A reader of ZenOfDesign sent me this thread that he started on NeoGAF near the turn of the year. I’ve found it an interesting topic to talk about, but haven’t had time to discuss it in detail.

I am very interested in creative processes and complex discussions around the creative freedom of artists as balanced against societal responsibility…. I have seen enlightening discussions amongst members around these subjects (the “butt-slap story” or “Quiet as embarrassing” being some of them). This is why I wanted to start this discussion around the role of the artist beyond his own creation as a “meta” topic. – can [the Artist] do as he/she feels?

– should he/she be concerned by the social environment of his/her art?

– is he/she tacitly influenced by his surrounding status quo, so the idea of art of isolation is chimera?

– should he/she be entirely free but so are critics to point out the problematic aspects of the creation?

The answer is a big ol’ ball of wax to unwind, but in truth is fairly straightforward – at least to questions 1 and 4. Maybe I’ll take 2 and 3 later.

The artist can, and should be, able to create just about whatever the hell he wants to create. This is core to my own beliefs about free speech, and maps pretty well to reality as well. For all of the fearmongering of the easily spooked idiot brigade, virtually any game can be made and sold- at least in the US. GTA V was made, sold record numbers and got stellar reviews. Hatred was made and sold. Huniepop as well. They didn’t exactly blow the doors off the bank vault – but their content made them somewhat niche. That’s fine, too. And while DOA isn’t coming to America, it’s not because of legal reasons, but because its projected sales don’t justify the expense. Well, not absolutely everything. The First Amendment – the legal bailiwick of Free Speech in America, at least – is one of the US’s more constrained amendments compared to, say, the Second Amendment. The biggest no-no is child porn. Libel and slander have legal consequences, although room is carved out for satire. Copyright and trademark law is meant to protect the artist. And you can’t go yelling fire in a movie theater, or go throwing down credible threats against other people. But if you can avoid these legal landmines, go at it. Push your envelopes. Take some chances. But keep in mind that some taboos are in place for a reason limited directly to broad market acceptance. However, this freedom is not about defending art as much as its about defending a message. The primary purpose of the concept of freedom of speech is not to protect art. That’s a really cool secondary effect, and one my work depends on. No, the concept of freedom of speech is to defend the right to criticize, especially for those in the minority to criticize those in power. This is the idea that free speech is a bulwark against tyranny. Art is protected because an artist may have a message – a political or cultural message – he wants to convey. And plenty of games do! Call of Duty is basically an ode to hoo-rah culture. The Sims is an exploration about how being trapped in consumer culture may not actually make you happier. Bioshock is about the failure of Randian philosophy. Civilization’s nuke mechanics are a pretty damning critique of the usage of nukes in terms of leaving the world a viable place to live. And so on, and so forth. In many cases, the message may be unintended by the designers. That’s okay – it’s protected anyway. And by extension, critics have just as much – if not more!- freedom to criticize art. If you conclude that the primary goal of free speech is to protect political ideas, it becomes clear that art criticism is exactly the sort of speech that the First Amendment was meant to protect. Does HuniePop have a political message worth protecting? The Supreme Court would probably blush as they played it before saying ‘probably not but maybe….’ — but that ‘maybe’ is good enough to warrant protection. However, Anita’s criticisms of games like HuniePop are DEFINITELY criticisms about the cultural status quo. One of the tenets of free speech is that the answer to bad speech is more speech. That’s all cultural criticism is. And the fact that its an unpopular opinion among gamers is exactly why it needs free speech protection – the status quo rarely needs protection. Criticism is not censorship. One of the most frequent and annoying themes of the alt-right/gamergate brigade is to suggest that we want to end problematic content. There may be some who have lofty visions of that, but most of us simply want to see the state of the art expand to include more diverse games with less problematic content. Which is to say, I don’t expect for GTA V to ever go away or for Call of Duty to ever stop embracing the jingo militarism that has made them a powerhouse brand. In fact, their dev teams would be idiots to stray too far from that successful formula (I wouldn’t expect Guns & Ammo to start selling Bernie Sander’s bumper stickers either). When most cultural critics say that GTA is bad, they aren’t saying it shouldn’t be sold (and I strongly fought against Jack Thompson, a right wing nutjob who did try to censor games at the governmental level). They are saying that they wished there were more games that were different. Criticism is, in fact, healthy for the genre. There seems to be a population of gamers who are completely satisfied with every game being a carbon copy of a game they’ve seen before – and endless array