Sweet Baby Inc. is a Montreal based consultancy firm that works with video game companies around the globe to, as their mission statement on their homepage states, “tell better, more empathetic stories while diversifying and enriching the video games industry.” Consultancy firms are nothing new, and exist across a variety of industries both within and outside of the arts. The job of a consultancy firm is to, as the name clearly suggests, consult. As another games industry consultant, Rami Ismail, wrote on X, the job of a consultant is “1. To understand your work is advisory. 2. To understand your position is easily eliminated. 3. To be so damn good at your work that others will continue to pay you to listen to 1) & not do 2).” Yet, after recent online discourse, one wouldn’t be blamed for thinking that Sweet Baby Inc. was some secret agency who had dirt on every high-profile executive at some of the industry’s largest studios, and in turn were forcing said executives and their developers to acquiesce to their “woke agenda” and shove in non-white characters and other marginalized groups into their games for the sake of propagating said agenda. 

A quick search on Reddit would have you believe just that, instead of the reality which is far more simple, though my words aren’t anywhere near as concise or as powerful as those of my favourite author, James Baldwin, whose impassioned words during an ABC interview in 1979 remains relevant to this day and can be attributed to a variety of contexts, this one included. The quote sees a group of people in power relative to their race, gender, and/or class being in perpetual fear with anger projected towards the unknowns and existence of those they’ve historically and (un)consciously deemed lesser-than. The full quote is as follows: “White people go around, it seems to me, with a very carefully suppressed terror of black people. A tremendous uneasiness. They don’t know what the black face hides.”

So when gamers, whose demographics in the U.S. consisted of 71% Caucasian as of 2022 according to the ESA – the majority of which were male – all of a sudden see an influx of non-white (particularly female) characters plastered across their screens, that aforementioned uneasiness sets in. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. For the uninitiated, late last month a consultant from Sweet Baby Inc. came across a Steam group that served as “a tracker for games involved with Sweet Baby Inc.” Scroll down the group’s page and you’ll see the hundreds of comments in praise of the work being done by the group’s admins, with one of the first reading, “now I know which to avoid. Thank you for making this group!” 

As of writing, the Steam group has just under 100,000 followers, with thousands often concurrently chatting in the group’s chat room. Amongst the thousands of layoffs, terrible working conditions, continued half-baked releases filled with exploitative micro-transactions, and the unsustainability of triple-A gaming as a whole, the gaming industry has seen better days. There are a number of issues that need to be tackled to better the state of this industry; being fired up that a game’s protagonist is a black woman, and perpetuating the notion that diversity and inclusion are one of the reasons for modern gaming’s downfall, is frankly asinine. 

“I’m not racist, I just don’t want ‘forced’ diversity!” 

This is a phrase we often hear parroted by fans both within gaming spaces, and outside of them. Whether it’s the cast announcement of some upcoming superhero movie, or the reveal of Alan Wake II’s protagonist, a version of this phrase is quick to show up in the comments section of a trailer, or a post on X. Though the term “forced diversity” is something that irks me, as if merely reflecting our real-world demographics onto the screen is some horrific totalitarian scheme, I can wrap my head around its underlying sentiment; if a genuine one does indeed exist. Because yes, I too want fleshed out characters that are well-written and multi-faceted, especially on the rare occasions when they look like my people. And yes, we have gotten high-budget games and films in the past where the non-white characters clearly exist just to serve as focus-tested quota-fillers and are never given proper substance, instead used as mere advertising pawns. 

However, it seems to me that this phrase doesn’t just show up after the release of a title, which could have at least some credence depending on the quality of the project and the creators behind it, but even well before it. Go to any post on IGN’s Instagram that reveals the cast for an upcoming blockbuster film or video game, Marvel properties especially, and if more than one of those actors are minorities then jump to the comments section and see the cesspool of angry folks (again, usually men, most of whom white) raising their online pitchforks at the casting choices and parroting a version of this phrase. Some don’t even take the time to justify their words, and instead simply pen a version of the ever so eloquent phrase, “this is woke garbage.” 

Mind you, these comments are being made in excess without these individuals even having watched or played the projects in question. Tell me, then, how exactly are they concluding that these stories are examples of “forced diversity”? The answer, frankly, is that they couldn’t give a damn. They’re not interested in seeing marginalized characters be written and performed with depth and nuance, because they don’t care to see them at all. These people are simply using these terms (“woke,” “pc,” “forced diversity”) as mere covers for their not-so-subtle discrimination.    

The Saga of ‘Saga’

Speaking of terms, “race-swapping” is another fun one that’s caught the ire of these individuals. In the case of one of 2023’s most critically acclaimed games, Alan Wake II by Remedy Entertainment, it was particularly Steamy (pun intended). The much anticipated sequel was originally teased as a live-action short film as an Easter egg within one of Remedy’s other games, Quantum Break, and was titled, Alan Wake: Return. The short film showcased two FBI agents, Alex Casey and Saga Anderson, the latter of whom was portrayed by white actress Malla Malmivaara. As noted, Saga was recast with Melanie Liburd, a black actress known for her roles on This Is Us and Game of Thrones. Recasting happens all the time, whether that be in films, television shows, or video games. Yet, the ongoing conspiracy theory perpetuated by these individuals on the aforementioned Steam group is that the recasting of Saga was done strictly due to Sweet Baby Inc.’s involvement with Remedy. Thankfully, you don’t need to read my words to know that this is an utter falsehood, as the director of Remedy Entertainment, Kyle Rowley, replied to a post on X to assert that this theory is “absolutely not true.”  

