maybe don't try to argue that orcs & fantasy races aren't written through a racist lens when I have listened to character art teams jokingly come up with racial slurs that the in-game races could use for each other surrounded & unchallenged by the entire rest of the dev team

Like, in the middle of a gathering of the whole team, surrounded by hr, management, etc. No one even acknowledging it. Just listening noticing it between conversations and pretending it's not happening in the middle of the room.

Thaaaaats game development!

Do you think that racist things are put into games because someone's hand slipped? No. It's because a bunch of people sit around a table and safely openly talk about the best way to make you *scared* of an NPC. And then everyone down the line chooses to or is pressured to oblige.

And whether the individuals were aware of what they were doing or not, that as happened thousands of times, is continuing to happen, and will continue to happen, because white game dev loves to hire their bro-y college friends that just laugh when they use slurs

I hated it the second that I entered AAA and didn't have the guts to challenge it in such an intense popularity/fame hierarchy but its part of why I left and part of why I don't want to go back. You can't fuckin breathe in a bubble that has run out of air.

But please literally never try to convince me that the whiteness of game development doesn't negatively impact the products. It EXTREMELY does as a result of our hiring habits and ostracization of POC as an industry. We need to focus on mentoring and amplifying new voices.

UGH

I will die on this fucking hill. Stand with POC game developers. Stand with black game developers.

And part of this means we as white artists and developers need to be honest and open witnesses to what we see behind "closed doors" aka in the middle of stand-up meetings