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

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

David Jaffe is still around? I would say "how the mighty have fallen", but his might was always questionable

 

[09philj]

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.

Films can't be easily altered, and nobody gives a shit about trash lit because there's so much of it and it's not hugely popular. Shitty exploitation films which are needlessly unpleasant tend not to make their money back anyway.

 

[TheVampwizimp_v1legacy]

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's... frankly absurd. Erections are hilarious. Insulting the player is funny. Poop is hysterical. Sex is a laugh riot.

Anything can be the subject of a joke, including boners. The date on the calendar has nothing to do with whether that's appropriate or not. And if my video game insults me, I can insult it back. It doesn't care, it's inanimate. Why should you care?

EDIT: ah, dammit, you got me. I just looked up your recent post history...

 

[Nature Guardian]

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

I am sorry you are right.

In the 90s people made poop and sex jokes.

Modern kids want antisemitic jokes.

They should have replaced the boner dialogue with a "kill all Jews" line. Or maybe an internet meme. Or Donald Trump.

We have EVOLVED you guys.

 

[CaitSeith]

David Jaffe gives in to bad IGN review

Did you ask David Jaffe directly? Did he quote IGN? It's kinda obtuse to do such accusations without double-checking.

In fact, did that tone-down announcement even happen?

 

[gyrobot_v1legacy]

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.

This is why the exploitation genre is well on its way to going the way of the dodo and replaced with the utterly unambitous AAA that investors are attracted. Every time a critic does shit like this that forces people to tone down their content to avoid being persona non grata shows how Japan is at least good at letting the audience dictate taste and not some focus group.

 

[CaitSeith]

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.

This is why the exploitation genre is well on its way to going the way of the dodo and replaced with the utterly unambitous AAA that investors are attracted. Every time a critic does shit like this that forces people to tone down their content to avoid being persona non grata shows how Japan is at least good at letting the audience dictate taste and not some focus group.

Oh, but they have a focus group: Japanese Otakus. If you aren't a Japanese Otaku, you won't even be able to have access to half of their game releases, because you aren't part of their audience.

 

[Erttheking]

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.

This is why the exploitation genre is well on its way to going the way of the dodo and replaced with the utterly unambitous AAA that investors are attracted. Every time a critic does shit like this that forces people to tone down their content to avoid being persona non grata shows how Japan is at least good at letting the audience dictate taste and not some focus group.

Yes, I know we all love the narrative that game developers are fragile little babies that are incapable of making decisions on their own and that they get strong armed by critics into doing something that we don't have to do, but can we please stop? Can we please not pretend that developers are incapable of making their own decisions, thinking that maybe even that this change will improve their game for the better?

Also if you think Japan doesn't use focus groups, I think you need to stop overromanticizing Japan.

 

[EternallyBored]

So other than the OP's word, do we actually have any evidence that it was IGN that caused Jaffe to change it? Because I know Giant Bomb complained loudly in their video that the game's humor was cringey, and specifically called out the T-rex boner line as an example of the announcer being annoying. Of course Polygon called it out too, but they're Polygon so I figure that's kind of a given.

Also I see a lot regular people that complained about the announcer, especially the boner line, both for being cringey and unfunny, and for being too fucking long (seriously that line is way too long). I don't give a shit what the announcer says, but if you design an announcer that spouts 15-30 second dialogue lines that are sparse enough that you can get a fucking repeat in a single match, especially in a game revolving around small arena multiplayer matches, you designed a shitty announcer.

I have PS+ so the game was free, I'll say the announcer being too fucking talky and annoying is a major reason I dropped the game after 3 hours. I was around in the 90's for that brand of offensive humor, this is not 90's humor, Twisted Metal is what Jaffe did in the 90's, this is not Twisted Metal humor, Jaffe is 45 years old now, this is 90's humor having a mid-life crisis.

EDIT: for those curious, here's Dan from Giant Bomb complaining about the game's humor, also a good example of the announcer and how it won't shut up:

 

[Nature Guardian]

I have PS+ so the game was free, I'll say the announcer being too fucking talky and annoying is a major reason I dropped the game after 3 hours. I was around in the 90's for that brand of offensive humor, this is not 90's humor, Twisted Metal is what Jaffe did in the 90's, this is not Twisted Metal humor, Jaffe is 45 years old now, this is 90's humor having a mid-life crisis.

So you didn't even, you know, GO IN THE OPTIONS MENU AND FIND OUT YOU CAN COMPLETELY DISABLE THE ANNOUNCER?

 

[Nature Guardian]

David Jaffe gives in to bad IGN review

Did you ask David Jaffe directly? Did he quote IGN? It's kinda obtuse to do such accusations without double-checking.

In fact, did that tone-down announcement even happen?

Noooo, I totally made a thread about it without any confirmation....

 

[Erttheking]

David Jaffe gives in to bad IGN review

Did you ask David Jaffe directly? Did he quote IGN? It's kinda obtuse to do such accusations without double-checking.

In fact, did that tone-down announcement even happen?

Noooo, I totally made a thread about it without any confirmation....

Can we please have a link then?

 

[EternallyBored]

I have PS+ so the game was free, I'll say the announcer being too fucking talky and annoying is a major reason I dropped the game after 3 hours. I was around in the 90's for that brand of offensive humor, this is not 90's humor, Twisted Metal is what Jaffe did in the 90's, this is not Twisted Metal humor, Jaffe is 45 years old now, this is 90's humor having a mid-life crisis.

