Asmongold TV - The Western Gaming Crash Is Real | Asmongold

Episode Date: June 29, 2025

The Western Gaming Crash Is Real Subscribe to Asmongold TV on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AsmonTV Disclaimer: This podcast is an independent project created by a viewer using content from the YouTube channel Asmongold TV. The purpose is to make his content more accessible to those who prefer audio formats, helping more people engage with the ideas presented in his videos. This podcast is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or officially associated with Asmongold. All rights to the original content remain with Asmongold TV. If there are any concerns or requests regarding this podcast, please reach out. --------- Keywords: twitch clips, gaming content creator, streaming highlights, gaming hot takes, reaction videos, twitch streamer, gaming culture Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I do actually think that we're having a Western gaming crash. This might sound crazy, but I think it is legitimately happening. The reason why, like identity politics and like woke shit in games, 10, 20% of it. The rest of it is that games are so safe and so boring now, people just don't care about playing them. Like, fuck, yeah, it's been happening, it is. This is a real tweet from Xbox

They said You don't know it But you're living in one of the greatest ages Of all right now Post Why would they Why would they do this? It had to be an ad

In this image Timeline through the ages Ancient age Medieval age Modern Age Contemporary Age And Dragon Age The Vale Guard

You are Wait this says Let's read this Contemporary age The French Revolution and the French Revolution ended in 23 Who the fuck made this?

What? What are we talking about? Oh my God Pure. That's a long-ass revolution, yeah. Clearly the greatest thing ever, best game of all time. And I know they're joking around a little bit,

but so many people have seriously been trying to prop this game up. As you might expect, the comments are not really agreeing with Xbox. Yeah, I guess so. So many corpos and their bootlickers have been going crazy lately. Enrage that gamers have been winning simply by refusing to buy games. Imagine that, that the consumer actually had all the power all along, but people didn't want to accept it. That's always been the case, is consumers have always had all the power.

You can make the decision and you can change the way that businesses work just simply by voting with your money. Of these corrupt Western AAA companies. This is something that I've talked about quite a lot recently, and now in this video, even more examples have come up. Over on Indy 100, Jake Brickstock made this article titled, More than 1,500 games have been rated on wild, quote, woke detector on quote. An online group has firmly brought the culture war of woke and anti-woke into video games. It's been in video games for a long time. It's not anything new. More than 1,500 titles have been rated on an.

absurdly wild quote-unquote woke detector Excel spreadsheet and that's not the worst part more than half of them listed are not recommended because they contain details and features that are considered woke what did you expect from something titled woke detector I went into this fucking restaurant it was called Longhorn Steakhouse they had a bunch of fucking steaks there I can't believe it I'm a fucking vegan what is this This is disgusting. How is that surprising? I love how he says that's not even the worst part, though.

Like, you can clearly tell that he's upset by this spreadsheet thing. Oh, of course he is. He then post an example of transgender character Serona Ryan from Hogwarts Legacy. But this seems like the worst example he could have used. Hogwarts Legacy, it was like the activist types on like Twitter, like the Armitter activist types who were really upset by this game saying to like boycott it. Yeah, they were real mad. And making like lists of streamers who streamed it hunting people like peeking me down.

Like, that was so stupid. This example hurts your argument. Look, I'll even say that I... Well, here's the problem with like the woke lists. The reason why they're problematic is because there's not a, like, they're a binary system. Like, for example, like they'll categorize a game like Eldon Ring or Baldersgate 3 is woke because Eldon Ring doesn't use male and female. They use body type 1 and 2. Or they'll categorize Baldur's Gate as woke because you can have like gay relationships.

And I think that it's a huge problem with like that group of people that are like trying to fix it on figuring out which games are and they're not woke because they don't know how to categorize them as a tier list. Like you might think that Baldersgate 3 is woke. That's fine. But you everybody knows it's not as woke as like I don't know, a Dragon Age, right? So that's really the issue. It's that there's not like a tier list or a power ranking for them. I've seen some games that get not recommended on these type of list. that do seem like whoever put them on said list is taking too extreme of a stance on,

like making too big of a deal out of things on occasion. However, plenty of times, the not recommended posts are very reasonable, like simply not wanting to buy the very shoehorned in fake, corporate DIY slop stuff. Of course, people don't want to buy games that come off fake and preachy. Who would want to get lectured by a bunch of lame corpos?

