Sam Winkler, the Narrative Director at Gearbox and the lead writer on Borderlands 3 and Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands chose to parrot Sweet Baby Inc.’s narrative about gamers.
Elisa Melendez and Sam Winkler via Nerdvana Live YouTube
Winkler posted to X a screenshot that reads, “A GOOD narrative writer of ANY skin color can write a good character with another skin color, without needing ‘consultants’. If your studio can’t do that, get a better writer.”
He then commented on this writing, “I see this argument all the time against DEI and consultancy, and it just highlights the total misunderstanding of what being a good writer is. You don’t somehow max out your stats and learn how to write every conceivable character, plot, or prose style.”
Sam Winkler on X
Next, he posted, “Knowing you can’t, aren’t ready, or aren’t the right person to write something is one of the chief skills for a pro writer. Ideally you have a team that can cover all your bases, but if you have a gap you hire an outside expert… just like in literally any f***ing other industry.”
He concluded the thread by defaming gamers: “just further evidence that 99.99% of the people spewing this shit have never created a single thing in their lives that they’re proud of” and then defamed them further (pictured below).
Sam Winkler on X
This narrative is obviously the same one that Sweet Baby Inc. has been running to the media and posting to X about for the entire month of March. The claim that gamers just don’t know what they are talking about when they criticize DEI video game development.
As an example Sweet Baby Inc. employee Maya Kramer under the X account legobutts pushed this narrative at the end of February when she attempted to get the Sweet Baby Inc. detected Steam curator list shut down.
She wrote, “the other part of this is it doesn’t matter if you tell them the truth. they think “DEI” just steps in and changes whole games: that creators are forced by some unseen hand (the govt, blackrock?? i guess? as well as just poc in general) to make games more inclusive???”
Legobutts on X
Kramer then posted, “fighting misinformation would be great! but social media + youtube is not equipped to hold people accountable to doing real research in good faith. just getting hits and proving their point in the absence of confirmation. it’s wild out there. nothing has changed. nothing.”
Legobutts on X
She then added, ““sorry no one thing has changed: the number of people who understand that spreading misinformation just lets them be racist in public with no consequence has increased dramatically. that has changed. probably requires some fighting from those with authority! probably. :(”
Legobutts on X
Sweet Baby Inc. co-founder David Bédard made a similar claim on LinkedIn where he wrote, ““For the past 4 months, my company (Sweet Baby Inc) has been targeted by a far-right harassment campaign / conspiracy theory. ”
He continued, “This is a tough situation for me, my co-founder Kim Belair, our entire team, and our collaborators. More than the frustrations caused by the harassment, and the precautions we’re putting in place as a result of that, the toughness comes from the fact that this entire campaign is based on misinformation. Misinformation so wild and left-field (or right-field, I guess) that it’s impossible to even engage with it to combat it.”
David Bédard on LinkedIn
As for Winkler’s argument that you need to hire writers based on their identity to write certain characters with the same identity, it’s a tired Hollywood argument that has proven to be a box office and financial disaster. One just need look at the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its embrace of identity politics over the past half decade to see the results of this ideology.
If that’s not enough to convince you look at Marvel or DC Comics. They completely hide sales data now because it’s so terrible.
You don’t need to be black to write a black character. You don’t need to be white to write white characters. You don’t need to be Chinese to be able to write a Chinese character. There are a plethora of examples of authors and writers able to create and write numerous characters without their identity matching those characters.
A screenshot from Borderlands 3 (2020), Gearbox Software
READ: Report: Over 50 Game Developers Took Part In Organized Scream At Game Developers Conference
Comic book writer Christopher Priest shredded this argument back in 2018 when identity-based hiring started becoming all the rage. He informed ComicBook.com, “So I got a call from DC, and they wanted to talk to me about Cyborg. I gave them the standard stump speech. I don’t want to be a “black writer.” When did I become a black writer? I used to be a guy who would write Spider-Man, Deadpool, and Batman. Why am I no longer qualified to write those characters? How did I get typecast from writing Black Panther of all things, when that series was never really about Black Panther. It was about the white guy, about Ross. It was narrated through his voice, and I thought I wrote a very well-constructed white character. Why are you now pigeonholing me as a guy who can only write black characters?”
He continued, “I later found out that Marvel and, to a lesser extent, DC moved into a trend where they were no longer hiring writers—they were casting writers. They’re listening to chatter on Twitter insisting that only a black lesbian writer could write a black lesbian character, and that’s nonsense. A writer writes. Tom Clancy, rest his soul, could write anything. A writer writes. All of the sudden I was no longer qualified to write anybody that didn’t look like me, and I resented that. I was really polite about it and told DC thank you for calling, blah, blah, blah.”
Priest concluded, “Then a day or two later I got another call from DC, and they asked me about Deathstroke. I asked if he was black, they said no, and I said, “OK, I’m listening.” We started having a conversation about Deathstroke. It wasn’t just that the character wasn’t black; we were talking about a character with a lot of untapped potential for me to get inside his head and mine new ground with him. I wasn’t going to come back to comic book companies until they offered me something I could get energized about. I left comics because they stopped offering me anything but black characters. Now, ironically, both Marvel and DC and some of the independents, are talking about a whole range of things. That’s much better. Maybe they’re changing or the industry is changing.”
Christopher Priest via Near Mint Condition YouTube
He wrote on X, “I’ve muted the threads for obvious reasons, but I wanna say this: If you don’t like my work, that’s okay! It doesn’t really bother me. Public crit is invaluable. What bothers me is when you feel like you need to use your finite time on this earth to try & make someone feel bad.”
He continued, “I’ve had uncountable civil conversations with fans and haters alike who want to understand why a plot point happened or why a favorite character never showed up. I’ll always show up for that. But some of y’all have truly screwed up your priorities. Are you even having fun?”
Sam Winkler on X
“I could hate, hate, hate a game’s writing, and it wouldn’t occur to me in a million years to heckle the writer or threaten them or tell them to stop writing,” he painted himself as the victim. “Because what could I gain from that? What could they? If you love games, go play them. Go talk to friends about them.”
He concluded, “This *has* made me feel bad, but not for myself. I feel bad for all the people who got shouted down and stopped making things. I feel bad for the stress writers feel about how they’ll be treated. And I feel bad for you, because you are honestly, truly, deeply wasting your time.”
Sam Winkler on X
What do you make of Winkler’s attack on gamers, his disingenuous defense of identity-based writing, and his near-immediate framing that he’s the victim?
Gearbox was pozzed even before the DEI garbage hit them – one look at Randy Pitchford tells you the type of people who work there. As for Sam Wrinkler – he folded quickly like a cheap suit. He admitted to being an incompetent writer who needs consultants to not be racist and then cried when people mocked him. Clowns like him should be ridiculed into oblivion.
Sam Winkler is evil.