if you say you know something’s bad and do it anyways, are you a good person?

Alright, here’s a quick hypothetical for you.

There’s a guy, and he’s like “i hate that guy. would you give me a gun so I could shoot him?” You, for whatever reason, give the guy the gun. He shoots the other guy, who dies.

Are you an accomplice?

Well, in the eyes of the law and most people at large, the answer seems to be yes.

There’s this video game about a wizard school that’s just come out, and quite a few people believe that the person who created the intellectual property that the game is set in happens to be a bigoted transphobe. Having seen her tweets and other public statements, I myself am under the same impression. It is also my understanding that she donates to a cause called the “LGB alliance,” an organization that works against trans people, as I understand it.

This could all be a huge misunderstanding, but if that was the case, she could easily clear it up by simply stating “trans women are women” and then talking about how proud she is to support trans women. It shouldn’t be hard. But instead, much like a certain Irish television writer, she’s gone the opposite direction. Instead, we have a case where noted author Stephen King said “trans women are women” and she unfollowed him, though.

Also, there’s all this.

Now, hey, I’m not trans, so the issues related to being trans aren’t really my particular wheelhouse. I care about my trans friends in the way that you should care about anyone, but my own specific cause is disability advocacy, and I know a lot more about that.

Still, as a person who’s doing my best to be a decent human being, I think that we should stick up for people, even if their fates don’t ultimately affect us. Like, an able-bodied person doesn’t generally receive ableist abuse, but I still appreciate when an able-bodied person sticks up for me. I figure the same goes for my trans friends.

Now, the way game development works at the AAA levels, a game is paid for by the publisher more or less in advance — because the publisher owns the whole studio making the game. So rather than working out a deal with a publisher to get funded to make a specific game, the company runs, regardless of what they’re making. Because this is a licensed IP, every copy of the game sold sends some money to the IP holder.

The IP holder, in this question, is the person that I understand to be bigoted against trans people. So, when you buy the game, she receives income from it.

This is what we call material support.

I am not going to post my usual ‘if you like my shit, post to my tip jar’ thing because it feels crass to do here, and while I’m happy to be crass when it comes to creative and colorful insults, I don’t want to come off as profiteering. I don’t really know of any good trans charities, but I hear good things about The Trevor Project. If you have a tip for me, consider maybe sending it to them instead.

So, hey, the reviews for this new game just dropped, and a few of them did something that bothered me. IGN left a comment on their video review (I think it was the video review? it was a video about the game) that said “our job as critics is just to say whether or not the game is fun.”

I ignored this as first, because aside from mistaking what a critic and a reviewer are, IGN wasn’t actually wrong.

Crazy, crazy, I know — a lot of people go “games are more than fun.” Look at my game Adios; it’s a game about two men talking. It’s not ‘fun’ in the happy joy joy context. It is, after all, a tragedy. But, when asked about games like Adios, I often reply “yes, I had fun.”

Fun, to me, represents a time that I valued in some way. A horror game could scare the bejesus out of me, but if I loved it, then I’d call it fun. So for a website to say “our job is to tell you if a game is fun or not” isn’t unreasonable at all. If they started going “The Last of Us Part II is a sad story, therefore it’s a bad game,” I might have an issue. Yes, yes, I have detailed my reasoning for disliking the game in the past, and I think it deserves low scores, but it’s a big AAA game that IGN reviewed well without claiming that the downer ending made it unfun and therefore bad.

IGN does not routinely review horror games as being bad simply because they’re not happy times for the characters either.

As such, I don’t think that was a big problem.

I do think the review was weird — it’s mostly negative, but still gave the game a glowing score, and as someone who actually wrote reviews for IGN and was literally told “your text and your score don’t match, you should update one or the other” when I wrote a negative review, I find this strange.

