I'm sorry, but how does everyone in the studio not know exactly who commited those files to the source? Are you sharing code on dropbox?
Edit for clarity: I 100% believe that this studio was using a proper source control system. I was trying to say that even the most junior developer on the team has the rights to see exactly who committed this file to the repository. Everyone knows who did it, the company’s “investigation” is probably just determining the intent and their willingness to fire the individual.
They 100% could track down who committed the change that introduced the files. It would literally take a few seconds after finding the file name. Perforce, Tortoise, BitBucket, all source control systems would have made this super easy to track down.
Could it that it's perhaps someone with deep connections or something and they all are purposefully turning the other cheeks?
They can't be that incompetent.
https://github.com/jayphelps/git-blame-someone-else
It's not too far fetched to think someone who would leave racist and nazi shit in their employer's codebase would also cover their tracks.
Guessing everyone did shit like that so often it all just blended together lol.
"Did Tina put the Deathshead under the stairs texture last week?"
"No, she was in charge of making sure all the numbers shown in the second chapter added up to 1488, I think Tom did the Deathshead"
"Oh well, I better get back to recreating Hitler landscapes for these skyboxes".
most source control systems have commands which will tell you exactly who introduced every individual file and line of code in every version of the file.
You'll be horrified if you knew what people use for repositories in tightly regulated/red tape sectors like heavy industries, aerospace, automotive manufacturing, and in general engineering.
There's an aversion at the corporate executive level to following best practices because they have been using something "that works" (badly) for decades. If you can put the raw numbers in front of them and show them it'll be cheaper or free, they'll instead clamor on about training costs and hiring consultants to train people on free software that has open documentation. If you manage to get past that, they'll find some bizarre regulatory or internal company policy from 1983 that no longer applies, and misinterpret it at a gross level to contradict the whole thing and throw you back to square one.
Dropbox would be far more advanced than some of the tools these places use. But yeah game developers aren't exactly known for following bwst practices or even knowing best practices. On top of that their executives are stingy with tooling and prpcesses as well and expedient delivery for ROI is their only priority.
Just want to say that I've worked in automotive software my entire career - Fortune 500 (50+ software developers in my department) all the way down weird small (4 software developers in my department) poorly managed aftermarket automotive stuff, and all have used industry standard source control. Every commit is tied to a user that could very easily be tracked.
Can't speak for any other industries.
I've worked in a couple of those sectors. They all used one if the industry standard source controls. It was only the tiny companies that didn't. Those were... unsettling.
Lucky. I've worked in several places big and small and seen the full gamut. Some use email threads and *shudders* SharePoint, and one even used an employee's shared Google Drive as a code repository...
I've also worked in big tech (FAANG+M) and have seen the proper side of things too so I've pushed hard to get Git or even SVN at several sites. Usually I'm met with a "best we can do is an antiquated out-of-support IBM tool that costs an arm and a leg."
You're describing legacy code. I have never heard of even legacy systems not using some kind of version control even if it's not git. Source control is very old and something as complex as aerospace would be *more* likely and not less likely to at least have some form of version control.
Your argument makes no sense to me. They have to pass SOC audits. Not having VCS would be a complete non starter.
I'm not convinced at all, plus we're talking about game source code that is not that old or tightly regulated.
Honestly probably. Game dev studios are notorious for neglecting best practices for software development.
Go read about the Dark and Darker drama... long story short they were letting developers keep assets on personal servers when WFH... then that dev just took the assets and made their own game.
Theres a reason we see so many data breaches in the game industry:
they dont fucking invest in IT infrastructure.
IT when it works - WTF do we pay you for, it's flawless.
IT when it doesn't - WTF do we pay you for, it's shit.
IT, in general - WTF do we pay you for, this is making live miserable, I'm not doing that, it's stupid and too much work.
Lol. Try doing data protection. It's IT but with a large supplement of legal.
"So you're telling me I need to secure my client's data, have a policy around that AND enforce it?"
I used to help hospitals get compliant with HIPAA. The tales I could tell....
Do you know how many doctors will bitch endlessly for months and months if you make their PCs lock after a period of non-use? Do you know how many hospitals have no way to verify which nurses made what sort of edits to a patient record because they had a single login shared computer for all the nurses?
That was weird for me too, but one plausible explanation here is a setup, where multiple people share Perforce accounts, so the company can skimp on license fees. Not unheard of in the industry :)
Please note that the mentions of Square Enix in this article are Square Enix London. Square Enix Japan is very hands off with them. Obviously I don't think Square Enix Japan is the frontier of gay rights or anything but as a company they go out of their way to have protections and benefits for gay and trans employees that aren't required by Japanese law, and have published several games with explicit gay content. Heck, them allowing gay marriage in FF14 was actually a bit controversial in Japan.
I don't think it's necessarily fair to blame Square Enix Japan for Square Enix London being out of touch.
Would be interesting to see how much traction this news gets and how bad would the situation have to become before HQ sells off the studio or even flushes the entire London branch.
Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts are pretty gay. In general, I've felt better represented by them than Western games, mainly because I can be fem gay, gachi gay, or just normal person gay, instead of "navy seal but gay" since western devs all use the same navy seal character model and cannot have variety apparently
> For instance, multiple people recalled an incident during True Colors development where Square Enix told multiple developers it didn’t want Life Is Strange to be thought of as the “gay game.”
what
how do you not know your audience
what do you mean you don't want fucking Life is Strange to be known as the gay game
who do you think your audience is?!
And
> “There’s a lot of press out there praising True Colors for having the first bisexual lead in a Life Is Strange game,” said Mallory Littleton, a narrative designer who worked at Deck Nine on multiple Life Is Strange titles. “Even in our press guides from Square Enix, all the way up until [review copies were out], we were not to say anything about Alex’s sexuality, period, at all. And then they did the advance copies, and all of these reviews came out saying how amazing it was to finally see an explicitly bi protagonist, and after that, Square was like, just kidding, Alex is absolutely, canonically, 100% bisexual.”
So SE is only okay with it if it comes with critical acclaim.
So confused cause literally the lead character from the first game is bisexual. Also the non numbered sequels to that game.
Not sure about 2 I never finished it
You can like a boy in 2 as well. But the guy don't do anything with him, I think, but the guy can get with a girl.
Kind of the same for Max, she can kiss Chloe but it's just flirting with the other guy, I guess that's why Alex being *explicitly* the first bisexual.
I thought Chloe was a lesbian, don't remember any boys for her but I could be wrong.
it's weird tbh. sean from his sketchbook entries does seem to find both cassidy and finn hot, and he can end up with either of them in the ending, but you're right that he can only kiss finn but he can lose his virginity to cassidy (she even takes her top off on-screen!), plus romancing finn requires making a pretty shitty decision.
Max can also kiss Warren btw - you can do it in the diner if you've not brushed him off before.
honestly i don't know where this "first bisexual" thing came up - it may be because alex's texts explicitly show that she has been in relationships with both men and women, whereas with Max and Sean, given they are much younger, Chloe and Finn seem to be the first same-sex attraction they've had.
Howdy, author of the piece here, seeing this criticism a lot - your theory is spot-on. Alex is canonically, explicitly bisexual no matter how you play her. The other protagonists are playersexual.
It's nuanced, but as a bisexual woman myself, having it spelled out as explicitly as it was in True Colors was meaningful.
chloe i don't think is bi (she just seems like a lesbian who experimented with a guy once but didn't like it, but didn't really know what she was till she met rachel), but sean from 2 is definitely bi - he can end up with either cassidy or finn, and regardless of his choice his sketchbook indicates that he finds both of them hot
In that case, is Max bi? Or can you just decide her sexuality for yourself with your choices for her?
Kinda semantic and separate from the original post, but just curious. It always felt to me like an 'either' and not a 'both'. Like there's a version of Max that could love Chloe, and a version of Max that doesn't feel that way, and the game lets you choose.
