The "harm" they "allowed" to happen? That is a weird way to say the actions they took to correct a harmful act that they allowed to happen in the first place. A company can edit it's own material. A company editing its own material is the actions of the company, not of someone else.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Hadozee are awesome and beautiful. I love them. I found plenty of images online that I can use for my game. Orcs and Scro are also awesome, yet are totally missing from Spelljammer.
That being said, is not pulling their images and backgrounds from the game in itself a racist act? Let's put the racist goggles away and just enjoy the game. You cant make 100% of the customers happy 100% of the time. Give the rest of us the content we paid for and love! We'll give you our money! Take it!
Let's invert the evidence demand. When has WotC ever replaced something they have deleted?
Until they do, or at a MINIMUM claim otherwise, we should assume they will continue deleting without replacement.
Have they even once claimed otherwise? Have they said "we know we have your money and are working to make it right as soon as we can"?
The one statement we have was before the art was removed and heavily implies the review will prevent future mistakes. Where are you reading within their statement that further edits to the books we bought will be made? It explicitly mentions excitement for new products, which would be at a minimum off topic if they intend to return to this book.
So again, what evidence is there that WotC will repair the harm they have allowed to happen to this work?
At this time, the only evidence we have is Wizards saying "Our priority is to make things right when we make mistakes." Making something right can--and should--include having new, non-offensive art in future printings of Spelljammer. Further, Wizards is also a company driven by a desire for profit. To ensure their profits, they need to continue to sell books full of fun art and lots of colour--that is what keeps them at the forefront of TTRPG industry. Art is particularly important on a premium product--one which already is receiving criticism for its general lack of breadth.
The simple reality is that we are in new territory--Wizards has not made this kind of change since shifting their focus to creating a more inclusive product free of the game's racist history. Without data, optimism demands we take Wizards' desire to make their game better at their word and assume Wizards would do the right thing; cynicism demands we assume Wizards will do what is best for their bottom line, which would be adding new art to what likely will be a well-selling book for quite a while to come.
Now, if the second edition of the print book is released without the images, that would be a different story--but that would be a different story based on actual data, not speculation seemingly designed to decry Wizards for making the right move and removing something harmful from their game.
That's simply not true, WotC absolutely has been here before. CoS, Volos, etc. What did they do in those circumstances?
I don't recall them removing images in CoS, just some fairly small text changes. Volo's they put out a new book, because the old one was really too big a project to fix.
1) Do nothing about books already in print. No recalls or anything like that.
2) Delete digital content, sometimes replacing text, but most often simply removing without replacement, and
3) Publish new books, offering you the chance to purchase it again.
That is WotC's MO for this situation, and we have seen it with frequency now.
At a certain point one has to ask - is the person who evidently holds Wizards to an impossible standard really trying to converse in good faith?
At this point, you have complained about the removal of digital images without automatic replacement - a foolish thing to say given how time consuming commissioning and creating new art can be. And now evidently you indicate that a recall—itself a time consuming and extremely expensive process—should have been done?
But, hey, just goes to show—no good deed goes unpunished. Wizards does the right thing and removes offensive content as swiftly as possible and folks come out of the woodworks to complain.
Here is the reality - D&D has a history of racist content. They also have a history of poorly fixing their racist content. But there was restructuring in 2020 and this is the first failure under the restructuring programme - as I already said, and you ignored, instead citing pre-restructuring examples (which did not even stand for what you were trying to show). We simply have no data for how the current Wizards structuring will react, so there really is no point in setting either unrealistic expectations or unsupported cynicism.
1) Do nothing about books already in print. No recalls or anything like that.
2) Delete digital content, sometimes replacing text, but most often simply removing without replacement, and
3) Publish new books, offering you the chance to purchase it again.
That is WotC's MO for this situation, and we have seen it with frequency now.
At a certain point one has to ask - is the person who evidently holds Wizards to an impossible standard really trying to converse in good faith?
