Steve Jackson Games Goes Red on the Woke Meter

Pat · July 08, 2022, 03:49:51 PM

It's no different than celebrities with political views. Are the uninformed, isolated, and elitist dim-bulbs who make up the Hollywood A-list where I want to go for cogent and reasoned opinions and analysis of topical social issues?

Hell no. Just because you have a platform to express your views doesn't make your vapid and uninformed utterances worth sharing. Shut the fuck up, or we'll rescind that platform.

S'mon · July 08, 2022, 03:50:12 PM

Quote from: Battlemaster on July 08, 2022, 07:35:03 AM
Anyway, abortion is always kinda funny to me. Christians are against it despite their god being a big believer in killing babies before and after birth. If they'd learn to read and read their Bible's instead of waving them they'd know that. But in the bible killing babies isn't the womans choice and she usually dies too. Apparently they only object to it when it's the woman's choice and she survives.

Old Testament Jehovah & Jesus Christ are pretty different.

Shrieking Banshee · July 08, 2022, 03:52:17 PM

I have come to the conclusion on how to separate 'art from artist' and where I draw the line (myself anyway).

The artist can believe whatever stupid shit they want. The question is:

A: Do they HATE me? If not personally, then as part of a collective.
B: Do they want me to know they HATE me? If they keep their yap shut, them hating me might be a thing I would only find out from leaked conversations. However if they find it important that I know they hate me, then thats a different thing.

If both A & B are answered with 'Yes', then I will not separate the art from the artist.

Reckall · July 08, 2022, 03:55:19 PM

Quote from: Cathode Ray on July 08, 2022, 03:48:32 PM
Hey, Reckall. I'm all for playing by the rules, but why admonish me but let our resident purple troll "Battlemaster", whose ramblings make me look benign, get three passes?

Because I'm not a teacher who picks the misbehaving kids and slaps them on the hands one by one. I hope we are all mature enough that one reminder is enough.

RPGPundit · July 08, 2022, 03:58:03 PM

Quote from: Battlemaster on July 08, 2022, 07:35:03 AM
Damn! I always had evil Stevie pegged as a solid conservative.

He was always Libertarian. And always had a big hate-on for the religious right.

BoxCrayonTales · July 08, 2022, 04:05:28 PM

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on July 08, 2022, 03:43:17 PM
Forgiving an artist for believing things I think reprehensible is one thing, as is separating my opinion of his art from my opinion of what I know of him personally. Wagner was a terrible anti-Semite but I see nothing wrong with loving the music of the Ring Cycle, which I do.

Knowing that the artist (or the holder of the artist's copyright, to broaden conditions) is going to take the money I give him and put it into reprehensible causes here, now, today is a much harder bar to overcome. SJG might still have been able to get my money if all Jackson had done was loudly tout his personal opinions. When he openly admitted part of his earnings would go directly to supporting evil? Sorry, at that point he made me (to use Catholic terminology) formally cooperative with that evil if I paid him money for his products while knowing that.

It can also be affected by knowing the artist's conscious intentions of the art. I can enjoy Tekumel because, loathsome as M.A.R. Barker's politics were, Tekumel specifically did nothing to advance them. I can't support Philip Pullman because, despite actually finding his anti-Christian politics more understandable in their own right, I know from his own explicit admission that "His Dark Materials" was consciously written to be the "anti-Narnia" and to try countering Christian ideals, images and themes in fantasy. That puts Pullman out of the "live and let live" box and squarely into the "I will not pay for the rope the seller wants to use to hang me" box.

Lev Grossman's The Magicians is much worse. Pullman wanted to oppose Christian themes, but he still had a sense of wonder and imagination. Pullman's worlds are fascinating, wondrous, and terrifying. Grossman just took a big shit on the whole concept of wonder and imagination. His worlds are bland, boring, and poorly thought out. The whole message is that "magic sucks and won't make you happy." What a joyless idiot.

Ghostmaker · July 08, 2022, 04:06:24 PM

Quote from: RPGPundit on July 08, 2022, 03:58:03 PM
Quote from: Battlemaster on July 08, 2022, 07:35:03 AM
Damn! I always had evil Stevie pegged as a solid conservative.

He was always Libertarian. And always had a big hate-on for the religious right.

It's frustrating because I really cannot blame him for being pissy about the Secret Service raid on SJG. That was so much bullshit I'm surprised he didn't just quit and leave the country. I wouldn't have blamed him.

Stephen Tannhauser · July 08, 2022, 04:13:09 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 08, 2022, 04:05:28 PM
Lev Grossman's The Magicians is much worse. Pullman wanted to oppose Christian themes, but he still had a sense of wonder and imagination. Pullman's worlds are fascinating, wondrous, and terrifying. Grossman just took a big shit on the whole concept of wonder and imagination. His worlds are bland, boring, and poorly thought out. The whole message is that "magic sucks and won't make you happy." What a joyless idiot.

Agreed. The Magicians was the first book I finished in a long time after Pullman or Brown that made me want to hurl it against the wall, and put its author into the "people I will have a very hard time refraining from spitting on if I meet them in person" box.