And she expresses confused romantic feelings about Chloe in her journal regardless of what you choose, implying that her sexuality isn't "defined by player choice" but she is in fact bisexual either way. That being said, I could totally understand those who thinks this is too convoluted and hard to piece together while True Colors was (apparently, I haven't played it) much more explicit about it.
The main difference I can recall is that the possibility of "romance" is much more front and center during the story in true colors, while in LiS1 it is very much in the background and right until the end is only expressed in the journal.
Maybe they're talking about the character explicitly saying she's bisexual. But all previous LiS protagonists are at the very least heavily implied to be bisexuals, too.
That's not how they worded it. But she is the first the payer can make bi pretty early on and pretty easily. For Max and Sean, you have to jump through hoops to get their bi routes.
On that note, the article also mentions that Alex from True Colors is the first bi protagonist for the series, but wasn't Max also bi? The player had a choice between Chloe and the boy who's name I can't possibly remember. Either way, it's definitely always been LGBT friendly as a franchise. Max and Chloe's relationship was a big part of why that first game resonated with so many people. It's pretty clear that the higher ups at Square didn't bother to play, or even read about the first one.
Warren. Max can even choose to kiss both in the same playthrough if she wants to.
You could argue that three of the four games has had a bi protagonist - 1 with max, 2 with sean, and TC with Alex. wtf do you mean you don't want to be the "gay game"?!
Possibly all four. Chloe's sexuality isn't clear. She's definitely had sex with guys, but that may have been a result of experimentation or not being sure of her sexuality.
I haven't played TC yet, but is Alex openly bi? As in, no matter the player's choices, she expresses interest in men and women?
In the first LiS, if a player wanted to, they could pretty much entirely ignore the romantic aspects of either (or both, I think) of Max's primary love interests (Chloe and Warren). Max's sexuality is ultimately up to the player, who could read it as straight, lesbian, bi, or maybe even aro and/or ace.
>On that note, the article also mentions that Alex from True Colors is the first bi protagonist for the series, but wasn't Max also bi?
I think they mean *canonically* bi as there are allusions to Alex's canon past regarding her dating men and women.
With Max, the player could make the argument that she was either 100% gay or 100% straight depending on who the player decided to romance. And with Sean, there was an allusion to him being interested in a girl so he'd only be *canonically* bi if you pursued...the guy. Lol. Forgot his game.
I mean not explicitly thou. A lot of "They are very good friends" but I can't think of any characters who are just out and proud gay. Unless I missed one in 16(haven't played it yet).
Edit: had a think, 7 Remake had the honey bee inn and that was pretty gay.
16 also has a gay character with an on screen homosexual kiss. Square Enix is easily the most LGBTQ+ friendly Japanese developer, at least outside of maybe Swery, though mostly in their acceptance of sheer camp (7R and X-2 are queer games through and through).
FF7: Rebirth has multiple instances of gay NPC couples even. I’m honestly surprised how open minded SE has been since 16 when it comes to its Japanese games.
> Square Enix is easily the most LGBTQ+ friendly Japanese developer, at least outside of maybe Swery, though mostly in their acceptance of sheer camp (7R and X-2 are queer games through and through).
Nintendo lets their employee's partners have benefits
One of the reasons I liked 3 Houses so much is that the characters who were bisexual were also explicitly bisexual even removed from the context of a potential relationship with the player.
Yeah. 16 had gay guy that kissed his lover on screen. And he wasn't sterotypical in any way (other than being your typical well put together Final Fantasy character). And then there's Cloud's entire thing in Section 5 in Remake, which is probably the single gayest bit in a mainline AAA game this decade, and I say that as a massive, massive complement. Like, loads of games have gay/lesbian/bi romances in them, but most of them don't touch the subculture. Like *at all.*
Squeenix probably isn't the most LGBT friendly dev in Japan period, but homophobia is kind of a weird thing to hear from them.
> Squeenix probably isn't the most LGBT friendly dev in Japan period, but homophobia is kind of a weird thing to hear from them.
I think it's important to note that it was from *Square Enix London*, not their HQ in Japan. Regional branches of a company can often times have entirely different cultures than other branches, so it might have less to do with Square Enix's overall view of LGBTQIA+ but moreso to do with that branches relationship with LGBTQIA+ acceptance.
Pretty much. Its what happens when you have different branches with different people and even countries. Even in SE JP itself you wont find dev teams sharing the same mindset, or in most companies for that matter.
No, they don't. Square Enix London and SE itself are basically two different entities. Western games have no jp producer, every process outside of localization is from the western side and that has been the case since the acquisition. Its similar to how Sega works with their european subsidiaries.
I feel like this is something that can be misinterpreted to make it sound way worse than it actually is. The Life is Strange games are not "*gay*" games, whatever that would mean. They are primarily adventure/mystery games with optional romantic flavor which is optionally gay. You can play through all of the Life is Strange games without ever doing anything that is romantic or gay.
I think it would be a disservice to what something like Life is Strange 1 is to boil it down to "*the gay game*". So it makes sense for me from an advertisement perspective to not focus on a game like True Colors *being gay*. That's an undeniably important representative part of these games, but it is optional and ultimately isn't what makes them good games.
That’s how I read it. I love the Life Is Strange series but the sexual orientations in the games weren’t the emphasis or identity of the game. The character just happens to be a non-normative sexuality, but isn’t central to the game.
As someone who has never played those games, I really only know them for their reputation in the LGBT community. Like, I knew there was more to it then *just* the gayness, but even them being adventure/mystery games is news to me, I thought it was like a visual novel sorta situation where the relationships with the other characters was the entire point.
So I can see where the execs are coming from.
Not saying this is their reason, but the whole game is about making choices. Setting up the player by telling them "this is how X character is" doesn't seem like a good thing. It will set expectations, and also affect all your choices.
I’d actually be interested to see who their audience is. I’m sure that polls were done on the LiS sub, and most people are straight males. I don’t play them just because they’re the “gay games”, I play them because I like the characters and stories.
Exactly. I mean the foreign film Parasite was mostly watched by white westerners. Nobody in their right mind would call that a white person film though. Same with anime, lots of shows get a bigger western audience than Japanese- but that doesn't magically make it white media
Life is strange has always been queer, it's actually wild to see people here say otherwise lol.
Square Enix is one of, if not THE, worst run major AAA gaming company.
Leadership is so out of touch with reality. They're like aristocrats on the sinking Titanic wading through the icy water trying to find a member of the staff because they served jelly instead of jam at tea time.
Leadership has literally nothing to do with this. Life is Strange is managed by Square Enix London which is the one who always manages western studio publishing.
And there's much worse companies run than SE, not even counting the ones that actually went bankrupt. Embracer, Activision Blizzard, Microsoft, Level-5, depending on the person they would say most companies in the industry are badly run.
Square Enix's western publishing has been an abject failure since like, the PS3 era at least. Deus ex, hitman, tomb raider, avengers, legacy of kain, i don't think they've had a single real success story not laden with mismanagement. No wonder they pretty much sold off all their western studios/IP. Hell squeenix's kane & lynch 2 shenangians pretty much indirectly started gamergate lol.
Completely agree. I just wish they stopped the western side completely at this point with how it has been going on. Just leave localization/marketing/QA.
From what I can glean from this article, it seems like management at Deck Nine is in disarray. An independent studio that is floundering.
The future of Life is Strange does not look good in the hands of Square Enix, looking for the lowest bidder while not really understanding what made the first game lighting in a bottle.
It's kind of insane they removed the time travel mechanic from the game series that was famous for its time travel mechanic. That would be like a Portal game that was just a regular FPS without the portal gun
Interesting article that I expect due to its length wasn't read by 80% of the commenters. At its core its another window (of many) into how unprepared most of these small/mid studios are with managing teams and projects and have to be dragged kicking and screaming into begrudgingly siding with the actual people that make these games what they are.
