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Indeed, some games that are criticized for things like unnecessarily masculine women are well received by many gamers for being otherwise good, such as the Horizon games and The Last of Us: Part 2 (neither received anywhere near universal praise or disdain). But it's not as if making a good game is just something someone can choose to do; even if every resource in the company was directed with laser-like focus on the goal of "make a good game," I'm doubtful that the odds are good that they'd create a good game. If priorities are split between that and injecting messaging into the game - and particularly the perspective is a "woke" one where the ideological messaging is considered to supersede other factors when determining how "good" a game is - then it becomes that much harder. Who knows how much the "woke"-ish messaging of the Saints Row reboot contributed to its many issues both with bugs and just basic game design, but given how much the entire narrative and tone of the game was steeped in it, I imagine it had a more parasitic effect than what the character models in those other aforementioned games did.
This is true, but the entire point that they're pushing is that they're already making a good product by injecting DEI and other "woke" messaging into the games. If players don't consider it so, then that means that they are wrong, and we need to put in more messaging until they get it. At their core, the ideologues who push this stuff truly believe that their ideology can never fail, it can only ever be failed. As ideological and political proselytizers, they see themselves as having no responsibility to check how effective their messaging is and to make adjustments based on that checking; rather, their only responsibility is to spread the message in the way the ideology tells them to, and if that doesn't work, then it's everyone else's fault.
It is a cliche at this point, that people labeled as sexist/racist keep pointing out that there are plenty of great works with diverse characters from yesteryear in gaming as well as in TV and film. "Woke" is a response and rejection of that; the idea that, in order to be praised, a work with women or minorities should also be good by traditional measures such as "entertainment" or "thought provoking" is, in itself, sexist/racist/White Supremacist/bigoted/etc. Rather, because we've now "awakened" to how the most salient way humans relate to each other in our society is through power dynamics between different demographic groups, we should realize that simply having these people represented in a positive way in entertainment works intrinsically make the entertainment works better. And, again, if the audience doesn't buy it, then the beatings will continue until morale improves.
I think we’re talking past each other. To be blunt, my thesis is that these people know they cannot release a good product, and have been wrapping their rather poor offerings in Woke to cover it up. Benjamin Sisko was a badass. The show was entertaining and actually did deal with racism during its own time. It wasn’t exactly subtle when they had a story about a show very much like DS9 not being able to be published if it were known that the author was a black man. I don’t think they’d be able to write a story like that today — and the story itself is pretty woke — because it requires skill to produce a story like that. It requires skill to show rather than tell, it requires thought to make a woman an actual badass (Sara Conners) without having her whine about sexism.
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