Company type | Private |
---|---|
Industry | Video games |
Founded | 2018Montreal, Canada | in
Founders |
|
Headquarters | Montreal , Canada |
Key people | |
Number of employees | 16 (2024) |
Website | sweetbabyinc |
Sweet Baby Inc. is a Canadian narrative development and consultation studio based in Montreal. Founded by former Ubisoft developers, including scriptwriter Kim Belair and product manager David Bédard, the company consults on video game narratives during development to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion within game narratives and studios. Sweet Baby has consulted with several developers and games, including Sable, God of War Ragnarök, and Alan Wake 2. In 2023, the studio became the target of online users who claimed it promoted a woke agenda.
Sweet Baby Inc. was founded in Montreal in 2018 by former Ubisoft developers,[1][2] including scriptwriter Kim Belair and product manager David Bédard.[1][3][4] Belair became Sweet Baby's chief executive officer and Bédard the chief operating officer.[1][5] Belair said that she founded the company after seeing that the video game industry lacked strong career progression for women and marginalized groups.[1]
The company consults on game narratives during development. Belair wanted the company to promote safer working environments,[1] including better representation within narratives and diverse development teams with correct and consistent pay, training, and credits.[6] Sweet Baby's stated goal for inclusivity was to ensure games feature representation within their design and narrative, rather than simply surface-level.[2][7] Belair found developers often add diversity but are "too safe" to avoid being offensive; Sweet Baby would encourage them to tell stories in different ways.[5] The company connects developers with studios when vacancies arise.[8] While the studio can be consulted at any point in development, Belair felt it had a better chance at improvement by entering early to avoid removing completed work.[2]
In 2022, the studio developed Lost Your Marbles for the Playdate handheld console, and formed two teams of around twelve people to assist in the development of two other Playdate games over the course of six months: Recommendation Dog and Reel Steel.[9][10] Bédard felt undertaking two projects simultaneously was "a bit too ambitious" for the studio due to their differing production schedules.[9] Sweet Baby consulted on the narrative and characters of God of War Ragnarök.[11] Its work on the game focused on making Angrboda, a black character, more relatable to black audiences while acknowledging the game's history of Norse mythology.[2][5]
Sweet Baby joined the development of Goodbye Volcano High in 2020[12] and led the narrative team after development rebooted in 2021.[13] The studio joined Afterlove EP as consultants after the death of writer and designer Mohammad Fahmi in 2022, having been speaking with Fahmi before his death.[14] Belair assisted Remedy Entertainment in refining the background and arc of Saga Anderson, the protagonist of Alan Wake 2,[5][15] and worked with A44 Games in developing Nor Vanek, the protagonist of Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn.[16] The studio assisted in writing scripts for Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, focusing on audio logs, non-player character dialogue, and in-game advertisements, having joined development after the story had been written.[7] Sweet Baby had 16 employees as of March 2024.[5]
In October 2023, Sweet Baby attracted negative attention on Kiwi Farms, a web forum where a user described the company's involvement with Alan Wake 2 as "possibly one of the biggest scandals in gaming history";[7] similar posts were shared on sites like 4chan and Reddit community r/KotakuInAction.[5] Employees said a small degree of harassment was directed towards the company following this attention,[17] which increased in January 2024,[18] when a Steam user created a curator group listing Sweet Baby's work,[19] encouraging players to avoid the games as the studio promoted a "woke agenda".[7][20][18] The curator group received increased attention in February when a Sweet Baby employee asked others to report it for failing Steam's code of conduct,[21] which resulted in the emloyee's Twitter account being temporarily blocked instead.[22][23] Within weeks, the group had more than 210,000 followers[24] and a related Discord server had thousands of members.[25] Both underwent purges of content after Steam and Discord staff contacted their moderators about potentially violating terms of service, as much of the user-driven content in these forums bordered on hate speech.[17][18]