(Full disclosure requires admitting that a fair bit of my reaction may have come from realizing how much of myself at that age I saw in Quentin Coldwater, both positive and negative. Myself I would have rephrased the theme as "Unlimited wish-fulfillment doesn't facilitate maturity, it retards it," which I think is a point worth making. But Grossman could have made that point with a much less bitter and cynical story.)

Pat · July 08, 2022, 04:24:44 PM

Quote from: RPGPundit on July 08, 2022, 03:58:03 PM
Quote from: Battlemaster on July 08, 2022, 07:35:03 AM
Damn! I always had evil Stevie pegged as a solid conservative.

He was always Libertarian. And always had a big hate-on for the religious right.

People forget that the raid on SJG was instrumental to the creation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, being their first big case. SJG took a hard stance against the government intruding on civil rights.

Here's SJG's summary of the infamous Secret Service raid:
https://www.sjgames.com/SS/

Never really had a clue how they felt about the religious right. It didn't seem to come up.

RPGPundit · July 08, 2022, 04:39:39 PM

Quote from: Pat on July 08, 2022, 04:24:44 PM
Quote from: RPGPundit on July 08, 2022, 03:58:03 PM
Quote from: Battlemaster on July 08, 2022, 07:35:03 AM
Damn! I always had evil Stevie pegged as a solid conservative.

He was always Libertarian. And always had a big hate-on for the religious right.
People forget that the raid on SJG was instrumental to the creation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, being their first big case. SJG took a hard stance against the government intruding on civil rights.

Here's SJG's summary of the infamous Secret Service raid:
https://www.sjgames.com/SS/

Which makes it especially weird that he's taking a stance in favor of unelected big-government federal bureaucrats getting to have control over abortion rules for everyone in the country.

hedgehobbit · July 08, 2022, 04:50:11 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 08, 2022, 12:11:00 PMYeah, it's this whole damned if you do damned if you don't thing. If you don't hold your audience's values, then they'll feel betrayed if they ever learn your personal politics. If you don't announce your politics and virtue signal, then people will burn you at the stake. It's impossible to win.

It's a different thing for a corporation. It would be easy to just say "the employees of this corporation have a diverse set of political beliefs, therefore the company does not take support a single political position." The big deal is that SJ is using SJG to push his ideology.

I'd join the boycott but I haven't bought a SJG product since 2003. I don't even know what they sell anymore besides Munchkin (which I don't like at all).

Pat · July 08, 2022, 05:04:53 PM

Quote from: RPGPundit on July 08, 2022, 04:39:39 PM
Quote from: Pat on July 08, 2022, 04:24:44 PM
Quote from: RPGPundit on July 08, 2022, 03:58:03 PM
Quote from: Battlemaster on July 08, 2022, 07:35:03 AM
Damn! I always had evil Stevie pegged as a solid conservative.

He was always Libertarian. And always had a big hate-on for the religious right.
People forget that the raid on SJG was instrumental to the creation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, being their first big case. SJG took a hard stance against the government intruding on civil rights.

Here's SJG's summary of the infamous Secret Service raid:
https://www.sjgames.com/SS/

Which makes it especially weird that he's taking a stance in favor of unelected big-government federal bureaucrats getting to have control over abortion rules for everyone in the country.

The almost exclusively consequentialist character of modern Woke leftism seems to have warped the conversation.

zircher · July 08, 2022, 05:11:23 PM

Something to remember is that SJG is in Austin which has the capital and big university literally across the street from each other. It is quite different from the rest of Texas for the most part.

jeff37923 · July 08, 2022, 05:15:15 PM

Instead of is the art the artist, in this case I think we should ask is the writer of the game material also the publisher?

Steve Jackson owns Steve Jackson Games and may do with it what he sees fit. I do not agree with this decision that he has made to support the Lilith Fund, but he also didn't write my favorite GURPS books - he just published them. I will be thinking twice about purchasing anything else from SJG in the future due to his announcement of where any money spent will be going, but you will pry my copies of GURPS Mars, GURPS: Traveller Far Trader, GURPS: Traveller Starports, and GURPS Space from my cold dead hands.

VengerSatanis · July 08, 2022, 05:29:39 PM

Quote from: Cathode Ray on July 08, 2022, 06:04:09 AM
Today's announcement from Steve Jackson Games is full-steam partisan/activist/pro-abortion. I don't care what side you fall on: pro-abortion, or the side that's on the right side of history. Right to privacy? Keep your extremism private.

Official word from Steve Jackson, alienating the majority of people.
http://www.sjgames.com/ill/archive/July_08_2022/Roe_v_Wade

They states that they'll donate profits to help murder children. (Link to the "charity" http://www.lilithfund.org )

Just curious, has anyone notified OBS of Steve Jackson Games' unequivocal political stance on the issue, as well as, other political stances mentioned in that rant?

Quote"What's next? A federal binary gender standard...?"

Are you tempting the fates, hoss?

Later in the forum thread, where you're encouraged to discuss the issue, the moderator says to "keep it light". This is about murdering babies in the womb, right? Maybe we can get some of those SNL clowns to juggle fire as the circus music plays?