I also find it hilarious when armchair activist types get all mad at gamers when they refuse to buy products from corporations. That's what they're getting mad about. See, and the reason why is that Like if we think about So let's go ahead and let's do something kind of funny Biggest games of the year Um

Wu Kong Chinese dev Metaphor Japan Dev Um Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Japan Dev Stellar Blade

Korean Dev I'm starting to see a pattern Pow World Japan Dev Elden Ring Japan Dev Dragon's Dogma 2 Japan Dev

Um Ooh Concord American Dev Okay Um Monster Hunter Japan Dev

Ooh Hell Divers 2 Fair Um Finnish Where were they from again? I don't remember Swedish

European dev Eurodev I think that's fair Yeah Sweden, okay Space Marine 2 Fair Where is Sabre interactive

I think they're American Right Oh they're Russian Oh Oh Did we make any good games this year? Did we make a good game this year? No

Not us No I'm saying Did we make a single good game Sabre is in Florida They just have a Russian studio. Okay. All right. All right. Maybe Sabre's American. Okay, why are people saying Russian?

Okay. Um, US Def. Okay, we've got one. We're saved. Everything's fine. But let's look at this. Western game dev has a huge problem. Massive. Tremendous problem. Like they're mad that gamers are actually better activists than they are at the time of writing. 403 titles in the document are recommended. 323 are informational and a staggering 824. Oh, it's staggering.

824 games are rated, not recommended with some hugely successful titles in there. There were corners of the internet that were up in arms because a transgender character in Serona Ryan was included in Hogwarts Legacy when it released in February 2023. Once again. Yeah, because there's a lot of people. So this is what these people don't understand. So when he's saying there are corners of the internet, do you want to know what corners of the internet are? They're called corners of the globe.

So you have an international platform where people from all across the world, across multiple cultures, religions, races, and also nationalities are discussing topics. And in some of those corners, being transgender is against the law, or it's not viewed in a positive light. So big surprise, some people on the internet don't agree with things that are literally against the law in their country. I'm sick of these people going and acting like this is some kind of a problem here when we're talking about this is a global internet. This is a global platform. Of course you're going to have people that disagree. Yeah, meanwhile, on the secret HQ of modern evidence. Yes, the internet's worldwide, exactly.

It's because we have a toxic positivity game community? Well, I don't know. Hogwarts Legacy wasn't a great game. It wasn't woke. I don't think it was woke either. I'm just telling you, like, it shouldn't be a surprise that there are people out there

that are not fans of transgender because the internet is worldwide and people on the internet come from cultures and from nationalities where it is literally illegal to be transgender. I feel like this is such a cold take. And this is a terrible example.

Like, I can't believe this guy's actually writing this. Does he actually think this or is he trying to like rewrite history here? Because if I recall, it was the boycott Hogwarts Legacy people that were all upset with Serona Ryan. They were saying the name Serona was transphobic because like the sir, they were like, of course Hogwarts Legacy's trans character would be named Serona Ryan. This is a transphobic dog whistle. And it was actually a lot of the pro-Hogwards legacy people defending that trans character by citing this Celtic deity Serona. He then says on surprisingly the proverb. None of these people care about that issue. They're just looking for some of the

complain about. Real woke content detectors curate a list of games does not recommend Hogwarts Legacy. Let's be honest. So as I mentioned earlier, I do think sometimes the people making those lists or at least posting like partaking in the lists are too extreme. This being one of those examples. Proverbrivial woke list that contains 1800 Scotland, somehow as diverse LGBTQ characters, uses body type instead of biological sex. I feel like that's fair. I mean, like there's no logical reason other than a woke reason to use body type instead of biological sex? I can't think of a single logical reason why that would be the case. Does it make any sense?

