The high visibility of indie success stories creates the illusion that commercial success is accessible and achievable by all, disregarding the challenges most indie developers face.

"I don't know if I believe in passion. Passion is the thing that lets us overlook how badly we're hurting."

Game studios are now purposefully designing bad systems and mechanics, hoping that people will be willing to pay to get past the poorly-made parts of the service: when microtransactions are the sole source of income, we start to build our entire product around that model.

Marginalized developers suffer from an industry-wide epidemic that withholds basic income from hard-working artists for the dubious privilege of exposure. But despite popular belief, we are not in dire need of exposure, petty consolations, or a tent on the outskirts of a major industry event.

Organizations run by primarily white, cis, straight founders train the majority of their focus on alleviating alienation for white cis women in cis male-centric spaces, but do little to dig deeper into other marginalized identities and access needs.

In a video games climate that has been decrying the prevalence of rehashed themes and narratives, perhaps the matter of racial inclusion can serve as one catalyst for greater change.

Simply telling people to use the ignore function is not going to curtail decades-long problems in video games communities.