How recent outrages made me question my writing

by Patryk Kowalik March 31, 2015 197 comments

Hello everyone, keeping in tradition of Elysian Shadows being as open and as public about game development as possible, I am going to write about something, well, rather unpleasant that I found out about myself recently.

I will preface this, however, with how writing in Elysian Shadows is handled. Whole story idea is handled by Falco and Tyler. Me and Dan can suggest what to add/change, but ultimately everything's up to discussion amongst us all and so far there wasn't a thing that we couldn't agree on after having a civil debate. Also, rest of the team is well known not-givers of fucks (Falco and Tyler with their Alabama redneckness and Dan with his British sass), so we don’t really have to worry about Elysian Shadows self-censoring itself as a whole. I am going to talk about me from my point of view. Also I want to reinforce the point that I am polish, english language and culture is - and always will be - somewhat foreign for me, so if any of you will take an offence, please ask for clarification first - chances are things got lost in translation. And now, without further ado...

I, as art lead, am significantly contributing to the "background lore" of the universe. Writing about cultures, past history and so on. After all, I am designing how these people clothe, how their cities look like and how their environment looks like. It makes it easier for me to have some sort of lore backstory for what I draw, so I naturally write something, submit to rest of the team to discussion and then we move on.

Example of design shaped by culture and their toxic environment. Their culture shuns showing off bare skin and especially eyes; nowadays it's largely ceremonial and of minimal use, but in past long ago it saved lives.

However, I was part of gamedev scene one way or another for past few years (mostly as spectator, recently as participant) and that left considerable mark on me. I saw gamedevs that were fighting against “games cause violence” now supporting “games cause sexism”. I saw gamedevs being threatened and labeled as sexists if they did not comply with angry mob, most recently I saw gamedevs apologising for drawing of a barmaid.

And then I realized, just yesterday - I was already censoring myself too. “Will it upset someone?”, “Will it cause outrage?”, “Will I be called sexist for writing a sexist character in game?”. Questions like these were constantly lingering at back of my head and now shadow of doubt was casted on everything I wrote in past two years. How can I wholly portrait entire world if I hold back myself from certain topics? In Elysian Shadows history we have people destroying entire swathes of land, starving and poisoning entire countries. We have people committing genocide, murdering entire civilizations, slaughtering men, women and children without exception. Committing crimes against humanity, experimenting on live subjects... And yet I didn't wrote a culture that was homophobic for fear of offending someone. As I write this, I wonder laughing bitterly: out of all these topics, what’s more relevant in this day and age? How many countries have sexual discrimination problems and in how many being homosexual warrants jail time or even death penality? (bonus points on checking out how Poland stands on the issue)

I can see some people seeing it as a good thing. That my drive to not offending anyone was noble and just and I did right, not wanting to trigger people. But I disagree with it, examples of bad behaviour are just as important - if not more - than good ones. Most of my views were shaped by seeing what people did bad and what I shouldn’t perpetuate, along with seeing right. I remember my parent’s tales of communism and censorship of that era, I listened to tales of people’s homes being raided by milicja because there dared to be “too political”. I saw my childhood friends being pushed to fulfill their parents dreams and what it did to them. I saw what poverty, true poverty does to people. I saw people bullied at school and I was bullied myself, being an immigrant. I saw what happens when people don’t love each other anymore and decided to lie instead. But these all experiences made me grow, made me a better person. I saw what exactly happens when you do something bad and why you shouldn’t do that, why should we strive to be better people.

Games are in unique position that can put us in someone’s else shoes, in safe environment. They can take aspects of our society and exaggerate them, to show what really is bad or good about it. They can take white, rich, heterosexual man and make him play a role of poor, discriminated against elf in fictional world. They can explain a death of a dear friend to someone who was too young to yet lose anyone. They can force pacifist to chose between brainwashing entire sentient species or xenocide - crime of magnitude that human brain struggles to comprehend. Show everything that we subconsciously hate about ourselves in new context, forcing us to confront it and examine. Show the hardships of living in totalitarian state, or what war does to common folk. We can experience fictional worlds as our own, examine them and draw conclusions. Through lens of gaming we can learn something about others and about ourselves. But if any other gamedevs think like I do (and a lot probably are, I’m hardly an unique snowflake), we could very well lose a lot of that of that. This recent re-emergence of puritanism, of outrage culture, bullies gamedevs away from certain topics, consciously or otherwise. How can we examine the worst of humanity if we’re at risk of being labeled as such for doing so?

Fortunately, I recognized my own biases and can re-examine my work in time. Fortunately our team as a whole embraces difficult topics and encourages discussing them. Fortunately, Elysian Shadows simply doesn’t give a fuck. But if recent months are indicative of larger trend, amongst gamedevs we seem to be in minority.

Patryk Kowalik

Patryk Kowalik is art lead for Elysian Shadows project, responsible for everything from the design and conceptart, down to very last pixelart tile and frame of animation. Previously working freelance since 2012.

