A plea to game makers who, in hard times, think their work frivolous

Companies are humans cohering together to build something bigger than themselves. But companies are made up of humans as much as they are made up by humans. And so having watched our social networks fill with distraught friends and family, fellow game makers from all team sizes, there is something we, the humans of Blacknut need to tell you:

If like us, you work in games, you might, like us, feel a little down. You might feel that when exclusionary policies are enacted, that when hate and bigotry seek to engulf every news stream you watch, those silly video games of ours suddenly seem to mean very little… I mean, they’re so distant and so… virtual. Every reason we love them, seems but the shadow of an empty promise when such horrifying historical events unfold slowly in front of our very eyes.

And for a moment we doubt. In the silence of our thoughts, trying to untangle the unthinkable, the voices, once silenced and quelled by so many grand oeuvres of our medium can be heard again: “games are useless, they’re a waste of time, everything but games is important right now” snigger they at our heels.

But great artists are the ones who see farthest. In the dead of night they write about shiny days, from the depth of depressions they make the funniest jokes. They endure and hope a world in words and motion. And when we play their games, read their twines, get lost in their worlds, we skip ahead in the darkness. We see further, we discern patterns and live lives that never were. Playing a great game, like reading a great book or seeing a breathtaking play is not wasting time. It is saving time. We see more, do more, live more in art and in that process, we draft futures and play with possibilities. All of us need to rise in the present, with walls of bodies and bridges of arms, but the future still needs be dreamed.

We will need dreams so that we may build.

In these dire times, the world needs inclusive and joyous games, tough and political games, sorrowful and heart breaking games, mind bending and complex games to rekindle humanity to its other selves in their myriad diversity. Though this period may be the toughest of fights, always remember that you are making bricks of which a future may be rebuilt.

Fight in presence, fight in voice but fight also in art. Keep on making great games, it is essential.

With love.

Signed: the humans of Blacknut.