That’s a terrible assumption, and you’re a terrible person for making it.
I know it’s a terrible assumption. I made it facetiously.
However, I am a terrible person.
Unfortunately, this is only true insofar as you choose to make it true. If the product in question that you are buying in no way relates to the more metaphysical value you hold, the only extent to which your refusal to buy it constitutes a statement of your values is the amount of jumping up and down and hooting about how you’re not buying it you do. The extent to which Shadow Complex is bad should be a symptom of the game - not of the author. To accuse it of being a bad game (implicit in the call for a boycott) indicates a commission of the ad hominem fallacy - you are judging a product on the basis of what you think of its creator. The idea that your refusal to purchase a product you would otherwise enjoy conveys any sort of meaningful message to either the company that produces the item in question or the original product designer is ultimately false. The way these things work, the guy that you don’t like probably already got his. If it makes you feel good not to do a thing because you dislike the people who are presenting you with the opportunity, that’s fine, in much the same way as it is fine to wear nipple clamps to work every day if you enjoy that. It is, after all, your money. Mixing up your politics with a product that has no relationship with those politics, however, is probably ONLY effective for making you feel better about yourself and not for accomplishing anything else, other than perhaps depriving you of something that you would otherwise enjoy.
More to the point, this sort of thinking, be it with Whole Foods or with Shadow Complex, ultimately oversimplifies the issue. When you buy an overpriced bottle of wine from Whole Foods, you’re not paying their CEO’s salary. You’re paying the salary of the thousands of people, some of whom are worse off than you, who have to work for the company because it’s the job they could get. Similarly, when you buy Shadow Complex, you’re not paying Card to hate gay people - you’re paying the people who built the game that he provided a rough plot outline for. This is just a guess, since I don’t know anybody involved in the project, but I’m assuming that they’re not all the height of evil. How is it fair for you to judge that they deserve to lose your business because some other, smaller minority of their number hold views of little or no relevance to the transaction you’re considering that you happen to disagree with?
For what it’s worth, I’ll probably end up buying this game if I ever start my 360 again. The initial footage that I’ve seen just didn’t click with me very well, but I like some of what I hear about the game and for its price, I’m willing to give it a ride blind. I don’t like Card’s personal views OR his writing (Ender’s Game = good; everything else = ghaa…no thank you), but I can recognize that neither of those things are a part of the product that I’m buying. The product I’m buying is, apparently, a super badass video game in the Metroid/Castlevania tradition. If it tells me to throw stones at gay people I will be among the first in line to criticize, but until then, I don’t see any reason why one wingnut’s personal quirks should have anything to do with the question.
Are they licensing his name for the game? I mean, it’s not “Orson Scott Card’s Shadow Complex” is it? He didn’t write the game script. According to the detail page, Peter David wrote that.
OSC was not involved in the production of the game beyond licensing his story material to use as a basis, as far as I know. He’s been paid his money, the game has almost nothing to do with him, and frankly I would assume it was just an opening someone saw that might get the game some publicity traction and help guarantee it got released.
If Peter David worked on it, it can’t be that tied in to OSC’s Crazy Mormon Mutant Gay-Bashing Turtles club, because he’s not down with that kind of shit. Neither is Epic Games. Are the people “boycotting” Shadow Complex over OSC also implying that Epic Games supports homophobic right wing hate speech?
I think this has been blown way out of proportion.
I’m not “boycotting” anything. However, if I’m standing next to two hot dog vendors, and one of them has a big “DIE FAGGOTS” sign on his booth…well, I don’t feel obligated to call up a private investigator and do a background check on his competition to know whose sausage I’m going to be gobbling.
I might pick up Shadow Complex anyway, since it does sound good, but I’m more than a little uncomfortable knowing that it’s a game in which the bad guys are essentially me. Or what OSC think I am, at least.
Chair Entertainment hired Card to create a backstory for their game world. If you want to believe that the political elements of the backstory he created are incidental you are welcome to do so. I think that position is nonsensical. If they found those elements bothersome they presumably could have demanded they be excised, or included provisions in the contract about the tone of the material (Cards political views are not unknown, and I’m assuming anyone interested in hiring him is capable of a little due diligence). Realistically, there are two possible scenarios: they hired Card specifically to generate this type of material, or they are incredibly incompetent.
He’s been paid his money
How is the timing of Card’s payment relevant to this discussion?
the game has almost nothing to do with him
Creating the backstory and writing two related novels is nothing?
Forget the propaganda; Hero sucked in every way imaginable. I would focus my anger on that, had I paid money to see it.
I refused to buy a game once because it was called ‘European wars’ and all the soldiers had strong American accents. Does that count?
Greetings:
Wasn’t there a game a while back that purportedly was going to allow you to be the shooter in the Kennedy assassination? I remember a bit of a kerfuffle over that. Then there was something about Korea protesting Ghost Recon 2. The first Ghost Recon was about Russia invading Georgia, but in that case, the fiction came before the fact.
Games, as part of the larger culture, are going to get caught up in the culture wars, and politics is part of that.
Best,
Michael.
Sure, that’s combating American cultural imperialism and ethnocentrism. =P
So I don’t get this whole “I’m not playing Shadow Complex because Orson Scott Card is a gay basher” thing.
First, I’m only familiar with OSC through his writings. I read Ender’s Game back in the day and have read some of his other stuff too. When I started hearing about this whole controversy over Shadow Complex, I started researching into his alleged “gay bashing”.
