The Bundle

itch.io's Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality is a collection of indie media content offered up as a fundraiser for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and Community Bail Fund. The minimum purchase is $5 which gains you access to 1637 items from 1304 different creators. The bundle has raised over $5 million dollars so far and is a genuinely incredible show of support and solidarity from the gaming community for the Black Lives Matter movement.

Here is the previous Tildes topic about it, here is a subreddit for it, and here is a community spreadsheet cataloging its contents.

The Content

The bundle is primarily video games, but it also has tabletop games, game assets, books, music, and tools. It is an intimidatingly large amount of content, and much attention has been called to some of the collection's highlights and standout titles: 1 2 3 4 (if you find other lists, let me know and I'll link them here).

I'm thinking it would be neat for us on Tildes to explore and highlight some of its less well-known content. The people who have made their creations available in this bundle have done so generously and in support of a great cause, so this is a way that we can show some appreciation for them by bringing some attention to their work. It is also possible to re-purchase games that you already own on itch.io and add tips to that purchase, so you can also monetarily support any devs you choose should you feel inclined to do so.

The Event

Using whatever selection methods or criteria you like, dive into an item/multiple items from the bundle and then report back here about it. There is a handy website that lets you filter the whole set of items, and it also has a very useful "pick a game" button that selects a game at random from the batch.

However you choose something, let us know what you've chosen, what it was, what your experience was like with it, and whether or not you recommend it. Format your entries however you like but please Bold the Titles of Items so people can scan the thread more easily!

Feel free to submit multiple entries to the topic as you explore the bundle. I'm thinking that with a few of us doing this over a couple of days, we can cover a lot of ground and surface some interesting and easily overlooked content.

Our Selections

I'll keep a table of the highly recommended things we surface here. To select something to be included here, mention in your writeup that it qualifies for "Tildes' Choice" status, and I'll add it to the list!

Channel 4 describe the programme "Series that captures the work of police, probation, prison, prosecution and parole".

Here's a link to the first episode: https://www.channel4.com/programmes/crime-and-punishment/on-demand/64655-001

Crime and punishment is a documentary series that looks inside prison to tell the stories of the criminal justice system from the viewpoint of those involved.

The first episode spends some time talking about the unjust "Imprisonment for Public Protection"[1] sentences (these are no longer given by the courts but there are thousands of prisoners still imprisoned on them), how they went wrong, and the awful effect they have upon prisoners. It's a difficult watch. It shows how severely the mental health of prisoners is when they're on this type of sentence, including their serious self harm.

Episode two talks about pressure inside prisons and how that results in "riots", about how prisoners use the only power they have available to them.

I like the programme because it avoids judgmentalism. The prisoners are not reduced to the bad guys; the officers are not simplified to the good guys. You hear a little bit about some of the offences committed by the prisoners

Here's a Twitter thread from someone working in the English NHS. She works in forensic services as a psychologist. https://twitter.com/SarahE_Davidson/status/1173707912981700608

I guess Channel 4 On Demand have geo-blocking. I don't know if it's available on other services, or on torrent.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprisonment_for_public_protection