Subnautica is a game that defied my expectations
in every single way.
It’s one of like... two early access survival
games to ever achieve a full release.
It’s beautiful, horrifying, and surprisingly
uhh… deep.
I guess you could say it was
[A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.]
For those who are unaware, in Subnautica you
take on the role of a survivor of a space
exploration mission gone awry, just after
your ship crashes onto the surface of planet
4546b, an unexplored ocean world teeming with
alien life.
Your goal is to unravel the mystery of what
caused the crash, and to make it back to civilized
space alive using the materials you salvage.
It’s good fun.
I initially intended for this video to be
about how Subnautica is amazing and how most
developers and publishers should take it as
a positive example of how compelling games
market themselves, and you don’t need to
spend a hundred million dollars to get people
interested, as long as the game’s good.
And Subnautica is really, really good.
Without a doubt worth a buy.
Plenty of other people have already made videos
about that, and a couple of them will be linked
at the end of the video.
But there is a much more important lesson
to be learned from this game than marketing.
If you’ve ever given the game at least a
passing glance, you’ll know that Subnautica’s
sound design is second to none.
Nobody can shut up about it.
It’s the aspect that most notably elevates
the game beyond your typical survival exploration
game and into the realm of survival horror.
Tell me these sounds don’t make your skin
crawl.
[Reaper]
So you can imagine that, having just spent
an enjoyable couple of days with Subnautica,
I was very excited to learn of the game’s
upcoming expansion pack.
I was then shocked to learn that Unknown Worlds
had fired the game’s sound designer, Simon
Chylinski, after he was found to have made
several very controversial tweets on his personal
twitter account, which a number of users stated
made them plan on boycotting the game.
The tweets are on screen.
I’m not going to tell you what to think
of them, make up your own mind about how you
feel.
I want you to listen to what I say now Very.
Carefully.
This is NOT an endorsement of Chylinski’s
views.
I’m not defending them.
I’m speaking as a huge fan of Subnautica
who backed the game nearly three years ago
that wants the game to be the best it can
be.
Let’s take a bit of a look at this controversy.
The first thing you’ll notice about a lot
of accounts claiming to be boycotting Subnautica
because of Chylinski’s political views is
that most of them have little to do with games,
but a lot to do with politics.
That’s not to say that this invalidates
their opinions, but if I didn’t know better
I’d say these people had no interest in
actually buying Subnautica in the first place,
and just jumped on the bandwagon in an effort
to cost Chylinski his job for purely ideological
reasons.
There were; however, a few notable people
like Jim Sterling who jumped in as well, calling
Chylinski a “bigot” and stating that he
deserved to be fired.
According to dictionary.com, a bigot is a
person who is utterly intolerant of any differing
creed, belief, or opinion.
That’s funny.
[Jim]
Subnautica’s lead developer, Charlie Cleveland,
called Chylinski’s tweets ‘hateful’
and stated that the studio decided to stop
working with him immediately.
This is a huge mistake.
I’m not going to claim that Unknown Worlds
is “censoring” Chylinski, but I would
definitely say that by terminating Chylinski
nearly instantaneously over his personal political
opinions, Unknown Worlds has not only lost
a very talented member of their team, but
they now look incredibly disloyal to any new
talent that might want to work with them.
Chylinski had been employed at unknown worlds
for eleven years.
It is not normal for a studio to reward eleven
years of employment with a sudden firing without
pause.
And sure you could say that maybe his views
made his coworkers uncomfortable and he was
causing friction in the workplace, but seeing
as the tweets in question were made about
a year ago, and he still featured prominently
in many behind-the-scenes devblogs released
a week ago, I’d say there’s a fair bit
of evidence that isn’t the case.
Also, Charlie Cleveland hasn’t been apolitical
himself.
In 2016, through official developer channels,
he stated that Subnautica does not include
any form of properly lethal weaponry because
he opposes the private ownership of firearms.
The issue here isn’t with Cleveland’s
political views, or the fact that the studio
has a message, it’s with the fact that this
sets a precedent.
This is blatantly hypocritical.
One developer expresses his politics as a
representative of Unknown Worlds and that’s
perfectly fine.
Another expresses theirs on a personal social
media account, and he’s gone.
The real cherry on top of this nightmare of
a sundae is the fact that Unknown Worlds is
based in California, where Section 1101 of
the California Labor Code forbids employers
from acting on any policy that seeks to control
or direct the political activities of their
employees.
Seeing as it is apparently a fireable offense
to hold beliefs like Chylinski’s at Unknown
Worlds, his termination could, in fact, be
considered illegal, though he stated in an
interview with Bunty King that he has no intentions
to pursue legal action against the studio,
and has since insisted that people stop targeting
the studio in retaliation to his firing.
Trying to appease the unappeasable will do
little good for them.
It would have made much more sense for Unknown
Worlds to publically distance themselves from
Chylinski’s opinions and to affirm that
he does not represent the company as a whole.
Instead, they chose to make themselves look
like a studio more concerned with their public
image than the talent of their staff and the
quality of their product.
Appearing as a game studio whose top priority
isn’t their games is an awful look, and
doesn’t bode well for Unknown Worlds’
future.
Again, I say that as a fan of their work,
both Subnautica and Natural Selection.
I would love for them to learn from this mistake
and to keep making great games, but as things
stand they’re beginning to look like the
next Bioware, where a studio’s rigid internal
climate ultimately leads to something like
Mass Effect Andromeda.
I don’t want to look back at Unknown Worlds
in a few years and wonder “How did they
fall so far?”
like I did with Bioware.
Did Chylinski deserve to be reprimanded for
his tweets?
Probably.
But firing him as a knee jerk reaction does
much more to hurt the studio than it does
to help.
As a developer, Unknown Worlds needs to make
their games their top priority, not whether
or not they’re appeasing the social media
hate mob.
