They’re back at it again, and this time it’s the same old tired argument used as the first attack, and that is “whites being evil and using colonialism to kill natives” fueling journos rage at Amazon Studios’ bland-looking New World.

Despite the developers behind New World saying that the game is not about colonialism, the same journos that can’t play a single game without crying for an “easy mode” can’t understand why a developer in current year would want to explore an era 300 years ago in a fantasy realm.

Earlier this year on February 9th, a Polygon writer built up the courage to ask New World’s studio head Patrick Gilmore about colonialism and brutality against the natives, which puzzled Gilmore since this game isn’t about the aforesaid nonsense:

“During an interview with studio head Patrick Gilmore, I put a version of this notion [New World being about colonialism] to him. He looked genuinely shocked. “That’s not really been a focus at all,” he said. “The lore of the game is that there’s a tainted aspect to this world, that it’s a garden of Eden that has fallen from grace.”

 

You could argue that this is precisely how 17th-century Europeans viewed the new world.

 

This game is undoubtedly a violent expression of 17th-century Atlantic colonization and ought to be treated as such. It is made, and will be played, by the heirs to that colonization.”

Nevertheless, Polygon’s take from earlier in the year has passed on to EuroGamer in that the European outlet interviewed Amazon Studio’s game director Scot Lane specifically about its “problematic associations.” Here’s what the website had to say about Lane and crew’s work:

“What I was most worried about was the setting. Indiginous people suffered terribly because of colonialism, and still do, so it’s a problematic period to be associated with.”

Lane had to do what Gilmore had done with Polygon and stressed that New World is not like what social justice warriors are projecting it to be and that it’s more of a milquetoast game:

“The colonialism stuff: there’s no way to tell that story in a good way. We are not that. This is not in America. We don’t have any history from America on the island. There’s nothing there that would tie us to America.

 

It’s an island in the middle of the Atlantic. It’s something that could be what people thought was Atlantis or Terra Australis Incognita at the time. The people who live here came here. This island was uninhabited. Everyone who came here, came here either out of greed or desire to control Azoth [a source of magic], and that’s the story we’re telling.”

Behold, Engadget couldn’t let Polygon and EuroGamer have all the woke fun, so it too chimed in by jotting down the following stupidity:

“Of course, a game about people violently sieging a foreign land in the 1600s has raised eyebrows. Its core idea seems to be based on real-life European imperialism, with undead creatures as a stand-in for indigenous peoples.”

I’m sure Amazon Studios will have its share of agitprop in New World, but I’m assuming these journos want it busting at the seams and flooding the brains of fence-sitters and championing the social justice ideology.

Surely the game in question will have more social justice warriors breathing down Amazon Studios’ neck when New World launches in May 2020, but until then, you’ll likely hear more whining from the usual suspects about “colonialism.”