It’s been a crazy couple of weeks since the details surrounding the work of Sweet Baby Inc. took the internet by storm. Now, we are seeing coordinated pushback from both “games journalists” and other DEI advocacy groups, many of whom have espoused racist hiring practices and anti-gamer rhetoric. The most recent of these extremely “inclusive” companies to berate gamers as “racist” and “sexist trolls” is known as Black Girl Gamers, a consultation and advocacy company that openly promotes hate against gamers on social media, much like Sweet Baby Inc. has done.
Black Girl Gamers, which was founded in the UK in 2015, began as a closed Facebook group that excluded anyone who wasn’t female or black. The group was started by Jay-Ann Lopez, a black woman who claims to have always loved gaming, but couldn’t find any other black women to play with. It is worth pointing out that gaming has always been open to any gamer, regardless of gender or ethnicity.
After the Facebook group grew in size, the next step for Jay-Ann was to take the race-hustle to the next level, which resulted in the formation of Black Girl Gamers as a company in 2022, with Jay-Ann Lopez as the CEO. While Sweet Baby Inc. was originally funded by the “non-profit” Baby Ghosts, Black Girl Gamers received their funding by invoking the name of George Floyd. Their rise to relevance was largely built on the back of the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as through acquiring a partnership with the failing live-streaming platform, Twitch.
The company would quickly shift from being a closed community that promoted racial exclusion, into a full-fledged DEI advocacy group that sought to inject wokeness into any game they could consult on. The best example of a game Black Girl Gamers affected the narrative on was the abysmal flop Forspoken, a game that was so universally hated, not even the access media could run cover for it.
In an interview with Her Agenda, the Black Girl Gamers CEO would give some of the usual talking points regarding what she is trying to accomplish in the gaming industry. As you probably already assumed, it sounds an awful lot like Sweet Baby Inc.
“We call out the industry for some of the issues we’re noticing when hiring Black women, Black representation in games, specifically Black women in games, and discrimination in the industry in general,” she said. “Over time, we’ve grown and attracted partners, clients, and sponsors to create events to broker talent. So it can be for creating content to curate educational programs to heighten Black women’s equity in the industry and provide a kind of a pumping pipeline for Black women.“
“So that’s what Black Girl Gamers is. We’re popular on different social media platforms. We have a community of around 10,000 people on Facebook, which is great, and we’re LGBTQIA+. We’re really trying to hone and create an intersectional Black woman and Black non-binary space that keeps gamers essentially safe.”
While Jay-Ann never actually explains what she’s trying to keep black women safe from, this recent video clip from Narrative Designer Dani Lalonders might offer some insight into Black Girl Gamer’s mindset about anyone who isn’t a minority in game development.
Black Girl Gamers has managed to escape much of the recent criticism that Sweet Baby Inc. and other DEI companies have been receiving. However, their actions on Twitter/X have painted a massive target on their backs. After claiming that they have been suffering from “harassment,” none of which they have provided receipts for, the Black Girl Gamers account would go on to tell gamers that they are in fact not the target audience of the gaming industry.
The Black Girl Gamers account tweeted out “The amount of harassment we’ve had recently due this ‘Gamergate 2’ is not surprising. Gamers that thought the industry revolved around them and their comforts are now realizing it doesn’t.”
“We’ve had emails, comments, and threats but you know what WE’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE.“
The news cycle surrounding Sweet Baby Inc. might be slowing down, but I believe the backlash from gamers is far from over, especially if these DEI firms continue to let their social media managers antagonize the actual customer base of the gaming industry.
Will Black Girl Gamers garner the same attention and backlash as Sweet Baby Inc? Let us know what you think down below!
Back in my Day, everyone played Games regardless of Race or Sexual orientation. I miss those days as time goes by.
When are people going to learn that there’s no such thing as ‘black girl gamers’?
There are gamers that are sometimes male, sometimes female, and sometimes of different races.
But anyone that identifies as a ‘such and such ethnic’ gamer is NOT a gamer, they are a celebrity leeching off of gaming and their ethnicity. They are FAKES, not gamers, ALWAYS.