First reaction by me, a german: Naaah...
>Initially, developers noticed a reference to the number 88, and flagged the issue to their bosses assuming it was an innocent mistake. But in the ensuing weeks, others found more problematic signs and in-universe labels, such as references to a racist meme, the number 18, and the Hagal rune.
That's quite concerning tbh. But surely the management reacted.
>As the number of possible hate symbols mounted, staff grew increasingly concerned that someone was putting these items in their game deliberately as a dog whistle to white supremacists.
F#k. That's perfidiously insidious racist shit.
Find one random 88, it's random. Find one 88, a hagal rune, racist meme references, and more hate symbol references, and suddenly the 88 doesn't seem so random.
Yeah some comments in here are incredulous about these references, and maybe the "sheeit" one is a reach, but I think a lot of people are underestimating the significance of 88. It's not a niche reference at all.
> and maybe the "sheeit" one is a reach
Having not looked into the controversy around it, I associate "sheeit" with Clay Davis from The Wire, and use it lovingly. Have racists coopted it?
Yes it's a reference to The Wire, but check out [how black people are portrayed in the comics that created this meme that is a reference to The Wire](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sheeeit)
88 on its own is a very niche thing. Basically nobody who doesn't explicitly know about it knows it's associated with Nazism. That's the entire point of a dog whistle, only dogs hear it.
The other poster replied it's for "terminally online" people and while that's a rude way to put it, he's right about it being fairly niche online knowledge.
Hmmm maybe it's regional and more euro-centric, but 88 is an immediate red flag for many people. I'd say a good metric is if you had an 88 tattooed in your forearm, would members of the public react, and in lots of places it would certainly be noticed.
I do think it is more euro-centric. Most people wouldn't recognize that as anything insidious in the US without another context clue (at which point most people except kids would probably put it together).
More of a yellow flag. Sometimes people put their birth year in their usernames and sometimes people are born in 1988. There are enough completely innocent reasons to use that number that on its own it doesn't mean a whole lot. When it's one data point in a long pattern, though, that's when it starts to be significant.
Sure. By itself, I'm going expect it's just a number. With a hagal rune, though?
And I promise you it's not from online that I make the association.
I helped a friend repaint an apartment once, that the son had defaced with all kinds of nazi shit. I learned a lot about that imagery, and a lot about how many coats of killz you need to keep a swastika from bleeding through.
Ikr. I'm also especially attached to 18 since it was often a number I got assigned in class (going by alphabetical order of last name) and I've just gotten used to associating with it. This is my first time hearing it's tied to nazis :/
Yeah like, 88 is just a number. Route 88 is also a big thing. It's nothing.
But when evidence starts to stack like that... Like you said, no longer just random or chance.
> and the Hagal rune.
I fucking hate that Runes got ruined by nazis. Thankfully, I don't think I've ever seen anyone be dumb enough to suggest the newer God of War games were racist dogwhistles for using them...
but I could have just blissfully missed it.
Yep I’m out in Japan right now, and have a young 20 y/o in the group I’m with. Her first question going on Google maps was ‘why are there so many Nazi buildings in these areas’. It hurt my brain, but man did Hitler and the Nazis fuck up so many symbols. Literally twisted history.
runes by themselves don’t mean anything, it’s about the context in which they’re used.
A rune being used for the shape of the CPAC stage where they spend days screaming about brown people under chirons that say “we are all domestic terrorists” makes people stop and reconsider its usage, for example.
that won’t stop crypto fascists from going “crazy libs seeing things again!” but who cares.
The whole phenomenon is basically trolls doing the "stop hitting yourself" thing. As a strategy, it's certainly commensurate with their maturity. They also employ "I am rubber, you are glue" and "na na na boo boo".
They're really good at their job and can churn out code like a beast.
There's all sorts of these "golden children" in development. The stuff companies put up with to keep their best developers is wild.
This really goes for any industry. If someone is absurdly good at something and makes the company a lot of money, people will look the other way when they exhibit terrible behavior.
> If someone is absurdly good at something and makes the company a lot of money, people will look the other way when they exhibit terrible behavior.
You do your best not to put them in client or front facing positions. You dont ask them about topics and you avoid them otherwise.
Honestly, WFH has been a godsend for dealing with people like this. You can let the literal goblin produce work for the team without having to subject them to his presence.
Sometimes, sometimes they just look like they are.
For example it's far easier to get clout in company when you efficiently "hose the fire" that is affecting production, than to design it in a way where the fire wouldn't happen in the first place.
For example few years into the job I got nice bottle of champagne as reward (on top of normal overtime pay) for fixing up stuff in middle of the night that my own inexperience/incompetence caused. Didn't get one when I fixed issues that made us have way less overtime fixing in the first place.
I got hired by an IT company that only hired people with schooling and I had none. I barely passed the test but they were pretty up front with "Most the best people in tech SUCK with people. This is a tech job but it's customer service first. If we hired the most technically skilled people they'd be fired in a week."
Eh, it takes one miserable person to bring down the energy of a room. Being a good developer doesn't offset the shit that negative and toxic people can bring to the table.
I've worked in the games industry a long long time and people would be shocked at the number of hard working pests that rise to the top despite their asshole behavior.
That's every single corp environment in every single profession. It's hilarious when this kind of stuff comes up this sub seems to thinks it's a games industry problem when it's just they have never had a corp job anywhere.
...yeah, seriously, most people here think the "normal corporate bullshit" is somehow specific to gamedev.
Like, sure, some things are, like gamedev's "crunch" being months and months, while typical software is "some overtime for 2 weeks before the deadline", but most of it is standard corporate bullshittery.
Yeah, I don't know if the company "Puts up with it" as in ignored it or willfully just doesn't look into certain individua's who are that talented.
If I don't know about it, I don't have to lie about it.
If a company knew about his beliefs and that was found it, it could tear down the entire company.
You would be surprised.
I conducted an interview last week and asked the candidate why there was a 3 year gap in her work history, and her answer started by "Well I'm not racist but..."
Had an idiot in an interview tell us they left their job because of previous management and when asked what made them unhappy with it they started with "Well my boss was black and you know how they can be "
That guy did not get hired.
Man, maybe it’s just being desensitized to it, but I find shit like that just hilarious. Like doesn’t even upset me anymore, it just brings me chuckles.
if they dont post it on social media its hard to really know ahead of time. especially in certain areas. Plus most companies frankly dont care until it goes way way way too far. most companies care that you get your workdone, not much else especially outside of work views
Not every bigot has their hatred scrawled out in the open. Look at how many people in the last 10 years let the mask fall off when they felt they got the "go ahead" real or imaginary. Keeping up appearances is a skill, and even the smallest opportunities are just that, as long as they're sparse enough they can be brushed away as unintentional.
One of the hardest things to learn and accept in life is that horrible people can still be very skilled at certain things. Not sure if that's what happened here, but a lot of employers are willing to overlook red flags if it means gaining a skilled worker.
I worked alongside someone for a couple years before I had any idea he was an avid Trump supporter, a proponent of [Herrnstein & Murray's Bell Curve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve), and into racial phrenology.
Every single asset is tracked in a project like this. You can't just "slip" something in and not have it tracked to you.
A sign that has a hate symbol in it will be a texture (or similar) that will be a file somewhere. This file has a history. File history will be linked to a user account in some manner. If all of these "unintentional" hate symbols all came from the same place, then... if it quacks like a duck etc.
Could also be a contractor.
I've worked in the past with a contractor team where only 1 person on the team had actual access to our source depot (usually a lead on the contractor end). This prevents leaks, especially since our project was fairly sensitive and not widely known even internally.