Honestly, I’m not finding anything he’s doing to be “bashing”. Sure, he seems to be anti-homosexuality, but he seems to state his case in a calm and non-inflammatory manner. He doesn’t make signs insulting homosexuals and run around screaming at the top of his lungs that we should hang them all or something else equally horrific.
Now, I completely disagree with him on his views, but I think he’s stating them about as respectfully as someone holding that viewpoint could. I’ve got no problems with someone holding an opinion that opposes mine, as long as they’re not being insulting/hateful/inflammatory about it. The guy can’t have an opinion?
Maybe I just missed some of his antics. Maybe there are stories of him being a complete douche about it, and I haven’t seen those. I don’t know.
I hate to say the obvious, but there are a lot of homophobic people in the USA so i’d imagine it would be hard to totally boycott paying for things that they influence.
Also, yes Hero sucked and i am a huge jet li fan. Note to film writers: please don’t tell your story in annoying flashbacks.
The problem is that is that his opinion is inherently insulting/hateful/inflammatory. There is no way to respectfully say “X group should be a second class citizen”. The best you can hope for is to dress up your insulting & hateful opinion with nice words.
Of course, that doesn’t address whether avoiding his game is the correct next step, but let’s not pretend this guy “just has an opinion”.
They hired him to create the backstory or he wrote novels and they licensed the stories to use as backstory? Honest question, I don’t know the details. This is primarily because I don’t care, but I think the answer is relevant.
Edit: Given the original novel’s publication date of 2006, I’m going to assume the story was licensed, not contracted by Chair.
If they found those elements bothersome they presumably could have demanded they be excised, or included provisions in the contract about the tone of the material (Cards political views are not unknown, and I’m assuming anyone interested in hiring him is capable of a little due diligence). Realistically, there are two possible scenarios: they hired Card specifically to generate this type of material, or they are incredibly incompetent.
Considering none of the political elements are present in the game, it seems to me they pretty much did excise the bothersome elements. Card kept them in his novels, but Chair has no control over that. Wildly speculating to give Chair the benefit of the doubt, it’s entirely possible that they contracted him to write a story about a secret paramilitary organization incorporating mechs and power armor and he ran off into crazyland with it. He’s too well established to contradict or demand a rewrite, so they just went with it and cut out the parts they found distasteful.
Edit: This is clearly not what happened given Empire’s 2006 publication date. I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know if the tech and mech stuff is in there and would have attracted a game dev. Or did Card approach them?
How is the timing of Card’s payment relevant to this discussion?
He’s already been paid, so buying Shadow Complex is not going to make him any richer or help fund his super secret anti-gay army any further than it already has been.
I note you skipped over my questions about Epic Games. Mark Rein and Cliff Bleszinski are not homophobes, and I have a hard time believing they’d support this game as much as they have if OSC’s politics were such a large component of the project.
I think the difference is whether they publically advocate for it, or they donate piles of money as a corporate entity to group X. If it’s just their personal politics it doesn’t matter much - see Will Wright.
Try here. He doesn’t want them killed, but he apparently thinks the US government should be overthrown or something:
If government is going to meddle in this, it had better be to support marriage in general while providing protection for those caught in truly destructive marriages.
Because when government is the enemy of marriage, then the people who are actually creating successful marriages have no choice but to change governments, by whatever means is made possible or necessary.
If America becomes a place where our children are taken from us by law and forced to attend schools where they are taught that cohabitation is as good as marriage, that motherhood doesn’t require a husband or father, and that homosexuality is as valid a choice as heterosexuality for their future lives, then why in the world should married people continue to accept the authority of such a government?
What these dictator-judges do not seem to understand is that their authority extends only as far as people choose to obey them.
I don’t think anyone’s debating that OSC is a fucking loon. I just think he’s a harmless loon.
OSC’s stated position isn’t just that homosexuals should be second class citizens, it’s that we should randomly arrest homosexuals for being homosexual so the homosexual community will live in fear and not get any strange ideas about being people, and that if the government doesn’t endorse this plan then Real Americans should rise up in armed revolt.
I think Orson needs to get out of Utah a bit more often.
As Card states in the afterword of Empire, which Rock8Man linked earlier in the thread:
http://www.hatrack.com/osc/articles/empire_afterword.shtml
That statement leaves open the particulars of where the political bent of the story originated, but since Card insists there isn’t one, in spite of the fact that there obviously is, that is necessarily the case. Based on the available facts, I’m less inclined to give Chair the benefit of the doubt.
He’s already been paid, so buying Shadow Complex is not going to make him any richer or help fund his super secret anti-gay army any further than it already has been.
I do not want to support their endeavor in any way, shape or form.
I note you skipped over my questions about Epic Games. Mark Rein and Cliff Bleszinski are not homophobes, and I have a hard time believing they’d support this game as much as they have if OSC’s politics were such a large component of the project.
I am unconcerned about Epic, because I do not buy their games in any event (not for political reasons, I just don’t think their games are very good). I think they may have made a poor choice in this instance, but that’s their business, not mine. I have no interest in speculating about their personal views of homosexuality, etc.
I think Orson needs to get out of Utah a bit more often.
I knew his wife’s parents growing up, and back then he hadn’t lived in Utah for a long time, and I’m fairly certain he still doesn’t.
From what I remember from one of his books, I think he said he lived in North Carolina. But it could have been South Carolina. I get those two mixed up in my head all the time.