Should we be going back and editing games for content that doesn't fit with a modern viewpoint?
Thinking about the recent incident where the devs for Skullgirls (current devs, not original devs) went and changed a bunch of artwork and other content for the fighting game, which released in 2012 after being Kickstarted. Aside from removing the sexualized imagery of an underage character, probably a good call, what about the other things they've decided are in 'poor taste' in 2023?
Should we be going back and editing games, or even movies, tv shows, and books to reflect more modern sensibilities? Is a game like Skullgirls even worth preserving its original content?
My opinion is no, unless it's something that is now illegal, I don't really enjoy the precedent that's been set lately where we go back and correct past mistakes in media. However, I also see the argument about removing media that may encourage racist or sexist thinking or put down minorities, but is it useful to see the media as it was and see how far we've come? Is that useful enough? Should only the original creators make that decision?
Just thought this was interesting. Tag as desired.
I believe Disney does the same. It’s absolutely the right way to handle it.
Yep; this is the same argument people have been having about books since the printing press came out.
We should never edit history, but alas, I’m not sure the people making these decisions are thinking about anything other than what will sell more copies.
100% this. Don't edit stuff that's already been released--if you want to make improvements do a rerelease or a remaster
This is absolutely correct and even Disney knows it's correct. They slap a warning label on there say hey sorry this is a different time. I think that's a really good go-between for both those who may be offended and those who want the original experience.
The thing I find most frustrating about retroactive modification of a work is that the person in charge of releases is effectively deciding to affect everyone else when they could just give the tools to the player to decide for themselves whether they want to modify the experience. Revision for moral reasons is still taking power away from the end user and I am surprised to see so many here advocating for it.
If you go back to correct Lovecraft's books, you'll end up deleting the entire corpus! But you also miss Lovecraft's journey from truly extreme xenophobia to becoming more and more accepting of other groups as he goes on.
It's important that the problematic stuff in the last remain, because we need to be able to measure ourselves against it.
What do you need to "learn" from "sexualized imagery of an underage character"?
Context for what was removed:
-"Allusions to real-world hate groups" seen in the dress and iconography of Skullgirls' Black Egret army, particularly its Nazi-like red armbands
-Instances in which characters "are fetishized and/or have sexualization imposed upon them," with particular attention toward younger characters
-Some content "believed to be in poor taste" with regard to race
And context for the original dev:
Skullgirls has had a storied development history. Its original studio, Lab Zero, collapsed after lead designer Mike Zaimont publicly joked about the murder of George Floyd and was subsequently accused of inappropriate workplace behavior, which led to him laying off the studio's entire staff. The current version of Skullgirls is now maintained by the studio that made the mobile port, Hidden Variable, and a studio founded by ex-Lab Zero developers, called Future Club. Zaimont is no longer involved with Skullgirls, and for the past two years has been working as a programmer on another game.
https://www.pcgamer.com/skullgirls-bombarded-by-negative-steam-reviews-after-devs-alter-old-artwork-they-felt-was-in-poor-taste/
As someone who has played the game extensively, Skullgirls is still very lewd and still includes a whole lot of crass humor and loud sexuality. They modified a few instances where they felt like they went over the line...it doesn't really impact the overall vibe or appeal in any meaningful way.
Because the overall vibe isn't what they were trying to address, it was discomfort with the way a particular character of dubious age was handled.
Jesus what an ass, definitely not comfortable supporting someone like that
He's not been involved with Skullgirls for a long time. When this happened:
He didn't actually want to lay off anybody, the entire staff quit in protest and since the game rights lie with the publisher they transferred it to the new studio where a lot of the old staff moved to.
Thanks for providing the context, that's helpful.
First I will say that I believe that digital media should allow us to rollback to previous versions, be it games, books, or audiovisual. But to your question, no I don't mind creators having the option to update their media, even years later. If the developers feel the game is better with these facets changed, they have that right.
I'm reminded of the Superhot developer who removed a suicide scene from his game. He no longer felt it was appropriate for the game, since it dealt with self-harm. Maybe he'd become more sensitive to the topic for one reason or another.
I don't buy that this is censorship, or even self-censorship, because in both cases they reflected the views of the creators (or "owners", if you wish to get into the weeds of the Skullgirls' development changing hands). The irony is that demanding that these creators make changes that the audience wants, rather than what they themselves want, would itself be a form of censorship. It's pressuring creators to do something against their own personal vision for their work.
I'll mention that in both cases, I personally felt the changes were beneficial. Superhot's story dragged it down, and Skullgirls' over-sexualization was really off-putting. That doesn't change my feelings about their right to make these changes, but I thought I'd include this for completeness sake.
I'll add one final thought. John Carmack made a post recently discussing the idea of patching books:
I think the part that feels "wrong" is simply the intuition built up from decades of books being made of paper, and video games being a digital medium. Books are static, games are dynamic. But of course that's no longer the case, and digital books can be easily updated. Should they be?
After finishing the Dark Tower anthology, Stephen King released a new edition of The Gunslinger which better tied it into the rest of the books, and cleaned up some of the writing he considered "dry". This was some 25 years after the original release. That's something that most authors simply weren't capable of doing because they didn't have the same kind of reach that King did. Now with digital distribution, they can too.
