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[Bridges]

It's not a smoking gun, but it's a suspicious lack of prudence. If I worked in the same building as Jared Fogle and had no way of knowing about his child pornography thing, I would be telling everybody that I had no idea whenever he comes up. Because I really, really don't want to be associated with that, and I'm not going to take any chances letting people mistake me for being associated with that. I'm going to be assertive in order to prevent mistakes.

Same thing should apply here. You'd think Gears for Breakfast would really want to not be associated with white supremacists, and so would be eager to tell everyone that they aren't white supremacists.

I understand that. I guess my mindset is this:

If you had started working in a building that Jared Fogle works with before it was known that he had a child pornography thing, and the nature of your work in that building had nothing to do with child pornography, then I would have no reason to assume that you engaged in child pornography. You were just doing your job and unbeknownst to you he ended up being a bad person. I wouldn't expect a statement from you, the nature of his job didn't leave you in any kind of position to know of or condone his bad thoughts and behaviours. That's on him, not you.

I also wouldn't expect the owner to go back and erase any work he may have done for the company if the work he did was completely unrelated.

Side note: I hope typing out "child pornography" multiple times doesn't put me on some kind of list

EDIT:

This dev-team is 8 people strong. They have been working on this game for over 5 years, with probably thousands of dollars in debt. Just look at the interview with the Cuphead team (they were close to bankruptcy and homelessness). They not saying anything has nothing to do with them agreeing what that fucking POS said, but more about covering for their own families. If you remove Jontron, you will get a massive fucking hoard of gamer-gaters (racists, misogynists, antisemites all of it). Why would a team, with no proved record, and 8 people strong, risk their fucking lives for this?

This is also really important. The gaming community at large has a tendency of eating people alive. More than anything this is a case of wrong place at the wrong, they got caught in the middles of some terrible bullshit that has nothing to do with them, and now have the extremely enviable position of choosing which half of their potential customers to alienate. While silence might not exactly be the moral high ground it is definitely their safest option

 

[Alucrid]

I understand that. I guess my mindset is this:

If you had started working in a building that Jared Fogle works with before it was known that he had a child pornography thing, and the nature of your work in that building had nothing to do with child pornography, then I would have no reason to assume that you engaged in child pornography. You were just doing your job and unbeknownst to you he ended up being a bad person. I wouldn't expect a statement from you, the nature of his job didn't leave you in any kind of position to know of or condone his bad thoughts and behaviours. That's on him, not you.

I also wouldn't expect the owner to go back and erase any work he may have done for the company if the work he did was completely unrelated.

Side note: I hope typing out "child pornography" multiple times doesn't put me on some kind of list

at the same time wouldn't it be prudent of subway to have purged him from any of their advertising after the fact?

 

[Painguy]

Please stop.

I worked on the game. I got to know my colleagues in my time there. They are anything but amateurs. Several of them had worked on games released for consoles and PC in the past. They are talented and far from inexperienced. I still recognize that, even after they chose to stand with someone who wants me ethnically cleansed.

You're trying to paint them (and me) as a bunch of amateurs to prove your point and it's just hilariously and utterly wrong.

We used middleware - Unreal Engine 3. It facilitates much of the difficult, menial things for you. It isn't as difficult as you keep claiming.

Hi Valen. I was making assumptions based of this quote you made

I was the only one on the team who had the skills to create Snatcher in 3D. However, this required shape key (also known as morph target) animation, something no one else on the team at the time knew how to do. I also created the pillow pile (the one you can "swim" in) in Hat Kid's spaceship, using a physics simulation. None of my colleagues knew how to do that either.

Some of those things you mentioned seem like standard fair to know when working on games of this magnitude. I myself haven't worked on large projects but have read and implemented papers involving these things. I tend to do things from scratch. although I have made a MEME game in Unity. lol

Since you're the dev, and you're saying something else I'll certainly retract what I said regarding the difficulty of changing the voice. Again I like to give the benefit of doubt (to fault), but I hope you understand why I've been saying what I have thus far. It's based on that quote from you. I have no problem with admitting I made a mistake tbh especially when working under assumptions. Are you still working with the other devs atm by any chance? I ask because I'd like to know if my assumption about them being afraid to make a statement is true or not.

