Comments on: Sony’s Little Big Goof Affects The Planet

By: Bwana

Bwana — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 10:14:05 +0000

Agree to disagree.

By: Glenn Slaven

Glenn Slaven — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 09:26:19 +0000

It should be pointed out that the song was performed by a muslim artist. Clearly he wasn't offended. The lines are verses from the Koran, I could pull equally 'aggressive' lines from any number of 'Christian' songs. Does anyone have the whole lyrics of the song? Do we know the context? They have pulled this from the game out of fear of a Danish comics repeat incident. I'm not going to even bother bringing up the double standards here. This was a non-incident that has been blown up. I'm not surprised by Sony's decision, but I am a little dissapointed

By: Marco

Marco — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 06:21:42 +0000

It's sad to me that it's come to this. My understanding is that this recall stems from a single post in a forum. Let's be honest. It just isn't offensive. You can put on your Joe Rightous shoes all day long and I couldn't care less. How do you reconcile that the text itself is from religous text, yet isn't appropriate for children? Are you telling me that the bible and the Qu'ran are not appropriate materials for children? I think you're being two faced, overly simplistic, and jumping on a band wagon.

By: Marco

Marco — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 06:21:14 +0000

Just looking real quickly, "Nancy Drew: Legend of the Crystal Skull" is rated "E" for everyone….should we rip it off the shelves becuase it has the word skull in the title? (I mean yes, we should rip it off the shelves but this particular title isn't offensive becuase of its title) Micky Mouse games that have scences from Fantasia should probably be for mature audiences because they deal with WITCHCRAFT!!! The dark arts, hide your children.

By: Marco

Marco — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 06:20:47 +0000

It is ridiculous. First of all, the lines in question were background vocals. Are you serious? Not dropping F'bombs, not a curse word, but rather lines from a religous text that were in the background. You can't have a whole team of interpreters for every single word in a song. Way to encourage additional expenses for small developers, media witch hunts, and censorship. All of which will result in less for gamers at more expense. I'd go so far as to say that if someone hadn't pointed out the text and translated it for you, you'd be happily playing for years without being any the wiser.

By: Harold

Harold — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 03:31:51 +0000

Oh come on, there's enough Christian propaganda everywhere we go, and if you just think about it for a moment it's in our video games, too. "God bless us all." Yeah, whatever. We athiests have to put up with religious gibberish all the time; get used to it.

By: Bwana

Bwana — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 03:00:58 +0000

It's not really complicated. It's simple. Don't release a game that's rated "E for Everyone" by the ESRB with those lyrics. How that's prevented is irrelevant.

By: Joe

Joe — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 02:34:22 +0000

Just to play the devil's advocate, how would you have avoided the situation? Have a native speaker of every existing language listen to all of every track you've licensed?

By: Bwana

Bwana — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 03:20:58 +0000

And you know what's even more troublesome? Kotaku is complaining the song won't be in the final game! I swear, the gaming community is so self-centered, it's sickening. This can't be more wrong, and they're actually going to try to make Sony/Media Molecule the villain for removing it. They're like 8 year old kids man, if you tell them they can't have something, they insist on using all their energy to getting it anyway.

By: 4four1ones

4four1ones — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 01:57:37 +0000

not good…nope. not good at all. this kind of stuff is not excusable.

By: Bwana

Bwana — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 01:53:31 +0000

I'm trying to sympathize, but I can't. Someone dropped the ball hard.

By: Joe

Joe — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 01:48:54 +0000

Licensed song from a Senegalese artist. Lyrics in Wolof were fine; no one realized that there were Arabic vocals in the background until it was almost too late.

By: Bwana (Bwana)

Bwana (Bwana) — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 14:41:31 +0000

New blog post: Sony’s Little Big Goof Affects The Planet http://tinyurl.com/559kc2