Daniel Friedman Profile picture
Apr 6 13 tweets 5 min read Read on X
This is an incredible article, because it shows what happens if you are a woke white man. Deck Nine makes progressive games and its CCO, Zak Garriss believed in assembling a diverse narrative team. But the people he hired hated and resented him and tried to destroy him.
In 2018, Garriss gave a talk at GDC about how he assembled a TV-style writers room for the game “Life is Strange: Before the Storm,” and how he believed “diversity of representation and perspective” strengthened the work. gdcvault.com/play/1025374/P…
But when he was nice to his team, they accused him of “love bombing,” a manipulation tactic. They insinuate that he was coming on to female employees, although he is never alleged to have tried to date any of his subordinates or that he made any kind of sexual advance. Image
Basically, they accuse him of having conversations in the workplace that were never inappropriate, and walking a female employee to her car on a night when they had worked late, and impute a sinister intent onto this because he is a white man.
The “love bombing” ended when Garriss’s team started to make it clear that they despised everything he was and everything he represented. His junior team members got very hostile and started invoking identity when he didn’t take every one of their notes. Image
Garriss’s was the Chief Creative Officer and the narrative lead. He was the principal author of the narrative. He had final authority over all story decisions, and his staff’s job was to assist him. But as a white man, they believed his job was to shut up and listen. Image
In response to the tense atmosphere in his writers room, Garriss stopped meeting with the writers. He worked alone, made decisions without their feedback and only consulted with the staffers he actually liked, holding meetings at his home to avoid the other writers. Image
When the writer of this article says Garriss “quit voluntarily,” she makes it seem like he was pushed out of his positions over these issues, but he has no gap in his resume and went from his job as CCO of Deck Nine to Vice President of Story Development at Telltale Games, the much larger developer and publisher of narrative titles that was publishing Deck Nine’s next game after “True Colors.” He was promoted.
Garriss had a sterling professional reputation and produced well-regarded creative work, but the diverse staff he brought on to share their unique perspectives didn’t value his talent and resented working under him. After he left, they took over and destroyed the studio.
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A bunch of woke staffers had a huge freak out over the fact that the numbers 88 and 18 appeared in places in the game. In certain far-right circles, 88 is a code for “heil Hitler,” because H is the eighth letter of the alphabet.

The number of 18 is actually symbolic of life and good luck in Jewish numerology, and I had never heard of its far-right significance, but apparently an obscure British Neo Nazi group uses the number to represent Adolf Hitler’s initials.

In response to this meltdown, Deck Nine announced mandatory diversity training for everyone. The woke staffers tried to get anyone who objected to undergoing this training fired.Image
Telltale Games ended up cancelling the project it was working on with Deck Nine, and Deck Nine ended up going through layoffs. Zak Garriss is now creative director for the Chinese gaming conglomerate NetEase. Image
The way IGN reports on the gaming industry is pretty shameful. It is pretty clear that this writer has written a major feature for this site centering the narratives of some junior staffers who were hired for their identity, refused to work for or respect a white male boss, and ultimately caused a lot of problems and did a lot of damage to the company that tried to employ them.
For all the effort these disgruntled former employees and the hack journalist have gone through to destroy Garriss’s reputation, the only concrete allegations present in the article are that he was very nice to people who behaved appropriately in the office, that he did not respond favorably to the employees who made his writers room a hostile space, and that he did not immediately take every note and incorporate every change suggested by people who were higher than him on the progressive stack.

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More from @DanFriedman81

Dec 10
You should be outraged that a “Top 50” list of dangerous homeless people exists. Every person on that list has been arrested dozens of times. Every one of them has attacked strangers. And the city leaves them on the street for you to deal with instead of locking them up. Image
Neely was on that list because he beat a 67 year old woman — a complete stranger he attacked for no reason — and broke several bones in her face.

They didn’t want to put him in jail, so they sent him to a residential treatment center. He walked out after two weeks. Image
The city knows who all these people are. They’ve been arrested over and over, for serious offenses, and they keep turning them loose. Officials know they are dangerous. And they won’t put them in jail; they let them ride the train with you and your kids.
Read 5 tweets
Oct 20
The US and Europe operate under a legal regime governing conduct in war loosely described as "International Law." It is a relic of the Cold War order that makes no sense in modern conflicts and is unsustainable in a conflict where significant interests are on the line. 🧵
Most wars between 1950 and 1995 were proxy battles between the US and the USSR. The main concern of both sides as they fought these wars -- the US in Vietnam and the Soviets in Afghanistan -- was not to escalate the proxy conflicts into open war between the two superpowers.
The US preferred to walk away from its objectives in Vietnam -- to lose the war -- rather than escalate into a conflict with the USSR which could potentially be a nuclear conflict.

The USSR didn't want that war either, so both sides followed these rules.
Read 17 tweets
Oct 12
This really changed everything for the Israelis. There used to be a very active Israeli pro-peace left. During the Oslo process, Gazans freely crossed the border to work in Israel and Israelis shopped in Palestinian markets. There were a lot of people for whom peace and coexistence were core values.

And after October 7, most of those former leftists don’t even see the Palestinians as human anymore.
It seems very clear that the rules of engagement for this war are different from campaigns Israel has conducted in the past. There is a lot less consideration for civilian suffering. Israel’s definition of what is proportional has changed.

And that’s because of these images.
Israel is not out to capture hearts and minds. Israel is not conducting this war with the expectation that these people will be partners for peace in the near future. Hamas is not some guys in Gaza — Hamas is Gaza, and this is a war on Gaza.
Read 5 tweets
Sep 20
An incredible story coming out of the world of Sci-Fi/Fantasy: GenCon, the annual Dungeons and Dragons and tabletop gaming convention has fired the organizing committee for its writers’ symposium and possibly cancelled the event for 2025 after a woke meltdown. Here’s what happened. 🧵
First of all, the source for this is a run-down of Erik Scott de Bie, who seems to have rounded up the facts, but has a very different take on it than I do. You can read his account here: erikscottdebie.com/2024/09/12/the…
Gen Con is an enormous sci-fi and fantasy convention, originally founded by Dungeons and Dragons creator Gary Gygax.

It has been running annually since 1968 and it had attendance of 71,000 in 2024. It’s a big event.
Read 10 tweets
Sep 10
@asymmetricinfo Eating livestock or hunting with a license in the woods is very different than going to the pond in an urban park and strangling the ducks that the children feed there.

There is no argument that this is normal or tolerable.
@asymmetricinfo Springfield, Ohio had 40,000 residents in 2020 and then Joe Biden brought in 20,000 Haitians. In those numbers, the Haitians will not assimilate and become Americans. What happens is that Springfield becomes Haiti.
@asymmetricinfo The traffic in Springfield is now like traffic in Haiti. The Haitians ignore stop signs, school zones and all traffic laws. This is, of course, after the nationwide scaling back of traffic enforcement in the wake of the George Floyd incident.
Read 6 tweets
Jun 30
The biggest lie told at the debate was Biden’s claim that the Republicans kept the border open by refusing to support Biden’s border bill. Trump pushed back but wasn’t coherent enough to decisively refute this common Democratic claim.
Border security and detention policy is in the hands of executive agencies. The policies these agencies utilize have a huge impact on the number of people who try to cross the border. Trump’s policies were very different from Biden’s.
The bulk of people crossing the border are currently exploiting a loophole in our immigration laws: We allow people who face persecution in their home countries to come here as refugees. The problem is that we entitle every individual who claims to be a refugee to a hearing to consider their status. When there are millions of such people, the backlog for a hearing stretches out for years. What do we do with the asylum-seekers in the meantime.
Read 10 tweets

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