Theories about the studio included that it was controlled by investment company BlackRock (directly or indirectly),[5] that it forced Remedy to make Saga Anderson black (which game director Kyle Rowley denied),[7][26] and that it was responsible for recent industry layoffs[5] and for several recent failures in high-profile video games such as Suicide Squad.[7][18][a] The Mary Sue's Rachel Ulatowski characterized the claims as "conservative conspiracy theories".[24] Aftermath's Nathan Grayson noted theories would likely continue to be spread as long as their narrative compels viewers and readers;[5] YouTube videos about the backlash collectively received millions of views.[28] Belair responded that Sweet Baby's work was to improve narratives generally rather than being solely focused on diversity and inclusion; she noted gamers thought the studio had simply added pride flags to Marvel's Spider-Man 2 when it had actually provided narrative work for about three years, including several levels and character arcs.[7][5]
Sweet Baby's employees faced harassment and doxing attempts in response to the backlash,[7][5][17] with attention drawn towards the company and its employees by high-profile social media accounts including Elon Musk and Libs of TikTok. Kotaku's reporter who first highlighted the backlash also faced harassment over the story.[18] Several journalists and content creators compared it to Gamergate,[7][17][28] and TheGamer's Stacey Henley called it "the latest dogwhistle for rejecting progressive ideas".[29] The studio continued to operate as normal;[7][5] Bédard felt the industry had become familiar with similar controversies since Gamergate.[5] Its partners, like Insomniac Games, offered advice on moving past the backlash based on their own experiences with harassment,[7][5] and several developers supported the studio on social media, including independent developer and consultant Rami Ismail.[20] The Guardian's Keza MacDonald urged the studio's other partners to publicly defend it to avoid the proliferation of false accusations,[25] and Game Developer's Bryant Francis urged Steam and Discord to clarify their policies to avoid similar incidents and further harassment.[17]
Year | Game | Developer | Role | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|
2019 | Neo Cab | Chance Agency | Writing | [30] |
2020 | Dota Underlords | Valve | Scriptwriting | [31] |
Assassin's Creed Valhalla | Ubisoft Montreal | Scriptwriting | [19] | |
2021 | Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance | Tuque Games | Scriptwriting | [32] |
Sable | Shedworks | Writing and characters | [1][33] | |
2022 | Lost Your Marbles | Sweet Baby Inc. | Full development | [9][33] |
Gotham Knights | WB Games Montréal | Scriptwriting | [34] | |
God of War Ragnarök | Santa Monica Studio | Narrative and character consultation | [2][33] | |
2023 | Recommendation Dog | Sweet Baby Inc. | Full development | [9] |
Reel Steal | ||||
Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew | Mimimi Games | Sensitivity reading | [11] | |
Goodbye Volcano High | KO_OP | Narrative direction, design, writing, sensitivity reading | [13][33] | |
Quantum Phantom Basketball | Brenda Arts | Writing and production | [35] | |
The Crew Motorfest | Ubisoft Ivory Tower | Proofreading, additional writing | [19][33] | |
Kingdom Eighties | Fury Studios | Additional writing | [36] | |
Marvel's Spider-Man 2 | Insomniac Games | Story consultation | [1][33] | |
Alan Wake 2 | Remedy Entertainment | Characters, sensitivity reading | [2][33] | |
2024 | Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League | Rocksteady Studios | Scriptwriting (audio logs, non-player characters) | [1][33] |
Afterlove EP | Pikselnesia | Narrative design and writing | [14][37] | |
Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn | A44 Games | Writing and characters | [16] | |
Hyper Light Breaker | Heart Machine | Story structure and character development | [38][39] | |
Tales of Kenzera: Zau | Surgent Studios | Narrative | [35] | |
2025 | Usual June | Finji | Narrative and characters | [40][33] |
TBA | Battle Shapers | Metric Empire | Narrative direction, design, writing, world | [33] |
Breeze in the Clouds | Stormy Nights Interactive | Narrative design and consultation | [33] | |
Contraband | Avalanche Studios | Sensitivity reading, scriptwriting | [39] | |
Marvel's Wolverine | Insomniac Games | Story consultation | [1] | |
South of Midnight | Compulsion Games | Story development, cultural and character consultation | [41][33] |