I'm glad you touched on the scores vs the review. Reading reviews is so important. I can recall dozens of times where reading a mostly negative review actually influenced me to buy the game just because I knew their negative points wouldn't affect my enjoyment.
(I read through soooo many negative Star Wars Outlaws reviews, and it became my favorite game from that year)
Outlaws is such a good game too! It was such a damn shame it was reviewed with such negativity. There were issues sure but the core experience of being in a Star Wars game without being a Jedi was just so damn good. It was the first game I reviewed on here before I had really figured out how I wanted to structure them so I've been considering replaying it and giving it a re-review of sorts. I played it at launch before they changed the auto fail stealth too so I know there have been improvements. Now to just wait for a sale. Thanks for reading!
Your review of reviews and the discussion around subjective experiences, is right on the money!!
Being informed (not necessarily influenced) by someone who has similar tastes to you is very much a good way to be. Thank you for this and i hope it gets its deserved exposure and discussion 🙏🙂
Really thoughtful discussion Cat! It’s a good reminder that reviews are not only subjective, but we all bring different experiences to them too.
But the upside of that? They aren’t all the same, which is why we can all review the same game and have something totally unique to say. No review is definitive, and we shouldn’t treat them as such.
Thanks Harrison! You are so right that it's really cool to see that different people can play the same game and have completely different and unique thoughts on them in their reviews. It's a great way to have interesting discussions. I've had that with my partner and some friends about games we've played together or independently then talked about in a friendly and nuanced way. That's what discussing games should be like, not filled with vitriol but mutual respect for other peoples experience.
Hey Cat, thoughtful piece (even though it seems directly pointed at mine in places, lol), and I want to engage with it honestly, because a) I think we may well agree on more than it might seem at first glance, but also b) I want to push back on your central argument, because I think it papers over a real problem.
First, a few areas where I'm in full agreement: you're absolutely right that reviews *are* individual experiences, and that different reviewers will have different takes on the same game. You're also right that the "shills" accusation is straight-up lazy and usually wrong (which is why I never made it myself; I don't think it really holds up to scrutiny here). You're also right that the Cuphead reviewers being bad at games thing was always overblown, even at the time. And finally, you're right that the gaming community has a nasty habit of treating any review score they disagree with as a personal attack, and it's both exhausting and unproductive. I'm with you on all of that.
But I do have to push back beyond that, and I want to do it respectfully, from one gamer to another, because I can tell you care about this stuff (as do I): if reviews are purely subjective opinion pieces, then what exactly is the IGN badge for?
I'm serious. The defense of reviews as subjective (whether in your piece, or in the discourse more broadly) never quite answers that question, which is a problem because I think the implications are load-bearing. Clearly, reviews from legacy outlets carry more weight than random Steam reviews (or random Substack posts, for that matter). Everyone intuitively knows this, which is why a 6/10 from IGN can move a publicly traded company's stock price by 30%, whereas a 6/10 from me cannot. That weight comes from *somewhere.* Specifically, from an implicit promise of professional standards: whether it's consistent evaluation criteria or context that tempers personal taste with genre conventions and audience expectations, readers expect a degree of editorial rigor that they don't expect from a random forum post (mainly because the forum poster never signaled they would [or could] deliver on that promise). And if that promise isn't real, then legacy outlets are effectively laundering individual opinions through their institutional branding while simultaneously disclaiming responsibility for the institutional weight that branding carries.
The press wants it both ways. When it's convenient (e.g., when a game succeeds despite a low score), reviews are "just subjective opinions, how dare you hold us accountable." But when it's convenient in the other direction (e.g., when the outlet wants to be taken seriously as an authoritative voice in the industry), reviews are professional journalism that deserve institutional respect. But you can't actually have both; either reviews are subjective and IGN scores shouldn't have the power to move stock prices, or reviews carry institutional weight and should be held to the same standards they hold the games they review to. The contradiction itself, and not any given reviewer's individual position, is the problem.
On the specific Veilguard/Crimson Desert comparison, the argument isn't "this one reviewer gave Crimson Desert a 6 and another reviewer gave Veilguard a 9, therefore conspiracy." That's a strawman of what people are actually saying (well... the *serious* people, at least). The *actual* argument is that a consistent pattern of misalignment is showing up across multiple outlets and multiple games (Crimson Desert, Stellar Blade, Black Myth Wukong going one direction, and Veilguard, Concord, Forspoken going the other), and that pattern is both stable and persistent enough to suggest something is going on, and it's probably structural in nature.
