Game Developer Removes Twitter from Game

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Sword and Sworcery is a unique and fun game. It has an incredible soundtrack, truly captivating puzzles that rely on real world events for completion, tense action, a great story, and fantastic retro graphics that somehow blend graphics of the past and present seamlessly. I’m a little embarrassed to say that, despite loving it, I’ve never completed it. That’s because, and I don’t want to spoil anything, there are parts that take real world time (or clock adjustment) to get through. I lost interest around there; it stopped being fun. However, if you stop around that point, it’s tough to get back into it. Really, I should start over from the beginning. It’s a wonderful game and deserves to be finished.

Sword and Sworcery was first released on the iPad, and later on the iPhone. After that, Capybara Games, Sword and Sworcery’s developer, ported to Windows, macOS, Linux, and even Android. The developers wanted to play with everything that was possible on iOS. That’s why the game involved real world elements. It’s also why they decided add Twitter support, and build dialog around Twitter. The game was released in 2011, when Twitter was a whimsical and fun place, not the toxic wasteland hate speech has made it today. The developers thought it would be fun if every piece of dialog could fit in a tweet. Players could share any little moment of the game on Twitter in 140 characters. It was a fun reminder that mobile games could inspire us to do more with our games than we previously thought.

Leaving Twitter Behind

Sword and Sworcery comes out on the Switch in October. The Switch seems like an excellent platform for the game, especially since Link’s journey in The Legend of Zelda inspired it. The graphics will look right at home on Nintendo hardware. One thing the game won’t carry over from previous versions is Twitter support. That’s not because of Nintendo or the capabilities of the Switch, it’s because the developers don’t want anything to do with Twitter. As if to rub it in Twitter’s face, they sent the message in 150 characters in the game, 10 more than Twitter’s old limit. Kris Piotrowski, creative director of Sword and Sworcery, announced this, ironically, on Twitter:

“Twitter support has been cut from the Sworcery Switch Edition. The reason for this is simple: When we first launched Sworcery many moons ago, Twitter was fun & nice & cool. Now, in the year 2018, Twitter is a vat of toxic waste and we want nothing to do with it.”

– Kris Piotrowski

Hate speech on social networks has done far worse than ruin the whimsy present in indie games. It has lead to alt-right rallies, presidential conspiracy theories (that he spreads), hate crimes, and has even contributed to genocide. We either need to hold social networks accountable for the hate they propagate freely, or do the same thing as Sword and Sworcery: leave it behind.

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Source: Nathan Grayson, Kotaku