Have you ever felt really offended by a game?

[o0BigDave0o]

I was fairly disgusted with the game COD modern warfare 2, the part where you infiltrate the public airport and kill 100s of innocent people. I couldn't even fire my weapon, i just stayed at the back behind the other NPC's

btw for all you gun totting people out there... yes i chose to make the game non restrictive but I didn't expect that

 

[Vuljatar]

Supreme Commander 2 was offensive to me as a PC gamer because it was so pathetically dumbed down for the sake of the consoles.

 

[lacktheknack]

I was offended by Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing.

I've never played it, but it still offended the shit out of me.

This, except I DID try to play it, because it sounded like an elaborate joke meant to stun people.

But, much like the Onion declaring Belgium to be fictional, it wasn't true and the game does, in fact exist.

AND IT'S 'ORRIBLE.

 

[Macedon]

There have been games that have angered me, but they have never offended me.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

Being offended is a choice. Plain and simple. If you want to be offended by something in a game or otherwise, go for it. I made the choice to never be offended and it has worked wonderfully.

Thanks for the feedback, Siddhartha.

I think it's perfectly acceptable to be offended by a game, games are expensive and it hurts when you feel like you've wasted your money.

Even if the spilled milk happens to cost 60 dollars, there is still no reason to cry over it. And I wasn't saying it is unacceptable, I am simply saying that if you don't want to be offended you shouldn't be.

 

[Savagezion]

"Calling your nephew a worthles bastard child" is still "sticks and stones". But if someone was to say that, it sounds more like their intent is to make an attack (which would usually be followed up with physical violence). In this case they CAN hurt you and you should review your options to fight back or not. But if someone makes that comment without the intent of attack (ie if it was a joke) then you really dont have a right to be offended, just tell him his mom is a 5c hooker and you will become the best of friends.

You guys ain't grasping the concept. It is easy to look at something that would offend me and say "Bah, he is just being rash." So we will flip it and I will throw the same scenario at you.

So if you are on a date with a girl and the guy across the table sees your date and says "Look at that whore" and making other lewd remarks about her and you, you'll just say "Meh, ignore em honey. It's just his opinion."?

Everyone can be hurt, it is the human condition.

Emotionally .. only the weak and fragile can be hurt. Physically on the other hand .. well I guess the same concept applies.

Like "sleep is for the weak" and such. Based off of this statement you are either between the ages of 18-23 or you are a bitter adult. There is a reason drama is as popular as it is.

To say that "never be offended makes life a drag" is a pretty bold statement. You assume that not being offended by anything means not believing in anything. This is very untrue, you can strongly believe in a lot of things and when you encounter the opposing view you have a choice of ignoring it or re-evaluating your own convictions.

What would being offended by it accomplish exactly? You can't change what is already made/said, and you're certainly not going to change someone elses opinion on the matter. To acknowledge offense means only to encourage negetive feedback to something that you have no control over.

A person doesn't choose to be offended, it is entirely reactionary. Acknowledging offense does not necessarily mean to encourage negative feedback. Acknowledging it in an immature manner does a lot of times but even then not always. It then depends on the maturity of the person who offended you. If someone I know takes offense to something I think is rediculous, I am not going to goad them. I will probably just try to avoid that conflict with their convictions if I can. This is where "agreeing to disagree" comes in between two people. Opinion =/= conviction.

 

[Seagoon]

Anything with stupid, steryotype english accents.... Ruined portal 2 for me...

How can that ruin a game that isn't even out yet, you haven't even played it!

I assume you're referring to Stephen Merchant who will voice the AI personality core Wheatley? He's from Bristol which gives him a West Country accent (or a twang at the very least) which is definately a distinctive accent but hardly a stereotypical British accent. As Yahtzee pointed out in his Killzone 3 review, all game companies ever seem to think us Brits talk like is either Posh or Cockney, so to hear Merchant's distinctive voice will frankly be a breath of fresh air. I really love his voice actually... in a totally non-gay way...

