I purchased this as part of the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality.
I'd like to bring awareness to the fact that the one darker-skinned human character is cast as the scapegoat/bad guy, which also happened in another game I recently tried to play from the bundle (Brassica). This is a terrible trope and one of the very caricatures of black people that the bundle was created to help change.
Although an interesting storyline, I can't continue to play this game.
I am sorry that you were hurt by our game. That was never our intention. I do, however, feel the need to point out that Anson is not the only African American human character in the game (although your point of Anson being darker skinned than Dorothy is noted), and even the main character's race, sexuality, gender, nor ethnicity is ever identified, left up to the player. But beyond that, I do understand your concern and we will do better to gauge the content of our products for any future socially conscious bundles.
Through unconscious bias, your game feeds into a negative stereotype of dark skin = evil/bad guy. That's a problem, and it was my hope that you would take this concern seriously and take action to remedy this issue in a future update as another developer promised to do.
Talking about how Anson's not the only dark-skinned character in the game and how the main character's portrayal is left up to the player is an attempt to detract and deflect from the problem I raised. My primary issue was not inclusivity - it was the harmful trope, and I made that very clear.
The equivalent of an "I'm sorry you were offended" apology is not an apology - but that's fine, it's neither wanted nor needed. The entire point of the movement is to bypass empty gestures, listen to feedback/criticism, and take action in a meaningful effort to change things for the better.
Without doing these things, being a part of this bundle becomes lip service and the equivalent of throwing money (your game proceeds) at a situation while thinking that's all you have to do.
No.
It isn't.
My above response was very poor. The damage is done, and what was written in my response can't be unwritten, but I am going to be using this week to do a rewrite of the Furries script. You are right, and action will be taken to correct this in our game, and I would like to apologize to you personally for how I responded to your comment. You brought up a serious matter and I in no way should I have internalized it.
This is one of the cringiest "look at me" posts ever. To imply racism because a dark skinned person was the bad guy is trite, tired, and completely crazy. You didnt even deserve the INITIAL apology to be quite honest and you seem like an absolute train wreck of a person. I feel bad for this developer that they even TRIED to respond to you in a positive way. You dont want positivity, you want drama. Youre the worst kind of person imaginable and I dont believe you were truly hurt by this game at all. Grand stand someplace else, this game was AWESOME.
P.S. I AM a person of color who also bought the bundle. I found ZERO offense from this characters portrayal. Also, the assumption people of color CANT be villians anymore due to this cancel culture you seem to perpetuate is, you guessed it, much more racist than what this developer did. But that shouldnt even matter quite frankly.