 

[PokéKong]

I am sooo so far past piling all the benefit of a doubt onto folks going out of their way to be "apolitical" in this the year of our lord 2017. The dead silence from the developers is deafening. I'm just super cerious why. Why would they not simply remove such a small cameo of such a toxic person from the game? I was completely unaware he was even involved until a couple days ago, I don't think it was common knowledge, so it's not like they would have to worry about triggering a wave of outrage from the gamergater trash army if they had just silently removed it from the game. Unfortunately today's bigots aren't all complete idiots, most at least understand you have to do certain things to get along in society, and this grace period of abstaining from condemning one another is just one of the special wink-wink nudges they use these days. I don't really have any signs to assume the developers of this game are super stand-up folks, so until I do I'm assuming their not.

But for the record, I already unfortunately pre-ordered the game long ago, and I've been excited to play it and still intend to, I admit I lack the will to take a pass on it and it's too late to make a difference anyway. But I respect anyone's decision to hold off because they're so turned off by this thing. And then of course any time I've voiced my concerns about his inclusion on twitter I've been hit with tons and tons of this sentiment:

So of course anyone who chooses not to buy or play the game for "political" reasons gets called "retrarded", hysterical, autistic, an unreasonable crybaby SJW and the like. Everyone against playing the game for this reason keep getting urged to sweep it under the rug, to not worry about it, that hey it really doesn't matter in the great scheme of things so shushh ssshhushhh just shut up and play the game. But of course these goblins find it perfectly acceptable that their support for jontron absolutely motivates them to purchase and play the game, and don't see the hypocrisy here.

 

[Kinsei]

It's a real shame GfB has kept silent on this. Even a basic "We do not condone hate speech" message that doesn't mention Jon would be better than nothing.

 

[Rokal]

I'm not so sure what good a thread reboot is. You either flaunt your privilege and chose to ignore white supremacy and ethnic cleansing and what that means by buying the game, or you don't. I genuinely don't know what the line here is supposed to be from the moderation staff as to "insulting" others. Sugar coating that a bit? Asking them to please do better next time? Because minorities don't get to decide whether or not they will be told to throw themselves into an incinerator just for waking up in the morning. At the end of the day when you can't even keep yourself from buying a video game, you are part of the problem.


Anyways I just shared my opinion on the matter and I hope I didn't insult anyone too badly. I'm sure you'll be okay, you've got a new video game to play after all.

Utterly disgusting that this poster got banned for this post.

If you are deciding whether to buy this game and have a conscience, support any of the hundreds of other great games this year that didn’t directly or silently support Neo-Nazis.

 

[L Thammy]

I understand that. I guess my mindset is this:

If you had started working in a building that Jared Fogle works with before it was known that he had a child pornography thing, and the nature of your work in that building had nothing to do with child pornography, then I would have no reason to assume that you engaged in child pornography. You were just doing your job and unbeknownst to you he ended up being a bad person. I wouldn't expect a statement from you, the nature of his job didn't leave you in any kind of position to know of or condone his bad thoughts and behaviours. That's on him, not you.

I also wouldn't expect the owner to go back and erase any work he may have done for the company if the work he did was completely unrelated.

Side note: I hope typing out "child pornography" multiple times doesn't put me on some kind of list

Hey, at least you have the quoting people defense.

But to address your point. That's not really my issue in that scenario. I can't risk sitting back and hoping that people assume the best of me when a situation of that severity is involved.

And even though I had no involvement, people don't exist in a vacuum. Jared Fogle had friends and supporters. JonTron has friends and supporters. It isn't implausible that we're associated. I can't assume that people will assume innocence of me, because there's still enough of a connection that we could have been association, at least from the perspective of an outsider observer. It still makes sense for me to want to clearly distance myself.

With JonTron, they don't even need to talk politics in private. They could agree with his opinions, or simply not care that he made them.

 

[Yukinari]

Utterly disgusting that this poster got banned for this post.

If you are deciding whether to buy this game and have a conscience, support any of the hundreds of other great games this year that didn't directly or silently support Neo-Nazis.

