Steam User Finds Misogynistic "Joke" Buried in Dead Island Code [UPDATED]

[cobra_ky]

nevermind, your like talking with a brick wall, nothing is going to change anything in the end, because it still is just a brick wall no matter what you do or say.

personally i find brick walls to be much more agreeable.

 

[Partezan]

You very deliberately reversed the scenario so that the programmer is now the defender of the marginalized. Here's the real analogy: The character is a black separatist with an ability that does more damage to white people. The programmer charged with coding the ability decides to call it "RacistNiggerWhore".

Now, you're asking me to believe that the programmer was gravely offended by this design, but instead of bringing it up with management, or refusing to write the code, or asking to have his name scrubbed from the credits, or even quitting entirely, he decided he would protest it by giving the ability an internal name, which under normal circumstances would never be seen by anyone outside the company, and to the uninitiated observer would appear to be a stark racist slur.

Sorry, but I think the much more plausible explanation would be that the programmer is just racist. And I think a sexist programmer is the most plausible explanation for the Dead Island fiasco.

Why would it be "******"?!? It would be "BlackRacistWhore". The only "offensive" word is "Whore" which is no where near as offensive as "******". The only offensive word is "Whore" and that is pretty general

The char gets her skill to do extra damage to men because she used her "looks" so calling a character a whore who whores her looks out is pretty appropriate at describing what's going on.

As for Duke Nukem, well, like I said, the only reason i would have an issue with Peruna is because she is EXPECTED to be taken seriously and is a "good character". Duke Nukem picks up crap and writes things on the wall with it... If Peruna picked up some crap and used it as lip stick it would be a different story. If the black supremacist was an evil character and someone coded them offensively to black people i would have a problem, but she is not, she is expected to be the norm, in fact someone to aspire too and the coder is saying NO. That's the way I see it.

If anything the coder is telling women "This woman is a whore and not someone to aspire too". It's not like she earned that skill by being good at assassin school, but if she did how would you be able to get away with targeting men so specifically? She would probably be good at killing people overall which is how the char should have been made in the first place.

 

[Erana]

No, it isn't an entirely proper joke, but its just something buried down in the game's code. IfZoey's called, "Teen Angst" in some files, right? And the wretched, elves that have succumb to magic addiction, are called, "Crackelves." This is just the name of a skill whose existence isn't really all that much better than the name itself, except one is negative language and the other is a positive bonus to zombie maiming. If she were called a feminist ***** everywhere or something, then I'd be a bit inclined to question the people who developed this game.

The big point here being that Techland has owned up to this behavior in a mature manner. It only takes one person to do something like this and I don't find it personally offensive,(I would hate to see a career ended over someone digging up an old file lying around) but I'm happy to see the professional response. The quick and serious pace that they have taken to respond to this issue alone should prove that they're not interested in pissing off their feminist audience of both sexes.

What I am disappointed in is how many people right here on the Escapist who don't know what "Feminist" means.

 

[walrusaurus]

If i was a militant feminist i'd be more up in arms about the mildly offensive feminist caricature that Purna is, rather than an obscure line of code buried in a place where noone who isn't looking for it would ever find it.

Frankly i'm more interested in the person who actually has the time (much less the motivation) to go digging through the code and find crap like this.

 

[cobra_ky]

Why would it be "******"?!? It would be "BlackRacistWhore". The only "offensive" word is "Whore" which is no where near as offensive as "******". The only offensive word is "Whore" and that is pretty general

Fine, BlackRacistWhore then. Whatever. But "Whore" is by no means general. It refers specifically to a person who sells their body for sex. In the broadest possible sense, it means someone who sells themselves out.

Then again, it's also frequently used as a slur against women, because women are frequently judged on the basis of their perceived sexual morality in situations that have nothing to do with sex.

The char gets her skill to do extra damage to men because she used her "looks" so calling a character a whore who whores her looks out is pretty appropriate at describing what's going on.