This doesn't have to be conscious, coordinated, or intentional on the reviewers' part in order for it to be operative; it can just be (as I posited in my piece) a shared cultural framework among reviewers, that systematically advantages certain games and disadvantages others, which is invisible to the people operating inside it because it just feels like "good taste." Notice how that's not at all an actual conspiracy theory. It's just how institutional bias actually works in practice: quietly and by consensus, without anyone needing to actually decide anything (and I originally come from the media world, so I've seen stuff like this manifest in the way I'm describing).
And on Starfield specifically, I actually think that comparison *strengthens* my point rather than weakens it. Yes, a 7 from IGN is reasonable for a mixed game. But the criticism leveled at Crimson Desert (weak story, obtuse systems, overwhelming mechanics, "not for everyone") applies to Starfield in spades, and in Starfield's case the story is MUCH more central to the experience. You can just *ignore* Crimson Desert's story almost entirely and let the gameplay carry you. But you can't do that with Starfield, where the main quest is both the core structure and (as the critics themselves widely admitted) one of its weakest elements. Yet Crimson Desert gets pilloried for the same flaws Starfield was essentially grandfathered past. *That's* the double standard people are pointing to, and I don't think dismissing it as just different reviewers holding different opinions does the discourse any favors. Certainly, it doesn't actually engage with the pattern.
Which is closely related to the "not for everyone" criticism of Crimson Desert (which I'm not saying you're saying, because you didn't say it), which I found particularly frustrating. I don't think this phrase should be used as a mark against any game at all, because *no* game is for everyone. Not Crimson Desert, not Veilguard, not Starfield, not Elden Ring, not Baldur's Gate 3, not even Mario or Zelda. It's a meaningless criterion even when applied in isolation, and when applied inconsistently it becomes actively disingenuous... which, again, is the pattern people are frustrated about. Elden Ring is famously "not for everyone," and it got a perfect score from the same outlet that used "not for everyone" as a mark against Crimson Desert. That's what makes people suspicious, and the press has largely responded with "oh, you're just imagining the pattern" (instead of acknowledging the concern and *demonstrating* why the pattern isn't real). Telling people they're imagining something they can see with their own eyes absolutely obliterates trust and is a big reason for the massive trust deficit driving the crisis that games media's found itself in.
Same, incidentally, for the reflexive dismissal of "woke" criticism as pure bigotry. Sure, some of it absolutely is. But a lot of it is actually legitimate criticism of specific and repeatable patterns in writing quality, character design consistency, prioritization of secondary elements at the expense of core experience, and in how certain games get preferential treatment from the press and the industry. Lumping *all* of it into "bigotry" is a deflection, a way of avoiding substantive criticism by dismissing the people making it instead of engaging with the argument. Which, in addition to being logically fallacious, is also a huge strategic risk. Just ask the Concord team how well "ignore the critics, they're just bigots" worked out for them as a market strategy. The media class' persistent dismissal of legitimate player observations as bad-faith bigotry is another flavor of the (basically) gaslighting that's resulted in so many players no longer trusting the games media.
To be clear, none of this is to say you're *wrong* to defend subjective reviewing. You're absolutely right that individual opinions matter, and that people should find reviewers whose taste aligns with theirs. But the way I see it, that's an argument *against* legacy gaming press being treated as authoritative as it has been - which you yourself basically stated in your piece, but the onus is not just on players. This is a two-way street.
At the end of the day: if the press wants to be treated as merely "one opinion among many," then they need to stop acting like they're anything more than that when it suits them. They can't wield the authority they claim while deflecting accountability at the same time.
Anyway, I do appreciate you writing this. It's good to actually advance the conversation forward, even (or especially!) where we disagree.
Wow that is a long comment and unfortunately so is this reply. I actually agree with a lot of what you say. I think the majority of the gaming press as a whole has just become useless and, really, what matters now is individual people not media companies. I also just don't think ratings should have the weight they have. I think that's an insane impact of the hyper capitalist world that currently exists. Ratings shouldn't hold that weight because of the subjectivity. I also think it's nuts for people to represent their experience as the end all be all. Not specifically in reviews, I get that's how writing works for a lot of people, but what happens after they're out and how they portray their thoughts in the aftermath.
