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Friday, May 8, 2015

Defending Kill the F*****?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - For its true message.

A company out of Los Angeles, California, Skaldic Games, recently caused a huge controversy over a game they tried to release on Valve's Steam Greenlight. Very controversial, and as such, we would like to issue a content warning for our younger audience concerning language. Hence the title-censorship that is sure to kill the search engine optimisation for the article.

Here's what Skaldic Games says about themselves:
"Skaldic Games is an independent video game developer from the Los Angeles area. We try to bring to life new games and apps with unique ideas."
Well, we definitely like new games with unique ideas.

The idea in question? Release a game called Kill the Faggot for free on Steam. You are tasked with shooting gays and trannies running across the screen while avoiding shooting normal people. This got instantaneous outrage and Valve deleted it.

Skaldic wrote a statement about it here

We wanna show you what we mean, but unfortunately, the YouTube video provided by Skaldic Games showing gameplay footage got deleted by YouTube for violating its Terms of Service.

Well, guess that means I better download it and play it myself. 'cause that's journalism.

Interesting file names.

Here's the GameInfo.txt file:
"This game is part of upcoming game "The Shelter: a Survival Story" by Skaldic Game

And here are the InstallInstructions.txt:
"No install needed, just unzip all files into a folder and play. Dumbass."
We definitely like this guy's attitude.

I'm being issued a challenge. Also I dunno what these mean so it's click Start.

Actually, I needed to click Windowed mode for it to open. Now, then.

So I get a title screen, a basic explanation of how the points work (killing trannies gets more points than gays), and an option of three levels that have the same music and enemies but different backgrounds. Here's Warehouse:

It's sort of like a contemporary Donkey Kong Country level?

By the way, I didn't crop the sides. This is why I don't do PC Gaming: My monitor is too small and my PC is too weak. The explosions when you shoot someone, along with the blood-splattering are really laggy. Also, my cross-hair is very laggy and can't catch up to the running people.

Here's Forest.

So it's a terrible, basically unplayable game, and it only features men. (Straight men, gay men, and... whatever the transsexuals wanna call themselves.) That's sure to anger the feminists who want equal gender representation, right?

However, it was trashed on Steam and the Internet not for being terrible (well, it actually was trashed for that, too) but for being offensive. And it was asked to be removed for being offensive.

Why should it be removed for being offensive? It clearly isn't the work of anything serious, if the file directory is to be believed. It's a badly-created joke. It's not even hate speech. The developers say this:
"The reason behind this particular game is because of how tired I am of people being overly sensitive and how easily offended people are by every little thing, especially with LGBT issues. I have worked in the game industry since 2007, so I know that's how the game industry pretty much is. I didn't make this game to attack LGBT people personally, and no I don't hate gays and think they should be treated farily, but I made this game just to piss off those people that are way too overly sensitive, which includes straight people. These people that think if you are even remotely homophobic, you are "hateful" and a "bigot", and do everything they can to destroy you in every vicious way possible.. So I decided to go down a path that most developers are afraid to go down: to piss these people off by making the most overly offensive game possible to these idiots to prove a point." [Emphasis added]

And Skaldic Games is absolutely right. And we've documented this many times last year with how the gay mafia, with GLAAD at their helm, bullies everyone. They bullied Nintendo throughout the #Miiquality movement, and their adherents went after XSEED. Of course, this isn't just a game industry thing, it's everywhere. Whether it's Mozilla Corporation or your local bakery, people who take issue with the behaviour employed by the gay mafia are being viciously bullied and having their livelihoods destroyed.

Oh, and if you're a member of a "protected group" and don't want their protection, you must die, too.

Skaldic Games is just becoming another target. Now, let me clue you in on something not so obvious: Skaldic isn't in trouble because they made a game about shooting gays and transsexuals. The coordinated, institutionally-ingrained outrage is not because of a crudely-drawn videogame, but it's because Skaldic is going against those very institutions like GLAAD.

For instance: If they made a "Kill the Koopas" game (please don't, we have enough of those already), would I be offended? Well, I wouldn't be happy about it and I would either ignore it or leave negative remarks on it. I wouldn't try to remove it from existence, though, or try to permanently unemploy the dude who made it. (I only want to do that with Shigeru Miyamoto for other reasons.) This is the normal reaction people should have when they see something they disagree with.

However, this is something different. There are shadowy organisations maintaining the theme that offensive things must be destroyed, and not because they are offensive, but because they are an affront to said shadowy organisation. Institutions of power, like GLAAD, do not like to be challenged. Making a game designed to piss them off isn't declaring war on gays, because they don't care about jokes. It's declaring war on GLAAD, who does care because jokes can serve to undermine these institutions and can be an act of warfare, as demonstrated by Japan.

This is why the Islamists react so strongly to things like art contests of Muhammad. Muslims as individuals don't care, but they have organisational reasons to obliterate depictions (and depictors) of their prophet. And, yes, radical Jihadists and the gay mafia are directly equivalent. They are both ridiculously intolerant and wish to have the heads of anyone that goes against them. If the radical homosexuals came from a culture with readily-available suicide bombs, AK-47s, and a general lack of respect for human life, they too would be murdering you for crossing them. They're cowards who are afraid of proper debate, so they'll just destroy you from other methods.

