Splash Damage
Society & Culture
About
Interested in video games, anime, and other geeky things and the culture of outrage surrounding them? In this podcast, husband-and-wife duo Scrivonaut and Norayla—and sometimes special guests—dive deep on controversies consuming the nerd sphere.
Episodes
- Episode 143: Lord of the Fallen 2 Blasted for Including Attractive Female Characters
The developers of Lords of the Fallen 2 claimed it would include attractive female characters, and they delivered: Concept art from the game shows its women will wear somewhat revealing fantasy outfits. The drew the ire of industry staples…
- Episode 142: Game Dev Claims Goblins in Crimson Desert Are Antisemitic
God of War creator David Jaffe tweeted he thought the greedy, big-nosed goblins of Crimson Desert are antisemitic, hilariously showing what he thinks of real-world Jews. We discuss the irony of being so anti-racist that you end up sounding…
- Episode 141: The Hypocrisy Surrounding Resident Evil’s Sexy Leon
Female gamers are frothing at the mouth over Resident Evil: Requiem’s attractive main character, Leon Kennedy. We discuss the hypocrisy of celebrating a male character’s attractiveness after years of insulting gamers for enjoying attractiv…
- Episode 140: Relooted is Another Failure Games Journalists are Propping Up
Relooted, an African-developed game about black people heisting museums for artifacts to return them to the cultures from which they came, released to a resounding 57 players on Steam. Despite being an utter failure for “modern audiences,”…
- Episode 139: Ubisoft is in Trouble
Despite assurances that Assassin’s Creed Shadows was nothing but a success, Ubisoft has canceled six projects, delayed others, and closed two studios, plummeting their stock. We discuss the company’s recent and future woes along with the d…
- Episode 138: Lord of the Fallen 2 Catching Heat for Making Attractive Characters
Lords of the Fallen 2 developer and publisher Hexworks and CI Games are getting flak in the video game industry for a single tweet that confirmed the game will feature attractive characters and outfits. We discuss how far video games have…
- Episode 137: Revisiting Recent Releases Not Doing So Hot
By all accounts, this should have been a big year for gaming, but recent releases such as Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Ghost of Yotei, and Outer Worlds 2 are not selling as well as developers (and shareholders) perhaps hoped. We discuss why t…
- Episode 136: Nature is Healing—The Male Gaze is Back, According to CNN
CNN wrote a lengthy piece illustrating how the male gaze is returning, bringing with it the things human beings actually find attractive in media. We talk about this welcomed return to sanity along with Microsoft continuing to kill the Xbo…
- Episode 135: Game Devs Mock Charlie Kirk’s Assassination
Several game developers, including a prominent one behind Ghost of Yotei, mocked Charlie Kirk’s assassination. We discuss the irony of “anti”-fascists celebrating a political opponent being killed for his free speech along with Sweet Baby…
- Episode 134: Faith in Elder Scrolls VI Drops Further as Bethesda Hires Dragon Age: The Veilguard Writer
In an amazing case of everyone involved with the train wreck that was Dragon Age: The Veilguard continuing to fail upwards, Bethesda has hired one of the lead writers of the game, presumably to work on Elder Scrolls VI. We discuss our erod…
- Episode 133: Activist Groups, Payment Processors, and the UK Government: The Entities Making a Recent Push for Video Game Censorship
It seems everyone from governments to giant companies to random grassroots groups are suddenly gunning for video game censorship. We discuss recent pushes made to quell what games people are able to buy along with Xbox and PlayStation shif…
- Episode 132: Wonderfilled Games Proudly Makes a Game that Imagines a Future with No White People
Wonderfilled Games created GiantLands, a game that proudly imagines a future with no white people. We discuss the open and blatant racism of the game along with insider rumors that diversity is being removed from games in response to Trump…
- Episode 131: Stellar Blade’s Success on PC Proves Game Journos as Out of Touch
Popular PlayStation 5 exclusive Stellar Blade just launched on PC, and it’s the best-performing PS exclusive ever released on PC, despite games journalists constantly (and hypocritically) trying to smear it. We discuss its success and jour…
- Episode 130: Assassin’s Creed Shadows Sales are Dismal
Since Ubisoft won’t release official sales data for Assassin’s Creed Shadows, internet sleuths have put together their best guess, and it’s not good. We discuss the lackluster sales along with fan reactions to Ciri being the protagonist an…
- Episode 129: The Wild Success of Indie Darling Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Should Mortify the Video Game Industry
A small studio of about thirty ex-Ubisoft developers have released an ambitious, critically and commercially acclaimed RPG called Clair Obscur: Expedition. Despite being made by such a small team, it’s blowing the woke, bloated AAA industr…
- Episode 128: Oblivion Remastered Has Been “Modern Audienced”
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered shadow-dropped this week, and while it’s mostly faithful to the original 2006 game, it has been adjusted in some ways for “modern audiences.” We discuss these changes along with the announcement of…
