Real-world sensitivities and game names

[HoneyBadger]

JimMorrison: You're not the only man to ever become sensitive about his big one eyed monster. [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Cold.gif[/img]

I'm also anti-PC. I'm pretty sure it's sucking out the soul of the human race through our eyeballs.

People get offended easily. I think it has something to do with it being illegal to chop at each other with battle axes, without a permit. In centuries past, you tended to let things go, because people hadn't yet perfected the reattachment of limbs and organs that we enjoy today. PC has grown from that, because now we've denied most violent recourses once open to our race, and have replaced them with video games, and you just can't simulate kicking someone in the nuts because he said your mother was fat. So we have to be careful about stepping on others' emotions, lest they blow things up, out of all proportion to the relative plumpness of their dear old mums.

But artistic expression remains artistic expression. You can choose to agree or disagree about art, and argue over how profound or significant or worthy a particular example of it is. You can hate it, and if you have the power to do so, you can even destroy it, but that doesn't change it's nature, or the deepseated desire and indominable demand and right and necessity and drive for humans to express ourselves in ways that go beyond-and yes, even if they also include-the needs of the animal.

[chrispedersen]

Ooooh how about a politically incorrect game...

A game where ALL commanders have to be named liberace (still planning that one, just for you Jim), hitler.

Stick a finger to PC!

[Lingchih]

I wasn't aware that anyone has ever said they were offended by anything in the game. Except for the sexy banner ads.

Why bring this up when it seems to be a non-issue?

[HoneyBadger]

I'd argue that the game is better for including "potentially offensive" material. It's a lot more educational that way, since exactly those sorts of things happened, and worse. Murder, rape, and torture happened. And then racism happened, and slavery, and genocide, and Eurocentrality in fantasy gaming.
Fun things happened, like the privelage of a noble to rape his vassal's bride on their wedding night, and the kidnapping and selling of children who had set out with the intention to free the holy land, in the Children's Cruisade. The Inquisition happened. Honest old women were burned at the stake. Heroes were crucified-and not just Christian ones, either. Entire species of animals were exterminated for purposes of entertainment. People tried their damnest-and I mean that term literally-to summon up demons from the pits of Hell, because they thought it was a good idea, having plum run out of ideas for evil things to do, themselves.

And bad things still do happen, believe it or not.

As far as using "potentially offensive" names in the game-please keep in mind that all publicity is good publicity. How many non Jews here had any idea what a Kohen was? How many non Indians know that the Rakshasas were an actual historical people? A better question might be: How many people here appreciate the works of H. P. Lovecraft, without sympathising with his racist, antisemetic viewpoints?

In the words of Plato, or maybe Socrates: "Knowledge is the only good I know of, ignorance, the only evil." Another good saying is "Beware the man who would keep knowledge from you, for he would be your master". I don't know who said that, off the top of my head, but I do have the power to look it up, and the will to form my own opinions about that saying, and the person who said it, separate the two, and take value from each, individually and as a sum.

[MaxWilson]

HoneyBadger said:
How many non Indians know that the Rakshasas were an actual historical people?

Huh? At the risk of going back on-topic to Dominions--they were? I knew that Devas and Asuras are swapped in Zoroastrianism--Devas are the bad guys--but are Rakshasas the same way? Or do they come from somewhere else? Wikipedia just says they're demons and I couldn't find anything about historical connections. Do tell.

-Max

[Zeldor]

Lch:

You treated my post seriously? That topic is not serious. Some people simply seek things to offend them. And truth is that Jews and Muslim are now best at it, better than Christian fanatics. You can read newspapers or listen to TV and you find a guy like that. Then you send him dominions, ask if it insults him and he will find 50 bad things about it and demand it banned.

[Atreides]

Zeldor said:
Lch:

You treated my post seriously? That topic is not serious. Some people simply seek things to offend them. And truth is that Jews and Muslim are now best at it, better than Christian fanatics. You can read newspapers or listen to TV and you find a guy like that. Then you send him dominions, ask if it insults him and he will find 50 bad things about it and demand it banned.

