I love the retarded controller sperging. All the Sony controllers are fine BTW, and I have no problems playing equally well on Dualsense or the Xbox Series controller. If you buy Xbox, remember
"25-30% of Xbox Gamers identify as having a disability."
I went through every page of that
product inclusion hub.
"If we don’t intentionally include, we unintentionally exclude." Basically, they want to funnel every game into the standard AAA mold we've seen for the past few years. Their ideal is the Ubisoft game. The screen has to be full of messages and markers telling you what to do. They explicitly encourage this. Games need telemetry to track which features and settings are used, and unused features should be highlighted with prompts. This is Inclusive Design.
Devs are literally encouraged to measure the amount of screen time and of spoken lines given as a % to characters of different identities. In order to make the game more inclusive, the underrepresented groups have to be given equal time as others. Female characters need to be written as masculine and aggressive, and men have to be written to be efemminate. Their body types also have to be similar. I don't know how much weight these guidelines have at Xbox Game Studios, but I could just imagine trying to write something like GTA 4 with requirements like these. Remember:
"Avoid using demeaning language if a player “fails” to complete something".
Given that this was published this week, how much more diversity do we need in AAA before they stop writing lines like these?
"Underrepresented groups like women, ethnic minorities, the LGBTQIA+ community, and people with disabilities remain underserved, unseen, and inaccurately represented in many games." In a way I agree, because women in western games are no longer feminine, because it offends trannies. Minorities are quite often shown to be respected leaders in their communities, even though they in reality perpetrate more than 50% of violent crime.
Because
"1/3 of all gamers in the US and UK have experienced not feeling welcome in a game community" they want to
"limit avenues for harm", both in chat and player actions. Meaning that 360-era CoD voice chat is never coming back. No bullying allowed!
"Have you considered how different players (such as members of a certain gender / racial group / age / non-English speakers, etc) might be impacted or targeted differently during player interactions?" I'm sure all these things are fine if you're making a children's game, but they make no mention that different age groups might prefer different levels of moderation. Instead they mention that games should accommodate everyone on planet earth. We've seen how Minecraft has moved to a more centralized model over time because Microsoft wants to stop everyone from typing
Nigger in chat, even if nobody is there to see it.
Some of the points are just strange, like did you know calling difficulty settings Easy, Medium, Hard is exclusionary language?
"Do you have difficulty settings within your experience and if so, are they welcoming? (i.e., instead of using EASY could you label it Story Mode where you acknowledge that for this player the story is more interesting to them versus combat?)" Some of the points are infantilizing game devs, although they might deserve it.
"Consider implementing and tracking outcome metrics like “A user shouldn’t die more than 3 times on the first level” or “Developers should be able to create a new account within 5 minutes”. If you can't do this without metrics, maybe look at another career?
Sensitivity readers as a concept was created in the book industry in the early 2010s. Funny enough they were invented because jealous writers used angry mobs to destroy their competitors. It all came from the young adult fiction sphere. As you'd expect, it was mentally ill women and their orbiters. Critical Theory allowed lunatics to accuse anyone of racism and cultural appropriation, and this was Not Okay. Publishers created sensitivity readers to guard themselves against these new lunatics. Then it spread wider. First to Disney, because it came from women. I remember Moana had issues because the staff of animators were too white. And now Microsoft has CYA guidelines for modern fiction. Devs need to hire writers, artists and other staff from the groups represented in the game. But that's not enough, because their
"lived experience" might not be representative enough, so they need to
"validate their output" with advisory councils, consultants and user research. They've seen what social media is like, it's never good enough. And of course they need to somehow avoid cultural appropriation, and also
"Engage with Global Readiness teams" to adapt the game for the cultural sensitivities of all markets. Ie, no gays or pride flags in homophobic markets. Finally, when marketing the product devs need to
"Surface up content that depicts diverse characters", hence why we see black women with curly hair everywhere now. It's over for white women:
"Are you taking intersectionality into consideration? For instance, if you show a player in a wheelchair is that player always a white woman?"
If you're wondering why everyone is so ugly in western games, here's one reason:
"Review how identities represented on screen (gender identities, races, sexual orientations, ability status, ages, and body sizes) match up to the broader population. Make sure that characters are not tokenized or stereotyped based on their identities. Validate your execution for your Inclusive Listening Systems (consultants/advisory councils, user research)." Remember that this is Microsoft's idea of how to reach more financial success in the games industry. They reference consumer research to strengthen the case for this being a good idea of how to make games more appealing to more people. They claim there is a potential 3+ billion audience for games, and this is how you reach everyone. Meanwhile Shawn Layden (former Sony) said consoles never reach more than 250 million users. That's the peak every generation, and it never changes. I think that's a more realistic measure of how many people genuinely are interested in games. I know loads of people who would never, ever play video games, no matter how gay you make them. It's the home for misfits and spergs. Some normal people also persumably play games sometimes. Yet under Accessibility Microsoft claims there are 650+ million players who are disabled. I would agree with that number if they meant that all gamers are retards, therefore all gamers have disabilities.
I thought this was unintentionally funny:
"We also know that accessibility features are not only used by people with disabilities. Features like subtitles, gameplay difficulty, and input settings are often used by gamers without disabilities." Think about that next time you change difficulty or remap buttons. You're using features intended for cripples and retards. I don't mind flexible controller options and similar for cripples. But for Microsoft it's ultimately about DEI marketing, as they mention in their final point.
"Share your accessibility features & plans with your marketing & PR teams so that they are a part of your teams storytelling."
In the Globalization section devs are encouraged to do user research, focus groups, A/B testing and more to adapt their games for a more globally universal appeal, including UI and usage patterns. To me that just sounds like mobile gacha mechanics. I think this is an impossible challenge for AAA studios, because US and Europe demands ugliness, whereas Asian markets want huge titties and loli. Asians also like gambling and exploitative mechanics, whereas western governments have made moves to remove them from games. Intentionally making a truly global game is almost impossible. It always fails when Japan tries to appeal to Americans, so it will also fail when Americans try to appeal to Asians. They're thinking about it the wrong way.
It's odd how Starfield has less player freedom than any other Bethesda game before it, yet Microsoft says devs should think about:
"How does identify manifest within your experience and do you allow players a way to feel ownership and create something that resonates for them personally?" They demand guardrails everywhere to avoid offending anyone, and yet they claim they want to allow player expression and freedom.
If Microsoft genuinely want to make good and interesting games (lol), then they should take the Sony approach during the PS4 era. You had your DEI slop games like Horizon Zero Dawn, but they also allowed some teams total freedom with a hands-off approach like The Last Guardian and Death Stranding. I guess that's what they're doing with Hellblade 2. Problem is Ninja Theory are hacks. I've finished every game they've made, and they're all shit! All this inclusion stuff will never lead to something like Dragon Ball. Something with genuinely universal appeal. All they will make is slop. But we already knew this. Microsoft themselves will never make a new original game that's good or exciting. They're institutionally incapable of this. These documents are a symptom of what's wrong with them.