Like Hogwarts Legacy, I think it's a cool game. So, it's just my opinion. Moving on. Oh, first one more thing. I did check the list to be sure he wasn't making this up. And yeah, that is on there. This is sadly just one example of hundreds and hundreds with each one having a similar format. None of the recent call of duty titles are recommended because of emblems containing

pride flags. Forza Horizon 5 isn't either because the pronouns they, them, can be chosen. And Bully's scholarship edition must have caused repulsion among those who made this wretched list. Because players can't. Well, yeah, a big surprise. Like, a lot of people don't accept that there are more than two genders. Like, this is another component that these people don't seem to understand is that I would say, like, the. massive overwhelming majority of the world that's on the internet thinks there's two genders. Whether you agree with them or not is irrelevant. You have to acknowledge that this is a minority opinion.

What are we talking about? It's unbelievable. 90% easily? I don't know if it's 90%. I have no idea. But it's such a huge amount of people. And so, isn't it

transphobic? I don't know. Gender and sex are different. How many people do you think give a fuck about that distinction? Really? Like, I mean, really, ask yourself the question how many people actually give a fuck about it? And I'm not

talking about just here in America. I'm talking about across the entire world. That's not going to work. Oh, yeah. It's such a small, minor amount of people. If we don't make the poll here, we don't need to make a poll here. What I'm saying is that I find it to be very annoying that people write these articles

complaining about how people on the internet are not inclusive, but we have a global internet. If we had an internet that for some way, in some way, only allowed people to post from like America, then you probably wouldn't see this stuff be as popular. The reason why this stuff is getting really popular, the guy that made the original DEI detected list is from South America. Get an achievement for kissing other boys with the lead male character. Video games are for absolutely everyone and an entitled select few should not hold any influence when it comes to so-called recommending games on if they have content deemed woe. Video games are absolutely for everyone and the entitled few and an entitled select few should not hold any influence when it comes to so-called recommending games.

Why not? Ironic? It is really ironic, isn't it? Yeah, that's crazy. Wow, that's what they're doing? Yeah, the lack of self-awareness is unbelievable. Do us all a favor. Get over it and just enjoy playing. So, yeah, you guys already know my opinion here. I think sometimes the list make some good points.

Sometimes they don't. Sometimes they're too extreme and sound silly. But I do enjoy how they make Corbeau's mad. Even if I disagree with some of the things these lists are sane on there, I do find them amusing because of the list. that fact. Let me know what you guys think about all that. And now moving on to the next part of this video, Mike Rose. This is so fucking silly, man. It's so fucking silly that they, because here's really what the problem is. They want you to not be able to express what your opinion is. They fundamentally

want to take away your right to speech and they want to have your opinion censored and you, They want it to be where you are not allowed to have this type of an opinion. That is crazy. Absolutely insane. No, they don't. They just don't like all the hate. So then they don't want you to have your opinion. They say that you're not allowed to have an opinion.

You're not allowed to express their opinion because they think that that opinion is hateful. That's exactly what they're saying. Yeah, it's literally that simple. Don't be a hateful con. I don't like the idea that because some people have opinions that you consider problematic, that then they shouldn't be having a right to have that opinion. Unless they are openly advocating for violence or like threatening violence, then I think they should be able to have an opinion on whatever they want.

That's the way it is. Who decides what hate is? Who decides who watches the watchman? Who watches the people? Who is the one that's determining what is it? isn't okay to say. Well, that changes, doesn't it? And that's why it's a problem. You can't let somebody make those decisions. It's a pretext. Yeah, it's a pretext for control. Like, I'm sorry, but like, I think people have realized what the conclusion for this is because it's happened so many

times. Part of this video, Mike Rose over on his Blue Sky account. Yeah. Made this post on blue sky with over 10,000 likes. A lot of people over there love this. I'm going to be surprised. I didn't know Blue Sky had 10K users. He says, everyone trying to work out why video games aren't selling anymore, quote, too many games. Prices are too low. Marketing is hard, unquote,

when the answer this time around is actually simple. The world got destroyed and no one has any money. People are struggling to pay bills and rent, let alone buy your game. Look, things have definitely been a mess, but when it comes to the gaming industry, largely the games... The funny thing about what he's saying,

is actually it's been found out that in recessionary and economic bad times, people will end up spending more money on luxury goods in some cases and entertainment goods to distract themselves from their real lives. And that's why you can see a lot of games even this year, like Blackmeth Wukong sold 20 million copies. You had other games like Helldivers was so popular. You also have, what do you call it, like Dragons Dogma 2 that was kind of popular. I think this is an entirely fake premise. visible luxuries? Yeah, exactly.

