional drama, or broad accessibility, completely diluting the core elements that male players actually look for.
Men and women simply have different preferences in entertainment, and the market data proves it. Men dominate competitive, violent, or systems-heavy genres, while women generally prefer narrative, social, puzzle, or casual experiences. When you pack a development team with people who do not naturally get or prioritize male-oriented power fantasies, or who view traditional masculine tropes as problematic or toxic, you get a massive creative mismatch. The protagonists feel neutered, the writing lectures the player instead of immersing them, and the combat feels completely weightless. It is design by committee to avoid offending anyone, and it completely alienates the core demographic that has funded big-budget gaming for decades. That is why we see falling enthusiasm, review-bombing, and lower sales across major AAA titles.
The economics of this are straightforward. If you ignore or actively alienate your largest paying audience, the product will fail. You cannot reshape market demand through top-down ideology; creators have to cater to what the audience actually wants. There is a massive, underserved market for bold, masculine games made by people who actually live and understand that worldview. Look at the enduring popularity of older titles, remasters, or non-Western studios like FromSoftware and certain Japanese developers. They are still delivering exactly what the audience wants, and the numbers show it.
Getting more talented men back into writing, design, coding, and leadership roles isn't about exclusion. It is about restoring the supply to match a proven demand and recapturing the raw passion, risk-taking, and authenticity that drove gaming's golden eras. Let a thousand flowers bloom, but nobody should be surprised when a forced push for diversity in the creator pool produces an output that feels totally disconnected from the actual audience.

[Tedenden @Tededeben]

The gaming industry has seen a massive decline in the kind of high-quality, ambitious titles that used to dominate the market. I mean deep, mechanically heavy action-adventure games like Halo, God of War, Metal Gear Solid, Gears of War, Doom, or The Witcher series. The reality is that the core customer base buying high-end console and PC hardware and games consists heavily of men. They want solid power fantasies, visceral combat, systems that reward mastery, and unapologetically masculine themes like brotherhood, sacrifice, or raw physical stakes.
When the creative leadership, writing, and design shift away from people who actually share those instincts, the final output changes completely. Whether it is driven by corporate DEI initiatives, cultural pressure, or self-selection in creative fields, the result is the same. Games get safer, homogenized, and watered down. Violence gets toned down, mechanics get simplified, and characters lose their depth to clear space for mandatory inclusivity messaging. Instead of brutal stakes and a clear power progression, priorities shift toward surface aesthetics, emotional drama, or broad accessibility, completely diluting the core elements that male players actually look for.
Men and women simply have different preferences in entertainment, and the market data proves it. Men dominate competitive, violent, or systems-heavy genres, while women generally prefer narrative, social, puzzle, or casual experiences. When you pack a development team with people who do not naturally get or prioritize male-oriented power fantasies, or who view traditional masculine tropes as problematic or toxic, you get a massive creative mismatch. The protagonists feel neutered, the writing lectures the player instead of immersing them, and the combat feels completely weightless. It is design by committee to avoid offending anyone, and it completely alienates the core demographic that has funded big-budget gaming for decades. That is why we see falling enthusiasm, review-bombing, and lower sales across major AAA titles.
The economics of this are straightforward. If you ignore or actively alienate your largest paying audience, the product will fail. You cannot reshape market demand through top-down ideology; creators have to cater to what the audience actually wants. There is a massive, underserved market for bold, masculine games made by people who actually live and understand that worldview. Look at the enduring popularity of older titles, remasters, or non-Western studios like FromSoftware and certain Japanese developers. They are still delivering exactly what the audience wants, and the numbers show it.
Getting more talented men back into writing, design, coding, and leadership roles isn't about exclusion. It is about restoring the supply to match a proven demand and recapturing the raw passion, risk-taking, and authenticity that drove gaming's golden eras. Let a thousand flowers bloom, but nobody should be surprised when a forced push for diversity in the creator pool produces an output that feels totally disconnected from the actual audience.

