Opinion: Sweet Baby Inc. Is Not An All-Powerful DEI Supervillain – They’re A Symptom Of A Larger Problem
If you’re a fan of video games and you’ve logged on to the internet at any point in the past months, you’ve no doubt heard tell of the “inclusion-focused” narrative consultation company Sweet Baby Inc.
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Founded in 2018, the Canadian-based company’s raison d’etre, as detailed on their official website, is “to tell better, more empathetic stories while diversifying and enriching the video games industry.”
“We believe that representation is key to connecting players and audiences, and we offer a few ways to help your team and project gain the perspective needed to make it happen,” the company asserts in their mission statements. “We’re part of an inclusive and knowledgeable community of diverse consultants, able to cover a wide range of cultural and sensitivity topics. Our approach leads with the creation of joy in marginalized players, and seeks to be additive rather than strictly corrective.”
But despite being relatively young – only six-years-old at the time of writing – Sweet Baby Inc. has already been tapped by some of the biggest studios in the entire video game industry to provide their various inclusion consultancy services on a number of major, ‘Triple-A’ level releases.
These include offering “narrative and character consultation, with a focus on representation” to Sony Santa Monica’s God of War: Ragnarok, “scripting (banter, but scenes, barks, audio logs, etc.)” to Warner Bros. Discovery’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, and “story consultation” to Insomniac Games’ Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.
Sweet Baby Inc. first came to widespread attention in 2023 when their attachment to Spider-Man’s latest digital adventure was uncovered by players scouring the game’s credits in search of a possible explanation for its abundance of hamfisted and performatively progressive narrative decisions – which included canonizing its version of Black Cat as bisexual, having Peter fully hand off his identity to Miles, and ensuring that absolutely zero police NPCs are ever actually seen in-game.
Ever since then, the company’s work has been subject to a massive amount of scrutiny and criticism, with players regularly decrying their involvement or potential involvement in any given title out of fear that they would attempt to overwrite its narrative with sociopolitical lecturing (One player even went so far as begin a Steam Curator list with the specific intent of warning others regarding which specific titles the company had a hand in).
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Though most of this criticism is well-deserved, there is one particularly absurd narrative that has risen to the top of the discourse in recent weeks: From individual players, to trusted YouTubers, to media outlets, much of the conversation around Sweet Baby Inc. has taken to framing the company as an all-powerful, omnipotent boogeyman responsible for the Western video game industry’s ever-growing deference to the concepts of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’.
Here’s the unfortunate truth: Sweet Baby Inc. is not responsible for the ideological turn the Western video game industry has made in recent decades (nor do they have anything to do with its decline in gameplay standards, but that’s an argument for another day).
Rather, they are but a symptom of a much larger problem.
From movies, to comic books, to of course video games, recent years have seen the concept of DEI take root in a vast majority of mainstream entertainment industries.
To this end, a number of studios and companies will regularly subject their projects to ‘sensitivity readings’ to ensure that no part of it, whether that be a piece of dialogue, a character depiction, or even a visual, causes any offense to any number of demographics.
If possible, companies prefer to perform this process internally, as it ensures a more smooth communication process between all involved teams.
However, for those that lack the resource to keep them in-house, consultancy agencies like Sweet Baby Inc. can be hired to come in and provide their own sensitivity reading services.
And is it that qualifier of “consultancy agencies like Sweet Baby Inc.” which serves as the basis of this entire piece, as with sensitivity readings currently being in high demand thanks to the stranglehold neoliberal politics has on the video game industry, there is absolutely no shortage of similar companies willing to provide such services.
Black Girl Gamers. Dragon Baby. Hit Detection. James Mendez Hodes. Gaymer X.
As it’s plain to see, it’s not just Sweet Baby Inc. So long as the DEI racket continues to exist, these services will continue to be in demand, and as long as they’re in demand, there will always be someone to provide them.
So while it’s important to continue scrutinizing and shining sun light on Sweet Baby Inc., it’s also imperative that disgruntled players do not focus all of their attentions on a lone enemy when their reinforcements are right behind them, – otherwise no real change will ever truly be affected.
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