Skaldic Games, KoopaTV, Charlie Hebdo, we're all in this together to defend free speech and defying the will of the gay mafia, the Jihadists, whoever the enemy is of our generation who hates our freedom. We go against the institutions that perpetuate this hatred.

So would KoopaTV make a game like Kill the Faggot? I mean, I could totally see us doing stuff like its voice-acting (best part of the game) and then posting a voice-acting compilation. But the key difference between KoopaTV's games and what Skaldic produced? You didn't have to play Kill the Faggot to get its message (and I know that for a fact, having played it), but you do have to play KoopaTV's games to get the experience. Our games have depth and meaning that you can't get from just looking at a screenshot or reading a description, similar to the distinction between our games and Meme Run.

So no, we wouldn't make something like Kill the Faggot, which is offensive for the purpose of being offensive. Which is protected and we should celebrate that and defend it from people who seek to stifle free speech, but it's still pretty crass.

We actually try to make works of art here!

Wanna see the full video? It's worth it. Click here.

The gay mafia wants to boycott Skaldic Games and their employees for life now. I think we should instead take a step back and commend them on their courage to at least try to undermine the oppression of oversensitivity. They have earned my respect.

...I'm not going to buy their games or anything, though. Maybe if they were Wii U developers?

KoopaTV is thinking hard about its future game projects, and you can be assured that whatever KoopaTV decides on, it will follow the themes of truth, levity, and trying to make a point.

Much like Steam removed this game, Scratch removed Defend Anita Sarkeesian.
Ludwig talks more about PC game compatibility testing here.
KoopaTV is making some progress in terms of terminology with sensitive groups.


  1. I feel you are wrong about two primary things in this article.

    First, when someone opposes gay rights, and that person faces public backlash, it is not only because it undermines organizations like GLAAD. People do care about this, myself included.

    Most people who faced public backlash are those who actively fight against gay equality. They donate money to fight gay marriage, pass bills to allow anti-gay discrimination, or take other, real, actions aimed at worsening the lives of gay people. When gay consumers are deciding where to shop, if they know that their money is going to support causes that directly attack their lives, then of course they are not going to want to shop there. And you can't really blame them. Who would want to support a cause that directly hurts themselves? And the same is true of people who care about gay people. They don't want to see their money hurt the people they care about.

    Imagine if the CEO of a company was donating money to bring racial segregation for black people, and that this actually had a chance at passing. Could you really blame black people for not wanting to give that CEO their money?

    It's true that the news passed around by organizations like GLAAD and by the media. But it catches on because most actual people recognize that real harms are happening. And most people find empathy there, and want to help their fellow man.

    Which brings me to the second thing you have wrong: Skaldic games is not actually making any statement about oversensitivity with their game. Sure, that's what their statement claims they were doing. But hey, that's not even their original statement. Their original statement claimed that they proved most gay people are hateful.

    And think about it: if you felt gay people and their allies are oversensitive, then how might you go about making a statement about it? You might imagine a game where a gay person is shooting anyone who disagrees with him, for example. That would be controversial, but would actually carry a message.

    Instead, here's what most likely happened. The creator isn't particularly familiar with gay people, except that he finds them and their stereotypes annoying. He is probably still a bit immature (which you can see from his public statements), and he made the sort of game his friends from high school might laugh at. He probably didn't expect he would get such a terribly negative reaction from all the people he was working with, and from, well, everyone, really.

    And then, because he is immature, he didn't flatly state what happened, but instead tried to portray himself as having executed some successful plan to piss people off. Again, in the high school world, that kind of statement might make you look cool to your friends, but in the world of adults, it makes you look like an a-hole.

    The bottom line is: I do agree that Skaldic games is probably harmless. But at the same time, I can't blame Steam for removing his game, any more than I'd blame them for removing a "Kill the Jews" or "Kill the N-word" game. People who face murder in real life shouldn't have to see that message show up when browsing Steam. Similarly, I can't blame people for pulling out of his project or not wanting to buy his games. After all, whether planned or not, he successfully sent a message that pissed people off.

    1. Well, first off: Thank you for giving your thoughts!

      Erm, maybe I ought to clarify something: People don't get offended because their first instinct is, "Oh, GLAAD wouldn't like this." I did say it was, "institutionally-ingrained outrage". So GLAAD or Al Sharpton don't have to lift their fingers for people to be outraged on their behalf... people just do it anyway.

      I guess you could say that it's this article's statement that if issue-based organisations never existed in our history, people wouldn't instinctively go out and destroy the livelihoods of people who offend them.

      You're right. It's natural that I'm not gonna go out and buy this Wii U indie developer's game because he basically said he's going to boycott KoopaTV and work to ruin our own futures.
      (I doubt I was gonna buy it anyway but whatever.) So I'm basically boycotting him back, and I don't have an organisation backing my thoughts up.

      But I'm not trying to get him unemployed from HIS OWN COMPANY, like people are apparently trying to do with Skaldic. (Or at least that's what I read somewhere on Twitter. It doesn't make sense.)

      That said, you used phrases like "real harms" and "real, actions aimed at worsening the lives of gay people."
      What Skaldic did here, I think, would not qualify as a "real harm". And I think when the #Miiquality movement was happening where a lot of gays + sympathetic people wanted to boycott Nintendo for supporting traditional marriage in Tomodachi Life, I wouldn't say that's "real harm" either.