I understand why people are uncomfortable with the idea of their media changing after they've purchased it, and that's why I support the ability to rollback any of said media to a previous version. But I have no problem at all with authors retaining the ability to update their works to best fit their personal vision, even if it's years later.
The Skullgirl example is especially confusing, because most of the edits weren't even sexual. And a lot of that sexualization still remains, even in edits.
e.g. I remember one upskirt shot and they simply changed the color of the underwear instead of changing the skirt. Another had some girl completely covered in this goo, and the edit simply uncovers her eyes. Who is that supposed to satisfy?
It's true actually about books, new editions often have improved editing and sometimes writers even go back and fix plot holes or inconsistences. Books already do get 'patched' regularly as it were.
I somewhat agree with some other commenters about original artists being able to do as they wish with their creations, but publishing houses deciding to edit for content years later, especially without author input, feels infinitely more wrong.
What about the people that liked the charm of the original, errors (even bad taste) and all. With physical media you can always search out older un-altered versions (usually) but digital media makes changes permanent.
YouTube does this too. It's interesting when you can see that only 30% of people who clicked on a video make it to the end and there's a 10 second span where half of people leave.
One thing I think is interesting is updating books to keep them modern. I don't think it's that common, but they did it for a bunch of Beverly Cleary books that were published in the 50s-70s. They set in the present day at the time, so later editions will sometimes update the technology to keep it current for modern kids. Mostly little things like having someone type on a computer instead of a typewriter.
It's also worth bringing up music now that it's possible to "patch" songs. Kanye showed the approach with Life of Pablo and we've seen examples of it since, like with the latest Lizzo album updating a song to remove an instance of the word "spaz" because she did not realize it was a slur in the UK and felt the word was easily replaceable.
As an european, i've never been comfortable with the way america media makes light of the nazis.
Talking about nazis here has always been an heavy subject, we've all been made aware of the atrocities they committed, all the suffering they brought, the carnage. And we make sure that history is never forgotten least it repeats itself.
Then you watch any american movie or play any american war game, and all of them paint hitler as some sort of goofy saturday morning cartoon villain with the nazis being just some kind of silly goons.
I think the way american media has made light of the nazis for the better half of the past century is half the reason why nazi ideology has made a comeback in the last few years. If people knew the horrors that nazis were capable of they wouldn't want to associate with them.
I think that going back to remove or modify media that makes light of such tragedies is a good first step to make sure the subject is taken with the tact and respect it deserves.
I can't say I agree.
Rewriting historical works is never justified. Especially not over some moral panic over someone's subjectige opinion on how serious something should be taken, we should not be joke/thought policing.
There are legitimate neo-nazis in the US, but they are far from widely supported and from what I've heard, places like Germany have a lot larger underground neo-nazi support.
Oppressing these people is how you make an underdog and radicalize people. Letting them make fools of themselves in public is how it should be.
What I think had happened is that the defenition of "nazi" has shifted over time as there were less and less actual nazis to refer to.
Are the people being called Nazis usually shitty people? Yes, but nazi is a very specific brand of shitty, not a catch all insult like it gets used today.
There were plenty of american pow's in concentration camps. The horrors of the holocaust are still taught thoroughly in school as a lesson that even well educated, modern, developed christian countries can become monstrous if unchecked.
It just doesn't define America like it does Europe, for what I think are obvious reasons.
This has directly led to the rise of the far right in America though. Availability and normalization of appalling ideas and concepts allow people who share those ideas to fall deeper into radicalization and rally around the ideas presented.
I can also say that the oppression of these groups in Europe has led to the spread and radicalization of nazi sympathizers in Europe as well. We're both just asserting what we believe to be true in a metaphorical thumb war.
But even if this (your beliefs) were true, the alternative is literally government enforced thought policing.
What I do know is that at least in the US I won't be thrown in jail for making a joke
Man guilty of hate crime for filming pug's 'Nazi salutes
Offending people (or even just the risk of offending people) in Europe is worth jail time apparently.
If I don't protect the freedoms of the people I hate, eventually I won't have any freedom either, case-in-point above.
You are burying the lede by calling this a joke and then making a gross generalization that "offending people" is what constituted "jail time".
You're welcome to provide a different example to support your point but the man in the article you linked, Mark Meechan, was not sentenced to jailed. He did spend a night in jail upon his arrest, but he was sentenced to pay a fine of £800 (which he then refused to pay in lieu of donating to a hospital charity before the money was seized from his bank account).
Furthermore, his sentencing happened in 2018 which is important because in 2012 there was a guideline added to the Communications Act 2003 which, summarized: Communications that are merely "grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or false" will be prosecuted only when it can be shown to be necessary and proportionate. This was further clarified in 2013, first with interim guidelines and then revised guidelines following public consultation,
Social Media and other Electronic Communications - Guidance language
Prosecutors should consider the following, non-exhaustive ECHR factors, and should only proceed if they are satisfied there is sufficient evidence that the communication in question is more than:
This is with reference to "contemporary standards… the standards of an open and just multi-racial society", assessing whether the particular message in its particular context is beyond the pale of what is tolerable in society" adopting the observations, as guidance illuminating these terms, in DPP v Collins [2006] UKHL 40, Chambers, Smith v ADVFN [2008] 1797 (QB).
