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Thursday 10 September 2015

If Wieck Couldn't Bring Himself to say Monte Cook Would be Safe From Banning...

So today there was a posting sent out to publishers where Steve Wieck gave a handful of answers to questions about his new Banning Policy (sorry, "offensive content policy", but let's call a spade a spade).

Quite a few people expressed relief at the notion that a game, once reviewed (and if not banned, of course) would be "whitelisted", meaning that it would not be subject for review ever again.  That's the promise, anyways. Note that "whitelisting" is the opposite of "blacklisting", which is the unspoken second half of this statement, the continued problem that some games WILL be banned because Wieck has gotten too much social pressure from the Outrage Brigade.

Now, here are two reasons why you should still really be worried about this situation:

1.  I had been in a conversation with Wieck over the last few days, where he gave some very noncommittal answers about whether the games regular gamers consider praiseworthy would be safe from the tiny gang of self-styled moral justicars who consider those games "toxic" (mostly because of who wrote them, since other games that feature way more 'offensive' ideas in terms of obscenity - stuff like child rape- are considered totally cool by this group because the 'right' person wrote them).
Wieck kept refusing to give a straight answer, so I posted a simple list to him.  I asked him to tell me if he could categorically assure me that any or all of these games would be safe from banning:


-Lamentations of the Flame Princess
-Zak Smith's products (Vornheim and Red and Pleasant Land)
-my products (Arrows of Indra and Dark Albion)
-Monte Cook's products (Numenera or The Strange)

I made a point of telling him that if he really wanted to calm the concerns of some of the people most ready to take radical action if they feel they are under threat, all he'd need to say is "yes, all these games are safe, none of them would be banned".

But he didn't do it.  He hemmed and hawed, he answered in the form of questions (like "do you really think we'd ban popular and award winning games"?), he said anything EXCEPT "yes, those games are safe".  Not even Monte Cook, it seems, is given a guarantee that his books will not be banned. And not just some theoretical future book, his existing titles, apparently, are under direct threat.

Why would Wieck refuse to say these products are safe, unless they were in fact very much not safe?


2. You could look at the above and say "well, I guess we'll just find out soon enough; those games will probably be among the first reported, and then they'll get whitelisted or not".   Besides that still suggesting a level of approval of a whole hideous and disgusting process that should not be, it's not as simple as that.

We got a claim today that a book, once cleared, would be secure.  But what is to say that if a book is whitelisted, and then enough of the Pseudo-activist Swine rise up in protest about it's being "approved of", Wieck won't change his mind? When they start to argue (not entirely without foundation) that by setting himself up as the judge of a game, his approval of a game that contains what they claim to be sexism or racism or homophobia would "prove" that Wieck himself is an "Enabler" of said sexism/racism/homophobia; when they start going around twitter calling Wieck a "Rape Culture Promoter" or "a protector of Racists", we are now supposed to believe that Wieck won't fold and ban a game he'd previously protected.

Except that this is already exactly what he did, with the 'tournament of rapists' game.



The problem is with the whole process.  It is flawed to the very core.  It would be flawed even if it didn't depend on us trusting the steadfastness of a man who has already turned on games whose right to sell he was vigorously defending only a day earlier.

Wieck refused to categorically assure the safety of LotFP or Vornheim or Dark Albion or Monte Cook's Numenera.
I guess at least he was being honest. As long as the course of his policy is based on the fundamental assumption is games should be banned if enough people complain about them online, none of these games are safe.

RPGPundit

Currently Smoking: Dunhill Shell Diplomat +  Burlington's Philosopher's

32 comments:

  1. This might be an ignorant question, but which game involves child rape?

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  2. It's not an ignorant question. I have no idea either, and therein is the real issue. You have a tiny, tiny fraction of an already tiny niche complaining about an even tinier slice of a product line. I still maintain that had the poorly named "Tournament of Rapists" product had been named, say, "Tournament of Terror" that whole uproar would not have occurred. The trigger word was found, and chaos ensued. Note, this is not a judgement on the product itself, just what happened because of the title

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    1. I think it would have been much worse had someone discovered such content inside a book that gave *no* warning in the title. The authors are not hiding anything or trying to candy-coat the disturbing content in their work. In fact the stupidest and most unbelievable thing about this whole imbroglio is the fact that simply by reading the title you can tell exactly what it's about, and steer as clear as your conscience decrees. This mess is stupid on all levels.

