So it WAS political?

Chris Avellone says a BioWare producer used to go through job applicants’ LinkedIn to see what posts they liked, and would advocate against hiring anyone whose politics he disagreed with. This is a conversation about the whole landscape, not one studio.

Back in 2024 Avellone said he had an experience with a BioWare producer who showcased the full extent of their hiring practices, that it was a story for another day, and that it was definitely cause for a lawsuit. Now that BioWare is gone, somebody told him it was time, and he said it.

In his words: when applicants would apply to the studio, the producer would go through their LinkedIn to see what posts they liked, and if he disagreed with their political or social likes, he would advocate not to hire them on that basis.

Avellone also said there are times screening is appropriate. You do not want somebody who hates working in teams, or hates game development, or is using your studio as a stepping stone. This was not that. Turning somebody down for skill or experience is one thing. He does not expect everybody to share his politics, and he does not think they need to in order to work well together on a game. Some of his friends hold radically different views and he has worked alongside them and trusted their skills. He wants the most skilled person doing the job.

That used to be normal. People with different politics collaborated constantly and made classics. Chuck Dixon, who writes for us at Rippaverse, has talked about working at DC alongside the late Denny O’Neil, who leaned left while Chuck leaned right, and the two of them built a run on Batman and the Bat family. Somewhere going into the 2010s that went out the window.

Here is my own position, and I know it loses some of you. I come from liberty minded thinking. People should be able to hire for whatever reasons they want. Political views are not a protected class federally and in my view should not be. At the state level there may be something there, but either way it should not be.

My problem is different. A large group of people pretend this does not happen at all, and not just at BioWare. This is the hiring practice across entertainment. I have dealt with it personally, in hiring and in collaborations, and plenty of you have watched it play out.

My standard is the same as his. I will collaborate with just about anybody. Leave it at the door. Do not attack the fans and do not manufacture issues over politics, and you can work with us. It is about collaboration and respecting the audience.

And if it does not come up at the hiring stage, it comes up later when somebody goes digging through your old posts. That is the reality of being right of center in this industry.

Why it matters is that pretending it does not happen lets people build a narrative that folks right of center simply cannot create. The filter is politics first. Everything after gets judged through it, and it was never getting a fair hearing. This is not about meritocracy. They pretend it is, because that is what justifies the outcome.

We only got where we are, with books in Barnes and Noble, because of you all. We had to become undeniable with no help at all, to the point where it would have been foolish not to work with us. That is rare. Rippaverse is not the norm. It is an outlier in a hostile environment, and for every one of us there are thirty that get cut off at the knees.

If people right of center are serious about being influential in the culture, they have to actually be in the culture. Not replicate what the other side does, but at minimum build somewhere people can work without their views being the problem.

The only answer is building your own. The legacy side understands exactly what it controls and it is not giving any of it back.

And when I say the other side, I do not mean their fans. Normies do not care about any of this. They go to what is familiar, and what is familiar is the IP the legacy studios hold. That is two enormous advantages at once. They will never take you seriously, and they control properties with baked in audiences made up of people who do not even agree with them.

Nobody is coming to fix this for you.