Last year we released Dots & Co, a new sister game for Two Dots. Two Dots stars Emily, an adventurous dot, and takes her on an voyage through fantastical, impossible worlds. For the new game, I wanted to take her on a different journey, one that swapped out the unreal for the real - a tour of some of planet Earth's most extraordinary sites. 

So far she's sailed into Antartic coves, picnicked under majestic Montana mountains, soared through the skies of Cappadocia, and explored volcanic mysteries in dense Mexican forests. My ambition for the game was to create something beautiful and peaceful - a portal on your phone that could give you a momentary taste of standing somewhere wild and beautiful, away from the bustle of modern life. 

Along the way, she meets new companions who help her as she travels - some human, some animal, all inspired by the locations in which she meets them. So in the Antartic she meets Emilio, modeled on Emilio Palma, the first ever human being born on this wildest of continents. In Mexico, she meets Catalina, inspired by Catalina Trail, the woman who discovered the secret home of the Monarch butterfly, deep in the heart of Michoacán. 

As a team, we were inspired by the discoveries we made about the world around us, and as creators took pride in the beautiful, atmospheric game we saw beginning to emerge. Since then, we've heard back from players that they treasure the same things about it that we do - a peaceful, restorative experience they can turn to whenever they need it. 

This weekend, as the Executive Order suspending immgration from seven countries was signed, we ran a full-screen ad expressing our commitment for inclusivity: we believe that it is wrong to exclude people purely on the basis of their religion or country of origin. The ad included a button that linked through to the ACLU donations page. Of the 3-4 million people who saw the ad, 500,000 clicked through. 

We've had an enormously positive response to the ad. We've also had a few ugly, hateful responses. But many other players have reached out with a simple point: I come here to get away from all this stuff. Stop shoving politics into my game. Let me have some peace. It seems like a fair criticism to make against a game that has worked so hard to be a peaceful place. 

But here's the thing. Politics was already in these games. Emilio Palma only came to hold the extraordinary position of being the first human born on a continent because his birth was backed and faciliated by the Argentinian army, who were hoping it would help them make a territorial claim to the continent. Catalina's beautiful carpet of butterflies is at risk of extinction, as industrialized farming on the west coast of the US destroys its migrational habitat. The beautiful landscapes of Montana are currently protected within national parks, but recent budget revisions have put more than half a billion acres of nationally held land at risk of sale or exploitation. 

And politics is in the lives of people who make these games. The Dots team hails from a dozen different countries, follows multiple faiths (or no faith), supports all genders and all sexualities. When we see actions being taken in the world which we know are unfair, punitive and irresponsible, we will always step up and speak out. 

We understand the desire for our games to be a respite from the stress and strife we deal with every day. And we'll continue to strive to produce beautiful, tranquil, restorative experiences for our players. But please don't mistake that tranquility for an absence of politics. They've been in there all along, just as they are in our socks and our soda, our movies and our make-up. All that's happening now is that they're becoming more visible. 

In response to Donald Trump’s executive order banning Syrian refugees and the citizens of seven majority-Muslim nations from entering the United States, Dots updated two its games, Two Dots and Dots & Co, to encourage players to make donations to the ACLU.

“A week in, many lines have already been crossed, but Friday the Trump administration made it very clear what they intend to do over the next four years. We could no longer sit idle. We have a very large and engaged audience, and our hope is by sending this message, it would encourage others with similar audiences to use their platform to stand up for civil rights as well.”

– Paul Murphy, CEO

At least 5,000 people visited the ACLU’s donation page within the first few minutes of the update, which went out to a combined 3-to-4 million users.