I think most of us can agree that it’s a good thing to beat Nazis. Heck, a bunch of great video games are based on the exact premise. Therefore, it was strange when a State of decay 2 The player discovered that game characters have a negative effect on trash removal in their pre-apocalypse lives.
In State of decay 2, the open-world zombie game released in 2018 by Undead Labs and Microsoft Studios, each survivor you recruit is equipped with random features that reflect what they did before the outbreak, and the effect the experiences have on their personality. Survivors can, for example, be ‘afraid of rats’, which in turn presents them in pest control, which provides a bonus for your maximum food storage.
Steam Marines 2 developer Yik-Sian James Seow picked up State of decay 2 offered for sale in January, and quickly a long Twitter thread about his time with the game. But last week, he noticed something strange: one of his survivors seems to be having a negative personality effect due to the trait “Punched Nazis”. Under the scent text, the play explained that kicking skinhead from a local concert in a previous life indicated that the character was generally ‘irritated with other people’, rather than just doing the right thing in that scenario .
‘It would be a very bad way to get the State of decay 2 devs are cool with Nazis, ”Seow wrote, on a days-long tweet asking Undead Labs and Microsoft Studios about the feature. He was finally blocked by the official State of decay account, what the studio now says was caused by a false positive in his “social listening software” after the avalanche harassment he received afterwards provides public support for Black History Month.
In subsequent tweets shared yesterday, Undead Labs explained that the feature “Punched Nazis” was never intended to be presented in an entirely negative light, as it also gives survivors a greater combat experience and makes them “more likely to be passionate. argue for their beliefs “, the latter of which was accidentally changed with the addition of new game mechanics.
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“When the Morality system came into being, it simplified our original nuanced concept of ‘characters arguing for their beliefs’ to a basic negative morality effect, representing disunity in the community,'” Undead Labs wrote. ‘Today, this feature has a positive skill bonus and a red text in the UI due to the likelihood of arguments. This has been the case for years and we have never realized until tonight how confusing it looks (it is not common, and we have over 1300 features). ‘
Undead Labs plans to correct this problem in a future correction by removing the negative effect currently associated with the “Punched Nazis” trait, and transforming it into the positive personality indicator it was always meant to be. Survivors will still get their fighting experience boosted, but will rightly not be considered a nuisance by the community because they have risen up against white supremacists.
As is often the case in these situations, Seow himself was on the other side of a hate campaign by gamers who would rather advocate for the rights of Nazis than look long and hard at the hatred allowed to cultivate in their communities and eradicate it by the roots. Establishing a safe, welcoming society requires that we be intolerant to intolerance, and if you can not even get away with it in a video game, do not let the door slam out of your hole on the way.