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A narrative designer for Cliffhanger Games, a subsidiary of Electronic Arts and the studio developing the upcoming Marvel’s Black Panther game, landed in a bit of hot water this week after their previous comments admitting to discriminatory hiring practices resurfaced.
Dani Lalonders, an associate narrative designer for Cliffhanger Games and self-described “black nonbinary woman,” previously admitted to building a team with “no white people” while working on a game called ValiDate.
“We have no white people on our team,” Lalonders admitted during a stream for the Game Devs of Color Expo in 2021. “I did that because I wanted to create a safe environment, and I know the best way for an environment to be safe is to be around people who are just like me.”
“I’m not saying white people are creating unsafe environments, I’m saying sometimes it’s hard to work with white people because sometimes they think something is okay, but it’s really a microaggression,” Lalonders continued.
Although Lalonders made the comments back in 2021, they recently went viral when Libs of TikTok tweeted this portion of the presentation.
This is Dani Lalonders, a nonbinary game developer. She was hired by @CliffhangerDevs to create a game based on @Marvel‘s #BlackPanther.
She says she doesn’t hire white people because they’re unsafe and it’s hard to work with them and only hires people of color.
Is this… pic.twitter.com/zVodAvagLN
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) March 12, 2024
Lalonder’s comments led to accusations of racism and discrimination, some of it lobbied at Electronic Arts. However, it’s important to note that these comments were made back when Lalonder was a lead developer and producer on the independent gameValiDate.
ValiDate is a romantic visual novel about 13 adults in Jercy City navigating new relationships and the harsh realities that come alongside them.” The game was released in 2022 to mostly positive reviews.
Additionally, she was working at Veritable Joy Studios at the time, a Chicago-based studio “working to bring you authentic, heartfelt games about people of color.” The company’s overview reads:
“Here at Veritable Joy, we pride ourselves on creating an authentic and supportive work environment where people of color can tell the stories that we want heard. Our studio is dedicated to crafting games that place people of color and LGBT+ characters at the forefront of the narrative, in the hopes that we can be the change that marginalized communities want to see in the gaming industry.”
Given the game’s premise and the company’s mission statement, one may understand why Lalonder would want to emphasize hiring people of color over white people but blatantly admitting that she wouldn’t hire white developers could make the studio subject to a potential lawsuit for discriminatory hiring practices.
Now it’s important to note that this only pertains to Lalonder’s time at Veritable Joy Studios. There’s no evidence that EA or Cliffhanger Games is engaging in this sort of hiring policy. Lalonder is only an associate narrative designer at the studio, which is a fairly entry-level position, so it’s unlikely she is determining who gets hired.
Even so, it’s probably not a topic of conversation that EA or Cliffhanger Games wants to be associated with. Neither the publisher nor the developer have commented on Lalonder’s previous statements.
Cliffhanger Games was introduced back in July 2023 as a new triple-A development studio with.a focus on Marvel’s Black Panther. Led by Kevin Stephens (Monolith Productions), the game is an original, third-person, single-player adventure. The studio aims “to build an expansive and reactive world that empowers players to experience what it is like to take on the mantle of Wakanda’s protector, the Black Panther.”
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