Get Woke, Go Broke - Gaming Edition

From That Park Place we get an update on the latest Woke video Game. 14% Of ‘Dragon Age: The Veilguard’ Physical Retail Orders Reportedly Cancelled Ahead Of Game’s Release, Total Pre-Orders Less Than 200,000

Dragon Age is a series of fantasy role-playing games set in world where magic, and dragons, and various other creatures need to be fought. The latest iteration of the series was released on October 31st. While the legacy media is trying to claim it is great success, people who are actually playing the game are not convinced, and the clips that have been released to YouTube or Twitter/X range from laughable to pure cringe.

YouTuber Endymion revealed that a retail insider shared with him that 956 pre-orders of a total of 6,793 were cancelled of 6,793 or 14%.

You can see what Endymion had to say at this link.

So a source who works in the retail space showed me how many pre orders got cancelled for Dragon Age Veilguard in the last few days. This is from a major store with over 900 locations in America.

He goes on to list the cancellation by platform (Playstation vs XBox), and more.

But back to TPP.

Of note, other estimates indicate that total sales for the game on Steam are less than 500,000. PlayTracker estimates the game has only 163,000 copies. VG Insights has the game at 349,800 copies sold and Gamalytic estimates the game has sold 479,500 copies.

If you assume that 500,000 copies were sold, all of the premium edition, that would mean that BioWare, the Canadian games studio that created Dragon Age, made less than $40,000,000. For a game that has been in development since 2015, that isn't a great return, even if you consider that the development team was occasionally raided to speed work on other BioWare titles. I haven't seen any reliable budget numbers, but people have been saying somewhere in the range of $250 million in development costs.

The CEO of Moon Studios, a competitor to BioWare, had bad things to say about the game. Moon Studios CEO Describes ‘Dragon Age: The Veilguard’ Writing As “Infantile And Terrible”

Moon Studios CEO Thomas Mahler starts by comparing the writing of TV over the past few decades. From the generic happy families of the 1980s, until we got shows that had a more genuine feeling.

“Then, in the late 90s, The Sopranos dropped and suddenly it was clear that TV shows didn’t have to be trash,” he stated. “That the episodic format could actually be used to give even more insight into characters, their trials and tribulations, etc. And it kept going from that point on – We saw more and more TV shows that delivered excellent drama, like The Wire, Breaking Bad, etc., etc.”

He then turned his attention to Dragon Age: The Veilguard and video games, “Looking at games now, it’s clear to see that we’re apparently moving back to the stone age of political correctness. I just watched a Dragon Age playthrough and it’s quite unfathomable how infantile and terrible the writing is. Everything feels sanitized and dehumanized.”

Yes, video games are created by corporations, and teams of people. So are movies and TV shows. They are still an art form. Storytelling should still be an art, and it should still come first.

“I hate to sound so harsh because I’m sure these people had the best intentions in mind, but this is what happens when art is created by amateurs, when we have to walk on eggshells and don’t dare to approach difficult subjects – you end up with a bland and bad product instead of art,” he continued.

The the case of the new Dragon Age game, what there is apparently a lot of, is gender identity. Much time is given to a companion character who declares that they are non-binary. There is even a scene in which they tell their mother, and another scene where players are lectured about how to apologize for misgendering someone. In a fantasy, role-playing game. As you can see from the copies sold numbers, this is not going over very well.