Specifically though, I want to address the paragraph that bothers me the most. Dismissing woke isn't a way of dismissing criticism that's substantive. It's dismissing people that are not coming from a place of validity. Your examples of "repeatable patterns in writing quality, character design consistency, prioritization of secondary elements at the expense of core experience, and in how certain games get preferential treatment from the press and the industry." are all kinda debatable but I want to address each.
Firstly, repeatable patterns in writing quality is not a problem of supposed "wokeness" but simply people viewing writing differently with hindsight. People think older games were better, that writing back then was just flat out better. The reality is much much different. Games writing hasn't changed, it's just as hit and miss. Even some representation is just bad when it's written by people who just. Don't. Get it. But this is also how the industry has always been. We can talk about Veilguard or Starfield or Avowed, or even Crimson Desert with this one, they all have moments of great writing and moments of "videogame writing". By that I mean they all have moments where, because of the medium they exist in, they're not able to be as well written as they could be. Especially when you also go into how writing teams are often treated like garbage and are working overtime and not able to turn out their best work because of burnout. Writing has legitimate criticism to be made, I have enjoyed talking with people about that in the past, but to say that writing is bad because of "woke" is not substantive criticism but the actual strawman that you mention. I also think saying it's "repeatable patterns" seems to be a sly way of saying that games are pushing "woke" when in reality all that is happening is more people are being let into writers rooms and they're being written by a larger variety of people. That's not "pushing the woke agenda", that's peoples writing just seeing the light of day. Some of it isn't amazing, but that's because it takes time to perfect that. Having games be on such tight schedules, rebooting multiple times, being stuck in development hell, means that the writing wouldn't be as good as it could be. But that's not "woke" that's an institutional management issue.
Secondly, design character consistency. This one seems pointed specifically at women looking like women as opposed to big titted sex objects. For the majority of the industry women were portrayed like sex objects, I mean all you had to do was look at E3 with Booth babes. All that is changing is women are being portrayed like real women. Nothing else is changing and how is real women portrayal a bad thing or "wokeness" or substantive criticism? How is that not simply adjusting to real people? You use concord as an example for character design and the real issue there wasn't "wokeness" as there was a variety of characters of different shapes and sizes. The problem was they weren't very imaginative and just were trying too hard to make an overwatch like experience without the actual charm of the characters. That's not character design being perverted by wokeness, that's just not very inspired art.
Thirdly, prioritization of secondary elements at the expense of the core experience. This specifically seems like a criticism you could easily level at a ton of games but not in a "woke" way and instead in a "why is this mechanic in the game when all it does is bring it down". The problem is using that to apply it to things like...well...Taash. Taash in Veilguard is exactly what people point to for this aspect. They're non-binary and people view that as harming the core experience of the world. They talk about how Taash should have been not non-binary but instead a term that fit into the world. They talk about how non-binary is a modern word that shouldn't exist in this fantasy realm. But they don't seem to know that Non-binary has been around for 30 years and it being in a game now is only because people are finally acknowledging those people exist in media. Non-binary is also a word that Taash gets from humans in the world not other Qunari. The word is integrated into the world just as much as any other word the game, but it's a "political" topic in the real world so people fixate on that and ignore how dwarf is a word we use in the modern world but has existed for a long time and is in the game. What's more, this integration isn't at the expense of the core experience because it literally is a core part of the dragon age experience, being on the front lines of representation. Having trans people in that game is normal and the only difference is people now fixate on it. But I'm talking about this one too much. My point is that this example being used against "woke" aspects of a game but not against other aspects is a part of the problem and the inconsistency.
