Valve renames Artifact card named Crack the Whip that affects black cards
123 replies, posted
https://www.pcgamer.com/valve-changes-artifact-card-name-to-avoid-racist-connotations/
Valve has been revealing new Artifact cards on its Twitter feed over the past few days, including one called Crack the Whip. "When you play Crack the Whip, it triggers once right after
its played," Valve wrote. "If you play an Untested Grunt next to the whipped hero it will trigger again, and the Grunt will receive the bonus."
That's innocuous enough—"cracking the whip" is a fairly common and widely used phrase—but the card text turned it into something altogether different. "Crack the Whip," it says.
"Modify a black hero with 'After you play a black card, give this hero and its allied neighbors +2 Attack this round'."
The "black hero" is a reference to card color: As we explain in our Artifact guide, cards and heroes are selected from four possible colors—red, green, blue, and black—each with its own
"personality" and range of capabilities. But commenters on Twitter very quickly pointed out the potential (and, let's be honest, obvious) racial connotations of the card text.
"Having a card called 'Crack the Whip' that says it modifies black heroes is not a good look, especially out of context," one said. Another pointed out that "the pairing of 'black' with
'whip' can be easily misinterpreted/misrepresented," and could also very easily be used "inappropriately" on platforms like Twitch. There were also memes—no surprise there—and
suggestions that the card text, while certainly not intentionally racist, was evidence of a lack of diversity at Valve.
Valve didn't respond to the criticism on Twitter, but it did take to heart the suggestion made by several people that the whole thing could be easily fixed with a name change.
I like how the "evidence of a lack of diversity" is just a link to a tweet of someone asking a question.
Twitter as important as Bob Woodward to journalism now.
Just like with H&M, this could have been avoided if Valve (and video games companies) had some diversity in the team
Thankfully, Twitter didn't make a huge fuzz about it, and calling for fires & boycotts / trashing Valve's place, they usually are when stuff like this happens, gotta give props for both sides for being respectful and props for Valve for not trying to backpaddle and make a shitty PR statement
Dude im pretty sure its unintentional and also fuck off like you know the racial makeup of valve?
Yeah if only they had blacvision this could have been prevented
I'm pretty sure this only happened because the people working on this game have done nothing but eat, sleep, and breathe Artifact for the past 2-3 years. After creating hundreds of card names and descriptions in a row, things probably started to blend together.
No where did I said it was unintentional lol
Form videos I have seen, is majority white
In general, Vavle is one of the biggest yet low-key company, that has a majorly history, mostly focus on PC Gaming, and yet, they are relatively small, with there multiplayer games, well know for being racist and in general toxic and letting "algorithms" doing all there work?
Doesn't take a professor to know, that the company is majority white
Do you have a steam account?
Yeah?
I touched an algorithm once and I turned caucasian, it was a harrowing experience
Getting some "chink in one's armor" vibes here. A lot of normal phrases can be misconstrued as derogatory unless you're writing something completely sterile like a court document.
Must suck to tiptoe around color descriptors like "black" or "white"
Never said or implied that algorithms is a white thing, I mean, I use them alot aswell?
It's just, usually when a non-diverse company is having a alot of or failing moderation issues, they usually use algorithms for everything (via la YouTube/Google, Amazon ect.)
My take away from this is that Slave Drivers do not "crack whips" anymore, but rather Coordinate Efforts Via Auditory Stimulus.
I'm looking forward to the new editions of colonial American stories where the cruel white task masters vigorously Coordinated the slaves cotton picking efforts.
They should have done it like physical TCGs, people find out about the card in game, Valve changes the name but leaves ones with the old name unchanged and worth a lot in several years
Doesn't take having someone who's not Caucasian on the team to be able to catch a misunderstanding like this. Heck, even if the team was "perfectly diverse" or some bullshit, it probably still would've slipped through.
This is less an issue about diversity, and more an issue about not getting enough external feedback.
I don't know about anyone else, but I find unintentional racism like this to be hilarious.
https://i.redd.it/rw84ti1yqz501.png
Thank you for the gift that keeps on giving, MtG.
Or it's just unintentional and it's only people like you that would read more into it that they changed it for
Fun fact, the dude who did the artwork for this now struggles to find work because he's a huge fucking racist.
I went to his website and looked at his gallery, 2 seconds in we've got a jesus-hitler hybrid.
https://haroldarthurmcneill.weebly.com/uploads/1/9/5/3/19530513/4523487_orig.jpg
Dude you have no idea what your talking about, take your racism and get out of here.
okay come on it doesn't take a genius to realize that "crack the whip" paired with "make black cards work harder" has racist connotations
pretending this isn't the case is you being (willfully) blind and/or giving valve too much leeway because they used to be a company that made good games
So because it sounds racist it is racist is your argument?
Yes, yes it is. It's 2018. We as a society don't let people get away with this wink wink nudge nudge shit anymore.
Yeah except the argument that it was unintentional is completely valid and the only evidence you have that it was some racist valve conspiracy is that you can see it being intentional.
if it looks like a duck, walks like duck, quacks like a duck, and has a corkscrew penis; it's probably a duck.
Okay hi welcome to real life where nuance exists
Card games color code their types to add another layer of balance, black cards literally means cards with the black background/type, there's red decks, blue decks, green decks, white decks, black decks, etc. this shit has been a staple gameplay mechanic of TCGs for eons with Pokemon and Magic
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/134149/2510fc13-ca44-4cc1-977a-eddf7c83aeaf/image.png
There was no racism and even so in good faith they changed the name of the card after people pointed it out to them that it'd stand out for shitposting like Mass Calcify and many other cards that sound funny out of context of the game rules
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