      Didn't stop leaders in the gay community from equating Nintendo with Uganda.

      ...Seriously. Assuming people listen to that incendiary shit, that's dangerously affecting you. And if you try to have common sense and go against the issue-oriented organisation representing your narrow minority, then you also become the enemy. (See: Calling black conservatives "Uncle Toms" and trying to destroy them.)

      I guess another thing I'd like to see happen is for outrage to be proportionate. If you donate to fund traditional marriage being the law, that's part of the democratic process. (I also wouldn't say you're making the lives of gays "worse" since that's the status quo.) You shouldn't have your life ruined. (That's why it's also pretty critical that we keep the names of donors a secret, which I know a lot of people don't like the idea of 'cause they think everything should be transparent. We like transparency too, but in this case, having transparency here would actually stifle the democratic process.)

      As for Skaldic, uh... Well, we can only go based on their statements, their game, and that game's meta-data (see: the file directory screenshot) which was presumably made before their explanatory statement.

    2. Skaldic maintains that they don't have things against the average gay person, and neither do we. However, it's the MILITANT ones that are the problem, and organisations like GLAAD would like you to believe that every gay is some militant social justice punk whose identity is determined by their sexual orientation and not actually important things.

      Skaldic didn't want to just REPRESENT the gays being oversensitive... they wanted to make an experiment PROVING it. It's a "show don't tell" kind of thing, except I guess making a game is "showing" it but whatever, proving in real practice is much more powerful than making a representational videogame.

      Of course the Skaldic dudes knew it would get a negative reaction. They're in California for heck's sakes in the videogame industry, bastions of queer thought. I don't think they knew it would be THIS negative (they obviously didn't think the gays would target the voice actors that are associated with the company but not this specific game), but they knew it would be negative WHEN THEY PUT IT ON STEAM GREENLIGHT.

      Steam and YouTube/Google can have whatever policies they want and that's their right, but it wouldn't make a difference to me if it was killing black people, killing Jews, or killing Koopas (I'm at least two of those).

      Just because it's offensive doesn't mean it doesn't have the right to exist. Free speech, in principle, exists to PROTECT the controversial and offensive.

      But yeah, I think looking at Skaldic's meta-data for the file directory and the game itself definitively proves:
      A. It's a joke
      B. They wanted to piss off the people playing it [I mean, they insult the player in them]

    3. Hi, thanks for responding to me! I always appreciate when a discussion on a controversial topic can remain civil.

      Regarding issue-based organizations like GLAAD, I agree that there would be less people upset by something like KTF if those organization didn't exist. But if those organizations didn't exist, then gay people would probably still face death or imprisonment under the law (though I suppose they still do in half the world). After being a crime for thousands of years, it wasn't until 2003 that homosexuality was made legal in the US, and that was only after gay people organized, gained a sense of identity, and said, "We are proud to be gay, and we shouldn't be treated badly because of it." That would never have happened without gay rights organizations, and I think it would be tough to say those organizations haven't been an overall positive influence.

      Also, I feel that if an action is wrong, then it doesn't matter whether that action is taken directly, or through a vote, or encouraged through a video game. Wrong is wrong. If I vote to kill an innocent person, then I've wronged that person the same as if I pulled the trigger, even if I'm engaging in the democratic process or maintaining the status quo. There is no doubt that gay marriage is controversial, but I personally believe, and would be willing to argue, that prohibiting gay marriage is wrong.

      Now, I don't want to throw people in jail for voting a certain way or anything crazy like that. I only mean that a person doesn't have to be directly punching a gay person in the face for me to disagree with their actions. And if I think a person is behaving immorally, I don't want to be a part of enabling that to continue.

      I am one of those people who didn't purchase Tomodachi Life, partly because I did not want to encourage an immoral idea, and partly I actually wanted to use the same-sex relationships feature. I hoped that by skipping this game, I would encourage the next game to add in this feature. So did I engage in one of these terrible, "militant" acts you've described?

      I guess that's what I'm having trouble understanding. Why are you calling some gay people "militant," and what is wrong with them behaving that way?

      Sure, some gay people speak out against anti-gay actions and ideas in products, and they choose not to spend their money on those products. But to me that's just capitalism. What's the alternative? Should these people be forced to spend their money on something they don't want to? In a fashion they feel is immoral?

      I don't personally feel that anyone deserves bad things happening to them, and I don't think that Nintendo or Skaldic or anyone else deserves to face financial ruin. But at the same time, I don't want bad things to happen to gay people either, and since I can't buy everything, I try not to buy things that work against gay people. Similarly, I try not to buy things that work against women (or men), or a certain race, or humanity as a whole, or anyone else. Why would I support causes that I think hurt people?

      And in general, I think the way that the gay community responds to these types of incidents is actually quite positive. When a company engages in actions that are harmful, we should respond with peaceful protest. It seems appropriate to speak our disagreement with those actions and sometimes choose to shop elsewhere until the policy changes. This may mean that people who hold unpopular opinions have trouble staying in business, and that is a shame. Until only recently, no one could hope to stay in business supporting gay equality. So hopefully we can be wise enough to apply this sort of peaceful protest only when the company takes tangible, harmful action, and only if protesting this way directly counters that harm. If some random employee holds an unpopular opinion, that is different from a wealthy, powerful person who can directly turn the company's profits against you (see Brendan Eich).

