Over the past 6 months Massive Corporation has been virtually silent on the gamedev front. While we might not have been a torrent of information beforehand, this was a planned silence. As a part of the Black Lives Matter protests we chose to silence our voice as game developers so that other more important things could have their space. Police violence, injustice, and oppression are an all to common aspect of our society… still… today. The discussion and awareness of these issues that has been happening are long overdue and necessary reflection in North America. We didn’t simply stay silent, we’ve used our platforms to share news, information and thoughts on the topics of injustice, social progress, safety, and good governance.
Our twitter feed has over the past months become a stream of injustices that need to be born witness to. We’ve been glad to help promote friends great work, but we’ve mainly used it to amplify messages that need to be heard. It’s been tough. These aren’t fun, or joyous, but they are important. If we don’t take the time to acknowledge and reflect on the failings and problems in our society, we can’t fix them. Too often we have over looked, avoided, or even blatantly denied problems as something that doesn’t happen in our backyards. It isn’t easy to see suffering, but it is important we spend at least some of our time and energy bearing witness to that reality.
We were hoping to see change. Substantive, meaningful actions, knowingly and willfully taken by politicians before we started up again. We knew it would take some time to draft proposals and table legislation. One month turned to two, two to three, three to an unbroken chain of disappointment in our elected officials of every political stripe across North America. Every month we see deflection, ignorance, and willful misrepresentation. We don’t feel the media has helped either. Stories aren’t being told. Depth and nuance isn’t conveyed. Hyper partisanship is still rewarded.
Still we have seen a lot of elections in the past month, of course the US presidential election has dominated, but we’ve seen our own province and city hold elections too. We’ve seen some progress and some disappointment. However we’re still hopeful that change is underway and feel confident that society has acknowledged the problem even if we haven’t had political action yet. The hope is new officials will take action, and importantly that we as a society hold them to account to take those actions.
Still after six months of stepping back and focusing on political action, it’s time for Massive Corporation to get active. We have commitments to others that we cannot continue to postpone. We will still actively push for change, but we will also push forward with our own creative pursuits. It’s been a very long year. We need to make sure we can keep spirits up and keep people fighting both injustice and the pandemic. Hopefully we’ll be pushing out some games over the next few months that will help spread some joy (and thought) through the world.
Thank you for your support, your understanding, and for the part you play in building a better tomorrow.