Nightmare Forge Games changes Infestation 88’s name – on Transparency in Game Dev

When characters and franchises enter the public domain, there’s a whole slew of movies, games, and other media being created to capitalize on that – or to just present endearing characters in a new light. 

Today’s post is about a more recent game adaptation of a now-in-the-public domain, unfortunate branding, a swift response and name change, and well, the fact that transparency is important. 

Now that Steamboat Willie is “up for grabs”, Nightmare Forge games has announced Infestation: Origins aiming to imbue sweet, sweet nostalgia with utter terror by turning Steamboat Willie into something much scarier.

Infestation: Origins is described by the developers as “a co-op horror in which you’re an exterminator treating sinister infestations caused by twisted versions of classic characters and urban legends”, so that seems pretty interesting.

That said, the game was originally titled Infestation 88, referencing the year it takes place, and due to some controversy surrounding its title, it got changed. 

The developers were not aware of the connotations made with said number and were very swift to respond to the feedback and criticisms they got, which is amazing, in my opinion.

Behaviour like this is what developers should strive towards. Acknowledge a problem and react to it promptly. 

Their official statement on their discord server states: 

“Unfortunately, we were unaware of any additional meaning the number ’88 has. We apologize for our ignorance on this and appreciate that this was brought to our attention so we could address it ASAP!”

I wanted to lead with this because writing about the subject matter at hand without doing so might incite people to harass the developers which is in no way, shape or form good. 

Don’t do that. 

They reacted in an appropriate way – and we should applaud that. I genuinely think they weren’t aware of the unfortunate branding.

So, what’s the big issue here?

Well,… 88 is a Neo-Nazi dogwhistle. It’s “code” aimed at signaling a certain message and aimed at signaling your support for a cause. 

This may not be widely known outside of Germany, I’d imagine, but H is the 8th letter of the alphabet. 88 hence stands for “HH” – which in turn stands for “Hail H*tler”.

That in itself is an issue, of course, but it becomes even more unfortunate in the context of using gas to kill “rats”. 

The game features rats as an enemy of sorts and you have to exterminate them using fumication, which is standard procedure in pest control… but Nazis did also call Jews “rats” during Nazi-Germany, and… you know.

So, gas + “rats” + “88” made it seem like this is some Neo-Nazi ideology put into a game, which is incredibly problematic, and the “gas + rats” part is only problematic in the context of “88”. Without the 88, it’s literally just pest control with no meaning whatsoever.

There are apparently some other signs or numbers or whatever in the trailer that reference stuff but most of those accusations are incredibly far-fetched. The trailer was hastily put together to be the “first” announcement, hence the quality isn’t the best and a lot of the signs that people are pointing towards are hardly readable and don’t seem to mean anything.

But the caution that people have isn’t unprompted. Nazis making games is actually relatively common, so stuff like this is taken seriously by big chunks of the community.

Steam, for instance, removed a game by Nazis in the past within not even a week from their stores. Games like “Heimat Defender” or enemies such as “Globo Homo” or whatever often end up making it onto the web in an attempt to recruit young, impressionable people into the ideology of Neo-Nazis.

Hence, it’s understandable that people got upset at a game with 88 in the title. But the developers responded, so all is good. I truly believe that the developers weren’t aware of the connotations made – and the way they handled this controversy was really swift and applaudable. 

The transparency they have shown is something you don’t see every day, especially when compared to how Dinkum’s developer, for instance, removed a problematic “joke” referencing the Stolen Generation in the game without ever mentioning that he did so publically. Back then, the developer of Dinkum wanted to sweep it under the rug.

The Infestation: Origins developers, on the other hand, didn’t. They were public about it and made a statement. That’s great.

But perhaps this is comparing apples to oranges. 

One of these is a transparent and swift name change whereas the other is the secretive removal of a problematic passage. Few people know about the latter unless they are educated on the topic on top of having bought and played the game. Meanwhile, Infestation: Origins isn’t out yet but you can see the name even without buying it, of course.

I wish that more developers would react swiftly and in a mature way to accusations like that.

I wish that transparency like this was more common in the gaming industry.

The fact that it takes a few outlets reporting on an issue for anything to change is worrying me… but it also means that for anything to change more outlets need to report on stuff like this, be it Dinkum, Dolphin Barn, Heartbeat, Hogwarts Legacy or Infestation: Origins.

Perhaps I’m also just overthinking this but maybe more people should use their platforms to report on this to create the change they want to see. By raising awareness and talking openly, assuming positive intent, and being respectful towards others, perhaps we can make changes happen – and maybe even more people will react similarly to Nightmare Forge Games as opposed to the other examples I mentioned.

This post was originally written by Dan Dicere from Indiecator.

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