While I have no clear opinion on this, it’s hilarious that people who have had over 11 years to purchase the game, often at extreme discounts or in bundles, are rising up to proclaim that they won’t be buying this game. Damn dude! I’m sure the developers are sweating bullets!
While I don’t like neutering an artist’s vision in the name of conformity or commercial pressure, it’s generally a wise business practice to avoid deliberately offending your potential audience. I suppose a healthy gaming franchise needs new users to thrive, and maybe toning down the excess will broaden the game’s appeal.
That video you shared was great!
I agree that neutering an artist’s vision is almost always a mistake, but I wonder if the artist’s vision has changed with the times as well? Furthermore, with patches, updates, downloadable content, and expansion packs for games, at what point is a game, as a work of art, complete?
How do you even begin to preserve a work of art when it is constantly changing and evolving?
If an artist’s vision is sexualized children, maybe that artist needs an eye exam.
I went off on a weird tangent about game preservation after my initial question, but that’s what I meant with my “I wonder if the artist’s vision has changed as well.”
If the artist’s views have changed, and they are either supportive or the driver of a change like this, is it neutering their vision? It’s certainly straying from the original vision, but I wouldn’t call it neutering.
When I think of neutering, or really, betraying an artist’s original vision, I think of something more akin to Terminator 2 (James Cameron was pushed to give the movie an open-ended ending), or, more recently, 2003’s Dumb & Dumberer.
Is it childen in that game?
One character is explicitly underage and sexually assaulted in game. Another is the “she died young and is a ghost so she just LOOKS young but she’s actually way older” trope.
I see.
We may never know if the artist’s vision has actually changed. Artists have to maintain healthy relationships with those who pay them, even after the fact. So jobs and, by extension, families are hostages to a demand that the artist support the censorship of their work.
This is definitely important in this case. While Skullgirls definitely has a following, it’s a difficult game to turn on in a couch setting because to those unfamiliar with the game, the style could easily come off as predatory.
Does anyone have before/after images? I never got into skullgirls
As long as the originals remain accessible in some capacity for posterity, developers should be free to craft their evolving IP however they see fit. I’d just hope Reverge Labs is doing this because it’s genuinely where they want to take the series.
On a day-to-day level, most of us censor what we say in order to conform to social norms. If someone holds unpopular views, they are unlikely to share them with people they don’t trust. But this is not what we mean by ‘self-censorship’, but rather ‘social filter’ that we all practice, and for good reason. The danger is when this ‘social filter’ is slowly expanded to cover more and more issues, increasing self-censorship and further silencing speech and public debate.
In similar vein, I support the devs changing Superhot, I still prefer to play the original.