OrdinaryUnfold

Woke Game is Bad Game?

We analyzed over 1,000 games in Woke Content Detector's list to see if wokeness and user review ratings are related.

"Woke" might be the most popular word in recent years. Not only do people frequently use it in discussion, but they also blame it for destroying culture and fun in many sectors, including games. But not many of those accusations are backed by the data when most discussions around woke topics are so subjective. So here we are.

But first, what is woke?

There are many discussions about the definition of woke. Merriam-Webster describes "woke" as

“
aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)
„

Our main data source, Woke Content Detector (a group with over 2,000 members that aim to label computer games with wokeness label), defines "Woke content" in their methodology as

“
any images, messages, characters, storytelling, dialogue, music, or game mechanics that include themes associated with the left-side of the political aisle in contemporary western politics.
„

In the Woke Content Detector's list, there are 0 games with 200 or more reviews on Steam.* It was grouped into 3 levels of wokeness:

1. Not Woke - 0 games

No Woke themes present (Recommended)

2. Subtle Woke - 0 games

Woke themes present with subtle/no specific messaging (Informational)

3. Overty Woke - 0 games

Woke themes present with overt messaging (Not Recommended)

* Data collected on 20 November 2024

What is a bad (and good) game?

Good and bad games are subjective and opinionated. We use Steam's game reviews as a collective good/bad indicator. Steam is a video game digital distribution service. People who buy games on Steam can give them a "Positive" or "Negative" review. When a game has enough reviews, Steam will show the percentage of positive reviews.

0% Positive Reviews (%) 100%
Tend to be bad Tend to be good

Let's guess

If a woke game is a bad game, now can you guess the positive review percentage that best separates "Not Woke" and "Overtly Woke" games? (Let's ignore subtle woke games for now)

Analyse the difference

When divided into wokeness levels, "Not Woke" games seem to have the highest average positive rating at 88%, followed by "Subtle Woke" at 87% and "Overtly Woke" at 85%.

0% Positive Reviews (%) 100%
Tend to be bad Tend to be good

Look like the more woke the game is, the worse review it tends to be by an average of 3% between the "Not Woke" and "Overtly Woke" groups. The question is, does this different matter? In statistics, we can use "Cohen's d" to measure how large is the difference between the average of two groups relative to their sparsity.

d = M 1 − M 2 S D p o o l e d where S D p o o l e d = S D 1 2 + S D 2 2 2
M1, M2 = Mean (Average) of each group
SD1, SD2 = Standard Deviation of each group

We calculated Cohen's d value of the two most extreme groups, "Not Woke" and "Overtly Woke" and here is the result (let's focus only on 80% positive reviews and above to see the details).

80% Positive Reviews (%) 100%

M1-M2 = NaN

SDpooled = NaN

Cohen's d size
0
Negligible
0.2
Small
0.5
Medium
0.8
Large
d = NaN

According to the Cohen's general guideline, Cohen's d of 0.28 can be interpreted as "The difference between two groups is small and difficult to see with the naked eye".

So, is woke game a bad game?

NO.

Using data from the Woke Content Detector, we cannot separate the game's wokeness with positive reviews percentage, and the difference in averages between the wokeness groups is too small to be significant.

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