    4. But like I said, I do think the gay community has been largely responsible and hopefully hasn't brought anyone to financial ruin. The mistake, I think, is in stretching the words of a few people out to encompass an entire community. Are death threats sometimes thrown around? Sure. But this is the world of the Internet. For every situation, there is a person who will threaten death. You could get death threats for opposing gay rights, and you could get death threats for supporting it. You could get death threats for virtually anything. Authors get death threats if they don't end their novel the way someone wants. There are always a few angry people who say stupid things. It doesn't mean any significant group of people actually agree with that stuff.

      And what about that comparison to Uganda? Well, I have no idea who Christopher Wood is, but who cares if he made some comparison? Surely no one is foolish enough to mistakenly think that Nintendo is killing or imprisoning gay people. Do some random comparisons like this make an entire group of people "militant"? If so, then how would we describe the anti-gay crowd, who are perhaps the largest producers of inflammatory comparisons in the world? And how about comparing a minority group hoping for equality to an aggressive, military force? Isn't that the sort of talk which might incite harms against gay people? But I don't mean to fault you for that because I know what you mean by it, and hopefully so do the others who hear you. If we get upset every time a negative comparison is made, we're going to lose our ability to communicate quite quickly.

      As for Skaldic specifically, it's true that Skaldic's game isn't particularly harmful. It also wasn't met with a particularly large outrage. But the game is entirely about allowing the player to commit the worst kind of hate crime against a minority group. It's going to offend people, and it's going to get removed from Steam. And it's difficult not to interpret this game as one created by someone who dislikes gay people. Skaldic's statement calling gay people "hateful" and "idiots" really didn't do them any favors in that department.

      And yes, a few extra-angry people probably contacted Skaldic's band and voice actors. I'm sure they were also contacted by their friends and the media. But is that really the big problem we're talking about? That if only the voice actors didn't know anyone was upset, maybe they wouldn't have disassociated themselves with the Shelter? I have a tough time believing many people wouldn't want to associate themselves with Skaldic after this.

      I don't believe Skaldic's game should be wiped from existence. There are far worse things out there than his game, and I don't burn books. Ideas shouldn't be destroyed, and Skaldic shouldn't be forced to erase the hard work it put into this game. But as it stands, I have every reason to believe that continuing to support Skaldic is continuing to support the development of these kinds of games. They even made it a promise.

      So what did Skaldic prove by making this game? That gay people would be upset? They didn't need to make this game for me to answer that one. But is this really "oversensitive" like you said? I don't see that. I see people discussing their dislike of the game and Skaldic's statement, and I see people deciding not to associate themselves with that. And that doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

    5. ...hold on lemme kill off these duplicate replies real quick.

    6. 'kay I'm back.
      Yeah, civil conversation is nice. That Derek Rumpler dude from Twitter I linked ended up blocking the KoopaTV Twitter account after we were pretty candid with him.

      Okay, if we're looking strictly at the USA, then GLAAD wasn't made until after some developments were already happening. And strictly looking at the USA, the thousands of years bit doesn't make sense 'cause, y'know, USA has only been around for a quarter of a thousand. From what I can tell, GLAAD hasn't actually done anything for "gay rights" besides try to increase inclusion and warp the language of the country (thought-crimes) with their style-guide, trying to shake-down and bully people who are against that kind of thing.

      That said, "After being a crime for thousands of years, it wasn't until 2003 that homosexuality was made legal in the US"
      I actually don't know what you're referencing. Massachusetts was the first state to legalise same-sex marriage and that was 2004.
      You could always practice homosexual acts within your bedroom and people wouldn't know about it. Just being gay wasn't a crime. You might get beat up by some thugs (or Kill the Faggot done in real life?) but that's another issue entirely, and that kind of thuggery itself was always illegal.

      If you wanna know my own views, personally (and I've been consistent with this), I don't think government should be in the business of recognising marriages or giving out marriage licenses. The definition of marriage shouldn't be a civil issue, it should stay in the churches. If you can find a priest to marry two people of the same sex, hey, power to you. So I don't think the government should give tax benefits (or... detriments) to married people, or grant rights that only married people can have. You should be able to make a "civil union" with anyone you please with a contract. A lot of the federal government's dealings with marriage are codified in... the tax code.

      So in that respect, I've always found that the gays are working on the wrong problem. They should be trying to replace the tax code and the existing laws that get in the way, rather than change what marriage is.

      You mentioned immoral behaviour and not wanting to enable that. That's actually the big reason that a lot of people ARE reacting so strongly against the gay movement. They see homosexuality as immoral behaviour and don't want to enable it, which is why you got those religious freedom laws. They recognise that public opinion is shifting in favour of pro-gay stuff, so they wanna be protected from that immoral threat when it comes to dominate their lives.

      I didn't buy Tomodachi Life either, though that was because I wasn't interested in the game or its activities. Not my kinda game. I guess if you didn't buy the game, for all Nintendo knows, it's for that same reason.