At this point, you have complained about the removal of digital images without automatic replacement - a foolish thing to say given how time consuming commissioning and creating new art can be. And now evidently you indicate that a recall—itself a time consuming and extremely expensive process—should have been done?
But, hey, just goes to show—no good deed goes unpunished. Wizards does the right thing and removes offensive content as swiftly as possible and folks come out of the woodworks to complain.
Here is the reality - D&D has a history of racist content. They also have a history of poorly fixing their racist content. But there was restructuring in 2020 and this is the first failure under the restructuring programme - as I already said, and you ignored, instead citing pre-restructuring examples (which did not even stand for what you were trying to show). We simply have no data for how the current Wizards structuring will react, so there really is no point in setting either unrealistic expectations or unsupported cynicism.
Caerwyn said it all: No individual/company enjoys or wants to have to go through and remove and check the Spelljammer artwork, but WotC is doing the right thing and trying to make sure they don't make another mistake here, yet people are still attacking them for doing what is morally right.
Ah yes, AI to the rescue! Let's plug in "D&D flying monkeys, but not racist" into one of those and see if it generates professional-level D&D art. I bet that would satisfy everyone complaining, right?
Also I wonder if you are aware of AI art generation. It takes seconds now to generate art. Aside from that I can tell you from personal experience that a week turnaround for five traditional pieces is not impossible. Nor is it especially expensive. I've got receipts.
Creating art is merely part of the process. I can get a request for a mini in the morning and have it ready and delivered to them in the evening. Can doesn't mean will though. Most of the time it will take a week or so. Time to design it, come up with a few variations, get the requestor to approve one, then do a few colour schemes, get one approved and then print it and trim it. It then gets primed, which I like to leave to cure for a couple of days, after which is gets a base coat. The next day, when it's thoroughly dry, it gets a few washes. The next day, drybrushed and detailed. The following day, it spends the day being varnished in stages. The day after is when it is available to be collected. Can I do it in a day? Absolutely, but it normally takes a week or more.
They've got to find artists to do it. Then they have to come to an agreement on payment, and get the details sorted of what is wanted. The artists will then have to concept drawings, which will have to be shown to and approved by the relevant authorities. After a mess like this, that will be multiple levels, which takes a long time to perculate through. Once approval comes back, the artist can then come up with the actual drawing. Then that has to go through another approval process involving even more layers than before. Once that is approved (and who said either approval would happen the first, second or third attempt?), The book has to be redone to accommodate the new artwork - obviously not a complete redo, but some reworking will have to happen. Then the new book has to be approved. Then they can send it to print...which will take a long while. Before they can start shipping, they have to obtain the various IP protections as well.
All that isn't happening in a day. Businesses aren't the epitome of efficiency some pretend they are. Usually, if they are being, ah, "efficient", it's because they're doing things of the "don't ask, don't tell" variety. When they aren't cutting corners, internal processes are generally glacial in speed, and they're not going to want to cut corners on this after what just happened. It's not going to happen in a week.
That said, I do have to say that people are being incredibly generous towards WotC in saying that they deserve a clean slate simply because a couple of years ago they said they'd changed their attitudes (especially since they then come out with this!). They've hardly shown themselves to be keen on providing high quality and high quantity products to their customers, and the Spelljammer as a product is a great example of that.
I'll believe that they're going to actually replace the artwork and lore with something of quality when it actually appears. Until then, I will go on last behaviour - and that doesn't lead me to have confidence in them. Hopefully I'm just being cynical, but we'll see.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Again, do we agree that there no evidence that anything further is being done? No evidence at all? We've already discussed how they have never done such a thing before, but have deleted without replacement in the past. Why continue to advocate for a thing without even a statement to rely upon? The opposite of unsupported optimism is not unsupported cynicism.
Also I wonder if you are aware of AI art generation. It takes seconds now to generate art. Aside from that I can tell you from personal experience that a week turnaround for five traditional pieces is not impossible. Nor is it especially expensive. I've got receipts.
