Relooted, which made its debut last week during the Summer Game Fest-adjacent Day of the Devs showcase, immediately turned heads. Its Killmonger-approved premise confronts one of the most uncomfortable truths undergirding Western society: We stole a lot of stuff! Land and lives, mainly, but as an extension of that, artifacts — precious pieces of the histories empires like the US and UK snuffed out. In Relooted, your crack team of liberators from a plethora of different African countries heists them back.
The game’s dev team is composed of people from African countries like Lesotho, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Tanzania, but during Summer Game Fest’s multi-day, demo-centric Play Days event, creative director Ben Myres, who is white and was raised in South Africa, manned the booth alone. This was not always the plan: Myres was originally going to be accompanied by another developer from South-Africa-based studio Nyamakop, whom Aftermath has granted anonymity due to their concerns that speaking out might exacerbate the challenges they’ve already faced entering the United States.
I’m so disappointed, but not at all surprised. I feel for them. :(
terminhell@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 hours ago
I’m not saying it’s right, or fixes past evils…but can we stop pretending the modern US have been the only ones that have ever done evil shit? At this point it feels more like crying wolf for the sins of our fathers. Every country, every era has dirty laundry.
araneae@beehaw.org 16 hours ago
Okay, well, here’s a video game about that and you don’t have to play it if you don’t want. Heisting back your cultural heirlooms is a great premise I could get behind for any culture.
Vodulas@beehaw.org 14 hours ago
This isn’t dirty laundry, this is current events. This event happened last week.
If you are referring to the game, the article calls out the US and UK, but the game description itself just says western, which probably means several locations. But even if it is just the US and UK, who cares? The US and UK have a fuckton of dirty laundry that is still being aired out, and this South African dev has the right to address concerns with those two countries that have had direct harm to their culture