Valve pulls GDC competitor for "Sex related topics"

[BabyHeadCrab]

Valve forces dev from contest with sex topic

Make a game about blowing zombies' heads off? Great! Make a game about losing your virginity? Oh, heck no!

Video game developer Valve pulled one of its star designers from the Game Developers' Conference annual design competition this week reportedly because the topic was sex-oriented.

According to Erik Zimmerman of GDC's Game Design Challenge, the company forced designer Kim Swift to withdraw from the contest two days before it concluded.

Valve Corporation is known for a number of violent shooters including the Half Life series and Left 4 Dead, as well as content service Steam.

Each year, the challenge pits three top-shelf professional designers to create a game based on a specific topic with only a few weeks' notice. Contestants' games are demonstrated and winners are announced at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

Past winners have included Will Wright (The Sims, Spore) and Harvey Smith (Deux Ex), and topics have included love, the poetry of Emily Dickenson, and the Nobel Peace Prize.

"My first time: Sex and autobiography" was this year's topic ? a theme employed in the films of John Hughes and Woody Allen and the novels of Alice Walker and Vladamir Nabokov. Competitors had several weeks to design, develop and present their entries.

This year, Swift ? who created Valve's blockbuster hit Portal ? was to compete against YouPlus game-design vice president Steve Meretzky and Sulake lead designer Sulka Haro. But just days before the entry was to be presented, Valve reportedly pressured Swift to remove herself from the competition due to the topic.

"I'm saying this as a fan of Valve, but I do find it frustrating and disturbing that Kim would be pulled from the panel," Zimmerman said at the award event on Wednesday.

Swift was replaced by a two-woman team of Heather Kelley (Lapis) and independent designer Erin Robinson. The pair subsequently won the competition, despite only having 36 hours' time to create and design their game.

It is a first-time GDC Game Design Challenge win for both women. Kelley won a similar design challenge at the Montreal Games Summit in 2005.

Thoughts on this? Seems unusually reactionary and poorly thought out for Valve, considering they make a living selling games which feature shameless violence.

 

[Barnz]

fail

char

Edit: Seen this coming, tbh. HL2 has a lot of religious references.

 

[kupocake]

Hmm. It's not like her participation in the topic happened at the last minute. The topic was announced about a month ago. Considering Valve pulled her off so close to the event, perhaps there has been some miscommunication of the fact and either Swift herself objected, or she come up with a game design that when passed by Valve at the last minute was a bit 'uhh... no actually.' (I mean, they manage to mention Nabokov in the report. Portalolita anyone?). Or perhaps she procrastinated, came up with nothing and it was thought to be better PR to say that Valve was pro-family. Valve Time Attacks.

Good, excuses out of the way, here are your jeers:

Boooooooooooo.

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

Well put, I'm not ruling out foul play -- I'd just like a statement or some clarification from Valve. It's getting a decent amount of press and the time for damage control would ideally be now.

I'll keep this post updated for now with updates and future sources:

decent article explaining the entry which has now allegedly been "removed", the GDC page for the entry
CNN is now also reporting
N4G
feel free to "digg" the topic (note: I am not GamerEdie, the person who brought the story to Digg)

 

[Ennui]

I was reading about this the other day in that CNN article about the game design contest, which mentioned that Valve didn't let Swift participate because of sexual themes... definitely struck me as rather odd.

 

[Vegeta897]

Let's all remain very open minded about this and not jump to any conclusions.

Because it's Valve.

If this were Sony, everyone would be instantly attacking them to hell.

I love hl2.net

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

It's something to keep an eye on, especially for someone who wants to see games legitimized as art. This kind of extreme tolerance for violence and condemning of sexual themes is extremely contrary to the aforementioned. It's just a shame that this controversy is surrounding a company which has a near spotless track record and has served to legitimize hobbyist gamers and up and coming independent developers. We'll see how it all pans out, I really hope it's merely a misunderstanding.

 

[Sledgehammer]

Sexual references (Episode One) and nudity (Left 4 Dead) is apparently ok. But not this. Still, a game about losing one's virginity... Then again, it was made by the Portal creator. Maybe losing one's virginity is actually fun now.

 

[PimpinPenguin]

If that's true then i've lost a lot of respect for Valve.
I can't see how people are ok with Violence yet when it come to sex it's the end of the world. Surely killing people in a game is worst that having a game with sexual themes.

 

[kupocake]

Perhaps Kim came up with a "Mr Friendly DS" title and PR decided to pull her participation because the concept was too like something they already had in development.

 

[DEATHMASTER]

They just don't want to get crucified by all the sex-sensitive ****s on the planet.

 

[Asuka]

This is so silly, but if true a few points - from valve. Censorship is retarded.

 

[DEATH eVADER]

Would be quite amusing as to the reason why Kim was pulled. I'm hoping there is a way to download the design documentation.