Let's have a discussion about the feather.

[ShadeStrider]

So, Smash Ultimate was subjected to censorship. This time it's Mr. Game and Watch. In one of his moves, he takes the form of a Native American with a feather, torching his opponent.

 

This was considered Racist by the American Public. So Nintendo removed it from the final game.

 

I'm not sure how to feel about this. Maybe it's people taking things too seriously in this children's video game that also happens to be a big deal to gamers everywhere? I am extremely opposed to censorship of any media, unless the creator explicitly intended for it to be offensive. Here, it's really just a stereotype, and a reference to an old game. Why remove it?

 

It won't affect the quality of the game, but incidents like this kinda worry me about the future of American media.

 

There are already people on the Internet campaigning to remove Mr. Game and Watch from the game. I... don't want this.

[Norman Guy]

I guess I understand people wanting to remove that move, but I don't agree that they should remove as a character all together. If anything that'd just be really stupid and make people mad about them removing him (I definitely will might be one of them).

[AyTales]

There are certain things that are good to remove because we recognize the racial sensitivities behind them. In your example, the Native American attack is a sensitive topic to Americans because of the genocide committed against the Native American people over the course of centuries. The United States, in particular, killed thousands of Native Americans and forced them from their homes.

 

Carelessly using stereotypes for entertainment is insensitive because it sends the message "we don't care that we are turning something you consider culturally important into something entertaining for us". Imagine something from your culture that you consider very important. Now imagine another country tore through your people through disease and war and then took that piece of your culture and turned it into an entertainment piece. It's insulting, but you couldn't really do anything about it. We sometimes censor ourselves because we recognize the inherent wrongness in the act. It's sometimes a fine line, but you have to look at the history of the imagery to find context on why it's wrong.

[Commander]

2 hours ago, ShadeStrider said:

It won't affect the quality of the game, but incidents like this kinda worry me about the future of American media.

 

There are already people on the Internet campaigning to remove Mr. Game and Watch from the game. I... don't want this.

I thought you'd be pro censorship since Incineroar is a Mexican wrestler and should be removed for being racist.

 

First off, the G&W removal is a joke playing on the fact he's the color black. Secondly, he's not going to be removed over a stupid reason like that. A slight cosmetic alteration is very, very different than removal of a character. We're talking about going from upsetting 10,000 people slightly to a million people being outraged. They would retract the removal of G&W instantly because that's cutting a character purely for a weak stance. Trust me, we have very, very little worry about content getting cut...for now. Nintendo has really loosened their censor policy lately.

 

I'm just going to at least explain why it happened. The ESRB was created as a level of censorship and anti-censorship to prevent certain age groups from viewing certain things but as well as not forcing localization to remove as much content. Certain things would be axed from some games which some were nonsensical such as removal of blood to keep a teen rating. It's why you see some nonsensical stuff or weird changes with localization. We've gotten A LOT better and more open then before. Then Sony takes a step back and we're seeing some ridiculous censorship. One game ready for release got canceled due to the change in policy. That's important as I'll come back to it in a minute.

 

There are some fields Nintendo and anyone doesn't want to trend. They will not fight a political battle if they don't have to. Publishers don't want to deal with racism which could possibly be dealing with court stuff, but very, very unlikely. So if it's not that impacting, it's best to avoid that and the controversies it'd start. All it would do is leave a worse image over something small. We saw this change in Bravely Second as well because of cultural reasons. I'm not really going to pick a side here as while it is censorship, it's something they would have done eventually it seems due to their beliefs. I'm against it and I will fight it, but it's a battle I'd take the loss for over other things. Fight the battle knowing you'll probably lose is what I'd call it.

 

This isn't anything new and we'll do this song and dance again and again. I'm against censorship, but this has been this way for at least 25 years. I'll take this if I have to but we've had games who've had it much, much worse such as Fire Emblem Fates being one of the more recent. Nearly every game you played likely has had some form of censorship actually. Let that sink in before making a vague post to panic people. It's when you blindly go at things it causes issues.

[CMV]

The words "racism" and "racist" completely lost their original meaning and has been turned into a vague buzzword to describe and essentially criminalize anything and everything that, no matter how harmless, through a series of mental gymnastics, MIGHT have a potential to upset the feelings of someone who is non-white. It's a farce.

[AyTales]

2 hours ago, CMV said:

The words "racism" and "racist" completely lost their original meaning and has been turned into a vague buzzword to describe and essentially criminalize anything and everything that, no matter how harmless, through a series of mental gymnastics, MIGHT have a potential to upset the feelings of someone who is non-white. It's a farce.

Did you really just racism is a farce?

[Wolfox]

Someone calling something racist before looking into it first? well, I never!

[Godot]

That is a racist stereotype making reference to an old game that featured villains that were a racist stereotypes. Just make the sprite not racist and we’re good.