Sweet Baby Inc. Guts Its Website
Sweet Baby Inc. is on the run. Smash JT was the first to report that the DEI consulting firm that was forced into the light upon the massive failure of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has heavily revamped its website. They seem to have removed sections that list all the games they worked on, an outreach link, their newsletter, and the details of their approach to video game consultation. Now, the site features a very general breakdown of their services and lists a few “featured projects,” including God of War Ragnarök, The Crew Motorfest, and the aforementioned Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. With one exception – a “dating sim” called Afterlove EP that comes out early next year (and sounds boring as sin) – all the games they list have already been released. This comes on the heels of a string of failures for games Sweet Baby Inc. worked on, like Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn and Tales of Kenzera: ZAU. There has also been increased concern that consulting with Sweet Baby Inc. could prove detrimental to a game’s sales, such as when a Square Enix shareholder asked the CEO of the company if they hired the firm. You can see the Smash JT video below:
What’s behind this? My guess would be that they’re trying to hide their involvement with various games, either at the behest of their clients or in the hopes that these games won’t bomb due to their connection to Sweet Baby Inc., which would make the firm’s track record look a little better and make game studios more willing to hire them. That’s why most of the games they feature are ones that have already been released; any damage has been done, and aside from Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, none of them were high-profile failures, although most don’t seem to have been hits. In fact, only God of War Ragnarök appears to have been a rousing success of the ones mentioned. Above the featured section, they have images from two other recent games, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and Alan Wake II, both of which were big sellers, and one from another upcoming game, Usual June. It looks like an effort to mitigate future losses while trying to highlight their biggest successes, which came out before gamers knew much about Sweet Baby Inc.
Sweet Baby Inc. has been growing desperate of late and acting out in increasingly destructive ways, from trying to get Kabrutus and his Sweet Baby Inc. Detected Steam curator canceled to contacting the former employer of Smash JT’s Jeff Tarzia. But none of it seems to have worked, and they’re increasingly being seen as a liability to video game studios; their revamped website looks like a response to that. It makes sense; they’re getting to a point where they’ll only be able to continue working by hiding their involvement in a game from customers. Even the descriptions of what they do are sanitized, leaving out mentions of DEI or anything off-putting; it’s mostly vague comments about scriptwriting, worldbuilding, and character development. The closest the site now comes to admitting that Sweet Baby Inc. does anything woke when it works on games is a blurb titled “Authenticity & Sensitivity,” which they describe as bringing out the “natural authenticity and emotional resonance” from an “existing narrative.” In other words, they don’t change anything, suggest anything, or force their agenda into a game. As they say in the final sentence, “We don’t look for red flags – we highlight green ones.” Perhaps even more than hiding the games they’re working on, this suggests that they’re trying to change the perception of what they do and shift the narrative away from them turning games woke. But they’re going to have a tough time of it since their CEO, Kim Belair, is on video asking employees of video game companies to “terrify” their marketing teams into hiring Sweet Baby Inc. Good luck with the makeover.
Let us know what you think of the revamped Sweet Baby Inc. website in the comments!
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