In late August of 2015, a product
entitled Tournament of Rapists was
noticed on DriveThruRPG/OBS. The title and publisher’s description drew
immediate and harsh criticisms from across the blogosphere (including here at
Tenkar’s Tavern - (WTF Were They Thinking? Tournament of Rapists (OGL), Aug 27,
2015), lead to at least one publisher pulling their materials from
the site in protest (Exploding Rogue and DTRPG, Aug 30, 2015), and
even drew harsh condemnation from such industry leaders as Erik Mona of
Paizo while, in other circles, the product’s publisher received
strong support. Within a few days of the beginning of the affair, the matter
was abruptly resolved by the publisher voluntarily pulling the product and the
introduction of a new content policy from OBS CEO Steve Wieck on
September 1.
Rather than satisfying either side of
the controversy, both groups expressed displeasure with the new policy and the
solution that it presented. Publishers sometimes seen as controversial, such as
James Raggi, expressed concern over the possible
far-reaching impact this new policy may have on creativity and participation
within the industry while heated discussions carried on at rpg.net, reddit, and
other sites. In the end, the policy put in place offered no hard and fast
guidelines for what would be deemed offensive or not, instead harkening back to
the old adage “we’ll know it when we see it”. Community opinions on whether
this system would be immediately abused in attacks against particular
publishers or if it would be overly permissive were just as heated as the
original discussions about Tournament of
Rapists.
It has now been over a year since the
policy was put into place and we at the Tavern decided to dig a little deeper.
We spoke with Scott Holden, Manager of Promotions and Business Intelligence at
OBS to see what impact the new offensive content policy has had at OBS.
TT: With an
already existing "Adult" filter, is there any reason for OBS to have
a content review system for matters other than copyright/trademark
infringement?
SH: We believe so, yes. If you did a
Venn diagram of adult content and offensive content, there would be overlap,
but the two things are not synonymous.
TT:
The majority of the OBS review system as originally cited boils
down to "We'll know it when we see it", in an attempt to avoid
"bright line" rules. Is this still the case, or has the system become
more rigidly structured?
SH: That is absolutely still the case.
Each instance is handled individually, and we discuss it internally after we've
all reviewed the titles thoroughly. Only once we've all chimed in and given our
"vote" do we take any action. And to date, as the record shows, our
policy leans toward acceptance and leniency.
TT: Since the policy has been put into
place have any products not been approved or been removed that fell afoul of
"know it when we see it" after having been identified internally?
SH: Thus far we have only reviewed
titles reported by customers, and per above, no RPG titles have been banned.
(We have banned a few non-RPG titles.)
TT: To date, what is the feeling on the
level of success of the review process?
SH: I think we're quite happy with it.
Everyone on our staff who has chimed in on these titles has been very
open-minded, even when they might have been personally offended or at least
made uncomfortable by some of the material in question. And the results speak
for themselves. From the customer side, very few people seem to have tried to
abuse the system (and I think it's both interesting and telling that the couple
who have done so almost certainly did it out of resentment for the system
itself). The policy and the tools have been working pretty much as intended.
TT: Looking back to the Tournament of Rapists controversy that
led to the policy being implemented, how would the new policy have caused OBS
to have handled that matter differently?
SH: I think there would be little
change. The title would have been reported at release; we would have suspended
the title for thorough review and discussed it with the publisher.
Since the policy’s implementation, the number of products reported for
review to OBS is about thirty. Among RPG products less than ten items have
been reported as offensive. These products have been spread across seven
publishers, five authors, and seven complainants. Of the reports filed, only
one complaint was found by OBS to be abusive.
“Interestingly, the only customer account to have reported
multiple titles (three of them) did so as a revenge tactic against our
temporary suspension of another title while it was pending review,” reported Holden.
Among non-RPG titles, six items have been reported as offensive,
while the remaining products have been RPG products submitted over IP
violations (whether intentional or unintentional). These numbers exclude “community
products” (e.g. DM’s Guild) for which complaints tended towards IP
reasons.
Further, between six and
eight titles, all non-RPG, have been banned since the implementation of the
policy. Five of those titles belong to a single publisher and were removed
after the reporting of a single product lead to the removal of an entire
product line.
To date, OBS in unaware of any publisher pulling their materials in protest of the Offensive Content Policy.
The results can be viewed
in a number of ways. One could say that one third of products reported among
RPGs are solely abusive complaints. One could say that the number of complaints
is so small as to have no real effect on the industry. But the numbers don’t tell
the full story of the impact of the policy, and in our next installments
we will be questioning several publishers and authors on both sides of the issue,
four of whom having had direct experience with the policy.
Bob Brinkman has been playing RPGs since the days of OD&D. Recently he has written for both the Goodman Games Fifth Edition Fantasy and DCC RPG lines and has completed a project for the Crossroads to Adventure books for GP Adventures. He co-hosts the monthly Sanctum Secorum podcast focusing on Appendix N in relation to DCC RPG.
Bob Brinkman has been playing RPGs since the days of OD&D. Recently he has written for both the Goodman Games Fifth Edition Fantasy and DCC RPG lines and has completed a project for the Crossroads to Adventure books for GP Adventures. He co-hosts the monthly Sanctum Secorum podcast focusing on Appendix N in relation to DCC RPG.