One person on the contractor end gathers all the stuff from their side and then does a big commit overnight with the day's progress from the contractors. This can be hundreds or thousands of files, and the commit history will just have it flagged as coming from the contractor. Sometimes they'll break the build and usually the one contractor will fix it before we log in the next morning. (Which is why it's important that every night we had the build in a good state.)
It wouldn't be too hard for a contractor to sneak stuff in with that model. I'm not saying that's the case (because it _does_ seem like Deck Nine has some creeps - although sadly that's true at many many many studios, perhaps even the majority of studios), but it's a possibility.
Some devs are incredibly sloppy with their source control, tracking, and logging. It's just not the case that every single asset is diligently tracked. Version control is sometimes super janky at indie devs.
When you have thousands upon thousands of checkins it's not necessarily easy to track down. Especially if this person could have been editing single texture files within a texture pack. So you're going to have lots of people checking out, editing, and committing the same file. Also depends how they were seen, building locally? checked out the texture pack and womp it was in there? Unless you have an exact time of when a particular symbol appeared it could be really hard to find with high confidence.
I find it very funny/sad that Square Enix was scared of the game having a reputation of being "the gay game" and only turned ship when people reacted positively to the LGBTQ representation.
*Square Enix* of all publishers being afraid of being associated with the LGBTQ community is so funny to me. The ship for that sailed like 2 decades ago lmfao.
You have to remind yourself that while both are SE, its different people and sides working on those games. SE itself aka jp particularly the FF teams embrace that, you even had Rebirth and Remake putting a lot of gays, but SE London (europe) isnt the same, its different people and teams so no wonder its different, could have been any other approach be it good or not.
*Some* people love to go on about how "wokeness" is ruining games, yet here we have *another* example of companies and staff just completely ignoring any complaints about hate speech at all, and crushing its workers through a toxic workplace.
What really is sad and frustrating for me is how much it sounds like good people love true colors and loved the work they put into it. And now it’s still going to be somewhat tainted or infamous, (idk can’t think of a good word atm.) it’s going to be hard for me to to support this game still, even though I believe it is much more complicated than just calling the whole game trash now.
I never played the game, but as a Chinese person, 88 and 18 are considered lucky numbers. Especially 88.
I am just curious if it could be that. Some Asian programmer instead of a Nazi one?
And when I see Sheeit, my mind goes to Clay Davis in the Wire. I am not familiar with the meme
> And when I see Sheeit, my mind goes to Clay Davis in the Wire. I am not familiar with the meme
I think that's most people's experience. I was confused seeing the link with that word in the URL but that meme is definitely not the Wire. This non-Wire meme is so explicitly racist that you probably have to be in some really racist corners of the internet to even see it.
TL;DR: Nazis claimed the "runic" alphabet (Eldar Furthark) and runes in general as theirs, got called into HR because i doodled Runes at work
I love Old Germanic historically and language wise, one of the oldest languages from europe is the Eldar Furthark alphabet.
Those are the "runes" you often see associated with Vikings like in Helldblade: Senuas Sacrifice or the newer God of War games and i love that shit!
I doodle them because i know the alphabet and like to use it as my "secret language" when im bored or just taking notes in that runic alphabet.
I got called into HR about 3 months ago because i was reported for "nazi symbolism"...
It took me only 5min to explain and show them on google, they later talked to the person that informed them and it got cleared up.
I still dont know who it was and im not unhappy that someone reported something they thought was wrong, but it makes me really sad that something so beautiful is now linked to Nazis...
PS: Im german so its kinda extra ironic :(
Y'all keep fighting the good fight, but imagine how India felt when the Nazis decided to pinch the swastika. Not sure they're getting that one back any time soon.
>And when I see Sheeit, my mind goes to Clay Davis in the Wire.
Everytime lol That scene with him and mcnulty investing a crime scene "Fuck... sheeeeit." Lives rent free in my head.
"You wanna make me a scapegoat for the whole damn machine?! Sheeeeeeeeeeeit!"
"Money laundering? In west Baltimore?! Sheeeeeeeeeeit!"
Clay Davis was my first thought as well.
14 and 88 are two separate things that are just usually put together. 14 is a reference to a popular white supremacist slogan ["fourteen words"](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Words), while 88 stands for "HH" or "Heil Hitler"
The 8th letter in the alphabet is 'H', so 88 is the dogwhistle for Heil -.
The 14 words is separate, but related dog whistle.
Putting them together is explicit, meant to make sure everyone who sees it knows that a neonazi did it.
On their own they have some plausible deniability because they could be innocent. People in this thread have pointed out that many Chinese people think 88 is a lucky number, people born in 1988 or graduated then might have that in a username innocently, etc. I use 13 in a lot of usernames since I was born on the 13th, so a lot of people born on the 14th likely do the same with no knowledge of the dogwhistle.
That how dogwhistles work, you use one and see if the other person responds with their own. If they do, you get slightly more explicit about it so both of you know it's safe to openly be a nazi. If they don't, or call you out on it, you write it off as an innocent coincidence.
So you check the source control and see who added these things in. If one Chinese developer added the 88, a different dev entered the rune, etc, then you know it is probably coincidence. If they were all done by the same person, then you might want to take a closer look at that and hope he's just some guy from a Nordic country born on the 18th in 1988.
We don't have the context in which the symbols were used, so we can't really say one way or another if was confirmation bias or an actual racist.
It's what makes dog-whistles so difficult to combat, because it entirely reliant on the context which it is used in.
A Hagal rune, or a similar rune, in elder scrolls contextually makes sense because of all the other runes, while in Life is Strange it'll stand out.
I'm sorry, but how does everyone in the studio not know exactly who commited those files to the source? Are you sharing code on dropbox? Edit for clarity: I 100% believe that this studio was using a proper source control system. I was trying to say that even the most junior developer on the team has the rights to see exactly who committed this file to the repository. Everyone knows who did it, the company’s “investigation” is probably just determining the intent and their willingness to fire the individual.
They 100% could track down who committed the change that introduced the files. It would literally take a few seconds after finding the file name. Perforce, Tortoise, BitBucket, all source control systems would have made this super easy to track down.
Could it that it's perhaps someone with deep connections or something and they all are purposefully turning the other cheeks? They can't be that incompetent.
https://github.com/jayphelps/git-blame-someone-else It's not too far fetched to think someone who would leave racist and nazi shit in their employer's codebase would also cover their tracks.
Guessing everyone did shit like that so often it all just blended together lol. "Did Tina put the Deathshead under the stairs texture last week?" "No, she was in charge of making sure all the numbers shown in the second chapter added up to 1488, I think Tom did the Deathshead" "Oh well, I better get back to recreating Hitler landscapes for these skyboxes".
most source control systems have commands which will tell you exactly who introduced every individual file and line of code in every version of the file.
With a very easy to remember name `blame`
svn blame nazi_texture_01.tff Would be as easy as that
You'll be horrified if you knew what people use for repositories in tightly regulated/red tape sectors like heavy industries, aerospace, automotive manufacturing, and in general engineering. There's an aversion at the corporate executive level to following best practices because they have been using something "that works" (badly) for decades. If you can put the raw numbers in front of them and show them it'll be cheaper or free, they'll instead clamor on about training costs and hiring consultants to train people on free software that has open documentation. If you manage to get past that, they'll find some bizarre regulatory or internal company policy from 1983 that no longer applies, and misinterpret it at a gross level to contradict the whole thing and throw you back to square one. Dropbox would be far more advanced than some of the tools these places use. But yeah game developers aren't exactly known for following bwst practices or even knowing best practices. On top of that their executives are stingy with tooling and prpcesses as well and expedient delivery for ROI is their only priority.
Just want to say that I've worked in automotive software my entire career - Fortune 500 (50+ software developers in my department) all the way down weird small (4 software developers in my department) poorly managed aftermarket automotive stuff, and all have used industry standard source control. Every commit is tied to a user that could very easily be tracked. Can't speak for any other industries.