Finally, you mention how certain games get preferential treatment from the press. I completely and utterly agree. But that's not a "woke" thing. That's a "we must focus on the AAA publishers, particularly western ones" thing. People fixate on those games because of the way the industry has, unfortunately, been structured to prioritize those publishers. This grows off of the Western-centralism that exists post WW2 and is something that needs to be carefully examined. But even you yourself bring up games like Stellar Blade and Black Myth Wukong, two games that the gaming press at large very much enjoyed and have higher ratings than crimson desert because they were, at least to their reviewers, more enjoyable experiences. So I don't think those two games feed into your idea of there being a pattern of bias when they both were loved by many critics. Now of course people still had issues with them and you can definitely make the argument you're making that Elden Ring has many of the same issues in it. I think when it comes to that one it's about refinement. I believe that Stellar Blade and Black Myth didn't score as high as Elden Ring not because of bias but because Fromsoft has been able to refine their games over the last almost 2 decades of soulsborne games. I think an inevitable sequel to both of those games are likely to be more loved because of that refinement. First games from developers or in a series are often subject to that lack of refinement that leads to them being perceived worse, just like Demon Souls was. It's not bias. Even crimson Desert, if a sequel ever happens, will be refined and people will likely enjoy it more because of that refinement. Again, I don't think it's necessarily bias as much as it is just a reality of these games. At least for the examples you mentioned.
In a long winded conclusion. This isn't gaslighting to dismiss criticism that centers around "wokeness". It's instead a way of understanding where criticism comes from and dismissing the basis for it as bigotry. Criticizing Taash being Non-binary is bigoted, just like people criticizing Dorian being gay and Krem being trans was (and yes that did happen at the time they just used SJW instead). Criticizing women looking like normal women is sexist. I think there is genuine criticism that can be applied to the games I've talked about, criticism that isn't woke. It's not about the criticism inherently but where it comes from, where it is rooted in. Also my quick dismissal of it to the point of seemingly not wanting to have a conversation about it is more because of the medium I'm in and how my article was getting long so I didn't feel the exact need to address that unless a comment like yours came up. In this comment I have to an extent.
I also hope I didn't bother you by it seeming so pointed, that wasn't my intention as I mainly just see a lot of articles and read them and they get very jumbled in my head alongside comments from other sites about this exact same topic so it's possible I fixated on some of your points but without realizing they were from you. I don't want to make beef and I genuinely think there's a lot that you said that I agree with, it's a nuanced issue and I like having these discussions even if in comment sections and articles it gets a little long like how we both just commented basically mini articles. I have other thoughts about what you said but that paragraph itself jumped out at me because of my own experience in this space as a queer person. I'm sorry I wasn't able to address all your points, especially the other ones I have disagreements with.
Excellent post, 100% agree!
I'm glad you touched on the scores vs the review. Reading reviews is so important. I can recall dozens of times where reading a mostly negative review actually influenced me to buy the game just because I knew their negative points wouldn't affect my enjoyment.
(I read through soooo many negative Star Wars Outlaws reviews, and it became my favorite game from that year)
Outlaws is such a good game too! It was such a damn shame it was reviewed with such negativity. There were issues sure but the core experience of being in a Star Wars game without being a Jedi was just so damn good. It was the first game I reviewed on here before I had really figured out how I wanted to structure them so I've been considering replaying it and giving it a re-review of sorts. I played it at launch before they changed the auto fail stealth too so I know there have been improvements. Now to just wait for a sale. Thanks for reading!
Your review of reviews and the discussion around subjective experiences, is right on the money!!
Being informed (not necessarily influenced) by someone who has similar tastes to you is very much a good way to be. Thank you for this and i hope it gets its deserved exposure and discussion 🙏🙂
Really thoughtful discussion Cat! It’s a good reminder that reviews are not only subjective, but we all bring different experiences to them too.
But the upside of that? They aren’t all the same, which is why we can all review the same game and have something totally unique to say. No review is definitive, and we shouldn’t treat them as such.
Thanks Harrison! You are so right that it's really cool to see that different people can play the same game and have completely different and unique thoughts on them in their reviews. It's a great way to have interesting discussions. I've had that with my partner and some friends about games we've played together or independently then talked about in a friendly and nuanced way. That's what discussing games should be like, not filled with vitriol but mutual respect for other peoples experience.
Hey Cat, thoughtful piece (even though it seems directly pointed at mine in places, lol), and I want to engage with it honestly, because a) I think we may well agree on more than it might seem at first glance, but also b) I want to push back on your central argument, because I think it papers over a real problem.
First, a few areas where I'm in full agreement: you're absolutely right that reviews *are* individual experiences, and that different reviewers will have different takes on the same game. You're also right that the "shills" accusation is straight-up lazy and usually wrong (which is why I never made it myself; I don't think it really holds up to scrutiny here). You're also right that the Cuphead reviewers being bad at games thing was always overblown, even at the time. And finally, you're right that the gaming community has a nasty habit of treating any review score they disagree with as a personal attack, and it's both exhausting and unproductive. I'm with you on all of that.