It's not getting bought, are triple A slop. And that post seems like it's trying to cover, it's trying to make excuses for these AAA companies. And when I say AAA companies, I'm also specifically talking about Western AAA. I should have specified that, but I'm clarifying it now. Yeah, Capcom is hiring more people.

From software increased their base salary. This whole idea that video games are in some sort of a depression is not true. video games aren't in the depression Western development studios are that's the problem a lot of gaming companies in Asia for example have been doing great last month from Soft

even announced that they were increasing the average basic salary pay by around 11.8% so true and what's really funny is that the gaming companies over in Asia that are struggling right now are often the ones that are adopting Western practices like DEI for example as I talked about just yesterday a recent financial report from Square Nix was so bad that it cost a massive sell-off of their stock

and the market cap loss of around $350 million. Jesus. This follows their partnership with Sweet Baby Inc. and their further involvement with practices, as mentioned, like, D.I., which you can see them pushing all. I don't think that's the reason, by the way. That's like maybe like a small percentage. It's probably a single-digit percentage of the reason why.

All over their website. In my coverage, to be fair, I did also mention other issues not related to that. For example, the price of their games and how many people find them to be too costly, among other things. Yeah, exactly. But the fact still stands that the Western policies they've been adopting certainly don't seem to be helping when other major gaming companies in Asia are not adopting those policies and are seeing extreme success. On top of the- I think people want to use video games as a form of escapism. And any time that people feel like the video game that they're playing is, you know, like involving itself with something that removes that escapism, it's going to,

lower their interest in the game for that reason. And because like fundamentally they can't escape out of the game now because, or escape out of their real life now because they feel like their real life has been put into the game. That we can see more evidence of these policies hurting Western companies when you take a look at games like SSK the JL. And now that apparently costs Warner Brothers around $200 million. Jesus. Of course, also Concord and the massive loss.

Oh, suicide squad killed the Justice League. He probably didn't want to say the words to know. not get demonetized. I understand. Yeah, that's what he's talking about. That was. And recently, Dragon Age the Veil Guard, which, while isn't as disastrous as Concord, seems like they're struggling to even hit break-even point based off all the current metrics. And when I say they... I think that, I mean, Dragon Age, it's not a terrible game. It's just not a very good game either. It's like just in a... It's like, it's fantasy Starfield. Honestly, I'd say probably maybe Starfield might have been a little bit better.

Yeah, it's just a, it's a mid-game, right? And also, like, here's another problem with Dragon Age. Is it, like, how many of you guys actually played Dragon Age? Like, actually played the game. Okay, nobody's played the game. For those of you that have played the game, have you run into the same problem where, like, after you get past, like, level 20 or, like, 25 or so, you feel like you're just spamming the same few abilities with, like, you know,

hitting bosses or mobs that have, like, just a ridiculous amount of health? Like the gameplay doesn't really feel dynamic or anything. It's very repetitive. Yeah. Yeah, same blight, same objectives, exactly. And so, like, even if you get, if you drill down into the gameplay itself, it really isn't very good. I'm referring to EA and BioAir, of course.

So, yeah, returning to that post from this Mike dude, I've seen a lot of people, often Corpos, making similar takes to that where they ignore their real policy issues going on at Western AAA companies. and instead they seem to try and deflect and cover for them. And keep in mind, another big component for why a lot of people are losing interest in a lot of Western games is because Western games are turning into the same game.

It's like basically every single game is the same. And it's kind of like how, you know, how movies have turned into like kind of a marvelization of movies? I think that video games, it's like a Fortniteization. Where like after Fortnite's success, I feel like so many other games have tried to, emulate that style in multiple ways, and that's caused them to have like a saminess to them. Yeah, the Ubisoft formula. Exactly. Yeah.

