Post by and Null in Why making art matters: We no longer have a type of industry where we can chase financial success. We can only sustainably fail. comments

Why making art matters: We no longer have a type of industry where we can chase financial success. We can only sustainably fail. » Comments

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and Null278 days ago (1 edit)

The theme of being rejected from professional spaces definitely hits hard with me. As someone who's projects exist within fetish, kink, and overt sexual themes, every place is a minefield. You may see some success financially, only for it to be ripped from under you as payment processors, platforms, and community hubs kick the chair from under you. People won't stand up for you because what you make is "degenerate", "pornographic", "unspeakable". Moderation acts squirrely and unpredictably as your choice of themes and depiction of them make someone uncomfortable.

Our communities are usually the first to go when the heat comes down. I'm fully expecting Itch.io to come under pressure from Paypal, Stripe, and Payoneer for their adult section. A while back, GameJolt changed their policies removing all "adult content" from their platform. I had two projects taken down, devs that got me into making stuff had their whole catalog removed.

But the thing about banning porn, sex, kink, fetish, paraphilia is that queer communities are almost universally rocked by these kinds of actions. Tons of queer stories and experiences scrubbed from Tumblr. GameJolt had to softly walk back their pornographic art ban. They still banned the art form, but their broad stroke approach hit dozens of games wrong fully. Some people with deep longer term relationships with GameJolt felt betrayed.

It can often feel like nobody will care when I'm inevitably scrubbed from the record. The USA's political climate is currently extremely hostile to erotic anor queer art. Discussing sexual mediums openly isn't considered broadly acceptable. Anything that breaks from the cishet hegemony gets branded as sexual in nature, regardless of how little it has to do with eroticism. It says a lot when pornography is repeated scrubbed from online places, but I can drive past a Hooter's every day. It says a lot when books about trans lives get banned, while people openly fantasize about acts of mass violence against marginalized people.

It's a surreal experiencing looking back to when I first got into erotic and kink art. I never thought I'd be facing a reality where putting it out into the world would suddenly make me an enemy of the state. There will be no accolades, no art galleries, no celebration of my work. I won't see sweeping financial success making fetish art (at least not in this climate). There's no reason to burn myself out chasing all that.

alienmelon278 days ago

thanks for sharing this. i know the gamejolt story well. they were friends, we’d (the two founders) would hang out at events whenever any of us where at the same festival, hugs n stuff, they interviewed me a bunch, said they supported my work no matter what, named a drink at one of their parties after my game, etc etc… then they took down my games because of that policy. they never gave me an explanation either, even if my games didn’t have sexual content. they said they reverted it but took my games down anyway. i wrote about that https://www.nathalielawhead.com/candybox/on-gamejolts-new-policy-why-stigmatizing-sex-in-games-is-harmful-to-the-medium-and-never-works

it’s an example of the empty platitudes platforms give queer creators but then stab them in the back when no longer of use to them.

i feel for pornographic devs and think they are a canary in the coal mine for how experimental work is treated. it impacts queer work the most and is often a smokescreen for targeting queer work.

personally i wish people would read this in a broader scope (what success is and that traditional capitalist models are not sustainable, we need to create that for ourselves…) rather than assuming i’ve had it easy and just had accolades dropped in my lap when the entire existence here has been a heartbreaking uphill struggle (you can read about how i was treated by game journalists for example), but this struggle is one i believe in and don’t want to give up. i have a right to exist, so that keeps me going. if i give up then i admit that the world has no place for someone like me.

i hope your work gets the respect it deserves someday. the way we treat anything surrounding porn is wrong.

and Null278 days ago

I think I remember reading that when the GJ bans rolled out. I recall the week before it came out. I was working on updating my No Porn Allowed and happened to be browsing GJ's site again. Looking around, I just got a sense their priorities had shifted. A week later I got that same email everyone else did. I was fucking crushed, ngl. I found a lot of inspiration on GameJolt. Much of it providing the motivation to take on my own weird, queer, and horny projects.

Also, I agree so much with that "I can't give up now". Shit has only gotten more scary and cruel. Another person in the comments mentioned how LLM generated art has people giving up in mass. I remember how hard my time as an artist was. Dealing with self-doubt, nasty comment, occasional harassment. It just makes me want to lift others up more than ever. I refuse to let the cruelty of the world stop me from creating art.

And, because organizing my thoughts well is hard, people are terrible at considering the strife of artist. Too many people be looking at us like vending machines. Then, you have lots of people the forget their struggles, or worse, use their strife to justify putting other down. This is especially common within game development (and software at large). "I struggled learning <NEBULOUS UNINTUITIVE TOOL> thus you must". Felienne Hermans has a great talk covering this, and I think it relates back to how gamers use the terms "asset flip" and "shovel-ware" to deride games. "Hard Is Good. Anything That Is Easy Is Bad. Making Hard Stuff Easy is Evil".

There is just so much more I could discuss. And, I'm glad you put this essay out. I've recently been playing through 50 Short Games. And, it's got me thinking about what game making means to me again.

alienmelon278 days ago(+1)

i really appreciate your comments here. it’s very validating to hear.

imo pornographic games are the original avant-garde in this space. there was a period way back where they where just starting to get seen fairly then that flipped. to me that indicated a bigger shift in culture that eventually impacted everyone… but i can’t speak to that. i was just observer not participant there.

i feel like it’s an awful period in tech right now (and games are not separate from that space) where fascism took it all over to drive it in that totalitarian direction. the way AI has been co-opted to be what it is now is a big glaring example. artists are fighting with that and it’s almost like a propaganda war where artists in all fields are made to feel disposable. making them think about quitting. a big enemy of fascism is art, and i feel like that’s why it’s so under fire rn.

i’m not sure how it will shake out but i just know that if an artist quits, techbro fascism wins ever so slightly, and that’s a sad loss for us all.

itch.io

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