Casey Snow

Think of it this way: when you deal with harsh subject matter, you are borrowing experiences for your fiction from people who experienced them for real. The only thing that they want in exchange is honesty. They don’t want their trauma to be fodder for a fantasy, they want it dealt with fairly and truthfully. The questions that you ask yourself are important ones, but don’t worry about the answers being a forgone conclusion.
- Leio
  
  Or maybe that people who have experienced horrible things need to realize that things similar to their experiences are used as story telling elements and while it sucks what happened to them, its not about them.
  - Casey Snow
    
    That’s certainly one way to look at it. I suppose “fuck ’em” is always an answer. We don’t live in a world with any sort of shortage of people willing to disregard the feelings of others. What’s one more, right?
  - Etherblaze
    
    I’m sorry, but if I were a game developer, I would not want to stop making a game, or remove the offending piece just because someone’s feelings were hurt because of something from the game, like say, a murder. It’s not really “fuck you” it more like “This isn’t about you. It’s fiction.” If your feelings are really hurt by some piece of fiction, then you can turn to another piece of fiction.
  - Casey Snow
    
    I guess by the same token, the developer would have to acknowledge that if they don’t like being criticized for their work, they can ignore the comments. The public, in this case, would have as little reason to care about the developer’s feelings as he/she would for the public… and we’re back where we started.
  - Niwjere
    
    That’s exactly how it should be. It’s called artistic integrity. If your art is actually that, art, made because you’re passionate about it, with financial viability as a secondary concern, no fucks should be given. There will be people who enjoy your work and people who don’t. It is not the artist’s job to pander. It is the artist’s job to create, and to find people who enjoy said creations. The market itself, absent PR pressure and hype, sorts out the good from the bad (which is why 12-year-old deviantART users who make shitty Sonic recolors don’t have giant followings).
    
    The people getting upset over the inclusion of potentially-offensive content are making fiction all about themselves and should come down off their ego trip already. You won’t see me, a nerd, blindly bashing The Big Bang Theory for being “nerd blackface” (although I will happily divulge its many and sundry objective flaws to anyone that asks), because I learned long ago that caricatures and stereotypes exist for good reasons, and that banning their portrayal is not going to make them go away. I also learned that guilt by association doesn’t work — saying “person X is evil and also a member of group Y” is not the same thing as saying “all persons in group Y are evil”, which is an entirely different statement that requires proof of its own.
    
    If you happen to be trans, and a trans person is depicted poorly in a game, that is not a condemnation of you as a person, or of any other trans individual. If trans people in a game are massacred for supposedly being evil, that is not a condemnation of you as a person, or of any other trans individual (in fact it probably speaks more to the villainous nature of the perpetrator).
    
    Fiction is not about real, living persons. It is fiction.
  - Etherblaze
    
    Critics have every right to criticize. Developers have every right to ignore it. If critics can change a game or piece of art because a few people are offended (or will be offended) then the medium will become dead. There will be zero risk and no creativity. Everything will become grey and monotone for the sake of not offending people. We are at the point where a female character being feminine or having/flaunting biological feminine traits is seen as offensive or not something to strive for (see: Anita Sarkeesian and the people who follow her. She even points out in her most recent video that a female character is “enhanced” BECAUSE you can miss her gender entirely). We live in a world where an ingame limerick is blown out of proportion, causes offense and a small campaign for the devs to remove or do something about it.
    
    If critics say I’m portraying a character’s personality or situation wrongly (if I’m going for realistic in the first place), then I may listen. But if they tell me that my cleavage flaunting character is embarrassing, drawn by a 13 year old, or demeaning to women everywhere (when only a few people actually care), I don’t have to listen. Or if I have a highschool girl killed and hung upside down upon an antenna, I’m not going to change it because it triggers someone’s feelings. It’s fiction. Why should I downplay a psychopathic fictional villain or a sexy heroine just so a few peoples’ feelings won’t be hurt?
    
    If I’m making a piece of art and consistently ask myself “how do I not make people offended?”, Violence or disturbing acts such as rape can be thrown away. Crazy, entertaining villains too. Male heroes (“ANOTHER male power fantasy?”) and attractive heroines (“Fapbait/fighting fuck toys/offensive to women everywhere”) are gone too. We can’t approach situations such as racism or homophobia. Even as jokes. Straight characters are consistently frowned upon (“Oh, another straight male main character” *rollseyes*). Women can’t die if the male is the protagonist (“Just a tool for the story”. Men can die though, who cares), women protagonists can’t fall in love with a guy. Women can’t be mothers (“it’s horribly sexist and lame”. Yes there are people who think like that. Citing Angry Birds as the sexist example, no less) or like/wear pink. They can’t wear ribbons, or anything that would make them look feminine. Males cannot rescue women (damsels). I’m sure there are more, but let’s see what I end up with in my quest to not offend anyone.
    
    An incredibly powerful woman (I don’t know if she is, since I can miss the gender entirely. This enhances the female character according to a well respected critic) in a hijab faces a cartoon villain who is a man and absolutely harmless, rescues (I don’t know from what though, since I can’t harm or have anything bad happen to women) another woman (I think she is). No one dies, there is no crying. And there are rainbows. Everyone is happy. Except the villain. I think he cries. Who never actually did anything to make himself a villain. Didn’t kill, hurt or kidnap anyone.
  - Fenrir007
    
    If you stop to worry about how the feelings of every single person on the planet will be affected while creating your art, you will neuter it so much you will end up with a completely bland and insipid work.
    
