How Suicide Squad Became A Lightning Rod For 'Gamergate 2.0'

Mar 15, 2024

[Programming note: newborn duties, a late winter flu ravaging the household, and falling down a few reporting rabbit holes for other stories all conspired to delay the latest issue of Dead Game. I’ve been incredibly humbled by how many people continue to sign-up for Dead Game!]

Sweet Baby, Inc.

On January 29, a Twitter user by the name of Kabrutus created a Steam curator group called "Sweet Baby Inc Detected" with the aim of cataloging every game on Valve's storefront that the narrative consultancy firm by the same name had potentially inserted a "woke agenda" into by working on it. An employee at Sweet Baby discovered the group, which has since acquired hundreds of thousands of followers, and called on players to report it for harassment. A cavalcade of toxic internet randos, "anti-woke" crusaders, and outrage-bait engagement farmers quickly descended on the episode as ground zero for something akin to gamergate 2.0.

If you had any lingering doubts that "Sweet Baby Inc Detected" was not a good faith group of like-minded gamers "just asking questions" about which consumer products they choose to support with their wallets, consider the fact that Kabrutus created the Steam curation page, a perfect vector for review-bombing and harassment when it comes to how Valve's storefront is setup, on the same day that people discovered pride flags in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League's depiction of Metropolis and then a small group of professional weirdos started freaking out about it. Reactionary gamers have been shadowboxing against Sweet Baby since at least the launch of Alan Wake II, but Suicide Squad was the flashpoint that blew it up into something more.

Small details like making Deadshot Black and Led Luthor "simping" for Wonder Woman became evidence among a fringe of the fanbase of a conspiracy to make Rocksteady's highly anticipated sequel into the "Woke Squad." Some people became especially fixated on Harley Quinn and her character design changing from the previous Arkhamverse version. They latched onto an Asmongold meme of "sexual assault is fine as long as it's a woman doing it" because Quinn at one point grabs Deadshot's ass. While most people were discussing their sharp disappointment with the basic gameplay and live service grind underpinning Suicide Squad, there was a vocal minority of gamers who tried to treat it as another example of the "go woke, go broke" phenomenon being peddled by Fox News culture warriors.

Some bigger content creators who have parachuted into the Sweet Baby blowup have tried to turn it into a broader referendum on the cottage industry around corporate DEI initiatives and "forced" diversity in both in-game representation and in-studio development teams. It feels very clear to me, however, that the online hate mob really comes from the specific circumstances around Suicide Squad itself. A studio renowned for a trilogy of games starring Batman took forever to make a game where he is now a side character and a villain and who also dies an unceremonious death at the hands of a female clown. This stuff even leaked out ahead of time, priming the audience for a manufactured sense of betrayal, perfectly mirroring what happened with The Last of Us II when certain fans discovered that their beloved Joel was no longer the main character in a massive, pre-release leak. Sweet Baby is just a convenient lie some people are telling themselves to avoid the fact the creators they once valorized made a game they didn't like (or more likely didn't even bother to play).

I'd like to think that just ignoring deranged social media outbreaks like this would deprive them of oxygen, but everything from the original gamergate to the modern GOP has shown that's not always the case. To paraphrase a quote often attributed to Leon Trotsky, you might not be interested in the fake gamer outrage but the fake gamer outrage is interested in you. It's unavoidable, rarely goes away on its own, and shouldn't be left to the marginalized people most harshly and disproportionately targeted by it to deal with it alone. Here are some additional articles and discussions worth checking out on the topic:

“Sweet Baby Inc. Doesn’t Do What Some Gamers Think It Does” from Alyssa Mercante at Kotaku
“The Small Company at the Center of ‘Gamergate 2.0’” from Megan Farokhmanesh at Wired
“How A Small Video Game Narrative Studio Wound Up At The Heart Of A Massive, Anti-Woke Conspiracy Theory” from Nathan Grayson at Aftermath
“Honey, The Gamers Are Toxic Again” from Remap Radio
“GAMERGATE 2.0 IS A FAILURE” from Spawn On Me with Kahlief Adams
“It’s 10 years since Gamergate – the industry must now stand up to far-right trolls” from Keza MacDonald at The Guardian

And here's Immortality director Sam Barlow's take:

Every time Vanillaware almost went bankrupt

Unicorn Overlord, a strategy RPG about an evil empire and a magi ring, is the type of dense, systems-driven genre game that rarely gets made on console anymore, at least not by an experienced team with an iconic art style and decent production values. Announced only months ago during the September 2023 Nintendo Direct, it seemed to come out of nowhere despite being in the works for roughly a decade, and instead of falling prey to one or two crippling flaws like many of its niche brethren do, it's already one of the top-rated games of the year.

The highest praise I can give Unicorn Overlord is that its beautifully scored and richly illustrated blend of real-time strategy and automated turn-based battles made me briefly abandon both Helldivers 2 and Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth to marathon it this week. Or you can take Final Fantasy Tactics director Yasumi Matsuno's word for it instead. He told fans of his beloved PS1 classic who keep asking him for a remaster to just go play Unicorn Overlord instead.

It happens to be the latest game by Vanillaware, a Japanese studio founded by director George Kamitani with a strong track record of making precisely what it wants to and always going nearly bankrupt in the process. While most players know it as the team behind side-scrolling action games like Odin's Sphere and Dragon's Crown, Vanillaware's 22-year history shows it hasn't been afraid to explore drastically different genres with an uncompromised vision, regardless of the financial peril.