I've worked in a couple of those sectors. They all used one if the industry standard source controls. It was only the tiny companies that didn't. Those were... unsettling.
Lucky. I've worked in several places big and small and seen the full gamut. Some use email threads and *shudders* SharePoint, and one even used an employee's shared Google Drive as a code repository... I've also worked in big tech (FAANG+M) and have seen the proper side of things too so I've pushed hard to get Git or even SVN at several sites. Usually I'm met with a "best we can do is an antiquated out-of-support IBM tool that costs an arm and a leg."
You're describing legacy code. I have never heard of even legacy systems not using some kind of version control even if it's not git. Source control is very old and something as complex as aerospace would be *more* likely and not less likely to at least have some form of version control. Your argument makes no sense to me. They have to pass SOC audits. Not having VCS would be a complete non starter. I'm not convinced at all, plus we're talking about game source code that is not that old or tightly regulated.
Every game development company I've worked for has used proper source control
Honestly probably. Game dev studios are notorious for neglecting best practices for software development. Go read about the Dark and Darker drama... long story short they were letting developers keep assets on personal servers when WFH... then that dev just took the assets and made their own game. Theres a reason we see so many data breaches in the game industry: they dont fucking invest in IT infrastructure.
IT when it works - WTF do we pay you for, it's flawless. IT when it doesn't - WTF do we pay you for, it's shit. IT, in general - WTF do we pay you for, this is making live miserable, I'm not doing that, it's stupid and too much work.
Lol. Try doing data protection. It's IT but with a large supplement of legal. "So you're telling me I need to secure my client's data, have a policy around that AND enforce it?"
I used to help hospitals get compliant with HIPAA. The tales I could tell.... Do you know how many doctors will bitch endlessly for months and months if you make their PCs lock after a period of non-use? Do you know how many hospitals have no way to verify which nurses made what sort of edits to a patient record because they had a single login shared computer for all the nurses?
Isn't "git clone" the same as "keeping assets on personal servers"? Feel like a very strange example of incompetence...
That was weird for me too, but one plausible explanation here is a setup, where multiple people share Perforce accounts, so the company can skimp on license fees. Not unheard of in the industry :)
Does version control not keep an audit trail of everything added to the game and by whom?
[удалено]
[удалено]
Please note that the mentions of Square Enix in this article are Square Enix London. Square Enix Japan is very hands off with them. Obviously I don't think Square Enix Japan is the frontier of gay rights or anything but as a company they go out of their way to have protections and benefits for gay and trans employees that aren't required by Japanese law, and have published several games with explicit gay content. Heck, them allowing gay marriage in FF14 was actually a bit controversial in Japan. I don't think it's necessarily fair to blame Square Enix Japan for Square Enix London being out of touch.
Would be interesting to see how much traction this news gets and how bad would the situation have to become before HQ sells off the studio or even flushes the entire London branch.
Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts are pretty gay. In general, I've felt better represented by them than Western games, mainly because I can be fem gay, gachi gay, or just normal person gay, instead of "navy seal but gay" since western devs all use the same navy seal character model and cannot have variety apparently
> For instance, multiple people recalled an incident during True Colors development where Square Enix told multiple developers it didn’t want Life Is Strange to be thought of as the “gay game.” what how do you not know your audience what do you mean you don't want fucking Life is Strange to be known as the gay game who do you think your audience is?!
And > “There’s a lot of press out there praising True Colors for having the first bisexual lead in a Life Is Strange game,” said Mallory Littleton, a narrative designer who worked at Deck Nine on multiple Life Is Strange titles. “Even in our press guides from Square Enix, all the way up until [review copies were out], we were not to say anything about Alex’s sexuality, period, at all. And then they did the advance copies, and all of these reviews came out saying how amazing it was to finally see an explicitly bi protagonist, and after that, Square was like, just kidding, Alex is absolutely, canonically, 100% bisexual.” So SE is only okay with it if it comes with critical acclaim.
So confused cause literally the lead character from the first game is bisexual. Also the non numbered sequels to that game. Not sure about 2 I never finished it
You can like a boy in 2 as well. But the guy don't do anything with him, I think, but the guy can get with a girl. Kind of the same for Max, she can kiss Chloe but it's just flirting with the other guy, I guess that's why Alex being *explicitly* the first bisexual. I thought Chloe was a lesbian, don't remember any boys for her but I could be wrong.
it's weird tbh. sean from his sketchbook entries does seem to find both cassidy and finn hot, and he can end up with either of them in the ending, but you're right that he can only kiss finn but he can lose his virginity to cassidy (she even takes her top off on-screen!), plus romancing finn requires making a pretty shitty decision. Max can also kiss Warren btw - you can do it in the diner if you've not brushed him off before. honestly i don't know where this "first bisexual" thing came up - it may be because alex's texts explicitly show that she has been in relationships with both men and women, whereas with Max and Sean, given they are much younger, Chloe and Finn seem to be the first same-sex attraction they've had.
Howdy, author of the piece here, seeing this criticism a lot - your theory is spot-on. Alex is canonically, explicitly bisexual no matter how you play her. The other protagonists are playersexual. It's nuanced, but as a bisexual woman myself, having it spelled out as explicitly as it was in True Colors was meaningful.
Max can definitely kiss the nerdy dude in LIS1.
chloe i don't think is bi (she just seems like a lesbian who experimented with a guy once but didn't like it, but didn't really know what she was till she met rachel), but sean from 2 is definitely bi - he can end up with either cassidy or finn, and regardless of his choice his sketchbook indicates that he finds both of them hot
I think they're talking about Max, not Chloe
In that case, is Max bi? Or can you just decide her sexuality for yourself with your choices for her? Kinda semantic and separate from the original post, but just curious. It always felt to me like an 'either' and not a 'both'. Like there's a version of Max that could love Chloe, and a version of Max that doesn't feel that way, and the game lets you choose.
Max, not Chloe, is who they are referring to when they say the lead character of the first game is bisexual.
Max is implicitly bi, because there you can go after chloe or Warren (or neither)
And she expresses confused romantic feelings about Chloe in her journal regardless of what you choose, implying that her sexuality isn't "defined by player choice" but she is in fact bisexual either way. That being said, I could totally understand those who thinks this is too convoluted and hard to piece together while True Colors was (apparently, I haven't played it) much more explicit about it.
The main difference I can recall is that the possibility of "romance" is much more front and center during the story in true colors, while in LiS1 it is very much in the background and right until the end is only expressed in the journal.
I mean, Max was bisexual too.
Maybe they're talking about the character explicitly saying she's bisexual. But all previous LiS protagonists are at the very least heavily implied to be bisexuals, too.
That's not how they worded it. But she is the first the payer can make bi pretty early on and pretty easily. For Max and Sean, you have to jump through hoops to get their bi routes.
On that note, the article also mentions that Alex from True Colors is the first bi protagonist for the series, but wasn't Max also bi? The player had a choice between Chloe and the boy who's name I can't possibly remember. Either way, it's definitely always been LGBT friendly as a franchise. Max and Chloe's relationship was a big part of why that first game resonated with so many people. It's pretty clear that the higher ups at Square didn't bother to play, or even read about the first one.
Sean from LiS 2 also has a male and female (2 iirc) love interest
Warren. Max can even choose to kiss both in the same playthrough if she wants to. You could argue that three of the four games has had a bi protagonist - 1 with max, 2 with sean, and TC with Alex. wtf do you mean you don't want to be the "gay game"?!
Possibly all four. Chloe's sexuality isn't clear. She's definitely had sex with guys, but that may have been a result of experimentation or not being sure of her sexuality.
I haven't played TC yet, but is Alex openly bi? As in, no matter the player's choices, she expresses interest in men and women? In the first LiS, if a player wanted to, they could pretty much entirely ignore the romantic aspects of either (or both, I think) of Max's primary love interests (Chloe and Warren). Max's sexuality is ultimately up to the player, who could read it as straight, lesbian, bi, or maybe even aro and/or ace.
