Goodman Games: Our Efforts Have Been Mischaracterized

Goodman Games' CEO Joseph Goodman made a statement via YouTube over the weekend*. The video itself focused on the content of the controversial upcoming City State of the Invincible Overlord crowdfunding product, but was prefaced by a short introduction by Joseph Goodman, in which he reiterates his company's commitment to inclusivity and diversity and its opposition to bigotry, something which they say they "don't want to be associated with".

Goodman goes on to say that the company's efforts have been "mischaracterized by some folks" but does not go so far as to identify the mischaracterization, so it's not entirely clear what they consider to be untrue other than the "inaccurate" statements made by Bob Bledsaw II of Judges Guild about Goodman Games' plans, which Goodman mentioned last week.

For those who haven't been following this story, it has been covered in the articles Goodman Games Revives Relationship With Anti-Semitic Publisher For New City State Kickstarter, Goodman Games Offers Assurances About Judges Guild Royalties, and Judges Guild Makes Statement About Goodman Controversy. In short, Goodman Games is currently licensing an old property from a company with which it claimed to have cut ties in 2020 after the owner of that company made a number of bigoted comments on social media. Goodman Games has repeatedly said that this move would allow them to provide backers of an old unfulfilled Judges Guild Kickstarter with refunds, but there are many people questioning seeming contradictions in both the timelines involved and in the appropriateness of the whole endeavour.

Despite the backlash, the prospects of the crowdfunding project do not seem to have been harmed. The pre-launch page has over 3,000 followers, and many of the comments under the YouTube videos or on other social media are not only very supportive of the project, but also condemn those who question its appropriateness. In comparison, the original (failed) Judges Guild Kickstarter had only 965 backers.

The video is embedded below, followed by a transcript of the relevant section.

Hi everybody, I'm Joseph Goodman of Goodman Games. We recently announced our City State of the Invincible Overlord crowdfunding project for 5E and DCC RPG.

In the video you're about to see, some of our product development team is going to tell you about what makes the City State so amazing and why we're bringing it back to 5E and DCC audiences nearly 50 years after it was first released. It really is an amazing setting.

But we could have rolled this project out with a lot more clarity. Now, to be clear, Goodman Games absolutely opposes any sort of bigotry, racism, anti-semitism, homophobia, transphobia. We don't want to support it. We don't want to be associated with it.

Our well-intentioned effort to launch this project in a way that refunds backers of a former failed Kickstarter from another publisher kind of backfired in the way we announced it. Rest assured, the funds from this crowdfunding will actually fund refunds to backers of the original City State crowdfunding for the Pathfinder edition from 2014.

Unfortunately, our efforts have been—you know, I didn’t clarify them perfectly when we rolled it out—and they've been mischaracterized by some folks since then. But please rest assured, we stand for inclusivity and diversity.

You can read a lot more detail in the post that's linked below, and there's another video linked below where we talk about this in even more detail. But for now, we hope you will sit back and enjoy as some of the product development team tells you about really what makes the City State of the Invincible Overlord so amazing, and why you might want to check it out when it comes to crowdfunding soon.

Thanks, and I'll turn it over to them now.

The statement refers to a post about this that is supposed to be linked below, but at the time of writing no post is linked below the video, so it's not clear if that refers to a new post or one of Goodman Games' previous statements on the issue.

I reached out to Joseph Goodman last week to offer a non-confrontational (although direct and candid) interview in which he could answer some ongoing questions and talk on his reasoning behind the decision; I have not yet received a response to the offer--I did, however, indicate that I was just leaving for UK Games Expo, and wouldn't be back until this week.

*Normally I would have covered this in a more timely fashion, but I was away at UK Games Expo from Thursday through to Monday.

 

[Mannahnin]

Recycling is tricky in part because it's at the mercy of pricing for various materiels. It can sometimes even vary week to week whether its cost effective. Some materiels are more consistently viable than others, like metal and glass more reliably than plastic and cardboard. Communities/municipalities which do separated recycling (pain though it is) are more able to make it worthwhile than single stream places.

 

[LordEntrails]

Recycling is tricky in part because it's at the mercy of pricing for various materiels. It can sometimes even vary week to week whether its cost effective. Some materiels are more consistently viable than others, like metal and glass more reliably than plastic and cardboard. Communities/municipalities which do separated recycling (pain though it is) are more able to make it worthwhile than single stream places.

Over the long term, material prices only go up and the cost to recycle goes down. So if a locale can't recycle now, at least they can segregate and store for a time when the facilities exist and the prices/costs justify. (Though I doubt many of any actually do)

 

[Marc17]

I understand that there are people who believe power is required to be "racist." I had a few college professors who pushed that idea. While, I understand that is a point of view, I'm not sure how it is logical.

I remember when I first ran across such issues. I did what I usually do in such cases and kept my mouth shut and went to some friends of mine who are sociology professors and asked them. Twenty minutes later it all made sense. I don't remember the details, but I believe that the tl;dr version is that the English language is limited and a lot of people have different definitions for the same word for different contexts. Sociologists are going to use a term differently than a political scientist, who are different than psychologists, who are different than how it is defined by your work. Add in when people hear convincing conversations on the topic and then don't understand the contexts they were used in repeating them.

 

[Argyle King]

I remember when I first ran across such issues. I did what I usually do in such cases and kept my mouth shut and went to some friends of mine who are sociology professors and asked them. Twenty minutes later it all made sense. I don't remember the details, but I believe that the tl;dr version is that the English language is limited and a lot of people have different definitions for the same word for different contexts. Sociologists are going to use a term differently than a political scientist, who are different than psychologists, who are different than how it is defined by your work. Add in when people hear convincing conversations on the topic and then don't understand the contexts they were used in repeating them.

I understand the idea that terms can be used differently. (A lot of contemporary disagreements about sex and gender are often because of two very different ways of using those words.)

However, in the case of "racism," it already has pretty specific definition as a subset of prejudice. My perception is that the prpfessors I had were trying to redefine a subset as no longer being part of the parent category so as to prove their own points 'correct' by redefining everything in a way that meant they were correct.

Even ignoring that, I still don't see how that can be logical. Earlier in this thread, Kanye West was mentioned. If I were to buy into sociological version of "racism," it seems to me that Kanye can openly embrace Nazi ideology but not be racist.

Why I asked the question (earlier in this thread) about whether or not people would buy Bledsaw's products if he were a minority is because I was curious if (like with Kanye) there would be a consistent view of finding his behavior unacceptable. If he's seen as being racist, acting racist, and doing racist things... it seems to me that trying to say he can't be labeled as being "racist" due to some convoluted reasoning doesn't make a whole lot of sense.