That doesn't make a damn bit of sense. How do her looks, or anyone else's for that matter, damage zombies? It's painful watching you contort logic to try to justify this. Why is it so hard to believe that the programmer may just be a sexist douche?

As for Duke Nukem, well, like I said, the only reason i would have an issue with Peruna is because she is EXPECTED to be taken seriously and is a "good character". Duke Nukem picks up crap and writes things on the wall with it... If Peruna picked up some crap and used it as lip stick it would be a different story. If the black supremacist was an evil character and someone coded them offensively to black people i would have a problem, but she is not, she is expected to be the norm, in fact someone to aspire too and the coder is saying NO. That's the way I see it.

If anything the coder is telling women "This woman is a whore and not someone to aspire too". It's not like she earned that skill by being good at assassin school, but if she did how would you be able to get away with targeting men so specifically? She would probably be good at killing people overall which is how the char should have been made in the first place.

And that's still pretty fucking offensive, because she isn't a whore in any legitimate sense of the word. And again, never mind the litany of other ways I listed before that he could have expressed this point, rather than sticking in code no one outside the company was ever supposed to see anyway. Why not simply call the ability "SexistPurna"? That conveys the point nicely in a way that is both much more accurate and much harder to misconstrue as denigrating to women.

Since you brought up her backstory, according to what i've read, she's a former police officer turned bodyguard. Maybe in those occupations she needed to learn specifically how to subdue men who are larger than her. Or maybe she just really does hate men? I haven't played the game so i'm not sure how she treats the human male characters. She did lose her cop job for shooting a child molester who was above the law; maybe she suffered a history of abuse and has issues with men resulting from it. I don't know. But both of those explanations make a lot more sense to me than your "magic whore powers" theory.

 

[brainslurper]

Well, I wish he hadn't written that.

As a woman: it makes me sad. Hearing that makes me feel hurt inside. Not because I have some weird feeling that it affects me in any way, but it just hurts to know there are people out there who would write such things about women - at work where they are supposed to be on their best behavior.

As a woman with male friends: it makes me sad for them because this type of thought process is exactly the reason any women who mistrust men do it. Because a few men think like this and act worse, women are more careful around men. That isn't fair to men who haven't done anything wrong and makes me sad for them.

This type of thing should make everyone sad, really.

It is EXACTLY the same way with females, and it isn't going to change in the next hundred thousand years.

 

[robinkom]

It sounds like a joke I'd make and not seriously mean because that's my sense of humor.

To be clear, whether you want to believe me or not, I treat women with the utmost respect. Unless she's some kind of physically violent psychopath, there is no excuse to abuse, mistreat, or insult them for the sake of stroking your own ego and asserting some neanderthal male dominance thing. I'm as patient and respectful as they come and it IS a damn shame that I'm automatically considered a dick by a lot of women just because there are so many chauvinist pigs out there that I happen to share an identical sexual orientation and reproductive organ with.

I just have a really sarcastic, dark and off-color sense of humor... but I know when to hold it back. If you're not yet used to me, I'll keep it as light as possible but once you know me well enough... yeah, "FeministWhorePurna" is something I will laugh at around you openly.

 

[tmande2nd]

Really?

The company says its in bad taste, and its one moron who wrote that?
What is the issue?

 

[Asehujiko]

Wow! That's actually too stupid and sad to be offended by.

This means a programmer actually sat there thinking about the most clear identifier he could use and he came up with "FeministWhore"...

Ah well, just means there is/was a programmer working there with the mental maturity of a pubescent. But there's likely plenty of them around the world, just a shame this had to end up in publicity. Stupidity is generally best reserved for drunken bar trips and anonymous internet rants.

