Good Game, Bad Dev

In today's politically charged atmosphere, I see a lot of false flags, slipping masks and lines drawn in the sand.  What if we were to change the scope in terms of timeframe and subject though?  This probably isn't much of a shock, but a lot of highly regarded art has been made by some really awful people.  For example, H.P. Lovecraft was one of the most influential horror writers of last century, but was also notoriously racist.  The same sort of thing holds true for video games and their respective developers.  Let's look at a few examples, shall we?

It's hard to overstate how popular Minecraft has become since it's initial early access build was made available to the general public back in May, 2009.  Since then, the mastermind behind the game (Markus "Notch" Persson) has become amazingly wealthy.  Ultimately, he decided to sell his game and development studio to Microsoft.  After taking his millions of dollars and retiring to a sprawling mansion in Beverly Hills, Notch began to earn a reputation for making misogynistic and racist remakes on social media.  Needless to say, this soured a lot of people's opinions of him to the point that Microsoft had all references to him removed from Minecraft (outside of the ending credits sequence).  A running joke on the internet is: when children ask who made Minecraft, the correct response should be "Hatsune Miku did."  That's how much Notch is disliked by fans of what once was his game.

Opposing Force was the first addition made to the original Half-life.  Coming in at approximately two-thirds the length of its progenitor, this stand-alone expansion featured a variety of new enemies, weapons and even some new gameplay mechanics, as well as different perspective on events at the Black Mesa Complex.  The online deathmatches were more enjoyable too.  So, who was behind this excellent fleshing out of the Half-life IP?  Why none other than Gearbox software with Randy Pitchford at the helm.  He is, by all accounts, one of the most sexist and abusive CEOs in the video game industry - right up there with the head of Ubisoft.  Calling the man a sleezeball might actually be a compliment.  Although, I do think that his nickname "Randy Pitchfraud" is well deserved.

Earthworm Jim, despite being panned by a number of critics, was one of my favorite games on the Sega Genesis (Mega Drive).  I like the sequel nearly as much as the original, and even met one of the artists who worked on the game in person.  Having said that, the creator, writer and director of Earthworm Jim 1 and 2, as well as the cartoon mini-series, is a really toxic individual by the name of Doug TenNapel.  Aside from being a massive transphobe and homophobe, he's been involved in an organized campaign against diversity in comic books.  Even the intensely conservative comedian, Mike Nelson (of MST3K fame) has cut all ties with the man and refuses to associate with him anymore.  I guess that Doug decided that being a vile bigot was more important than anything else.

At the beginning of this blogpost, I mentioned H.P. Lovecraft.  The thing about him is he has been dead for nearly a century.  He died penniless and forgotten with no children to carry on his name.  All his works a in the public domain, and he is not held up by any extremists groups as a champion of their cause.  He can't be "canceled" because there is nothing to cancel.  On the other hand the three individuals I've mentioned here are alive and well.  They have notable social followings and use their influence in the worst possible ways.  For those who want to fight the good fight don't waste time on a decaying corpse.  Instead, go after people that hide behind a shield of accomplishments while actively seeking to make the world a worse place for everyone.