Montreal studio Sweet Baby became a scapegoat for the “vocalization” of video games

Culture wars are brewing in the video game sector as well, and Montreal’s Sweet Baby studio now finds itself on the front lines of a global campaign of cyber harassment.

The company, which specializes in storytelling and dialogue consulting, has been the target of a reactionary online movement, often violent, that accuses it of “wokeness” in the games it works on. Critics sometimes lean toward conspiracy theories and racist and sexist language.

For almost six months now, sixteen Sweet Baby employees and managers have received thousands of emails containing insults and threats (sometimes death), apparently anonymous, from all over the planet as the sector globalizes.

Even billionaire Elon Musk, founder of Tesla, took part in the development of the X platform writes: “Video games need to get rid of [bullshit] awoke. People don’t play it to be taught by boring propaganda! »

“It’s truly outrageous for the richest man on Earth to say that we are a blot on the video game industry when Sweet Baby is just a consulting company in the sector that employs 16 people in Montreal,” he comments. Duty David Bédard, director and head of operations for the studio he founded in 2019 with screenwriter Kim Belair.

“The players have become dissatisfied with an industry that is changing, that wants to be more inclusive and diverse,” explains the director. “When they discovered our existence, they made us scapegoats for these changes. We are accused of many things that we have nothing to do with, and this campaign of harassment has been going on for six months. »

Sweet Baby offers script writing services to production companies for full acting or writing scenes or dialogue. Some of these measures aim to make games more respectful of standards of diversity, equity and inclusion – for example, by practicing sensitive reading. The company participated in the creation of the black character Angrboda in the world of Scandinavian mythology. God of War Ragnarok (2022). She has also supported script writing for major productions such as Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (2020), Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance (2021) or Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (2024).

“We created writer’s room with 10 writers and 6 producers, a team that is now, in my opinion, world famous,” says Mr. Bédard.

“Our mission is to help studios tell better, more authentic stories. We’ve been accused of promoting a woke agenda, of forcing game makers to include all kinds of messages and all kinds of things in their games. Although in reality we are consultants. And that our clients sometimes make decisions after five or six layers of information. »

Online mobilization

Certain (let’s say) various transformations, sometimes simply proposed to avoid awkwardness, cause strong dissatisfaction among the more conservative part of video game fans.

The first salvos were fired last October on the Kiwi Farms discussion forum, known for its harassment campaigns and its role in disseminating the racist manifesto of the 2019 Christchurch shooter in New Zealand. The shooting continued on the 4chan and Reddit forums. A group associated with the movement, created on the Steam shopping platform on January 29, now has more than 300,000 subscribers; another on social media Discord connects thousands of people. Their members are tracking down works where Sweet Baby may have appeared and have advised players to avoid them.

The accusations typically relate to what is perceived as oversensitivity to diversity. Strong game scene Suicide Squad where the female character Harley Quinn defeats the masculine Batman, sparking hostilities. The appearance of a black woman, Saga Anderson, as one of the main characters of the game Alan Wake 2 the nets were set on fire. Detractors even blamed Sweet Baby (without any evidence) for its relative commercial difficulties Spider-Man 2 and recent mass layoffs in the video game sector.

Director Bédard assures that all his clients remain with the Sweet Baby company, which persists and signs contracts. “We are practicing a kind of innovation in a cultural field that is too homogeneous, where all kinds of stories and perspectives are underrepresented. We’re trying to create a more inclusive world with more diversity,” he says.