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.

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.