- Episode 127: Assassin’s Creed Shadows Isn’t as Successful as Ubisoft Wants You to Believe
Assassin’s Creed Shadows is out, and while Ubisoft keeps bragging about how many millions of people have played it, the truth is sales are down in Japan, and the game got fewer concurrent players than Dragon Age: The Veilguard. We discuss…
- Episode 126: Borderlands 4 is already proving to be a disaster
Randy Pitchford, CEO of the Borderlands franchise, couldn’t help but shoot himself in the foot by going on a tirade after a loyal fan criticized the direction of the upcoming Borderlands 4. We discuss his overreaction along with news that…
- Episode 125: Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is What Happens When Devs Take the Blue Pill
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is out, and it includes several woke and out-of-place elements that never would have been included in the decidedly anti-woke original game from 2018. We discuss the 180-degree turn for the series along with Bi…
- Episode 124: Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s Sales Bombed, and Assassin’s Creed Shadows is Next
The sales figures for Dragon Age: The Veilguard are out, and they show the game fell short of sales expectations by fifty percent. We discuss what this means for Bioware along with drama surrounding the upcoming Kingdom Come: Deliverance I…
- Episode 123: Watch Out: Witcher 4 Might Be Another Woke Disaster
The developers of the upcoming Witcher 4 game admitted at least part of the story will focus on the struggles of being a woman in a medieval world. This isn’t necessarily a red flag, but when you consider other suspicious things about the…
- Episode 122: The Game Awards Shows the Sad State of Western Games
Not a single American-made game was nominated for The Game Awards’ game of the year this year, proving how bleak the industry has gotten stateside. We discuss the annual awards show, including the controversial Intergalactic: The Heretic P…
- Episode 121: Avowed’s Art Director Accused of Discriminating Against White Men
The art director of the upcoming RPG Avowed is in some hot water after basically admitting to discriminatory hiring practices against white men at Obsidian, the studio he works for. We discuss the hypocritical and blatant racism of such st…
- Episode 120: IGN Backpedals on Dragon Age: The Veilguard Praise
Merely two weeks after awarding Dragon Age: The Veilguard a 9 out of 10, IGN published a long critique of the game’s writing, worldbuilding, and roleplaying, which account for about 99% of what makes RPGs RPGs. We also discuss the game’s l…
- Episode 119: Surprising No One, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is Woke Drek
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is finally out in the wild, and it’s already stirring up cringe from its terrible writing and voice acting, stale character interactions, and incredibly preachy woke nonsense. We discuss its success (or lack there…
- Episode 118: Will the Role of Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ Yasuke be Diminished?
Assassin’s Creed Shadows has been delayed to February, no doubt due to criticism against playable character Yasuke, a black samurai in a feudal Japan setting, and the announcement of Ghost of Yotei, a sequel to a game that actually did a h…
- Episode 117: Dragon Age: The Veilguard is Gonna Tank
Preorders for Dragon Age: The Veilguard are apparently poor. It might have something to do with the fact the game is now basically a cartoon, the character creator looks like trash, and the devs don’t even know characters from the series.…
- Episode 116: Concord and Other Recent Games Have Been Disasters—Will Devs Learn?
Concord will go down in video game history as one of the most colossal failures of all time. The game, filled with ugly character designs and pronouns for each one, lasted barely a week before the developers announced they would take it of…
- Episode 115: Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster is Censored, Because Of Course
The Dead Rising remake is making some notable changes, including changing the race of one of the baddies from Asian to white guy and removing the feature that would reward players for taking risque photos. We discuss the censorship along w…
- Episode 114: Capcom Pushes for DEI with Goal of Getting More Women in Leadership
Capcom announced they want to increase female representation in management roles to 15%. Surprisingly, even the far-left sides of the internet disagree with the idea of hiring based on sex. We discuss the terrible effort that is DEI along…
- Episode 113: Kotaku Australia is Dead
The Kotaku brand is one step closer to death as Kotaku Australia shut down last week. We celebrate this fact and also discuss a D&D creator’s reaction to inflammatory remarks about the game’s origin, Japanese players petitioning for the ca…
- Episode 112: Kotaku Writer Compares the Difficulty of Her Life to Shadow of the Erdtree
Elden Ring’s expansion, Shadow of the Erdtree, arrived to stellar reviews, but a Kotaku writer couldn’t help but use her article to compare her life of mean tweets to the brutality of the fantasy RPG. We discuss this ludicrous take (and ou…
- Episode 111: Assassin’s Creed Shadows Faces Backlash for Black Samurai