Full guidance available here
All that to say - these guidelines were already in place when he made the video where, per the article you linked, he says, "gas the Jews" and "Sieg Heil" to prompt the dog to give a Nazi salute.
Per these guidelines, his freedom of expression was considered and the prosecution continued. "Prosecutors should only proceed with cases under section 1 MCA 1988 or section 127 CA 2003 where the interference with freedom of expression, is necessary and is proportionate."
His video received 3 million views, he is on record as saying he doesn't think he did anything wrong, and I'll quote this part, "He said that he could see how people could be offended by his video but that he doesn’t “think hurting someone’s feelings is a crime.”" This is also something that prosecution considers as noted by the Divisional Court in DPP v Kingsley Smith, ""the [offender] intended his message be grossly offensive to those to whom it related; or that he was aware at the time of sending that it might be taken to be so by a reasonable member of the public who read or saw it"." (emphasis mine).
There are a number of other cases related to the CA 2003 where their offensive messages have been protected by "freedom of expression" including Kate Scottow who was convicted in February 2020 for tweeting transphobic insults. Her conviction was overturned on appeal in December 2020.
Now, whether or not you think these types of guidelines result in too many prosecutions, sensitivity to obscenity online, etc. are all separate conversations. But, in my opinion, you shouldn't be supporting your points with someone who trained a dog to salute to antisemitic language and thinks he did nothing wrong. It's not thought-policing that the CA 2003 is doing. It's policing tangible, real world communication that has tangible, real world effects on people.
I understand that you’re concerned about thought-policing but I think there’s a big difference between facing legal consequences for something you believe and facing them for media that you produced and then mass distributed. Skullgirls has thousands (if not millions?) of players. The guy in the article you linked had millions of views on YouTube.
Thought-policing, to me, involves an invasive level of surveillance and scrutiny that intrudes on people’s private lives, whereas these situations both reflect statements that people chose to make public to mass audiences. That is a very different situation from thoughtcrime in my book, especially when, in the case of the news article you posted, what he was saying was clearly extreme hate speech regardless of his intent.
To be clear, are you saying that the situation with the guy being arrested for his joke was warranted?
If that's the case then this is a fundamental disagreement and something I personally find quite authoritarian.
And that's also a huge assumption that a joke where someone calls nazis the "least cute thing I could think of" will somehow magically transform people into nazis?
People are individuals that have brains. They can weigh both sides of an argument and come to their own conclusion. That's the foundation of modern society, and they don't need anyone, especially not the government, to dictate which arguments they're allowed to see.
The right to have a belief but not express it is no right at all.
Freedom of expression covers beliefs as well as expressing and sharing those beliefs. It's a fundamental part of having the freedom to express yourself. It's why activists don't get thrown in jail for advocating gay marriage, trans rights, abortion, secularism, etc., even in the most conservative parts of the country. And that's because everyone is afforded that freedom equally on an equal platform.
The entire purpose of it is to protect unpopular speech, because by definition popular speech doesn't need protection. If the US hypothetically somehow became a literal modern nazi germany, freedom of expression would be what would protect those protesting it from being thrown in prison or executed.
It's why peta can keep making their hilariously bad flash games where ash ketchum beats pokemon with a whip, and why PragerU can continue to say dumb, reprehensible things online and get memed to death.
It either goes both ways or it goes neither.
I hope you don't see this as a copout answer because it's the honest truth, but I don't like litigating cases I wasn't present for in places where I don't know the laws (I'm not from the UK). So, for him specifically? I don't honestly know what I feel is correct.
What I will say is that I'm fine with there being consequences for hate speech being broadcast to millions. I also generally think it's a copout to call hate speech a "joke". The internet and extremists have been using that technique as a sanitization method for a long time now, and I'm glad that we're finally at a point that it's starting to get widely seen as such rather than enabled as it did for years and years.
With regards to that man specifically, even if he intended his words as a joke, they were very clearly hate speech. Reducing them to the level of a joke requires denying what he said at face value. Like you, I feel that speech is important and meaningful and valuable, which is why it feels intellectually dishonest of me to just discard what he said as somehow meaningless and meant for laughs. Meanwhile, even if I fully accept it as a joke, I still find it deeply unsettling that 3 million people would find entertainment in someone saying something as abhorrent as "gas the Jews". I think I would be more sympathetic if his were a more ambiguous or borderline case.
That said, in general, I think my views on this are way more gray than yours. I don't think this is a topic that's good to approach from absolutes, and I think it requires a lot of wading into gray areas and tough judgment calls. Like you though, I think that's essential to the functioning of our modern society. Freedom of speech in name alone is not freedom of speech in outcome. When people are targets of hate speech, their own speech and expression is limited, which denies them their own freedom of expression.
I think this is a bit of an overly optimistic take and rather simplified to the point of it being a meme.
Political ideologies don't "make fools of themselves in public" to the ones that end up following them. Never have and probably never will. Sure we can all point and laugh and say "how SILLY that you believe those obviously wrong things" but humans have followed straight-up whackadoodle ideas for their entire history.
Without meaning to offend the religious "Guy in the sky, trust me bro" is what the majority of the Western world believes in and it shapes their opinions and stances. Thinking that a political ideology which can have multiple layers of obfuscation will be regarded with ridicule first and foremost, and that this ridicule will overwhelm any appeal the ideology has is, in my opinion, wishful thinking.
