alt Hacker Newsim not a gamer but looking at this purely from the headlines and reactions :
- games like other forms of media have become mixed with political messagings that pre-dominantly hetrosexual male demographic rejected understandably
- games have become far too expensive and poor lasting. i remember games like unreal tournament, quake arena, counter strike 1.3, starcraft had very lasting user base long after their release, now it seems like game companies shut down multiplayer and stop community mods
So you make a product that your target audience doesn't want and raised the prices and lot of smaller studios and indie developers are filling that gap that large studios have self sabotaged by associating with (ex. Sweet Baby, GaymerX, Black Girl Gamers) that have led to flagship titles to complete ruin (ex. Concord)
First of all, we're talking about Doom here. I doubt Doom is too alienating for heterosexual audiences. Doesn't that seem like an extremely inorganic segue into identity politics?
Secondly, The "go woke or broke" thing has been a Schrodinger's mantra used by grifters to sell outrage. Everything is woke until it succeeds, and then suddenly it was always predetermined to succeed. The market, on the whole, doesn't seem to care about or pay attention to these things as much as you imply. The worst examples, like Concord, are games that are shit across the board and compete in really crowded markets. The "Sweet baby" watch group on steam flagged Elden Ring, for christsake. If anything, the indie games are even more woke.
But there is certainly a loud minority that will insist this is a massive threat to the industry. I for one cannot wait until people learn how to criticize games again. It's unfortunate good game criticism is being overtaken by to a crowd of tourists that flatten game quality to a checklist of anti woke signifiers. It sucks. But it mostly affects internet comments.
I think the fact that you are not a gamer but the first thing you think of when you imagine what gamers care about is Sweet Baby Inc says more about the content you consume.