Thread by @javierabegazo

I can’t help but feel bad for the game developers that unfollow or mute me.

I have a lot to teach them about curiosity, compassion, emotional fortitude and contending with unjust power structures.

A 🧵 on power:

Whenever I choose to follow someone, and I follow a lot of people, it is because I am invested to some degree, larger small in their continued success.

if someone tweet some thing out of rage or despair, that is the last reason why I would ever unfollow them.

Seeing someone express rage or despair reads to me as a last resort of communication. If I have learned anything about my 300+ personal 1:1 conversations with game developers, it is that time is not linear, and we all have composite gifts to offer to each other.

I am not interested in exiling someone from my social awareness, especially if they are transphobic or misogynist.

i’m interested in doing what I can to help support them in their own transformation to being a more at peace and empowered individual.

When you are at any of the myriad intersections of marginalization, there is this corporeal danger in taking up space and projecting your voice.

there are so many of us who are afraid to say the wrong thing lest they be ostracized.

I’m not interested in investing my time, attention or energy in this kind of penal society.

language is so central to our ability to conceive of movement past any kind of border we may come up against in our lives.

I want to talk about “transformative justice”

First, here’s the Wikipedia article on transformative justice.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transform…

“Transformative justice is a series of practices and philosophies designed to create change in social systems.”

I cannot express enough the power and agency that transformative justice provides towards individuals and groups of people in the game industry.

Solutions for all of these endemic social issues that affect individuals in the game industry can be found in transformative justice.

Transformative justice seeks to treat the cause and not the symptoms.

transformative justice in the case of the Activision blizzard debacle would be to dismantle the negligent systems of imbalanced power so that harm does not repeat itself.

Transformative justice for my father who was physically and sexually abusive would be that he would be provided the requisite structure of support to recognize the harm that he has caused and to have his unaddressed needs to be met.

any act of violence or power over another is an expression of that persons deficit of creativity to meet very vital needs that they have as a human being.

in a scarcity carcerel mindset, this person is disposable because they have broken the social contract.

what this punishment does not understand is that in requiring a specific threshold to be met before action is taken, it overlooks the minor ways in which all of us express power over another.

Problems of career growth that affects cis gendered straight white men are absolutely related to the narcissism that drives and sustains misogyny and seeks to displace women and people of marginalized genders.

what is at the heart of all of these social inequalities is Power.

In the dichotomies of abundance and scarcity, what is underneath the doctrine of scarcity is the fear that there is not enough HERE for me to succeed, And that I must endeavor to limit what is possible for my neighbor.

I see this as a fundamental weakness of capitalism.

Whenever I hear people and marketing talk through a scarcity mindset of the limitations around marketing for Indy games, I see very clearly how they are ignorant about how grass roots communities function.

I as a game dev benefit directly from the success of “competition”—

But to be more explicit, that I would encourage us to be suspicious of what we perceive as competition or rather what we believe competition to be.

if I were a cis gender white man, I would cheer on any person of a marginalized background if they were to receive a high paying job in the game industry.

we are all interdependent on each other.

me helping a person arrive at a position of power affords myself a level of communal safety and belonging.

The cure for the narcissistic drive to power that is patriarchy and other forms of hate is the acknowledgment of our mutual interdependence.

I’ll end this thread with some affirmations:

there is enough for all of us.

progress is a relentless force.

there is room in you yet for renewal and growth.

If this brought you any comfort or value, & you are in a position to comfortably express that by means of donation here’s my PayPal .

paypal.me/javierabegazo

Composing these thoughts is emotional labor & consumes time, energy and attention and lord knows GDC will be expensive.

Thank you so much!! 💖

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