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The term DEI has been thrown around a lot in gaming, with little-to-no understanding of what that actually means. Over the weekend, CI Games – developers of 2023’s Lords of the Fallen – told their investors that they would be shying away from making any sort of social or political statement with their future games, which is a weird statement to make when you want to get people excited for upcoming releases.

What led CI Games to say such a thing? During a recent investor call, the company was asked to comment on DEI (Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion) in gaming. Global marketing director Ryan Hill said, “Our games will always be developed to maximize player enjoyment and commercial success, and as such, we will not be integrating any social or political agencies into these experiences going forward, having observed the high risk this can present.”

This comes as fans await the sequel to 2023's Lords of the Fallen, a 2014 game that was as close to a Dark Souls clone as anyone has managed. While the combat was fun and captured the utter hopelessness of classic grimdark fantasy, the story was flat and the characters were utterly forgettable. The game went on to be a commercial success, though its lack of a compelling story made it feel like there was room for improvement.

Ignoring the obvious fact that all art, including video games, makes a political statement, there is a strange capitulation at the core of Hill’s statement. Some gamers feel, without any evidence to back up their opinion, that a focus on telling stories that reflect the world they live in written by a diverse group of people is somehow making gaming worse. 

If we were to hazard a guess, we’d say it was the fact that companies are working the people who make games harder, longer, and for less money or job security even if they make a great game that sells well that is ruining gaming, but that is just us. Hill mentioned that there have been some high-profile failures in recent years that caused the company to reach this same conclusion, though he didn’t cite a specific flop as the inspiration for making more bland games for a vocal subset of gamers. Most likely he was referring to Concord or Dragon Age: Veilguard, both of which struggled to live up to sales expectations. However, they most likely struggled because they were average games that spent too long in development and cost too much to make rather than the actual content of the story.

Clearly, CI Games thinks that the group of people complaining loudly about DEI on the internet is a large enough market to ensure their future games are a success. Maybe they think it is safer to recommit to the same cookie-cutter characters and edgelord worldbuilding that made Lords of the Fallen a hit in the past.

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