AlyxDinas

Even if it were doing more than having a lark at the situation itself, I don't think many people care. Or, at least, I don't see people in a tiff about the re-write. I think the original joke was dumb and ill thought. The new thing? Definitely not skin off my back.

A statement like this makes silly assumptions. I'm glad they changed it and even have no real "issue" with the slightly mocking memorial. I'm playing the crap out of this game. Steer away from this pseudo-"No True Scotsman" stuff. Doesn't really help

The scale of the project and the amount of user content to vet makes this, while a fair point, not always something that can happen. If you're rolling fast towards whatever goal you have for getting the content in the game and you've done vetting of the egregious stuff, you don't always have the time or resources to make a second pass. And you're probably leaving the data entry to so many people so things will slip through the crack. End of the day, something made it into the game that people didn't find commensurate with the quality of the studio and, yeah, Obsidian had to reflect and figure out what they thought was the best choice. I'm speaking generally here and not specifically to you at this point but we can't really begrudge them the choice. It was their's to make and they did.

They made a decision. All you really care about is that it isn't the one you wanted. But it was, at the end of the day, their choice to make and not your own.

Merely not wanting something to exist is not censorship. I hate mayonnaise. I want all of it destroyed forever. It's gross. Censorship is when I somehow manage to get it outlawed against the will of the people or when my army of robots (which I totally don't have! *ahem*) somehow enforce my magical anti-mayo will on the world. Obsidian deciding "Hey, let's get rid of this thing?". Not censorship. It's a choice. If the government of California marched down to Irvine and made Obsidian change the game? Censorship. I mean this in the nicest way possible but if you care so much about a thing you need to learn about what it is and isn't.

Second solution is better but flawed. The first isn't smart, business wise. The product's out. It "belongs" to more than just the backers now. (Although, really it belongs to no one but Obsidian.)

Possibly. In which case they'll leave it in. But things do slip through the cracks that are not always commensurate with the ideals of your studio. Particularly in large projects with a lot of moving parts. Josh wants to look into it. If the answer from the producers is "Oh, we just had two people sit in a room and gave them two days to log all the data after the initial cull. I guess we missed this." then that's what happened, y'know? The realities of a dev cycle are complicated and Kickstart stuff only makes for more complications you can keep track of. I've been there and that was on projects not even close to the scale/funding of Pillars.

I figure the whole "it's Obsidian's choice" thing would have made clear who I place more capital on in the struggle you're painting. As someone in the field, I think the choice is left to the creator. Do I have a preference? Sure. But you can't talk about mobs in one sentence and then make an argument to the people right after.

The thing is...there's not "wrong" way to engage with or consume art. If someone wants to do that, they're not doing anything worse than the person who is enjoying the dumb fun. Perhaps, for them, the analysis was the fun. Art is experiential. Regardless, I'm getting off topic so I'm going to generally shy away from more talk of politics and such. The end of the day? We all interpret content through different lenses. Some might find things they take exception to. The question is if Obsidian thinks the content in question is fitting of their created world and in line with whatever values they want to convey to customers/clients. The choice is their's to make. The thing to consider is what you will do if they take action you disagree with. Merely be disappointed or kick and scream and pout?

Tautology. Allegory is an interpretation of symbols. Something can be intentionally allegorical or not. We're in the Tolkien realm now. Which is why I assume you're using the term applicability but at the end of the day he was merely swapping out one word for another. Presumably out of some type of iconoclasm. You're being reductive. Politics is the totality of interactions in a society, which includes art. This is why we see the term used loosely for various things that aren't about policy. "Forum politics" for instance, doesn't have to be about the rules that moderators are setting. It can be about power dynamics and interactions.

Allegory doesn't have to be deliberate because individual audience members interpret different signs in vastly different ways at times. Semotics is a process that tends to be experiential and centered on the person engaging with the text. Politics is merely the art and practice of interacting with other individuals. Art, as something that individuals make which then interacts with other people, is necessarily political because it involves people.

No created work is apolitical or without allegory. If the only issue is that people would be put off by the existence of politics, they shouldn't be engaging with art at all. Or and that is just a or we could all act like adults and see it as a dumb joke a bard or jester would sing and not as something political or even more than that. If presented in that context? Sure. I don't think it'd be as much an issue. It's something artists and creators already do and have done for quite a long time. Examine the use of magic in fiction and you'll often find the fear of magic or magic users has political or allegorical subtext.

