Someone recently asked me, "What do yall think is next [for video games]? more woke? woke indies? ruined remasters? industry collapse?"

I used to think that I had very different views from most people. But over time I started to notice that the general public would usually follow my lead, just a handful of years after I'd taken the posture. During the Scamdemic, I realized immediately how silly the face diapering thing was. Now, almost everyone agrees with me-- it just took them a few years to come around to it, after the fear of the Kung Flu lessened a bit. Another example is external combustion-engined cars: I was against them when everyone was saying "they are the future", in lock-step-- now I'm seeing editorials on places like Zero Hedge, which don't normally cover cars, echoing what I was saying a few years ago.

I have given up on Western-made games. They are ideological, they are preachy, they are smarmy, they are unoriginal, they lack any kind of personality, and they don't even hold up technically. When "Rift Apart" made seventy million dollars but was unprofitable, that indicated to me that they are also financially unsustainable. Even a year ago, I was buying and forcing myself to play these games, mostly out of habit. But from here-on-out, they won't see another red cent from me.

It's going to take a few years, but eventually I suspect almost everyone will see it my way: they will grow out of the angsty wokeness phase and start to laugh at it; they will stop buying the games; and the triple-A part of the industry will phase out. These developers will shift focus to what we might call "double-A" budgets-- smaller, more limited-in-scope titles-- and will ditch the ideological stuff. Maybe this will reach critical momentum in, let's say, 2026.

The Japanese are already there: the list is huge, and observe how almost every game mentioned is a lower-budget title. It's not all roses there either, as most of their output is stuff like this: very cookie-cutter and somewhat generic. All the same, it's not actively offensive in any way, and the anime aesthetic and melody-focused music is always pleasing.