      Well, if you wanna get into militant people, those are the people who apparently dedicate their lives to social justice instead of getting a job and wotever. People likely to do that think their sexual identity is the most important part of their lives (more important than a real livelihood). So they go bus around to participate in protests or parades or wotever, sort of like the professional agitators that were in Ferguson and Baltimore and wotnot.

      Not wanting to buy Tomodachi Life because it doesn't support your lifestyle isn't militant, though I'd say if you boycotted the whole Nintendo for NOT including something (as opposed to the alternative, which would be... trashing it directly or something?) then that's pretty petty, yeah. I wanna engage in Koopa-Koopa relations too, but I don't make it a requirement for every game to have that to buy it. I certainly wouldn't call it immoral if games didn't have that. Militant people would insist that every aspect of the culture must bend their way OR ELSE.

    7. More direct militant things also include these guys:!


      In my worldview, you'd never be "forced" to spend money on anything. As of now, the only thing you're forced to spend money on is health insurance, and I had nothing to do with that one. If you are ONLY gonna buy games that simulate homosexual relationships and you wanna enjoy videogaming, then maybe you ought to broaden your acceptability standards. That's way too narrow a niche. I suggested to #Miiquality people to just... roleplay like the rest of the world has been doing for their niches for years. Imagination is great.

      As for hurting people, a LOT of games have conflict that invariably goes against someone. For the SMB series, Koopas suffer and are regularly portrayed as bad guys. Not a big fan of that, but if I think those games are fun then I'll play it for the fun. (...That said, you won't get me to say I like any SMB games but whatever.) If a game is against "humanity as a whole", then I guess you're against the game "Destroy All Humans!"? (See, I like the idea of destroying humanity. Humans suck. Koopas are better.) It's clearly a game, and it's clearly whimsical in nature. Sorta like "Kill The Faggot" except a lot better. It's not "hurting" anyone.

      Brendan Eich was never going to turn Mozilla's profits against gay people, or whatever that means. The dude was CLEARLY very qualified for his position, and Mozilla's decisions should've been solely based on his competency. It was the gay movement looking to witch-hunt people who digs into people's personal records and tries to destroy them. It's not like Eich was going to ban gay people from using FireFox for heck's sakes.

      Hehe, we've gotten a ton of death threats in our two years at KoopaTV (and, of course, before that too). We don't think death threats should be a way of life, though. (Anita Sarkeesian doesn't, either, so we're in... uh, "good" company?) Death threats just for talkin'? That's awful.

      Okay, so I'm not in your movement so I don't know who you consider leaders, but this Chris Wood is the head of this place:

      I have no idea what they actually do but they seem important, and the BBC thought the dude was important enough to show up and represent the gay community's thoughts. A lot of people think the BBC is a very respectable organisation whose decisions should be... uh, respected (I don't) so there you go.

      Hah, KoopaTV makes negative comparisons all the time and it makes liberals lose their minds. See here for a laugh (goes on for the rest of the thread):

      ...And it wasn't even a negative comparison, actually, if you read into it.

      (I think you'd like our site when we're not talking about gay people, which we sorta haven't done at all in 2015 except for this article.)

      I dunno, I thought Skaldic's game was met with a lot of outrage. Not as big as #Miiquality to be sure, but big enough that even I heard about it. And I don't exactly go looking for any information on the PC gaming world, especially not obscure indie titles.

    8. That said, it's come to my attention that Skaldic is violating some... free-speech principles, like stifling debate and criticism. KoopaTV isn't happy about that since we're purists on that front, and we're not about carrying their water...

      Skaldic didn't call ALL gays "idiots", though. Their game doesn't speak for the entire gay community, just a portion of it. And you can see that in the gameplay itself (no lesbians) that it's not all-inclusive of the whole gay community.

      (You brought up another thing I don't particularly care for: "hate crime". I don't think the designation of "hate crime" should exist.)

      I don't actually know what the full story is with the voice actors associated with the company is right now, but according to some random comments they themselves are disgusted and disassociating themselves with the company. That's fine if they make that decision. It's less fine if they're doing it because an angry mob is demanding it or threatening them.

      If you don't believe Skaldic's game should be wiped from existence, why should it be removed from Steam for non-quality reasons?

      People deciding not to associate themselves with Skaldic or the game is different than what actually happened, which is that they're going out of their way to crusade against Skaldic (that's where the oversensitive part comes in to play). Skaldic hasn't handled the situation very appropriately, though, so they get points off their grade, too.

      Oh, on the topic of how you'd like KoopaTV, you should play the games we've made assuming you're on a computer. Which I bet you are since you wouldn't make those kind of long thoughtful comments from a mobile device, would you?
      It's the "Games" tab up top. We really do think we did a much better job making a... thoughtful gaming experience than the crap Skaldic did, and it embodies our values, too.

      So, summary: There is a line between being a dude who gets offended by a game created that's dedicated specifically to shooting that dude (or people who that dude identifies with) and being a dude who dedicates his life to trying to make the lives of dudes who make those games more miserable.

    9. Oh, and I agree that Skaldic's game's message wasn't very good, if only because it didn't prove anything new. It was just confirmation bias.

  2. Ah, sorry if I ended up posting some duplicate replies. I thought I might have, since I had spotty internet and clicked the "Post" button more than once.

