Kingdom Come - Interview @ TechRaptor

Daniel Vavra is interviewed on TechRaptor to talk about GamersGate, and the gaming industry. I will remind everyone to keep it civil this time, or I will lock the thread.

What is the biggest difference in the gaming industry when comparing now to when you worked on Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven (2002)? Better or worse?

The industry is much better now. We can be independent. We can self-publish our games, even on consoles. We can speak directly to our fans through social networks. There are new ways to fund development. All that is awesome and ideal for growth of the scene and more original games. There are also many more communication channels – social media, Youtubers, bloggers. Back in the day, the Internet was very small, paper mags held all the power, and the journalists asked boring questions like “how many weapons/cars/levels are you going to have?” I was trying to write a sophisticated mature story, and most of them wanted to know if it’s going to be possible to drive over people. Now, when I am trying to make mature realistic historic game, some people ask why we don’t have female knights.

Will the GamerGate issue have any real effect on your approach to your upcoming game, Kingdom Come: Deliverance? That could be changing a character, a story, or part of the world.

No. We had a strong playable female character before all this started. We have gay characters in the game, and we have different minorities in the game, because all I want is to have a mature, strong story. A story that I wanted to tell for years, and I am not going to change it because of outside pressure.

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More information.

while the tools might have grown, and we got out of a slump.. They are still miles away from the quality of the old projects
Those guys seemed like geniuses, passionate geniuses compared to nowadays developers

Big chunk of interview is on the theme of women in gaming and gaming journalism

this quote pretty much sums in up for me

Assassin’s Creed had 5 different articles about its lack of a female character on the front page of an industry website in one day. Five! Next to each other. And we can continue: the Far Cry 4 cover “scandal,” Stanley Parabble was accused of racism, Wildstar was accused of sexism, God of War, Hotline Miami, Bioshock, Divinity Original Sin, Witcher… Nobody ever dares to argue or protect his art, because it would mean instant accusation of misogyny/racism/homophobia/sexism… And then you realize that the people who are accusing others everyday have terrible conflicts of interests and very weird ethics. The pot calling the kettle black.

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I am glad some of the developers are growing a backbone and standing up to some of the recent crap.

One of the pillars of mainstream journalism are scandals and controversy. So they do it intentionaly to raise attention using the easy way. These people can write for other media too, so they are accustomed for this kind of writing. They do it basically for money. The most loudest ones are probably fanatics who like to censor other opinions but I think that main problem lies in this journalistic trend. Mainstream trend.

See also recent topic about game journalism:
http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25617

Dan Vavra said:

we are called racist because there are no people of color in our medieval Bohemia world

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Really sad. A mix of egoism + ideology + zero knowledge about history. Hopefully most of these comments also come from children and teenagers.

There are a handful sites that -occasionally- write something about women in video games. This idea that there is a gigantic conspiracy, and that you can't express yourself in games.. it's just absurd. I mean, these websites are relatively tiny forces, and it's not like they're pushing for anything crazy. And, at the end of the day, these articles are drops in the bucket of the overall discussion. This guy (and the whole GG fiasco) is blowing this stuff out of proportion.

You probably misread part of the interview… or most of it. Its funny like you bend his words into "gigantic conspiracy" and "tiny sites". Please, befool someone else. He didnt said its gigantic conspiracy and the only thing that is absurd here is in fact your comment.

What's this I find here coming back after my vacation? Communities ripped apart, lines being drawn in pristine virtual sands, brothers and sisters of the Watch even going at each others' throats? Seriously?
And why? Because some angry (young?) internet men usurping the term "gamer" (hey, I've been a gamer for 30+ years now, and I'm not planning to yield that well-deserved title to anyone who hasn't suffered from and grown in decades of geeky rejection at all) feel some possible minor collusion within their favoured media outlets had anything to to with those same outlets generally agreeing on certain (SJW) perspectives on the state and dynamic of games and their community, views not shared by said angry men?
Now it seems I can't make two steps on the web without being swamped by a horde of gleeful crusaders popping out of the woodwork, falling over themselves to agree with anyone with a face even approximately supporting their respective views and a few on at least one side going to great lengths and worrying depths to denigrate anyone who doesn't.
Let's not draw this community here into that sort of name-calling, ad hominems and inappropriate suggestion. The issues at hand are obviously important to many here as anywhere else and should certainly not be hushed up. Stances may be taken but based on sound argumentation and the readiness to defend them fairly against well-founded criticism.

Edit:
It took me quite a while to find an article that gave me a useful overview as to what happened and successfully eschewed much bias. On Forbes.com, of all places, but worth the read and enough for me to refrain from further fuelling those flames:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkai...look-at-the-controversy-sweeping-video-games/

SWTOR lead designer Damion Schubert's response to Vavra and g*mergate is perfectly on point I believe :http://www.zenofdesign.com/my-artistic-freedom-is-fine-thank-you/

Just keep the fucking izm's out of our games please, unless it's there for story reasons (e.g as in killing nazis, commies or feminizts.)

namelessone said:

SWTOR lead designer Damion Schubert's response to Vavra and g*mergate is perfectly on point I believe :http://www.zenofdesign.com/my-artistic-freedom-is-fine-thank-you/

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This article didnt touch the problem so its response to noone. Mr. Schubert just talks about his own job or freedom which is fine. I dont see anyone who would claim he is exactly the man who has some problems or needs help or anything. So its pretty ridiculous to make statements about "threat" that doesnt exist. But I dont think he was called racist like other developer just because he respects the history. But if mr. Schubert wants to write about his freedom he can.

Farflame said:

This article didnt touch the problem so its response to noone. Mr. Schubert just talks about his own job or freedom which is fine. I dont see anyone who would claim he is exactly the man who has some problems or needs help or anything. So its pretty ridiculous to make statements about "threat" that doesnt exist. But I dont think he was called racist like other developer just because he respects the history. But if mr. Schubert wants to write about his freedom he can.

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Except that no one was called racist. Criticism of any part of a game (you can argue the validity of it) is not a personal attack on the devs, if Vavra perceives it as that, it's his problem.
Some people want their creations to be recognised as art, but when they get criticised from all angles, like all art does, they get defensive and cry censorship when no one is calling for it.