You'd be surprised at how difficult it can be for even established studios to get backers to go for a particular pitch.

There are a bunch of pitches from very successful, well-known production houses that will probably never see the light of day despite being really interesting, simply because they couldn't get anyone…

Yeah. There's still a bit of a boys club atmosphere in certain parts of the industry. Add to that the issues you mention (with adult-oriented animation being a pretty small, specific niche), and I can see why it'd be a hard project to get off the ground.

Animation is expensive, mostly because, if you're doing it at any reasonable level of quality, it's extremely time-consuming.

Honestly, that budget doesn't seem terribly unreasonable to me, particularly if they've avoiding a lot of the corner-cutting that you see in a lot of TV productions.

Sure, but at the same time, there's a limited amount of time in life, and there's more media than I will ever be able to consume. So, you have to have some way to narrow things down.

I think "does not contain blatant, vile racism as its central conceit" is probably a pretty good starting point.

In the specific case of The Turner Diaries (which is, admittedly, a pretty extreme case), I think the racist nonsense (and the sub-par writing) overshadows pretty much anything else.

There are plenty of other books that talk about the authoritarianism/liberty divide you mention that aren't also ridiculous racist…

"As for proportional representation, how many women develop games?"

There's a couple of things here.

One, the answer to that question shouldn't -really- matter, unless all developers are so creatively limited that they're only able to write characters who are exactly like them (or, well, wish-fulfillment versions of…

That's true. I'm not sure there's really much that can be done about that.

In terms of things that I think would irrevocably taint a creative work, though, I'm thinking along pretty extreme lines, like, say, Nazi apologism. Sure, there are some people who will agree with it, but seriously, fuck those people.

Well, sure. Just like an artist has to be prepared for criticism, a critic has to be prepared for argument. If you look at academic criticism, this is pretty much tacitly understood. If you write an article about a particular reading or theory, other people ARE going to respond (you hope; otherwise, it means no one…

But that level of moral relativism leads to...well, meaninglessness.

Like...we honestly can't say racism is wrong because some asshole Klan members somewhere genuinely believe it? That's ridiculous.

Right.

I mean, there's certainly room for criticism to call out particularly abhorrent world views when those are expressed through the work. I do think there are instances in which such views can irredeemably taint the entire work.

But there's a lot of middle ground between that and "totally devoid of any point of…

"Except when people paint others creative expression as "what's wrong with the game industry". "

Oh, absolutely.

I think part of it is a simple budget reality issue.

It's more efficient to limit the player to a fairly linear, controlled path, since that way you only have to build assets for that path. It's like a haunted house attraction: all that matters is what the audience can see along the narrow path they're…

Well, some degree of linearity is more or less a necessity unless you're going 100% open world or procedural. I mean, even if the individual levels are open, you're still likely going to move through them in a set order.

But that puts us in a weird place where we CAN'T ever criticize problematic elements in media for fear that we might somehow be "changing" the precious snowflake that is the artist's creation.

"and yet, nobody thinks twice about saying, "It's only a movie. Stop taking it so seriously.""

Sure they do. Like, say, anyone who actually studies film on a critical/academic level.

I mean, yes, you have to keep things in perspective; a film/game/whatever is not the end of the world. But when people say "stop taking it…

That's just silly.

No one is telling creators what they "can and cannot do". No one is calling for legal restrictions on what creators are able to produce.

They're simply holding them to the same standards that we hold every other form of creative expression.

And how do you know how educated the people critiquing games…

People are rarely advocating for "less art". But when you make a work of art, you're putting it out there to be criticized.

If I say "The Turner Diaries" is a racist, poorly-written piece of garbage, am I "advocating for less art", or am I simply responding to the problems of a particular work?

Well, sure, a clumsily-delivered, didactic sermon is going to be irritating. That's just an issue of the art being -bad-, not the idea of art being created with a political agenda in mind.

But...-why- should people keep controversial subjects out of games?

Should they do the same for movies? Books? Should all art be as watered down and safe as possible to allow for maximum escapism with minimum discomfort?

It's one thing to say that you, personally, don't like playing games that evoke contentious…

Eh...that's not entirely true. Social context is a very real thing, and dismissing recognition of certain persistent themes or stereotypes as coming from "pre-conceived ideas and prejudices" is simply incorrect.