[Tedenden @Tededeben]

The gaming industry has seen a massive decline in the kind of high-quality, ambitious titles that used to dominate the market. I mean deep, mechanically heavy action-adventure games like Halo, God of War, Metal Gear Solid, Gears of War, Doom, or The Witcher series. The reality is that the core customer base buying high-end console and PC hardware and games consists heavily of men. They want solid power fantasies, visceral combat, systems that reward mastery, and unapologetically masculine themes like brotherhood, sacrifice, or raw physical stakes.
When the creative leadership, writing, and design shift away from people who actually share those instincts, the final output changes completely. Whether it is driven by corporate DEI initiatives, cultural pressure, or self-selection in creative fields, the result is the same. Games get safer, homogenized, and watered down. Violence gets toned down, mechanics get simplified, and characters lose their depth to clear space for mandatory inclusivity messaging. Instead of brutal stakes and a clear power progression, priorities shift toward surface aesthetics, emotional drama, or broad accessibility, completely diluting the core elements that male players actually look for.
Men and women simply have different preferences in entertainment, and the market data proves it. Men dominate competitive, violent, or systems-heavy genres, while women generally prefer narrative, social, puzzle, or casual experiences. When you pack a development team with people who do not naturally get or prioritize male-oriented power fantasies, or who view traditional masculine tropes as problematic or toxic, you get a massive creative mismatch. The protagonists feel neutered, the writing lectures the player instead of immersing them, and the combat feels completely weightless. It is design by committee to avoid offending anyone, and it completely alienates the core demographic that has funded big-budget gaming for decades. That is why we see falling enthusiasm, review-bombing, and lower sales across major AAA titles.
The economics of this are straightforward. If you ignore or actively alienate your largest paying audience, the product will fail. You cannot reshape market demand through top-down ideology; creators have to cater to what the audience actually wants. There is a massive, underserved market for bold, masculine games made by people who actually live and understand that worldview. Look at the enduring popularity of older titles, remasters, or non-Western studios like FromSoftware and certain Japanese developers. They are still delivering exactly what the audience wants, and the numbers show it.
Getting more talented men back into writing, design, coding, and leadership roles isn't about exclusion. It is about restoring the supply to match a proven demand and recapturing the raw passion, risk-taking, and authenticity that drove gaming's golden eras. Let a thousand flowers bloom, but nobody should be surprised when a forced push for diversity in the creator pool produces an output that feels totally disconnected from the actual audience.

[Tedenden @Tededeben]

We don't want all western developers we've loved over the years to commit suicide by erasing their internal culture and creating slop as we've seen many times before in the last decade. Soon there will be none left because of their blindness. Creating games for audiences that don't exist while neglecting their core fanbase. And somehow Asian developers keep thriving because they have a better understanding of what their audience wants.

[Tedenden @Tededeben]

The gaming industry has seen a massive decline in the kind of high-quality, ambitious titles that used to dominate the market. I mean deep, mechanically heavy action-adventure games like Halo, God of War, Metal Gear Solid, Gears of War, Doom, or The Witcher series. The reality is that the core customer base buying high-end console and PC hardware and games consists heavily of men. They want solid power fantasies, visceral combat, systems that reward mastery, and unapologetically masculine themes like brotherhood, sacrifice, or raw physical stakes.
When the creative leadership, writing, and design shift away from people who actually share those instincts, the final output changes completely. Whether it is driven by corporate DEI initiatives, cultural pressure, or self-selection in creative fields, the result is the same. Games get safer, homogenized, and watered down. Violence gets toned down, mechanics get simplified, and characters lose their depth to clear space for mandatory inclusivity messaging. Instead of brutal stakes and a clear power progression, priorities shift toward surface aesthetics, emotional drama, or broad accessibility, completely diluting the core elements that male players actually look for.
Men and women simply have different preferences in entertainment, and the market data proves it. Men dominate competitive, violent, or systems-heavy genres, while women generally prefer narrative, social, puzzle, or casual experiences. When you pack a development team with people who do not naturally get or prioritize male-oriented power fantasies, or who view traditional masculine tropes as problematic or toxic, you get a massive creative mismatch. The protagonists feel neutered, the writing lectures the player instead of immersing them, and the combat feels completely weightless. It is design by committee to avoid offending anyone, and it completely alienates the core demographic that has funded big-budget gaming for decades. That is why we see falling enthusiasm, review-bombing, and lower sales across major AAA titles.
The economics of this are straightforward. If you ignore or actively alienate your largest paying audience, the product will fail. You cannot reshape market demand through top-down ideology; creators have to cater to what the audience actually wants. There is a massive, underserved market for bold, masculine games made by people who actually live and understand that worldview. Look at the enduring popularity of older titles, remasters, or non-Western studios like FromSoftware and certain Japanese developers. They are still delivering exactly what the audience wants, and the numbers show it.
Getting more talented men back into writing, design, coding, and leadership roles isn't about exclusion. It is about restoring the supply to match a proven demand and recapturing the raw passion, risk-taking, and authenticity that drove gaming's golden eras. Let a thousand flowers bloom, but nobody should be surprised when a forced push for diversity in the creator pool produces an output that feels totally disconnected from the actual audience.