    It's unfortunate that Derek Rumpler jumped so quickly to boycotting your site. I'm not sure I'd call a reply like "Have fun~!" candid so much as dismissive, but he might have gotten a much worse reply. Like I said, there's always a few people who are extra angry, and I guess he wasn't happy to receive any response at all.

    When it comes to GLAAD specifically, I don't know a ton about them. After an era of gay people being portrayed as villains, I do think it's helpful to have someone working for more positive portrayals. But I don't know exactly what tactics they use to accomplish that goal.

    Regarding Miiquality specifically, I thought it was handled in a positive way. I don't think there was a boycott or a bunch of Nintendo hatred or anything. There was simply a bunch of people writing Nintendo and posting on social media, asking for same-sex relationships. Would you say it is wrong for players to organize and ask for a feature they hoped the game had?

    It's true that I personally avoided Tomodachi Life, but I don't skip every game which doesn't have same-sex relationships. I'm only bothered when relationships are a major feature in a game, and when the developer had to go out of its way to intentionally disable same-sex relationships. To me, that's just like saying, "This isn't a game for gay people," and if that's the case, I'm not buying it.

    And of course I wouldn't avoid Destroy All Humans. A video game doesn't actually hurt anyone, and like I've said, I don't think Skaldic is harmful. Not like a company which actually donates to anti-gay causes. But at the same time, there is undoubtedly a difference between KTF and Destroy All Humans. KTF was created specifically to insult and disparage people, while Destroy All Humans was not. KTF insults gay people in the same ways that they are insulted in real life, and shows them being killed, the same thing that they fear might happen to them in real life.

    If I ran a video game store and were subject to no outside pressure, it is likely that I would allow any game to remain in the store, no matter what. But if I were going to prohibit any type of game, it wouldn't be pornography or violence, it would be a game like KTF, one whose stated purpose and actual effect is to upset people, and which presents a horrible real-life act as something to laugh at.

    When I said, "thousands of years," I was talking about the prevailing attitudes of the entire world, not just the US. But the US is not a savior of this terrible legacy. You are mistaken about homosexuality being legal. Like I said, homosexuality was criminalized in the US until 2003. Many states had decriminalized it before then, but not much before. The case that legalized it in the remaining states is Lawrence v. Texas, and that included my home state of Michigan. Before that, it didn't matter if you were having sex in your own home that nobody knew about. That's exactly what Lawrence (the plantiff in the case) was doing. If you were suspected, police could investigate and arrest you, and they often did. There were countless gay bar raids, where police would arrest people and try to prove that they'd engaged in homosexual acts.

    1. Okay, I apologise for not knowing the proper history here.
      So I did my due diligence and read the entirety of:

      ...And I'm sorta, uh, shocked and appalled at how recent this stuff was with these terrible state laws. On principle, I think states should be allowed to have terrible laws and citizens can leave that state to go to the state with better laws, so states can compete on that basis. ...But yeah I'll acknowledge that's some terrible stuff.

      And then acknowledge that groups like GLAAD had *nothing* to do with that court case.

      Hey, the tilde with Derek Rumpler should make everything alright! He should calm down and laugh at how silly the situation was. I actually thought he wouldn't block the KoopaTV account since he didn't do so right away. ...but then he did so yeah.

      It's not wrong for players to do that, but let's compare movements. At the moment there is a quixotic movement for Nintendo to add voice chat to Splatoon (which doesn't need it, personally). This movement, pre-Testfire, just spammed all of Nintendo's social media feeds whenever they posted on Splatoon. It was obnoxious, but it stayed within the videogame community.

      #Miiquality was specifically intended to blow up without regard for where it went, which is why the organisers sent it to mainstream media outlets and gay organisations. The story was red meat for them and for a while, whenever you searched "Tomodachi Life" into Google all you got was #Miiquality stuff and no information about the game. This is irresponsible, and was not kept within the industry bubble. It was picked up on by people who are not interested in facts, truth, or knowledge of the industry.

      How do I know this is true? Because even now, lies are being peddled.
      Like that. That was not true. What happened was that homosexual relationships were possible in the Japanese version via a game-breaking glitch that busted your file. It was patched out because you want to patch out game-breaking glitches.
      The media reported that as "Nintendo removes same-sex marriage." and "Nintendo refers to same-sex marriage as a 'bug'." It wouldn't matter what the allowed, it was Nintendo's job to patch its nasty butt out. It just happened that the glitch involved a hot-button topic in the Western world.

      To be fair, according to Wikipedia, "Destroy All Humans"'s top dude (or company or whatever) refused to work on the game because he didn't like the idea of making that kind of destructive to humanity game.

      Thanks for having good morals regarding your hypothetical store.

  3. Anti-gay attitudes are not something from the distant past, nor are they something that was going to go away without a social movement, without gay people banding together and parading through the street and showing that they aren't ashamed of who they choose to love. Even in 2003, it took a supreme court ruling to legalize it. And even today, those anti-gay laws are still technically on the books in many states, and at least one state (Louisiana) still sometimes charges people with the "crime" of homosexuality, even though they're not allowed to enforce it. There are still many prominent people in the US who blame gays for every natural disaster and who actually support the "shoot the gays" ballot initiative in California.

