Big Changes At White Wolf Following Controversy

Following an online backlash regarding the content of their recent publications, White Wolf Publishing has just announced some big changes, including the suspension of the Vampire 5th Edition Camarilla and Anarch books, and a restructuring of management.

White Wolf's Shams Jorjani made the following announcement about an hour ago:

"Hello everyone,

My name is Shams Jorjani, VP of Business Development at Paradox Interactive and interim manager at White Wolf Publishing. I wanted to inform you of some changes that will be implemented at White Wolf, starting immediately.

Sales and printing of the V5 Camarilla and Anarch books will be temporarily suspended. The section on Chechnya will be removed in both the print and PDF versions of the Camarilla book. We anticipate that this will require about three weeks. This means shipping will be delayed; if you have pre-ordered a copy of Camarilla or Anarchs, further information will follow via e-mail.

In practical terms, White Wolf will no longer function as a separate entity. The White Wolf team will be restructured and integrated directly into Paradox Interactive, and I will be temporarily managing things during this process. We are recruiting new leadership to guide White Wolf both creatively and commercially into the future, a process that has been ongoing since September.

Going forward, White Wolf will focus on brand management. This means White Wolf will develop the guiding principles for its vision of the World of Darkness, and give licensees the tools they need to create new, excellent products in this story world. White Wolf will no longer develop and publish these products internally. This has always been the intended goal for White Wolf as a company, and it is now time to enact it.

The World of Darkness has always been about horror, and horror is about exploring the darkest parts of our society, our culture, and ourselves. Horror should not be afraid to explore difficult or sensitive topics, but it should never do so without understanding who those topics are about and what it means to them. Real evil does exist in the world, and we can’t ever excuse its real perpetrators or cheapen the suffering of its real victims.

In the Chechnya chapter of the V5 Camarilla book, we lost sight of this. The result was a chapter that dealt with a real-world, ongoing tragedy in a crude and disrespectful way. We should have identified this either during the creative process or in editing. This did not happen, and for this we apologize.

We ask for your patience while we implement these changes. In the meantime, let’s keep talking. I’m available for any and all thoughts, comments and feedback, on shams.jorjani@paradoxinteractive.com."

White Wolf is currently own by Paradox Interactive, who acquired the World of Darkness rights in 2015 from previous owner CCP (who you might know from Eve Online) whose plans for a WoD MMO failed to bear fruit.

The recent Camarilla and Anarch books have met widespread criticism. The former, Camarilla, includes a section which appears to trivialise current real-life events in Chechnya, where the LGBTQ community is being persecuted, tortured, and murdered and uses that current tragedy as a backdrop for the setting. This comes after the company was forced to deny links to neo-Nazi ideology. White Wolf recently announced that "White Wolf is currently undergoing some significant transitions up to and including a change in leadership. The team needs a short time to understand what this means, so we ask for your patience as we figure out our next steps" and this appears to be the result of that decision.

 

[Winghorn]

It's taking the actual arrest and torture of human beings whose sole crime is being gay and turning that into a vampire created smokescreen (literally "fake new") to hide the feeding of vampires in the region and the control the nation by vampire clans.
Read up on the issue. Here's a helpful starting point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-gay_purges_in_Chechnya

It's extremely tone deaf and insensitive to turning real life evil and an ongoing atrocity currently affecting dozens of individuals and their families into a plot point for roleplaying game. To make their suffering part of someone else's entertainment.

I was umm-ing and ahh-ing over a big ol' post, but I think this is a better summary than I could come up with.

In any case, I'm real disappointed in the WW team. I was one of the folks who was turned off V5 by all the controversy over the beta (alpha? whatever), but was actually won back by the core book. It was a fairly solid piece of work, and the chapter on ensuring safe and comfortable play was pretty good.

And then they go and do something like this. Bloody hell.

 

[CleverNickName]

This seems like a reasonable response to a reprehensible oversight.

 

[TrippyHippy]

I think it should be noted that there had been an announcement prior to the Camarilla release about changes that were going to be made anyway. The likelihood is that sales weren't good enough for Paradox, which could be due to a number of factors (price range, distribution, etc) as well as concerns about controversy. Moreover, they may have surmised that if the new edition remained toxic to a section of vocal fans, building the brand into other media (which was the stated purpose of the new White Wolf company) was increasingly difficult.

With regards to the Camarilla issue itself, there was a tendency of people to pick sides in tribal way ("Edgelord" v 'SJW") which was flatly inane. To me, it was an in character metaphor - no different to Black Sabbath referencing generals and politicians and 'witches at black masses' and 'sorcerers' in the 'War Pigs' vietnam protest song. I didn't see it as a literal report on what was going on - and so the idea that it was trying to spread 'fake news' is only going to be relevant to those people who think there are literally vampires in the world in the first place.

The questions I have to people complaining - about the use of real world Chetchnyan persecution of the LGBT community as a reference point within the fictional world of Vampire - are these:

1) How much did you actually know about the persecution of LGBT people in Chechnya before it was drawn to your attention by this White Wolf controversy?
2) What are actually doing about it?

Join Amnesty, or write letters to news organisations or whathave you. It's quite crazy that people are now citing the Chechnyan and Russian governments for the 'offense' of this written piece. White Wolf have been upturned, but what does this do for anyone?

