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Super Smash Bros. Ultimate had an offensive stereotype regarding Native Americans (Update: Removed)
- Thread starter Regulus Tera
- Start date
That went pretty well. They could have patched it out quietly, but instead they took responsibility and apologised. Relatively quick as well.
This.
Everytime an user has a different opinion / political ideal, they are immediately banned/warned without being able to discuss or defend themselves.
As a fellow editor: That's an absolutely terrible headline. Your painting the issue as if some internet mob calls a game as a whole "racist" because a single animation got called out. Its incredibly inflammatory, not a good representation of what's happening and only aimed at generating more clicks by making as many people mad as possible.
Acting like headlines don't sway the public discourse in very meaningful ways because many people only see those on social media seems dishonest to me. I can promise you the screenshot of this tweet will be shared a lot to make a point about how "those SJWs" even want to take away Smash Bros because they think even that game is inexcusably racist.
Good to see that they acted on this so quickly. Sometimes this stuff just happens and they don't realise that they've caused offence in certain countries (like the Inkling pose in MK8DX, or the islamic chanting in OoT), but it's great that they nipped this in the bud so fast!
Well in this case, it's faithful to his G&W Gallery 4 incarnation. It's a sensible change to make and still represents G&W history.
Well in this case, it's faithful to his G&W Gallery 4 incarnation. It's a sensible change to make and still represents G&W history.
It's the strucutre. Start with the "facts": the action taken, reminder of context, reason why it's bad/removed. Then ends with the "opinion": the apology and future commitment.
Though the apology is that it slipped into marketing before the "update", not that it was made, highlighting which of the two-level of development (main team and NOA) is apologising. Which makes sense since they are the ones responsible for localisation/making sure the content is okay.
It has precedent, if you want to cling to referencing obscure older games, as it's faithful to its representation in the GBA (2002) version:
I guess that would be valid. It's just i'm not usually too fond of these kind of edits when something is supposed to be faithful to the original source (I can understand the racial angle though)
I'm not going to give it more though anyway, Mr.G&W is a great character with or without feather, so it changes nothing in the end.
But why is it desirable to be faithful to a source that's racist?
Good response and feels like swift action. I can accept one or two bad oversights like this to slip through a giant project like this as long as they are taken seriously if uncovered.
I think it's more than a lot of the public apologies given by people/companies lately have some sort of "sorry you were offended" subtext to them.
Is just a pet peeve of mine, man.
If Capcom released RE4 fixing the image they gave of the Spanish people it would bother me too(And that one is racist as fuck). It's not about the racism and, as i said, i understand that angle.
I also said it's not a big deal. no need to stress it.
This is especially a problem on etcetera. But not only are people sometimes banned for trying to explain a different view or other very minor things, many users actually call for bans and promote them. I may not agree with what some of them say, but hold yourself to the same standards you hold others. As long as they are civil and open for discussion there's nothing wrong. Big part of the reason I stopped visiting this site for a while, despite being very liberal and agreeing with most people here, is that many are still fairly intolerant and extreme in their views.
Uggghhh this annoys me so much. The game is supposed to be set in Spain and yet everyone speaks with a Mexican accent and dialect. It's the equivalent to making a game set in the USA in where every single person speaks in a British accent with stereotypical British expressions while drinking tea at 5 PM
Like it's the only big profile game set in my country that I know of but in practice it's set in Mexico :(
And they are all overly relligious, archaic, sexist, without basic commodities and pay in pesetas.
And it would still bother me if capcom fixed it.
If your opinion is on the side of something racially insensitive, it will not be well received here.
People like making a big buzz about stuff like this mentioning how apparently insane the forum is, calling back at the sombrero thread, but if anyone ever decided to look at it they'd notice most people never agreed with OP.
Isn't the game set in the 90s or something? If so the pesetas thing is right. I believe people didn't start actually using euros here until like 2002
The rest is terrible of course
It takes place 6 ayers after RE2, in 2004 (RE2 was in 1998 i think)
Dismissive posts, accusing people of looking for things to be offended by and bad-faith arguments ("All my black/native american/gay friends don't find this offensive") are swiftly dealt with. In short? engaging in racist rhetoric, even if unintentional, will get you banned. People who approach these topics with compassion and a desire to understand these issues rather than to win a debate can participate like anyone else. Seems pretty clear cut.
great, fantastic apology too. to the point, no "sorry you were offended", no bullshit.
BUT MUH ARTISTIC INTEGRITY!