    I know that those people are acting on a deeply held belief that homosexuality is immoral, and I have empathy for their beliefs. But at the same time, I don't view morality as just a matter of opinion. When I see real people being hurt by someone's actions, I won't facilitate those actions. And for that reason, I won't purchase from someone who's going to use that money to oppose gay rights.

    That's what I (and others) wanted from Brenden Eich. We wanted reassurance that if we gave him our money, he wouldn't donate it to an anti-gay cause again. Instead of that, Eich issued carefully worded statements assuring us only that he wouldn't treat gay employees unfairly at Mozilla. That simply wasn't anyone's main concern. Maybe Eich didn't deserve to lose his job, but at the same time, we shouldn't have to give him money if we think it's hurting people. It's a bit of a rock and a hard place, but I favor not contributing to harms.

    I would not be opposed to how you described differentiating religious marriage and legal marriage. If that means using the term "civil union," then that would be fine, so long as the same term applied to everyone.

    As for Skaldic, I believe their original statement did say "most", not "all", though like I said, it didn't do them any favors.

    But after all this text, I can agree with your conclusion: there is a difference between being offended by Skaldic's game and dedicating your life to try to ruin them, and I agree with the implication that the former is okay while the latter is not. But I just think that the latter group is smaller than a few Internet comments make it seem. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if you and I are the only people on the Internet still talking about KTF.

    You're right that I do use a computer, and I even do a bit of game development myself. I'll definitely check out your games and your website. I don't know that I'll agree with too many of the political messages, but you never know. It's always good to hear and experience other people's opinions.

    1. Those people don't view morality as a matter of opinion either.
      ...I don't either, actually, for the same reason. Morality isn't relative, it's what G-d says it is.

      I dunno, that seems pretty satisfactory to me. Eich can't single-handedly control how Mozilla spends its money, only whatever money he makes. And you shouldn't be able to control what a dude does with his own salary, because that really is equivalent to trying to stifle democracy and livelihood. Shareholders should be able to control what the company as a whole does with its money, and that's acceptable.

      I'd be surprised since I'm pretty sure Twitter is still talking about it, I think. Skaldic sure is.

      Thank you for being... the most pleasant liberal KoopaTV has ever talked to, honestly. You're our favourite now.

      Good step up from people telling me that I'm a woman-killing pedophile because I don't like Anita Sarkeesian.

      Anyway, not all of KoopaTV's articles are political, and we try to be Fair & Balanced.

      So... yeah. :p
      Thanks again. ^_^

  4. I am a homosexual and I believe that it was wrong for the developers to make this game... unavailable.

    Seriously. It started out as a very poorly made slapped-together game created for the sole and exclusive purpose of angering uptight busybodies who feel they have the authority to decide what media I can and cannot consume. And the second Steam removed it from Greenlight, it became a representation of something our country needs to hold dear, something our country is letting slip through it's fingers: free speech.

    This game is free speech and it has a right to exist, and its creator has a right to make and publish it, just like I have a right to be, well, gay! I'm saddened that I can't find a copy of it anywhere; I'd happily rehost it and join the creator's quest to "disturb" the masses.

    Again, it's a video game where you shoot at sprites, get points for pink ones, and lose points for grey ones. If they were ISIS and Marine sprites respectively, we would not be having this conversation, and the game would still be on Greenlight.

    KoopaTV, PLEASE upload your copy of this game somewhere, it's an endangered species!

    1. Thank you for your comment, Mr. Anonymous Homosexual.

      Well, our copy was downloaded from this url, left at the end of Skaldic's statement:

      (So I technically linked to it already, just not directly. ...Didn't wanna make a big deal out of it since it's not my place to really RECOMMEND people download it.)

      We don't vouch for the files' cleanliness but Ludwig's computer hasn't had problems since downloading the game.
      It's really not worth playing, though, but if you wanna help piss off people who hate free speech, go ahead and re-host it

      Thaaaat saaaaaid, you can also promote KoopaTV's games (as in, KoopaTV developed them), which also disturb the masses.

      Al Sharpton's minions notably want Trayvon Tyson's Punch-Out!! removed from the Internet.

      Actually, you bring up an interesting point. Mechanically, the game could be the same as something that wouldn't get this kind of reaction. That said, it could just as easily be Marine and ISIS sprites, respectively. Would that attract the same outrage? Probably not, and it probably wouldn't have gotten a KoopaTV article as a result.

      You gotta think, portraying homosexuals as the victims is probably THE number one outrage machine you could possibly do in our society. Blacks? Veterans? Pft, they wouldn't hold a candle. I think Skaldic recognises that, and that's why they picked the subject matter they did. Not out of any personal malice towards homosexuals. Homosexuals should be, uh, "proud" (aw, dangit) of how far they've come in such a short period of time.

      Or for ones like you who don't subscribe to wrecking free speech as a sign of progress, appalled.

      Thank you.

  5. The problem isn't that the game is offensive. The problem is it's the clumsiest attempt at satire I've ever seen. Like, laughably bad. The "statement" from the company as to why they made it is just inane. I suppose it's a good way to get attention for a company that probably needs it. I'd never heard of Skaldic games before today, so mission accomplished. I'd never buy a game from them, but I'm aware of them. I'm more disappointed in how stupid these people are than by how stupid their game is.