That, or this is a labyrinthine in-joke that spawned somewhere in the past 4 years that dead island has been in development that was never designed to be offensive to anyone, kind of how on 4chan "fag" has absolutely no relation to either homosexuality or the tobacco industry. For example, one of my favourite minecraft server has, among others:

The Cancer Fortress(furnace house, also smooth/cobble and coal storage)
Severed Penis Square(an undeveloped forest)
Josef Mengele Bakery(a now demolished storage shack, replaced by a minecart station, still called that)

Try and figure out(as an outsider) how those got their names. Hint: it has absolutely nothing to do with us not taking cancer seriously or supporting genital mutilation and nazi ideology.

 

[Trillovinum]

Yeah, fuck that shit. Women's rights? The only right they have is staying in the kitchen. Hatespeech against women? Please, its not my fault they dress like whores and seem to believe they're equal to a man. Ain't that right, buddy?

And yes, video games are so much important than hateful language against another human being.

Um, alright. Your argument is so smary and sarcastic that it offers absolutely nothing of value, and it is a pretty severe personal attack on top of that. But I'll see what I can do. First, hate speech is bullshit. Second, it's not like a joke in a video game is going to somehow undo 50 years of women's rights. Third, who cares about hateful speech against another human being? In this day and age of instantaneous communication, why does it fucking matter? Don't you see this enough everyday to just not care? They're just words.

It's a silly fucking joke. Don't make a mountain out of a molehill.

Indeed, who cares about hate speech? Why yes, we should call Jewish people the K word, and black people the N word in the street. I mean, we all heard it enough in rap music and the internet, so we should be totally desensitized to that sort of thing.

Wait! Video games are violent, and we see this stuff enough not to care right? So, why don't we start murdering eachother? Lets make murder legal! Since its been around for such a long time, why should we care?

you really need to stop being so sarcastic. people might think you're serious

 

[flatten_the_skyline]

Consider me a feminist, and put it this way, I'm not amused. But I wouldn't like to see htis guy fired. I don't think that that'd change anything for women that are called feminist whores, or whores at all on the street every day, and I don't think he'd learn anything from being fired to save the company's reputation. I'd like to see him give a statement on this being a joke that wasn't funny, being frowned at, and that's it. It doesn't say anything about his programming skills, does it?

On the other hand, I think this skill isn't such a good idea at all, because it conjures up te image of the "feminazi", the crazy menhating woman that always wanted to kill men and finally has a chance to do it. That's how many people see feminists, Including some feiminists.

My idea of feminism is a more philosophical approach, and it is about having a choice in how to live your life, to be a princess, or to be a "slut", to dress pretty or to run around in rags. Our society has few gender stereotypes to conform to, and even these feminists are just another gender stereotype in my book...

 

[Magnikai]

11 pages on this? Really? It's just a stupid line of code gang. No need to get all up in arms about something so trivial.

 

[cobra_ky]

11 pages on this? Really? It's just a stupid line of code gang. No need to get all up in arms about something so trivial.

about 8 of those pages are posts saying exactly this.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

Purna is a character type who I have seen asked for in podcasts, forums and suchlike. She's female, strong willed and also aborigine.

She is just not the usual 30 somthing white guy with brown hair. That was great and I really admired it.

But now this.

I'm not angry or enraged. I'm just dissapointed that what could have be seen as a step forward for the industry no matter how small is now tainted by the apparent view of a person who has input into this character.

I had an argument recently with a friend when I mentioned I was sick of playing male characters in FPS games. It came about when I said I felt that making scenarios like Crysis 2 and using the Warhammer lore seemed like an excuse to push female characters out of the games. We can't be in Medal of Honour or Modern Warfare (for obvious reasons) and they seem to want to exclude us from futuristic shooters as well?

I have noticed that Mass Effect 2 and Fallout 3 and Vegas have a huge female following. The core gameplay isn't really that different from the games that the industry demographics say women don't like. Is it the dialogue and rpg aspects or the fact that you can play as a woman the issue? It would be interesting I think for someone to look into that. These developers may be missing a huge chunk of the market simply because they don't want to have a female avatar.

