In throwing his hat into the current round of video game discourse, Gearbox narrative director Sam Winkler has written off critics of both Sweet Baby Inc. and DEI consultancy work as coming from one of either two camps: Jealous creatives who “never creative a single thing in their lives that they’re proud of” and “straight up just bigots”.
Winkler, who in addition to his current position as a narrative director on an as-of-yet Gearbox title has also worked for the studio as the lead writer on Tiny Tina’s Wonderland and the co-lead writer of Borderlands 3, offered this read of his ideological opponents on March 23rd in response to the argument, as made by an unidentified individual, that “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.”
Sharing a screenshot of this statement, Winkler asserted, “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.”
“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,” he told his followers. “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–king other industry.”
Bringing his point to a close, Winkler ultimately affirmed, “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 the rest are just straight up bigots.”
Met with the affirmation from fellow Twitter user @atagarone that ,”I’m a writer in the tech industry. There’s plenty of stuff in my own industry that I can’t write effectively/intelligently about. I hire freelancers all the time for their niche expertise. Totally get what you’re saying,” the Borderlands 3 scribe declared, “Exactly. They’re literally arguing against hiring to fill knowledge and skill gaps.”
Winkler would subsequently attempt to defend his opinion in a separate discussion with Twitter user @EzhmaarSul.
Retweeting the Gearbox employee’s opening tweet, @EzhmaarSul opined, “lol this f–king dork. A work should not incorporate ‘every’ prose style. It should be *your* style. Authors become famous because of their particular styles. Not because they aced a Creative Writing class on mimicking other styles.”
“Nor should the work include ‘every character’ or ‘every plot,’ they continued. “Your work should be your creative endeavor; not the mongrel spawn of a boardroom insistent on checking boxes. Although, many of you poor excuses for writers would benefit by simply copying [Conan The Barbarian creator] Robert E. Howard.”
“Uh, yeah!” exclaimed Winkler in reply. “I agree! Nothing I said implied otherwise. Works are better when they have distinct voices contributing their strengths to it. That’s literally my thesis here.”
“Nah, your thesis is that you should hire consultants to help you write something if you’re concerned you can’t write something,” argued @EzhmaarSul. “But here’s the deal: there’s nothing you can’t write. In general, expansive writing teams are disasters. This show [Rick & Morty, as indicated by a GIF attached to their tweet] dropped off a cliff after Season 2.”
Taken aback by his opponent’s declaration, Winkler then asked, “Are you under the impression that basically every single TV show you’ve ever watched isn’t created by a writer’s room? No matter whose name is on the script, a huge amount of people (and not just writers) contribute to every episode of every show’s story.”
Receiving a response of “I’m under the impression that every single TV show that isn’t a sketch comedy was made *worse* by a writers’ room” from @EzhmaarSul, the Gearbox writer at this point tapped out of the conversation.
“That is certainly an opinion,” he sighed. “I feel like we could actually have a good conversation about how media gets made, but I’m not getting the sense that you’re open to changing your mind. Have fun heckling, I legitimately hope you find a way to enjoy more things.”
Finding himself frustrated by both the pushback to his original post and his inability to change @EzhmaarSul’s opinion, Winkler eventually moved to remove himself from the discourse all together, informing both his followers and detractors, “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.”
“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,” he wrote. “I’ll always show up for that. But some of y’all have truly screwed up your priorities. Are you even having fun?”
“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,” Winkler continued. “Because what could I gain from that? What could they? If you love games, go play them. Go talk to friends about them.”
Drawing his thoughts to a close, the writer concluded his thread by lamenting, “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.”
