#Online Design Communities and TTS Discussion
undone apex
My name is Bryn Smith and I own a small board game publishing company, Doomsday Robots Game Co, and run an online game design and playtesting group, Heavyweight Championship Playtesting which principally uses Tabletop Simulator (TTS) as our medium of choice. As a transperson (they/them) who both leads a design group and who has been involved in the design community for over 10 years, the leaders of several online game design groups are looking to me for guidance on how to handle the current situation with you (Berserk Games). The question they have is, should we ban using TTS from our online gaming platforms.
It’s important for you to understand how much of a sacrifice losing TTS would be for us. TTS changed the landscape for many game designers. Most game design meetings were in person in local communities. They required significant amounts of time to produce and reproduce prototypes and travel to meetups. When the pandemic hit, most design communities stopped meeting and started looking ways to interact online. That’s when many of us discovered TTS.
Because of TTS and the communities that sprung up around it, game design continued into the pandemic - even flourished. Traditional prototyping is an expensive and time consuming process and served as a huge barrier to entry into the hobby, especially for those without the means or disposable time, but TTS was inexpensive and easy to use. Those in underrepresented communities got access to publishers and playtesting that would have otherwise been out of reach. For the first time for many, designers could play with people from all over the world without traveling to international conventions! There was simply no better tool for prototyping than TTS. I cannot overstate how much good your software has done for so many, myself included.
So you can imagine the flood of emotions that came over me when I got the news and read the encounter Xoe had with CHRY. I was attending an online gaming convention, Protospiel Online, running playtests on TTS of my new game when I saw Xoe’s tweet. Personally, I felt a huge pit in my stomach reading the interactions with your mod. I was hurt, emotional, and felt terrible for Xoe. I had to fight hard not to react. Discussion began and voices ranged from immediate outrage to incredulity. Prominent voices were messaging me, as a person who runs a design community, to immediately take steps to drop TTS. I decided to do my best to enjoy the rest of my weekend at the convention and wait for Berserk’s response, but I felt gutted by this.
I am in a terribly unenviable position caught between two worlds. This is emotional for me, and I hate stepping out at all. I feel a great burden trying to represent both of my communities as a transperson and as a leader in the online board game design community. Xoe is a member of the game design community and close to many of us. We want to support especially her and the other LGBTQIA+ people (including myself) who have been harmed by your actions even if that also means leaving TTS behind. But the design groups are not currently functional without TTS, and switching platforms would create significant hardship for many of the members. In fact, it could be the end of some groups and other’s ability to engage in the hobby.
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Outside of your initial response, I’ve appreciated all that you have done since to rectify this - you’ve apologized generally to the hurt communities, global chat has been shut down, CHRY is no longer moderating, moderation of your Discord has improved, you’ve sought to elevate the designs of the impacted communities, you’ve made a significant donation to a trans charity, and you’ve committed to doing more to regaining our trust. I really feel this has been done in the best of faith with good intentions to continue to do more. As an aside, as a transperson who has personally experienced homelessness and poverty and who sees it rampant in my community, $10,000 toward supporting the trans community is a lot of money especially when ensuring people have food.
That said, I really need something more from you. I need two things in particular before I can truly feel good continuing to use your platform in my community. Xoe is a member of my community who was the most harmed. I cannot imagine how she feels right now and the antagonism she is experiencing for speaking out. I know there isn’t a lot that can be done to take that pain away immediately, but please, reach out to her, personally, directly, and apologize. I honestly don’t know why you haven’t already. Perhaps you have a legal department who has advised against it. I’m not sure, but I need you to do this to move forward with you in good faith.
The second thing I need will take some time, but a commitment from you to would be sufficient for now. Please either hire or professionally consult with someone from the LGBTQIA+ community to help guide you going forward. For example, even though the transphobic positive Steam reviews are not your fault, they would likely advise you to disavow them publicly regardless as this is still a pain point in the community. Find someone who can offer training and root out the biases that lead to this disastrous situation. Someone who could help you not only weather this storm, but even become a leader in how to support our community going forward.
I cannot promise that, even if you do both these things, it will be enough for everyone, but I can say it would be enough for me and likely for the other game design groups that follow my lead. TTS has been such a wonderful part of my past. I hope it can also be a part of my future.
Finally, I want to credit Xoe. Were it not for her willingness to stand up and take the heat, TTS global chat would still be an unsafe place for people like me, your moderating practices would remain outdated and not be under review, and the trans community would not have your generous donation. She is a credit to her community and I’m so very grateful for her.
If you’d like to contact me directly, my Discord name is boardgamebryn#4762 and my Twitter handle is @undone apex.
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distant nebula
👍
surreal thicket
👍
Thank you for making this available for everyone to read through @undone apex. I think it sums up the major points many of us are contending with very well.
undone apex
👍
That means a lot to me coming from you given your organization is the largest of all of them.
distant nebula
I think they really do need to make a statement saying "yo that shit's not on" to all the stuff on the steam forums / reviews, I understand they don't moderate there themselves, but they need to make a blanket "stfu with the biogted shit" and take whatever hit that gives them from the far right. It's back to the bar allegory. You can't stay neutral because that just makes everyone assume you're... I want to say "batting for the other team" but maybe that's the wrong phrasing 😄
You give the nazis an inch and they will take an absolute mile.
karmic portal
Like I've said before, it's not enough to simply be not a bigot, you need to be vocally and vehimently against bigotry because if you don't actively say "We don't want bigots here" they will point at your lack of condemnation as you agreeing with their view
trail arch
Thank you for sharing this Bryn. I resonate with the statements you've provided here today and am in full support of them.
hardy storm
Just wanted to come in and lend my support to everything Bryn said. I've been watching this space over the last week and one of the things that has given me hope is that the moderation does seem to have gotten better. I still think there's too much lenience for some of the "both sides" types of arguments though, and that's something I think Berserk needs to address in an official way here: putting down the hammer on people who come in here to take the stance that TTS did nothing wrong and this is all a big overreaction.
By letting those arguments happen here, we have two types of harm: 1) Berserk undermines its own apology. Intentionally or not, this gives a wink and a nod to homophobic/transphobic types that there's a battle they can fight here and that Berserk may even actually "be on their side," and 2) people from marginalized communities have to (on a daily basis) engage in the emotional labor of defending their right to exist in this space. I'd love to see a more cohesive moderation philosophy that weeds out bad actors who hide behind civility and "just expressing my opinion," type of behavior.
distant nebula
I can see them being hesitant to ban quickly and I can't blame them for that... That's kinda how this started.
hardy storm
I can see them being hesitant to ban quickly and I can't blame them for that... ...
I get that. I think we're on the same page (as your comment above) about a general philosophy of staying neutral isn't going to work.
karmic portal
Just wanted to come in and lend my support to everything Bryn said. I've been w...
As someone who is exhausted from the last week of defending my right to simply exist here I really second that I hope they step up their game. Even if it's temporary bans for people who seem like they are engaging in bad faith. Something that shows us they actually care about defending us more than pissing off bigots