MachineGames senior game director Andreas Öjerfors recently told PCGamesIndustry.biz that the online discourse regarding any kind of sociopolitical debate has been affected by “Right-Wing Extremists”. He also told the outlet that he was “disappointed” that fighting Nazis was viewed as “problematic” in Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus.
Öjerfors told the outlet…
“It’s incredibly weird and disappointing. We never meant for our stories to be relevant, we wanted to tell great, interesting stories to the best of our abilities. But then, when we started to talk about Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, we started to get comment online about the theme of the game, fighting the Nazis. Somehow some people felt that was problematic, which is just incredibly disappointing. We’ve seen an increase of right-wing extremism in the Western world. We see that online to a great degree. Right-wing extremists are great at affecting the debate online. And of course, maybe they abused us to whip up some anger when we were making Wolfenstein II.”
Let’s clarify a few things here.
A lot of people picked up animosity toward Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus when they specifically began framing their marketing as anti-Right and associating Nazism with Conservativism.
First of all, the “Make America Nazi-Free Again” campaign was one of many that really rubbed most people the wrong way, because it took one of Trump’s slogans and tried painting it as being representative of Nazism, and that gamers had to kill Nazis to make America free again.
Make America Nazi-Free Again. #NoMoreNazis #Wolf2 pic.twitter.com/52OESypw4P
— Wolfenstein (@wolfenstein) October 5, 2017
Various news outlets – ranging from the Washington Post to Newsweek – condemned anyone angry about the tweet, claiming that people who weren’t supporting MachineGames and Bethesda’s marketing campaign of Wolfenstein II were Nazis.
This whole “with us or against us” mentality rode the marketing trolley right up to release, where the game became a battleground of ideologies.
Additionally, Right-wing extremists aren’t affecting anything.
It’s the Left that controls big tech and it’s the Left that are using blacklists and censorship to deplatform those that don’t fall in line. In fact, after people began railing on Wolfenstein: Youngblood for being a vehicle for propaganda, they were promptly banned from the forums and had their threads locked.
Nevertheless, it sounds like Öjerfors still hasn’t learned his lesson and is still using typical “Progressive” talking points to shame people for not liking Wolfenstein’s new role as Left-wing agitprop.
A lot of these developers just won’t get the hint until they they end up on the Get Woke; Go Broke master list.
(Thanks for the news tip Ebicentre and s_fnx)