A note about our next PC, The Princess

We are firmly for #blacklivesmatter. That is why we must talk about our player character, The Princess. The Princess will be a woman of color and her storyline will contain many sensitive themes including systematic oppression and a revolt. The Princess’s storyline was always meant to be a call out of the prison industrial complex, which is a subject more timely than we could have imagined when we began creating her. Though the storyline of the Princess will seem uncanny during this time, we began developing her long before the current protests began. Her storyline was first outlined over 6 months ago, and by mid May her plot was already halfway done. We thought long and hard about if we should change her story. Our intention was never to offend anyone or lessen the importance of what is happening in society right now by including these themes in a game. However, we came to feel games and fantasy stories have always been a way to explore and reflect on society. The choose your own adventure format is uniquely suited to allowing a person to explore issues, decide what they would do, and then see the consequences. That being said, we (the author and artist) are white women. We have been gathering advice, critique, and suggestions from people in the bipoc community to help inform everything about The Princess, from her character design to her storyline. We will also open a forum for feedback from the bipoc community to beta test the storyline before its public release to ensure we do not cross any lines we may not have initially perceived as non-bipoc creators. We are with you and we will use our platform – no matter how small it is – to shed light on systematic abuses affecting the bipoc community.