Mary Kenney, associate narrative director at Insomniac Games, has discussed the current online discussion surrounding narrative development and consultancy firm Sweet Baby Inc.
To recap, Sweet Baby Inc. recently became the target of a group which claimed the company was forcing studios it worked with to increase diversity within its games, and accused it of pushing a “woke agenda” into the industry. Following a report into the claims by Kotaku, a number of game developers have spoken up to clear up misconceptions about what companies like Sweet Baby Inc. actually do.
Kenney, who has written for games including Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Telltale’s The Walking Dead and the upcoming Marvel’s Wolverine, posted a thread on X yesterday. “Some of you don’t seem to understand how narrative consulting on games works,” she began, “but don’t worry: I do!”
During a game’s development, narrative consultants will be hired by studios to help with fleshing out or tweaking narrative elements, Kenney said. “Narrative consultants do not get final say,” Kenney reiterated. “It doesn’t get into the game if we [as the developer] don’t approve it.
“They consult. They do research, pitch ideas, give feedback, and maybe even write scripts. But none of that gets into the game unless the core dev team agrees with it. I’m going to keep saying that, because it’s key. Sweet Baby is not, nor is any consulting group, coming in to wreck games. They’re helping smooth out plots and deepen characters. They ease the burden on the core narrative team. They’re additive in every way.”
Sweet Baby Inc. has helped with and consulted on a broad spread of blockbusters, including God of War Ragnarök, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Alan Wake 2, and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, as well as Marvel’s Wolverine and South of Midnight (which are both yet to be released). Kenney called its employees “some of the most talented, passionate people we’ve got”.
Alan Wake 2 director Kyle Rowley took to X earlier in the week to dismiss rumours that the game’s FBI agent Saga Anderson was originally meant to be white, and Sweet Baby Inc. was somehow the reason why Saga is Black.
Indie developer and consultant Rami Ismail backed up points made by Kenney, adding in his own post that as a consultant you must understand “your work is advisory” and “your position is easily eliminated”.
Kenney created Hailey Cooper for Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, a Black deaf character, and has stated actress Natasha Ofili was key in fleshing out Hailey. A combination of internal and external consultants, plus Ofili herself, worked on the game’s accessibility to help ensure Hailey was a positive representation of the Deaf community, as Victoria found out when she interviewed Ofili and Insomniac about Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.