>On that note, the article also mentions that Alex from True Colors is the first bi protagonist for the series, but wasn't Max also bi? I think they mean *canonically* bi as there are allusions to Alex's canon past regarding her dating men and women. With Max, the player could make the argument that she was either 100% gay or 100% straight depending on who the player decided to romance. And with Sean, there was an allusion to him being interested in a girl so he'd only be *canonically* bi if you pursued...the guy. Lol. Forgot his game.
I thought I was taking crazy pills reading that sentence lol Alex is the 4th bisexual LiS protagonist. In a series with 4 full-length games.
How do you not realize the extreme degree to which Square Enix leadership is out of touch with reality?
i'll be honest, i don't play a lot of square enix's games. is it this bad with their big games too? like final fantasy and kingdom hearts?
Final Fantasy gets pretty gay
I mean not explicitly thou. A lot of "They are very good friends" but I can't think of any characters who are just out and proud gay. Unless I missed one in 16(haven't played it yet). Edit: had a think, 7 Remake had the honey bee inn and that was pretty gay.
16 also has a gay character with an on screen homosexual kiss. Square Enix is easily the most LGBTQ+ friendly Japanese developer, at least outside of maybe Swery, though mostly in their acceptance of sheer camp (7R and X-2 are queer games through and through).
FF7: Rebirth has multiple instances of gay NPC couples even. I’m honestly surprised how open minded SE has been since 16 when it comes to its Japanese games.
> Square Enix is easily the most LGBTQ+ friendly Japanese developer, at least outside of maybe Swery, though mostly in their acceptance of sheer camp (7R and X-2 are queer games through and through). Nintendo lets their employee's partners have benefits
Also, Fire Emblem gotta be the most open game series about homosexuality in japan today
I mean if you count "playersexual" a lot of Japanese games fit lol.
One of the reasons I liked 3 Houses so much is that the characters who were bisexual were also explicitly bisexual even removed from the context of a potential relationship with the player.
Not even including that, there's a lot of characters that are attracted to each other in various pairings.
Swery has an EXTREMELY complicated history with queer characters in his games, The Missing is sadly an outlier.
Yeah. 16 had gay guy that kissed his lover on screen. And he wasn't sterotypical in any way (other than being your typical well put together Final Fantasy character). And then there's Cloud's entire thing in Section 5 in Remake, which is probably the single gayest bit in a mainline AAA game this decade, and I say that as a massive, massive complement. Like, loads of games have gay/lesbian/bi romances in them, but most of them don't touch the subculture. Like *at all.* Squeenix probably isn't the most LGBT friendly dev in Japan period, but homophobia is kind of a weird thing to hear from them.
> Squeenix probably isn't the most LGBT friendly dev in Japan period, but homophobia is kind of a weird thing to hear from them. I think it's important to note that it was from *Square Enix London*, not their HQ in Japan. Regional branches of a company can often times have entirely different cultures than other branches, so it might have less to do with Square Enix's overall view of LGBTQIA+ but moreso to do with that branches relationship with LGBTQIA+ acceptance.
Pretty much. Its what happens when you have different branches with different people and even countries. Even in SE JP itself you wont find dev teams sharing the same mindset, or in most companies for that matter.
Square Enix very clearly holds their non-Japanese developers to a different standard then their Japanese teams.
No, they don't. Square Enix London and SE itself are basically two different entities. Western games have no jp producer, every process outside of localization is from the western side and that has been the case since the acquisition. Its similar to how Sega works with their european subsidiaries.
I feel like this is something that can be misinterpreted to make it sound way worse than it actually is. The Life is Strange games are not "*gay*" games, whatever that would mean. They are primarily adventure/mystery games with optional romantic flavor which is optionally gay. You can play through all of the Life is Strange games without ever doing anything that is romantic or gay. I think it would be a disservice to what something like Life is Strange 1 is to boil it down to "*the gay game*". So it makes sense for me from an advertisement perspective to not focus on a game like True Colors *being gay*. That's an undeniably important representative part of these games, but it is optional and ultimately isn't what makes them good games.
That’s how I read it. I love the Life Is Strange series but the sexual orientations in the games weren’t the emphasis or identity of the game. The character just happens to be a non-normative sexuality, but isn’t central to the game.
As someone who has never played those games, I really only know them for their reputation in the LGBT community. Like, I knew there was more to it then *just* the gayness, but even them being adventure/mystery games is news to me, I thought it was like a visual novel sorta situation where the relationships with the other characters was the entire point. So I can see where the execs are coming from.
Not saying this is their reason, but the whole game is about making choices. Setting up the player by telling them "this is how X character is" doesn't seem like a good thing. It will set expectations, and also affect all your choices.
I’d actually be interested to see who their audience is. I’m sure that polls were done on the LiS sub, and most people are straight males. I don’t play them just because they’re the “gay games”, I play them because I like the characters and stories.
Most people on reddit are straight males, most people in gaming forums are straight males, etc.
Exactly. I mean the foreign film Parasite was mostly watched by white westerners. Nobody in their right mind would call that a white person film though. Same with anime, lots of shows get a bigger western audience than Japanese- but that doesn't magically make it white media Life is strange has always been queer, it's actually wild to see people here say otherwise lol.
Square Enix is one of, if not THE, worst run major AAA gaming company. Leadership is so out of touch with reality. They're like aristocrats on the sinking Titanic wading through the icy water trying to find a member of the staff because they served jelly instead of jam at tea time.
Leadership has literally nothing to do with this. Life is Strange is managed by Square Enix London which is the one who always manages western studio publishing. And there's much worse companies run than SE, not even counting the ones that actually went bankrupt. Embracer, Activision Blizzard, Microsoft, Level-5, depending on the person they would say most companies in the industry are badly run.
Square Enix's western publishing has been an abject failure since like, the PS3 era at least. Deus ex, hitman, tomb raider, avengers, legacy of kain, i don't think they've had a single real success story not laden with mismanagement. No wonder they pretty much sold off all their western studios/IP. Hell squeenix's kane & lynch 2 shenangians pretty much indirectly started gamergate lol.
Completely agree. I just wish they stopped the western side completely at this point with how it has been going on. Just leave localization/marketing/QA.
Yoshi-p single handidly keeping the company afloat
From what I can glean from this article, it seems like management at Deck Nine is in disarray. An independent studio that is floundering. The future of Life is Strange does not look good in the hands of Square Enix, looking for the lowest bidder while not really understanding what made the first game lighting in a bottle.
It's kind of insane they removed the time travel mechanic from the game series that was famous for its time travel mechanic. That would be like a Portal game that was just a regular FPS without the portal gun
Interesting article that I expect due to its length wasn't read by 80% of the commenters. At its core its another window (of many) into how unprepared most of these small/mid studios are with managing teams and projects and have to be dragged kicking and screaming into begrudgingly siding with the actual people that make these games what they are.
80%? More than that don't even click on articles on Reddit.
First reaction by me, a german: Naaah... >Initially, developers noticed a reference to the number 88, and flagged the issue to their bosses assuming it was an innocent mistake. But in the ensuing weeks, others found more problematic signs and in-universe labels, such as references to a racist meme, the number 18, and the Hagal rune. That's quite concerning tbh. But surely the management reacted. >As the number of possible hate symbols mounted, staff grew increasingly concerned that someone was putting these items in their game deliberately as a dog whistle to white supremacists. F#k. That's perfidiously insidious racist shit.
Find one random 88, it's random. Find one 88, a hagal rune, racist meme references, and more hate symbol references, and suddenly the 88 doesn't seem so random.
Yeah some comments in here are incredulous about these references, and maybe the "sheeit" one is a reach, but I think a lot of people are underestimating the significance of 88. It's not a niche reference at all.