But that isn’t what this piece is about. It’s not strange that someone might score a game high because they love the IP. If I reviewed Digimon Survive, I might have given it an 8/10 as a gut thing, because I loved the experience so much, but people who don’t love Digimon might score it lower. For me, the Digimon are part of the experience. For another reviewer who doesn’t care, that might not impact the score as much. We cannot divorce ourselves completely from our feelings; they’re always there. Humans are, after all, predominantly emotional creatures (‘not me,’ the teenage redditor boasts, ‘i’m purely rational.’ then he starts crying because he saw a woman in a video game and he’s terrified of women)

I think the editors should have pointed out the text is far more negative… but instead we see IGN posting a “hey here’s our reason for doing this” which is… fairly unprecedented. You do this when you know there’s gonna be blowback. I suspect — because I don’t know — that that’s what happened here. The 9/10 was given despite the text because they were afraid of the fanbase getting mad at them.

(never seen an example of a website getting paid to review a game well, but seen plenty instances of writers being afraid to upset the fans. i literally got stalked by fans when i gave a game a negative review. it happens)

So: weird score/text mismatch, bizarre “hey don’t get mad at us” comment. Not great, but whatever.

Look, a reviewer’s job is to tell potential customers if it’s worth the sale. A critic’s job is to tell potential customers what the thing is and what it’s doing to them. A critic is an educator. Both roles work in service of the audience. We are here to help.

(that’s why I dislike critics who act as if they’re above the people they’re talking to; do not pretend to be an intellectual. you discuss toys. do not lose your levity in self-seriousness)

Then I read two other reviews. I will not link them. I am not intending to target them. I just want to call out this fucking bullshit take they both had.

If you’ve followed me on social media, you know this is how I work: I prefer to focus on the behavior, not the person. I’m aware I’ve got a few thousand followers behind me, and I cannot control their behavior — I’ve seen big accounts direct people at other people before, and it’s not pretty. While I’m nowhere near a ‘big’ account, I am probably big enough that someone bigger than me might notice. Things get hairier from there.

So, like, a while back, I read a really bad criticism of a game; it is criticism that I would not have published. It essentially said “I don’t like this game because it’s outdated.” It didn’t work to prove the point, it just… said “outdated,” the same way people use “generic.” They say the word, hoping it carries weight, but they don’t intend to actually express their problem.

This article never did that, and it went out to hundreds of thousands of people. So I took some screenshots, removed identifying information so as not to dogpile the writer, and explained the problem I had: they made a claim but they just used it to neg a game. There was no helpful, useful, or interesting criticism, it was just someone going “this game sucks and it’s bad. it should be good instead” and little more.

Same thing here.

I read two reviews. Both of them went like this: “this IP meant a lot to me. I know that supporting it means that money is going to a person who does bigoted things. But despite this, I am still an ally.”

Okay… why?

They did not have an answer for that, and I think that’s because there isn’t one. If you provide a gun to a man who wants to shoot another man, and you know he wants to shoot another man with that gun, then you’re just as guilty as he is. There is no scenario where you can give money to a shitty person and go “well, no, I’m okay because…”

You’re not okay. You’re actually a huge piece of shit. You know you’re doing harm and you still do it? It’s one thing to do it unknowingly or accidentally. I bought the Dragon Quest Builders games, and as best I recall, I did not know that the composer was a holocaust denier. I believe they were both used copies of the game, so I didn’t actually support him, but I came super close to doing so accidentally.

And those games? They did a lot for me. I mean that literally — I don’t know if I’d be alive without Dragon Quest Builders 2. But giving money to a holocaust denier is still wrong; one can be forgiven for making a purchase without knowing, less so if they knew.

Well, he’s dead now, so it’s fine to buy the games. He won’t be composing them, and he won’t be making money off of them. His own compositions can’t really communicate his ideology, and the games certainly don’t.

As an aside, some people went from “I love his music” to “it wasn’t good anyways.” I know this is a defense mechanism for some, but I think it makes it easy for people to leap from “if it’s good, the person making it must be good. If it’s bad, the person making it must be bad.” That’s simply not true. Bad people can make good things. Good people can make bad things. I remember being told that Facing the Giants was a good movie because Christians made it. Nah, man, it sucked! You need to divorce quality of work from quality of creator. And yes, sometimes that means going “this really good thing is something I need to deny myself.” I denied myself Dragon Quest until Sugiyama died. Now I have no concerns; that money isn’t going to holocaust denial ads anymore.

