Im new to the community but i was hoping that this place wouldnt have as much complaining about “censorship” as others. Honestly if boobs are the only reason you play games i am sure there is a plenty of other games with plenty of boobs for you thirsty gamers. It doesn’t change the experience of the game and it makes it more accessible for people with stricter parents or some sort of laws. I see more people complaining about the people being offended than actual offended people. And you sound offended when you complain about it.
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Way to introduce yourself and missing the point.
Welcome, by the way.
Oh my bad, please allow me to elaborate:
censors here are not a matter of boobs; they are a matter of artworks, lore, timing and more:
- most of the cards that got a “censorship” treatement were stripped of lore correlation to the WoW the basic/classic set was solely based upon;
- artistically and contestually, most censorships either made no sense (Deadly Shot), offered worsening rather than improvements(see Jaina’s Hero; even a fashion expert commented how ridicolous her new outfit looks) or deprived a sense of class from WoW (Succubus replaced with Felhound);
but the worst part or rather, what I personally disliked about this whole ordeal:
- the poor, half assed, blatantly hypocritical explanation the developers tried feeding upon the playerbase, regarding their timing AND decisions to change certain artworks, claiming they “did not meet their standards”; basically saying: “I know you all are nothing more than dunces, so we trust this explanation will suffice”.
You don’t just so openly treat your playerbase like idiots and expect them to comply nicely.
“In case I didn’t say it already”, welcome.
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The new art is more tonally consistent with HS as a whole, the goofy madcap cartoon shenanigans of hearthstone just didn’t fit in with some of the card art.
Blizzards communication on this subject has been awful though.
Hi there. The Community Discussion is the less popular of the two major sections of these forums. This means that certain topics tend to linger around for longer than they would otherwise. The whole censorship kerfuffle is irrelevant to most people in these forums, as you can see if you look at the Multiplayer Discussion section. The few oddballs who still care about it keep one or two threads alive on this section, which makes the topic itself seem more relevant than it actually is.
The real problem with the censorship is that it’s forcing Communist China’s censorship laws onto the rest of the world. There is no reason for Blizzard to censor the game for the REST of the world just to meet CCP’s requirements. Censor the game IN CHINA. Region lock them or just run different clients. Don’t change things for EVERYONE just to appease China. And don’t go and hide behind “ItS oUr ArTiStIc ViSiOn”
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It more about human rights and gender equality than censorship to be honest. (At least to me.)
It is not okay for the male characters of this game to be half naked and be okay but when a female shows a little bit of skin they get covered up.
What are we teaching our children from this? I am serious. It’s bs that the male characters don’t cover up along with females. They are either all okay or none of them are okay.
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Yes, I am offended by Activision Blizzard succumbing to political correctness. You should be too. Political correctness is thought control. Not allowed to think about boobs or butts or blood. Those things are double plus ungood.
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Greetings. You missed the point of censorship.
Should we just be compliant with it? Of course not!
You miss the point. That’s what the artwork was like, and they’re changing it for China. Nobody cared about it, but they had to just make everybody mad by taking down something that was PERFECTLY fine! You sound like somebody trying to denounce Belle Delphine’s fanbase.
You mean the Chinese laws? I’m tired of American companies bending over backwards for a new market quicker than they would for our own fanbase. Hearthstone should be enjoyed for all ages, but they’re just making ti safer for a censored market and for a 2 year old to play it. Can’t handle words such as “Succubus” or some cleavage/ Grow up.
Because this is abhorrent business behavior that is anti-consumer to its extreme. Nobody cared about the lewdness or gore, I’m sure everybody liked it but them removing it shows how much Blizzard cares about money rather than us.
And yknow what? I DO want my Secretkeeper booty back, sue me.
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“hey guys! We could change a few artworks on cards and break into China where we’d make millions!”
“Dude. That’s censorship. Our fans will whine a lot. What so you think this is? A business?”
…
Unfounded claim, no proof.
