badgerbag was tots correct; have been following links for the past couple of hours, and it is like getting sucked down the rabbit hole. @_@
Okay, my thoughts (as someone who just heard about this and isn't a video game fan, and will tune the whole thing out after I've finished typing up this comment):
(1) a lot of the reaction against The Arkh Project seems racist & transphobic, and I find it hard to garner sympathy for white cis people for being excluded from one game, JFC.
(2) I have no idea who GNN is, or what she's done to deserve so much vitriol, and I don't really care.
(3) Because the bottom line, as I see it, is to produce an amazing video game featuring characters not typically seen in video games. And going by what's up at The Arkh Project tumblr at the moment, I have serious doubts over their ability to do so.
I thought the critiques, when they got personal, were quite racist. But when they talked about the mechanics of what developing a game would probably require, the project development aspect of it, they seemed spot on.
I don't have any experience developing a game, but I feel like it would be as much a business as a creative project. And successful business projects require a detailed initial plan, solid cost estimates, a basic timeline by which certain goals should be met, a strategy for doing so that takes into account the potential pitfalls, etcetc. And they don't seem to have any of these things, seem to just be operating on ideals. And this wouldn't matter as much if the people heading this had experience, but they don't seem to have that, either.
It also seemed weird to me that the pitch for the game didn't start with a storyline, and I felt extremely uncomfortable by that fact. Maybe I'm missing something here, but I didn't see any place where they provided their characters with a context -- communities they came from, cultures that shaped them, a believable world to grow in, challenges they would have to face and overcome, etcetc -- didn't see anyplace where they gave them their own stories. And I would've thought that to be the most basic thing to do (especially if you're in it to dismantle hierarchies).
And perhaps it will all work out in the end, and there will be an amazing game that will come out of this that will have me apologizing profusely for being so wrong and eating all my words. I really hope so! But I do not think that will happen.
no subject
Okay, my thoughts (as someone who just heard about this and isn't a video game fan, and will tune the whole thing out after I've finished typing up this comment):
(1) a lot of the reaction against The Arkh Project seems racist & transphobic, and I find it hard to garner sympathy for white cis people for being excluded from one game, JFC.
(2) I have no idea who GNN is, or what she's done to deserve so much vitriol, and I don't really care.
(3) Because the bottom line, as I see it, is to produce an amazing video game featuring characters not typically seen in video games. And going by what's up at The Arkh Project tumblr at the moment, I have serious doubts over their ability to do so.
I thought the critiques, when they got personal, were quite racist. But when they talked about the mechanics of what developing a game would probably require, the project development aspect of it, they seemed spot on.
I don't have any experience developing a game, but I feel like it would be as much a business as a creative project. And successful business projects require a detailed initial plan, solid cost estimates, a basic timeline by which certain goals should be met, a strategy for doing so that takes into account the potential pitfalls, etcetc. And they don't seem to have any of these things, seem to just be operating on ideals. And this wouldn't matter as much if the people heading this had experience, but they don't seem to have that, either.
It also seemed weird to me that the pitch for the game didn't start with a storyline, and I felt extremely uncomfortable by that fact. Maybe I'm missing something here, but I didn't see any place where they provided their characters with a context -- communities they came from, cultures that shaped them, a believable world to grow in, challenges they would have to face and overcome, etcetc -- didn't see anyplace where they gave them their own stories. And I would've thought that to be the most basic thing to do (especially if you're in it to dismantle hierarchies).
And perhaps it will all work out in the end, and there will be an amazing game that will come out of this that will have me apologizing profusely for being so wrong and eating all my words. I really hope so! But I do not think that will happen.