I have a lot of issues with the “what you consume is who you are” thing. I’ve seen people go with the religious “a bad thing was depicted in a film therefore it’s an endorsement” shenanigans. I’ve seen people say “this work is good because it’s about good subject matter” even when the game is not good. I’ve had people say they’re intellectuals with great taste… because they bought one of the most heavily marketed AAA games of the entire year (that doesn’t make you a sophisticate, bucko!).

I think it’s important to be able to analyze all media, to be able to take it on its own merits, and to discuss it for what it is, so people who tie consumption with worth… they irk me, they irk me quite a bit. I don’t think you’re a bad person if you play Dragon Quest. I don’t think you’re a bad person if you’ve heard Sugiyama’s music and gone “wow, that means a lot to me.”

I would think you’re a bad person if you went “yes, I’m buying this game, supporting a man who is a holocaust denier. I’m personally someone who thinks the holocaust was a bad thing, but I just really like his music so I’m gonna buy his game.”

Once you know, you know. It is the knowing that damns you. If you go “Yes, I know it’s bad, but I’m still a good person…” well, okay, what good did you do?

You are saying you are a good person, but this action — knowingly supporting a holocaust denier, in the case of Sugiyama — is a bad one. How do we square those things up?

To me, there’s something cowardly, something insipid, something slimy as fuck, about saying “yes I know I am materially supporting a bad person, but I’m still a good person.”

Okay, why? What makes you a good person? For those of you calling yourselves allies… I dunno, if I saw you selling weapons to the Axis in World War II, I might consider you an Axis supporter, right? If the only actions I see from you are “because I am selfish, because I am weak, because I don’t care what happens to other people, I am supporting a bigot for my own selfish reasons,” how am I supposed to believe you when you tell me “I’m an ally”?

It sounds like you think me and everybody else are a bunch of fucking idiots who can be lied to so boldly, or that you’re a coward who needs to believe you’re doing good while compromising your own morals. You’re trying to lie to yourself because you’re not strong enough to go “I will deny myself something.”

The lead singer of Lostprophets committed what I personally believe to be the worst thing one human being can do to another. Worse than murder. Don’t look it up if you’re squeamish. I don’t listen to Lostprophets anymore. Arsenal meant so much to me. Now it can’t.

My belief, my firm belief, is that if you’re supporting shitty people doing shitty things, and you know they’re shitty, and you know this support is shitty… then maybe you’re a shitty person.

Don’t get me wrong — I know people who go “well, yes it’s bad, but also I’m struggling with a lot and this thing brought me comfort.” I understand it. I’m sympathetic, even. Once I found out Sugiyama was a bad person, I can’t just go “well, no, the fact that Dragon Quest Builders 2 saved me didn’t happen.” It did. And there are some people who may literally need that.

But to go “yes, I’m giving money to a bigot but i’m still a good person,” that pisses me the fuck off.

How dare you. Don’t try to con us, and yourself, going “yes I know this is bad but I am still good.” At least fucking own it, confront it. “Yes, I’m doing this, but things aren’t great for me now and it gives me comfort,” would be more fucking meaningful.

Instead, you stupid fucking assholes watch a billionaire punching down on a bunch of women and you go “i’m gonna help her do it, but I’m not a bad person!” You gave the gun to the murderer!

And whose side are you on? I’ll tell you, because your side came my way when I said that shit was fucked up.

The people who side with you are like the guy who told me, directly, that he thought trans people should die. Plenty of people straight up said they didn’t think trans people deserved to be treated like people. Others were ableist towards me. One guy ended up being the man who was let go from his position as CEO of Tripwire Interactive when he publicly announced that he was glad women were losing reproductive rights in Texas.

You say you’re an ally, but these are your allies — people who wish others dead. People who celebrate when women lose rights. People who hate.

So many people fired off “i’m gonna make you mad by BUYING this game that I don’t even care about.” Bro, I’m not mad at any of you. A bunch of you are so weak you hear “hey I’m disappointed in people I thought were worth respecting” and go “wow this is forcing me to waste money on a game I don’t care about.” How pathetic do you actually have to be that someone can control you simply by saying something random online?

