Bohemia, yo
This happy chappy is Daniel Vávra, a Czech video game developer. Long story short, he had an idea for a videogame, tried to get funding, was told all anybody wants is puzzles to play on iPhones, took his idea to Kickstarter. He was trying to get half a million to start, he got nearly $2.5 million to date (he has another corporate backer, as well – it’s a big team and a long lead time).
The game looks gorgeous. It’s set in a meticulously recreated 15th century Bohemia. They’ve consulted historians and architects, rotoscoped sword fighters, bought topo maps of the area, really trying to nail the era down as fully and accurately as they can. No magic (their slogan is “dungeons, no dragons”). You have to eat and sleep and make homemade medicines.
It’s called Kingdom Come: Redemption. I know most of you aren’t gamers, and I don’t usually recommend early access, but these guys are the real deal. They’re professionals and they’ve hit all their deadlines. The game is currently in early alpha (they’re calling it “technical alpha”; they’re mostly looking for basic playability glitches. Flying horses and chickens that walk through walls). Due out for reals in a year.
The t-shirt? Vávra is under heavy fire because there aren’t any people of color in the game. In 15th C Bohemia. He doesn’t seem too bothered.
Don’t think this is a bit of SJW fluff. This is a thing now. The Witcher — a popular series of games based on Slavic myth — has been dinged recently because everybody in it is Slavic.
And some silly grad student at the University of Leeds has written a paper — or put together a presentation, it’s not clear — on how ‘medievally-themed video games are a space where whiteness can be anchored, in a “happy history” where a world is free of multiculturalism and white guilt’.
Unfortunately for her, she picked the worst possible game to illustrate this. Skyrim is a great game in a fantasy medieval Nordic setting, but it’s completely multicultural and, at times, annoyingly preachy and 21st C about it. Her research seems to have been entirely interrogating players without investigating the game at all.
May Talos smite her in the ass for it.
Oh, yeah: the commenter Formerly known as Skeptic has won the dick with Bobbi Kristina Brown. They finally unplugged the poor kid and let her go. See you back here on Friday for Dead Pool Round 76.
July 27, 2015 — 9:39 pm
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