I am not really that angry about this errant bit of code, but it has made me think about these gaming issues a bit more.

 

[zeplon]

Imma admit, I laughed. It's not serious and noone was meant to see it, so whats the big deal?

 

[Undeadpool]

So wait, having a woman in a thigh hugging dress who refuses to take off her stilleto heels, despite a ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE isn't misogynistic enough? This story is kinda like not seeing the forest for the trees.

 

[Iron Lightning]

I had an argument recently with a friend when I mentioned I was sick of playing male characters in FPS games. It came about when I said I felt that making scenarios like Crysis 2 and using the Warhammer lore seemed like an excuse to push female characters out of the games. We can't be in Medal of Honour or Modern Warfare (for obvious reasons) and they seem to want to exclude us from futuristic shooters as well?

I have noticed that Mass Effect 2 and Fallout 3 and Vegas have a huge female following. The core gameplay isn't really that different from the games that the industry demographics say women don't like. Is it the dialogue and rpg aspects or the fact that you can play as a woman the issue? It would be interesting I think for someone to look into that. These developers may be missing a huge chunk of the market simply because they don't want to have a female avatar.

I am not really that angry about this errant bit of code, but it has made me think about these gaming issues a bit more.

Well, there's always Dawn of War: Soulstorm with its Sisters of Battle. You also have to consider that Warhammer 40k is a pretty male game. I played the tabletop game once a week for two years and I never saw a single female player. I'm sure that I would never see a single dude if I joined a hardcore knitting circle. Some things have pretty asymmetrical demographics.

That said, I completely agree with you in that we could definitely use more variety in game protagonists and I'm an 18-35 year old white male. The ethnicity and gender of the protagonist doesn't really matter to me in any individual game. However, when you can count on the protagonist always being a 30-something brown-haired white guy (the conformity is so extreme that hair-color is fucking part of it) then there's an issue. We need more varied protagonists just to keep things interesting.

More on Topic: The most interesting thing about this story is that some asshole pored over every line of code for some reason. I wish I could find a Youtube video of that one scene from The Simpsons where Ned Flanders is watching taped TV programs looking for something to be offended by because that is so appropriate for this situation.

I sure hope Techland didn't fire that guy for his silly little in-joke.

 

[Iron Lightning]

So wait, having a woman in a thigh hugging dress who refuses to take off her stilleto heels, despite a ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE isn't misogynistic enough? This story is kinda like not seeing the forest for the trees.

Well, Dead Islanders in general are pretty stupid. I saw one guy in a gameplay video who had enough time to set up a small compound yet was still dressed in nothing but swim trunks despite the aforementioned zombie apocalypse. The ************ wasn't even wearing shoes.

 

[Caverat]

Really?

The company says its in bad taste, and its one moron who wrote that?
What is the issue?

That's the issue, there isn't one. It needs to be manufactured into an issue, otherwise those that need to feel self-righteous would go without something to be vocal about. (Case and point, this post )

It was a joke, it was meant as a joke. There is no need for spiels about what this says/means for society.

The dude responsible is probably going to lose his job, unfair? Not really, he included a personal sense of humour in something work related, his bosses didn't laugh when overly sensitive members of the public shat themselves over it. He played a game, and lost. He'll hopefully find another job elsewhere, might even learn that it's best to not have a sense of humour when making something for the general public.

Cuz, you know, we shouldn't have anything that makes a joke at anyone's expense.

 

[DarthSka]

Honestly, I really can't take this seriously. It's a joke. I've heard plenty of jokes aimed at women and plenty aimed at men. I've found many of each side hilarious. Everyone makes generalizations in one way or another, but we don't really let it take over (us logical ones anyway). Hell, I've been sexually harassed by a female before (no, I didn't like it), but I don't blame all women for it, just like how most women don't blame all men for everything wrong in the world. I think the day that we can hear these kinds of jokes and simply laugh and move on will be a better day. I'm already doing it.