Example:

However I do have to agree, hearing true stereotypical British accents is getting somewhat tiresome and I do get somewhat irked when the only choice they ever make is Cockney, like London is the very epicentre of Britain and nowhere else exists. We're a very diverse place you know![/q
first off, Wheatly is not voiced my Stephen Merchant! what annoys me is that Americans think english characters can be voiced really badly and it just makes it more realistic!


...........


ok... something annoying just happened... watch this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J_7z9Uo8G8

i first saw the original voice and got really worked up about it but after googling it i found out they had changed the voice actor to my number one idol, Stephen Merchant....

sorry....

i feel stupid...

anyway... nice to know that there's some Brits on this site other than me....


sorry.....

i love Stephen Merchant......

 

[Seagoon]

Anything with stupid, steryotype english accents.... Ruined portal 2 for me...

How can that ruin a game that isn't even out yet, you haven't even played it!

I assume you're referring to Stephen Merchant who will voice the AI personality core Wheatley? He's from Bristol which gives him a West Country accent (or a twang at the very least) which is definately a distinctive accent but hardly a stereotypical British accent. As Yahtzee pointed out in his Killzone 3 review, all game companies ever seem to think us Brits talk like is either Posh or Cockney, so to hear Merchant's distinctive voice will frankly be a breath of fresh air. I really love his voice actually... in a totally non-gay way...

Example:

However I do have to agree, hearing true stereotypical British accents is getting somewhat tiresome and I do get somewhat irked when the only choice they ever make is Cockney, like London is the very epicentre of Britain and nowhere else exists. We're a very diverse place you know![/q
first off, Wheatly is not voiced my Stephen Merchant! what annoys me is that Americans think english characters can be voiced really badly and it just makes it more realistic!


...........


ok... something annoying just happened... watch this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J_7z9Uo8G8

i first saw the original voice and got really worked up about it but after googling it i found out they had changed the voice actor to my number one idol, Stephen Merchant....

sorry....

i feel stupid...

anyway... nice to know that there's some Brits on this site other than me....


sorry.....

i love Stephen Merchant......

 

[Proverbial Jon]

ok... something annoying just happened... watch this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J_7z9Uo8G8

i first saw the original voice and got really worked up about it but after googling it i found out they had changed the voice actor to my number one idol, Stephen Merchant....

sorry....

i feel stupid...

anyway... nice to know that there's some Brits on this site other than me....


sorry.....

i love Stephen Merchant......

I watched the video and then came back to read the rest of your post. I was certain you were going to give me 20 reasons why the original voice was better! Glad you agree, they couldn't have picked a better actor to do Wheatley's voice. Merchant just has this very natural flow and seems able to react, seemingly quite genuinely to anything thrown at him, almost as if it's improvisation. Love it. That placeholder voice was just dull... kinda like the default male Shepard voice in Mass Effect... but that's another debate

Oh and there's plenty of Brits on this site, you just have to hunt them out. we're hiding between all the Americans!

 

[James Joseph Emerald]

Pretty much any game with an Irish character, because apparently real Irish voice actors "don't sound Irish enough", so they get in Americans who're like "top of the mornin' to ye, boyos!" Ugh.

Oddly enough, Dreamfall is an exception, where half the cast are inexplicably voiced by Irish people (guess it was cheaper to order voice actors in bulk from the one company).

