Sweet Baby Inc. CEO Makes It Clear She Wants To Erase White Male Lead Characters While Employee Shows Disdain For White People

Sweet Baby Inc. CEO Kim Belair made it abundantly clear the company wants to erase white male lead characters while the company’s employee Maya Kramer expressed her disdain for white people.

Back in 2020, Belair spoke with Complications Ensue where she was asked to explain the importance of what she’s trying to do.

She answered, “We’re hitting, what, 40 years of video games. And I think people are starting to ask, why are we making very similar products? Why are a lot of our stories not resonating with the younger audiences? Why is our audience not growing? I like to say that representation is innovation. I think when people are asking for diverse stories, we’re not asking for the same story with, you know, diverse characters.”

“We have to look at story and narrative as one of the things that we can innovate on,” she continued. “Like when you bring someone in from a different culture, from a different background, from a different gender, they’re going to create something that we haven’t seen before.”

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Next, she said, “The way that we look at demographics is that we go, OK, the majority of our player base is, let’s say, a white male. So we’re going to make stuff for white males. But if you make something from the perspective of an Asian trans woman, and it’s really strong, then it will work for people.”

Belair explained, “People crave new stories. If you want to innovate, even to stay current, it’s not about graphics, it’s not about hardware. It’s about opening up new perspectives for people. So I explain it as, it’s important to game development to diversify. It’s not just part of advocacy or activism. It is going to make your games better.”

Belair would also state, “The market has always been frustrating to me because we make assumptions based on what we already have instead of what we could have. A couple of months ago we were talking a lot about player choice in Assassin’s Creed. People were saying, well, no matter how good this female character is, a majority of players played as a male character. So therefore people prefer male characters.”

“And what I had to explain was, no, actually, from a marketing and a psychology perspective, most people are going to choose the gender that they most align with. It doesn’t mean that’s what they want,” she said. “If you are male identified, it’s not that you don’t want to play as a woman. You’re just going, oh, that one’s for me. I’m a guy, I don’t go to the ladies’ room.”

She then pointed to Horizon Zero Dawn as an example, “We look at the success of something like Horizon Zero Dawn, which is a game led by a female character. If they had made it a choice, most players would have played as a male. But they didn’t, and it was a huge success.”

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Maybe the most interesting part of Belair’s comments came when she admitted that she believes gamers are a captured audience and will accept the brands no matter what kind of changes are made to them.

She said, “I think that the majority of the men, if you had Assassin’s Creed starring a woman, they would play it anyway. Aside from a couple of trolls on Twitter, the odds are they’re gonna go, oh, this is the brand that I like, I’m going to just play.”

Aside from Belair’s comments, one of the company’s employees or at least one of their consultants, Maya Kramer made it clear her disdain for white, male characters in video games.

In 2016, Kramer wrote, “I’m a sucker for warrior ware so i bought Peter Panic Also: Idk why games featuring human characters are still so white and male.”

In 2014, Kramer wrote, “pay me to shoot down your white male lead game ideas”

She also appeared to take issue that game developers were white and male. She wrote in January 2014, “Looking around the mixer last night put into perspective just how white and male our dev scene really is. it’s really white and male.”

Kramer posted the same day, “had a nightmare that i was a white male gamer.”

This disdain for white people was not just made apparent a decade ago, but is still happening. Back in February, Kramer wrote, “i usually get grossed out when straight white rich people kiss but even i think those two are pretty cute.”

In 2012, Kramer also wrote, “abort all the Jews.”

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Much of this information was dug up after Sweet Baby Inc.’s Chris Kindred called on gamer Kabrutus to get banned for creating a Steam Curator list highlighting games that Sweet Baby Inc. has worked on to let players know he does not recommend them.

Kindred reacted to this list writing on X, “The Steam curator harassment group Sweet Baby Inc detected is lead by this person, kabrutusrambo. Here’s them trying to be slick so they don’t get reported. Even with the discriminatory language filed off, the group itself still fails the code of conduct.”

She then stated, ““anyway report the f*** out of this group.”

She added, “And report the creator since he loves his account so much.”

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At the time of Kindred’s call to ban Kabrutus and targeted the Steam Curator list, the list only had around 20,000 followers. At the time of writing, the list now has over 121,000 followers.

The list includes 15 games: Neo Cab, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Afterlove EP, Gotham Knights, South of Midnight, Kingdom Eighties, Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew, Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance, Hyper Limit Breaker, Breeze in the Clouds, Goodbye Volcano High, Usual June, Battle Shapers, Sable, and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.

The list originally included 18 games and had Saints Row, Forspoken, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, and Mortal Kombat 1 on it. Kabrutus explained why some games were removed, “A lot of people have been asking why I deleted some reviews related to games that where listed on the IMDB website. That list proved to be a not reliable source since anyone can edit it at any time by adding any game whenever they want, so that’s why I don’t consider IMDB website a valid source anymore.”

He added, “I want to maintain our credibility, people are watching us and paying attention to the curator so I need to be extra careful on what games I review because I don’t want to be unfair with anyone.”

Sweet Baby Inc.’s website features 12 games they’ve worked on. It includes Alan Wake II, God of War: Ragnarok, The Crew Motorfest, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, and Lost Your Marbles alongside games featured on the list including Battle Shapers, Breeze in the Clouds, Goodbye Volcano High, Usual June, Sable, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, and South of Midnight.

Games like Alan Wake II and God of War: Ragnarok are not currently listed because they are not available on Steam. Kabrutus explained on Steam, “I’m aware of those games, but since they haven’t been added to the Steam store yet I can’t add them to the curator rn.”

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The company also revealed the various studios they worked with.

It includes Xbox Game Studios, Electronic Arts (EA), Valve, Tru Luv, Santa Monica Studio, 2K, Ubisoft, Square Enix, Warner Bros. Studios, Finji, Polytron, Rocksteady, KO_OP, Shedworks, Compulsion Games, Metric Empire, Chance Agency, Avalanche Studios Group, Deck Nine, Brass Lion Entertainment, Wizards of the Coast, Nerial, People Can Fly, Eko Software, Juvee Productions, Glitch Games, Remedy, Panic, Raw Fury, and Fellow Traveler.

What do you make of these comments from the Sweet Baby Inc. CEO and one of its employees?

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