As someone so painfully plugged into online discourse that I may soon just have to live in an arctic cabin somewhere, I’ve witnessed a narrative in the media landscape this year, namely in movies and on TV, in which right-wing media consumers and influencers believe they’ve defeated “woke” games and shows and those who support them, while simultaneously claiming their own “victories.” It feels like a new one of these narratives emerges every month, and I thought it was time to break down the perception of what’s going on here and the reality of what’s happening.

Successes of anti-woke things are labeled scalps, whether or not that was actually the intention of the work. Failures of woke things are due solely to the fact that they are woke, and not for any other reason, ignoring all other factors. This happens everyone Time, and it’s time to add them all up here to show what’s going on. Prepare to “Cope and Seethe” as they say.

“Woke losses”

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League

• perception – This was a “woke” version of the Arkham universe, where characters like Harley Quinn dressed more conservatively than before and things like Pride flags hung in base headquarters. A consulting agency called Sweet Baby Inc. was brought in during the game’s development to advise on how to make things overly inclusive.
• reality – Suicide Squad failed miserably because it was a live service game after Rocksteady had focused its entire fanbase on its single-player superhero offerings, and not particularly good ones at that. It was a silly concept that gave all Task Force X members the same weapons, little difference in powers, and abandoned a plot halfway through to create a live service concept that featured a dozen Brainiac knockoffs. All based on an IP with a critically panned movie and a box office flop in the DCEU. Supposedly woke critics gave the game a 60, one of the lowest major releases of the year.

Unity

• perception – A hero shooter that failed because its heroes weren’t attractive enough and “signaled virtue” by using pronouns in the selection screens.
• reality – Concord began development right after Overwatch launched in 2016 and came into the shooter landscape outdated, with a poorly thought out $40 price tag in a F2P landscape and failing to really differentiate itself from the competition. The character designs were poor, not for the sake of “hotness” but for a lack of aesthetics that other games with lots of similarly sized and aged characters had done much better. Supposedly woke critics gave the game a 65, lower than all of its multiplayer competitors.

The Acolyte

• perception – The “woke” series featured virtually no white male characters and focused on a cult of space witches, at least two of whom were lesbians. The showrunner is a lesbian and her wife appears in the series. The series broke canon and disrespected “true” Star Wars fans. This attitude was even celebrated by Elon Musk, who declared that the series “went woke and went bankrupt,” as is the eternal mantra of this group.
• reality – The series cost $180 million to produce. It was the least watched Star Wars series, which is not surprising since it sought to tell a story with completely original characters and no connection to the Skywalker era. Every time people said the series violated canon, upon closer inspection it actually did not violate canon and critics either misunderstood the source material or claimed Legends was still canon. The cost to viewers was the reason for the cancellation.

“Anti-Woke wins”

Starblade

• perception – The game was a huge success for AAA newcomer SHIFT UP because it took the idea that real gamers want attractive women in their games and provided them with plenty of fanservice outfits to fulfill that desire.
• reality – Stellar Blade is a solid action game overall and received good reviews from video game journalists. It scored 81 on Metacritic and was hailed as a great first effort from SHIFT UP.

Helldivers 2

• perception – A game about killing bugs and bots, and with no woke agendas, it was a celebration of the kind of patriotism that the left lacks in the modern era.
• reality – The entire game is based on Starship Troopers, a very clear, famous mockery of these very concepts. Journalists gave the game 82 points and it was touted as a possible, if not likely, candidate for the GOTY shortlist.

The first descendant

• perception – The PvE hero shooter is full of attractive women who are responsible for its rising popularity, and its live schedule has so far introduced more attractive women to ensure its continued success.
• reality – The game is successful largely because it is a well-structured looter game with sensible progression systems and endless targeted farming. However, it has issues with RNG and the game’s player numbers have dropped sharply, from 265,000 on Steam to 40,000 in a couple of months, so its long-term future is uncertain.

Black Myth: Wukong

• perception – The gaming media “wanted this game to fail,” based on an IGN article that has discussed sexism in gaming academia in the past, and its success is a blow to the “woke” agenda.
• reality – The game is an absolutely overwhelming, huge hit in China, where no one pays attention to these controversies when buying it. Here, too, game journalists have rated the game with a very positive 81 points.

The mental acrobatics here are always one of the following:

• A game considered “woke” fails because it is “woke”
• A successful game must not be awake, otherwise its awakened aspects can be explained by the fact that it has not really woken up after all.
• A game is considered anti-woke for some discernible reason and that anti-woke quality is the reason it’s a hit.
• One or two sentences from a single review or a specific tweet mean all bright journalists or gamers love or hate something

It’s a series of moving goalposts where “woke” and “not woke” are whatever is appropriate for the narrative at the time. Baldur’s Gate 3, the woke game set on planet Earth, has won dozens of GOTY awards, but that’s not Really woke up because it at least had attractive characters. The same could be said, in one form or another, about almost every big hit of the last decade.

On the other hand, games “claimed” by anti-woke gamers, like Stellar Blade or The First Descendant, are in no way theirs and either receive good reviews in the supposedly woke gaming media and/or have a far larger player base than those who play them because they feature attractive characters. The truth is that no one is making games specifically for this audience, which partly angers them and forces them to analyze these victories and defeats in their own minds.

This isn’t going to stop and it’s only gotten worse in recent years. But it’s important to understand what is and isn’t going on here, no matter what is being said.

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