When brothers Skyler and Spencer Hardegree sent an email to table-top gaming site Board Game Geek asking about running an ad campaign for their new game Possess Me, Satan, they weren’t expecting to receive a response telling them tales of spiritual healings of demonic possessions, or that the game made the advertising manager “sick to their stomach,” and they certainly weren’t expecting to be told that the game was the equivalent of making a game about “being a sexual predator.”
Possess Me, Satan is described by Skyler Hardegree as “a social deductions game” inspired by the likes of Werewolf and Mafia. When I chatted with Hardegree, he explained that he and his brother—who release board games as Falling Whale Games— had played a lot of Werewolf with friends and family, “and would always think of ways we thought it could be better.” Their main goal was a version of the format where the host could have their own role card and different ways to win, and in the case of Possess Me, Satan, even wear devil horns. The game, currently running a fundraiser, has the host (Satan) select one player in a group to be possessed by a murderous ghost, and the rest attempting to work out who and perform an exorcism before they’re murdered. But elaborating on the familiar format, each player has unique goals and traits as well as their own agendas, and on top of that, the host playing Satan has their own machinations at play too. The trailer lays it all out very neatly:
Clearly a superbly produced and lighthearted party game and not an occultic ritual, the resulting product is obviously not designed to upset or offend anyone, but rather to be a lovingly crafted elaboration of a very popular social game mechanic.
“When we submitted the art to BGG,” says Hardegree, “we were expecting an email either approving or declining the ads within 24 hours, because that’s how long it took for another game of ours. A week went by with no email.” Fearing there were concerns about the use of the word “Satan” in the advert art, the brothers sent a follow-up email asking if anything was wrong. “We never expected the kind of reply we got.”
“Thanks for the followup!” jovially began that reply, which Hardegree would go on to share on Reddit. “To be completely transparent,” it started, “I’ve been sitting on this one and praying about what to do in this instance.” Huh.
“As a follower of Jesus,” the email continued, “I routinely help people suffering from demonic oppression, and more occasionally, possession, and it’s absolutely devastating the damage he does to peoples’ lives.” So devastating, in fact, that “it’s sometimes beyond what would even dare be depicted in a horror film.” But lest you feel too fearful, the good news is that the unnamed ad manager explains, “The amazing thing is that I get to see Jesus completely heal folks of even the most severe effects.”
This would all seem, uh, kinda funny until the author gets into examples. “We’ve walked with one lady who was diagnosed with 32 distinct personalities as a result of horrific occultic abuse, and she eventually was one whole, complete individual, healed by Jesus, with no fragments or need of all her psychological meds.” Along with “occultic abuse” being, of course, entirely fictional, the idea that people with psychiatric illnesses are being encouraged off their medicine is horrendous. Following this anecdote, the ad manager concludes, “So I just can’t in good conscience approve this one,” adding that their firsthand experience means “the thought of displaying this subject matter makes me sick to my stomach,” and then going on to suggest that Falling Whale “pull the entire project.”
“We were shocked at how long it was and how he suggested we cancel the project and don’t make the game,” Hardegree told me. “We then sent one email back asking for clarification. We were confused if we broke some policy and if this was just his opinion or the opinion of BGG as a company. Because it seemed like we were being denied service due to religion.”
That was when things really escalated.
“Keep in mind that it’s not over religion,” replied the ad manager, “but reality.” Then came the zinger line: “It’s the same reason I would say a game would be in very poor taste if it featured being a sexual predator.”
Says Hardegree: “That was when we were like, okay, we don’t want to talk with this guy anymore. So we never responded to that second email.”
The ad manager had also stated that “it’s about keeping BGG welcoming to everyone, and since I’m privy to this subject matter, I know firsthand that this is not friendly content, and incredibly triggering, put in front of some of the population that visits BGG.” In response to the brothers pointing out that Board Game Geek was, at that exact moment, hosting ads for an occult-based game called All True Believers, the email responded, “If it were just my personal preference, [it] wouldn’t be approved either.” But considering the title less “triggering,” they declared, “In that game it’s a bit less obvious from the title, whereas you went for the shock value.”
“Since he was the only person in charge of ads at BGG,” said Hardegree, “we figured there was no way to appeal or get someone else to look at the ads. So we just left it at that. We then posted what was said to us on our Gamefound page and on Reddit, just to let people see this crazy response we got. We really just thought it would get a few laughs.”
Reddit being Reddit, however, things escalated quickly. Not only did the emails get a great deal of attention, but others began digging into the ad manager’s online presence, discovering a lot more examples of this individual’s fundamentalist beliefs about demonic possession. By the time we contacted Board Game Geek yesterday to ask a few questions about the situation and where the site draws its lines on advertising subject matter, I can only assume BGG co-creator Scott Alden had had entirely enough, and we received only a URL as a reply. It directed us to the BGG forums where Alden had posted a public response to the situation:
“Due to a situation in which BGG’s Advertising Manager responded inappropriately in a business email to a designer, I have decided to let him go. His response does not reflect or represent our company or the way we conduct business.”
“We definitely never intended for the ad manager to be fired,” says Hardegree, “but we did think it was good for BGG to know what happened because the guy might have done similar things to other indie board game designers. We were ready to spend money with BGG and support their amazing site, but we were turned away unprofessionally without a suggestion on how to maybe get approved. Whatever BGG decided to do about it was all up to them. We weren’t worried about it one way or another, but a lot of people online wanted BGG to address it in some way.”
As Reddit began digging, it became clear that the (now former) ad manager didn’t restrict his bigotry to party games about the devil. Searching through this person’s social media, people quickly found homophobic rants that describe being gay as caused by “sin,” as well as Reddit posts in which they argue homosexuality is caused by “generational curses, behaviors and agreements of the parents when a child is in-utero, and childhood trauma” which “allow all kinds of spirits an entrance at very early ages, often before there is narrative memory,” and describing being queer as “spiritual oppression.”
As of this morning, most of the ad manager’s social media accounts have been wiped.
This whole bizarre situation doesn’t seem to have done any harm to Falling Whale, however. Possess Me, Satan‘s Gamefound has more than doubled its crowdfunding goal, and has now received far more word-of-mouth coverage than the Board Game Geek campaign was ever likely to have brought in. And as one Redditor said, “Boy, you have your back of the box quotes,”:
‘I can’t in good conscience approve this’
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‘It’s beyond what would even dare be depicted in a horror film’
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‘Made me sick to my stomach’
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‘This is not friendly content’
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‘Incredibly triggering.’
