In the beginning of September, “Dead Island” was released in North America. It received good reviews and high commercial success, shipping two million copies of the game by the end of this week already. But what is “Dead Island?” “Dead Island” is a first-person game crossed with role-playing video game conventions, with stats and skills to upgrade your character. You take the role of one of four tourists on the fictional vacation spot of Panoi. This island is populated with the walking dead and your task is to help the survivors and investigate why zombies have appeared on a tropical island.
Two days after the game was released, some really troubling coding was found in the game. A skill, early in development, called “Feminist Whore,” was discovered. This skill gave a damage bonus for killing male zombies. This skill was later renamed “Gender Wars” and yielded the same effect. However, even though the skill was changed for the retail release of the game, the labeling and lack of removal has stirred up a response from the media. Ign.com reported on these events. “A Steam user by the name of AlekseiVasiliev dug into the game's source code and discovered the remnant of a skill called ‘Feminist Whore.’”
Ign.com continued the article with a response via Eurogamer from the developer, Techland, about the issue. "It obviously violates professional and ethical standards at Techland and should never have happened. We're investigating this right now and we'll issue a statement later. For now, I can only express my sincerest apologies for this incident and assure you that whoever acted so irresponsibly did not represent the views and opinions of Techland.” That’s the usual corporate response when controversy arises and they have yet to release said statement about the issue.
On September 9, a day later after the coded skill had been discovered, an editorial was put up on gamepro.com from Pete Davison as he discussed the “Feminist Whore” skill. “It was slipped in by a programmer as a private joke -- a private joke which subsequently became very, very public. And that "joke" has revealed an attitude towards women on the part of at least one Techland programmer that is extremely unhealthy, and all the more offensive for the fact that it came from a real person…The content of many games excludes women quite enough already -- there's no need for the people who work on producing that content to perpetuate that poor attitude.”
As for my opinion on the subject, I am completely on the side of Mr. Davison. This event reflects poorly on the gaming industry as a whole and like Davison said, this came from a real person and reflects real ideologies that just seem misplaced in a video game about slaying zombies on a fictional tropical island.
Leave a comment below and tell me what you think about the “Feminist Whore” skill.