But I do have to push back beyond that, and I want to do it respectfully, from one gamer to another, because I can tell you care about this stuff (as do I): if reviews are purely subjective opinion pieces, then what exactly is the IGN badge for?
I'm serious. The defense of reviews as subjective (whether in your piece, or in the discourse more broadly) never quite answers that question, which is a problem because I think the implications are load-bearing. Clearly, reviews from legacy outlets carry more weight than random Steam reviews (or random Substack posts, for that matter). Everyone intuitively knows this, which is why a 6/10 from IGN can move a publicly traded company's stock price by 30%, whereas a 6/10 from me cannot. That weight comes from *somewhere.* Specifically, from an implicit promise of professional standards: whether it's consistent evaluation criteria or context that tempers personal taste with genre conventions and audience expectations, readers expect a degree of editorial rigor that they don't expect from a random forum post (mainly because the forum poster never signaled they would [or could] deliver on that promise). And if that promise isn't real, then legacy outlets are effectively laundering individual opinions through their institutional branding while simultaneously disclaiming responsibility for the institutional weight that branding carries.
The press wants it both ways. When it's convenient (e.g., when a game succeeds despite a low score), reviews are "just subjective opinions, how dare you hold us accountable." But when it's convenient in the other direction (e.g., when the outlet wants to be taken seriously as an authoritative voice in the industry), reviews are professional journalism that deserve institutional respect. But you can't actually have both; either reviews are subjective and IGN scores shouldn't have the power to move stock prices, or reviews carry institutional weight and should be held to the same standards they hold the games they review to. The contradiction itself, and not any given reviewer's individual position, is the problem.
On the specific Veilguard/Crimson Desert comparison, the argument isn't "this one reviewer gave Crimson Desert a 6 and another reviewer gave Veilguard a 9, therefore conspiracy." That's a strawman of what people are actually saying (well... the *serious* people, at least). The *actual* argument is that a consistent pattern of misalignment is showing up across multiple outlets and multiple games (Crimson Desert, Stellar Blade, Black Myth Wukong going one direction, and Veilguard, Concord, Forspoken going the other), and that pattern is both stable and persistent enough to suggest something is going on, and it's probably structural in nature.
This doesn't have to be conscious, coordinated, or intentional on the reviewers' part in order for it to be operative; it can just be (as I posited in my piece) a shared cultural framework among reviewers, that systematically advantages certain games and disadvantages others, which is invisible to the people operating inside it because it just feels like "good taste." Notice how that's not at all an actual conspiracy theory. It's just how institutional bias actually works in practice: quietly and by consensus, without anyone needing to actually decide anything (and I originally come from the media world, so I've seen stuff like this manifest in the way I'm describing).
And on Starfield specifically, I actually think that comparison *strengthens* my point rather than weakens it. Yes, a 7 from IGN is reasonable for a mixed game. But the criticism leveled at Crimson Desert (weak story, obtuse systems, overwhelming mechanics, "not for everyone") applies to Starfield in spades, and in Starfield's case the story is MUCH more central to the experience. You can just *ignore* Crimson Desert's story almost entirely and let the gameplay carry you. But you can't do that with Starfield, where the main quest is both the core structure and (as the critics themselves widely admitted) one of its weakest elements. Yet Crimson Desert gets pilloried for the same flaws Starfield was essentially grandfathered past. *That's* the double standard people are pointing to, and I don't think dismissing it as just different reviewers holding different opinions does the discourse any favors. Certainly, it doesn't actually engage with the pattern.
Which is closely related to the "not for everyone" criticism of Crimson Desert (which I'm not saying you're saying, because you didn't say it), which I found particularly frustrating. I don't think this phrase should be used as a mark against any game at all, because *no* game is for everyone. Not Crimson Desert, not Veilguard, not Starfield, not Elden Ring, not Baldur's Gate 3, not even Mario or Zelda. It's a meaningless criterion even when applied in isolation, and when applied inconsistently it becomes actively disingenuous... which, again, is the pattern people are frustrated about. Elden Ring is famously "not for everyone," and it got a perfect score from the same outlet that used "not for everyone" as a mark against Crimson Desert. That's what makes people suspicious, and the press has largely responded with "oh, you're just imagining the pattern" (instead of acknowledging the concern and *demonstrating* why the pattern isn't real). Telling people they're imagining something they can see with their own eyes absolutely obliterates trust and is a big reason for the massive trust deficit driving the crisis that games media's found itself in.