of fighting games, CoD clones, and sequels to Assassin’s Creed. Games are capable of so much more, and in so many directions. And while many people are focusing on new directions involving new tech (VR) or new game mechanics, adjusting the games we make and sell to reach broader audiences is not only a competitive advantage for companies willing to listen, it also is important for gaming as a hobby to continue its rise to ubiquity. Seeing game companies like BioWare, Volition and tobyfox expand how games approach these issues is more important to the genre growing as improving our fill rates and creating ever shinier shaders. Criticism of criticism is also fair game. People like to rant that Anita ‘can’t be criticized’ in return. This is belied by the hundreds of GamerGate adherents who have filled YouTube with criticisms of Anita’s work. Much of it is not very good. But no one is stopping you from doing so. Free speech does not grant you a market. Just because you can make a game does not mean that anyone should be obligated to sell it. If Steam had decided they didn’t want to sell Hatred or HuniePop, they’d have every right to exclude them from their shelves for whatever reason they want to. We don’t force Christian stores to sell Satanic bibles, we don’t force Wal*Mart to bely their family friendly brand by selling porn. ‘Freedom’ includes letting the owners of a marketplace decide what they want on their shelves in order to attract the clientele that they want. Free speech does not grant you press – good or otherwise. No one is obligated to write about your game – nor are they obligated to write positive things about your game if they do. No one is obligated to let you complain on their website if you disagree with their review. No one is obligated to turn on comments so you can turn their website into a sewer. And no one is obligated to give you a checkmark if you break their rules. Part of freedom of speech is the freedom to publish. We don’t force the New York Times to let Donald Trump write the front page either. If you don’t like how Twitter or Polygon treats you, go start a blog or find someone who wants to publish your rant. People who fight to shut down cultural critics are anti-free speech and against the growth of video games as a genre. If you are trying to scare or intimidate voices off the internet with death threats, scare tactics or just outright bullying in order to shut them up, you are trying to silence what is very likely a valid voice about games. I’m not saying that that voice is always right – as an example, I tend to like Anita’s work but still find plenty wrong with it – but her videos have given me plenty to think about and have contributed directly to my growth as a designer, and to an overall improvement in the games that I make. A lot of game designers could care less about what cultural critics say, and that’s fine too. Again, you want to go make Hatred 2 or HuniePop, be my guest. You probably won’t get great reviews from Polygon, but sadly, you’ll probably milk the ‘controversy’ that someone hurt your feelings to sell far more than a non-controversial game would ever sell. Which is, of course, the funniest thing about this whole ‘CRITICISM=CENSORSHIP!’ meme that floats around. Hatred is, for example, a pretty lousy game by most standards based solely on their gameplay, not their craptastic politics. It probably sold a lot better than a lot of other, much more worthy games that didn’t have that controversy to milk. That being said, shitty, hateful & awful games DO hurt the industry. It’s a necessary pain in the service of free speech, but every time some jackass attempts to generate controversy to sell games, as they did for Hatred, they can turn people off of gaming. When an article about Slave Tetris hits the LA Times, it may result in parents taking their gameboys and ipads away from their kids. This will become less of a problem in the future – gaming now has just too much momentum as broadly acceptable by almost everyone – but one cannot ignore that there may be ripple effects. And for what its worth, sometimes its the SJWs that are poking the bear, such as when Mass Effect added lesbian sex scenes to the ire of Fox News.

When I started out in the industry, I didn’t pay much attention to cultural criticism of games – in fact, I also bristled at political correctness affecting my games. I expect a lot of industry folks are like I was then. But in twenty years of working in the industry, I’ve grown a lot. Working in MMOs, I’ve been in a lot more contact with my fans, and I’ve gotten more and better feedback about how my games have been perceived and have affected minority voices. Running teams, I’ve grown more aware of how few of these voices actually find themselves in decision-making positions on dev teams. And frankly, having been an avid game player my whole life, I’ve gotten a little weary of playing the same games year after year. I’m still interested in the next Doom that’s coming out, sure, but frankly I’ve been having way more fun in the last year with games like Undertale and The Stanley Parable – games that actually challenged the conventional wisdom of what a game actually is and- in many ways- who a gamer actually is as well.

I’m a lifelong gamer. I’m a fan of games as a genre and a way of life. I’m eager to see them improve in every vector. My freedom to create any game is vital to that – but so is the freedom of critics to help guide the genre along the way.