One of the developers behind an upcomingBlack Panther gamehas come under fire after a clip resurfaced in which they admitted that they previously built a team that excluded white people to create a “safe environment” for them to create a prior game.
Dani Lalonders is an associate narrative designer at Cliffhanger Games who is currently working on a game based off the Black Panther Marvel film series.
Formerly, they worked on a game called ValiDate, “a romantic visual novel about 13 adults in Jercy City navigating new relationships and the harsh realities that come alongside them.”
It was on this game that Lalonders said they had no white people on the team, which was a deliberate decision.
“We have no white people on our team,” they said. “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.”
They continued, “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 actually a microaggression.”
Timestamp 7:10
Since the clip started to go viral, Lalonders has set their Twitter/X account, and other social media, to private, as users have called out the comments as “blatant racism.”
This is fucking insane.Just blatant racism.From a dev that works for EA. Don’t care that this is LibsofTikTok, an opinion like this is harmful & should be condemned by EA yesterday…. but uhhh nothing?https://t.co/TY9oItR8qs
It is not known if this policy followed Lalonders over to Cliffhanger and the Black Panther project. This development team falls under the EA umbrella and is a much bigger team.
Related:
Not much is known about the Black Panther game at the time of writing, with the game still in the infancy of its development, but fans of the films will be excited to start cruising around Wakanda on their own.
Jacob Hale is Dexerto’s UK Editor. He is an award-nominated Gaming and Esports reporter, known for his industry-leading coverage of the Call of Duty competitive scene. Jacob has bylines at GINX and Esports News UK. You can contact him at: jacob.hale@dexerto.com