On the topic of a recall, that depends entirely on whether or not real world harm is caused. I don't need to take a position on that to point out that if it does cause measurable harm then not recalling it perpetuates that harm. If the ink was poisonous, for example, you would demand a recall. If the art is harmful on that level, a recall would be appropriate. So WotC should decide whether allowing the art time in the wild is harmful and react accordingly. But the harm, not the convenience of action, would be the deciding factor for a moral or even ethical decision.
Rather than respond to your point on AI art, I will let the US Copyright Office do so: “Human authorship is a prerequisite for copyright protection.” Nothing more to say on why that suggestion just cannot work.
Second, yes, we do have evidence they are doing something - they said they are doing something both in their announcement and in a pleading filed last week. Now, you might not believe that evidence is sufficient to satisfy yourself, but you simply cannot say there is “no evidence”. We also disproved how they have done deletion without replacement in the past and how CoS added replacement language and a whole new version with additional content. So that just goes to show you have not actually read responses to you and do not wish to actually engage in conversation.
Your equating psychological harm - something an apology and promise can do better to mitigate - and poisoned ink is easily distinguishable in relation to a recall. A recall is only used by companies when other mitigation cannot work—that is not the case here.
There are really just two camps here: those who recognize that the originally published content causes harm to some people, and those who do not care. It really is an issue about empathy and a lack thereof. Some people will never care about racism and how it harms others. Some people will only ever care about how the removal of harmful content impacts their entertainment to some imagined degree. Imagined, because they can certainly insert that racist content into their home games if they really want it. It does not matter to them that a diversity consultant was not sought out or credited in this book, leading to this whole mess because racism is not an everyday occurrence in their life. People without empathy simply cannot understand why this is a problem because it is not a problem for them and really, that is all that matters from their perspective. Them. The abundance of ‘I’.
There are really just two camps here: those who recognize that the originally published content causes harm to some people, and those who do not care.
The current line of discussion has nothing to do with whether or not the original content harmed people and everything to do with how WOTC handled/is handling/will handle a situation where they published content they then wanted to retract. Even if you're right, neither of those two camps would be relevant to the current conversation -you could stipulate either one and the current conversation wouldn't change.
There are really just two camps here: those who recognize that the originally published content causes harm to some people, and those who do not care.
The current line of discussion has nothing to do with whether or not the original content harmed people and everything to do with how WOTC handled/is handling/will handle a situation where they published content they then wanted to retract.
Then the current line of discussion is missing the crux, the aim, the point, and the entire relevance of the incident. Furthermore, bringing up a post publication editing decision as some sort of harm while brushing the reason for the edit under the carpet is doing a grave disservice to the relevance of the decision, which had to do with rectifying actual harm.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
There are really just two camps here: those who recognize that the originally published content causes harm to some people, and those who do not care.
The current line of discussion has nothing to do with whether or not the original content harmed people and everything to do with how WOTC handled/is handling/will handle a situation where they published content they then wanted to retract. Even if you're right, neither of those two camps would be relevant to the current conversation -you could stipulate either one and the current conversation wouldn't change.
I am not sure you are following the conversation - nor did you apparently read the post you quoted. The post you quoted already stipulates to the images being deemed offensive by Wizards—as has most of the conversation on this thread. It breaks the discussion down not into “found it offensive” and “found it not offensive”, but into “found it offensive and worthy of removal” and “found it offensive but does not care about the offence and thinks the offensive art should stay for whatever reason.”
That has been the general cadence of this thread - for the most part, the discussion has not been about whether the underlying images are offensive (though that was explained a few times), but on what Wizards should have done about it. Presently, the thread’s discussion—and what Erik_Song was responding to—examines whether there was an alternative to blanket removal of the images in question.