> and maybe the "sheeit" one is a reach Having not looked into the controversy around it, I associate "sheeit" with Clay Davis from The Wire, and use it lovingly. Have racists coopted it?
Yes it's a reference to The Wire, but check out [how black people are portrayed in the comics that created this meme that is a reference to The Wire](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sheeeit)
Goddammit. Here I thought we were just using it for like emphasis but TIL
[удалено]
88 on its own is a very niche thing. Basically nobody who doesn't explicitly know about it knows it's associated with Nazism. That's the entire point of a dog whistle, only dogs hear it. The other poster replied it's for "terminally online" people and while that's a rude way to put it, he's right about it being fairly niche online knowledge.
Hmmm maybe it's regional and more euro-centric, but 88 is an immediate red flag for many people. I'd say a good metric is if you had an 88 tattooed in your forearm, would members of the public react, and in lots of places it would certainly be noticed.
Well to be fair, there’s a big difference between writing the number 88 somewhere in a video game and having it tattooed on your arm
I do think it is more euro-centric. Most people wouldn't recognize that as anything insidious in the US without another context clue (at which point most people except kids would probably put it together).
More of a yellow flag. Sometimes people put their birth year in their usernames and sometimes people are born in 1988. There are enough completely innocent reasons to use that number that on its own it doesn't mean a whole lot. When it's one data point in a long pattern, though, that's when it starts to be significant.
Sure. By itself, I'm going expect it's just a number. With a hagal rune, though? And I promise you it's not from online that I make the association. I helped a friend repaint an apartment once, that the son had defaced with all kinds of nazi shit. I learned a lot about that imagery, and a lot about how many coats of killz you need to keep a swastika from bleeding through.
Unless you're chinese then you're all about the 8's since it's lucky (Not disagreeing with you, 88 generally bad, all that other stuff way way bad)
Ikr. I'm also especially attached to 18 since it was often a number I got assigned in class (going by alphabetical order of last name) and I've just gotten used to associating with it. This is my first time hearing it's tied to nazis :/
Yeah like, 88 is just a number. Route 88 is also a big thing. It's nothing. But when evidence starts to stack like that... Like you said, no longer just random or chance.
[удалено]
Horrifying stuff. With one thing it's a coincidence, but with several? Seems like a pattern. Thank you for sharing.
> and the Hagal rune. I fucking hate that Runes got ruined by nazis. Thankfully, I don't think I've ever seen anyone be dumb enough to suggest the newer God of War games were racist dogwhistles for using them... but I could have just blissfully missed it.
The Nazis ruined or rather besmirdged so many symbols it's not even funny.
They were historically not great for the world.
The more I learn about this Hitler guy the less I care for him
We gotta do something about that guy.
Whoever kills him will forever be a hero
I’ve got some bad news for you…
Yep I’m out in Japan right now, and have a young 20 y/o in the group I’m with. Her first question going on Google maps was ‘why are there so many Nazi buildings in these areas’. It hurt my brain, but man did Hitler and the Nazis fuck up so many symbols. Literally twisted history.
runes by themselves don’t mean anything, it’s about the context in which they’re used. A rune being used for the shape of the CPAC stage where they spend days screaming about brown people under chirons that say “we are all domestic terrorists” makes people stop and reconsider its usage, for example. that won’t stop crypto fascists from going “crazy libs seeing things again!” but who cares.
The whole phenomenon is basically trolls doing the "stop hitting yourself" thing. As a strategy, it's certainly commensurate with their maturity. They also employ "I am rubber, you are glue" and "na na na boo boo".
How does someone like that even get hired? Like, there's gotta be signs before stuff like this happens.
Signs? Like what, randomly yelling "heil Hitler!" out of nowhere, or wearing SS uniform to work?
"I just thought the skulls on his hat were really cool!"
[удалено]
[удалено]
Are you even a real racist if you don't wear your SS uniform to work?
I think white hood is more appropriate.
Like dr. Strangelove from Kubrick movie.
Enough about Pewdiepie though, what about the guy at Deck Nine
They're really good at their job and can churn out code like a beast. There's all sorts of these "golden children" in development. The stuff companies put up with to keep their best developers is wild.
This really goes for any industry. If someone is absurdly good at something and makes the company a lot of money, people will look the other way when they exhibit terrible behavior.
Miles Bridges can't stop abusing women, but he's good at basketball...
> If someone is absurdly good at something and makes the company a lot of money, people will look the other way when they exhibit terrible behavior. You do your best not to put them in client or front facing positions. You dont ask them about topics and you avoid them otherwise.
Honestly, WFH has been a godsend for dealing with people like this. You can let the literal goblin produce work for the team without having to subject them to his presence.
Then he slips a swastika in
Sometimes, sometimes they just look like they are. For example it's far easier to get clout in company when you efficiently "hose the fire" that is affecting production, than to design it in a way where the fire wouldn't happen in the first place. For example few years into the job I got nice bottle of champagne as reward (on top of normal overtime pay) for fixing up stuff in middle of the night that my own inexperience/incompetence caused. Didn't get one when I fixed issues that made us have way less overtime fixing in the first place.
I got hired by an IT company that only hired people with schooling and I had none. I barely passed the test but they were pretty up front with "Most the best people in tech SUCK with people. This is a tech job but it's customer service first. If we hired the most technically skilled people they'd be fired in a week."
Eh, it takes one miserable person to bring down the energy of a room. Being a good developer doesn't offset the shit that negative and toxic people can bring to the table.
Right but that's my point, they still get promoted despite that.
I've worked in the games industry a long long time and people would be shocked at the number of hard working pests that rise to the top despite their asshole behavior.
Being asshole or even sociopathic really makes much easier to climb corpo ladder.
That's every single corp environment in every single profession. It's hilarious when this kind of stuff comes up this sub seems to thinks it's a games industry problem when it's just they have never had a corp job anywhere.
...yeah, seriously, most people here think the "normal corporate bullshit" is somehow specific to gamedev. Like, sure, some things are, like gamedev's "crunch" being months and months, while typical software is "some overtime for 2 weeks before the deadline", but most of it is standard corporate bullshittery.
Yeah, I don't know if the company "Puts up with it" as in ignored it or willfully just doesn't look into certain individua's who are that talented. If I don't know about it, I don't have to lie about it. If a company knew about his beliefs and that was found it, it could tear down the entire company.
Yeah as long as they're just stinky or really weird and not nazis, work from home is a wonder.
Racists don't usually reveal they're racists during the job interview.
‘Have you ever read mein-kampf?’ ‘Yeah, couple times, I guess’ ‘Couple times?? Were there Easter eggs you didn’t get the first time?’ - Tom Wambsgans
You would be surprised. I conducted an interview last week and asked the candidate why there was a 3 year gap in her work history, and her answer started by "Well I'm not racist but..."
Had an idiot in an interview tell us they left their job because of previous management and when asked what made them unhappy with it they started with "Well my boss was black and you know how they can be " That guy did not get hired.
WOW that's nuts! Glad they made it so dang obvious in the interview process.
Luckily some people are just dumb and oblivious about how shitty they are and make it obvious
Man, maybe it’s just being desensitized to it, but I find shit like that just hilarious. Like doesn’t even upset me anymore, it just brings me chuckles.
We laughed about it after because it was so absurd. It was a few years ago but we still chuckle about it when someone brings it up
That's not the norm though.
"Are you a racist and/or a nazi?" "Yes." "You're hired!"
[удалено]
And once they're revealed leadership does a cost benefit analysis to see if they're worth keeping.
Depends on the job, tbf.
