Divinity: Original Sin “Save the Boob-Plate” Interview

While I haven’t paid a whole lot of attention to GamerGate over the past year or so since it became something of a movement, but I found this interview with Larian Studios’ Thierry Van Gyseghem on BlogJob interesting as it focuses on his “Save the Boob-Plate” post in defense of the female’s choice of clothing on Divinity: Original Sin’s cover. An excerpt:

Billy: One of the things I was curious about was when the controversy broke out over the boob-plate armor, was it actually Kickstarter backers sending most of the criticisms or was it relegated to the gaming media and pockets of social media sub-communities?

Thierry: The original cover art had been used for nearly a year at that point, we even had a booth on E3 2012, without a complaint. It was a very small vocal minority that complained about the cover design when we went on kickstarter. Because of the kickstarter campaign there were certain gaming media sites that picked up on it and amplified the complains, I think we all know which sites are the most vigilant in their political agenda. I can only assume social media sub-communities will have added to it also.

…

Billy: Lately there’s been a lot of controversy over creative freedoms that developers can or should exercise with character designs. How much of it do you feel is legitimate criticisms and how much of it do you feel is social politics invading the creative design space?

Thierry: Criticism is formed by opinions, and opinions are formed by what we see, hear and read. So yes I do feel that social politics has a hand in the criticism that is thrown at creative freedom because it’s politics that decides what we see, hear and read. It’s remarkable that you can almost pinpoint the critiques to certain parts in the world, since different parts of the world have different politics.

So in that regard, no I don’t think there are that many legitimate critiques on character design as all of it is just pure taste and preference based. You can like something, or you can dislike something. Feel free to walk away if you don’t like it, but don’t harass the creator for it and wave your political flag.