I dont enjoy being called racist or a supremacist for wanting to buy a game that looks fun.

If i bought the game right now it would be to play it, not to support Jon or his views. Same goes for anybody who got a free copy on Twitch.

Gaf might as well go after every single streamer right now whether they mention Jon or not.

 

[etrain911]

That is not fucking true at all. You, and other people, are ignoring the fact that this dev-team is 8 people strong. They have been working on this game for over 5 years, with probably thousands of dollars in debt. Just look at the interview with the Cuphead team (they were close to bankruptcy and homelessness). They not saying anything has nothing to do with them agreeing what that fucking POS said, but more about covering for their own families. If you remove Jontron, you will get a massive fucking hoard of gamer-gaters (racists, misogynists, antisemites all of it). Why would a team, with no proved record, and 8 people strong, risk their fucking lives for this?

It's not hard too understand.

I feel like this is a point that has been going unstated for a while. Not everyone is in a position where they can take that kind of risk financially or emotionally (as these people often tend to attack developers and their families).

 

[OriginalPoe]

I can't support the game if they don't remove JonTron.

It's that simple and black/white. With the rising tide of racism being openly paraded around America like it's something okay, no. Anything touching that blight I will avoid and speak out against.

 

[Yoshimitsu126]

What does Vinny have to do to make things right? Make a statement? All because he chose to hand wave Jon and resume playing?

The only reason he brought it up is because hes known ever since the YL incident that the chat would go apeshit over anything related to Jon. He played YL as well.

I mean, Jon is a white supremacist so this make sense? Or are you saying they are going apeshit defending Jon Tron?

Anyway, Vinny didn't hand wave. He asked the chat if the world exploded as to mock the outrage people have for disliking Jon's voice in a game they might enjoy.

 

[Rmagnus]

I dont enjoy being called racist or a supremacist for wanting to buy a game that looks fun.

If i bought the game right now it would be to play it, not to support Jon or his views. Same goes for anybody who got a free copy on Twitch.

Gaf might as well go after every single streamer right now whether they mention Jon or not.

Ya we are at the point where being called a racist is more important than the fact that a development team decides to stand by their racist voice actor but hey game looks fun

 

[Kyolux]

I'm just asking here. But isn't the fact that making a big deal is made out of this, and if a statement would be made by the devs, just be accomplishing one thing. And that is putting the spotlight on JonTron? This feels like feeding wood to a fire instead of extinguishing it.

Like I wouldn't have known that JonTron was in this game and he wouldn't have gotten any of my money anyway if I would have bought the game if there wasn't 4-5 threads on here bringing this up. While if I'm just a random customer and bought the game because it looked interesting, I wouldn't have known about any of this and the game doesn't go out of its way to tell you that it's JonTron voicing one random npc.

I get the concerns of not wanting to support what JonTron stands for and anyone that associates with him though.

So I dunno.

 

[Yukinari]

I mean, Jon is a white supremacist so this make sense? Or are you saying they are going apeshit defending Jon Tron?

Anyway, Vinny didn't hand wave. He asked the chat if the world exploded as to mock the outrage people have for disliking Jon's voice in a game they might enjoy.

Its a combination of chat going crazy for just mentioning Jon and some defending him yes.

And yeah i know it was to mock the outrage. I should word myself better.

 

[Theanine3D]

Hi Valen. I was making assumptions based of this quote you made (I think)


Since you're the dev, and you're saying something else I'll certainly retract what I said regarding the difficulty of changing the voice. Again I like to give the benefit of doubt (to fault) I have no problem with that tbh. Are you still working with the other devs atm by any chance?

I was one of the very few 3D artists on the team who was entirely self-taught. And because I was self-taught, my skillset was very broad - I had never limited myself to learning solely to what a college curriculum would teach you. I had taught myself anything and everything if it was something I needed for a personal project. And one of those happened to be morph target animation. I happened to have had learned it for a project I'd made years before.