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    2. As If, that's exactly why I titled the book Tournament of Rapists. I wanted everyone to know exactly what the book was about the moment they saw the preview image of the cover.

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    3. Chris, I think I get the hentai manga aesthetic that you were going for, but we all could have guessed the reaction that politically correct people would have. The word rape shuts people brains off. Quite literally, that's why otherwise sane people can talk about censorship and inclusiveness in the same conversation and not see the hypocrisy. To them fictional hentai rape is not free speech.

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    4. still sounds like an incredibly stupid book.

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    5. Stupid books get protected just as much as smart ones on a truly free society.

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    6. @As If - Naw, the reaction would have been the same, with the exception of being slightly more informed as to the exact content of the product. This is really just the maturation of the industry, just like the Tipper gore Crusade in the 80's against musical lyrics. A balance will (hopefully) be found at some point, otherwise we'll be looking at D&D 7e being called "Killing Sentient Creatures with Differing Viewpoints, Taking Their Stuff & Violating the Resting Places of the Dead." We're humans. We're not perfect. We do the best we can, and I believe that's what OBS is trying to do. Happy to cut them some slack. I do not require Instant Gratification.

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    7. something that may or may not be of note. at least one person I spoke to refereed to the Tourney of Rapists book as "the new F.A.T.A.L." which leads me to believe that he hadn't read the book. I'll admit that I only skimmed it, but what I saw of it was that it was mostly a 'monster manual.' a list of opponents for PCs to remove from existence, and not a book on 'how to create a better rapist' like so many seem to see it as being.

      and that alone makes it a far less loathsome book (to use their terms) then either Book of Erotic Fantasy or Book of Vile Darkness which both have rules options for players AND GMs.

      Chris, if I'm wrong on that assessment, please feel free to correct me.

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  3. I wonder if he didn't give a straight answer because he himself was not familiar with the details of the actual books- i.e. he hasn't read LoFP and doesn't want an off the cuff answer now to bite him in the ass later. I'm gonna stay tuned to see if they announce a list of white-listed publishers (which you should encourage him to do if you talk to him again).

    As someone who's product centers around an isolated community with a history of genocide and racial discrimination (it's dwarves killing humans, so it's all good), I could see my being dinged by someone with a super thin skin for daring to use the word "genocide". Will that happen? Unlikely (and I'm not that worried about it).

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  4. Or maybe I just haven't read every single book in every single product line on your list and thus wasn't prepared to instantly commit to finding every one of the titles acceptable?

    I feel that the gaming community is damaged right now by ideologues on all sides.
    Ideologues don't have dialogues they have diatribes.
    They hear in others only what they expect to hear because ideologues aren't really listening.
    They assume the worst intents in others rather than the best.
    They like to project fear and anger, maybe they thrive on those stress emotions, I don't know.
    A way to start healing the damage in the gaming community is to start having dialogues about differences in opinion rather than just spewing anger and fear at "the other side".

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    1. Your company sells thousands of products. How exactly do you intend to read every single one of them?

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    2. I expect to have help from staff here.
      I also have this crazy optimism about most of the gaming community.

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    3. Steve, it's your house. I trust you to order it as you will. People are threatened by the idea that books may be banned arbitrarily. While mistakes may be made, I trust that you are reasoned enough to change your mind should compelling evidence be presented.

      People who have intractable viewpoints cannot see themselves ever changing their mind, so don't trust that you would.

      Gaming is the spice of life. As well know, "the Spice must Flow."

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    4. Steve, I made it clear that I would have been happy for you to say ANY of these games was obviously safe. I would obviously have reported on a distinction, had you claimed it, between those books you might have admitted not reading and others. But you couldn't give a "SAFE" response to a single one of these.

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    5. Nor did I choose obscure titles. My books were by far the most obscure of the list and they were copper and silver titles on rpgnow.

