David Jaffe gives in to bad IGN review, tunes down "offensive" content in his videogame

[Nature Guardian]

So, I'm playing a lot of Drawn To Death recently.

That game's attitude is all about immature, crass, funny humor - not because it's stupid, but because it's the art style of the game pretty much like Mortal Kombat's hyperviolence is part of that game's style.

Just in the tutorial, the drawing of a dissectioned frog insults you in all possible ways.

And during the game, the announcer makes comments about his raging erection or about how bad you are at playing.

Well, apparently some IGN moron didn't understand the concept of "style" and called the game offensive.

In the latest patch, the game's main dev, David Jaffe (of God Of War and Twisted Metal fame) announced that they were changing the frog's comments to be less offensive and that they were tuning down what the announcer said during the game.

That's as if, back in the '90s, the Mortal Kombat developers decided to completely remove the violence from their game because certain people complained about it.

 

[Here Comes Tomorrow]

I don't really care but I can't help but laugh at the lack of integrity and am reminded of Yoko Taro's response to people complaining about 2B's butt.

 

[Dornedas]

Well I absolutely support his decision.
If it made people feel uncomfortable then it absolutely should be changed.
I mean HELLO we have 2017 especially comments about erections simply shouldn't fly anymore nowadays.
And commenting about the skill of the player is equally unacceptable.
Not everybody is a virgin neckbeard living in their parents basement that has the time to play games 30 hours a day.

 

[Erttheking]

The internet really needs to stop advocating for, what I like to call, first draft culture. The idea that the first version of something is the best, and that any attempts by the creator to fine tune it are a disgrace and "giving in." Plenty of times, when people create a work, they need outside perspective. Did it ever occur to you that maybe, just maybe, the developer thought that IGN might be onto something? That they might be right? Because not every change to a game is someone giving into moral cowardice and willingly shredding their own artistic vision.

Sure, talk about if you think that the changes make for a lesser experience, but I'm seriously tired of people acting like any changes of this nature as a response to criticism are a bad thing and focusing on the moral aspect of how it's bad, rather than if the change makes the game better or worse.

 

[BrawlMan]

So, I'm playing a lot of Drawn To Death recently.

That game's attitude is all about immature, crass, funny humor - not because it's stupid, but because it's the art style of the game pretty much like Mortal Kombat's hyperviolence is part of that game's style.

Just in the tutorial, the drawing of a dissectioned frog insults you in all possible ways.

And during the game, the announcer makes comments about his raging erection or about how bad you are at playing.

Well, apparently some IGN moron didn't understand the concept of "style" and called the game offensive.

In the latest patch, the game's main dev, David Jaffe (of God Of War and Twisted Metal fame) announced that they were changing the frog's comments to be less offensive and that they were tuning down what the announcer said during the game.

That's as if, back in the '90s, the Mortal Kombat developers decided to completely remove the violence from their game because certain people complained about it.

1. It's IGN, so this does not surprise me. They have always been hypocritical twats. The praised the content in GTA V, but were "offended" by the gigolo missions in Killer Is Dead.

2. This is not the first time David Jaffe censored his own game with a patch. The God of War: Ascension achievement "Bros Before Hoes", became "Bros Before Foes", due to a few whiny piss ants. Ironically, IGN was not one of them. Kotaku, Polygon, and Adam Sessler were the most vocal about this. To all of them, and especially Sessler, I have to ask: Where was this sense of morality back in the early or mid 2000s? Did your balls drop off all of sudden or, were you just doing this for the sake of convince, and make yourselves look better than what you are?

3. The "professionals", mainly from the West, seem to have this inclination of wanting to be seen as respectable, mature, and more 'adult' by their other peers. Who for all intents and purposes, a majority of them don't give a shit. It's why you got crap like God of War IV trying to be a Last Of Us clone, nobody asked for, or most of them jizzing over the DmC reboot. Which in itself is another hypocrisy in DmC case; especially from IGN and the defunct Game Trailers.

 

[Ogoid]

That's as if, back in the '90s, the Mortal Kombat developers decided to completely remove the violence from their game because certain people complained about it.

If you recall, Nintendo actually did just that, with the SNES version of MK1. Sales numbers were quick to remind them that removing a game's main draw to appease people who aren't playing it in the first place isn't a very smart business strategy.

Hopefully we'll see the same happen here.

 

[Nature Guardian]

Well I absolutely support his decision.
If it made people feel uncomfortable then it absolutely should be changed.
I mean HELLO we have 2017 especially comments about erections simply shouldn't fly anymore nowadays.
And commenting about the skill of the player is equally unacceptable.
Not everybody is a virgin neckbeard living in their parents basement that has the time to play games 30 hours a day.

