A Video Game Dynamo with Ideas Always Swirling | Hacker News Reader

A Video Game Dynamo with Ideas Always Swirling

nytimes.com

50 pointsmistersquid8 comments

Painting a racist picture oppressing creativity where there is none.

> Other Black developers know there is a struggle behind Nelson’s success. “Every game company says they want new ideas from Black developers, They’ll talk to you. They’ll say nice things. But they won’t come up with the money.”

All developers share this struggle regardless of skin color. Big money doesn't invest in creativity, industry stagnates with yearly clones with increasing numbers at the end, getting blander and blander. Everyone with weird ideas has to become independent to express themselves. The game engines, libraries, and tools that exist don't discriminate on skin color, so attempting to frame it as such is some weird American racism propaganda.

It's not whether or not all developers face the issue it's whether there is disproportionate funding that favors one class over the others. That doesn't mean that finding funding is easy for anyone just that it isn't fair due to bigotry. That also doesn't mean all the people offering funding are out and out bigots just that the structure of things is such that it's harder for some groups than others.

> "not whether or not" > > "doesn't mean that" > > "doesn't mean all"

Your statements are not only convoluted, but dubious. And why the need to constantly speak in alternatives/negatives?

Here are statements that are easy to understand:

1) Finding funding is difficult for everyone.

2) Group affiliation does not inherently grant entitlement to funding or financial support.

3) If 'disproportionate funding' occurs, that's simply the reality of how resources are allocated. It doesn't necessarily allow you to claim racism or bigotry.

> If 'disproportionate funding' occurs, that's simply the reality of how resources are allocated

Sure, that's just a tautological statement but it's pretty thought terminating to stop there and not consider if there are some factors involved in why they were allocated that way. I know this is a political football in the US but ignoring reality is a bad idea:

https://www.polygon.com/24058266/video-game-industry-funding...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/01/31/black-...

> attempting to frame it as such is some weird American racism propaganda.

It was probably only the possibility of such a framing which made the article worth it to be written.

I'm curious what prompted you to write this. The quote you include from the piece does not say that ONLY Black developers have a hard time, but you seem to interpret it this way.

The article itself expresses no position on Black game developers' lot. It only quotes them talking about their own experience in the industry. So printing two people's opinions is "weird American propaganda"?

Do you think that the author of the piece should have qualified their quotes by saying there is no evidence that they are being discriminated against vs others in the industry? That would be kind of weird, right?

https://archive.ph/dUxhQ

good background but a more interesting interview is this one where he talks about the design philosophy that allows them to put out so many good games.

https://youtu.be/6wkDf5sFapk

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