When Do you stop buying from a Specific Developer?

Discourse.zone's own Austin Walker likes to reference this John Darnielle quote quite often which makes the rather compelling argument that perhaps we should explore a little deeper to find artists (or in this case: game developers) who aren't doing shitty things.

I don't need to separate an author from his work if the author’s a truly terrible human being. nobody's perfect - I don’t ask anybody to be perfect; I just ask them not to be, you know, nazis, or virulent homophobes. But if they are, then I don't care how good their work is purported to be. I don’t have to listen to Burzum; there’s no shortage of amazing black metal that isn’t written by racist murderers. the amount of tremendous black metal that meets the “not the work of an appalling horrible person” yardstick is sufficient to excuse me from having to listen to the stuff made by assholes. so when people go into the “I separate the art from the artist” thing, I’m like - why? if we live several lifetimes, we should all be so lucky, we won’t read all the great books or hear all the great music. we can allow artists to be human and make mistakes, even big huge everybody-has-their-personal-lows mistakes, while still saying “artists who are just worthless garbage as people, who actively and unapologetically campaign to make others’ lives worse, don’t deserve to have their work read.” we will not actually miss much; we can put our attention elsewhere. there’s just no shortage of amazing books to read, incredible music to hear. unless one wants to claim “no no, these terrible-people artists are actually the best artists,” in which case I think one might want to more closely examine one’s aesthetics. (source)

I commend campo santo's stance on this matter, would like other developers to do the same. As a web developer myself, it puzzles me to know that perhaps some of my work is being use, enjoy, or even profited by racist. Personally I just re-bought firewatch in the Mac Store (eventhough I have the steam version) to support their action.

I rather take the economic bite, than cross arms while society further deteriorate

@dgtlty: That quote makes a valid point that I can theoretically stand behind, but I find it incredibly fascinating to actually explore the minds of people I disagree with or who are horrible because at the end of the day they're still just humans. It gives me a sense of perspective on the nature of the human experience and what might differ between my own and their outlook on life. But if we're taking the Burzum example, should I also avoid Darkthrone's Transylvanian Hunger because Varg Vikernes wrote the lyrics for half the album? Or Mayhem's De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas because he performed bass on that album? Those are two pretty iconic albums to ignore if you want to avoid Varg Vikernes presence in your black metal. And as a fan of black metal, I would rather be able to listen to those albums despite Varg Vikernes involvement than miss out on them because of some sense of moral obligation to avoid art by specific people. Though I wouldn't fault someone for doing it though, we all have our limits.

PewDiePie is an ass hole and so are all of his fans. Good on Campo Santo for doing what they did.

Nothing really, you make a good game I'll buy it. I lose some faith in developers over time but its easy enough to restore it with something like Nioh or whatever. If Warcraft 4 or Diablo 4 sucks I won't buy it, but I'll still keep owning ATVI stock regardless. Skipped Unity for AC but played Syndicate and it was great, Rogue also pretty good.

I think for me it comes down to whether I buy the game immediately or when its cheap; only a small handful of games will I buy at launch without question.

Separating the art from the artist is, in a sense, taking their work and callously using it for yourself, in spite of their being.

And your aesthetics have nothing to do with their being, which is the point. It's almost cruel, this sort of separation. Like selfishly stealing away with the yields of their imagination, and using them to your own ends and personal growth. Though I understand that even this is not enough to abate the seething hatred by some for anything that might even tangentially result in a legacy for a loathsome author, where nothing short of total nonexistence will suffice. I am fine with my own brand of cruelty over that more festering contemptuousness.

The absurdity in binding the two, and your own aesthetic too, that you would deny your own artistic tastes in the service of some metaphysical purity. It's almost religious in that sense. If the history of an author makes you uncomfortable, then by all means avoid it if that is your true desire. It's the rationalization of it into a hard and fast rule that I find silly, and only quarrelsome when the subject of ideological advocacy at the expense of any other.

@rongalaxy: doesnt he have something over 50 million subscirbers? Isnt that kind of ridiculous to label 50 million people assholes though?

I hardly give a shit at all what a creative person is like vs their content. Some awful people make great stuff, and what we know about whom is so entirely selective. It's Chinatown. I have never really agreed with that viewpoint too much or engaged in it. For me, art is put out there and interpreted and in many cases I don't really care about engaging with any idea of who created it. Kubrick kind of seemed like an asshole, particularly to get the results he wanted in his art.

Don't fault others for it, but like I say I think it's selective many times. Some of them will sure fault me though. Had those fun discussions before.