Both sides appear to be in agreement that the images could be offensive (though, I there might be some “concern trolling” going on—wherein one feigns sympathy, and, in so doing, demands such unrealistic and hyperbolic solutions as to mock those who want real solutions), but disagree with how Wizards should handle offensive content. That is exactly what the thread is supposed to be about—and exactly what you seem to want the conversation to be about based on your post.
I don't agree on those camps. The way I see it it's two camps:
A) WotC cares about this issue and will take any necessary steps to rectify it, and
B) WotC cares mostly only about their reputation and will take only the actions that are convenient (and profitable).
We also have some folks asserting that a legal action against a trademark infringement is somehow related to restoring art in Spelljammer, who then goes on to assert that other people don't read. So place that in whatever camp you want I guess.
Well, for starters, I will respond to your dig about the trademark dispute. As it turns out, they ARE related--one of the major elements of trademark is the risk of harm to the holder of the mark (Wizards) if the offender (fake TSR) continues to use the mark in trade. Wizards' pleading (which I read in full) extensively talks about their diversity initiatives--they are saying that Ernest Gygaxs' new TSR's blatantly racist game will tie Wizards' trademark in TSR to racism, thus hurting the TSR brand name Wizards still uses in trade and Wizards generally by undermining their present diversity initiatives. Wizards specifically mentions the removal of the Spelljammer content and how they are working continuously to update their game and update problematic elements within it.
Other than that, I think all evidence points to option A being the correct answer. Read any interview with Wizards' staff members; see any posts online by folks who work for Wizards and you will see a whole lot of them come from marginalized backgrounds themselves. This makes sense--D&D has always been a game about escapism, which breaks down into two camps--those who want to use escapism to flee marginalization to a better life, or people like Ernest Gygax who want to use escapism to escape to a less tolerant time. Folks who grew up on D&D in the 70s, 80s, and 90s are now all old enough to be working for Wizards and Wizards has actively been courting members of the former group and trying to excise those of the latter.
So, when it came time to face the music and admit they made a mistake, they DID do everything that was practical to do--they removed the content from digital platforms and future publications and instituted an in-house review to determine what went wrong and how to do better next time. Anything beyond that is not only "inconvenient" and "unprofitable" it is simply stupid--even for someone who genuinely cares about fixing their mistakes, you cannot wave a magic wand to create new art; you cannot institute an extremely expensive recall. That simply is not how the world works--and continuing to insist there is some magical solution Wizards did not apply indicates such a clear misunderstanding of reality as to really raise questions as to your true motives in continuing to insist Wizards was wrong in applying the only practical mechanism for immediately preventing the dissemination of offensive content.
Pointing out the gap isn't a dig. If WotC doesn't defend their trademark, they lose it. This includes stating any harm caused by potential brand confusion.
Zero to do with any art.
Speaking of zero, that's the number of times they have replaced art for free in a product. You're suggesting they'll do the 'buy it again but for more money' box like they did for CoS. That seems... naïve. But even if they did, that's not the moral choice if they believe they did harm in the first place. It shouldn't be a profit opportunity.
The magical solution I suggest needs two components: money and effort.
They need to make it right.
Here is the reality--Wizards has gone above and beyond in their response, both in terms of breadth of presently removing content that is a huge selling point for their products (art) and in terms of speed, acting within days of the internet making a fuss over this extremely offensive content and bringing the matter to Wizards' attention. What you also missed with your tangential restatement of a high schooler's understanding of trademark, is that the actual facts alleged by Wizards are relevant. Yes, they are used because Wizards has to prove harm (I already said as much in the very post you were responding to), but that does not mean Wizards can speak falsehoods in their pleadings. Speaking as someone who has signed my name to many pleadings, I feel fairly confident that, when Lauren Rainwater, Esq. puts her professional reputation on the line to say "[Wizards] increasingly uses sensitivity readers and diversity experts in its creative process to ensure that its storytelling reflects its values" she is doing so because Wizards is, in fact, taking those steps to dig themselves out of a legacy of extremely problematic content.
