"We Aim To Be Inclusive"

"Darkwingz;c-17745473" wrote:
The problem is that the Japanese audience already sees Snowy Escape's shrines as a paid capitalist object and offensive with the current interaction.
Meanwhile, Korea has been known to censor Japanese culture references.

It's as if the pre-established Sims 4 Sulani "culture" and respecting Gnomes slipped developer's minds.
It doesn't matter if Windenburg was a successful culture merge as far as architecture went.
There really is no solid excuse here that EA can give, and the current solution doesn't sit well with the Japanese audience.

"Shrines are meant to be a place of respect, not a curiosity." -Kotaku article linked somewhere in thread

Well if it seems like I'm giving them an out, I'm definitely not trying to. I don't think their efforts to represent other cultures are sincerely motivated to begin with. The personal views and desires of individual devs notwithstanding, the overall direction of a company like this is not in the interest of representation. It's in the interest of money. And my saying that is not meant to be some sort of "well that's just how it is, so people have to accept it." The point is that there is no pro-social authenticity to be found in their aims as a publicly traded company serving the interests of shareholders. "We aim to be inclusive" should rightfully be criticized, but should probably be understood clearly as something that was never going to be real to begin with... and understood as something people can pressure them with in terms of their brand and how it's viewed, but not as something they will feel any real shame or guilt about on a corporate level.

I'm probably saying stuff here that has already been said, but I wanted to make it clear where I stand. Musings about cultures and the ability to represent them authentically in a game like this aside, I don't have any illusions they are even capable as a company of representing these things properly. As you indicate, the very nature of their business, in some sense, makes it offensive. Authentic representation in art arguably requires, at the offset, a certain degree of authentic intention (not to mention the room to understand what is being represented without it being squeezed through things like target audience and marketing) and that is something fundamentally incompatible with their cynical profit-driven aims.

I'm sure I could say more, but I'm probably already riding the line of what kind of stuff is acceptable to talk about on these forums.