Consider this, modern liberal democracy (I'm using it as the most generally-acceptable example of the "preferred status quo") markets itself in certain terms, when the real-life application is severely lacking and has a TON of problems. No-one says "yeah every 4 years you get to cast a vote based on minimal information and a ton of propaganda and there's going to be massive, corruption, inequality, attempts to disenfranchise and demotivate you, change will be slow and we will have a de facto ruling class and things might end up sucking for a whole lot of you" when promoting liberal democracy.
Similarly Nazis don't say "Hey you know what's fun? Untold human suffering and extermination based on unchangeable traits and unrestrained nationalism possibly leading to a global conflict!". They market themselves along an axis of strength, tradition, pride and of course economic prosperity and 'taking care of our people'. Additionally, what is generally considered by the overwhelming majority of society so abhorrent so as to make one a subject of ridicule is waaaay down at the end of the line. Racism, xenophobia, demonization of foreigners and LGBTQ people, appeals to isolationism and nationalism, turning a blind eye to the death and suffering of "the other" are now part of mainstream democratic discourse,
By the time a Nazi uses their true abhorrent ideas that would make 99.9% of the population say "how can you possibly think that you absolute clownshoe" as marketing material and calls for firing up the ovens it's already too late, they're already in power or next to it and they've laid the ideological groundwork to take the next step.
Which is to say, leaving them alone and trusting the public to ridicule them doesn't seem to work and I really can't think on which tangible example or experience it's based on.
This is an unbelievably baffling take. Have you had your eyes closed for the last five years?
Most Americans are aware of what the Nazis did. A small segment support them. We make light of them because fuck nazis
I would say most Americans know about the Holocaust and that Nazis are bad, but I would argue that the majority don't understand the dangers of fascism itself, or Nazi ideology beyond their antisemitism and white supremacy. Our own history informs us why it's bad to persecute people based on their skin tone or religious preferences, but I'm curious if most Americans could tell you why reporting your neighbors might be a bad concept or speak to the danger of unaccountable government institutions and subsequent authoritarianism. Clearly a huge section of the population is completely blind to far-right policies.
Oh yes, absolutely agreed with you. I think that's been dumbed down significantly. Though I learned quite a bit about it in high school, as well as other ideologies. This was in NJ
You might see a Neo-Nazi and think "That Neo-Nazi must have become comfortable with Nazism because the topic wasn't treated with enough gravity. Nazism should have been portrayed as something darker and more uncomfortable to talk about."
On the other hand, you might see a Neo-Nazi and think "That Neo-Nazi must have been attracted to Nazism because of how taboo it is, and they were able to set themselves apart from their peers by embracing something edgy like that. Nazism should have been talked about more openly, maybe mocked, made light of, so as to avoid creating an attractive taboo topic for people so-inclined."
I can't really say which is more valid. I think both can apply. Maybe the problem was always that person who decided to become a Neo-Nazi.
As a Polander I’ve never been comfortable with the way Europeans make light of the nazis by calling them nazis and at the same time whitewashing Germans. Yes, those mythical „nazis” were German and omitting that info makes it harder to learn from mistakes of the past. This is why rewriting history is bad both in real life and in games, movies and art.
What also bothers me is that people these days say that only the SS were the "real Nazis" and all the other people were just going along with it or forced into it.
The fact is Europe was full of real Nazis and they had all sorts of nationalities. Every country had collaborators and they were all real Nazis in my opinion.
I'm uncomfortable with the idea of conflating the act of video game developers making it so you can't see little digital panties in some shots of a 2D fighting game comprised of overly sexualized all-female anime characters with historical revisionism of mankind's literary accomplishments.
Maybe as an old man, I'm underestimating the importance and societal impact of Skullgirls, but this feels like it should be two entirely different conversations.
I feel like using this as an example makes the question more interesting—The answer feels a bit obvious when you’re rewriting significant parts of history or literature. What about the small works that mostly go unnoticed? What does it say about our culture when we decide that even minor infractions should be corrected, and is it a problem when even those changes go unnoticed?
Yeah that's where I stand, too. This isn't done big literary piece, this is a pretty tongue in cheek fighting game of all things.
That is to say, I don't really mind either way. It's "just" a game.
My intention isn’t really to talk about Skullgirls specifically, it’s just what sparked my thought process on this topic.
It was merely the jumping off point, not a gold star example.
I started wondering how other games (or other media) might be changed because we find something in poor taste today compared to even 10 years ago and how radical those changes could or should be and if people should be receptive to the very idea itself.
If it's something that was generally accepted at the time of creation (which the example given was not), I favor something like a disclaimer. Something that acknowledges that the content hasn't aged well, is now viewed as offensive or harmful, and to keep that in mind while consuming the media through a modern lens.
Whoopi Goldberg's intro on the Looney Tunes DVDs is a well-known example
That approach works really well with static media that isn't constantly changing (TV <sort of>, film, music, etc.) but I'll admit it gets a little trickier with "living" content like video games that get regular updates or new content. But I do also think most (not all) of the people who get really bent out of shape about this sort of thing online don't actually care about retaining the original vision of a piece of media.
History museums deal with this issue pretty frequently, and I think their approach is generally similar. Developers can add context, e.g. a disclaimer. Or add a mode/feature that allows the user to hide the offending content. Removing content entirely feels like covering up the issue and pretending it doesn't exist.
