I’m sure by now you can see the through line from COD ubiquity to the bizarre hype reels of ICE/HS repelling onto buildings in Chicago in full tactical gear to kidnap citizens, even if you refuse to look at Palestine. This is manufacturing consent. This is the Hugo Boss “cool” nazi uniforms.

I understand this is a very unpopular position to voice in games but I’ve long held it and my first GDC talk was honed in on how it dehumanizes Arabs. It’s something I’ve been trying to fight in my own work for over a decade now to very little recognition. We need to face this head on post Oct 8.

BUT we’ve pivoted too far in the opposite direction. It makes my stomach churn to see queer (usually white, but not always) trans people latch onto “Ghost” or whatever and humanize him in extensive fanfics. It’s bizarre. There is no redeeming COD/mil-sims and we need to say so as artists.

Up until this AI shit I would’ve said hey sometimes you have to make money in a shit system and gotta take the job, but at this point, why aren’t we organizing against this? It sucks that Christian fundies have forever hampered the convo around these games by framing them as “creating IRL violence”,

New York Times killed Weinstein and Epstein stories but just asked Ms Rachel if she was funded by Hamas.