Zeldor, I just wanted to take a moment to respond to this statement because I found it pretty confusing. To contextualize my opinions for everyone reading this, I was brought up as a reform Jew, and as the joke goes, that means in practice I'm an atheist In any case, the statement that Jews and Muslims are most easily offended by trivial things is just a little ridiculous. I'm certainly in no way offended by the name Adolph, or the fact that you said people from my religion are apparently petty and offended by absolutely nothing.

In any case, I don't think there is anyone involved in this discussion who doesn't realize that people on television are generally completely insane. Political commentators are frequently drawn from the extreme left and the extreme right with little regard for any middle ground. Similarly, when individuals are on television railing about insults to their religion, those people are quite simply religious fanatics who represent the smallest portion of the smallest constituencies of any major religion. In specifically addressing your comment, maybe its my tendency to ignore the irrational arguments and sensitivities of religious zealots, but I don't think I have ever seen a Jew on television screaming about being offended over nothing in particular. Likewise, the only Muslims I've ever seen ranting on television are the clips the American mainstream media loves to play of bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda operatives in an effort to convince people that Muslim's are irrational and want to kill us because of cartoons. When you consider that an estimated 1.8 billion people in the world are Muslims from a world population of approximately six and a half billion and less than one percent of those 1.8 billion are considered "radical adherents of Islam," what probably pisses off and offends Muslims most is 99.9% of them being lumped together with radicals because the media in the United States and throughout the "developed world" has a completely one-sided portrayal of Muslims that fails to mention anything about the constant denunciations of extremist Islamic groups by the majority of Islamic countries, groups, and people throughout the world. And as for Jews, we are by far the most liberal demographic in the United States, and being liberals, Jews generally are not very offended when someone makes either a profoundly uninformed or just outright incorrect statement.

Being as I am from the United States, if you want to talk about religious nutcases on television getting easily offended about absolutely nothing, you might want to pay a little more attention to evangelical Christians and the Republican party who somehow think that homosexuals existing and living in this country, where tolerance and freedom of expression is a right, is offensive to G-d. The American media is crammed full of hate-mongers who bask in finding offense in everything and nothing and speak for and represent millions of like-minded fundamentalist Christians, like George Bush "No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots.", James Dobson "Homosexuals are not monogamous. They want to destroy the institution of marriage. It will destroy marriage. It will destroy the Earth," Jerry Falwell (currently in Hell learning that hating people probably wasn't what Jesus wanted him to spend his life teaching people) "If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being," and Pat Robertson "The Constitution of the United States, for instance, is a marvelous document for self-government by the Christian people. But the minute you turn the document into the hands of non-Christian people and atheistic people they can use it to destroy the very foundation of our society. And that's what's been happening." So I hope I'm not offending you Zeldor, but these are the guys with millions of followers in the US and they are on TV, or organizing politically, or running the government, and they are on TV everyday spouting their hate and bigotry and when it comes down to it, these are the groups who can't stop *****ing about violence in video games, violence and profanity in movies, pornography, and a host of other issues that would honestly not be offensive if not for the fact that these people want to impose their social views, their religious beliefs, or their bigoted judgment and puritanical standards on people who think differently.

Since it is almost inevitable that someone will say that I am bashing Christianity (because they are easily offended and won't actually read my arguments or my justification for my statements) I'm not suggesting that only Christians do that, but in the United States Christian fundamentalist groups are by far the largest radical religious groups in the country. To argue the other side, there are certainly Jews and Muslims that are also offended by violence and whatnot, Senator Lieberman is a prominent example of hating the video game industry and getting outraged and offended for political purposes, and he is quite frankly ridiculous and a douche bag who is in no way representative of any Jew that I know. Anyways, the possibility certainly exists that I'm wrong and maybe there is some satellite television channel of Jews and Muslims giving "I'm offended by X" diatribes that I'm not aware of, please feel free to inform and correct me.

