I know you're a big fan of Night in the Woods, so I was wondering if you knew about the recent drama surrounding the game/what your thoughts on it are? Would you still recommend it in spite of all that?
Yes, I’ve read about the situation. I’m not going to try to summarize it here, so I’ll just provide this link. People who don’t know but want to can read more there and it’s highly recommended to read the posts by Scott Bensen, the lead writer and director of the game.
Getting to it, “drama” doesn’t really do much to describe the situation. At least how I feel about it, “drama” is beauty vlougers on youtube making back to back callout videos that ultimately seem to be more about fighting for subscriber counts than anything else. The recent events involving Alec and his role in the NITW game and the lives of the people around him is something very far away from drama. It’s a situation of widespread abuse going back years that “ended” tragically, with the people involved making single statements they feel they owe to others and then stepping away from the public spotlight to continue processing both Alec’s death and the realization that what they personally went through had happened to so many other people without their realizing it. That’s not drama, that’s the reality of the life in the 21st century where creative types and their audiences feel connected to each other, which inherently involves the individual creatives becoming partially public figures who are expected to talk to their audience. Additionally, separate from that expectation, it’s also Scott and company’s right to be able to use their platforms to say, “I’ve heard something awful about my former team member, and this is how I feel about it and what I’ve been through myself.”
As far as recommending the game goes, there are two basic perspectives that come to my mind. The first is cynical. It’s, “Sure Alec was minimally involved in the creative processes (aside from the music), but regardless of that and the work of the other team members, the success of NITW enabled an abusive person to gain more influence and hurt more people.” A simpler version of that take is as direct as, “A person who I would never want to support was involved in making NITW, so I do not want to support NITW.” However, the flip side of that is equally true. Even though NITW wouldn’t exist without Alec, Scott Benson went through veritable hell to create NITW because of Alec, and to decide to condemn the game is also to condemn all the hard work and passion of one of Alec’s victims.
Scott himself has said that it’s up to every person to decide how they should feel about this, and that’s true. But Alec is gone, while Scott and Bethany are still here. I’ll let that statement speak for itself. Plus, NITW speaks for itself. Regardless of the abusive actions of its lead programmer and composer, the game is a heartfelt and masterful exploration of fighting for hope and life in dark places while your town slowly dies and every year people seem to struggle a bit more than they did before. I would feel differently about that if every person on the NITW team was someone who I would feel bad about supporting, but that’s not the case with NITW. The only thing the recent developments have changed for me is to make me feel even more acutely invested in the heart-wrenching tale of personal and collective struggle that Scott and Bethany worked so hard to bring into the world while fighting their way through their own struggles to make it through each day.
