Oh boy here I go. For anyone who needs context, @theofficetypeofficial (please don't send hate to them; that's their blog if anyone wants to check it out) are making a dating sim that's pretty much being created for "the sjws", for lack of a better term. It looks pretty cute, but it's gotten a ton of backlash for supposedly being racist, transphobic, and ableist. I can sort of understand both sides, so I'll give some background on what The Office Type is doing and how I plan to handle these issues.
Even though transphobia wasn't mentioned in the ask, I feel like it should be addressed since it's one of the things TOT seemed to get wrong. In general, transgenderism is a complicated thing and shouldn't be thrown into a game just to show how woke we are.
Onto race. I feel like TOT definitely fucked up a there, as well-meaning as they were. Let's start by considering their target audience, "the sjws". I'm sure they're nice people, but this is just my observation of them on the surface and as a whole; the first impression I get is that they're emotional, thin-skinned, and (on the extreme end) violent. So the creators basically took all those stereotypes and shoved them into their black character set in order to appeal to the people they thought could relate to them. They did confirm that those things weren't all there was to the characters, but it's still a pretty bad first impression.
I can't speak for mod Fin, but to me race is just another part of a character's appearance and design. Depending on the story, it'd be appropriate to give them some background on their culture or any discrimination they've experienced. But like...we're making a horror game. There's not much time to share info on your culture or your experiences with racism when there's a monster trying to kill you.
And the most recent complaint about TOT is that they're ableist for revealing that the dateable characters are figments of the player's imagination as a result of idly talking to their office supplies during work. As a mentally ill and disabled person myself, I have to say that this is not offensive or discriminatory at all. You'd have to be abnormally sensitive to be genuinely offended by that.
There will definitely be some psychological elements and mentally ill characters in our game, and I want them to be as realistic as possible. I personally have depression, social anxiety, and aspergers/autism (which was only diagnosed a few years ago and I really don't care to write about it; it might just better explain why I'm less emotional about all this lol). I have also gone through periods of paranoia and symptoms of OCD, though those two were never diagnosed.
As far as we've planned, there will be characters with social anxiety, ptsd, and depression. While I have dealt with similar things to the cause of one character's ptsd, I have not experienced ptsd itself and will do my best to research it and portray it accurately. There's always going to be the possibility of screwing up; that's just part of learning. I know if someone misrepresented an illness or disability I have, I wouldn't consider it ableist if I knew that wasn't their intention.
Tldr: To be blunt, I don't think virtue signalling or political activism have any place in a horror game. We're just here to tell a story and give some scares. Thank u all for coming to my ted talk.
@ mod Fin feel free to add your thoughts my dude
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