Hey, remember the cool game about reclaiming African artifacts form Western Museums at SGF? Well…
In brief:
The game’s dev team is composed of people from African countries like Lesotho, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Tanzania, but during Summer Game Fest’s multi-day, demo-centric Play Days event, creative director Ben Myres, who is white and was raised in South Africa, manned the booth alone. This was not always the plan: Myres was originally going to be accompanied by another developer from South-Africa-based studio Nyamakop, whom Aftermath has granted anonymity due to their concerns that speaking out might exacerbate the challenges they’ve already faced entering the United States.
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In the past, this developer said, they have managed to acquire a US visa “without any issue,” and have never stayed past their departure date or breached any terms within the country. But this time around, none of that mattered. While the consulate in South Africa allowed the developer to answer a few questions about the purpose of their stay – and, to support their responses, they brought along documents from relevant and highly reputable sources – they were immediately denied.
[…]
“At least three people before me in the queue were denied without having their documents looked at,” they said. “In fact, as I left the consulate, someone else who had their visa approved with no issue, who had no travel history and did not provide concrete travel plans, asked me if I noticed what was happening inside. You can probably guess what the main difference between myself and this other applicant is.”