Developers with an awful track record I guess would get me but even then I'd just wait and see how it turned out. Obsidian is an example there for me with how busted some of their games were but I still jumped in on PoE when that turned out solidly.

I'm not saying if some developer was out there being a Nazi I would go buy the game but I haven't ever had an experience remotely like that. And of course, if the work is racist or what have you, that's a different story. Like I said before, to me the art stands more or less alone to how I work with this stuff.

As far as Campo Santo goes, it is a mixed feeling for me but as someone who does some creative stuff in an amateur capacity and wants to professionally, I feel strongly that artists have rights to their work and shouldn't be swayed just because other creators do differently or the audience doesn't like it. And I see plenty of reason to cut Pew Die Pie off after this last incident.

Yup. Burzum is good. I listen to them because they are better than a lot of black metal bands. Just cause there is more black metal out there, cool, that doesn't really change my thinking or have anything to do with quality. There actually is not at all tons of great black metal out there. There are certain bands I listen to and that are really worth listening to. Your post also gets at the selectiveness of who we know about and that sort of thing.

I'm into rap music as well and that's another genre where it's a real fun thing to dig into. Just recently, because of different productions on NWA and things, I think a lot of people figured out that in real life Dr. Dre is a woman beating piece of shit and were shook by that when I've known it for many years, even though I am a Dr. Dre music fan. That's just how it is. I don't know if these people stopped listening to him then or only do research on certain people or what.

When it comes to metal, you usually get the goof balls or legitimate sickos in my experience but I'm just listening to the music.

Like you said, of course I don't care what anyone else chooses to do.

@boonsong: I definitely think a bunch of aspects of Vikernes are bad enough, but personally I don't feel much of any "infusion" that you speak of (more than any huge number of metal bands that promote paganistic ideas) and quite enjoy the music. Dissection is another example of a band I like so yeah that's just me.

It also presupposes that art is interchangeable. In the given example, you want to listen to some black metal so you find a different band of the same genre. I can't comprehend a situation where someone wants to hang a painting or art print in their house and they're just after "something" surrealist for example. Personally I would opt for a work that appeals to me in an individual piece and I imagine that's how a lot of people feel about the music they like and the movies they cherish. If something feels tainted to you then by all means move on but I reject the notion of swapping out parts of your life because of milkshake ducks.

Edit: To the point of it being selfish, I think that is how a lot of people consume media and art. We don't think about it, we just do. It isn't prudent or necessarily valuable to enjoy all things on all levels from all angles. A catchy pop tune can be enjoyed because the sounds make people feel good. I definitely agree with your purity argument though.

@grayfox666I would argue there are way more than 50 million ass holes currently occupying space on this planet. So no

Campo Santo can do whatever they want regarding how others use their product, and that's where this sentence ends.

I don't boycott things like some people do after discovering unsavoury things, i still love Mel Gibson films as an example, but there are two developers whose design asthetics put me off trying any of their games, and that's Blizzard and Arkane Studios.
It's something to do with art styles, animation, voice acting direction, story, character design, gameplay mechanics, there's no 1 thing i can point to as being the reason i don't play their games anymore it's a culmination of everything.
I played through Dishonored which was painful to the point i haven't wanted to play the sequel or Prey (a game that very much shouldn't have been made by Arkane), as far as Blizzard goes i love Diablo 1 and 2, but 3 doesn't at all feel like a sequel to those games and remains the only game that i've had hacked, a friend made me play Warcraft 3 which i didn't like, the Terran campaign for Starcraft 2 is fine but the music is better, but my dislike for their games stems mostly from World of Warcraft, and how it stole my friends from me for most of my childhood. Last year i tried to make peace with WoW but fell asleep while playing it which was the sign to stop, i've played loads of other MMO's no problem (currently 138 hours into Black Desert Online, despite how anti-player it can be) but WoW has definitely aged, i can see how it would be more impressive back in the day, but considering my friends have spent most of their lives playing it i couldn't at all see why, i'll never forgive Blizzard for that.

On the whole whether a company or corporation has some sketchy shit around them doesn't really influence my decision on purchasing video games. While I do put some time and effort into what to buy based on game reviews and friend opinions on games, I don't really wanna have to do a background check on every company I buy games from in case someone there is being racist, sexist or just generally being shitty in some way. Of course if I have been made aware of any said actions before buying a game it will subconsciously play a part in my choice of whether to buy or not but I do think it's unfair to expect everyone to put this much effort into buying a product.

@dgtlty:

I don't agree with Austin here at all, good art can transcend a shitty creator. The best examples I can think of are John Lennon and H.P. Lovecraft, both of whom a responsible for some of my favorite works in their respective fields, but at the same time they were both kind of shitty people.