What would that disclaimer be for Skullgirls?
"The former boss was a racist piece of shit that abused his employers until they all quit, and the people now working on it hate those partsaand don't want to sexualise children, but will keep them in to keep the legacy of the piece of shit intact"
I don't think arguing with keeping history intact is a good argument here. It's still receiving updates and isn't and old relic.
That's a fair response. I was speaking more generally about video games/media and not meaning to address Skullgirls specifically. I also didn't realize that Skullgirls DLC was actively being developed. I thought the game was more dead than it is. So I think your stance is more defensible when it comes to Skullgirls.
From a more philosophical perspective though, the suggestion that the only reason to keep harmful content intact in some form or another is to preserve the legacy of the creator is silly though. Why do museums preserve WWII content? To preserve the legacy of Nazis? The fact that the game is actively being developed is relevant to the discussion, but it doesn't fundamentally change the issue.
I get your point, but WW2 might not be the best example. It is taught to show the atrocities human are capable of. It's taught to show us how easily we can be led into something awful and follow along doing unthinkable things. It's taught to not repeat it.
I don't know where a video game would fit into this. The argument could be about art and if we're allowed to destroy it because it's insensitive, but it should never be compared to teaching history.
Edit: We could talk about the release of duke nukem on N64 and if they should've kept it as the original or if they were right by toning it down a bit.
May I ask what other examples you're thinking of? I'm not really up to date with what e.g. Disney may be doing with old animation like Dumbo that had some pretty problematic stuff, or The Black Cauldron, which didn't, just wondering what else you have in mind.
This one seems pretty cut and dry though -- decreasing the horniness by 1% and removing nazi armbands doesn't really smack of censorship or revisionism to me. Loli shit and nazis are touchy subjects at the moment, which is a sentence I can't believe I'm typing, so this just feels prudent.
I am not convinced this was ever actually happening, it was just a form of outrage marketing. Dr Seuss and Goosebumps did the same thing. When's the last time you thought about any of those books before the outrage media advertising campaign?
This is one of the examples I was actually thinking of. I wouldn't exactly equate Skullgirls with classic literature like Roald Dahl but it's what got me thinking about the ethics and concerns with 'going back' and changing media to fit modern sensibility.
Recently several children's books have been edited to be more "sensitive" and "inclusive". Most famously Roald Dahl's books, but I think some R. L. Stine books also got edited. For some reason, the publisher particularly likes replacing anything describing a character as fat in Dahl's books with something like "cheery" or "happy". Another notable change I recall was one book talking about how witches could be any girl, with a range of careers that included cashiers and letter writers. The rewrite changed it to scientists and businesswomen, which was obviously intended to be more "empowering" to girls but in my opinion muddles the intention a bit (that any girl could be a witch).
Here's an article by Time outlining some of the notable changes and the backlash. Some of the changes might be deserved and well-intentioned, but overall it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth as a writer given how it can alter the original intention.
Another thing to mention is this is NOT new. Looney Tunes cartoons were being updated to remove racist stereotypes decades ago back in the 60s and 70s.
I think this is pretty stupid from several angles.
I agree the sexulization of the underaged is not ok, but there's a HUGE conversation about that and anime and sections of japanese culture (which this is certainly drawing inspiration from) that I just don't have the ability or answers for.
The "nazi symbolism" feels like it's especially reaching seeing as how it wasn't just the nazi's who had red arm bands for their military outfits (judging by the images I'd guess it's maybe inspired by russians). I certainly don't think this imagery is "pro nazi" or honestly emboldening or encouraging any nazi's.
There's so much in this world that we can spend our time to improve, and this is, to me, the equivalent of the "this should've been an email" business meeting.
I agree with you. If people are willing to dig through ten years of post history on Twitter, looking for that "gotcha" moment, then I fully expect it to happen elsewhere.
It really depends...obviously you don't want to get into revisionism, pretending these things never happened. But you know, especially if it's a game, you do want your games to be welcoming to everyone. In the 90s/00s there was a big belief that women didn't really play video games, and that's why you see sexualization and objectification of sooo many female characters in games.
Sometimes that can work despite that (Bayonetta being an example, who despite being sexy and risque and fanservicey, is seen as empowering to a lot of women because of the writing in her story and how her sexuality is written as genuinely subversive for the rules of the world she resides in) but a lot of times this kind of fanservice is extremely offputting, especially to women.
I'm sure nerds like us on here have a game or anime that we want to recommend to others but it has this kind of dated sexism that puts people off. I don't think going back and removing those elements is that bad in that sense. But I do get how it can be a slippery slope.
Like people are saying that a disclaimer works and in some cases it does, but for me, a queer woman, when it comes to homophobia and sexism, seeing a disclaimer that 'sorry we severely sexualize women in this game, it was the 80s/90s/early 00s' isn't gonna make me suddenly turn off my brain to it, like oh they're apologizing but that's just how it was back then...ehhh. Same with homophobia...I'm just likely to not even bother with the product then if they'd removed those elements entirely. But of course this is wildly different then what a disclaimer like that is usually used for, namely racial elements from decades ago, and I'm white as the driven snow so not really in a position to talk about that aspect at least.
