By Tauriq at Wednesday, May 06, 2015 9:13:00 AM

Popular game critic, Jim Sterling, recently published his latest in his series of Steam Greenlight trailers. In this YouTube series, Sterling shows us a game trailer on Steam, (pulled by Valve yesterday) and, more often than not, criticises the trailer and its content. His latest, however, took a decidedly less than a snarky note.

“This is a Steam Greenlight trailer for something I’m not going to even say the name of,” Sterling says. The game is called “Kill the F*ggot”.

In this light-gun game, you must - as the game suggests - shoot gay people. You suffer penalties for shooting straight people and get bonuses for targeting transgender people. We hear a man make use exaggerated stereotypes of gay people to make lurid comments about them.

The game is ugly on every level and it’s horrible that someone thought it necessary, not only to make it, but put it on a platform for anyone to see. Naturally, as often happens, defenders and the dev himself says "I made this game just to piss off those people that are way too overly sensitive."

That's admirable.

Some have attempted to say the game is "satire", since he did make it knowing what bigotry is and went ahead anyway - but claims himself not to hate gay people.

But just because you spout bigotry in a funny voice doesn’t make it satire; you’re also literally using mechanics to murder digital gay people, you’ve created digitised versions of a people targeted by existing governments and murderous people today. It doesn’t matter that it’s not real; it’s perpetuating a culture that says its fine to target gay people, transgender people, and so on - people who already are targeted and undermined everyday.

Even games like Watch_Dogs set up the faceless goons as worthy opponents with guns; killing civilians in GTA results in actual punishment, a lot of the time. Here you’re rewarded for gunning down people who, even today, are not allowed to marry in America and are imprisoned in certain, more conservative countries.

Using your platform to beat down on people who currently suffer isn’t admirable, it’s bullying; it’s not satire, it’s immoral and awful.

When asked to defend it, the dev made noises about how sensitive gamer culture has become; how people are so easily offended. This isn’t about “offense”, it’s about wondering who benefits from intentionally creating material that perpetuates a stereotype and violent targeting so many of us fight every day.

You’re not strong for making a game for gamers to beat on on digital representations of people who are treated as non-humans by so many; who are cast out by family members; viewed as “freaks”, fired from jobs, denied marriage and adoption and blood donation.

Oh, how very strong and brave to make and support material that thinks this community is worth mocking and literally targeting - and not, say, goons, aliens, ghosts or any number of other targets.

No one forced the dev - a failed Christian shoe promoter - to make his game’s targets gay people. And no one is forcing you to not support him. As always, there’s no law - only appeals to empathy and respect, for those who even today face the consequences of this horrid view. And please, don’t push this under the guise of satire. It’s not satirising anything - (good) satire shows why the bigotry is wrong by mimicking it in the right way; this just mimics it in a funny voice.

Further, this isn’t a free speech issue. I’m not asking for it to be banned from the Internet. The dev can sell his game wherever he likes. Steam, apparently, doesn’t want to host it and they’re entitled to - it’s their platform. The same freedom that let’s him make homophobic and transphobic games is the same freedom being used to decide what they want on their platform.

Games can be better than this.

Finally, it’s pretty horrible that the dev himself has allegedly received threats. That’s awful, too, and I hope anyone opposing him focuses on the game - not threatens or harasses him.

UPDATE

Voice actress, Rachel Lally, issued a public statement to Skaldic asking them to remove her voice, name or likeness from any Skaldic games.

"I don't see the merit, humor or artistry in 'pissing people off'' and was certainly not made aware that that is what Skaldic is about or aims to do. It is easy to 'piss people off' as you say, what is difficult and what we as creators, artists and collaborators should strive to do is to reveal, challenge and hopefully change attitudes in an enlightening and thought provoking way. Not by relying on outdated stereotypes and intentionally offending easy targets or minorities simply for attention.

You sought to offend and I am well and truly offended."

Related articles:

Tauriq Twitter / MWEB GameZone Twitter | Facebook