• Indie Dev Removing Racially Charged Gag From Game After Complaints
    201 replies, posted
The gag was not meant to be racist, but satirical. The fact that someone could interpret the joke in a way that is offensive in an unintentional way, is good reason to slightly alter the joke to avoid possible confusion. The gag doesn't rely on racism to be funny, and therefor it won't hurt the joke to be altered to remove this unintended connection.
Quoting Davey from his post on Reddit here, although I have no idea if anyone already posted this: [QUOTE]Hi guys, game's developer here. Let me try to clarify a bit of this: First, consider that I am definitely leaving a HUGE amount of content in the game that many find extremely offensive. I get angry messages all the time from people who feel I ripped them off, that there should be more gameplay, that there should be an actual ending, that it should be longer, etc etc. And I ignore basically all of that because a) it would be way too hard to change and b) those suggestions are not consistent with the experience I want players to have with my game. However, when someone comes along and says that this one section of game made them feel like they could not play the game, and the item in question is extremely easy to change, and when it changes nothing about the experience I want people have, well why wouldn't I do it? We're changing it from an image of stephen setting the kid on fire to an image of him standing over the kid, smiling with gas and lighter in hand about to set the kid on fire. This change in no way compromises my artistic vision, it has nothing to do with my artistic vision, it has essentially 0 bearing on what I consider to be the essential experience of playing the stanley parable. If you are in any way concerned that I'm making this change at the expense of my artistic vision, please do not worry! I promise you now, the change is so so small that most will barely notice anything is different. I've made hundreds of changes to the game based on suggestions from players, it's called playtesting. I put the game in front of someone and see if what we've done has more or less the effect I want it to have. Some times it does, in which case we keep it. If it doesn't have the effect I want, I talk to them and figure out what was holding them back and try to create something new that gives them a better experience. Is this corrupting the art by allowing outside influence? If it is, then Stanley Parable is corrupt 100% from start to finish. Sometimes people have a suggestion that is just too much work to do so I have to cut it, other times the change is very minor so it's quite easy. In the case of the image of the kid on fire, that's extremely easy for me to change, and it brings the game closer to being more accessible by all people, so I do it! However, in some cases the mistakes I've made are simply too much work to correct, and in those cases I'm just going to have to deal with people being mad at me. I will always be trying to improve my art, always trying to find new ways to make it accessible and meaningful, and I'll correct those mistakes along the way as I go. It is a constantly changing process, nothing is set in stone. If I could continue updating the game to make it better and better I totally would, but I just don't have the time/energy (some people do, Valve updates TF2 on a regular basis but no one calls them out for compromising their artistic vision) But then, someone suggests a change that could help make the game more accessible and that wouldn't in any way compromise my vision and is very very easy to do? Yeah, sure! Why not! I'm always trying to improve the game, and here's a simple way to get it closer to my ideal of being accessible to all people. Does it make the game perfect? No, it's still imperfect in many many ways. But at least now it's a little bit closer to what I want.[/QUOTE] tl;dr: If someone is uncomfortable with something, and changing that doesn't affect his vision of the game, why not change it?
[quote]Valve updates TF2 on a regular basis but no one calls them out for compromising their artistic vision[/quote] Uuuuh :v:
[QUOTE=Simski;42639761]Uuuuh :v:[/QUOTE] the joke is that people totally do
That damn picture. . .that's the funniest thing I've seen since Mingebox's avatar.
[QUOTE=Simplemac3;42639831]the joke is that people totally do[/QUOTE] And that they don't really update it anymore
it's a joke about giving cigarettes to children or setting them on fire and he's complaining about the race of the kid. seriously? god damn i'm not going to say that racism doesn't exist nowadays, but there are better places to go find it than in a rather dark joke about morality.
Ahahaha! I fucking died! They didn't have to take the thing down though.. they could have ya know.. changed the kid's skin color if people thought it was because the kid is black..
How many endings are actually in the Stanley Parable?
[QUOTE=Niklas;42626050]"Steven has a choice. He could spend years helping improve the quality of life for citizens of impoverished third-world nations..." How are you going to portray a kid of a third world country instead? A well dressed white kid being set on fire? [editline]24th October 2013[/editline] This guy [img]http://i.imgur.com/QQ0I9agh.jpg[/img][/QUOTE] No, you can be offended whenever you like. Being offended doesn't give you special rights.
[QUOTE=gottifour;42644657]How many endings are actually in the Stanley Parable?[/QUOTE] 10 or so
[QUOTE=gottifour;42644657]How many endings are actually in the Stanley Parable?[/QUOTE] It never ends.
[QUOTE=gottifour;42644657]How many endings are actually in the Stanley Parable?[/QUOTE] At least 14, If you don't count a a few secrets of varying depth that force the game to be restarted to continue.
[QUOTE=Sungrazer;42645160]No, you can be offended whenever you like. Being offended doesn't give you special rights.[/QUOTE] People have been telling him (in far harsher terms) that he is wrong for being offended. That is fucked up.
You can be offended for whatever you like but that doesn't mean it's valid. If I got offended because this jokes portrays white people as arsonistic murders would that be valid?
The fact that the guy got offended because the kid is black, instead of because of a kid being set on fire, offends me.
[QUOTE=nikomo;42647575]The fact that the guy got offended because the kid is black, instead of because of a kid being set on fire, offends me.[/QUOTE] the fact that anyone gives a shit to begin with, offends me I've seen things way, way worse than this, and people take this serious?
I took offense from the adventure line Its yellow and is pshown as a "character" who is useless. i am so offended remove this
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