Artifact’s “Crack the Whip” Card Is Now “Coordinated Assault”
With Valve’s card game Artifact set for release in November, the Twitter account has been posting designs for some of the game’s cards along with their functions. And on September 26, a card called “Crack the Whip” stirred up controversy by starting with “Modify a black hero…” Now, Valve has changed the name of the card.
Within the game’s context, “black” is used to refer to cards of a specific color and thematic connection. Crack the Whip contains an illustration of a blue lizard creature whipping a group of smaller lizards on the battlefield. But the title appears to be an allusion to slavery, which is rubbed some people the wrong way.
As a design philosophy, we’ve done a lot of work to make it once you learn the game rules you can predict any card interaction. For example, when a reactive ability says it applies [after] something else happens, it truly means after.
— Artifact (@PlayArtifact) September 26, 2018
“How do people not catch these things?!?” one person wrote on the forum ResetEra. “Like I’m oblivious at times but even I can see the problem here.”
“A card called Crack the Whip that modifies black heroes…guessing there’s not a lot of diversity over at the Artifact offices,” someone tweeted to the initial image.
Valve recently announced that the card was renamed to “Coordinated Assault.”
Artifact is currently in closed beta on Steam and will be released on November 28.