I really didn't want to mention any of the Sweet Baby Inc controversy because I had no real idea what it was that the team did or it's connection to what many were calling the downfall of modern gaming. And that might be because I find the spurious and often hyperbolic sentiment that all modern games are trash to be deeply misguided and, honestly, a little 'boomer-coded'. Closing your eyes and affirming 'everything was always great when I was a kid' is a delusional diatribe into an easily disprovable fantasy and throwing away many of the spectacular accomplishments of the modern industry for sheer merit of being 'new' is the height of stupidity. Sure, many of the trending directions of the corporatized game industry are harmful to many games that come out, but those that manage to resist those pulls create some of the greatest games that have ever existed. Baldur's Gate 3 was less than a year ago, guys! Don't get it twisted!
As such, I saw a lot of the folding of the 'Sweet Baby Inc' effect on games as a kind of easy catch-all to try and throw a 'cause' at all the games that didn't quite land where they were supposed to. Sweet Baby worked alongside the teams that made Saints Row, Gotham Knights, Suicide Squad and Spider-Man 2- but the problems with these games are not all related to areas that Sweet Baby had consultation with. They are a narrative development and consultation studio with a focus on inclusivity and representation- neither of which were the prevailing reasons why Suicide Squad sucked balls. (Unless you mean to say that Deadshot's badly reconned race swap was what made you put down the game. Because personally, I think this new guy looks way cooler than silly moustache original- I just wish they made this guy a successor rather than the apparent original assassin who had he identity stolen by a man who looked and dressed nothing like him.)
Saints Row did absolutely suffer from the fact that many of it's irreverent charm was lost in an attempt to appeal to millennialism in the most surface level, eye-wateringly out of touch, way possible; but again, that wasn't the whole story. Gotham Knights writing was hardly a footnote in it's soliloquy of disappointment- and whilst you might blame Sweet Baby for the incredibly lacklustre character work the game received, I would argue a lack of effort put into those areas overall. Afterall, they recycle the same conversation with Alfred for all four heroes, only changing the various Batfamily member's lines- you can't just get away with crap like that! And Spider-Man 2? Most people found the game to be unambitious, which had nothing to do with Sweet Baby's influence. In fact, one might even say their most ambitious play was something Sweet Baby no doubt had supreme influence in- their brazen attempt to rewrite the Spanish language to fit 'faux-progressive' stereotypes that the Latin community find offensive: which again, was a footnote in the discussions of Spider-Man 2's issues. (They also got the Puerto Rican flag wrong. So yeah.)
So do Sweet Baby ruin games? Doubtful. I think the best correlation one could make would be to say that the sorts of development teams with such a loose grasp on the master vision of their game that they need to rely on an outside consultancy agency like Sweet Baby in order to secure 'fake progressive' social points in hopes of boosting their reputation, are more likely to be messier productions that bend to the whims of pulling publishers and conflicting influences. Afterall Sweet Baby also worked on God of War Ragnarok and Alan Wake 2- both of which are hailed as Masterpieces. So let's not turn this into another 'Cal Arts Style' reductive argument tool that dumbs down criticism into ill-informed catch-alls: nothing about art is ever so simple.
But Sweet Baby Inc do have an incredibly bad track record of public relations that tracks close to public goading for internet drama- which does not reflect well on the professional aura of their team. It feeds into the conspiracy theories that the team are some kind of boogey men of the industry that swoop in and purposefully inject propaganda into the games before they make it to consumers. The way I've seen it, it appears they're more like a check-box you tick off in the development process- like some Government body doing the bare minimum to score 'energy credits' so it can get away with underperforming in it's goal to reach the renewable energy percentage it agreed on years ago despite the fact that those credits are no longer valid, Australia! (Woah, I went way off track for a moment there. What where we talking about?)
Just recently we saw Sweet Baby Inc become incensed by a Steam Curator who was highlighting games they worked on in order to make sure they weren't recommended by him- a tiny drop in the criticism bucket that was noticed by next to no one. But when you're easily upset by people not liking you- then it might as well be a coordinated hate campaign. An employee of the company highlighted this individual on their Twitter account and attempt to direct an angry mob to get his account banned, which led to a wave of people noticing his action and an unprompted backlash wave of reports that got Sweet Baby Inc's account banned. Which is just about the perfect dose of Karma, wouldn't you say? And the cherry on top of the cake for a pointless drama which didn't need to be started in the first place and wouldn't have been if the company in question were manned by professionals.
Personally I have nothing against the existence of a company like Sweet Baby Inc, more I loathe the grandstanding faux-justice that these types of organisations lionise whilst hiding beneath underhandedness of their own. It undermines their supposed purpose and disgraces the people they're supposed to be standing up for- it ends up taking more steps backwards than forwards- they're worse then their worst enemies at this point! And all of this is besides the fact that- uh oh- the Sweet Baby team were formed out of Ubisoft offshoots. I'm sorry, but nobody who worked over ten years at Ubisoft should be consulting anyone on any aspect of game design- they are the leeches of innovation the world over, I bet their mere presence in the studio warps the soul out of every errant game system by aura alone.
Diversity and opportunity are conceptuals worthy of championing, but sometimes I question the kinds of folks who come to be those champions. Often you get the self-indignant too drunk on their own hero complex to conduct themselves with the grace and intelligence required to affect serious change. We're talking about the kind of people who applaud Suicide Squad for finally placing a black face on a video game cover, thoughtlessly paving over the decades worth of leading black characters that have already existed in gaming. It's all self-serving pretentiousness under the guise of virtuous activism, and it always ruins the causes they fight for. Can we be done with SBI now, don't really feel like thinking about them again...
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