AI Summary
5 min readThe Western Gaming Crash Is Real
"I do actually think that we're having a Western gaming crash," Asmongold says early in this episode. "This might sound crazy, but I think it is legitimately happening." The claim is not that video games as a whole are struggling—it's that Western triple-A studios specifically are failing, while Asian developers are thriving. And the reasons, he argues, go deeper than the culture war debates that dominate online discourse.
The Real Problem: Sameness, Not Just Politics
Asmongold estimates that identity politics and "woke shit" in games accounts for maybe 10-20% of the problem. "The rest of it is that games are so safe and so boring now. People just don't care about playing them." He describes a "fortniteization" of Western games—everyone trying to copy the same successful formula, producing a sameness that he compares to the "marvelization" of movies. The Ubisoft formula, he says, has worn out its welcome.
The evidence he offers is concrete. Looking at the biggest games of the year: Black Myth: Wukong (Chinese developer), Metaphor: ReFantazio (Japanese), Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (Japanese), Palworld (Japanese), Dragon's Dogma 2 (Japanese), Monster Hunter (Japanese). "Did we make a single good game this year?" he asks, referring to American developers. The pattern is hard to ignore.
The Economic Argument That Doesn't Hold Up
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:04) **The Western Gaming Crash Thesis** - Asmongold states his belief that a Western gaming crash is happening, attributing 10-20% to identity politics and the rest to games being safe and boring.
- 2 (01:41) **Consumer Power and the "Woke Detector" List** - Asmongold discusses how consumers have all the power by voting with their money, then examines a viral "woke detector" spreadsheet rating 1500 games.
- 3 (05:24) **The Success Pattern: Non-Western Developers** - Asmongold lists the biggest games of the year (Black Myth: Wukong, Metaphor, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Palworld, Dragon's Dogma 2, Monster Hunter, Helldivers 2, Space Marine 2) and identifies their developers as Chinese, Japanese, or European, not American.
- 4 (09:12) **Global Internet vs. Local Norms** - Asmongold defends the existence of anti-woke sentiment by noting the internet is global, and many cultures and countries have laws against being transgender.
- 5 (11:49) **The Body Type Controversy** - Asmongold argues that using "body type" instead of biological sex in games like Elden Ring has no logical reason other than a "woke reason."
- 6 (15:46) **Free Speech and Censorship** - Asmongold argues that critics of the "woke detector" lists fundamentally want to take away the right to express opinions they consider hateful.
- 7 (17:33) **Debunking the "No Money" Excuse** - Asmongold refutes a Blue Sky post claiming games aren't selling because people have no money due to a destroyed economy.
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Show Notes
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