- China already has its own client, and its own version of the artwork. If they wanted to change it for China, the change would have been to that version.
- The changes went live less than a month after China announced regulation. Lots of players see that as evidence that there is a connection. They totally ignore that it actually takes a much longer time to implement such a change. Blizzard started planning this before China announced their new rules, the timing is just an unlucky coincidence.
We don’t know the full reason for this change. But because of the above, China is in fact the least likely reason.
Companies always bend over backwards, for any market. It’s called doing business.
Fans, or rather people calling them that, should stop forcing a company to make the things they want instead of the things that make the company money. Why are you even trying to limit Blizzard’s freedom of artistic expression?
Do you have a source for that claim?
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It just so happens they took out things that would make it more in accordance with China? Are you really telling me you’re believing Blizzard when they say China had nothing to do with it?
No, it doesn’t. I’d bet all these art changes is just art they had unused. Changing the names or art of the cards would take very little time. In fact, the day they announced it, the changes went live.
Proof?
Not for us it seems.
Would you rather appeal to the vast majority, or a small minority? That’s called business.
Here’s a better question, do YOU have any source that has the MAJORITY of the playerbase complaining and up in arms about lewdness or gore? If you have good sources I’ll concede my points.
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every person complaining about censorship is inherently anti capitalism. HS is very popular in china it would stupid to not pander to them. just like it would be stupid to not pander to us or EU.
capitalism is submitting to the regulations of a communist government?
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yes litterally yes. they want to buy our product well sell it to them. capitalism its a global economy and china in the next decade will most likely pass us in GDP. they are better at the capitalism then us. thier stock markets already have more companies publicly traded then us.
Yes. Because the things they took out are ALSO things that have become more sensitive in the US market. And because, as I explained in my previous message (mostly the parts you choose to overlook and not quote back!), a change for China (a) would have been in the Chinese version, and (b) would have taken more time.
“China is being a pain, Sir”
“Oh, dear lordy. Well, then it’s good that we already happen to have a bloodless version of Eviscerate and a more decent version of Secretkeeper lying around that we totally planned to never use and then created anyway.”
In other words: why the heck would they have created the less sexual and less violent version of that art before China announced anything? There is only one logical reason: because they already had plans to change those cards when China made that announcement. So your assumption that you “bet all these art changes is just art they had unused” actually supports my argument that China is not the root cause.
Which means that they had been working on it in secret, probably for a few months, and had decided not to do an advance announcement and then release later, but that they would rather not release it until ready.
I’m pretty sure that when the Chinese announcement dropped, a few managers at Blizzard regretted their decision to not announce the art change project when it kicked off. “No way our conspiracy-loving fanbase will ever believe we didn’t do it for China now”.
In the two statements before the one you quoted.
No?
Okay, then, Please show me a list of all cards that show bare nipple.
Well? I’m waiting.
What’s that, you say? There are none? Hmmm, what a remarkable coincidence, for a game that used to have the USA as its primary market. A market where skin and cleavage is okay, but a tiny bit of nipple in the halftime show of a Superbowl causes a full on revolt, causes advertisers to lose money, causes future halftime shows to be broadcast on delay.
Exactly.
And I hate to break this to you, but you are a representative of a small minority.
The vast majority of HS players don’t give a thing about these artwork changes. They probably don’t eve notice the change in Eviscerate. They grumble a bit about not recognizing Secretkeeper anymore. And then they move on, because gameplay is unchanged. They still love, or don’t love, the interactions of a Hearthstone game as much as before.
And then there is a small but vocal group of people who for whatever reason are terribly upset, and like true Social Justice Warriors take to the streets (or rather, the forum), threaten to bring down the company by cutting their habit of spending a handful of pocket money on it, unless the company proves that they are independent and not willing to budge to demands of artwork change. A proof that, funnily enough, has to be delivered by exactly budging the the demands of artwork change of this group.
