The director and writer of Days Gone has blamed the game’s middling critical reception on technical issues and “woke reviewers” who he claims “couldn’t be bothered” to play the game.
John Garvintweeted this theory in response to a fan asking why he thought the post-apocalypticPS4biker game didn’t get more praise when it was first released in 2019.
“Three reasons,” Garvin replied. “1) It had tech issues like bugs, streaming and frame rate.
“2) It had reviewers who couldn’t be bothered to actually play the game. 3) And three, it had woke reviewers who couldn’t handle a gruff white biker looking at his date’s ass.”
Update8th Dec 2022 / 9:28 pm
Sony’sBend Studio has distanced itself from Garvin’s commentsand thanked fans for supportingDays Gone
‘Woke’ is a term that originally referred to those aware of social injustices such as racism, sexism and all other forms of discrimination. In recent times, however, it’s been adopted as a catch-all term by right-leaning people to refer to those who favour progressive political ideas.
Days Gone currently has a score of 71 on the review aggregatorMetacritic. Numerous similar PS4 console exclusives scored somewhat higher, such asGhost of Tsushimaearning 83, andSony Santa Monica‘sGod of Warreboot receiving 94.
Garvin’s latest claim has sparked backlash from both members of the games media and fans of the series, who responded to his tweet negatively.
One response read: “C’mon John: ‘woke’? You’re better than that,” to which Garvin replied: “Nope, I’m really not… if a reviewer objects to a character because of identity politics, I call that woke … how am I wrong?”
Others pointed out thatRed Dead Redemption 2, which contains numerous instances of racism, sexism and other scenarios that those accused of being ‘woke’ would presumably object to, was released just six months earlier and was critically acclaimed with a Metacritic score of 97.
https://twitter.com/John_Garvin/status/1600353225840144385
The claims are the latest theory from Garvin on why the game didn’t perform as well as some of its fellow Sony titles during the same era.
Last year, Garvin spoke to game designer David Jaffe onJaffe’s YouTube show, where he claimed the reason it sold poorly was becausenot enough people bought it at full price.
When asked if he’d heard anything about any “meaningful uptick of engagement” with Days Gone since the game was added to thePlayStationPlus Collection onPS5, Garvin replied: “I do have an opinion on something that your audience may find of interest, and it might piss some of them off.
“If you love a game, buy it at fucking full price. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen gamers say ‘yeah, I got that on sale, I got it through PS Plus’, whatever.”
“But how do you know you love a game until you’ve played it?” Jaffe responded.
Further reading
Garvin replied: “I’m just saying, you don’t, but don’t complain if a game doesn’t get a sequel if it wasn’t supported at launch.
“It’s like, God of War got whatever number millions of sales at launch and, you know, Days Gone didn’t. [I’m] just speaking for me personally as a developer, I don’t work for Sony, and I don’t know what the numbers are.”
Garvin is now leading Ashfall,which is described as “the first true Web 3.0 AAA title forPC, console, and theHederanetwork”, which uses a “native, energy-efficient cryptocurrency” called HBAR.