    Art depicts everything, the good and the bad. We have wonderful paintings depicting terrible acts like torture and rape, and that doesn’t stop them from appearing on museums. Sure, that might be “triggering” for a select few, but those people need to learn that they have the alternative of walking away from something that they find, in their opinion, to be offensive.
- Patryk Kowalik
  
  Interesting perspective, but is it right? What if I’m writing something controversial based on my own experience? Or based on experience of close friends that I talked with extensively (for the sake of including their story in my storytelling)? Then what game portrays are very personal, mine or my fiends. Does it give claim on it to people of similar experiences? Do they have right to take it away from me and my friends?
  
  But hey, lets keep it simpler – for me banning anyone from speaking about certain topic is deeply disturbing, traumatic even (I’d have to explain history of poland, my parent’s lives and how it impacted my upbringing to justify it, so allow me to skip it for the time being). Who’s right now? Offended person that calls to remove what I created, or me being offended by them trying to ban me? (they take issue with fiction, whereas I take issue with real life actions that impact me personally)
  
  Regardless of all of that though, I take no issue with people wanting my work to be better. By people coming over and saying “I see you made a game with issue x, coincidentally I have to live with x. I think you’re portrayal of x is not quite right, here’s how you could make it better and more realistic”. But that’s not what I see. What I see are outcries to remove, cut, accusing gamedevs of being horrible people, calls to boycott. That’s not critique, that’s not even desire for accurate portrayal. That’s simple bullying.
  - Casey Snow
    
    Starting from the end of your reply, going backward, I think that you will find that those who have complaints, unless they’re trolling, will flesh things out a bit if you talk to them. I think some of the problems that you have are problems inherent with trying to have a dialogue on the internet in general, and not something specific to just grievances concerning game development.
    
    Offense is not some kind of end-all be-all argument that stymies all discussion. You need to employ your good ol’ fashion who-what-whys. Walls between people are MASSIVE right now. If they can fail to see where you are coming from with your ideas, you need to recognize that you are just as susceptible to misunderstanding theirs.
    
    But you’ll never please everybody. Look at Mass Effect 3’s ending. People were PISSED about that. But was their anger about the ME3 ending any different from people being upset about cleavage in plate armor? I fail to see the difference.
    
    I think that most failures of taste that people take issue with are also failures in world-building. So don’t see this so much about “my feelings vs. your feelings” and just take ALL feelings under consideration as material to educate yourself. The better educated you are in this regard, the better writer you’ll be.
  - Patryk Kowalik
    
    There’s some trolling, I agree, but I think it’s mostly folly of twitter format. Because of the severe character limit, it forces to omit such important phrases like “In my opinion”, “I think…”, etc. Great example is my recent conversation with other dev, where we basically started tweeting pastebins at each other. Wonderful and respectful discussion, and while we haven’t quite reached common ground, I was truly happy to have it and I hope that both of us were wiser because of it.
    
    Still, the Mass Effect 3 offendatrons were at best calling devs retards, idiots and sending death threats. The offendatrons that I had in mind while writing this blogpost are calling devs bigots, sexists, transphobic and worse. (the difference is that 3rd party won’t take questioning dev’s intelligence seriously, but they may take questioning their tolerance seriously. Especially with how unequal representation is in our industry)
  - Casey Snow
    
    I think, at least in my experience online, that critics are calling the art itself sexist, not the maker. The artist usually only gets called a sexist depending on their reaction to the criticism of their art.
    
    Everyone gets called out. Everyone. The question is how you deal with it.
  - Stephen Weir
    
    but mass effect 3’s ending was a consumer issue. bioware promised that the choices made in the previous games would affect the ending when they didn’t, and it was a misleading, insulting way to end the franchise. people were mad because they were told one thing but delivered another. this is completely different.
    
    when it comes to “offense”, that doesn’t and shouldn’t matter. art should be impactful, it should make you feel things, and trying to avoid offending people is a fool’s errand. the only exceptions i can see as being suitable are outright hate speech/calls for violence, but even then, it’s a fuzzy line. morality whining and petty grievances with the existence of breasts (especially the latter) have no place in art.
cen

First of all i think self censoring is very very bad. Iike you said it keeps people(gamers) from growing and learning. I would maybe even go so far as to say, games are the only medium that can relativate bad stuff and help people understand why this bad stuff happens. What looks good from one person might look bad for another and visa-versa (i.e. a man stealing from a shop owner. But from the mans perspective he steals for the survival of his family) i have to admit that is an old argument but i am sure this can be applied to newer topics as well.

this knowledge can be crucial when people then walk out into the world and try to make things better for everyone.

as for the lionhead thing that happend recently liana k made a great youtube video about this and the drawback this debacle had/(can have) not only for developers but for the real world.

As a side note i applaud you for writing this post and self reflecting on this.