What to do if a woman consulted a video game you played

We've all been there. It happened to be the best of us. You buy a video game you've been looking forward to and spend dozens of hours enjoying it, only to discover the worst thing that could ever happen: a woman consulted it.

It's scarier than waking up to burglars in your house because at least with burglars you don't feel so betrayed! Who knows what poison is in those games? Who knows what ideas have taken place in your pure mind? But don't worry. We'll get through this together. Here's what to do if a woman consulted a video game you played, even if it's a woman who only became almost famous because you were upset for 15 years about a mid-YouTube series.

This is only advice for people who have already played and enjoyed a game that a woman has consulted on. If you haven't bought whatever game it is, great. You don't have to, even if it eventually makes the Game of the Year lists. They cannot be trusted. Unless it's on one of this year's playlists, then they can trust them and it was pretty obvious to everyone that this was going to happen.

If a game consulted by a woman sells well, it's because of tricks or some brave soul rescued it from the inside. If a game consulted by a woman sells poorly, it's because a woman consulted on it. These are unbreakable laws of nature. But this conversation is for people who accidentally enjoyed something a woman consulted about.

Maybe you've had it, and it's worse

First of all, stay calm. You've just been through a traumatic experience like a high-speed car crash or not getting a Steam Controller despite opening the page a minute after orders went live. It makes sense that you're shaken, and you shouldn't immediately pressure yourself to respond to the horror of having enjoyed something a wife got her disgusting mitts on, especially if you've long blown past the payback period.

Just think about it: what if you really liked one of her submissions? Yes, you don't know what she contributed or even if she contributed anything at all, and you enjoyed the game beforehand, but sometimes we have to burn down the whole house to stop a spider.

Next, it is important to find out the type of woman so that you know how to get angry. Does she have a foreign name? Does the picture of her you chased have dyed hair? And the big one: did she make a series of boring videos a decade and a half ago that would have been completely and instantly forgotten if the people who were crazy about it didn't pick it up every three months like they just discovered it for the first time?

All of these are all worth considering and all normal, good reasons to rage at a game without knowing about their contributions before you played and had a good time. That said, there's always a chance the consultant was just an attractive woman they were just using for breast stuff, so who's to say if anything she did was bad?

Family

How is Tim Sweeney so bad at this?

Sweeney's apparently well-intentioned follow-up to laying off 1,000 people isn't actually helping anyone.

Don't get caught up in hypocrisy

Miles in his Evolved Suit in Spider-Man 2.

Here's an important step: before you make your anger known online, be sure to delete any previous posts where you praised the game. You might even have compared it favorably to games you already knew a woman consulted about! This isn't you hiding the fact that you enjoyed something without knowing there was a girl involved, this is you simply self-correcting your views to now be true. How could you have known your opinion was false until someone told you? And if you get any crap from people on social media for this, just say, “Your page does this too!”

Perfect answer and one that has Mariana Trench level depth of insight. Ignore the fact that this would bother you when other people do it for games you still like. Ignore the fact that there may be bigger problems facing the industry like unfinished games, cynical season passes, chasing trends that are dead by release, mass layoffs, and sky-high prices that stifle consumers from playing anything that isn't Roblox. Just because these problems are bigger doesn't mean they're as emotionally wrenching.

Here's the really good news: you've now got a scapegoat for everything you didn't like about the game. If a character in a sequel doesn't look the way you want? Could have been a woman! If the game interferes with your favorite strategy? Could be a woman! If the game isn't as fun as another, completely different game you still like? I mean, she made the somewhat obvious point that a lot of stories in games are about rescuing a princess! It was the first domino to fall in Western civilization and worth remaining furious about well into late adulthood.

You can write this in a review and say this online, which is your God-given right, but we strongly warn that this will probably only make that consultant more famous. Just look at the cretins on the other side who do that: one of your favorites has probably been the target of angry online blue-haired liberal tourists and those streamers just got more brand sponsorships from razor companies who can charge more by saying they agree with you on issues.

This is the biggest cultural issue of our time

Ellie and Dina in The Last of Us Part 2.

But it's comforting to know that the complicated process of developing a game that works, pleasing multiple funders, managing the time crunch, and having to appeal to dozens of markets can be boiled down to the theoretical failings of someone who was clearly just hired so the company could look good.

Which is kind of confusing, because you didn't find out she was hired until later. Which also means the company hid it from you! They were trying to signal virtue without signaling anyone that virtue! And now you can't even see where the virtue is hidden in the signal! Is there any other definition of the banality of evil?

Finally, remember that the woman consulting on that game can't hurt you. Even if you think she must hate games and gamers because she has opinions about games when she works with games and plays games. And if she makes the game as bad as you worry, then, as we said, the company will ultimately be punished by the market for it. That's what happened with Concord, a game that failed because of its diverse but terribly bland characters, and not because it seemed to come out of nowhere at a time when everyone was tired of both the genre and the neon-sign-in-space Guardians of the Galaxy knock-off.

You may never get that $20-$80 back, and you may have lost hundreds of hours that you only thought you enjoyed under false pretenses, but at least you know now and you can move past it. Sometimes we have to avoid the mistake of cutting costs, cut our losses and focus elsewhere. After all, aren't there more important fights to be had online like whether or not Pragmata will get people pregnant?