[2019] Notch has revealed his love for Rimworld

Originally posted by IllCaesar

Tynan dug himself thaf hole. An article outlined emergent story telling in Rimworld and how it manifests from code. It wasn't defamatory, it was quite matter-of-fact and the sort of example you'd use in a game design course to demonstrate how a game can imply something in its mechanics, intended or not. The article even went out of its way to pre-emptively defend Tynan, saying that it's almost certainly the result of placeholder values sue to be an unfinished and unbalanced game.

Instead of seeing the article for what it was, which was mostly lauding the game, Tynan got defensive and instead of leaving it be he started making foolish statements. He started going on about how there's no such thing as a straight or gay woman, that all women are actually bisexual, and that there's no such thing as a bisexual man. In the LGBT community we call that lesbian erasure and bi erasure. The first being the idea that any self-proclaimed lesbian just needs a good dicking from a straight dude. That idea leads to a lot of sexual harassment and is even the basis for corrective rape. As for the bi erasure, it's the notion that somebody's sexual orientation is defined by who they're currently boning. That notion is the basis for the brand of gay conversion "therapy" that originated in the United States and has since been exported to most of the world.

Now I'm not going to call Tynan some atrocious bigot because I don't think he is. He was clearly feeling attacked when he said those things. His statements were very ignorant though and it isn't hard to see where people get the idea that he's bigoted from. It's all about how much you're Tynan when he says that he isn't. Given that violent homophobia is extremely common it isn't hard to understand why people weren't willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Tynan made very poor statements that never needed to be made and people made reasonable conclusions based on those statements. He dug that hole all by himself.

Originally posted by Thyrotoxic

I don't get the backlash tbh. It was an interesting article and a fairly unique take on how sex and sexual preferences are portrayed in media, often simplified into stereotypes, and how that applies again to a fairly unique game. Sure it was a critique, but it's perfectly possible to critique media through a lens and still really like that media!

Tynan could've quite easily explained why he made the decisions he made, from a practical coding point of view, and from a cultural point of view, all without getting super ridiculously defensive and making some pretty homophobic statements (and I agree they were probably from a position of ignorance rather than hate). For some reason video game creators and audiences have still not matured to the point they can understand more indepth, academic, critique without going absolutely crazy about it-unlike literature, TV, film, music etc. But it's also an extremely young art form, that I'd argue doesn't really have traditional roots in music, literature and theatre like film and TV has. It's getting there, slowly.

Originally posted by SirToastymuffin

As a bisexual guy, yeah it was pretty disappointing, prior to his little shit parade I was like "whatever, he just wasn't thinking of it" then he went to defending weird and offensive stances and as much as I separate art from artists, kinda leaves ya feeling burned.

Don't know if he ever had a real response about it or just quietly hoped the years would wash it away. I'd love for him to have understand where he was wrong and the reality of sexuality instead but... I've come to accept it's a game I really enjoy made by a just another guy who would think I live a lie. There are some great mods that fix the sexuality with something better, though, like Psychology which is a great overhaul of everything... psychological, and replaces sexuality being a handicap to steal a slot with a Kinsey scale, variety in orientation, and more logical relationship mechanics.