That cultural mishmash has prompted some criticism of “Stray’s” French developer, BlueTwelve, notably for lifting inspiration from the Kowloon Walled City with out acknowledging and even giving a nod to some of its troubling history.
Kate Edwards, 57, a Seattle-based cultural and political consultant working within the video game trade, makes it her enterprise to foresee these sorts of criticisms — and assist builders deal with their blind spots or steer clear completely.
“Starting with the Walled City as an inspiration can potentially be a valid choice, but how the game distances itself from the original context is a very necessary thought exercise,” Edwards stated. “Why choose this moment and place in history? How does it build or detract from the intended narrative and player experience?” (BlueTwelve and “Stray” writer Annapurna Interactive declined to remark.)
Edwards is a longtime video game trade govt who has labored with firms resembling BioWare, Google and Microsoft to get video video games to raised replicate worldwide cultures and geopolitics. Last yr, she was a part of Forbes’ “50 Over 50” listing and was inducted into the Women in Games Hall of Fame.
She’s suggested game firms and cautioned them when their titles contained potential fodder for worldwide outrage or controversy.
“If you’re going to be making a mainstream game, like ‘Cyberpunk 2077,’ you have to be mindful of the fact that there’s a lot of different, diverse people playing your game,” Edwards stated. “Your particular viewpoint as a game designer or narrative designer, that viewpoint, unless it has an explicit narrative reason to be there and you can justify it within the world building that you’ve done, it needs to be basically logically consistent with the world you’ve created.
“If you’re going to represent a specific culture, there are plenty of people from these cultures who are sensitivity readers, or they represent that culture, who can give you feedback.”
Edwards received her begin working at Microsoft in 1992 as a geopolitical specialist and helped deal with an argument within the game “Age of Empires” in 1997, when the Korean authorities disagreed with the game’s depiction of a Japanese invasion of Korea. So the game may very well be offered in South Korea — thought-about a key marketplace for Microsoft’s development technique, Edwards stated — the builders considerably altered the small print in a downloadable patch. Edwards known as the incident “a lightbulb moment” for her to start out an inner staff that manages geopolitical threat.
In 2004′s “Halo 2,” a Covenant character had its title modified from the non secular time period “Dervish” to “Arbiter” to cut back similarities to Islam and avoid creating the looks that the game was concerning the United States versus Islam, in accordance with Edwards. She stated she argued for the phrase change given the game’s references to Islam, the non secular nature of the Covenant and protagonist Master Chief’s mission to cease them.
Katy Jo Wright, senior director at Xbox’s staff known as Gaming For Everyone, stated in a press release, “We aim to create product experiences where players feel at home. This includes recognizing the worldwide differences in player journeys, including local needs, barriers and experiences, and developing meaningful products that have local relevance for a global audience. At times this means we need to make decisions guided by our values of Gaming for Everyone — a commitment to a journey, not a destination. We continue to learn from these experiences and invest resources to fairly represent the diversity of our gaming community.”
After over 13 years working with Microsoft on geopolitical enterprise technique, Edwards finally left to start out her personal consultancy, Geogrify, the place she continued to assist purchasers like BioWare and Google adapt their merchandise for a worldwide viewers. She nonetheless works with video games in lots of circumstances.
In 2012, she took an much more concerned position within the video game trade: That yr, the International Game Developers Association, or IGDA, supplied Edwards the position of govt director, the place she labored till 2017. She additionally served as govt director of the Global Game Jam from 2019 to 2022.
Edwards stated when she joined the IGDA as a member, she seen localization staff complaining that they had been being ignored by the trade, so she began a particular curiosity group for them in 2007 and went on to carry a localization summit on the annual Game Developer Conference. Her work led her to being approached by the IGDA for the chief director place, she stated.
“I don’t like seeing people complaining about stuff. I like solutions. I don’t like whining,” Edwards stated, reflecting on why the IGDA supplied her the position. “At the time, I’m like, ‘I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I’ve never been in a leadership role like this.’ But I was really passionate, though, about the organization and about helping developers, because at that point, I’ve been working alongside game developers for many years and I love these people.”
She stated she felt strongly about pay fairness, range and inclusion, and encouraging higher practices round working extra time.
In 2014, when avid gamers launched a focused on-line harassment marketing campaign, known as GamerGate, Edwards, as IGDA director, spoke out towards them and was, in consequence, a recipient of demise threats and insults.
“I put on that strong face because I’m leading the IGDA. I’d have to be this pillar of strength to other developers who are being harassed and attacked. And I did that the best I could,” Edwards stated. “But at the same time, there were plenty of times I was on the phone with my parents, crying, because I couldn’t take the stress. But of course, we all know what happened to GamerGate. They basically evolved into the alt-right, and then Trump got elected, and they got distracted.”
Edwards added that she knew quite a lot of girls who left the video game trade within the aftermath of the harassment, deciding to tackle jobs at main tech firms the place their expertise can be relevant. She finally left the IGDA in 2017, when she felt that she was not in a position to make a distinction.
“We understand that those who play games are basically at gender parity, and across all racial groups and cultures,” Edwards stated. “But the people who make games still tend to be skewed in a certain direction, demographically, so we still really want to strive to see that those who make games better represent those who play them. And we’re not there yet, even though we are seeing improvements.”
Over the previous a number of years, video game firms, together with Riot Games, Activision Blizzard and Ubisoft, have confronted allegations of sexual harassment and gender-based discrimination, in addition to claims that their human useful resource departments have did not adequately deal with complaints introduced earlier than them. Last July, per week after news of a California lawsuit towards the writer Activision Blizzard surfaced, staff at Ubisoft, one other main video game writer based mostly in Paris, authored an open letter in solidarity with Activision Blizzard staff, sending it to Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot. Ubisoft ousted a number of executives in 2020 following studies of office harassment and toxicity, and has vowed to reform its tradition.
“It’s been painful to work in this industry over the last five years, where we see some signs of change. We see more women in leadership roles and people of color in leadership roles,” Edwards stated. “But then we see the crap that went down at Ubisoft, or the crap that went down at Riot, or the stuff at Activision Blizzard. It’s very much two steps forward, one step back.”
To critics who say that video video games are toys, and that asking gaming firms to deal with politics is akin to asking Mario or Sonic the Hedgehog what they consider politics, Edwards stated she thinks of video games as tradition.
“Games represent the current evolution of human narrative. We are redefining how stories get passed from one generation to another, in the same way that art has done and written text has done, and film and radio and all these other forms of creative media have done, which are all still around,” Edwards stated.
“Games are now taking a stab at redefining what that looks like: How do we convey story, and narrative, and emotional connection between generations? And that’s vitally important for developers to understand what they’re doing because far too often in our industry, it’s a business, it’s all about money, it’s all about numbers.”