Red Herring Games have just completed a two year refresh on all their murder mystery games making them more relevant for the current age.

“As with the movie industry where prevailing attitudes have changed for the better, murder mystery games were needing a refresh to remove sexism and out of date “tropes” that were no longer appropriate.” Jo Smedley, managing director of Red Herring Games, an international leader in the murder mystery games field said.

“We had some games in our catalogue that were written over 17 years ago and they contained out of date stereotypes and gender biases that, thankfully, are no longer present in society.”

“We made the decision back in 2021 to refresh the entire catalogue. Adjusting the formatting, improving the playability and the look of all our games. IT moves on apace – and our games just hadn’t moved with the times. So each one now prints differently, can be played straight from Mobiles and also includes a virtual video inspector.”

Part of their large scale changes also included creating two gender neutral characters in each game.

However when the team announced their changes to their games as the process began to role out back in 2021, they were shocked to receive some quite appalling emails from a customer who objected strenuously to the non-gender specific roles in the games.

“The thing is, we did this to make it easier for families and friends to invite single friends. Because not everyone invites in “couples”. But I admit we were quite pleased that our decision to do this also helped people who don’t consider themselves either male or female. Over the years we have received numerous emails from hosts trying to find suitable roles for their non-binary friends, and until now we had always helped by fixing things to order. But the decision to include two non-gender specific roles in each game fixed many of the issues in one go.”

“When I received the complaint email – it made me appreciate just how much bile the LGBTQ community put up with day to day. To find such out of date thinking within our customer base was horrifying, and we suggested the person in question simply didn’t order again, and put out a statement on our social media channels that if other’s felt the same way, we also welcomed them to remove their custom.”

“Since then however our decision to amend all our games has met with overwhelming support with customers across the globe enjoying our virtual inspectors.”

Next up is a refresh on the firm’s main website which is due to role out later this year.

“It should have been done by July, but was held up by our events website which we had decided to split away from our main catalogue. We offer so many services now it was just getting confusing for everyone.”

With Christmas peak sales just around the corner, Red Herring Games are hoping for a bumper year this year thanks to all the changes they’ve made. They even have one entirely gender neutral game ready for the winter season “It’s a Wonderful Death!”