“During the development of Princess Crown, the company I worked for went bankrupt,” Kamitani told 4gamer in a 2013 interview. The 2D side-scrolling RPG for the Sega Saturn was a commercial flop, and Kamitani was eventually removed from his next game, an MMORPG called Fantasy Earth being developed for Square Enix. That’s when he founded Vanillaware.
“When development of Grim Grimoire was about to end, the company ran out of funds and was in a serious pinch,” Kamitani told 4gamer. The PS2 strategy game inspired by StarCraft was made in under a year to sustain the studio while it waited for Atlas to release Odin’s Sphere, its spiritual successor to Princess Crown, the game that had already bankrupted his earlier company. Kamitani took out a personal loan to keep Vanillaware from shutting down. “At that time, it was such a difficult time for me mentally that when I lay down, I could see the ceiling moving.”
Odin’s Sphere was a financial success and paved the way for Vanillaware to keep doubling down with similar follow-ups Muramasa: The Demon Blade and Dragon’s Crown, which became its most expensive game ever at $1 million (that was only a decade ago). Kamitani bet the house again on a pivot to sci-fi mechs with 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, its longest in-development game ever.
And now the creator recently revealed that Vanillaware ran out of money again with Unicorn Overlord. Kamitani tweeted that the final stretch of development was covered out-of-pocket “as usual.” It was the best-selling game in Japan last week, with publisher Atlus even apologizing for the shortage of physical copies, so it looks like Vanillaware is safe again, at least until its next big swing.

Helldivers 2 weekly digest

Let's see if we can speedrun everything that's recently happened in Helldivers 2 in one quick paragraph. EXO-45 Patriot mech suits officially started dropping last Friday, proving to be incredibly deadly glass canons. But with new power comes new responsibilities, and Arrowhead is trouble shooting ways to prevent players from kicking one another out of matches for failing to equip the “best” loadouts. Fans have spotted mysterious new flying Terminid enemies which the studio’s CEO has called fake news. A new patch made the game’s tankiest enemies a little less frustrating to kill. A new $10 Warbond battle pass has added more items to unlock, including a powerful laser gun called the Sickle which players swear does not make the game pay-to-win. And a new Major Order has tasked players with permanently eradicating bugs through a new mission type that douses planets in galactic chem trails. Also there are fire tornadoes now and giant sand worms might be arriving in the future. Over a month later, Helldivers 2 is still in the top five games on Steam. At least one player who has maxed out everything still plays everyday just going around answering newbies’ SOS beacons.

One of these needed to get delayed

The hype has been building for Dragon's Dogma 2 with each new trailer and preview cycle. The latest round, maybe a bit too breathlessly, calls the fantasy action-RPG sequel "a perfect second try," "a gorgeous makeover," and "another Capcom hit." "Dragon's Dogma 2 could be 2024's best RPG," VGC exclaimed. Hyperbole aside, I played a build of the game last fall and it certainly does appear like the NPC and monster AI-driven open world sandbox fans of the original have been geeking out about, and the formula seems ripe for a second look in a post-Elden Ring world. I'm excited to see if director Hideaki Itsuno and his team can finally pull off his vision with fewer compromises this time around (even if the uncapped framerate sounds like it'll barely hit a consistent 30fps).

But there's one major problem: Dragon's Dogma 2 comes out March 22, the same day as Rise of the Rōnin. Team Ninja's action-RPG takes place in 19th century Tokyo and looked like a competent but unspectacular open world game when it was first shown during the September 2022 PlayStation State of Play. An equally buzzy slate of previews made it sound exceptional, though. IGN called its mashup of Assassin's Creed, Dark Souls, and Ghost of Tsushima influences "a perfect mix of gameplay ingredients." While not a visual stunner, it sounds like the team behind Ninja Gaiden and Nioh has cooked up something pretty special. Hence the dilemma.

Dragon's Dogma 2 got its release date first during a November 2023 Capcom showcase. Rise of the Rōnin followed a month later with a pre-order trailer at The Game Awards. As a PS5 exclusive with the weight of Sony's first-party marketing department behind it, maybe the expectation was that Capcom would flinch first and shift Dragon's Dogma 2 into April which remains incredibly empty outside of Stellar Blade in the second half of the month. Whatever the case may be, neither side has budged.

Alan Wake 2 ran into this situation just last year with Spider-Man 2. Remedy Entertainment announced on August 17 that it would push the horror survival game's release date back by 10 days to avoid a clash. Baldur's Gate 3 arrived a month early to get out of the way of Starfield (in hindsight it probably should have been the reverse). One of the bigger projected pileups in release date history was in 2019. Metro: Exodus, Days Gone, and Anthem were all set to arrive on February 22. Days Gone eventually got pushed to April of that year, while Metro: Exodus moved up a week earlier. Unfortunately, all of those release date dances happened weeks or months in advance. Dragon's Dogma 2 and Rise of the Rōnin are out in just seven days. If you listen closely you can hear the long deep sigh of both my bank account and my non-existent free time.

The roundup:

Saber Interactive is free of Embracer and took the makers of the Metro series and other studios with it.
Destiny 2 is getting a free content update to bring in new players ahead of The Final Shape expansion and it probably has a horde mode.
Check out this amazing room full of Nintendo’s pre-video game past.
Jacking up the traffic acceleration in GTA 4 leads to glorious results.
An interview with the creator of a 2022 cult-hit RPG 15 years in the making.
Players are throwing themselves at a 17-second torture chamber in Mario Maker before the servers shutdown.
Sony will currently give you $50 off and a free game if you buy a PS5 right now.
Someone’s finally decoded the Hideo Kojima review score system.
In Pocketpair’s CEO’s first interview since Palworld blew up, he revealed the game cost less than $7 million to make and Microsoft hasn’t yet offered to buy his studio.
Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney called Valve “assholes” over their tiered Steam commissions in newly released court documents.