Are other issues going on at these corporations? For example, they're inflated expenses. However, Mike is specifically talking about why people aren't buying their games, which is why I focused on discussing that specific point. And it's really weird how often certain types of people try to ignore how delving into DEI has verifiably caused a negative impact on many game sales, but moving on. I do think that's a huge problem is that a lot of developers and journalists try to ignore

the problem and hope that it goes away. And like, you know, here's what's going to happen. You're going to ignore the problem and it is going to go away. The people are going to leave. That's what's going to happen. And I see this all the time where they're like running defense

for it and like trying to pretend like, oh yeah, there aren't a lot of people to think this. Well, if you go to the YouTube channel and you look at the amount of people that are responding to this. I do actually think that like an official trailer getting a really bad reception on YouTube does absolutely play into people's opinions. And like maybe not these super normies, but there probably aren't that many super normies. Like there's a lot of people that play video games and like playing video games and they look at YouTube. Like a lot of people use YouTube. And guess what? They're going to see that and they're

going to scroll down to the comments and they're going to be like, wow, a lot of people really think this game sucks. I don't want to play it. it. That's the real reason. I used to show dislike button. If I see 90% dislike ratio, I'm staying away. Yeah. And I think that's a lot, a lot of people. So this whole, like, basically, I think that there's a lot of, like, game studios that are banking on basically low information gamers instead of low information voters, buying their games, even though their games have bad reputations inside of more invested communities. And I think that's what companies. like Ubisoft are they're trying to bank on. I want to talk about the Game Awards. Look at this. Says, according to the official website of the Game Awards,

the opinion of the fans counts in the selection of the winners. But the value of the fan vote is much smaller than that of the jury vote. Thus, the jury's decision counts for 90% compared to 10% for the popular vote, aka the fan vote. Yeah, I talked about this earlier. And so the jury vote is right here. The jury includes IGN, inverse, Jeff Gerstman, show kind of funny la times min max pc gamer polygon venture beat the verge tough arcade what's good games

game rant npr pride dot com in variety so as you can see most of this list by totally represents me as a gamer oh yeah oh this is yeah these are the people that are really going to be able to tell me what the best games are for sure bar has like nothing to do with gaming but here you go this is the jury for the game awards. I also know that most gamers, like we don't care about this stuff at all. We don't care about the game awards. This is just some Corbo nonsense. But it's another example of how lame-

I think people care about it. It's not a big deal. Like, I mean, who gives this shit at the end of the day? But it does matter. Sure, it matters. Stuff is. And I thought it would be pretty funny to take a look at. Also hilarious how kind of funny is on this list when just the other day we were talking about

Andy Cortez from Kind of Funny and how he went on this giant rant about gamers. He was like so mad that game. a minute rant but like you know first dare criticize yeah i anyways that's it for this video let me know what you think about these topics in the comments and if you missed the earlier video about 2b and you be soft and all that consider checking that was that was crazy like i could not fucking believe that oh my it looks so fucking bad oh my god how does it look that bad out too hope you enjoyed today's segments consider liking and or subscribing if you did and i'll

see you in the next one I just don't know what to say. Just literal trash. What do you think about game devs? This is a real tweet from Xbox. What do you think if the panel was game devs instead that aren't being represented? I think that they should make it, like, I think it should be a panel vote, but I think that it should be 80-20 with like fans being 80% and the panel being like 20% somewhere around there. So I do think that there should be like some degree of editorial control that's exercised, but it shouldn't be like,

like a like a 90-10 against fan voting right yeah fill up the panel with haters yeah fan-based 100 I think that's fine but I feel like fan-based 100% like you can do that already you just look at steam charts in the game that has the most people playing it on steam charts that's the one that wins right it's pretty simple it's going yeah like cotton tomatoes well I don't know about cotton to make the fuck is a cotton tomato I'll link you guys the video. I feel like what's happened is that I can't believe they would tweet this out. You're living in one of the greatest ages right now.

And here's the thing. It's really funny because actually I agree with them, but not because of Dragon Age. I feel like there's so many really good games that are coming out all the time now. All the time there's great games that are getting released. And now, like, I feel like it's just, there's so much focus put on the bad games

that we never think, about the good games.