Poll Pitts v Rohrer: The Castle Doctrine and Pull-quotes (120 votes)
You might have seen the quick look of the game, read Patrick's article on designer Jason Rohrer's philosophy behind selling it, or maybe you've played it yourself, but it seems that The Castle Doctrine is in the news again for controversial reasons. Russ Pitts at Polygon blasted the game in his review, owing largely to his distaste for the game's paranoid and nihilistic nature, and gave it a 5 out of 10. He then tweeted about the review, as is common practice.
Well, Rohrer took two of Pitts's Twitter comments about the review and used them as a pull quote for the game's Steam page, with edits to make it appear as a single truncated quote, which in a way distorted Pitts's view of the game. Pitts didn't appreciate this and asked Rohrer to take the quote down, which led to an apparent exchange in which Rohrer grew increasingly aggressive, eventually pulling the "fair use" card. The situation escalated to the point that Pitts briefly contemplated legal action against Rohrer.
You can read Pitts's full account of his side of the story here.
I find the whole thing fascinating and bizarre. On the one hand, Rohrer's use of the Twitter comments is less than savory, and yet it's not really any different than countless movie ads that have used elided and out-of-context negative quotes for positive publicity. And, well, if you say something in public, it's not entirely unreasonable for that quote to be cited. Yet the quote(s) referenced weren't from the review, but from tweets about the review.
It's just bizarre. I can kind of see where both sides are coming from on this, but wow. I don't know. What do you guys think?
(For the record, I myself have not played The Castle Doctrine, but I did not feel particularly moved by Pitts's review, as it seems largely geared toward condemning the game for making you play as a horrible human being in a hopelessly horrible world and little else.)
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