Which is a bit of a bummer when you think about it. Not that the absence detracts from the game. It doesn't. Game's great. But the potential certainly existed.

TotalBiscuit is generally ignoring an important question. There's nothing wrong with games including ugliness in ugly, harsh worlds. The question is what the effect is. What the purpose is. What is the effect? Pillars is a setting that could totally be used to discuss trans issues, particularly if we get into some of the neat stuff it does with souls. And it could even have people who are somehow transphobic. "That person has the soul of a woman in their body? What? Freak!" And that would be interesting. That would be great, actually. But the backer thing here is, while small, shallow. Given some of the other content of the game, I'm unsure if it "fits". At least in this form.

No? I'm saying that if you're really that emotional about the matter, maybe take a twenty minute break or whatever. You've a lot of personal investment here due to your personal circumstances and it might affect how your approach the topic or the discussion. You can talk all you want, it's not skin off my back. No one is censoring your voice.

I'm sorry for whatever pains you've had in your life but you're talking from a place of a lot of anger and painting with a very broad brush. Perhaps distance from this topic might be wise? I mean, you're arguing (a word I don't use lightly) from a pretty dark place.

I worked on a project where we got a fair amount of complain from individuals saying they had an issue with how we were portraying native Amercians. The criticism was made with little knowledge of the game's content (we were only in the early stages of back beta) but the criticism and pressure was there. At the end of the day, the studio had a choice to make. We kept the character in. We felt she was a strong character. There's always a choice when you're a development studio. No one has a gun to your head and people on "both sides" on this are applying equal pressure. "Change it or I won't buy from you!". "Remove it and I demand my money back!". What the "right" decision is, is merely whatever the studio thinks is in line with its standards and fitting for the text.

It's largely a matter of lived experiences. I don't know what you have and have not experienced or encountered but I've seen more than my share of troubles for other trans individuals and the silliness/petulence of bigots, to my estimation, that the limerick sets out to ridicule. I think that reads a lot of intent. Keep in mind that I don't think this was someone trying to deliberately be mean or mocking either. I don't think there was even that much intentionality. I think they thought they were funny and didn't give it much thought.

All I'll say is that I feel you're being deliberately obtuse. If you think I answered your question just to stir the pot as it were, that's a very presumptuous thing to do. You put your thoughts out there and I answered them just as you did mine. Nothing more and nothing less. Your interpretation, when I read it, seems the very definition of equivocation. This is not a game "addressing [trans] issues", it is a backer who tried to hard to be funny and hit the ground with all the grace of a sack of doorknobs. At the end of the day, the call is up to Obsidian. I find the content moronic and puerile. Reductive. Simple. Base. It's not going to stop me from playing the game or buying another Obsidian product. Do I think it is wise for the studio to reconsider the content? Sure. Given the realities of development, it's unclear how much of this was just detritus sneaking in through the cracks of a busy rush to whatever the deadline was to have backer content in the game. /shrug

I can jump in and explain to the best of my ability. The main reason is because the implication is the man was so disgusted or shamed that he slept with someone he thought was a biological female that he killed himself. That he found them so repulsive once he knew they were not who he thought, that he would rather die than live. That's pretty harsh and in real life, when these things happen, people actually do die. Namely the transperson who is the victim of a murder. It happens and more than you'd think. Some people know friends who were murdered due to this very issue. Imagine, for a moment, that the "joke" was about race. A man somehow doesn't realize that the person he was sleeping with was of dark skin so he kills himself when he finds out. It would never really get in the game, I'd imagine. And while race and gender are not the same thing, the implications here are enough that Obsidian isn't capitulating by reconsidering the content. It doesn't even matter if a backer put the content in there. If you're working on a project (and I say this as someone who has worked on big projects with Kickstarter backer content to put in game) and you have hundreds of things to input and it's you and one other person or whatever, you might miss a few things because you have a lead or a producer who is saying "We gotta get the backer data in by the next build!". Just because it got in doesn't mean it got in because it was approved necessarily. So, let's review: we have a scenario in the game that isn't necessarily about offense but is also about respectfully approaching a real problem within society and we have no indication that the content was given a stamp of approval outside of whoever's job it was to proof and do the data entry. The content itself has vulgar implications that do the studio a disservice and do a disservice to many customers. There's nothing "pro" about it. That's, I would suggest, a deliberately dishonest read of the content.