    Free speech is protected, but why would you want to "speak" this in the first place? It seems like a colossal waste of time. Kind of like Christian sneakers. Anyone sensing a theme here?

    1. Thanks for your comment!

      ...I dunno wot Christian sneakers are.

      I too have never heard of Skaldic, but now I follow them on Twitter which I never would've done if not for this, so I can stay up-to-date with whatever the heck they'll do next. (And whatever that is will probably make great article fodder.)

      The problem IS that it's offensive, or at least that's the problem the majority of people have with it. My problem, like yours, is that the quality is lacking and it's just shallow. (Which is why I said the games that KoopaTV makes ( my gosh what a horrible url) are much better works of satire.)

      Skaldic may or may not be genuinely bad designers but it's clear they didn't put effort or time into the game, maybe because the message isn't that important to them. Or they could deliver the message in a minimally viable fashion.

  6. Parts of this article admittedly gave me a headache (the comparison of the game to hypothetical games about killing koopas being equivalent to games about killing people who are at a real risk for being killed due to their sexual orientation in reality felt particularly fallacious and empty), but reading your comments was pretty refreshing.
    Also, I think it was totally appropriate for Steam to remove it. For many such publishing platforms, that game would have blatantly violated TOS, and it's also in Steam's right to want to have nothing to do with such a game (which is why this issue manages to highlight an apparent near total lack of overhead about what kinds of games can be put on steam greenlight)
    I'm also glad to see other people who think this game completely failed to prove the point it was allegedly made to prove. (The best analogy I can think of is like trying to use an allergy test comprised solely of Histamine to prove that someone has allergies to something.)
    I also agree that the publisher has a right to make the game, but seeing some people appearing to take the stance that that means they shouldn't be criticized for making it is kind of tiring. I think xkcd summarizes it well:

    1. Thanks for the comment, but I take immediate issue with your headache, especially since it's two days after Troopa Memorial Day. We JUST memorialised our fallen Koopa Troopas that just DIED in the name of defending free speech and the liberties of Koopa Kingdom.

      So I think it's disgusting that you think having concern for killing Koopas is fallacious and empty and you should apologise immediately for your fighting words. It's people like you who make Koopas seem like acceptable targets for hatred... and fates even worse.

      That said, you're welcome for the refreshments. We don't exist to carry Skaldic's water or anything (we supply our OWN water, which is the refreshment you just had) so there's that.

      Oh, yeah, legally and all, what Steam did is totally kosher. Yes, there are those TOS kind of things that you gotta abide by whenever you use a third party platform (including whatever Google's is that KoopaTV abides by and somehow hasn't gotten in trouble for yet) and Skaldic might've broken it (I wouldn't know I haven't read it).
      But SHOULD Steam have done it? I don't think so. Why hide it? What good does that do for anyone?

      If you think it's abhorrent behaviour, why not shine a bright light on that behaviour and let people know it exists? It's not hurting anyone by virtue of it existing (besides Skaldic's reputation).

      (I have no idea what that analogy means because I don't know what Histamine is.
      ...But I Googled it and... So you're saying that the allergy test has a 100% chance of succeeding because it's a self-fulfilling prophecy?)

      Yeah I knew what the xkcd link was before lookin' at it. I'm familiar with it.
      The First Amendment does guarantee you that you'll be able to express whatever shitty views you have without being killed for it or having coercive force against them being expressed. It doesn't guarantee that people will like you or agree with your views, or that they even have to listen to them.
      So yeah, no one is saying Skaldic shouldn't be criticised. I mean, I criticised them in the article and have criticised them more in the comments. The game sucks, almost broke my computer, and its message is ineffective. But they should be able to still have an avenue to allow people to play their monitor-busting game, especially if those people have big enough monitors that it won't bust them.

      Steam isn't that avenue because Steam decided so, which is why Skaldic has the game in a .zip on their site. That's fine. But it's a commentary on Steam's values, not Skaldic's, on allowing only SOME kinds of expression.

    2. By the analogy, I meant that making something that is virtually guaranteed to get a negative reaction is the dumbest way I can think of to exhibit how "oversensitive" a group is. Instead of proving that the group has that reaction on a hair trigger or over inane things (in contrast, the tomodachi life thing was an excellent example, although I felt that the complaints people had were valid to bring up, stuff got INCREDIBLY overblown, especially because of those mistranslations and false reports. Nintendo did a really good job handling it though), it simply proves that they can have that reaction period. And yeah, I apologize, I should have explained what Histamine was. (It's normally used as the control in such tests because if they don't react to it then something's wrong)
      Also, in your mention of steam trying to "hide" it, do you think they should have instead done something like disable downloads from the page (it could be downloaded from the developer's site anyways, which they might mention), put a message on the page distancing themselves from it, and just left it up as a "wall of shame" kind of thing?

    3. In my world view, what Steam should've done is nothing.
      That said, that wall of shame thing would be a lot better than deleting it entirely, and I think it's appeal to a lot of people.

      Skaldic's experiment wasn't if the game would get a negative reaction or not (as we know, it's guaranteed), but they wanted to measure the *degree* of negativity. So it's like seeing if your allergy causes some skin rash or it makes you basically suffocate like those scary severe peanut allergies.


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