That last comment of yours speaks volumes. If you really arent a lonely neckbeard and do have a life, that means you shouldnt care about not being a pro at some videogame.

If you get offended by a prerecorded videogame message mocking you and anyone playing at your place, then removing such phrase is not going to fix your psychological issues.

 

[Nature Guardian]

The internet really needs to stop advocating for, what I like to call, first draft culture. The idea that the first version of something is the best, and that any attempts by the creator to fine tune it are a disgrace and "giving in." Plenty of times, when people create a work, they need outside perspective. Did it ever occur to you that maybe, just maybe, the developer thought that IGN might be onto something? That they might be right? Because not every change to a game is someone giving into moral cowardice and willingly shredding their own artistic vision.

Sure, talk about if you think that the changes make for a lesser experience, but I'm seriously tired of people acting like any changes of this nature as a response to criticism are a bad thing and focusing on the moral aspect of how it's bad, rather than if the change makes the game better or worse.

When the entire style of the game is based on being "offensive", removing the offensive content destroys the entire game concept.

Like Dead or Alive without boobs or GTA without killing pedestrians.

 

[SirSullymore]

Dang, the announcer was my favorite part of that game.

 

[Erttheking]

The internet really needs to stop advocating for, what I like to call, first draft culture. The idea that the first version of something is the best, and that any attempts by the creator to fine tune it are a disgrace and "giving in." Plenty of times, when people create a work, they need outside perspective. Did it ever occur to you that maybe, just maybe, the developer thought that IGN might be onto something? That they might be right? Because not every change to a game is someone giving into moral cowardice and willingly shredding their own artistic vision.

Sure, talk about if you think that the changes make for a lesser experience, but I'm seriously tired of people acting like any changes of this nature as a response to criticism are a bad thing and focusing on the moral aspect of how it's bad, rather than if the change makes the game better or worse.

When the entire style of the game is based on being "offensive", removing the offensive content destroys the entire game concept.

Like Dead or Alive without boobs or GTA without killing pedestrians.

He modified an announcer and something that was in the tutorial. Now, I have not played the game, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. Was the game so shallow that it can't exist without those two things? He didn't even remove them, he just toned it down. I mean, have you played it yet? Has the quality dropped that radically?

You mean Dead or Alive the fighting game? The game were boobs are only really emphasized in the spin off volleyball games? The game that actually had a fully armored Halo SPARTAN in it? http://deadoralive.wikia.com/wiki/SPARTAN-458

And if you were to take killing civilians out of GTA, you'd still have car chases, races, assassinations, heists, police shootouts, hunting, flying, stock market, bounty hunting, kind of a lot of things going on in there that would let the game keep going.

It just kind of seems like you're boiling games down to their most well known and marketable traits.

 

[Death Carr]

I don't know how to broach this
on one hand, I think that no creator should "give in" to criticism and change something to please critics
on the other hand, I think that creators should listen to criticism and take that criticism to heat (to a degree)

I think that games need to change to match the times they're created in
so for the modern day, where people have actually learned that being unnecessarily offensive isn't the best way to attract people to your title, maybe tone down the 90s style over the top offensiveness
because it isn't the 90s anymore

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Why would somebody care about an IGN review? This is less "PC gone mad" and more they must have been personally offended by the frog enjoying seeing the player lose enough to wank off to. It's like an ego thing. That said though, there was an annoying bug during my first playthrough on the tutorial that had a specific announcer's audio loop in a way that really isn't great for any attempt at humour. It was a fairly long recording, which eased the annoyance a bit, but i can see anybody hanging about longer there would not be so forgiving. Still, after seeing his words in the review, sounds like the reviewer is reacting more from a fragile ego. Pity the creator should fall for it. Some gamers seem to demand continuous encouragement and congratulations from their experience.

 

[Neverhoodian]

The internet really needs to stop advocating for, what I like to call, first draft culture. The idea that the first version of something is the best, and that any attempts by the creator to fine tune it are a disgrace and "giving in." Plenty of times, when people create a work, they need outside perspective.

Isn't that what editing and, in the case of video games, play testing is for? When a story makes it to publication it's probably been through the editorial wringer at least once. Rarely is the final product identical to the original drafts.

I'm not saying editors and testers are infallible, but if someone is confident enough to publish something after editor approval then shouldn't they be able to weather criticism from one reviewer? Or hell, since this is a video game why not keep both versions of the allegedly offensive dialogue and allow the player to select which one they prefer in the Options menu? Call it "Extreme Dialogue Mode" or something.