I remember in Persona 5 people made a big deal of how they removed/changed this bit that was a pretty homophobic joke. Personally I'm glad for things like that. Especially in escapism. I don't really see an argument for keeping these things when you're going to release them in a modern market. But that's just imo.
I think people in this thread are too quick to conflate editing for taste and dangerous historical revisionism. If I have a standup bit and one of my jokes doesn't land, and then in future sets I don't use it anymore, am I a dangerous historical revisionist? Is every single person who consumes problematic media doing so from an analytical perspective in which they need an authentic snapshot of the times and the bigotry involved, or are there people just along for the ride and digesting it at face value?
If everyone was approaching these works with a mind to criticize tasteless missteps in our past, great. I don't see an issue. But I know that there are a lot of people just consuming problematic content unabated, reinforcing their views. The people buying these games/movies/shows aren't all anthropologists and museum employees.
Who's "we"?
My opinion is it's none of my business what a living creator does with their creative output. They are free to change whatever parts they have ownership over, same as I'm free to paint my house whatever colour I want even if my neighbour likes it the way it is. They're free to do it, I'm free to like the result or not, and they're free to not care what I think.
I feel like certain types of games that are sort of in continuous development (such as fighting games, of which Skullgirls is one) is a different situation from books, movies, etc. It may even be a different situation from older published games that are no longer under development.
Games such as fighting games, MMORPGs, League of Legends, etc. are constantly looking for new players to buy into the game. For these players, the product is basically considered a newly published game, no matter when it was originally published. If the current developers think that there is an aspect of their game that will turn off potential new players, then I think it makes a lot of sense to change it.
I strongly recommend watching the youtube comparison video linked in the article. The overall tone/vibe/whatever of this game isn't changing in the slightest. You have sexualized characters who are now ever so slightly less sexualized, and in a TON of these cases it's like a "find the difference" puzzle. Almost everyone with an armband is a background character (literally or part of an attack animation for one character who has one on a few of her alternate colors), and some of these are on a character who is literally a cthulu amalgamation of characters.
There are a bunch of before/after's where if you were bothered by sexualization of the characters, you're still going to be even with the changes made.
I had to dig a little for the article because there wasn't one in the OP, but I'm assuming you're talking about this one? I skimmed through the video and the changes seem understandable to me. They seem small but sometimes significant. That being said, if folks genuinely feel like the tone hasn't changed and the changes are barely noticeable, then why is this so controversial in the first place? Are there folks saying that it hasn't changed enough?
I think all profit media should shy away from things that skirt the line of being illegal, but having messages at the beginning of older works that identify and acknowledge problematic topics is the best thing from a historian's standpoint. Like "this film depicts the racial prejudices of the time and the mistreatment does not reflect our viewpoints" or "this caricature of a member of the LGBTQ community is wrong"
I also don't fault companies for changing older content to more accurately convey the message they wanted to. Like if mickey casually said a slur in an old cartoon, it can be removed or altered without compromising the intended message of the work.
I think it's always noble to try to reduce the amount of bigotry or hate speech in a work, and never noble to promote bigotry or hate speech even absentmindedly, so that's a clear line in the sand for me when it comes to censorship and free speech.
I don't disagree with what a lot of people are saying here, but sexualized imagery of children is a whole other ballgame IMO. I think we should go back and censor that, child actors can get pushed into a lot of messed up stuff by their parents. Think about Brooke Shields for example, she was sexualized since she was 11 and was even on a cover of playboy as a child!! No one should have to be subjected to that for the rest of their lives because their parents weren't looking out for their best interest.
For a random videogame honestly I'm fine with it. I hate that conversation where you go "yeah great game/show/movie it's tons of fun. By the way, super racist and sexist though so just try to ignore that and don't judge me for promoting it."
Thing is in this example it's more like "it's super sexist but don't worry it's slightly less sexist now" (there's an entire conversation about whether this example is "sexist", but I'll overlook that for this moment). So, what really changed in my pitch at the end of the day?
I'm going to borrow a relatively known screen from another medium to explain my viewpoint:
And I'll emphasize the last part of it that really solidifies my viewpoint:
The only thing worse than rewriting history is ignoring it. Even if you think it's obviously objectionable, It should be used as a lesson on what NOT to do, not some vaulted off part of history we forget. That warning in the beginning of a work shows that the airers are coming from a place of understanding and respect, not one of malice and support. And I feel that is enough acknowledgement to frame the work with.
There's also the coporate aspect of editing content that I don't like. They want to essentially double dip on an audience's nostalgia without putting in the proper work to create new content with that IP. Above all else, many content edits feel lazy and hacked in, instead of an attempt to make it blend with the original artistic vision. I may not like all remakes/reboots of old content, but I can at least respect giving modern creators the ability to try and re-imagine an existing IP instead of trying to force out/in pieces that never fit to begin with.
now with all that said, I understand that not all editing is done from a moral standpoint:
I don't think so, at least not for other forms of media (video/music/literature). The Star Wars updates that Lucas made to the OT were bad enough.
For games though, we've gotten so used to the idea of games getting updated or patched, are games ever really "finished" anymore? There's updates being made to games that are years, maybe even decades old at this point. Which changes/updates are acceptable vs those that aren't? Can we even do anything about it? It's just going to happen whether we like it or not, unless you switch off automatic updates. I would prefer the idea of them making these sorts of major content updates as optional features and leave the original still available for someone that actually wants to see it.
depends on the kinds of games you play. There are still plenty that release, maybe get a bug fix, and then move on. People were upset that Pokemon Legends Arceus really only got 2 major patches. Which is still 1-2 more than any other pokemon game before it.