Not me. I’m a strong enough person that if I want something, I get it. If I don’t want it, I don’t get it. I don’t let some random stranger online compel me to buy a game I didn’t want out of some bizarre contrarian weakness.

When you say “I know she’s a bigot, but…” just admit you’re being selfish. Just admit that. Be honest with yourself and with us. Don’t try to pretend you’re a good person when your allies aren’t the marginalized people you claim to care about. They’re literally actual nazis. One guy had “fanta” and “88” in his name. Claimed to be leftist but a cursory search of his twitter made it clear he was a nazi going for plausible deniability.

You can’t say “I am an ally” and then throw the people you claim are allies under the bus just because you’re so fucking shitty of a person that you can’t keep your hands off a fucking toy.

Fuck you.

You deserve far more venom than I have to give.

Stop pretending you’re a friend to the people you tread on and fix your shit or get the fuck out.

I don’t give a shit about the nazis. They’re the enemy. They suck. They will act as they do; I don’t get apoplectic when I see them buying the game. Of course they’re buying the game. They’re reactionary goddamn amoebas.

But you? You, the ones who say “well, I’m queer and I’m an ally…” or “I have an ally tattoo right next to my Harry Potter sleeve…” and then go spitting in the face of the people you claim to care about while siding with the fucking Nazis? Like actual factual bonafide fourteen words-using, 88-slinging, fanta-drinking, literally-stating-they-like-Hitler Nazis? Not “everyone who disagrees with you is a Nazi” Nazis, I mean guys who tattoo swastikas on themselves Nazis.

Fuck off. I thought you knew better.

—

PS: for those of you going “hmm, you say buying a TOY is bad because the person uses it to directly harm people by funding organizations and repeating propaganda that harms them… and yet you probably own clothing, and that clothing was probably made in a sweat shop… curious…”

I have two possible answers for this.

First, “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism” is a phrase that means “don’t set yourself on fire to keep your friends warm.” We know that in a capitalist society, plenty of capitalists are pretty shitty, and that much of the goods we need to survive, like groceries and clothing, come from less than ideal conditions. The phrase does not extend to luxury goods. You can refuse to buy a game from a person who supports bigotry. You can not refuse… clothing.

That’s the actual factual good answer. That’s the only one any of you need.

I am going to give the next answer because I think anyone who wants to try to be more ethical in their purchases might benefit from it. So here goes:

I actually do try to source what I buy entirely from the most sustainable, humane places I can. My winter coat, for instance, is made out of American buffalo fur that’s been brushed off them when buffalo naturally shed it. The companies I buy from, like Bombas, do things like donate one pair of clothes to homeless or lgbt charities for every pair sold.

Nearly all of them manufacture their clothes in the United States, which is… generally better than other countries for things like sweat shops, thanks to the minimum wage. Is it perfect? I dunno, but I do try to think about these things, and I do try to get the most ethical stuff I can. I have limited bandwidth, being disabled, but I do try.

Also, to the like, half dozen people who went “I bet you buy products from Nestle,” well, I do try as best I can to avoid buying anything from Nestle. I just looked up a list of Nestle products and I think the only Nestle product I bought was one I didn’t even know was Nestle: Stouffer’s lasanga. Cool, I’ll get a different brand. That’s not hard. Now I know.

It’s not hard to deny yourself some shit if you know it’s hurting people! It’s all optional shit! There are choices you can make! It is possible to try to be ethical — to claim “i am ethical but i’m not going to do anything ethical” is galling. That’s the fucking bullshit I’m intent on calling out.

Stop hurting the people around you out of selfishness. It shouldn’t be fucking hard to drop something purely optional like this! Ya’ll act like you need it more than oxygen. What the fuck is wrong with you?

I think if you’re momentarily weak and you do something, okay. But jesus fucking christ, enough with trying to pretend you’re great when all you have to show for it is that the people siding with you think women don’t deserve rights.

If you do something you know is wrong and that you know hurts people who have no call to be hurt, then you’re a fuckin jackass. Fuck yourself for trying to pretend otherwise. Be a better person. Stop fucking with people like this. Stop lying to yourself.