Same, incidentally, for the reflexive dismissal of "woke" criticism as pure bigotry. Sure, some of it absolutely is. But a lot of it is actually legitimate criticism of specific and repeatable patterns in writing quality, character design consistency, prioritization of secondary elements at the expense of core experience, and in how certain games get preferential treatment from the press and the industry. Lumping *all* of it into "bigotry" is a deflection, a way of avoiding substantive criticism by dismissing the people making it instead of engaging with the argument. Which, in addition to being logically fallacious, is also a huge strategic risk. Just ask the Concord team how well "ignore the critics, they're just bigots" worked out for them as a market strategy. The media class' persistent dismissal of legitimate player observations as bad-faith bigotry is another flavor of the (basically) gaslighting that's resulted in so many players no longer trusting the games media.
To be clear, none of this is to say you're *wrong* to defend subjective reviewing. You're absolutely right that individual opinions matter, and that people should find reviewers whose taste aligns with theirs. But the way I see it, that's an argument *against* legacy gaming press being treated as authoritative as it has been - which you yourself basically stated in your piece, but the onus is not just on players. This is a two-way street.
At the end of the day: if the press wants to be treated as merely "one opinion among many," then they need to stop acting like they're anything more than that when it suits them. They can't wield the authority they claim while deflecting accountability at the same time.
Anyway, I do appreciate you writing this. It's good to actually advance the conversation forward, even (or especially!) where we disagree.
Wow that is a long comment and unfortunately so is this reply. I actually agree with a lot of what you say. I think the majority of the gaming press as a whole has just become useless and, really, what matters now is individual people not media companies. I also just don't think ratings should have the weight they have. I think that's an insane impact of the hyper capitalist world that currently exists. Ratings shouldn't hold that weight because of the subjectivity. I also think it's nuts for people to represent their experience as the end all be all. Not specifically in reviews, I get that's how writing works for a lot of people, but what happens after they're out and how they portray their thoughts in the aftermath.
Specifically though, I want to address the paragraph that bothers me the most. Dismissing woke isn't a way of dismissing criticism that's substantive. It's dismissing people that are not coming from a place of validity. Your examples of "repeatable patterns in writing quality, character design consistency, prioritization of secondary elements at the expense of core experience, and in how certain games get preferential treatment from the press and the industry." are all kinda debatable but I want to address each.
Firstly, repeatable patterns in writing quality is not a problem of supposed "wokeness" but simply people viewing writing differently with hindsight. People think older games were better, that writing back then was just flat out better. The reality is much much different. Games writing hasn't changed, it's just as hit and miss. Even some representation is just bad when it's written by people who just. Don't. Get it. But this is also how the industry has always been. We can talk about Veilguard or Starfield or Avowed, or even Crimson Desert with this one, they all have moments of great writing and moments of "videogame writing". By that I mean they all have moments where, because of the medium they exist in, they're not able to be as well written as they could be. Especially when you also go into how writing teams are often treated like garbage and are working overtime and not able to turn out their best work because of burnout. Writing has legitimate criticism to be made, I have enjoyed talking with people about that in the past, but to say that writing is bad because of "woke" is not substantive criticism but the actual strawman that you mention. I also think saying it's "repeatable patterns" seems to be a sly way of saying that games are pushing "woke" when in reality all that is happening is more people are being let into writers rooms and they're being written by a larger variety of people. That's not "pushing the woke agenda", that's peoples writing just seeing the light of day. Some of it isn't amazing, but that's because it takes time to perfect that. Having games be on such tight schedules, rebooting multiple times, being stuck in development hell, means that the writing wouldn't be as good as it could be. But that's not "woke" that's an institutional management issue.
