A candid discussion about video games and hate campaigns with Abukabar Salim

“We are a gun armed. As soon as we get that funding, man, we have it.”

Abubakar Salim made his game development debut earlier this year with Tales of Kenzera: ZAU, a critically acclaimed metroidvania inspired by Bantu stories and Salim’s own journey of grief after losing his father.

Three months later, his company Surgent Studios has announced a wave of layoffs. Zau’s Surgent funding had run out, and the studio was unable to secure funding for a second project at the time. Salim hopes to retire his staff if the studio can find another publishing partner for his next game—an Afro-Gothic RPG that blends technology and spirituality, where you’re both the player and the dungeon master.

Where Zau was inspired by death, Project Uso was born of life.

“This idea came from the birth of my daughter,” explains Salim. “I had this reality check like, damn it, I’m a dad.”

“Yes, my first thought when I had a baby was the abyss,” I reply.

Salim laughs and gives me the look of someone familiar with the void.

“Uso” means “face” in Swahili. The game sees you build two separate characters – two faces – that inhabit the same body but don’t always share the same goals, such as your parental instincts stepping in and overriding self-preservation. In Project Uso, you don’t just roll for results, you roll against yourself.

Salim has spent the past few months rolling himself. In addition to struggling with the economic and indie visibility issues of modern game development, he and his team have been subjected to a sustained campaign of harassment.

He recently shared a video on Twitter in which YouTubers character-assassinated him, accused him of faking his legacy, and even suggested that he should rename his Surgent Studios studio to “Spear Chuckers” — it’s kind of racism that hits you. in your chest and the wind blows out of you, as if the last decades had never happened.

Salim grew up in the UK, so it’s not the first time he’s faced racism, but the online campaign against him and his studio has been relentless and sustained, designed to cause maximum damage and undermine his motivations for being in video games first. Watching Salim’s passion fizzle out over the past year has been one of the most depressing stories in the video game industry.

After all, he shouldn’t be here. He WANTS to be here.

Before starting his studio, Salim was best known as an actor. You might know him as Bayek from Assassin’s Creed Origins, but most of his work has been in television, where he’s played major roles in shows like Raised by Wolves, Jamestown, and House of the Dragon. He just liked video games and wanted to do cool things. Despite everything, he still does.

“(My wife says, ‘What are you doing? Why are you fighting this battle for a small reward?'” says Salim when I ask how his partner feels. “But it’s not really about that. There’s a pleasure. There’s a love for him. She only sees turmoil and struggle. But there is true love and passion that is still strong in the studio.”

Despite naysayers claiming that Salim has been handed the keys to the industry, he’s still looking for funding every day to bring his team back together and make Project Uso happen.

That Surgent Studios has done anything while building a studio – the culture, the pipelines and the processes – under the strain of the current business turmoil is a miracle in itself. Nobody gets that. More experienced teams have tried and failed. Heavy grafting is required. Anyone who says otherwise doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

“I would say the first three years is figuring out who you are as a studio, and then the last year is like, okay, let’s make this game,” explains Salim. “We’re united by this idea and the vision of the game, but we’re still trying to figure out how we work. And so the first game is essentially team building. The second game is muscle flexion.”

That would be a lot for any developer. Now imagine doing it when the world is against you. Online vitriol would be enough to alienate most people, and anyone in this industry for the wrong reasons wouldn’t stick around for long. It would be too much to take.

“I think there’s a lot of fear in this idea of ​​what forced diversity is — there’s a fear of the unknown, which is what’s sparked a lot of these conversations,” says Salim. “And again, just to be clear, this is a very different conversation than racism kicking ass. It’s very different. I guess the thing that surprises me as well is how can you be so openly racist on a platform like YouTube? How can you feel confident enough to say those things in public?”

Many of these conversations are perpetuated by haughty people mobilizing an army of loners lost in the agerithms rabbit hole, fueled by algorithm hatred from people who act the same way they accuse Salim of acting. They say Salim forces politics into games, but these people rarely talk about video games or things they like. They talk exclusively about politics. They say that Salim is just grifting, but his studio has created a great video game, which is more than you can say for people who raise the masses, who do not create anything.

“It’s important to emphasize that,” agrees Salim. “Buddy, you literally talk politics all the time. You want an escape, but all you talk about is politics. So how can you escape politics? It’s crazy. So we’re juggling that as we wrestle with where the industry is right now. It’s like pushing water up a hill.”

On the other hand, Salim has well-meaning people telling him he should shut up, not give them ammunition, and pretend it’s not happening, all while his notifications are ablaze with dozens of tweets they say it shouldn’t exist, mocking the way it does. he dressed up at the awards, denying his heritage, laughing at his pain and claiming he was acting.

“It’s a noisy minority, but they’re very noisy,” he says. “When you’re on the other end, it feels surgical. And when it comes to the racist factor, you’re attacking or criticizing something I can’t change about myself. It got messed up, because there were a lot of people saying, “Oh, but if we criticize the game, you call us racist.” And I’m like, “No, I don’t mind criticism of the game.” The problem with keeping quiet and just ignoring it is that you never talk about it. What a privilege to be able to stop this. It’s cool, man. And they control the narrative.”

Yes, Salim knows the abyss well. We work in it.

Even as I write this, I know it will trigger the usual suspects and make me their next victim of the week, but it’s important to shine a light on it – who knows, maybe we’ll save a few misguided young people who, for some reason, see these scammers as their saviors. Maybe they’ll roll against themselves, get a critical success in logical thinking, and escape the dungeon masters pulling their strings.