Now, you are welcome to write off that reality if you want--though I generally try to keep my fantasy world to the tabletop, not to my views on how the real world works--and I am sure you will. Whether you are living the fantasy that Wizards--having already done more than expected--should have been able to do more, or are living the fantasy where you believe the content was not offensive and you think content trolling is a clever way to score internet points, matters little to me. Fantasy it is regardless, and one simply cannot engage in coherent conversation when the other party keeps shifting the goalposts and attempting to pass non sequiturs as legitimate discourse.
Anyone want to put up a betting pool that the over reaction by WotC will continue and Hadoozee will be turned into flying squirrels that have always been hyperintelligent, really diligent and are a race of engineers, wizards and scientists bent on the betterment of all sentient races. I give them about 3-6 months before they do a full on species change. After that, all ape and monkey mentions will be removed from the monster manual.
My vote goes to sugar gliders and no, I don't think it's an over reaction.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
When I hear the word minstrel, I think medieval bard. One the of Hadozee images was a Hadozee bard.
Did Wizards see a comment about the Hadozee bard image looking like a minstrel and assume they were calling it blackface? Because I would find it difficult to confuse the images of the Hadozee with blackface.
When I hear the word minstrel, I think medieval bard. One the of Hadozee images was a Hadozee bard.
Did Wizards see a comment about the Hadozee bard image looking like a minstrel and assume they were calling it blackface? Because I would find it difficult to confuse the images of the Hadozee with blackface.
There are unambiguously racist images of black people which are strikingly similar to the art in the book. To the point it may seem the hadozee art was inspired by those racist images. Whether or not it was is not something we’re likely to know, but it’s close enough to raise eyebrows. I understand you may not be aware of the art, but it exists, and is sufficiently well known that they showed up on Twitter shortly after the book came out.
This thread may explain the controversy....Yes because offending apes by using them a fictional created slave race by a fictional antagonist in a fantasy game with a fantasy history in the pursuit of a fictional story may offend just one real person who identifies as a ****ing ape. Give me a break. Slavery existed across all races and throughout time and even today so removing it from a fictional game because of 'inclusion' or because someone might get offended because they identify as a modern ape in a 3 piece suit is the epitome of woke culture. Literally ever race has enslaved their own race or others in the past and even today. But to use that as a pretext 'sanitize' a fictional story is ridiculous. Only if you identify as an ape should you reply to this, otherwise, game on!
Things in fantasy games can still be offensive if they're based on harmful real-world stereotypes. As I explained HERE, there is nothing wrong with seeing something racist in a book and calling it out as racist. Ignoring a problem only allows it to grow and hurt more people. Also, the problem is not real people identifying themselves as apes: The problem is that some racist people have called some real people "apes" in the past as a way to dehumanize them -- which was used to justify treating those real people unfairly, including enslaving them.
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Nothing is worse than having ancestors who were called bad names. The harm my people and I feel even today simply can't be measured.
Lives have been ruined and WotC doesn't even care. They're just trying to avoid controversy instead of addressing the real issues of systemic oppression.
As long as they do this, we still live in chains.
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The "harm" they "allowed" to happen? That is a weird way to say the actions they took to correct a harmful act that they allowed to happen in the first place. A company can edit it's own material. A company editing its own material is the actions of the company, not of someone else.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Hadozee are awesome and beautiful. I love them. I found plenty of images online that I can use for my game. Orcs and Scro are also awesome, yet are totally missing from Spelljammer.
That being said, is not pulling their images and backgrounds from the game in itself a racist act? Let's put the racist goggles away and just enjoy the game. You cant make 100% of the customers happy 100% of the time. Give the rest of us the content we paid for and love! We'll give you our money! Take it!
