The author of Dustborn is obsessed with Trump
an interview with the Norwegian newspaper Dagsavisen in 2018
https://archive.is/TUPVk
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What are you willing to march against?
- We discussed it today, actually. How we feel powerless. We are working on a game, which will be a very angry, political game. Unfortunately, I read the news from the moment I wake up and get angrier and angrier as the day goes on. I would go on a demonstration train for human rights. For social justice. Because everything I feel is under attack, from Trump, from the right, from the Republicans.
Oh, tell me more about that game!
- I hope we can make it. The game that will become our voice. We will shout out to the world. Games are usually not that political, but we want to mix entertainment with politics.
When will it come?
- The goal is to have it out in 2020, before the next presidential election, and make a difference.
Who would you rather be stuck in the elevator with?
- Donald Trump.
Um, what were you supposed to do in that elevator?
- I just had to get out what is on my heart. I know it wouldn't change anything, that is.
He’s Norwegian! What does it matter to him!?
We have here a well-off and educated man, living in a country that is practically free of political turmoil. He reads Twitter, and it puts him in a state of anger that worsens with each passing hour of the day. Instead of enjoying his life in his peaceful country, he spends all his emotional energy getting upset about the living conditions in a foreign country, which may not even be accurately portrayed by social media posts.
He has literally made himself unhappy and then deluded himself into believing that he could change this foreign country through a message in a video game
He says that reading Twitter made him absolutely furious in this other interview
Adventure Gamers 2019:
https://archive.is/hBj6V#selection-2389.0-2403.273
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Ragnar: I wake up and look at Twitter every morning, and I read the Washington Post every morning, and it’s all that concerns me, because everything that happens [in the U.S.] affects us so much. Politics in Norway is quite boring, in a good way. But Brexit and U.S. politics, that’s what we get fed every day. And this game is not really about the real people in American politics, it’s more about the emotions of it and the feelings of it. Of course we’re going to get that criticism, of course there’s going to be a lot of people yelling at us. Fine. We’re not afraid of that; we’re used to being yelled at. If you go on the Steam page for Dreamfall Chapters, most of the threads there now are about the politics of Dreamfall Chapters, how the game is Marxist propaganda and stuff like that. Which is ridiculous, because it actually turns out the Marxists are terrorists in that game! But it means people are sort of—they see a single criticism of right-wing politics and they take it as leftist propaganda.
He believes they're the new Telltale
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Emily: I think that’s a trade-off when you want to make adventure games, or story games—this is the size of my audience; I want to make a game that maybe attracts a little bigger of an audience, but this is what I’ve got.
Ragnar: The audience is millions, but you’re never going to reach everybody with a single game. Telltale did really well; I think there it just became a question of maybe it wasn’t sustainable over time, the amount of games they were making.
This is so insane
He had a spat with and hired a new woman for this game. Can you imagine the level of petty to actually put that in your game!?