It just so happens that my colleagues, some of whom had actually studied game development and 3D art in a professional college setting (unlike me), were either not taught these things in their school, or they had picked a concentration/major that didn't require learning it. That doesn't make them amateurs. They were very good at the things they were hired to do. Animation was not one of those things for most of them. At the time I was in the team, I was 1 of only 2 animators.

I am not in communication with the team anymore. I left the team on good terms, but it was so long ago. I don't expect they'll want to speak to me after all this. I'm okay with that though. Speaking out against racism doesn't exactly make you popular in this industry. It's in part why I left.

 

[JonnyB]

I might have to get this game to support him. The whole situation was blown out of proportion, per usual in this day and age.

 

[Rmagnus]

I might have to get this game to support him. The whole situation was blown out of proportion, per usual in this day and age.

Yeah I think he has a patron too since it's the thing with YouTubers so you can give the money directy to him boo. Although he at least had the guts to show his face when sprouting shit and not hide behind an alt account.

 

[5taquitos]

I might have to get this game to support him. The whole situation was blown out of proportion, per usual in this day and age.

You're going to buy the game to explicitly support JonTron?

Oh boy.

 

[『Inaba Resident』]

I might have to get this game to support him. The whole situation was blown out of proportion, per usual in this day and age.

"We've gotten rid of discrimination in our western countries. If you don't think we've gotten rid of discrimination, you're living in a fantasy land."

 

[the_darkness]

Oh, I'm sure it's quite easy to replace an audio file in UE, too, and didn't mean to imply otherwise. I actually ninja-edited my post to clarify as much, but, evidently, wasn't fast enough, haha.

It's really not as simple as File > Replace when it comes to RC code, especially when dealing with small teams.

I might have to get this game to support him. The whole situation was blown out of proportion, per usual in this day and age.

WTF?

 

[Ferrio]

You guys are taking the classic junior member bait.

 

[watershed]

I might have to get this game to support him. The whole situation was blown out of proportion, per usual in this day and age.

Congratz on going out of your way to support a blatant racist. I'm sure it makes you feel very good about yourself.

 

[Monkeyball]

Its not hard to replace a few soundfiles if they are from a racist. Stop making shit up.

 

[L Thammy]

I might have to get this game to support him. The whole situation was blown out of proportion, per usual in this day and age.

Join Date: 03-09-2017
Total Posts: 38 (0.18 posts per day)


Tell KIA we said hi. Good job on your initiation.

 

[jabuseika]

Why would you want his name associated with your product...
It just doesn't make sense.

 

[Maximo]

You guys are taking the classic junior member bait.

Important to voice and educate people but yeah with juniors like that best to let the mods sort it out.

 

[JaseC]

It's really not as simple as File > Replace when it comes to RC code, especially when dealing with small teams.

That's generally true, sure, but there are no secondary concerns in this case. Steam has no certification process for patches (they can be published instantly and at any time) and the console versions are still some weeks away from being cert-ready.

 

[Painguy]

I was one of the very few 3D artists on the team who was entirely self-taught. And because I was self-taught, my skillset was very broad - I had never limited myself to learning solely to what a college curriculum would teach you. I had taught myself anything and everything if it was something I needed for a personal project. And one of those happened to be morph target animation. I happened to have had learned it for a project I'd made years before.

It just so happens that my colleagues, some of whom had actually studied game development and 3D art in a professional college setting (unlike me), were either not taught these things in their school, or they had picked a concentration/major that didn't require learning it. That doesn't make them amateurs. They were very good at the things they were hired to do. Animation was not one of those things for most of them. At the time I was in the team, I was 1 of only 2 animators.

I am not in communication with the team anymore. I left the team on good terms, but it was so long ago. I don't expect they'll want to speak to me after all this. I'm okay with that though. Speaking out against racism doesn't exactly make you popular in this industry. It's in part why I left.

I see. Given their educational background it makes sense. I made the incorrect assumption that because it was a small team everyone knew a little bit of everything like you. Thanks for the clarification. Sorry to hear that you were pressured out of game dev Hopefully you landed work that allows you to get decent pay while not working yourself to death, and beyond.

 

[Budi]

So maybe someone can clear this up for me, is Jontron getting a cut from the sales or something? Another poster here said that Jontron was the one who paid to be in this game? This "supporting" white supremacists if you buy the game confuses me a bit.