Secondly, design character consistency. This one seems pointed specifically at women looking like women as opposed to big titted sex objects. For the majority of the industry women were portrayed like sex objects, I mean all you had to do was look at E3 with Booth babes. All that is changing is women are being portrayed like real women. Nothing else is changing and how is real women portrayal a bad thing or "wokeness" or substantive criticism? How is that not simply adjusting to real people? You use concord as an example for character design and the real issue there wasn't "wokeness" as there was a variety of characters of different shapes and sizes. The problem was they weren't very imaginative and just were trying too hard to make an overwatch like experience without the actual charm of the characters. That's not character design being perverted by wokeness, that's just not very inspired art.
Thirdly, prioritization of secondary elements at the expense of the core experience. This specifically seems like a criticism you could easily level at a ton of games but not in a "woke" way and instead in a "why is this mechanic in the game when all it does is bring it down". The problem is using that to apply it to things like...well...Taash. Taash in Veilguard is exactly what people point to for this aspect. They're non-binary and people view that as harming the core experience of the world. They talk about how Taash should have been not non-binary but instead a term that fit into the world. They talk about how non-binary is a modern word that shouldn't exist in this fantasy realm. But they don't seem to know that Non-binary has been around for 30 years and it being in a game now is only because people are finally acknowledging those people exist in media. Non-binary is also a word that Taash gets from humans in the world not other Qunari. The word is integrated into the world just as much as any other word the game, but it's a "political" topic in the real world so people fixate on that and ignore how dwarf is a word we use in the modern world but has existed for a long time and is in the game. What's more, this integration isn't at the expense of the core experience because it literally is a core part of the dragon age experience, being on the front lines of representation. Having trans people in that game is normal and the only difference is people now fixate on it. But I'm talking about this one too much. My point is that this example being used against "woke" aspects of a game but not against other aspects is a part of the problem and the inconsistency.
Finally, you mention how certain games get preferential treatment from the press. I completely and utterly agree. But that's not a "woke" thing. That's a "we must focus on the AAA publishers, particularly western ones" thing. People fixate on those games because of the way the industry has, unfortunately, been structured to prioritize those publishers. This grows off of the Western-centralism that exists post WW2 and is something that needs to be carefully examined. But even you yourself bring up games like Stellar Blade and Black Myth Wukong, two games that the gaming press at large very much enjoyed and have higher ratings than crimson desert because they were, at least to their reviewers, more enjoyable experiences. So I don't think those two games feed into your idea of there being a pattern of bias when they both were loved by many critics. Now of course people still had issues with them and you can definitely make the argument you're making that Elden Ring has many of the same issues in it. I think when it comes to that one it's about refinement. I believe that Stellar Blade and Black Myth didn't score as high as Elden Ring not because of bias but because Fromsoft has been able to refine their games over the last almost 2 decades of soulsborne games. I think an inevitable sequel to both of those games are likely to be more loved because of that refinement. First games from developers or in a series are often subject to that lack of refinement that leads to them being perceived worse, just like Demon Souls was. It's not bias. Even crimson Desert, if a sequel ever happens, will be refined and people will likely enjoy it more because of that refinement. Again, I don't think it's necessarily bias as much as it is just a reality of these games. At least for the examples you mentioned.
In a long winded conclusion. This isn't gaslighting to dismiss criticism that centers around "wokeness". It's instead a way of understanding where criticism comes from and dismissing the basis for it as bigotry. Criticizing Taash being Non-binary is bigoted, just like people criticizing Dorian being gay and Krem being trans was (and yes that did happen at the time they just used SJW instead). Criticizing women looking like normal women is sexist. I think there is genuine criticism that can be applied to the games I've talked about, criticism that isn't woke. It's not about the criticism inherently but where it comes from, where it is rooted in. Also my quick dismissal of it to the point of seemingly not wanting to have a conversation about it is more because of the medium I'm in and how my article was getting long so I didn't feel the exact need to address that unless a comment like yours came up. In this comment I have to an extent.
I also hope I didn't bother you by it seeming so pointed, that wasn't my intention as I mainly just see a lot of articles and read them and they get very jumbled in my head alongside comments from other sites about this exact same topic so it's possible I fixated on some of your points but without realizing they were from you. I don't want to make beef and I genuinely think there's a lot that you said that I agree with, it's a nuanced issue and I like having these discussions even if in comment sections and articles it gets a little long like how we both just commented basically mini articles. I have other thoughts about what you said but that paragraph itself jumped out at me because of my own experience in this space as a queer person. I'm sorry I wasn't able to address all your points, especially the other ones I have disagreements with.