I think it's useless playing moral guardian, but as a consumer I'm going to simply ask: "does this update bring any value to me?". This can still be tricky for stuff like bug fixes, because I may have never run into it but others have. So I understand it adding value and polish to a game.
Updates like this Skullgirls one almost never feel that way, even from an empathetic POV. I doubt anyone was swayed by some armbands in the backgrounds, and the sexual changes weren't enough to where I feel it will suddenly win people over who were turned off by the sexualization. So it just feels like a waste of resources. I don't like these changes, but don't half-ass them if that's the direction you want to take. You just disappoint everyone if you don't commit.
A little off-topic but Harmy's Despecialized Edition of the OT is a wonderful restoration. As far as I'm concerned it's the definitive way to watch the originals and I'm raising my kids on it.
Briefly leaving aside the game that brought up the discussion in order to reflect on the topic itself, I don't think there has to be a one-size-fits-all solution to this conundrum, and sometimes I think different works (even within the same genre) benefit from different solutions.
Historical revisionism is shit, but artists (including authors, etc) should also be allowed to update their works to reflect their own growth; we see that in various 2nd+ editions of scientific works, but also in works of fiction-- this has been used both to catch up to modern sensibilities and simply to editorialize a book to make it better after the author had gained more writing experience, or thought about a plot point that stuck in their craw and wanted to rectify what they saw now as a mistake worth fixing in an existing work.
I think it's a little murky getting into updating the existing works of dead authors (why? I'm not really sure why my gut says that, maybe it's just a lack of being able to get consent? Is it fine for their estates, if they exist, to do so? I don't have an answer to this, tbh), but also nothing stops other people from iterating on them once they enter the public domain, so the classics tend to get revisited for The Times, such as they are, every generation or so anyway.
A lot of people's concern with modern day 2nd Editions may be with the lack of a (literal) paper trail; and I can see that, as more media becomes digital only, it gets a lot easier to just edit it out if something lands poorly or is criticized, especially if the offending party is a huge media conglomerate. I don't think Disney would be as quick to give us Somber JPGs in front of showings of its older media if they could have simply erased it all from existence instead, but that cat is out of the bag (for now, anyway). :P
I do think that kind of cultural history is important to remember! It gives legitimacy and more contextual weight to the often mostly-toothlessly-told history that gets watered down at every chance we get.
That said, I just don't know if I agree that every single bit of entertainment media should be left totally unmolested from its inception for fear of the boogeyman of revisionism. Not to be callous, but I think ascribing that sort of cultural heft to every single creation that gets made may be unwarranted.
I think ultimately, the biggest hurdle to the future of archiving media will be continuing to find enough people who care & are able to truly archive the endless sea of media of all kinds so we have anything at all to compare things to. Fully digital media whose access is controlled primarily by big corporate conglomerates sounds like an absolute nightmare for anyone concerned about revisionism of the cultural zeitgeist in the next coming decades. As long as people have been archiving things, those that aren't well connected have had the collections they've worked so hard on dumped by family or the state going through their homes and trashing everything that they don't ascribe potential monetary worth to, and I think that's only going to get worse as more and more things live "only in the cloud".
That might be a greater concern to people worried about historical revisionism than whether or not one fighting game among thousands did a little tone editing to get rid of what sounds like something two steps removed from kiddie porn. :P I don't think there is much historical value in that questionable kiddie content, I'm not too sorry to say.
History SHOULD make us uncomfortable. We should be so bothered by some history that we simply REFUSE to repeat it.
Legally, it is obviously their right to edit things.
Morally, I think it is completely wrong and unethical.
To the first point, I'm automatically wary of any company that decides to edit their stuff after release. It smacks of "outrage advertising" to me. The recent RL Stine kerfluffle is one such example. I firmly believe it was a way to drum up sales. Someone created it, someone edited it, someone proof read (or playtested if a game) and all of those people essentially signed off on it. Own whatever decisions you made or convictions you wished to convey. If you changed and/or grew with the times, add a disclaimer to it.
Now, if someone wants to stop selling something they consider "too problematic" (Disney's "Song of the South") that's fine, in my opinion. They're not muddying the waters with different versions. Same thing with the real reason Dr Suess's publisher stopped selling certain books--they simply weren't selling enough to make it worthwhile.
Morally, however, I think creator's who use copyright protections sort of "owe" society to leave the originals unchanged. They can add something like a disclaimer or release an entirely new remastered or "modern/anniversary edition" along with a disclaimer.
Editing a book to hide uncomfortable things is tantamount to banning said book. I can't think of any "good guys" in history that banned books.
Florida is in the process of completely editing out whole swathes of history and pretending that anything civil rights related never happened. The laws are purposefully vague enough that in an effort to comply, publishers are not even mentioning WHY Rosa Parks refused to move. That is the insidiousness of these vague laws. They're not telling teacher's WHICH books will land them in trouble, just that SOME books will. In an act of self-preservation, teachers are getting rid of nearly all books in their classroom as a result. Then Pudding Fingers and his cronies can say "Well, WE didn't ban that book!"