Oh, and there is also a group of potential players that might be reached when the nudity and violence on the cards is toned down a bit. Young players, with parents of the type that back in 2004 thought that seeing a bare nipple could corrupt a youngster for life. And who by now have gone on to convince themselves and their pear that cleavage, butcracks, and also drops of blood might well have the same devestating effect on their sweethearts. (And then probably take them to the shooting range to learn how to handle a handgun, but let’s not get political here).
No, I don’t. So I guess it’s a good thing that I never did make such a claim.
You, however, did make a claim. A claim that you are apparently unable to back up.
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If that is true then why is Garrosh and any other male characters left completely untouched and un-nerfed if Blizzard is such a crusader for child friendly content and not due to China? A company would never lie to its fanbase for profit, who had ever heard of that??
Dang, must take a long time to draw some card art and upload them to cards. No one can do that within a month.
If they can do 100+ cards from scratch every 4 month they can change some in a month easily dingus. Plus it wasn’t something they can “wait and see” because it involved an entire countries of players.
So you want to push for Blizzard’s artistic expression by not letting them draw anything that would be consider inapporiate?
Must have worked really hard for years for like the 5 card changes, impossible to do in a month.
Well you said it yourself, I don’t even have to say anything
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Last time I was in the USA was, I think, November last year. I admit, a lot can change in a few months. Back then, not a single part of the male upper body was considered obscene by even the most conservatives around.
But I take it that has changed since?
Or, if not, you need to explain how Garrosh’s art would in any way disprove my arguments.
In a large company, yes.
First management has to decide on whether and how to change the art standard, where then over 2000 collectible cards (plus I have no idea how many uncollectible cards) need to be reviewed against the new standard, then cards need to be assigned to artists, work is done, a review panel comments, adaptations are made, and then finally the changes are implemented and rolled out in production.
Yes, I think that this would take at least six weeks, probably two months.
They have a full team of artists working on those cards. And since they are busy on those cards, they cannot work on art changes in between, there is no room for that in the schedule.
You may also not be aware of how such processes work. If you think that work on the next expansion starts after Saviors of Uldum releases, you are wrong. The only people now working on Uldum are QA (to catch final bugs and get them fixed before release) and, mostly, the PR department. The graphics and programming for that expansion is already done, artists and developers are already working on the next expansion. Which means that the designers are already done with that next expansion, and are now fleshing out first ideas for the first expansion of 2020. (Which then probably also means that the lead designers are already tossing up first rough ideas for the second expansion of 2020).
Welcome to the world of large enterprises!
Last time I looked, you were the one criticising Blizzard’s choices of how they want their game to look, and I was defending their freedom of expression.
If you want to have serious discussion, I’m game.
Fair enough.
Here’s my proof. The player base of Hearthstone is millions of players. How many of them are posting here? How many on Reddit?
All the rest apparently don’t care. At least not enough to bother to type a message here.
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A little bit of female skin wasn’t considered obscene either, so wasn’t violence/blood in entertainment. Why are all the the sudden those considered inappropriate but naked Garrosh is not??
Normally it would take 2 month or longer for any HS decision to be made I am sure. But this is China, one of there biggest gamer base. They couldn’t sit around for a couple or month deciding on this to risk their china player base. They probably could/did prioritize the change over many other changes.
How they want their game, or how China want their game to look?
That is such flawed logic.
In the 2016 presidential election 60% of Americans voted, but that doesn’t mean the other 40% doesn’t care about who gets to become the president of the United States. And 60% is for something important such as a presidential election, it is much less with local elections and no doubt tiny for a game forum.
Second out of the millions of HS players, how many speak english? How many use reddit/ the forums instead of other websites? How many would prefer to complain to a friend and to another source rather than on here?
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Seriously, what’s next, a freaking LGBTQXYZ character? Political correctness is death to any free thinker and it’s death to Hearthstone. RNG is also killing this game, btw.
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LOL you are so full of it