Reports and posts have been reviewed, and the thread will remain locked.
Staff agreed to come down harder on posts than we might have otherwise in similar threads for other games. Why is this?
We absolutely know that misogynoir (the hatred of Black women) exists, and that it always relevant in situations such as this where a Black woman is the protagonist of a major product, even if the team behind the character's creation is non-Black. We also know that when products such as these that invariably feature some notable form of representation turn out less than perfect, or even outright bad, these flaws are used as plausible deniability to continuously and exaggeratedly harp on an object of ire, either subconsciously or not.
This does not mean that such products cannot be criticized, as even Forspoken fans in here have pointed out some issues with things like the game's stability on PC or the music. Rather, it means that we have a responsibility to look at the criticism and attitudes in aggregate and see how they are serving the environment of minority inclusion staff try to foster here.
So, where does that leave us with Forspoken? Ultimately, it's an average game starring a Black woman that was released to a market dominated by white men, and here we have a forum full of white and non-Black members who have been shitting on the game for months on end for every single flaw, not only to the detriment of Black members' enjoyment of the forum as a whole, but in rebuke of their lived experience of racial bias and sexism within the game industry. This has come somewhat to a head in this thread, wherein non-Black content creators continue with the exact same behavior.
This stops today with this thread. We will be harder on the inflammatory rhetoric and side-eye worthy jokes in Forspoken threads than we've been in the past. Drive-bys and anything that can be construed as being dismissive of the valid issues at hand will be hit as such, with standard two week bans going out and escalations happening to members with similar priors.
Happy Black History Month.
