For a while, the West has been looking at Russian gamedev with optimism: slowly, more and more studios began releasing bigger titles, with Atomic Heart being the biggest one. But even Atomic Heart has found itself amid a controversy due to the developer’s potential ties to Russian authorities and data collection practices.
Today we received another example of the current state of things when an indie studio Next Genium sent us a press release titled “No game from a Russian studio Next Genium will include woke elements or inclusivity.” We prepared ourselves for quite a read, and boy were we right.
The full press release reads:
“A representative of the independent game studio Next Genium considers the modern “agenda” and inclusivity in games to be artificial and completely unnecessary. He noted that there will definitely be nothing like this in the company’s projects.
Next Genium is developing several expensive projects for PCs and consoles. None of them will feature flamboyant strong women, or black people where they are completely out of place, and where the context of the story does not imply any modern cultural agenda.
According to an unnamed top manager, in any game, even a story-based one, addictive gameplay and narrative drama are of primary importance — this applies not only to the Western market but also to our market. And absurd modern trends only prevent gamers worldwide from truly enjoying PC and console gaming.
We treat every project we develop like a child. Would you bully your child with a woke agenda and other trendy things? We definitely wouldn’t. We put all our efforts and resources into gameplay, a memorable visual style and into the narrative. But we will never waste time on introducing trends. We never even allowed such a thought,” said the official representative of Next Genium.”
Read also: Sony banned users from Russia and Belarus from activating their video games on Steam
To be completely honest, that press release (the original can be found here) has left us stumped, but we guess that’s what the current landscape in Russia is. Next Genium, in particular, has developed such massive hits as 14: Overmind, a “space survival game”, as well as Godreaper (“hardcore souls-like gameplay in a dark fantasy setting inspired by Slavic folklore”) and Formind, which is a hard sci-fi world with survival horror mechanics reminiscent of 1990s zombie titles.
We suggest steering clear of this company’s games in the future — seems like they don’t want our woke money anyway.