HANOVER, N.H. — Sachi Schmidt-Hori has never played Assassin’s Creed Shadows, but facing an onslaught of online harassment from its fans, she quickly developed her own gameplay style: confronting hate with kindness.

Schmidt-Hori, an associate professor of Japanese literature and culture at Dartmouth College, worked as a narrative consultant on the latest installment in the popular Ubisoft video game franchise. The game launched March 20, but the vitriol directed at Schmidt-Hori began in May 2024 with the release of a promotional trailer.

“Once I realized that I was by myself — nobody was defending me — I just decided to do what I knew would work,” she said. “It’s very difficult to hate someone up close.”

The game set in 16th- century Japan features Naoe, a Japanese female assassin, and Yasuke, a Black African samurai. Furor erupted over the latter, with gamers criticizing his inclusion as “wokeness” run amok.

They quickly zeroed in Schmidt-Hori, attacking her in online forums, posting bogus reviews of her scholarly work and flooding her inbox with profanity. Many drew attention to her academic research into gender and sexuality. Some tracked down her husband’s name and ridiculed him too.

“Imagine that! Professional #WOKE SJW confirms fake history for Ubisoft,” one Reddit user said, using the initials for “social justice warrior.”

Learning that Yasuke was based on a real person did little to assuage critics. Asian men in particular argued Schmidt-Hori was trying to erase them, even though her role involved researching historical customs and reviewing scripts, not creating characters.

“I became the face of this backlash,” she said. “People wanted to look for who to yell at, and I was kind of there.”

Ubisoft told her to ignore the harassment, as did her friends. Instead, she drew inspiration from the late civil rights leader and congressman John Lewis.

“I decided to cause ‘good trouble,’ ” she said. “I refused to ignore.”

Schmidt-Hori began replying to some of the angry emails, asking the senders why they were mad at her and inviting them to speak face-to-face via Zoom. She wrote to an influencer who opposes DEI principles and had written about her, asking him if he intended to inspire the death threats she got.

“If somebody said to your wife what people are saying to me, you wouldn’t like it, would you?” she asked.

The writer didn’t reply, but did take down the negative article about Schmidt-Hori. Others apologized.

“It truly destroyed me knowing that you had to suffer and cancel your class and received hate from horrible people,” one man wrote. “I feel somehow that you are part of my family, and I regret it. I’m sorry from the bottom of my heart.”

Anik Talukder, a 28-year-old south Asian man living in the United Kingdom, said he apologized at least 10 times to Schmidt-Hori after accepting her Zoom invitation to discuss his Reddit post about her.

On May 16, feeling surprised and disappointed about Yasuke as a protagonist, he posted a screenshot that included photos of Schmidt-Hori, her professional bio from Dartmouth’s website and a description of a book she wrote.

“I felt like maybe they were doing too much of like racial inclusion and changing things,” he said in an interview. “An Asian male could have been the role model for so many people.”

Though he didn’t criticize Schmidt-Hori directly, others responded negatively and the image was shared in other forums.

He was shocked the professor reached out to him and hesitant to speak to her at first. But they ended up having a thoughtful conversation about the lack of Asian representation in Western media and have stayed in touch ever since.

“I learned a massive lesson,” he said. “I shouldn’t have made this person a target for no reason whatsoever.”

Ubisoft officials declined to be interviewed.