 

[Erttheking]

The internet really needs to stop advocating for, what I like to call, first draft culture. The idea that the first version of something is the best, and that any attempts by the creator to fine tune it are a disgrace and "giving in." Plenty of times, when people create a work, they need outside perspective.

Isn't that what editing and, in the case of video games, play testing is for? When a story makes it to publication it's probably been through the editorial wringer at least once. Rarely is the final product identical to the original drafts.

I'm not saying editors and testers are infallible, but if someone is confident enough to publish something after editor approval then shouldn't they be able to weather criticism from one reviewer? Or hell, since this is a video game why not keep both versions of the allegedly offensive dialogue and allow the player to select which one they prefer in the Options menu? Call it "Extreme Dialogue Mode" or something.

This is true, but perspectives continually become more and more varied the further a product moves along. You need only look at Blade Runner in order to see how something can be approved for a final product, receive a lukewarm reception, and then be changed afterward for the better. The Director's Cut is famous for radically changing the product and making it MUCH better. The thing is, people always call a developer who changes their views someone who is caving. No one ever considers the possibility of them agreeing with the reviewer. Someone's artistic vision isn't set in stone, no one ever goes "every last detail of this is exactly how I wanted it, and changed the slightest bit would ruin my vision."

Though I do see your point in that we do now live in a world where we can very much have our cake and eat it too, so an alternate mode to please those who want the old stuff wouldn't go awry.

 

[McMarbles]

Sounds like a case of a creator deciding what's best for their own work...

oh, right, I keep forgetting that we only care about what the creator wants when it comes to underage anime tits or excluding non-white-male characters.

 

[Nature Guardian]

So, I'm playing a lot of Drawn To Death recently.

That game's attitude is all about immature, crass, funny humor - not because it's stupid, but because it's the art style of the game pretty much like Mortal Kombat's hyperviolence is part of that game's style.

Just in the tutorial, the drawing of a dissectioned frog insults you in all possible ways.

And during the game, the announcer makes comments about his raging erection or about how bad you are at playing.

Well, apparently some IGN moron didn't understand the concept of "style" and called the game offensive.

In the latest patch, the game's main dev, David Jaffe (of God Of War and Twisted Metal fame) announced that they were changing the frog's comments to be less offensive and that they were tuning down what the announcer said during the game.

That's as if, back in the '90s, the Mortal Kombat developers decided to completely remove the violence from their game because certain people complained about it.

1. It's IGN, so this does not surprise me. They have always been hypocritical twats. The praised the content in GTA V, but were "offended" by the gigolo missions in Killer Is Dead.

2. This is not the first time David Jaffe censored his own game with a patch. The God of War: Ascension achievement "Bros Before Hoes", became "Bros Before Foes", due to a few whiny piss ants.

Jaffe hasn't actively been involved with God of War since GoW2's early development. I think the decision was more corporate face-saving than anything, as is usually the case.



Having said that, it's pretty sad that this was done all in the name of appeasing a few sensitive Susans/Simons. Sometimes I think the gaming medium is too vulnerable to criticism being able to be patched like this every time something upsets someone. No one complains about books and movies like this anyways, probably because "it's all art" and therefore off limits.

 

[sageoftruth]

Well I absolutely support his decision.
If it made people feel uncomfortable then it absolutely should be changed.
I mean HELLO we have 2017 especially comments about erections simply shouldn't fly anymore nowadays.
And commenting about the skill of the player is equally unacceptable.
Not everybody is a virgin neckbeard living in their parents basement that has the time to play games 30 hours a day.

That last comment of yours speaks volumes. If you really arent a lonely neckbeard and do have a life, that means you shouldnt care about not being a pro at some videogame.

If you get offended by a prerecorded videogame message mocking you and anyone playing at your place, then removing such phrase is not going to fix your psychological issues.

I'm not certain of this, with this being the internet and all, but I really think he was joking.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Sounds like a case of a creator deciding what's best for their own work...

oh, right, I keep forgetting that we only care about what the creator wants when it comes to underage anime tits or excluding non-white-male characters.

Once a video game is released, it's a pure work set in stone forever more.

Unless a lot of people don't like its ending.

 

[sageoftruth]

Anyway, if that's actually the direction he wants to take it in, I won't complain. Then again, I'm not actually playing the game, so my feelings about this really shouldn't count (I'm serious btw). Crass humor's just not my thing. Still, I feel like he'd actually take "Offensive" as a compliment if he truly wanted to take his game in that direction. Either that, or he just cared about other aspects of the game more than the theme, and didn't want people to miss out on them because his theme was off-putting.

 

[shrekfan246]

oh noooooooo someone altered some immature "humor" because it was rightfully criticized for being the bargain-bin "comedy" it actually is its the end of the wooooorrrrrllllllld