CAN'T ERASE THE PAST
fuck off with that. this was offensive and nintendo did the right thing, both removing it and sending out an apology that sounds real and sincere.
As I said in the other thread, hopefully this includes editing the Spirit that also used the reference. Either way, I'm glad that Nintendo is fixing it.
And yet in threads about China, people can literally say things like "China/Chinese people are taking over the world and we're just letting it happen", which is explicitly racist and conspiracy theorising, and mods don't do anything at all in response to reports.
I mean, I'm certainly very very left wing, and I do think this thing in Smash is racist etc, but there is absolutely a good faith argument that it's not racist- I'd happily disagree with those people, but I'd like it if mods at least gave us the chance to talk about it. I feel like banning in these situations is just a form of public shaming, which is just going to reinforce the banned user's views rather than challenging them.
I do think the moderation on here is very wonky sometimes. We have millions of threads about exactly the same thing all the time, and threads about games are constantly derailed by people endlessly reiterating the same complaints about prices/online services/download sizes or whatever, yet a lot of the time, heavy moderation is only used in threads where some sort of plurality of discussion would be quite interesting.
Obviously I don't want Era to be Reddit or something, and obvious troll posts should be definitely banned, but I find this board performatively right-on sometimes, and I'd rather have discussions where people weren't worried whether or not they sound liberal enough. For me, even though I usually always agree with the majority on whether something is sexist/racist etc, I often don't agree with the liberal response to this (as in, the liberal, centrist response is too right wing IMO). But if I argue against that, there's just a worry it will sound like a bad faith argument which is actually supporting sexism/racism, and that I'll be banned.
It's picked up by the /r/SmashBros community.
https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/9ux254/mr_game_watchs_feather_will_be_removed/e97pewi/
And another thread that was locked due to significant reports:
https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/9tu6hq/a_small_controversy_is_brewing_and_its_on_the/
https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/9ux254/mr_game_watchs_feather_will_be_removed/e97pewi/
And another thread that was locked due to significant reports:
https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/9tu6hq/a_small_controversy_is_brewing_and_its_on_the/
what the hell? why would you be disappointed or want it to remain in the japanese version? would be super fucked up if they issue an apology but keep it in if you select a specific language. who would they be trying to please with that decision?
edit: i see you've already answered to another poster.
Yeah, I'm really impressed. One of the best company responses in a long time.
Usually corporate apologies aren't actual apologies. This at least admits fault and explains how the will prevent this moving forward, although, they do kinda dance around the "why its offensive" part.
Corporate business avoid speaking directly on why it's offensive, because if they explain why, some people who never thought or consider the issue before, then see the issue being dealt with, and now feel they wished to have the issue back, would be angered by the resolve.
It is better and easier for them to speak about the matter in an objective way, putting the blame on other but also important factors, like miscommunications within the company (which would be considered an internal issue, by the way) and investors confidence (also important for trust on the businesses).
The comments on the gamexplain video are expected and disgusting as expected. "Resetera are npc sjw's", etc etc etc.
I seen some conversation in a few forums that claim they are Native and say they're not offend by this. This happen a few times with the whole Mario wearing Mexican clothing. Assuming that they are Native why is it that their not offend by how their nationality is shown?
It's weird that those kind of people even watch GameXplain considering how liberal all of the GX guys are.
No, it's better to actually apologize and explain why you offended. The statement never mentions Native Americans, First Nation peoples, etc. But I think Nintendo did fine here. I was being less snarky about Nintendo and more snarky about corporate apologies on the whole.
I'm Canadian, but with Iroquois heritage on one side of my family as recent as my grandfather. There is much to be offended about when it comes to the treatment and depiction of that part of my heritage - but this is a video game depicting a past game with clearly no bad faith intended. It's my personal opinion, but it doesn't bother me in the slightest.
That's not to say I'm not pleased that Nintendo made the decision to remove it, but I wouldn't be bothered either way.
EDIT: Quick edit to add that my history isn't really a part of my life, and I'm absolutely not suggesting I would have a voice in any sort of argument about this - was just quickly giving an idea as to my opinion on the matter. I'm happy it was removed, at the end of the day.
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What the hell is an NPC anyway? I've seen it being thrown around last few weeks, but god knows what the joke is that I missed...
I can't speak directly for them, but I take it they don't see it as a (hurtful) stereotype or don't it as savage. I'd be interested if they'd elaborate more on their opinion/reason.