There is excitement in the USA about the new superhero video game “Black Panther” from Electronic Arts. A video clip is being hotly debated on reddit and Twitch. Streamer Asmongold once again leads the way in the protest. The context in which the developer speaks is being distorted.
What kind of clip is this?
- The clip features Danielle Lalonders speaking. She is currently an “Associate Narrative Designer” for Cliffhanger Games. The studio is working with Electronic Arts on “Black Panther”.
- However, in the clip, she is not talking about “Black Panther”, but about the game “ValiDate: Struggling Singles in your Area”, which was released on Steam in September 2022.
- For the studio “Veritabel Joy Studios”, she works as a Lead Producer – in this role, she speaks in the clip.
Black Panther is a Marvel movie from 2018. In summer 2023, EA and Marvel announced a new single-player game about Black Panther (via GamePro):
This is what the designer says:
“I have a team of 21 people at ValiDate. That is a quite large team. For an indie team, it’s an incredibly large team. But who is in our team? ValiDate has a team that is mostly – that exclusively consists of people of color. We have no white people on our team.
I made that decision because I wanted to create a safe environment and I know: the best way to make the environment safe is to work with people who are like me. I am not saying that white people create an unsafe environment in the gaming industry. I am not saying that. I am saying that it is sometimes hard to work with white people because they think something is okay, but it is a microaggression.”
No one wants to deal with such difficulties when developing a game they love.
Statement portrayed as “EA lead developer says”
What is important to know? This statement is being portrayed on social networks and in media reports (via dailymail) as “This is what the lead developer of EA’s new game ‘Black Panther’ says”.
However, this statement does not refer to this game. She did not make this statement in her capacity as an EA employee, but in a different context and in relation to a different team.
“ValiDate” is an indie game with consciously “diverse stories” – and not “Black Panther”, a game aimed at the mass market.
For “Black Panther”, the designer is also not a “Lead Designer”, but an “Associate Narrative Designer” – “Associate” is usually a job at a “somewhat better than entry-level” level. It can therefore be assumed that she is not in a position to make personnel decisions.
Discussion is heated
How is this being discussed? As one might imagine, the video in the embedded video game reddit is being critically discussed.
One user quips: “So, if the game flops, will they blame it on racism?”
Another user says: Don’t make a mistake here. The woman speaks only for herself and not for all black people.
Once again, Twitch streamer Asmongold has taken the lead in the “I am outraged” movement, portraying the clip with “EA developer explains why she doesn’t hire white people”.
He says it is clearly racist. One only has to imagine if black people were categorically excluded in hiring. He explains this to be probably illegal and the designer’s behavior to be “simply insane”.
His video on the clip has already received 540,000 views. In a second video, Asmongold’s editor clarifies that he “mistakenly” stated that the developer was the lead designer for Black Panther. In reality, she is just a Narrative Designer. However, the developer is called a “racist piece of shit” and they see themselves fundamentally in the right.
In a critical reddit thread that the editor refers to, Asmongold is accused of “ignorant rage baiting”. One user suggests that YouTube needs “Community Notes” like Twitter.
What’s behind this: It was clear that the developer’s statement in the currently charged climate would spark such a reaction. But in her actual context, as the producer of an indie game, the statement probably would never have made such waves.
In her role as an EA employee, the designer likely would never have said something like that, because the situation is different, and presumably the EA PR machine would have exploded.
The debate is part of the current “Sweet Baby Inc” story, led by Asmongold, which criticizes a consulting firm for making video games artificially “woke” and then turning against a Steam group that criticized this behavior.
Amid this heated climate, stories like “Indie designer makes tiny game on Steam that is supposed to be diverse and doesn’t hire any whites” escalate into such a story.
“Black Panther”, a game that focuses on a black superhero, lends itself particularly well to such a debate:
Consulting firm under fire: What’s behind the accusations that Sweet Baby Inc makes games “woke”