Ubisoft is finally making an Assassin’s Creed game set in feudal Japan, so who is the protagonist? A black samurai. We discuss the controversy around this decision along with Shift Up releasing uncensored versions of the Stellar Blade outf…
- Episode 110: Farm Folks Dev Caves to the Perpetually Offended
The developers of Farm Folks took to X to ask for fan input on breast physics in their game. The woke, of course, got offended, and the CEO apologized, starting a series of events that will likely end in the game’s failure. We discuss why…
- Episode 109: Stellar Blade Devs Promise Game Won’t Be Censored, Then Censor It
A few days before release, developer Shift Up promised their highly anticipated Stellar Blade wouldn’t be censored. Well, even before official release, fans discovered a fast one was being pulled: Several costumes and gore have indeed been…
- Episode 108: The New Tomb Raider Won’t be a Tomb Raider
The upcoming Tomb Raider: Shadows of Truth won’t be a Tomb Raider game at all, considering the developers are flipping the entire premise of the franchise on its head in the name of wokeism. We discuss this IP-killing move along with Micro…
- Episode 107: Dev Admits Blatant Racism as Sweet Baby Inc. Drama Continues
An ex-Sweet Baby Inc. game developer working on the upcoming Black Panther game openly admitted to not hiring white people while working on an indie game because they make her feel “unsafe.” We discuss this blatant (and illegal) discrimina…
- Episode 106: Gamergate 2. 0? Sweet Baby Inc. is Ruining Video Games, and Gamers are Waking Up
Smaller games like Palworld, Baldur’s Gate 3, and Helldivers 2 are becoming increasingly popular while major studios are seeing major layoffs. Could one of the reasons be that these games aren’t tainted with the woke mind virus that seems…
- Episode 105: Tomb Raider Remasters Want You to Feel Bad for Playing Them
Crystal Dynamics remastered the original Tomb Raider trilogy and included a long trigger warning about how racist the games are. We discuss this virtue signaling along with the creator of Stellar Blade’s based opinion about attractive char…
- Episode 104: Ubisoft Wants You to Own Nothing and Be Happy
A Ubisoft executive recently said in an interview they want more players to get comfortable with the idea of not owning video games, instead turning to subscription-based models that have proven time and again to be detrimental to the fans…
- Episode 103: Final Fantasy Panelist Canceled for Simply Liking Tweets
A Final Fantasy vocalist was going to appear at a convention, but when permanently online Twitter users discovered she had merely liked certain “problematic” tweets, her appearance was canceled. We discuss the ludicrousness of this decisio…
- Episode 102: Spider-Man 2 is Super Woke—Except in the Middle East
The developers of the highly anticipated Spider-Man 2 game, Insomniac, have proven themselves to be the ultimate hypocrites by inserting an absurd amount of woke messaging into the game but censoring it all in the Middle Eastern version of…
- Episode 101: Wokies Delete Mods that Remove Starfield’s Pronouns, Baldur’s Gate 3’s Lore-Inaccurate Races
Developers are bad at their jobs, so naturally, fans are going to mod games to their liking. However, certain mods, such as one to remove pronouns in Starfield’s character creator, are being banned from hosting platforms. We discuss wokies…
- Episode 100: Nerd Stuff is Awesome
We spend a lot of time on this show pointing out the ridiculous cultural trends of video games and other nerdy hobbies, but that’s only because we love it all so much. To celebrate our 100th episode, we discuss some of our favorite games,…
- Episode 99: Ding Dong! The Witches Are Dead!
The Witcher TV show is likely going to be canceled, and Feminist Frequency is finally ending. We discuss both and how their deaths are well deserved along with the controversy surrounding Skullgirls and the weird wokeness prominent in play…
- Episode 98: Assassin’s Creed Take on Feudal Japan Will Feature a Female Samurai and Black Shinobi
In a confusing but unsurprising move, Ubisoft’s upcoming Assassin’s Creed game based in feudal Japan is rumored to feature a female samurai and a black shinobi as the two playable characters. We discuss the odd choice to shoehorn in gender…
- Episode 97: Final Fantasy XVI is Too White for Game Journalists
Some reviewers are panning the recently released Final Fantasy XVI for a pretty dumb reason: Apparently, despite it being an entirely fictional fantasy world based on Medieval aesthetics, the cast is too white. We discuss what a stupid cri…
- Episode 96: Overwatch 2 Celebrates Everyone … Except Straight People
Blizzard is virtue signaling hard this month, creating a month’s worth of LGBT pride content for Overwatch 2. The game now includes personalization items reflecting every imaginable sexual orientation, and a map that has been “pride-ified”…
- Episode 95: Where All the Straight Female Characters At?
With the latest predictable twist in Horizon Forbidden West’s Burning Shores DLC, the question must be asked: Why do so many modern female protagonists have to be, well, you know? It’s almost like developers think normal women are incapabl…
- Episode 94: Kotaku Does a Racism Over Being Blacklisted
The arbiters of social justice in the video game sphere, Kotaku, made a little oopsie this week when one of the site’s writers showed his true colors by making a racist tweet in reaction to being upset that Nintendo has (rightfully) blackl…