At this time, the only evidence we have is Wizards saying "Our priority is to make things right when we make mistakes." Making something right can--and should--include having new, non-offensive art in future printings of Spelljammer. Further, Wizards is also a company driven by a desire for profit. To ensure their profits, they need to continue to sell books full of fun art and lots of colour--that is what keeps them at the forefront of TTRPG industry. Art is particularly important on a premium product--one which already is receiving criticism for its general lack of breadth.
The simple reality is that we are in new territory--Wizards has not made this kind of change since shifting their focus to creating a more inclusive product free of the game's racist history. Without data, optimism demands we take Wizards' desire to make their game better at their word and assume Wizards would do the right thing; cynicism demands we assume Wizards will do what is best for their bottom line, which would be adding new art to what likely will be a well-selling book for quite a while to come.
Now, if the second edition of the print book is released without the images, that would be a different story--but that would be a different story based on actual data, not speculation seemingly designed to decry Wizards for making the right move and removing something harmful from their game.
I don't recall them removing images in CoS, just some fairly small text changes. Volo's they put out a new book, because the old one was really too big a project to fix.
At a certain point one has to ask - is the person who evidently holds Wizards to an impossible standard really trying to converse in good faith?
At this point, you have complained about the removal of digital images without automatic replacement - a foolish thing to say given how time consuming commissioning and creating new art can be. And now evidently you indicate that a recall—itself a time consuming and extremely expensive process—should have been done?
But, hey, just goes to show—no good deed goes unpunished. Wizards does the right thing and removes offensive content as swiftly as possible and folks come out of the woodworks to complain.
Here is the reality - D&D has a history of racist content. They also have a history of poorly fixing their racist content. But there was restructuring in 2020 and this is the first failure under the restructuring programme - as I already said, and you ignored, instead citing pre-restructuring examples (which did not even stand for what you were trying to show). We simply have no data for how the current Wizards structuring will react, so there really is no point in setting either unrealistic expectations or unsupported cynicism.
Caerwyn said it all: No individual/company enjoys or wants to have to go through and remove and check the Spelljammer artwork, but WotC is doing the right thing and trying to make sure they don't make another mistake here, yet people are still attacking them for doing what is morally right.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.Ah yes, AI to the rescue! Let's plug in "D&D flying monkeys, but not racist" into one of those and see if it generates professional-level D&D art. I bet that would satisfy everyone complaining, right?
Creating art is merely part of the process. I can get a request for a mini in the morning and have it ready and delivered to them in the evening. Can doesn't mean will though. Most of the time it will take a week or so. Time to design it, come up with a few variations, get the requestor to approve one, then do a few colour schemes, get one approved and then print it and trim it. It then gets primed, which I like to leave to cure for a couple of days, after which is gets a base coat. The next day, when it's thoroughly dry, it gets a few washes. The next day, drybrushed and detailed. The following day, it spends the day being varnished in stages. The day after is when it is available to be collected. Can I do it in a day? Absolutely, but it normally takes a week or more.
They've got to find artists to do it. Then they have to come to an agreement on payment, and get the details sorted of what is wanted. The artists will then have to concept drawings, which will have to be shown to and approved by the relevant authorities. After a mess like this, that will be multiple levels, which takes a long time to perculate through. Once approval comes back, the artist can then come up with the actual drawing. Then that has to go through another approval process involving even more layers than before. Once that is approved (and who said either approval would happen the first, second or third attempt?), The book has to be redone to accommodate the new artwork - obviously not a complete redo, but some reworking will have to happen. Then the new book has to be approved. Then they can send it to print...which will take a long while. Before they can start shipping, they have to obtain the various IP protections as well.
All that isn't happening in a day. Businesses aren't the epitome of efficiency some pretend they are. Usually, if they are being, ah, "efficient", it's because they're doing things of the "don't ask, don't tell" variety. When they aren't cutting corners, internal processes are generally glacial in speed, and they're not going to want to cut corners on this after what just happened. It's not going to happen in a week.
