DEI Watchdog game rating site mocked online: ‘Shows how soft the anti-woke gamers truly are’
One of the games deemed “ultra woke”, GTA 6, isn’t even out yet (Rockstar North/DEI Watchdog)
“Anti-woke” web developers have created a site to check the wokeness of your favourite video game, despite literally no one asking them to.
The website, “DEI Watchdog”, appears to have been developed in early 2023 but recently caught the attention of users on social media for its outlandish concept, to the extent that it started trending on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday (6 January), with people mocking the often deeply spurious decisions to brand a game “woke.”
One person wrote, for example: “There’s a DEI Watchdog site, and despite GTA6 (Grand Theft Auto 6) not being out till fall and us knowing little about it, they’ve already determined it’s ‘ultra woke’.”
There’s a DEI Watchdog site, and despite GTA6 not being out till fall and us knowing little about it, they’ve already determined it’s “ultra woke”.
— Ultra Johnus (@UltraJohnus) January 6, 2025
Glad that’s settled. pic.twitter.com/Khch69e7Vc
Another person added: “The fact they have to make a watchdog site for a bs issue just shows how soft the ‘anti-woke gamers’ truly are.”
“It’s a game about a time travelling lesbian”
A third tweeted: “My favourite part of their ridiculous list was once again Life is Strange only getting a ‘slightly woke’ ranking. It’s literally a game about a time travelling lesbian and her blue haired punk girlfriend, that alone should give it the wokest rating possible.”
The website was also described as a “psy-op” by another X user, who said: “No real gamer concerned about DEI in games is going to think a game is ‘woke’ just because it has women in it or members of the LGBT … if you believe that you are just falling for a strawman.”
While the site is currently down, with a text box reading “website under development,” its Meta description – text typically shown under a Google search result – describes it as a “community-driven” review site analysing “social messaging, representation and cultural content in games.”
DEI, meaning diversity, equity and inclusion, is used to refer to fairness, typically in employment, for underrepresented and marginalised communities. However, in recent years it has become a right-wing dogwhistle used to quickly label – and dismiss – anything that features minorities.
Essentially, the website deems how woke a game is by aggregating reviews.
THEY MADE A DEI VIDEO GAME REVIEW WEBSITE AHAHAHAHAHAHAHahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHHAAHHAHAHA this is gonna provide endless laughs pic.twitter.com/39ISowQXu8
— kate bush's husband (@airbagged) January 5, 2025
Screenshots from the “content analysis” page reveals a set of sliders that users can modify based on the game’s content. One of those sliders, under the category of “female characters,” ranges from “hot and sexy” to “covered and strong,” with the second option being considered the most “woke”.
Male characters, meanwhile, range from “manly men” to “sensitive boys.”
Excerpts from the website show that most users’ decisions are merely based on whether the protagonists or supporting characters are female or non-white, and in many cases both.
A review of the game Alan Wake II labels it 2.4 out of a possible five with an 8.7 out of 10 woke-content score, making it an “ultra woke” title.
The description for the review reads: “Woke garbage main character switched with Black female.”
Games deemed to be “woke“, according to an archival version of the site, include Celeste, Detroit: Become Human, Borderlands 3 and Halo: The Master Chief Collection.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is apparently so woke that it earned a spot on the site’s front page, where it is described as “highly controversial” and, according to some, “turned out to be a massive box office flop.”
The title was, in fact, EA’s biggest single-player launch on PC platform Steam and broke the record for the most concurrent players in a game from developer BioWare, and was in the top 10 best-sold games for October last year.
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