Wizards of the Coast has made several questionable decisions when it comes to their new One D&D system for Dungeons & Dragons. Longtime fans of the game have been complaining that the basic elements of D&D which made the game special have been stripped from this newest edition. Now, one of the game designers has come out and made an explicitly racist statement implying he wants white people out of roleplaying.
Players have already become upset about the subscription model of the new D&D, where One D&D appears to be using paid subscribers as beta testers for a game as it develops and changes. Such practices are common in the video game industry, where companies fix the bugs in their games through post-release updates. Still, for tabletop playing, players are used to having a complete book to play their games without having to worry about it working or not.
On top of the format and rules debacle, Wizards of the Coast has been removing tropes associated with some of their fantasy races as they believe those races exemplify real-life human cultures. Most famously, several woke activists have compared Orcs to black people and tried to project their own racist proclivities on normal people who just want to pretend to fight monsters.
In a recent interview on the 3 Black Halflings channel, however, Wizards Of the Coast Executive Producer Kyle Brink gave an interview revealing the designer’s bigoted biases.
“This is not the face of the hobby anymore,” Brink said, “and I think there’s been mistakes made in years past where people assumed that D&D players were all, you know, white dudes in a basement. Which has been a faulty assumption for a lot of years and gets more and more false every day. And so in my viewpoint, guys like me can’t leave soon enough.”
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Explicitly calling for white males to leave the hobby is a new low for the roleplaying company, especially as they constantly tout diversity and inclusivity as one of their core values. An executive calling for an entire race to leave the hobby would be met with an instant firing if this were in regard to any other race, but as of this writing, Wizards of the Coast has not even made a statement regarding their employee’s overt racism.
The comments on the live stream savaged the interview, with one viewer stating, “I think their best bet is to just stay silent because everytime one of their ‘leaders’ discuss the hobby, they prove how out of touch they are with their customers more and more.”
YouTuber Diversity & Dragons also spoke out about the situation, voicing his disgust with being told he’s not welcome as a customer as Wizards of the Coast.
He said in his reaction video, “It’s certainly racist. It’s proof that Wizards of the Coast does not want the business of what was a large part of their traditional fanbase.”
Over the last several years, it’s become en-vogue to attack white and male demographics among the fandom’s elites. As companies continue down these paths, they will only find they will be losing customers along the way, as many, like Diversity & Dragons, are fed up with being told they’re not wanted.
What do you think of Wizard of the Coast’s stance on white male players? Leave a comment below and let us know.