Politics in video games have always been a touchy subject, recently seen through events like Hearthstone player Ng Wai "blitzchung" Chung being banned from competitive play for speaking out about protests in Hong Kong. That attitude extends to tabletop gaming too, as Evil Hat Productions found out when discussing the politics of H.P. Lovecraft in relation to Fate of Cthulhu on Twitter.
Fate of Cthulhu is a tabletop game in the vein of Dungeons and Dragons or Cyberpunk 2020 that was kickstarted in April 2019 and released on January 13, 2020 after receiving $93,894 — over $70,000 above its goal. It uses a gameplay system developed for previous titles by Evil Hat, and is described as a cross between the cosmic horror mythos Lovecraft developed and action styled after James Cameron's 1984 film The Terminator; all laid out in a 256-page book.
Evil Hat Productions posted a page from the book on January 17 which outlines the team's stance against Lovecraft's racial politics (specifically citing his use of a slur to name a cat in his 1924 short story "The Rats in the Walls," based on his real-life pet) in spite of its interest in the author's source material for dealing with deeper human and societal struggles.
Three days after that the developers responded to comments on their Tweet by saying, "If you don't like the politics included in our games, don't buy them ... We are committed to diversity and inclusive gaming."
While a number of folks have praised of the developers' stance that audiences should speak with their wallets, many others have questioned the explanation being included at all. For instance on a Reddit thread about the Tweets posted to r/Games by tyrone737 earlier today, user Arimer asks why it was brought up as if Evil Hat were saying "we think he's problematic but we enjoy money."
About four hours after the thread was opened it was locked by a moderator of r/Games who said "we have locked this thread due to an increased level of hositility [sic] and a lack of on-topic commentary."
As another Reddit user going by von_Blucher points out in the same thread, Fate of Cthulhu is not the first tabletop game set in Lovecraft's universe. Call of Cthulhu, named after Lovecraft's story from 1928 (which was also the basis of a 2018 video game), was first released in 1981 by Chaosium Inc. and is currently on its 7th Edition.
Many of the works of H.P. Lovecraft are public domain, including "The Call of Cthulhu" — which is why people see the iconic monster all across popular culture, from board games to Adult Swim's Rick and Morty.
There are even sillier takes on the creature like Zeboyd Games' Cthulhu Saves Christmas released late last year.
By all accounts, the disclaimer in the opening pages of Fate of Cthulhu is nowhere near as tongue-and-cheek or integral to gameplay as something like the "House Divided" version of Monopoly capitalizing on the 2020 presidential election. But all the same, it's interesting to see the conversation about separating art from the artist which has emerged because of the stance Evil Hat has taken online.
Fate of Cthulhu is available now in hardcover and digital formats for $35 at Evil Hat Productions' website.