Regardless of that, it's definitely not a good look for the team to not say anything about it.

 

[philz]

This wasn’t even on my radar until this controversy. Will probably buy on sale because it looks fun. JonTron could be a complete racist NAZI but I have no idea because many on NeoGAF throw around the terms so loosely they’ve essentially descended to meaninglessness. In any case the dev’s I’m sure want anything other than to be at the center of this type of controvesy. Let games be games.

 

[Phu]

There are no safe bets on Kickstarter. Seems like every other project that gets funded finds a new way to go askew.

 

[Bridges]

at the same time wouldn't it be prudent of subway to have purged him from any of their advertising after the fact?

Yes, however the difference here is that Subway was the face of the company at the time, key to their public presence and mindshare, referenced repeatedly by name.

JonTron is just a cameo that is, to my knowledge, never mentioned by name (other than certainly in the credits) and from what I can tell never mentioned on their website, Kickstarter, or in any form of advertising after the initial announcement that he'd be in the game (which was before he made those infamous remarks). I totally could be wrong about this though so if someone calls me out on that I'll respectfully retract this statement.

Why would they not simply remove such a small cameo of such a toxic person from the game? I was completely unaware he was even involved until a couple days ago, I don't think it was common knowledge

I feel like you just answered your own question. It's a small cameo and it's not common knowledge, most people are completely unaware. This controversy has very little to actually do with them and making any kind of statements will cause unnecessary aftermaths that I'm sure a fledgling team of less than 10 would not like to endure.

Utterly disgusting that this poster got banned for this post.

If you are deciding whether to buy this game and have a conscience, support any of the hundreds of other great games this year that didn’t directly or silently support Neo-Nazis.

I'm sure this poster was definitely banned for his stance on the issue and not for the jabs against the moderation team and the overtones of hostility towards those of dissenting opinions.

Hey, at least you have the quoting people defense.

But to address your point. That's not really my issue in that scenario. I can't risk sitting back and hoping that people assume the best of me when a situation of that severity is involved.

And even though I had no involvement, people don't exist in a vacuum. Jared Fogle had friends and supporters. JonTron has friends and supporters. It isn't implausible that we're associated. I can't assume that people will assume innocence of me, because there's still enough of a connection that we could have been association, at least from the perspective of an outsider observer. It still makes sense for me to want to clearly distance myself.

With JonTron, they don't even need to talk politics in private. They could agree with his opinions, or simply not care that he made them.

That makes sense, but I still stand by that, at least in my head, Person A working with Person B is not causation to assume they share beliefs that are unrelated to the project being worked on or that there is any kind of obligation for Person B to condemn Person A for a situation that happened after their time together and no way involved Person A.

But I see your side of it and I see how and why someone would think that way. I guess I just think about it a little differently.

I think we all here agree that racism is bad. I just haven't seen Gears for Breakfast do anything racist yet.

 

[Rmagnus]

This wasn’t even on my radar until this controversy. Will probably buy on sale because it looks fun. JonTron could be a complete racist NAZI but I have no idea because many on NeoGAF throw around the terms so loosely they’ve essentially descended to meaninglessness. In any case the dev’s I’m sure want anything other than to be at the center of this type of controvesy. Let games be games.

That's a thing called Google use it to educate yourself but it seem being ignorant while giving out hot takes is a thing these days.

 

[KonradLaw]

Did people seriously expect Humble to intervene with game on their store just because it has a small voice role of a guy who said offensive stuff outside of the game?

 

[CookTrain]

Did people seriously expect Humble to intervene with game on their store just because it has a small voice role of a guy who said offensive stuff outside of the game?

No. People expected the developer to pipe up, but when that didn't happen, Humble was the next stop.

 

[L Thammy]

This wasn't even on my radar until this controversy. Will probably buy on sale because it looks fun. JonTron could be a complete racist NAZI but I have no idea because many on NeoGAF throw around the terms so loosely they've essentially descended to meaninglessness. In any case the dev's I'm sure want anything other than to be at the center of this type of controvesy. Let games be games.

