Ken Burnside of Ad Astra games is a nice enough guy who has put together a few space combat sim boardgames like *Attack Vector: Tactical, *the Saganami Island Simulator (the same basic system set in David Weber’s Honorverse), and Squadron Strike which, despite some seriously innovative game mechanics to translate 3D movement into something approaching a playable system, still is more the province of those who, growing up, thought Harpoon, Advanced Squad Leader and Starfleet Battles were either just right, or didn’t have enough detail.
Yeah, that’s me.
Anyway, he’s a good enough fellow, and a sharp designer, but on the “nice guy” side of libertarianism that still buys into feminism, rape culture, etc., and anything but a Trump supporter. So imagine his surprise when (as he posted on Google+, re-shared courtesy of Eric Raymond aka ESR. Yes, that ESR.):
I’ve been informed that someone has created an “orangelist” of Trump supporters in the game industry, and that Ad Astra Games is top of the list, largely due to alphabetical order.
The progenitor of the list says that all entities on the list were contacted before he added them. We have no record of this contact for Ad Astra.
At least two other game companies listed on the “orangelist” have been out of business for ten years, and one designer listed has been dead since 1997.
Ad Astra’s position is that we’ll work with anyone who knows our products and does work we can use, and that whomever you voted for in this election is your business, not ours.
While we were going to create a Black Friday discount code that ran through the first Sunday in December…we’re going to start it a day or two earlier than normal, and call it the NoOrangeList code instead.
For those of you interested in seeing the list:
Every incident like this – SNL and their condescension, liberals sneering about people being too poor to boycott Hamilton, NY Times and Colbert and many other outlets failing to get it and doubling down on the contempt – gives me hope. For the first time in years I smile at SNL routines (except the travesty of politicizing a tribute to Leonard Cohen) because I watch how completely fucking clueless they are as to why they were so hated.
They won’t listen, and that’s good for us.