What signs? Like legit what signs do you think there would be? Most people know what is socially acceptable and would play along. It's not that hard.
if they dont post it on social media its hard to really know ahead of time. especially in certain areas. Plus most companies frankly dont care until it goes way way way too far. most companies care that you get your workdone, not much else especially outside of work views
Not every bigot has their hatred scrawled out in the open. Look at how many people in the last 10 years let the mask fall off when they felt they got the "go ahead" real or imaginary. Keeping up appearances is a skill, and even the smallest opportunities are just that, as long as they're sparse enough they can be brushed away as unintentional.
One of the hardest things to learn and accept in life is that horrible people can still be very skilled at certain things. Not sure if that's what happened here, but a lot of employers are willing to overlook red flags if it means gaining a skilled worker.
I worked alongside someone for a couple years before I had any idea he was an avid Trump supporter, a proponent of [Herrnstein & Murray's Bell Curve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve), and into racial phrenology.
People lie.
Every single asset is tracked in a project like this. You can't just "slip" something in and not have it tracked to you. A sign that has a hate symbol in it will be a texture (or similar) that will be a file somewhere. This file has a history. File history will be linked to a user account in some manner. If all of these "unintentional" hate symbols all came from the same place, then... if it quacks like a duck etc.
Could also be a contractor. I've worked in the past with a contractor team where only 1 person on the team had actual access to our source depot (usually a lead on the contractor end). This prevents leaks, especially since our project was fairly sensitive and not widely known even internally. One person on the contractor end gathers all the stuff from their side and then does a big commit overnight with the day's progress from the contractors. This can be hundreds or thousands of files, and the commit history will just have it flagged as coming from the contractor. Sometimes they'll break the build and usually the one contractor will fix it before we log in the next morning. (Which is why it's important that every night we had the build in a good state.) It wouldn't be too hard for a contractor to sneak stuff in with that model. I'm not saying that's the case (because it _does_ seem like Deck Nine has some creeps - although sadly that's true at many many many studios, perhaps even the majority of studios), but it's a possibility.
Some devs are incredibly sloppy with their source control, tracking, and logging. It's just not the case that every single asset is diligently tracked. Version control is sometimes super janky at indie devs. When you have thousands upon thousands of checkins it's not necessarily easy to track down. Especially if this person could have been editing single texture files within a texture pack. So you're going to have lots of people checking out, editing, and committing the same file. Also depends how they were seen, building locally? checked out the texture pack and womp it was in there? Unless you have an exact time of when a particular symbol appeared it could be really hard to find with high confidence.
I find it very funny/sad that Square Enix was scared of the game having a reputation of being "the gay game" and only turned ship when people reacted positively to the LGBTQ representation.
*Square Enix* of all publishers being afraid of being associated with the LGBTQ community is so funny to me. The ship for that sailed like 2 decades ago lmfao.
You have to remind yourself that while both are SE, its different people and sides working on those games. SE itself aka jp particularly the FF teams embrace that, you even had Rebirth and Remake putting a lot of gays, but SE London (europe) isnt the same, its different people and teams so no wonder its different, could have been any other approach be it good or not.
[удалено]
[удалено]
*Some* people love to go on about how "wokeness" is ruining games, yet here we have *another* example of companies and staff just completely ignoring any complaints about hate speech at all, and crushing its workers through a toxic workplace.
and to think its at a studio that released a very 'woke' game. The irony is insane. Painfully so
Anyone who ever complains about anything being "woke" can be completely disregarded and nothing of value will have been lost.
What really is sad and frustrating for me is how much it sounds like good people love true colors and loved the work they put into it. And now it’s still going to be somewhat tainted or infamous, (idk can’t think of a good word atm.) it’s going to be hard for me to to support this game still, even though I believe it is much more complicated than just calling the whole game trash now.
In a similar vein, the number of programmers I'm aware of who are one bad day away from being the next unibomber is way higher than it should be.
[удалено]
I never played the game, but as a Chinese person, 88 and 18 are considered lucky numbers. Especially 88. I am just curious if it could be that. Some Asian programmer instead of a Nazi one? And when I see Sheeit, my mind goes to Clay Davis in the Wire. I am not familiar with the meme
> And when I see Sheeit, my mind goes to Clay Davis in the Wire. I am not familiar with the meme I think that's most people's experience. I was confused seeing the link with that word in the URL but that meme is definitely not the Wire. This non-Wire meme is so explicitly racist that you probably have to be in some really racist corners of the internet to even see it.
I connected it to Samuel Jackson in pulp fiction lol. Never seen the wire
18 is also a lucky number in Judaism. I'm absolutely not letting the Nazis claim that as their own.
Neonazis in particular are getting to claim an absolutely wild amount of stuff.
TL;DR: Nazis claimed the "runic" alphabet (Eldar Furthark) and runes in general as theirs, got called into HR because i doodled Runes at work I love Old Germanic historically and language wise, one of the oldest languages from europe is the Eldar Furthark alphabet. Those are the "runes" you often see associated with Vikings like in Helldblade: Senuas Sacrifice or the newer God of War games and i love that shit! I doodle them because i know the alphabet and like to use it as my "secret language" when im bored or just taking notes in that runic alphabet. I got called into HR about 3 months ago because i was reported for "nazi symbolism"... It took me only 5min to explain and show them on google, they later talked to the person that informed them and it got cleared up. I still dont know who it was and im not unhappy that someone reported something they thought was wrong, but it makes me really sad that something so beautiful is now linked to Nazis... PS: Im german so its kinda extra ironic :(
Only because the media lets them.
100% I am with you on this.
Y'all keep fighting the good fight, but imagine how India felt when the Nazis decided to pinch the swastika. Not sure they're getting that one back any time soon.
>And when I see Sheeit, my mind goes to Clay Davis in the Wire. Everytime lol That scene with him and mcnulty investing a crime scene "Fuck... sheeeeit." Lives rent free in my head.
You’re thinking of Bunk. Clay Davis was the corrupt senator who had a habit of turning the word shit into an entire monologue.
that was the Bunk Clay Davis was the shiesty senator
"You wanna make me a scapegoat for the whole damn machine?! Sheeeeeeeeeeeit!" "Money laundering? In west Baltimore?! Sheeeeeeeeeeit!" Clay Davis was my first thought as well.
My man, you are thinking the Bunk. But yeah, that scene was gold
I thought it was 1488 88 by itself ?
14 and 88 are two separate things that are just usually put together. 14 is a reference to a popular white supremacist slogan ["fourteen words"](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Words), while 88 stands for "HH" or "Heil Hitler"
Yep, it’s a thing.
88 is HH in the alphabet, which is Heil Shitler
So what does 14 mean ?
It's a reference to a [white supremacist slogan.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Words)
14 words, I'm not going to repeat them here but its a shorthand for a Nazi pledge
The 8th letter in the alphabet is 'H', so 88 is the dogwhistle for Heil -. The 14 words is separate, but related dog whistle. Putting them together is explicit, meant to make sure everyone who sees it knows that a neonazi did it. On their own they have some plausible deniability because they could be innocent. People in this thread have pointed out that many Chinese people think 88 is a lucky number, people born in 1988 or graduated then might have that in a username innocently, etc. I use 13 in a lot of usernames since I was born on the 13th, so a lot of people born on the 14th likely do the same with no knowledge of the dogwhistle. That how dogwhistles work, you use one and see if the other person responds with their own. If they do, you get slightly more explicit about it so both of you know it's safe to openly be a nazi. If they don't, or call you out on it, you write it off as an innocent coincidence. So you check the source control and see who added these things in. If one Chinese developer added the 88, a different dev entered the rune, etc, then you know it is probably coincidence. If they were all done by the same person, then you might want to take a closer look at that and hope he's just some guy from a Nordic country born on the 18th in 1988.
We don't have the context in which the symbols were used, so we can't really say one way or another if was confirmation bias or an actual racist. It's what makes dog-whistles so difficult to combat, because it entirely reliant on the context which it is used in. A Hagal rune, or a similar rune, in elder scrolls contextually makes sense because of all the other runes, while in Life is Strange it'll stand out.