I had a personal encounter with an individual on our very site not too long ago. In the comments section of my article wherein I sung the praises of Alan Wake II, a user wrote, “Alan Wake 2 is woke garbage, they changed the race of a character to be more inclusive.” They’d go on to write more words about just how “racist” the game was, and how they were now saddened by the fact that they couldn’t return their purchase of the original game they’d bought a decade ago. After a groan and a sigh, I decided to reply. My response, which I feel still adequately sums up my feelings, reads as follows: 

“The snippet we saw of Saga’s character in Quantum Break’s trailer was a ‘concept’ from 2016, 7 years before the game’s release, and when Remedy were in *very* early development of the game. Nothing, and I mean nothing was divulged about her character. The snippet didn’t even have her saying a single word, or even have the name ‘Saga’ mentioned. Remedy likely didn’t even send out an official casting call for the role, most likely due to the fact that the game wasn’t even fully written yet. That concept trailer was simply that, a concept. Have you ever seen pre-production concept (art)work of other games and movies? Go look some up and see how drastically different the final product looks. Did you know that Will Smith was who The Matrix creators originally envisioned as their lead character Neo? Are you as up in arms about that?”

We never received a reply from the user with a rebuttal, but that’s besides the point. None of this mentions that beyond everything, Saga is a genuinely interesting and well-written character, and her being black makes sense from a lore perspective once you do a little digging. Sure, I did wish her blackness was a more relevant part of her character, both in the interactions she has with other characters and to see how it affects her as an FBI agent. On a side note, I do grow tired of continually seeing black characters in roles of law enforcement. It’s a trend that’s been long prevalent in Hollywood as well, and frankly has become trite when considering the history between black communities and the police in the U.S. Nevertheless, Saga is a character that outshines even Alan in Alan Wake II, in my opinion. She has purpose, nuance, and a narrative weight that has her questioning her past and herself as a mother, agent, and partner. And yet, a subset of the gaming community don’t want to acknowledge these traits, because as mentioned, they don’t give a damn. Instead, they’d much rather relegate her as the product of some large “woke” conspiracy that’s spearheaded by a sole company.

The Numbers, & Why They Matter 

It’s abundantly clear that all of the “isms” that have plagued our society for centuries are still alive and well in 2024, and their existence in the gaming community unfortunately aren’t whispers in the shadows, but rather shouts from rooftops. Rooftops of houses of individuals that have come to expect their games to have protagonists who look a certain way, because such was the norm for so long. And where 71% of 2022’s U.S. gamers were reported as being Caucasian, a survey conducted in 2021 by the International Game Developers Association revealed that 78% of all game developers were white, the majority of whom were, unsurprisingly, men. Games being made by white men, for white men. Additionally, the IGDA’s survey all the way back in 2005 had reported that only 2% of their respondents identified as black. What was that number in their 2021 report? A mere 4%. 

To illustrate how these numbers affect the types of characters being created, allow me to reference an extensive study done by New Media & Society, whose report in 2009 titled The Virtual Census – Representations of Gender, Race, and Age in Video Games, showcases the disparity in gender and race in both lead and supporting characters in video games. Their results found that nearly 90% of all primary characters were male, of which nearly 85% were white. Thankfully, these numbers have shifted somewhat positively in recent years. In another study conducted by Diamond Lobby, which had them go through a hundred of the most popular games from 2017-2021, revealed that though a vast majority of game protagonists remained male (~80%), the percentage of them being white had dropped a fair bit (~55%). That being said, only ~8% of games had a female main character of a non-white background.

Couple all of this with reports coming out nearly each year of workplace harassment against women at some of the largest studios, the most notable being against Yves Guillemot and his high-level compatriots at Ubisoft. As well as non-white indie developers like Neil “Aerial Knight” Jones saying in an interview with The Washington Post how “one of the hardest things to deal with is talking about the real struggles Black game developers have, knowing that people are going to dismiss you,” which I’m sure can be a reason as to why Black characters have had instances of being unnecessarily brutalized in high-profile games like The Last of Us Part II. With all of this, it’s not hard to understand why CEO and co-founder of Sweet Baby Inc, Kim Belair, is so passionate about the work her company does. 

In her Game Developers Conference presentation a few years ago, Belair spoke about an experience she had while working with a developer. “I once worked on a project where they had an all-white cast where they expressed their desire, ‘Okay, we need to mix it up a bit. How about this character’s, like, stereotypically French.’ So they have a beret and they have, like, a striped shirt. And I was like, ‘Okay, if you need to do that, can we at least make them a person of color?’ And they said, ‘Oh no, that would be weird. They’re already French.’” This anecdote contextualizes the importance of her statement a few minutes prior where she says, “So despite the changing face of audiences, despite the changing face of conferences like this one, we still look at our core demographics and say, ‘Okay, they’re white, cis, hetero males.’ And we cater almost exclusively to them. And the problem is that we don’t just cater to them like, ‘You know, here’s something that we think you’ll enjoy.’ We cater to them like a picky baby.” 

The cheeky “picky baby” analogy did not sit well for many of these individuals, but it’s a comparison that I can understand, especially after reading through the reports linked above and the countless comments I continue to come across in my day-to-day perusal of gaming internet. Though a change has slowly taken afoot, it’s had to be done, and will need to continue to be done, through patient grit. It has had to be done through work from the likes of Kim Belair and Sweet Baby Inc. Though it’s good to see many of the large studios that Sweet Baby Inc. have worked with come out and defend Belair and her company, the work is far from finished. In my experience, change doesn’t occur with niceties that placate the uneasiness of those in power and those who follow that power, but rather with a steadfast, unwavering fire.

I will end this piece in a similar way to which I started, with the words from a man who wasn’t short of fire:

“If you stick a knife in my back 9 inches and pull it out 6 inches, there’s no progress. If you pull it all the way out, that’s not progress. The progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven’t pulled the knife out, much less healed the wound. They won’t even admit the knife is there.”  – Malcolm X