Skullgirls Controversies [Thread]

At the risk of getting ratio'd and/or having to protect my tweets,
I'm going to give my full thoughts on the Skullgirls controversies.

First, let's start with SonicFox.
SonicFox is famous for being a competitive video game player. SF has won EVO several times. EVO is a video game championship that focuses on fighting games.
SF is a "furry" and used to identify as a gay man, but now
identifies as non-binary.

Recently SF started appearing in Skullgirls. In the Tutorial mode, there used to always be a teacher named Mrs. Victoria who stood
by watching as you learned the ins and outs of the game,
but now there's a 50% chance that SF will show up.

My opinion on the whole thing? I'm not upset that SonicFox is in the game. SF is a prominent competitive fighting game player who plays Skullgirls, so having SF make a cameo appearance makes sense.

What I do take issue with is that SF has a 50% chance of showing up. That's just excessive to me. I think SF should have a 25% chance AT MOST of showing up since it's just a cameo. But to have SF show up 50% of the time borders on in-game advertising.

Imo, the devs should either reduce SF’s chance of showing up in the Tutorial mode or make an option to remove SF from that mode altogether. Skullgirls lets you change the voice of the announcer from male to female to even Soviet, so this change I suggested isn’t much to ask.

Next I’ll talk about the game’s “censorship.” In 2015, two characters, Filia and Cerebella had a few frames of their animations altered. This pic sums the changes up. This article goes into detail about the changes and the controversy: https://www.lewdgamer.com/2015/11/4/skullgirls-made-small-change-panties/

What’s my opinion on the change? I don’t care about it. I don’t think the change was necessary, but I also don’t find the change offensive. I wouldn’t have even noticed the change if other people didn’t point it out.

Much like with the people who were offended by Mr. Game & Watch's headdress, you have to go out of your way to even notice things like this.

Two reasons I don’t care:
1. These changes amount to a few frames. The game still has A LOT of sex appeal, from sexy outfits, to sexy fan art you can unlock and view in-game, to panty shots. To call Skullgirls politically correct would be dishonest.

Compare this to Mortal Kombat 11, a game that got rid of most of the series’ sex appeal. It’s as if NRS was so ashamed of how their female MK9 characters looked that they went the complete opposite extreme and covered up their women...

...while still having half-naked male characters, making the game's roster look awkward and inconsistent as a whole.

This looks like it was entirely a creative decision. I’m not a big fan of political correctness, and I HATE it when game devs arbitrarily change things because a handful of people got offended (Mr. G&W above is a good example).

But as far as I can tell, they didn’t make those minor changes to fold to crybullies. One of the staff at Lab Zero explains why he made the change, pictured here.

Source: http://skullheart.com/index.php?threads/skullgirls-pc-beta-updates-discussion.407/page-190#post-268947

Unless you have proof that this change was made because someone got offended by those few frames, it was just a creative decision, not an attempt to pander to the PC crowd. Otherwise, I would’ve taken more issue with it, but as it is, I'm indifferent to it.

Now, whether you like or dislike this change, you’re entitled to your opinion, and I respect it. But I really don’t think this change was that big a deal. If you didn’t agree with the change, that’s fine, but please cease with the slippery slope argument.

Just because they changed a few frames, doesn’t mean they’re going to cover all the women up and get rid of all the sex appeal.

And if you didn’t mind the change, can you stop telling people who did “Just watch porn” or “It’s fiction!” There’s nothing wrong with fan service in video games. If it’s not your thing, that’s fine, but some people love their fan service, and that’s okay too.

Overall, I'm not asking anyone to agree with me on any of this, but I hope that I didn't commit Twitter suicide.