Opinion: Wolverine’s Sweet Baby Inc. Involvement Feels Like Performative Wokeness

Insomniac’s Marvel’s Wolverine should be one of the easiest superhero games to sell.

You have Wolverine, one of Marvel’s most recognisable characters, a studio with years of experience making blockbuster superhero games, and decades of comics, films and other material to draw from. Yet one detail in the game’s credits has once again become a major talking point online: the involvement of narrative consultancy company Sweet Baby Inc.

And for me, it raises a fairly simple question. Why does a studio like Insomniac need an outside narrative consultancy on Wolverine in the first place?

This isn’t an unknown character being created from scratch. Wolverine has an enormous history. His personality, motivations, relationships, flaws and moral conflicts have been explored for decades. Insomniac also employs its own writers, narrative designers and creative leads who are presumably capable of understanding that material and adapting it into a video game.

That is why Sweet Baby Inc.’s involvement feels less like something Wolverine genuinely needed and more like a performative box ticking exercise.

To be clear, hiring consultants is completely normal in game development. Studios routinely bring in specialists for historical research, cultural accuracy, accessibility, technical expertise and countless other areas. There is nothing inherently unusual or sinister about a developer asking outsiders for advice.

The question is whether that advice actually improves the game.

Sweet Baby Inc. has become an incredibly divisive name among some gaming audiences, but simply seeing the company in the credits does not prove that it dictated Wolverine’s story or forced Insomniac to change its creative direction. Without evidence showing exactly what decisions the consultancy influenced, those claims go much further than the facts allow.

But that works both ways.

If the contribution was relatively minor, then it becomes reasonable to ask what value it added. If Insomniac already has experienced writers and access to Marvel’s enormous library of Wolverine material, what problem required another layer of narrative consultation?

That is where the involvement starts to feel performative to me.

Modern entertainment companies increasingly want to demonstrate that they have considered representation, sensitivity and cultural perspectives during production. Those intentions are not automatically bad. In fact, good consultation can make fictional worlds richer and prevent writers from making avoidable mistakes.

But consultation should serve the story rather than becoming part of a corporate checklist.

Wolverine does not need to be sanitised. He does not need every rough edge carefully filed away. Logan is interesting precisely because he is violent, damaged, angry, contradictory and frequently difficult to like. The challenge for Insomniac should be preserving those characteristics while giving players a compelling story, not making the character feel as though he has passed through layers of corporate approval.

Of course, the finished game ultimately matters far more than a name in the credits.

If Marvel’s Wolverine delivers a great interpretation of Logan, then most players are unlikely to care which consultants were involved behind the scenes. Sweet Baby Inc.’s participation alone is not evidence that the game will be good or bad.

But publishers and developers should also understand why players are increasingly questioning these relationships. When major studios already employ huge creative teams, outside narrative consultants can look unnecessary unless their contribution has a clear purpose.

That is ultimately my problem with Sweet Baby Inc.’s involvement here.

It isn’t that outside consultants should never be used. It is that Wolverine seems like a character Insomniac should already know how to write. If you have talented writers, decades of source material and Marvel itself involved in the project, another layer of narrative consultation risks looking less like a creative necessity and more like a company demonstrating that the correct boxes were checked.

Maybe the finished game will prove that concern completely misplaced.

But Wolverine shouldn’t need corporate reassurance to be Wolverine.