So you didn't even, you know, GO IN THE OPTIONS MENU AND FIND OUT YOU CAN COMPLETELY DISABLE THE ANNOUNCER?

So what? I listed it as a major reason rather than the only reason, without the announcer its still a mediocre shooter with only some occasionally interesting aesthetics to hold it up. Doesn't make it any less of a shitty announcer, and a major annoyance in the game itself. Being able to turn off a shitty option does not make the option itself any less poorly designed.

Also, you got some proof of that confirmation that Jaffe is caving to IGN specifically, or are you just ignoring every one else that slagged off the game's humor? You seem really overly invested in this.

 

[Nature Guardian]

I have PS+ so the game was free, I'll say the announcer being too fucking talky and annoying is a major reason I dropped the game after 3 hours. I was around in the 90's for that brand of offensive humor, this is not 90's humor, Twisted Metal is what Jaffe did in the 90's, this is not Twisted Metal humor, Jaffe is 45 years old now, this is 90's humor having a mid-life crisis.

So you didn't even, you know, GO IN THE OPTIONS MENU AND FIND OUT YOU CAN COMPLETELY DISABLE THE ANNOUNCER?

So what? I listed it as a major reason rather than the only reason, without the announcer its still a mediocre shooter with only some occasionally interesting aesthetics to hold it up. Doesn't make it any less of a shitty announcer, and a major annoyance in the game itself. Being able to turn off a shitty option does not make the option itself any less poorly designed.

"I don't like this optional thing of the videogame that I can turn off in five seconds" does not seem like a good argument to explain why you don't like a game.

Also, you got some proof of that confirmation that Jaffe is caving to IGN specifically, or are you just ignoring every one else that slagged off the game's humor? You seem really overly invested in this.

The game really clicked with me. It brought me back to the '90s and to my childhood reading Lobo comics (which have the same type of humor).

It's a normal human reaction to get angry when someone hates on something you love.

 

[DaCosta]

Also, you got some proof of that confirmation that Jaffe is caving to IGN specifically, or are you just ignoring every one else that slagged off the game's humor? You seem really overly invested in this.

The game really clicked with me. It brought me back to the '90s and to my childhood reading Lobo comics (which have the same type of humor).

It's a normal human reaction to get angry when someone hates on something you love.

I guess it is a natural human reaction to blindly and angrily defend something when you turn into a fanboy.

So, how about that proof that it's IGN's fault and not just an attempt to change something most people appear to dislike about the game?

 

[EternallyBored]

Ignoring the first part because its an offtopic argument, I want an announcer, just not one that tells the same handful of overly long unfunny stories every match, turning him off doesn't help that.

The game really clicked with me. It brought me back to the '90s and to my childhood reading Lobo comics (which have the same type of humor).

It's a normal human reaction to get angry when someone hates on something you love.

Great, that's fine, I don't mind that you like the game, I'm sure if I listed some of my favorite games you could find some you absolutely hated and rag on me for liking them.

Doesn't change that you are blaming IGN for something with no actual proof IGN had anything to do with it. A normal human reaction doesn't mean you just get to spew things unchallenged against anyone that draws your ire.

I just wasted 10 minutes watching the Dev Youtube video announcing the new patch, the dialogue change gets one brief second mention at the end, and its framed as a way to attract people to the game that might be turned off by the overly antagonistic tutorial. Part of the reason they are doing this seems to be because the game is bleeding players, and they specifically mention doing it for a short period of time to see if fewer players drop the game and that they would look into changing it back in a week or two, given the data they have available they are probably seeing an unusually high number of players dropping the game in the tutorial.

The announcer change doesn't seem to effect his basic jokes, only his overly long anecdotes. Something I can see people complained about on the forums, specifically asking for a way to make the long repetitive stories stop. Even if you find things like the t-rex boner joke funny, its too long to remain entertaining for a lot of people after the first couple dozen matches. The content of the story is largely irrelevant, hearing the same 30 second voice clip is going to get old if it isn't actually announcing anything relevant to the match itself.

It seems like they are experimenting with complaints the players themselves are voicing, and are fully willing to change them back if it doesn't work, that does not strike me as a company caving to offended people, more them trying to save a game that looks like its going to give Evolve a run for its money in how fast the playerbase drops the game.

 

[Elijin]

This is...

Whats with the implication that criticism means you didn't understand it? Especially with crude/shock/offensive humour. Its a polarizing style of comedy, which people can fully understand and just not be a fan of.

If the dev changed the game based on that feedback, that's the decision/problem of the dev, not the reviewer for having an opinion on something intentionally provocative. But then you seem pretty 'fanboy' in your follow up comments, so I'm guessing holding the dev accountable isn't high on a list of things which will happen for you.

 

[Nature Guardian]

It seems like they are experimenting with complaints the players themselves are voicing, and are fully willing to change them back if it doesn't work, that does not strike me as a company caving to offended people, more them trying to save a game that looks like its going to give Evolve a run for its money in how fast the playerbase drops the game.

So, how did you decide people don't play this game? The bad reviews, I bet?


But yeah, even if the game has a good playerbase now, I hope the drop you mention happens. There has been ONE newly released game I actually want to play, and it's this one. It must die as I must learn never to find a good videogame again.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Well, it's his call I guess.
Nice to hear the game's pretty good.

 

[Marik2]

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.

David gaffe is the type of guy who doesn't care about pissing off people.

Looks like he doesn't want to lose sales.