—

“What if people send death threats?”

I’ve been sent those before. It sucks. You shouldn’t send death threats to people. No shit. You can call a bigot a fucking asshole because the two things are synonymous. Don’t go around telling people to kill themselves, come on.

If you act indistinguishable from a nazi, people will confuse you for one. Even if it’s a joke. Better not to do that to avoid getting mistaken for that shit.

—

“I don’t want my money going to bigotry” Cool then don’t buy the game. Buy other games. Maybe buy indie games from trans creators instead or something?

—

“What if I used to be transphobic but I’m not now” That’s awesome! Growth is important. I’m one of those people who believes that people can change; I grew up in a deeply religious, conservative culture, and while I don’t think I ever did anything outright homophobic or transphobic — I certainly never used the F-slur — it’s entirely possible that without realizing it, I did and said shitty things! I’m not working towards any kind of redemption, because I’m unaware of having done anything particularly wrong, but there is the possibility of blind spots! I am doing my best in the here and now to be the best person I can be.

I’ve met people who feel like “well I can’t come back from this, so I’ll just double down on it…”

Look, think of good and bad like a product, something you actively manufacture. If the past you would have been shitty to a random passerby, but the present you will be good to them, then instead of going “i’m bad and people will hate me so I’m gonna keep being bad,” just… do good now. The random stranger will experience the good you are doing, not the bad that past you would’ve done.

You can work to be a better person, if you’re feeling as though you aren’t. It is possible. You can produce more good now. Don’t produce bad.

—

“You are swearing so you must be mad”

lol, no i just like swearing because it accentuates language, making it more pleasant to read. I’m a bit mad at the people who wrote the reviews.

—

“wait, so you only care about the hypocrites?”

No, it’s that I’m realistic. I think I can reach a person who is trying to excuse their bullshit when they KNOW it’s wrong. I don’t know how much I can reach a guy who literally wants to commit genocide.

I’m mad at the hypocrites because they know better. I don’t really feel shit about the Nazis. You can’t disappoint me if I already think you’re a stupid piece of shit. I don’t respect you enough to feel angry with you. I just think the world would be better without Nazis in it, due to all the data we have showing this exact thing.

—

“are you calling for a boycott?”

I don’t think it will work. This is like when I say “JRPGs aren’t RPGs.” I know I’m not able to generate enough critical mass to change culture at large, so I’m not trying to. I do think it’s possible to make the IP something that isn’t cool to hang around with, the same way that people made fun of Nickleback tho

—

“What if I pirate the game?”

Counterintuitively, piracy is a good thing for most people because people who like a game they pirate will talk about it, which will convince other people, through the dramatic power of word of mouth, to seek it out. Some of those people will buy it.

So… that’s obviously bad. You’d be talking about the game, and some people, people who were on the fence, will go buy it and spend money, even if you didn’t.

But… how weak do you have to be to go “oh I’ll get it and play it in secret” anyways? Come on. You got a spine. This is one game out of thousands this year, and it apparently isn’t even that good.

Also it’s denuvo so it’s a moot point. Game’s not getting cracked immediately without a huge fuckup on WB’s part.

—

“Won’t this hurt the developers?”

A perfect, prosperous team can be shut down depsite getting everything right. Underperformance doesn’t mean anything in that level of AAA.

—

“Right but don’t they get royalties?”

No, game developers almost never get royalties. There are some studios that get bonus payouts, but it’s not the most common thing in the world and it’s usually about review scores more than anything else.

The royalties go to the terf who’s said she’ll keep doing terf shit tho.

—

Here’s the logical path I think everyone should take when deciding things:

1. will my actions lead to harm of people who do not deserve harm? (if a serial killer points a knife at you, i would not complain if you pulled a gun on him. he wants you dead, defending yourself is totally reasonable)
2. can i avoid these actions? (i need to get to work; i’ll have to emit carbon to get there. that sucks but i will literally die if i can’t get paid for working)
3. can i mitigate any harm done?
4. would I want someone to do to me what I am doing to other people?

pretty fuckin simple