Generally speaking, we shouldn't be modifying old media to fit modern sensibilities. If you consider something offensive or unacceptable, then don't consume that product, and, if you want, feel free to advise others to do the same.
A major streaming service in my country puts a warning at the start of 70s, 80s, and 90s soap opera and TV series episodes. Because they are all full of sexism and terrible representation. I'm okay with that.
We should be critical of the past, not revisionist
That said, nowadays games are never really done, and developers have full autonomy to decide what to do with new versions of their own games, for whatever reason. Most games don't have an "authoritative" version anymore, they're in a state of constant change. So, unlike other media, there's often not a "real" state that is locked in time that I'd feel compelled to preserve.
I think so. I think if you want to remain relevant and with it, it is okay to go back to your art and revise it.
George Lucas I believe is a pioneer of this. I'm not happy that he's revised the OT so much, but it's also his vision. A true artist never finishes their work and has to learn to part with it at some point. George is an artist and he got caught up in doing the artist thing.
There was a story I read some while back about an artist who did not like the error in his painting after seeing it in a museum and tried to fix the error as it hung on the wall, but the people working there held him back. I forgot which artist this was.
If you're an artist, you can probably relate. It's hard to call a piece finished.
Let's take a game that we can no longer revise as an example... and NSFW warning, but Clay Fighters Sculptor's Cut for the N64. The things that made it into this game simply wouldn't fly today. It's extremely racist and offensive. That's a game that people now remember for its rarity and how racist it is. That's its legacy and the legacy of the people who worked behind it, forever.
So if the artists for Skullgirls are concerned for the legacy of their game, I say let them fix it. They're sorry. They want Skullgirls to be culturally and artistically relevant and I support that.
I should clarify something: the devs that are making these changes are not the original devs. The original team apparently went bankrupt and the publisher retained the rights and formed a new studio. This new studio is putting out the changes. Allegedly the original founder was a huge POS btw. The game is still very much sexualized and everything but they decided to remove some aspects they felt went too far: Nazi imagery, some panty shots on questionably aged characters, and a scene with a black character being beaten by police.
These changes don’t personally bother me and I’ve ever even played the game but it sparked my interest in talking about what it means to go back and revise media, especially in the digital age.
Worth mentioning new studio is essentially the old one minus the former lead after everything with him came out, lest anyone read this comment and think the ones making the changes were disconnected outsiders jumping in and changing things willy-nilly. Neither of the original leads remain, with Alex Ahad leaving before any of this and Mike Z being a piece of garbage, but the bulk of the team is the same.
I still support it👍
No, these are artifacts of a past society. Rather than changing them, we should reflect and learn from them, keeping these "errors" as a reminder of what we were once, and what we should be doing in the future.
If it is a piece of work that is still relevant to current times, then it's a hard maybe, like in this case where a game is being made more palatable for today's gamers.
Unless it's a news reporting that had misinformed readers previously or something similar, I am in the camp of "keep it as it is". We can't be retconning every single thing we find distasteful. Might as well forget about all the atrocities and errors we've all made in the past... (and keep on doing it).
A lot of stuff depicted in paintings which are in museums can be considered a crime or morally wrong today.
I know that there is an ignorant self-centered minority salivating to destroy every piece of art and reality which doesn't agree with their current fad, but someone has to be the grown-up here and help everyone understand the insignificant place they occupy in the history of our civilization. Please apply to the world the same rule you apply to a bathroom: leave it at least in the same condition you found it. If possible, a little better.
A point that I saw brought up in a discussion on this elsewhere is that the reasoning for the changes fanned the flames. Had their statement read something like “the Egrets are not while enough to warrant Nazi-inspired uniforms, and we’re no longer 23 years old, so testing the code that replaces the number 18 with the string legal makes us roll our eyes instead of laugh”, much of the controversy could have been tempered. Instead, the reasoning was read as “we’ve made all the money we can from the game in its current state, so we’re changing it for everyone to attract more paying customers. We already have your money and we’ll spend it on drugs.”
I don't love it, but I do think it's a creative decision of the artists.(referring to the entire organization that helped produce it, not just those that made the "art assets). I do think a record of the change, or an acknowledgement is necessary.
It's complicated because I think you need to strike a balance of not popularizing or spreading problematic things or hate and keeping things technically available for history. For example, I have long lamented the fact that George Lucas put so much effort in preventing a release of the original cuts of Star Wars. I understood the desire to update them, and I support his decision to do so. I don't support completely cutting off access to the old. I think he should have kept it available even if he made it difficult to obtain(perhaps some written request or purchasing directly, idk). Here though, the movies are not hurting anyone.
So I think I would apply the same rules to a developer removing something problematic. If I made a game when I was younger that became a popular meme game but had some racist aspect to it, I would certainly not want to let that remain in perpetuity. I would change that game. Should I keep a version of this old game around? I'm inclined to think no. Spreading these views could cause harm. It could lead others to think those views are acceptable.
I think some of the skullgirls changes are silly. I own it, but I've not played it a ton. I can't say I'm attached to anything that got changed. I'm not even sure I think anything they changed does to much to make it less offensive to any particular group. I do fundamentally agree with the logic they present.
No, we shouldn't go back to edit anything to fit modern viewpoints.