 

[Fetzenfisch]

99% of the people who claim being offended by a game just dont like the game. And should start to read a book or two so they might finally find the definition of offense. At least i can understand the people who are angry about the stupid stereotypical depiction of their people or countries in a game, but damn it, every gender, race, nation, people in mass media are used stereotypically. The evil, drunk, poor equipped russians. The badtotheboneevil germans of whom not a single one can pronounce a single english word correctly, the greasy italian wanna be players andwhatever. Its a pretty simple thing. The developers dont decide to make a character russian and then he speaks perfect english and behaves completely against everything the average audience expects from a russian character.
Audiovisual media just don't have the time to transport such a thing. In a book it wouldnt be a problem, but games, movies and even most series cant afford to take the time to build up every character in much detail and a lot of them cant even do so with the protagonists.
You can only get offended by this, because you immediately can spot a stereotype,its the prejudices we all know and share, you wouldnt be offended by "a guy that acts strange or wrong and accidentally happens to belong to a certain group of people". Stereotypes are a stylistic device, an aid for the comprehension of the audience and by that cant be completely annihilated.
So just get over it, no one is safe from that and that again is where we find equality (i am talking in quality not quantity, of course most games are produced with a americanoscentric POV, but maybe you want to try out other devs once in a while for sweet justice )

 

[RuralGamer]

Age of Empires 3, by getting the Dutch flag wrong (come on guys, how hard can it be?) and making the Dutch voices sound utterly shit. and I don't even LIKE this place.
I'm not offended because they did something edgy, but by their apparent inability to do some damn research (i.e. opening goddamn wikipedia or google images) and hiring decent voiceactors.

Wasn't that flag at one point used by the early united provinces United Provinces? I mean, from what I know, in the early years of independence, there was no set Dutch flag; I've seen images of double and even triple layer versions of the Prince's Flag (I think that's what its called) because there was no standardised format until the towards the early 1600s. I don't profess to be an expert on this, so apologies if I am wrong.

 

[Drummie666]

Yes. actually. MW2. By No Russian. But not for the reasons that you might immediately think. The story of MW2 could have been REALLY damn good if they cared enough to fill in the MASSIVE plot holes. It was the plot holes surrounding No Russian that made it offensive. It felt like nothing but a marketing tactic and the writers seeing what was the worst thing they could get away with. Using an act of terrorism like that is VERY offensive.

 

[bulldogftw]

Any game where there a british characters but they hare actors who have no idea what a british person actully sounds like and just do what they think a british person sounds like.

 

[Kurokasumi]

Bulletstorm made fun of me and made me cry. /joke

No seriously though, games never offend me because I don't care enough about them or take them that seriously. I play it to have fun. Something a lot of people seem to forget to try doing nowadays.

Though I guess Red Dead Redemption, or rather Rockstar's horse riding simulator offended me in the fact I paid $60 to listen to people talk about shit I don't care about for half a fucking hour and then get me to herd cattle. Sorry I thought it was going to be a good ol' western shoot em up. Not a drama story.

 

[Twilight.falls]

I've never been offended by the content of a game.

However, I have been offended by the actions of the games creator.

Nintendo's Super Mario 25th Anniversary pack, which seems to be just direct ports of the included games. Especially glaring is that they didn't even update the control scheme, it's just the NES controls. For the Wii, mind you. Phelous's review of the bundle sums up everything that's wrong with it.

It didn't change my love for Nintendo, but did leave a bad taste in my mouth.

 

[Amarok]

Anything with stupid, steryotype english accents.... Ruined portal 2 for me...

But that's the guy's actual voice. Are people with recognisable English accents not allowed to get voice work any more?

(not that he is even a voice actor. As far as I can remember he's some guy in the office doing a place holder voice that proved popular)

 

[Savagezion]

No.
Being offended means you are DOING IT WRONG.

Very very very much this. In fact, I maintain that if you are ever offended by anything, then you are doing it wrong ("it" being life).

EDIT: Just want to clarify, I'm not hating on you, OP.

Well, that seems foolish and unrealistic. That would mean that a person would have to be completely without conviction. Why bother to be alive at all then?

With that said, I don't think I have ever been offended by any game. Let down, sure. But I think I am more offended by the industry and its practices or certain specific parts and people of the industry. (Dead Space 2 being marketed to ages under the M rating as 1 recent example.) As well as the outcry by "modern day" society against the gaming medium.

So I guess I should go away and die, then?

Umm... so did I offend you or something?