That said, I do have to say that people are being incredibly generous towards WotC in saying that they deserve a clean slate simply because a couple of years ago they said they'd changed their attitudes (especially since they then come out with this!). They've hardly shown themselves to be keen on providing high quality and high quantity products to their customers, and the Spelljammer as a product is a great example of that.
I'll believe that they're going to actually replace the artwork and lore with something of quality when it actually appears. Until then, I will go on last behaviour - and that doesn't lead me to have confidence in them. Hopefully I'm just being cynical, but we'll see.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Rather than respond to your point on AI art, I will let the US Copyright Office do so: “Human authorship is a prerequisite for copyright protection.” Nothing more to say on why that suggestion just cannot work.
Second, yes, we do have evidence they are doing something - they said they are doing something both in their announcement and in a pleading filed last week. Now, you might not believe that evidence is sufficient to satisfy yourself, but you simply cannot say there is “no evidence”. We also disproved how they have done deletion without replacement in the past and how CoS added replacement language and a whole new version with additional content. So that just goes to show you have not actually read responses to you and do not wish to actually engage in conversation.
Your equating psychological harm - something an apology and promise can do better to mitigate - and poisoned ink is easily distinguishable in relation to a recall. A recall is only used by companies when other mitigation cannot work—that is not the case here.
There are really just two camps here: those who recognize that the originally published content causes harm to some people, and those who do not care. It really is an issue about empathy and a lack thereof. Some people will never care about racism and how it harms others. Some people will only ever care about how the removal of harmful content impacts their entertainment to some imagined degree. Imagined, because they can certainly insert that racist content into their home games if they really want it. It does not matter to them that a diversity consultant was not sought out or credited in this book, leading to this whole mess because racism is not an everyday occurrence in their life. People without empathy simply cannot understand why this is a problem because it is not a problem for them and really, that is all that matters from their perspective. Them. The abundance of ‘I’.
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The current line of discussion has nothing to do with whether or not the original content harmed people and everything to do with how WOTC handled/is handling/will handle a situation where they published content they then wanted to retract. Even if you're right, neither of those two camps would be relevant to the current conversation - you could stipulate either one and the current conversation wouldn't change.
Then the current line of discussion is missing the crux, the aim, the point, and the entire relevance of the incident. Furthermore, bringing up a post publication editing decision as some sort of harm while brushing the reason for the edit under the carpet is doing a grave disservice to the relevance of the decision, which had to do with rectifying actual harm.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I am not sure you are following the conversation - nor did you apparently read the post you quoted. The post you quoted already stipulates to the images being deemed offensive by Wizards—as has most of the conversation on this thread. It breaks the discussion down not into “found it offensive” and “found it not offensive”, but into “found it offensive and worthy of removal” and “found it offensive but does not care about the offence and thinks the offensive art should stay for whatever reason.”
That has been the general cadence of this thread - for the most part, the discussion has not been about whether the underlying images are offensive (though that was explained a few times), but on what Wizards should have done about it. Presently, the thread’s discussion—and what Erik_Song was responding to—examines whether there was an alternative to blanket removal of the images in question.
Both sides appear to be in agreement that the images could be offensive (though, I there might be some “concern trolling” going on—wherein one feigns sympathy, and, in so doing, demands such unrealistic and hyperbolic solutions as to mock those who want real solutions), but disagree with how Wizards should handle offensive content. That is exactly what the thread is supposed to be about—and exactly what you seem to want the conversation to be about based on your post.
Well, for starters, I will respond to your dig about the trademark dispute. As it turns out, they ARE related--one of the major elements of trademark is the risk of harm to the holder of the mark (Wizards) if the offender (fake TSR) continues to use the mark in trade. Wizards' pleading (which I read in full) extensively talks about their diversity initiatives--they are saying that Ernest Gygaxs' new TSR's blatantly racist game will tie Wizards' trademark in TSR to racism, thus hurting the TSR brand name Wizards still uses in trade and Wizards generally by undermining their present diversity initiatives. Wizards specifically mentions the removal of the Spelljammer content and how they are working continuously to update their game and update problematic elements within it.
