For the past week, the game-o-sphere has been awash with the latest hot goss to land on everyone’s laps. Skullgirls, a relatively niche fighting game had announced, 10 years after the title’s launch, a radical shift in artistic direction.
If you’re not caught up on the happenings of a niche entry in a niche genre, I’ll keep it brief: the original Skullgirls was an incredibly raunchy game, featuring a lot of classic anime-isms like upskirts, sexual aggression, and over-the-top imagery like one of its main characters basically being a Nazi princess or one of its only Black characters being violently assaulted by cops.
Considering how much the political and cultural climate had shifted over the years (as well as the leadership of the teams involved), the game’s Director Charley Price had a bombshell announcement- they’d be cleaning up their act, so to speak, altering art from the game to remove things like upskirts for underage characters, as well as toning down a lot of other scenes by making them look less like they need to be identified by six digits. The result? A seemingly torrential backlash.
If you’ve no stake in either side of this story you’re the person I want to talk to. Because I think there is a rational argument to be made for either side of this, and that’s what we’re going to look at today:
Find out more by subscribing to our newsletter. You can read the full article for free just by putting your email address in the box below:
Give it a read and let us know what you think! There will be new newsletter feature articles regarding various topics surrounding video games, entertainment, and more every week.