Oh and aside from responding to Zeldor's comment, if it wasn't clear from the previous paragraph, I'm obviously coming down on the side of PC not really needing to be an issue for dominions. PC is a strange concept, and I generally believe that it really shouldn't exist because its the thought and attitude behind words that matters rather than the actual words themselves. Dominions 3 is a video game. It is meant for entertainment purposes only. There is honestly nothing as petty and wasteful as getting angry and offended over something that does not have any impact or importance to issues that exist in the real world. As people have already said in this thread, people who get offended by something from a video game should probably examine more closely what it is about themselves that is causing their reaction rather than what it is about the video game that 99.9% of people have no problem with whatsoever.

[JimMorrison]

I'm impressed, that was quite well expressed. I was a little daunted by the general lack of breaks in the text. A couple of paragraphs would do wonders for getting people to read what you have to say. <3

[Leif_-]

Atreides said:
Zeldor, I just wanted to take a moment to respond to this statement because I found it pretty confusing.[...]

Personally, I'm deeply and griveously offended by your hatred for paragraph breaks.

[chrispedersen]

Atreides said:

Being as I am from the United States, if you want to talk about religious nutcases on television getting easily offended about absolutely nothing, you might want to pay a little more attention to evangelical Christians and the Republican party who somehow think that homosexuals existing and living in this country, where tolerance and freedom of expression is a right, is offensive to G-d. The American media is crammed full of hate-mongers who bask in finding offense in everything and nothing and speak for and represent millions of like-minded fundamentalist Christians, like George Bush "No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots.", James Dobson "Homosexuals are not monogamous. They want to destroy the institution of marriage. It will destroy marriage. It will destroy the Earth," Jerry Falwell (currently in Hell learning that hating people probably wasn't what Jesus wanted him to spend his life teaching people) "If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being," and Pat Robertson "The Constitution of the United States, for instance, is a marvelous document for self-government by the Christian people. But the minute you turn the document into the hands of non-Christian people and atheistic people they can use it to destroy the very foundation of our society. And that's what's been happening." So I hope I'm not offending you Zeldor, but these are the guys with millions of followers in the US and they are on TV, or organizing politically, or running the government, and they are on TV everyday spouting their hate and bigotry and when it comes down to it, these are the groups who can't stop *****ing about violence in video games, violence and profanity in movies, pornography, and a host of other issues that would honestly not be offensive if not for the fact that these people want to impose their social views, their religious beliefs, or their bigoted judgment and puritanical standards on people who think differently.

Since it is almost inevitable that someone will say that I am bashing Christianity (because they are easily offended and won't actually read my arguments or my justification for my statements) I'm not suggesting that only Christians do that, but in the United States Christian fundamentalist groups are by far the largest radical religious groups in the country. To argue the other side, there are certainly Jews and Muslims that are also offended by violence and whatnot, Senator Lieberman is a prominent example of hating the video game industry and getting outraged and offended for political purposes, and he is quite frankly ridiculous and a douche bag who is in no way representative of any Jew that I know. Anyways, the possibility certainly exists that I'm wrong and maybe there is some satellite television channel of Jews and Muslims giving "I'm offended by X" diatribes that I'm not aware of, please feel free to inform and correct me.

Well, by quoting you, I illustrate that I have read your statements; and I am not easily offended. Having done that, I will now opine that you *are* bashing Christianity.
Your biases - while politically correct in the circles you probably run in, are none-the-less fairly strong.

For example - calling Christian fundamental groups 'radical' in the same vein as muslim terrorists. Or calling Lieberman a douche bag - because he holds beliefs contrary to yours.

It may be my misreading, yet I would opine that when the original poster was commenting about jews and muslims being the most easily offended that there is enough evidence to support the utterance of the statement, if not support or prove it.

I believe he was referring to the world wide muslim response to things like - the danish cartoon, the film in the netherlands where muslims responded by killing the producer, or even the reactions to 9-11.

On the jewish side, I think the case much less strong, although the actions of the israeli state, the constant tit for tat middle east violence; and perhaps even the actions of the antidefamation league might support his case.

Regardless; I don't support his position. In this area I happen to believe that all peoples are to greater or lesser extents capable of violence. And to argue who is most qualified is bootless.

But your whole rant about hate-mongering, gay hating christians right wingers etc etc. is exactly that. Bashing