Other than that, I think all evidence points to option A being the correct answer. Read any interview with Wizards' staff members; see any posts online by folks who work for Wizards and you will see a whole lot of them come from marginalized backgrounds themselves. This makes sense--D&D has always been a game about escapism, which breaks down into two camps--those who want to use escapism to flee marginalization to a better life, or people like Ernest Gygax who want to use escapism to escape to a less tolerant time. Folks who grew up on D&D in the 70s, 80s, and 90s are now all old enough to be working for Wizards and Wizards has actively been courting members of the former group and trying to excise those of the latter.
So, when it came time to face the music and admit they made a mistake, they DID do everything that was practical to do--they removed the content from digital platforms and future publications and instituted an in-house review to determine what went wrong and how to do better next time. Anything beyond that is not only "inconvenient" and "unprofitable" it is simply stupid--even for someone who genuinely cares about fixing their mistakes, you cannot wave a magic wand to create new art; you cannot institute an extremely expensive recall. That simply is not how the world works--and continuing to insist there is some magical solution Wizards did not apply indicates such a clear misunderstanding of reality as to really raise questions as to your true motives in continuing to insist Wizards was wrong in applying the only practical mechanism for immediately preventing the dissemination of offensive content.
Here is the reality--Wizards has gone above and beyond in their response, both in terms of breadth of presently removing content that is a huge selling point for their products (art) and in terms of speed, acting within days of the internet making a fuss over this extremely offensive content and bringing the matter to Wizards' attention. What you also missed with your tangential restatement of a high schooler's understanding of trademark, is that the actual facts alleged by Wizards are relevant. Yes, they are used because Wizards has to prove harm (I already said as much in the very post you were responding to), but that does not mean Wizards can speak falsehoods in their pleadings. Speaking as someone who has signed my name to many pleadings, I feel fairly confident that, when Lauren Rainwater, Esq. puts her professional reputation on the line to say "[Wizards] increasingly uses sensitivity readers and diversity experts in its creative process to ensure that its storytelling reflects its values" she is doing so because Wizards is, in fact, taking those steps to dig themselves out of a legacy of extremely problematic content.
Now, you are welcome to write off that reality if you want--though I generally try to keep my fantasy world to the tabletop, not to my views on how the real world works--and I am sure you will. Whether you are living the fantasy that Wizards--having already done more than expected--should have been able to do more, or are living the fantasy where you believe the content was not offensive and you think content trolling is a clever way to score internet points, matters little to me. Fantasy it is regardless, and one simply cannot engage in coherent conversation when the other party keeps shifting the goalposts and attempting to pass non sequiturs as legitimate discourse.
My vote goes to sugar gliders and no, I don't think it's an over reaction.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
When I hear the word minstrel, I think medieval bard. One the of Hadozee images was a Hadozee bard.
Did Wizards see a comment about the Hadozee bard image looking like a minstrel and assume they were calling it blackface?
Because I would find it difficult to confuse the images of the Hadozee with blackface.
There are unambiguously racist images of black people which are strikingly similar to the art in the book. To the point it may seem the hadozee art was inspired by those racist images. Whether or not it was is not something we’re likely to know, but it’s close enough to raise eyebrows.
I understand you may not be aware of the art, but it exists, and is sufficiently well known that they showed up on Twitter shortly after the book came out.
Things in fantasy games can still be offensive if they're based on harmful real-world stereotypes. As I explained HERE, there is nothing wrong with seeing something racist in a book and calling it out as racist. Ignoring a problem only allows it to grow and hurt more people. Also, the problem is not real people identifying themselves as apes: The problem is that some racist people have called some real people "apes" in the past as a way to dehumanize them -- which was used to justify treating those real people unfairly, including enslaving them.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
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