Infestation 88 developer, Nightmare Forge Games, have responded to claims that the ‘88’ in the game’s title refers to the Neo-Nazi salute.
The Nazis were defeated in the 1940s. The so-called Nazis you hear about today are 90+ % feds. You’ll never encounter a real life Nazi in real life. If you read this article and take it seriously and begin shaking with irrational fear, then you are the reason “Nazis” exist. Get the fuck over it already.
The “Nazis” have become some believe in. They sound like a 5 year old that’s scared of the monster under their bed. It’s all just so fuckin cringe. The virtue signaling psychopaths that buy into this trash are creating unnecessary problems in the gaming sphere. Stop. Just fucking stop.
If you want to say something is a false positive by all means, but just pretending that culturally none of this exists helps no one.
Fuck nazies appropriating shit. People should stop associating things with nazies instead of not being able to enjoy things. Like apparently runic script is associated with nazies for some god forsaken reason and I have a old native myth tattooed in runes on my arm. I have gotten tons of weird looks and I was very confused until someone accused me of being a nazi.
Yeah I see it constantly here on lemmy, the word being thrown around like it’s nothing, imagine holocaust victims reading this shit
“Look, I’m not saying it’s IMPOSSIBLE that this game wasn’t made with ill intent, but 88 is an immediate red flag,” said streamer Josh ‘Anoriand’ Fagundes on Twitter. “As are the facts that they use the word ‘Infestation,’ they use rat-based imagery, it involves gassing them, and counting the space ‘Infestation 88’ is 14 keystrokes.”
That’s quite the quinkydink.
counting keystrokes goes too far into chemtrail conspiracy theorist logic for me, ngl.
Care to explain yourself
Maybe the real nazis were inside us the whole time.
It really is annoying how many alt right dog whistles there are
You seem to hear the dog whistle. Are you a dog
Imagine believing a dev would do this on purpose, your game would just get cancelled
If your game sucks there’s no such thing as bad press.
I can see the devs having no clue about the alternative meaning, but a game about gassing rodents called “Infestation 88” is a terrible look. I’m glad the devs changed the name right away.
Especially considering Walt Disney’s views…
Yea, if they say “we didnt know what that insinuated”, and there are no other dog whistles, I’m happy that they responded so well and quickly!
I think just changing it to “Infestation 1988” would have also been enough…
Though, “infestation 88” a game about killing nazis, would also work!
there are no other dog whistles
oof. yea, thats not a good sign.
… Those aren’t the devs or discord mods, they’re literally random people that just joined their server.
🤦
You can find edgy teens with shit eating grins anywhere.
IDK, what else do you do with rodents in a game? Set traps? Shoot with guns?
I’m guessing the devs were born in 1988 or thereabouts and wanted to set the game in their birth year or something like that. Or they picked a number that’s somewhat long ago but not too long, and ~35 years ago is something I’d probably come up with (it’s not a neat number like 25 and 50), it’s far enough back that it’s old, but recent enough to feel familiar.
Occam’s razor: they’re probably not Nazis or Nazi sympathizers. I had never heard of the meaning behind “88” (granted, I’m not that interested in neo-Nazi symbolism), and I was born near 1988. Maybe I’d change the name, IDK, even hearing the arguments here I really don’t see an actual connection so it’s really no big deal to me. Then again, I think it’s a stupid name regardless, so I probably would’ve been more clever.
Hanlon’s razor. I myself had no idea that 88 had any nazi-related meaning before I read this article and thought nothing of the title when I first heard it. It seems perfectly reasonable that the dev could have done the same, especially since they were willing to almost immediately change the name and remove all existing promotional material once they found out.
Resetera (among other outlets) have done a bit more digging and it is more or less an orgy of red flags
So we have:
- A game about a rat invasion (anyone who’s read Art Spiegelman’s Maus should already know where this is headed);
- Where one plays as exterminators using gas masks, who coincidentally use poison gas as their weapon;
- On a game titled “Infestation 88” (which, as another user pointed out, has 14 characters, besides the obvious 88 dog-whistle);
- Which also happens to supposedly reference the StG 44 German WWII assault rifle;
- And if you want to add my original dog-whistly speculation, it wouldn’t be a stretch to be suspicious of that “SS” at this point.
And, to add on, the studio’s website claims they have been making games since 2010 with this being their first game. 2024-2010=14 (words).
combine that with the official discord being full of “pronoun jokes” and similar bigotry and it is really hard to view this edgelord game as anything other than a giant dog whistle.
So, out the door any media playing with steamboat Willie being public domain is suspect because of rat adjacent symbolism?
Counting characters seems like basically numerology, if you want to get to a specific number it’s not hard. If you count the space it’s 14 characters, but you could just as easily not count the space. What if it had been "infestation: 88”? Not Nazi because of the colon, or do we skip the space now?
Using the conclusion of your argument as evidence to make further leaps is also not super sound reasoning.
It’s an asset flip game capitalizing on steamboat Willie and the “make a now public domain children’s character scary” money grab. It’s exactly what happened with Winnie the Pooh.
It’s a horror game with a mouse as the scary creature. The only cultural touchstones we have for mice are either cute, infestation or disease. Exterminators are who you call when you have a mouse problem, and people wearing gas masks are one of the most prolific assets you can buy models for in asset shops.
Dogwostles exist, but it’s important to actually look at context.
Oooh. Thanks for reminding me of the other important reason to be aware of dog whistles and to look at the context in which they are being applied.
The people who aggressively insist everything is just a coincidence while trying to nitpick everything to death are almost never acting in good faith. Best case scenario, they are an edgelord kid on 4chan who doesn’t understand they are being manipulated. More likely they are angry that people understand their “secret code”.
Either way, they aren’t worth interacting with.
So… good job demonstrating what a bad faith dipshit would insist upon. You missed the
/s
though. Be careful with that. Some people might actually think you woke up and said “I need to defend some neonazis from criticism”.Or, you know, I don’t think that literally everything I can justify with numerology is Nazism, and so I don’t think I’m defending neonazis because someone used 14 letters in a game title.
Your argument is unassailable, because in your mind anyone who finds in unconvincing is a literal Nazi.
Think to yourself what someone would have to discover for you to decide they weren’t Nazis.
I know what I would need to see to think that I was wrong: statements, affiliations, something beyond numerology, refusal to make changes in the face of an unfortunate coincidence, or almost anything.What would make you say “shit, I was wrong and listening to numerology”?
Oh… you were serious. Ewww
And you’re a moron.
This. Cryptofascism relies on being able to scream, “It was just a joke / I didn’t know!”
Mistakes can happen and you might accidentally engage in a dog whistle as a normal person.
A dozen mistakes all pointing to the exact same thing are unlikely.
And to be fair, it could be one person at the top putting all these wink wink indicators in, and the majority involved might just be normal folks.
I still won’t be buying the game.