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.

 

[Artamo]

No, what you're doing is judging a whole bunch of people you don't know based on those few visible people. The vast majority of people who buy and play OSR games probably don't even know who those people are. Go ahead and judge people who are actually guilty of things as harshly as they deserve, but don't even pretend there's any good reason to judge some wider group of people that have nothing in common beyond playing a certain sort of very popular game. Ridiculous.

Visible people matter. Leadership in a community matters. They speak for a community until those people within the community signal that those people do not speak for them. The OSR community seems to be one that is at sometimes at war with itself. When someone like Ben Milton is reticent to address controversies with some of the publishers he reviews, that matters to me. There are some wonderful people in the OSR community: I think Yochai Gal and Kelsey Dionne are great creators. I think they represent a burgeoning group of designers in a space that wants simpler games. But I sense there’s an underlying problem and that is a portion of the OSR community is entrenched in some very retrograde perspectives of who those games are for, and how they should be for. Again, I will say that silence speaks volumes. When reviewers and publishers - the actual faces of a community, not the anonymous forum goers - are not willing to call out some of the offenders, I have to question why. In this case, the only answer I have is that they are afraid of loss of standing within that community.

If you perceive that as a bias on my part, then I’m willing to accept that. I’m certainly not willing to budge from that perspective. I’m willing to deal with anyone on an individual basis. But if I see someone as a spokesperson for a given community choosing not to make a statement about greater issues within that community, I’m gonna have criticisms.

 

[Artamo]

There are hundreds of OSR companies, many of whom have loudly expressed their opposition to this kind of crap. You cannot extrapolate like this, unless you want to bear the responsibility for all of the bad actors that resemble you in any way.

Yes, as was said many pages ago, folks like Bob World Builder and Questing Beast 100% have a responsibility they're not living up to by not saying anything. But that's as far as you can extrapolate here.

And I appreciate every single time one of those companies (or designers or influencers) speak up. I’d like more to do so.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I think Yochai Gal and Kelsey Dionne are great creators. I think they represent a burgeoning group of designers in a space that wants simpler games. But I sense there’s an underlying problem and that is a portion of the OSR community is entrenched in some very retrograde perspectives of who those games are for, and how they should be for. Again, I will say that silence speaks volumes. When reviewers and publishers - the actual faces of a community, not the anonymous forum goers - are not willing to call out some of the offenders, I have to question why. In this case, the only answer I have is that they are afraid of loss of standing within that community.

So you're now deciding that Yochai Gal is a racist based on "I personally haven't seen him say enough to satisfy me that he's not?" Do you listen to Between Two Cairns?

You are way out of line here, man.

 

[Artamo]

So you're now deciding that Yochai Gal is a racist based on "I personally haven't seen him say enough to satisfy me that he's not?" Do you listen to Between Two Cairns?

You are way out of line here, man.

Wait, what? I can’t even parse that. Speak plainly. What I’ve heard from Yochai Gal is thoughtful discussion about the OSR space. I think Cairn is a great game. I think he’s a positive voice. Did I lead you to believe I think he wasn’t?

 

[Retreater]

So you're now deciding that Yochai Gal is a racist based on "I personally haven't seen him say enough to satisfy me that he's not?" Do you listen to Between Two Cairns?

You are way out of line here, man.

Not to try to answer for @Artamo, but my reading of the post was that Gal is being put in the "good" category with Kelsey Dionne. Unless I just really misunderstood it.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Wait, what? I can’t even parse that. Speak plainly. What I’ve heard from Yochai Gal is thoughtful discussion about OSR space. I think Cairn is a great game. I think he’s a positive voice. Did I lead you to believe I think he wasn’t?

This gibberish:

Visible people matter. Leadership in a community matters. They speak for a community until those people within the community signal that those people do not speak for them. The OSR community seems to be one that is at sometimes at war with itself. When someone like Ben Milton is reticent to address controversies with some of the publishers he reviews, that matters to me. There are some wonderful people in the OSR community: I think Yochai Gal and Kelsey Dionne are great creators. I think they represent a burgeoning group of designers in a space that wants simpler games. But I sense there’s an underlying problem and that is a portion of the OSR community is entrenched in some very retrograde perspectives of who those games are for, and how they should be for. Again, I will say that silence speaks volumes. When reviewers and publishers - the actual faces of a community, not the anonymous forum goers - are not willing to call out some of the offenders, I have to question why. In this case, the only answer I have is that they are afraid of loss of standing within that community.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Not to try to answer for @Artamo, but my reading of the post was that Gal is being put in the "good" category with Kelsey Dionne. Unless I just really misunderstood it.

It's generally a bad idea to include "publishers who don't want to speak out are cowards and maybe closet racists" in the same wall of text of specific people's names.

 

[Artamo]

This gibberish:

I still have no idea what your issue is. I specifically called out Dionne and Gal as people I think are positive examples within the OSR space.

 

[mamba]

So you're now deciding that Yochai Gal is a racist based on "I personally haven't seen him say enough to satisfy me that he's not?"

I believe these are two distinct groups (Yochai and Kelsey vs 'faces of the community that do not speak up'). The latter might be directed at Questing Beast or Bob Worldbuilder

 

[Artamo]

I believe these are two distinct groups (Yochai and Kelsey vs 'faces of the community that do not speak up'). The latter might be directed at Questing Beast or Bob Worldbuilder

Exactly this, though I didn’t know Bob the Worldbuilder even got caught up in this.

Ben Milton, OTOH…I’m not impressed with his unwillingness to address even the slightest controversy.