 

[Panda-s1]

The questions I have to people complaining - about the use of real world Chetchnyan persecution of the LGBT community as a reference point within the fictional world of Vampire - are these:

1) How much did you actually know about the persecution of LGBT people in Chechnya before it was drawn to your attention by this White Wolf controversy?
2) What are actually doing about it?

Join Amnesty, or write letters to news organisations or whathave you. It's quite crazy that people are now citing the Chechnyan and Russian governments for the 'offense' of this written piece. White Wolf have been upturned, but what does this do for anyone?

1) I've known about it since reports started coming in last year. It was big, heartbreaking news for the LGBT community at the time. How the else would it become a controversy if people didn't know about it?
2) What am I actually doing about it? I dunno, supporting my LGBT community, not being a PoS about queer issues and related etiquette. Voting. Man, what have you done about it?

3) (I mean you didn't number this one but w/e) It shows that Paradox Interactive is taking any and all criticism against the new White Wolf seriously and is willing to do something about it.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

White Wolf have been upturned, but what does this do for anyone?

Well, it sends a pretty clear message to anyone in the future that doing this sort of thing is a BAD idea. That using ongoing human tragedy for entertainment purposes is maybe not a great idea.

That's certainly a plus.

 

[TrippyHippy]

1) I've known about it since reports started coming in last year. It was big, heartbreaking news for the LGBT community at the time. How the else would it become a controversy if people didn't know about it?

The person who actually started the petition about the contents has actually said he regrets doing so now. Moreover, I knew about it because I am a member of Amnesty, and we get reports like this - but plenty of other people, when asked, didn't know anything at all about it, till they were made aware of this particular White Wolf controversy.

2) What am I actually doing about it? I dunno, supporting my LGBT community, not being a PoS about queer issues and related etiquette. Voting. Man, what have you done about it?

As said above, I'm a paid up member of Amnesty and a school teacher. We organise certain charitable events and do letter writing for selected issues. You say 'voting', but which politician raised this issue?

3) (I mean you didn't number this one but w/e) It shows that Paradox Interactive is taking any and all criticism against the new White Wolf seriously and is willing to do something about it.

The point I am making is that the anger here may well cause a company to make changes, but this, in itself does nothing to help the victims. If people are angy enough to complain about a fictional representation of events, one would hope they could also channel that concern into the real world issues behind it.

 

[TrippyHippy]

Well, it sends a pretty clear message to anyone in the future that doing this sort of thing is a BAD idea. That using ongoing human tragedy for entertainment purposes is maybe not a great idea.

That's certainly a plus.

I don't agree. I think it's a concern that people will now feel it is too much of a risk to highlight real world events in art. People will feel that the only safe option is to stick with pure escapism, without any cultural reference.

That is not a good state of affairs.

 

[Morrus]

If people are angy enough to complain about a fictional representation of events, one would hope they could also channel that concern into the real world issues behind it.

If there's one thing that's apparent in today's world, it's that people channel a LOT of concern into real world issues.

 

[TrippyHippy]

If there's one thing that's apparent in today's world, it's that people channel a LOT of concern into real world issues.

There is certainly a lot of concern - but I tend to find that a lot of it, these days, tends to get channelled into things that don't actually provide much progress. Attacking things that are 'offensive' increasingly seems to end up being tribalised. People petition against media presentation rather than source.

The Chechnyan and Russian governments said they were offended by this piece of writing, yet they are the ones responsible for the persecution. The book has been removed, the actions against LGBT continue.

In terms of using real world events for entertainment, it's worth noting that 'entertainment' can mean a lot of things and doesn't mean it is inherently 'making light' of a serious matter in a dismissive way. Notably, Death of Stalin was also banned in Russia this year too.

 

[Panda-s1]

The person who actually started the petition about the contents has actually said he regrets doing so now. Moreover, I knew about it because I am a member of Amnesty, and we get reports like this - but plenty of other people, when asked, didn't know anything at all about it, till they were made aware of this particular White Wolf controversy.

So now even more people know about it? Why is this a bad thing? What is there to regret?

As said above, I'm a paid up member of Amnesty and a school teacher. We organise certain charitable events and do letter writing for selected issues. You say 'voting', but which politician raised this issue?

The point I am making is that the anger here may well cause a company to make changes, but this, in itself does nothing to help the victims. If people are angy enough to complain about a fictional representation of events, one would hope they could also channel that concern into the real world issues behind it.

No I asked what you're doing about it. What have these "charitable events" and letters done? I can escalate this to its inevitable conclusion: Why aren't you in Chechnya doing something about this? Why aren't you taking up arms and overthrowing the government?

Also, idk how you're questioning how voting can affect this issue just because politicians didn't bring up the issue specifically. Voting for LGBT positive candidates, does that help?

I don't agree. I think it's a concern that people will now feel it is too much of a risk to highlight real world events in art. People will feel that the only safe option is to stick with pure escapism, without any cultural reference.

That is not a good state of affairs.

No, no, that's not the controversy. The controversy isn't highlighting a real world event, it's trivializing it. Either you don't get this point and need to better understand the controversy, or you do and should just take your concern trolling elsewhere.