Ragnar Tørnquist: Red Thread Games Founder Outed as Hypocrite on Diversity - Another White Guy That Hates White Guys...
Boy. Dustborn just can't seem to catch a break these days - and now... it feels like the dam has burst.
Thanks to The Internet Archive 'Way Back Machine', while the forums over at Red Thread Games have been purged, they have been preserved, and the internet... never forgets.
Ragnar Tørnquist, the founder, CEO, and 'Creative Director' of Red Thread Games, has been outed as an extreme racist hypocrite, thanks to a post from 2015 that's resurfaced. While yes, what people say in the past was 'in the past' and they can certainly change for the better... based on Dustborn, I think it's safe to say that his Trump Derangement Syndrome has only gotten worse as time has gone on...
Tørnquist's comments reveal a troubling mindset, one that is drenched in what many would call "modern" talking points about diversity. His post highlights his self-professed embarrassment over his past creations ...and suggests a design philosophy more focused on virtue signaling than on making genuinely compelling games.
Two passages in particular stand out:
and then, just two sentences later, he writes:
Which one is it, Ragnar?
It's hard not to wonder if he realizes the 'doublethink' in these statements - or if he is so fully-immersed in the rhetoric that he doesn't even notice... Reading the rest of his post makes it abundantly clear—Ragnar is chugging the diversity Kool-Aid as hard as he can.
If Tørnquist was writing like this back in 2015, one has to imagine that the outcome of the 2016 election probably pushed him even further to the fringes.
He also claimed he wants to represent the "real world" in his games, yet uses his location in Norway as an excuse for why his team can't be more diverse. The irony is strong here; Norway’s population is already nearly 17% immigrants.
Why does Tørnquist see the team's makeup as "unfortunate" but refuses to actually do anything about it? It seems like he's more comfortable parroting talking points than making tangible, meaningful changes.
It's even more laughable that he says he feels guilty for his team being mostly white because they "live in Norway." If diversity is such a virtue, why isn't he actively doing something about it? The answer is simple: people like Tørnquist talk a big game but never take the logical next step. They loudly advocate for more women of color in the industry but never seem willing to give up their cushy positions for them. It's always someone else's job to fix, isn't it, Ragnar?
This is where people like Tørnquist get it wrong. The "real world" he speaks of isn't some natural state; it’s a concocted reality born from forced migration policies, where people are uprooted from places like Africa and the Middle East and pushed into societies that are entirely different from their own. Tørnquist’s words here echo a broader Marxist mindset, where every Western country must embrace diversity at any cost while non-Western countries remain ethnically homogeneous.
If he truly believed in the diversity he preaches, he could make a powerful statement by stepping down and letting a person of color or a woman take his place - Right? But of course, that won't happen... We all know better. All this "righteous rhetoric" is just a way to shore up that financial support and keep the funding rolling in while continuing a 'narrative'.
...and per his LinkedIn:
The game industry is just another cog in the machine of managed decline—a house of cards that'll eventually collapse under its own contradictions... You know - once that government funding and the grants dry up. Many gamers are looking forward to that glorious day, where quality games can be built to exist and survive based on the demand of the customers themselves, and not given life support from governments in an attempt to indoctrinate citizens with propaganda.
In the end, Ragnar Tørnquist is just another example of someone who talks a lot about diversity but refuses to act on it in any meaningful way. He'd rather signal his virtue than take real steps toward the change he supposedly wants to see... While also degrading white people in general.
Ask yourself - Why would a video game company CEO feel it's so important to hire based on someone's skin color... In Norway?
~Smash