HomeNewsWarhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2
Saber won’t say whether their CEO wrote this highly baity comment about games “imposing morals on gamers"Grimdaft, amirite
Grimdaft, amirite
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Focus Entertainment
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Focus Entertainment
In it, the poster thanks youtuber Asmongold for thevideoand characterises Space Marine 2 together with the recentBlack Myth: Wukongas a “reversion” to an “old school” era, when “games were simply about fun and immersion”. He also mentions games he allegedly encountered during his time atnoted layoff manufacturer Embracer"that made me want to cry with their overblown attempts at messaging or imposing morals on gamers”. The comment has now been seized upon and widely disseminated as Saber coming out as anti-woke, “woke” being anappropriated, catch-all term for leftwingers and especially those who campaign against racism, transphobia and sexism. Here it is in full:
Is thisactuallyMatthew Karch? Saber won’t say. The user in questionregistered his account in May 2024. He describes himself as a “generic male of sorts - lover of loud guitars, violent games, fast cars and all sorts of whisky”, which is certainly generic. Suspiciously so. I asked a PR representative to help me confirm the account’s legitimacy yesterday. Fast forward to this morning, and Saber have toldIGNandKotakuthat they won’t be commenting on the subject, which would typically be PR speak for “yes, it’s real”. Except.
If I were Karch, I’d find it cringey to be associated with such a transparent jumble of thinly camouflaged reactionary talking points. It reads like it’s been slapped together on 8chan to rile up the Twitterati. It reads like it’s been AI-generated, using the prompt “it reads like it’s been slapped together on 8chan to rile up the Twitterati”. I would probably want to come out and disavow it.
Of course, all this is just the latest flicker in the decades-old optical muddle that is Games Workshop’s Imperium of Man, on whose behalf those tank-footed Space Marines wage war. Conceived partly in response to Thatcherite Britain, the Imperium is a satirical and grotesque portrayal of a xenophobic, mass-murdering, patriarchal theocratic empire. You’re not supposed to seriously buy into the values depicted.But some people do, partly because after years of people telling and selling stories in such a setting, the thrust of the satire has gotten lost beneath the merchandising. I guess it’s thanks to that submerging of the political relevancy that “Karch”, whoever he really is, doesn’t seem alive to the irony of deriding other games for “imposing morals”. (Thanks to Nic for suggesting this last observation.)
As it happens, I interviewed Hollis-Leick earlier in the week. We discussed a bunch of things, ranging from more innocent chat about the game’s jump pack implementation to how you do a Space Marine power fantasy that isn’t an endorsement of bigotry and genocide. I was going to publish a write-up this week. But in the wake of this alleged Karch comment, and more broadly in light of the game’s reception, I’m going to give those pieces more thought.