[Tedenden @Tededeben]

Up to 80% of gamers spending large amounts of money on console and pc games are straight men. There is a higher percentage of women in game development through DEI initiatives than actually playing the games. Women generally don't like the kinds of games men like. So they make games that they would like to play. Sucking the testosterone out of western games partly because they are deemed problematic for "modern sensibilities". So what we get is a bunch of games with the edges removed. Visceral violence removed. Anything men subconsciously and instinctively crave. Homogenized unchallenging inclusive disneyfied slop by people who don't understand when something is badass. Maybe women should join developers who make games they love instead of trying to turn beloved male centric franchises into shit nobody wants to play.

[Tedenden @Tededeben]

Up to 80% of gamers spending money on console and pc games are straight men. There is a higher percentage of women in game development through DEI initiatives than actually playing the games. Women generally don't like the kinds of games men like. So they make games that they would like to play. Sucking the testosterone out of western games partly because they are deemed problematic for "modern sensibilities". So what we get is a bunch of games with the edges removed. Visceral violence removed. Anything men subconsciously and instinctively crave. Homogenized unchallenging inclusive disneyfied slop by people who don't understand when something is badass.

[Tedenden @Tededeben]

Up to 80% of gamers spending money on console and pc games are straight men. There is a higher percentage of women in game development through DEI initiatives than actually playing the games. Women generally don't like the kinds of games men like. So they make games that they would like to play. Sucking the testosterone out of western games partly because they are deemed problematic for "modern sensibilities". So what we get is a bunch of games with the edges removed. Visceral violence removed. Anything men subconsciously and instinctively crave. Homogenized unchallenging inclusive disneyfied slop by people who don't understand when something is badass.

[Tedenden @Tededeben]

Up to 80% of gamers spending money on console and pc games are straight men. There is a higher percentage of women in game development through DEI initiatives than actually playing the games. That has sucked the testosterone out of games. Women don't like the kinds of games men like. So they make games that they would like to play. Sucking the testosterone out of western games because they are deemed problematic for "modern sensibilities". So what we get is a bunch of games with the edges removed. Visceral violence removed. Anything men subconsciously and instinctively crave. Homogenized unchallenging inclusive disneyfied slop by people who don't understand when something is badass.

[Tedenden @Tededeben]

I was disappointed by the second game but loved the first. But tonally and aesthetically the series is badass. Exactly where the now GOW games seems to fail hard. If they had grimmer and darker aesthetics, more gore and if it took itself more seriously and ditched the bad humor and cutesy characters this game would have been received a lot better.

[Tedenden @Tededeben]

Up to 80% of gamers spending money on console and pc games are straight men. There is a higher percentage of women in game development through DEI initiatives than actually playing the games. That has sucked the testosterone out of games. Women don't like the kinds of games men like. So they make games that they would like to play. Sucking the testosterone out of western games because they are deemed problematic for "modern sensibilities". So what we get is a bunch of games with the edges removed. Visceral violence removed. Anything men subconsciously and instinctively crave. Homogenized unchallenging inclusive disneyfied slop by people who don't understand when something is badass.

[Tedenden @Tededeben]

Up to 80% of gamers spending money on console and pc games are straight men. There is a higher percentage of women in game development through DEI initiatives than actually playing the games. That has sucked the testosterone out of games. Women don't like the kinds of games men like. So they make games that they would like to play. Sucking the testosterone out of western games because they are deemed problematic for "modern sensibilities". So what we get is a bunch of games with the edges removed. Visceral violence removed. Anything men subconsciously and instinctively crave. Homogenized unchallenging inclusive disneyfied slop by people who don't understand when something is badass.

[Tedenden @Tededeben]

@LOCONGAMER01 The fucked up big time by moving their gaming devision to California. They should have stayed in Japan.

[Tedenden @Tededeben]

@Dillonverse Remove the title from the cover art and nothing in that picture makes you think God of War. Nothing. And that's the reason. If that cover was more grim and metal, she was covered in blood and you delete the cube you would come a lot closer.

[Tedenden @Tededeben]

@MR3Dev It's a really intense job. Don't underestimate it. I did the mocap work for the companion cube in portal.

[Tedenden @Tededeben]

@MR3Dev That's fucking hilarious

[Tedenden @Tededeben]

@Wurst3Bernd @SonySantaMonica Don't forget the cutesy Disney critters and the talking ribbon.