It seems like everything and anything under the Sun gets labeled as "woke" or "DEI". I seriously doubt that there's as much of a push to make anything "woke" as people claim or think there is. Companies are in the business of making money, plain and simple.

To that extent, they tend to expand their customer base as wide as possible. Any claims that they're purposefully "targeting" or emphasizing one group more than another is superfluous, and ignores the more OBVIOUS and reasonable explanation that they're simply casting a wider net and want as many people to buy their product.

Now, if we're talking about specifically and purposefully changing characters or stories in visual or printed media, then I would argue that it's probably not as widespread of a problem as people think. Marvel's MCU might have certainly given that impression.

Hell, Ubisoft's recent fiasco with AC Shadows is pretty controversial. But let's be honest, "wokeness" has been leveled at almost every and any new game coming out, whether it's actually even guilty of being "woke", simply because there's a bunch of people who are paranoid about "woke" in general and start looking for it where it doesn't exist. Let's get something straight.

1: Diversity in itself isn't bad.
2: Token minorities can be insulting, but only because they are underdeveloped and treated as caricatures rather than real people.
3: If a story is bad, then what the characters aren't isn't going to make much of a difference.
And 4: How a character looks (whether they're considered "ugly" or "attractive" is debatable) is usually less related to "woke" and more of a designer/developer choice, and sometimes that choice can plain simply suck.

Which is all irrelevant to whether a game or movie will even be good. If I'm honest, sometimes it comes off more as a bunch of racists/bigots complaining that the world has changed and the new people represented in media and in general are not people these individuals "like". So their own biases and prejudices are coloring their opinion.

Not to say it's always a xenophobic or bigoted reason, but plenty of those people have jumped on the "hate wokeness" bandwagon. Back in the day, if you simply wanted to go ahead and say that a company or person was overemphasizing race, nationality, gender, religion, or creed, you'd simply say they were being "politically correct". It's a less loaded term, and tends to actually criticize actual instances of PC attitudes that were done for brown points rather than actual character development. Sorry for the long rant. Thoughts?