It's been posted over in the Open Letter thread, but I am going to give some props to the Dead Island collector's edition FUCKING BIKINI TORSO as my #1ReasonWhy today. I just want to go home and pretend I never had this fucking hobby.
It lead me to find out about a controversy I didn't know. Apparently one of the female character's skills in the debug version of Dead Island was called Feminist Whore. That studio made a pretty fun little zombie game. And are apparently throwing all of that away by having a deep corporate culture problem.
But all they wanted was "to provide a unique collector’s edition that was utterly 'Dead Island' and would make a striking conversation piece on any discerning zombie gamer's mantel." See? Just a conversation piece for the mantel. You can put it next to a picture of grandmother.
Any discerning anything would bin that thing faster than a suprise puppy present. Unless they're discerning in the sense that DeSade was, in wich case I can see them bringing it out when composing correspondence.
Well, I've seen worse apologies than that one I guess. They could have mentioned the actual reason people were upset though, instead of implying it was because it was violent. I suppose they probably got some complaints along those lines as well, but...
Uh, let's not forget, Deep Silver got in how much trouble for having Purba's special skill be FEMINIST WHORE (emphasis theirs) in the game's code? This is just another example of a clueless, misogynist company being just that. Also, fucking boobs how do they work? For that matter, fucking vaginas how do they work?
I'd love to know why they apparently though that the hacked up torso would be the perfect thing for the Euro market. The US collector's edition is entirely tame: a set of keys, a hula girl statue (the old kitch icon), and the game, in a suitcase-styled container. Seems perfectly innocuous, and well fitting with the beach theme, right? So how the FUCK do they go from that to "And for Europe, the mutilated corpse of a woman in a bikini! Perfect, we nailed it, take off early for martinis, guys!" Just.. what the fuck.
Hey, what do you want, guys? It's right there on the box: contents may cause offense. CLEARLY this absolves them of any and all wrongdoing! They warned you, after all.
You'll have to connect the dots for me on the objection to the "for now" phrase. It's just a statement of the form "We are working on X, for now we will just say Y" which seems like a pretty normal way to put things. EDIT: I see the problem, I can't read. I read "inaction" as a different word. NEVER MIND!
Everyone knows europeans are less uptight about the violence and gore while americans are more relaxed about sex and nudity.
I'm awe-struck. Now all it needs is for this to reach a conservative news program, because the images speak for themselves.
Just read about how it's apparently supposed to recall Roman marble statuary or some such. Now, if it were like those tacky golden statues you see in some resorts but still with the arteries and bones in the stumps, or if it were as it is now but was actually in the sort of poses that those old statues were (maybe give it a head and make it like the Venus de Milo? Although that's Greek, but whatevs), then I might have actually been ok with it and maybe even considered it kind of clever. As it is now, though, it's just too far abstracted from that idea to be anything but hideous.
I admit, I did think of Venus de Milo, which I imagine is what they're going for, but that doesn't justify it.
You know, when I saw this yesterday, my initial half-joking reaction was "that's it, fuck this industry, I'll read a book instead". And then I stopped myself from posting that, because no. NO. Because if I back out of this, then they've gotten exactly what they want. This myopic, tone-deaf attitude is the death throes of a dying breed, a breed that wants to preserve the status quo; a breed that is rapidly becoming obsolete as this industry and many others stop being boys' clubs. What they want is for things to be the way they were, where they can say and do and release whatever they want without having to think if it's sexist or not. And what's happening instead is whenever they do something stupid like this, enough people call them out on it that they immediately have to back down. Guys, look what happened: we heard about this statue thing yesterday, and within 24 hours they apologized. That's wonderful. Yes, the apology was half-assed, but would they have even made it 5 years ago? People are sick and tired of sexist bullshit, and we're getting harder to ignore. We just can't quit, that's all. Hang in there, guys. We're doing it.
You know what? If it had been an *actual Venus de Milo* statue covered in scratches and blood, it probably would have been awesome. The contrast of "well known art" vs "scenes of violence" would have been pretty awesome, like the violence happened *near* the statue, and a well known piece of art was ruined by it. But no, instead they act like 14 year old boys scribbling in their math textbook.
http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=9934 Lengthy piece on con culture and fighting game culture in specific. Very relevant to this thread.
A nice little article about the torso thing. http://business.financialpost.com/2...-level/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
So is anyone not going to buy Dead Island: Riptide because of this? Honest, serious question. I'm not going to buy DI:R because I still haven't gotten around to playing Dead Island, and with my backlog, it's very easy to skip a game for almost any reason. This is actually a relief, now because I don't have to bother with it.
Just this I might let pass. It appears to be a repeated issue with the company, so I'm terribly tempted to pass. Made a bit easier since I did play Dead Island, enjoyed it, but I don't feel that I've seen anything that really improves the experience in Riptide. For me, I'm basically passing on what appears to be an expensive expansion pack because the company has serious cultural issues.
I wasn't ever going to buy it, but I'm pretty hardcore about boycotting so I probably would pass had I been interested.
I'm not going to buy it based on this and their double down with the transphobic "joke" tweet. I liked Dead Island too.
I was planning to buy it. I really enjoyed the first Dead Island, I played probably a hundred hours with friends. I'm not buying it now, explicitly because of the statue and the transphobic bullshit one of their senior employees thought appropriate.
The chance of me getting it was already 0% but this does mean that I will never touch anything they put out, even if it is something that would theoretically interest me.
