Its been over three years since Days Gone launched (almost two because directors Jeff Ross and John Garvin left), and Garvin is still bitter about its poor reception, going as far as to blame “woke reviewers who couldn’t deal with a gruff white biker looking at his date’s ass”. This is nothing brand-new for Garvin, as he appeared on David Jaffe’s podcast in 2015 to say that he doesn’t want to buy into political correctness and “satisfy social justice warriors.”
This was an apparent reference to grievances that The Last of Us Part 2 was too ‘woke,’ a sticking point that Garvin has consistently claimed as the factor for why Day’s Gone underperformed seriously and one he stays with even today.
He commented about Days Gone – once again, three years from launch – because somebody tweeted,
Garvin reacted with three reasons:
- It had tech issues like bugs, streaming, and frame rate
- It had reviewers who couldn’t be troubled to play the game
- It had woke customers who couldn’t handle a gruff white bicycle rider looking at his date’s ass
His first reason being the tech problems and frame rate, the other two claiming customers “could not be bothered to, in fact, play the game.” This is a quite typical accusation hurled out whenever negative evaluations come in, and one we see again with The Callisto Protocol, but it has little weight. Incomplete reviews tend to be flagged as “In progress,” not offering a rating until the reviewer finishes.
As numerous responses highlight, there’s no proof for Garvin’s points, and the evaluations weren’t even that bad. Days Gone made an average of 71 on Metacritic, i.e., a 7 out of ten.
It didn’t hit the highs that Sony typically does of eights and nines. However, it wasn’t slated to the same level as Babylon’s Fall, or perhaps Marvel’s Avengers.
However, his final point does lean into the essence of Garvin’s mindset when it concerns why his game failed because he wanted to make a video game that was about guys who love women, so much so they stare at their ass every time they stroll by. The sexist undertones here are blatant and have drawn a lot of ire from commenters contacting Garvin to rescind his remarks and delete the tweet.
At the end of the day, Days Gone didn’t review all that well. Not every video game gets eights and nines out of 10, however three years of the very same arguments on loop has to get tired at some time, eh? In the meantime, Garvin is busy with his blockchain web 3.0 job at his brand-new studio.