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    6. Should we even ask Steve's approval? Apparently Jessica Price and Fred Hicks are the people we need to ask. Steve already gave in to "ideologues who have diatribes not dialogues". Right now, they're running the show.

      I suggest starting with the best-seller lists and working our way down. If there's a single title left unflagged, go back and flag it until it's gone.

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  5. Perhaps someone in the OSR needs to start up a company to distribute content free of censorship. Perhaps taking a smaller cut from the content creators to get as many on board as possible. After all Weick runs a webstore (one that was recently hacked for account info to boot). It really shouldn't be hard to duplicate and if he starts to ban things he might find a lot of people looking around for other options.

    Hopefully we've got an entrepreneur out there ready to pounce.

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    1. This is my thinking as well. Perhaps the time has come for my to learn web development...

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    2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    3. So let me get this straight.

      You're suggesting a business with no quality oversight, run by someone with no consumer experience, that makes less per sale than established vendors, will somehow be viable in a struggling market, less vulnerable to hacking, and better able to maintain good customer relationships?

      ...

      Knock yourself out.

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  6. This is such a badly designed policy. Why not just request publishers to rate their own products, or let buyers tag products, like Steam does?

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    1. Steam gate-keeps what goes onto their marketplace through their greenlight process. So far titles with content most people would find reprehensible haven't passed the greenlight so Steam doesn't have to worry about carrying such titles.

      We don't have a similar process (and I'm not convinced we should at DriveThru).

      Also, it costs far less money to create a tabletop RPG supplement that is good enough to sell in PDF on DriveThru than a computer game that is good enough to get on Steam.

      So with cost to entry higher and the greenlight voting process, Steam has a relatively high barrier to entry for new games. Thus they have the luxury of a no censorship type stance because market forces mean reprehensible titles don't just get marginal sales but are still listed on site, instead such titles get no sales and are not listed on site.

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    2. Steam approved Hatred, a game where you literally have the goal of killing as many virtual people as possible, on its artistic merit BEFORE its devs altered the more disturbing parts of that game (prob. The executions). That was greenlighted despite a HUGE controversy that even existed among hardcore gamers.

      I say let such products exist and sell. Just put up a HUGE disclaimer up that you have to click through to buy them. Explain your lack of condoning the acts in there too.

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    4. You're both half right. Steam _pulled_ Hatred over that controversy until Gabe Newell got wind of it, put it back, and then _apologized_ to the dev team. And since creators are the ones who tend to get screwed over in situations like this, I'm glad to have an advocate like that.

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  7. I do appreciate your ongoing engagement here, Steve. I just wish you could say you're not going to censor my games. Or hell, pick ANY game titles you sell. Just name one thing you definitely won't ban.

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  8. I mentioned as a reply to drivethrurpg's twitter announcement, that I had seen wors than tournament of rapists on old Death metal albums, and I have. So I would guess that a game where you played through old Cannibal Corpse songs ,would get banned immediately by onebookshelf. Which is a shame, because somebody should make that game. I might play a "Post mortal ejaculation" (from the album " Tomb of the Mutilated", for those who dont speak metal) campaign.

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  9. The central salient point you make is that, since OBS has a track record of caving into SJW pressure -- Gamergate the Card Game (itself slyly omitted when they said "no RPG has ever been removed"), Tournament of Rapists, and now with this new policy -- there's no guarantee that they won't cave again when the SJWs' demands to ban some product to which they take offense, after the review process is complete.

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  10. Lulu ships quickly & cheaply, coupons abound, & my only quality complaint was addressed promptly & satisfactorily. As an indie rpg consumer I've found it inferior to OBS only in terms of the number of creators who use it. I now expect that to change.

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  11. Lulu ships quickly & cheaply, coupons abound, & my only quality complaint was addressed promptly & satisfactorily. As an indie rpg consumer I've found it inferior to OBS only in terms of the number of creators who use it. I now expect that to change.

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  12. How would it go down if the offensive content ruling involved you getting a court ruling with regard to banning a product for sale from your region and rpgdrivethru were then obliged to deny service to you as the complainant.

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