Hi! This is who you're defending.

But I'm sure everyone else are the bad ones. Just being mean and throwing labels at everyone.

 

[KonradLaw]

No. People expected the developer to pipe up, but when that didn't happen, Humble was the next stop.

It would be pretty troubling if Humble would intervene. .

 

[WrenchNinja]

This wasn’t even on my radar until this controversy. Will probably buy on sale because it looks fun. JonTron could be a complete racist NAZI but I have no idea because many on NeoGAF throw around the terms so loosely they’ve essentially descended to meaninglessness. In any case the dev’s I’m sure want anything other than to be at the center of this type of controvesy. Let games be games.

https://youtu.be/R02k1sQpc2k

There's no could here.

Games aren't just games. There's a freaking joke about ethical capitalism in this one.

 

[philz]

Hi! This is who you're defending.



But I'm sure everyone else are the bad ones. Just being mean and throwing labels at everyone.

Eh. This is pretty fucked up.

 

[Alucrid]

It would be pretty troubling if Humble would intervene. .

no one is asking for humble bundle to kick down the door and make the devs submit. polygon just reached out for a statement.

 

[AlexFlame116]

It's upsetting that games have become so entrenched in this kind of subject. More than before as well.

But this is the world we live in. There are people out there who would love to subject others under their "superiority". It affects all things whether you like it or not.

We as individuals decide which side we want to root for. Even if we aren't really choosing consciously. You can complain and say to let games be games, but not everyone is as good as not being influenced by these things as you are.

 

[Zolo]

Eh. This is pretty fucked up.

Yeah. It's why Jon gets more focus on his racist beliefs. He's bad even by Youtuber standards.

 

[serenewarfare]

This situation is so shitty for a litany of reasons. For one, why as a developer would you not say anything? Like, anything at all? It's frankly ridiculous because it really reads like they were hoping Yooka-Laylee would get all the Jontron attention and they could skirt by and people would forget about it by now. The silence is absurd and is hurting them more than anything they could say short of being openly racist themselves.

And all the talk about "oh they're a small studio so they can't afford to take him out" reads hollow to me. If that were the case, why would they not be yelling that from the rooftops to stave of the inevitable heat they'll get from the silence? Hell, if it were my game, I'd sooner not want that character to be voiced at all than be voiced by him.

Ultimately, I'm in a weird spot though since I backed the game years ago and it's been in my Steam library since well before this whole thing blew up. I'll probably play it because I've payed for it and I can't get that money back, but I certainly can't recommend anyone buy it in good faith, even though it seems to be a quality game.

 

[CookTrain]

It would be pretty troubling if Humble would intervene. .

A statement isn't intervention though.

 

[watershed]

The worst thing about all these bigoted youtubers isn't their bigotry (there were tons of bigots before youtube ever existed) it's all the goddamn people who support their views or actually think such views are reasonable. It saddens me to think that there is an entire generation of people who are being informed by the values of youtube personalities who know fuck all about race but think someone like JonTron makes a lot of sense.

 

[sangreal]

Did people seriously expect Humble to intervene with game on their store just because it has a small voice role of a guy who said offensive stuff outside of the game?

It’s not a game on their store, it’s a game they published. Handling issues like this is what publishers do. They have a financial interest to protect in the game after all

 

[Lijik]

Did people seriously expect Humble to intervene with game on their store just because it has a small voice role of a guy who said offensive stuff outside of the game?

Theyre the publishers, its not just a random game they happen to be selling. Theres a reason they were reached for comment and not Valve.

 

[OriginalPoe]

Eh. This is pretty fucked up.

I know, it's almost like you want to actually do something about it huh?

 

[Kareha]

Just play Super Mario 64, it's probably better and it doesn't have any racists in it.

 

[Bridges]

And all the talk about "oh they're a small studio so they can't afford to take him out" reads hollow to me. If that were the case, why would they not be yelling that from the rooftops to stave of the inevitable heat they'll get from the silence? Hell, if it were my game, I'd sooner not want that character to be voiced at all than be voiced by him.

I think you might be overestimating how many people are actually made about the silence and underestimating how many people will be mad at his removal.