On Blasphemy and Release Dates

[atolnon]

If you don't have a Playstation 3, or are otherwise uninterested in the video-game culture in which I stand, (knee-deep like a space marine amoung livid, clawing corpses) you probably don't know about Little Big Planet and its subsequent failure to release. This is an issue that I really only know about second hand, through the medium of web comic oracles and my room mate, who is interested enough in this software to possess distinctive desktop wallpaper of their chief icon.

I understand that she is not amused by the games failure to ship. From what I can uncover (and I really did not try to hard), it has something to do with a pop song, or maybe Islam. They kind of rhyme, so maybe I just got them confused. In all seriousness, I think that the situation is maybe tied to both things, and I did not look into the matter deeply. Something in bad taste occured.

The truth is, I have been living my video game life vicariously through others. I am ostentaniously stuck in the past with my only systems, 2nd generation all, quite some distance away. I recieve my fix almost entirely through the mediums of Diablo II and losing at Soul Caliber 4, which is a franchise I really should be familiar with by now. This isn't really an issue about 3rd party systems, though. Little Big Planet is a game that is all about user-generated content. You know, this is really the gaming equivilent of just letting people post whatever RPG modules they want to the games website. At some point, there are going to be a lot of these, and some of them are going to be awful.

I mean, in terms of taste.

And I guess that's what happened. Someone posted something awful, and someone else found out, and now they have to close the playground for everyone until they can hire more recess monitors, or something. Little Big Planet is a game where little cloth-people run around a cloth-environment, and make funny faces; it really possesses no significant threat to liberty or our welfare, even when it's in bad taste. I guess the game designers are trying to keep a close eye on the situation, now, which is a job I don't particularly envy.  As soon as their boulder is near the top of the hill, I can garuntee where it will roll just prior to victory.

Comments

[arist-one-eye.livejournal.com]

Essentially, it works out like this. Remember last year-ish, when there was an uproar in the Muslim countries over the Netherlands depiction of Mohammad? Basically the same situation as with Little Big Planet, but over music. There's a piece of music that samples the Quran, and that's a big no no in Islam. (http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/10/quran-reference.html)

Sony, who just recently fought and settled with The Church of England over using a church in the first Resistance (not joking) (http://blog.wired.com/games/2007/06/church_of_engla.html)didn't want to deal with that shit again. So they pulled the carts, fixed the code, and the game should be re-released within the next week or so.

Of course, as Gabe points out at Penny Arcade (http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2008/20081022.jpg), this does not even big to touch what's going to happen when LBP goes live and the general population gets its claws on it. Like your comparison to fan produced material, sometimes you'll get pure awesome, and sometimes you'll get FATAL.

[atolnon.livejournal.com]

I thought it was something like that, but I liked the vagueness because Gabe is totally right. It doesn't matter what they pull now, because they'll have to shut down content for reals.

User generated content is going to be right up there with file sharing on the news in the next year or so.

[atolnon.livejournal.com]

And strictly speaking, FATAL did inspire awe in me. Just the morbid awe of someone willing to write something that is simultaniously huge, banal, and sad.

[brantai.livejournal.com]

And completely historically accurate.

[atolnon.livejournal.com]

This is a fact.