Unfortunate Implications / Video Games

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• Blah Story Blah Blah Circumstance Blah Blah Implication Blah. Example Website

• The citation needs to record the opinions of several people; a citation that mentions only one person isn't enough.
• The citation should be in a reputable source. We'd prefer you cite something a bit more formal than someone's Tumblr blog. Anyone can write a blog post and then call it a "citation".
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Keep in mind that Unfortunate Implications are unintentional. An intended offensive message (for example, a piece of Axis propaganda about Jews) does not belong here, nor does natter about the author's true intentions.

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• Assassin's Creed:
  • Assassin's Creed: Unity: Robert Rath writing for The Escapist criticized the depiction of famous revolutionary women in the game, noting that despite the negative publicity Ubisoft is Not Helping Your Case. He points out how one major woman historical figure like Charlotte Corday is portrayed like a crazy stalker (rather than Well-Intentioned Extremist who truly believed she was doing right) as well as being treated in a throwaway half-baked side mission when she is one of the most legendary true-life assassins in history. Olympe de Gouges, a highly respected feminist author (regularly considered for placement in France's Pantheon building) does not get a database entry and appears as a collectible severed head for Madame Tussaud's collection which Arno has to rescue since it's a fetish object from a nutty soldier, noting how she is quite literally objectified.
  • Assassin's Creed: Valhalla was criticized by historian Bret Deveraux for, among other things, its premise being a glorification of white nationalist race ideology and colonialism:
    "This is a game where the Norse and Danish, in possession of a superior culture and unencumbered by effete Christian morality take root in a new, populated land by force and immediately proceed, by virtue of their superiority, to begin ‘improving’ the locals. This is, without exaggeration, exactly the vision that historical colonialists presented of their brutal imperial regimes and it differs from the actual, historically traumatic experience of the 9th century invasions in exactly the same ways as more modern experiences of colonialism."
• BioShock Infinite, which features class warfare between downtrodden minorities (led by the black Daisy Fitzroy) and a racist white society (led by the "Prophet" Zachary Hale Comstock), has come under criticism for its somewhat awkward use of the theme of race. The juxtaposition of Comstock and Fitzroy has been called a false equivalency, and the main quantum mechanics story thread being independent of race (although the two themes do dovetail in some of the subplots, e.g., the gunsmith and his wife) have led some to question why even add race relations to the game at all. Burial at Sea attempts to alleviate this by making Fitzroy more sympathetic, revealing that she never wanted to kill Fink's son, and only pretended to because the Luteces needed Elizabeth to become more comfortable with killing. However, this plot point also came under fire in player retrospectives over the optics of forcing Fitzroy, the only significant black character in the entire game, to effectively commit Suicide by Cop for the sake of empowering Elizabeth (a white woman).
• Call of Duty: Ghosts' campaign has some unpleasant undertones, as Ben Croshaw pointed out. All of the non-evil characters are burly white men, bar three: Kyra Mossley, a white female astronaut who dies during the first level, a nameless, faceless female helicopter pilot, and Ajax, the Black Token Minority of the Ghosts who dies after about two lines and whose death doesn't bother the heroes much. ^note To quote the review: "And, frankly, when that happened, the main characters displayed less emotion than when their dog got shot." Every other non-white character is a part of the Federation, an ineffective Generic Doomsday Villain faction composed of every country in Latin America banding together in an attempt at destroying the United States for poorly-explained reasons, leading to every character coming from south of the border being treated as Always Chaotic Evil. The only villain who is portrayed as competent and with a deeper motivation than "destroy America For the Evulz" is Rorke... who is also the one white member of the enemy faction.
• Call of Juarez: The Cartel:
  • A mission where the protagonists break up a sex trafficking ring that's targeting American women to be sold in Mexico. Not only is the player encouraged to threaten the strippers in the club for a lead in the case, but the scenario is a complete inversion from the reality, where the majority of such kidnappings are of Mexican women to be sold in the US. As the host of Extra Credits points out, doing the former would paint a huge bulls-eye on the cartels for US law enforcement agencies.
  • Another bit in the game that Extra Credits called out was an achievement called "Bad Guy" — one of the standard "Kill X enemies" achievements. What pushes it into this territory, though, is the name, and it's the only "Kill X Enemies" achievement in the game, and it happens to take place in a level where the only enemies are black gang members that the protagonists had incited to violence through a False Flag Operation.
  • Furthermore, in the same video, Extra Credits noted that Kim Evans, the Token Minority female, is depicted as only joining the agency through an affirmative action program, rather than through skill or experience.
• Digging into the files of Dead Island reveals the names for the special abilities for each character. One of Purna's is "Gender Wars", which allows her to deal more damage to males. However, it was discovered this particular ability was before release named by one of the developers "Feminist Whore." Developers Deep Silver apologized for missing this and sending out with initial copies of the game.
• Deadly Premonition 2: The trans character Lena Dauman has been subjected to criticism by members of the LGBT community, not necessarily because of the character herself (aspects of her portrayal have been highlighted as quite admirable, and York makes an impassioned speech in her defense at one point, decrying the townspeople for isolating her from the community merely because of her gender identity), but rather the frequency in which she is deadnamed and misgendered (including by York himself despite the aforementioned speech). SWERY actually issued an apology in response, stating that the scenes will be rewritten to correct this.^note It seems a big part of the issue is that the Japanese language lacks personal pronouns, leaving the English translation team to decide which ones to use on their own. Thus Values Dissonance and Innocently Insensitive in full effect.
• Death Stranding has been criticized for the interview log titled "An Asexual World", which gives an offensive and inaccurate description of asexuality. The in-game document describes asexuality as a "sexless lifestyle" (implying that it is a personal choice), insinuates that asexuals are "incapable of feeling desire or attraction" and "reticent to form emotional connections with others" (ignoring the existence of non-sexual love), suggests that the cataclysmic Death Stranding is responsible for more people turning asexual, and blames asexuals for the world's low birth rate. Presumably, the intent was to draw parallels with Japan's rapidly falling birth rate, but equating asexuality with celibacy is a harmful misconception (asexuals do not feel sexual attraction, while celibate people may, but choose not to act upon it), with the harm being worsened by the extreme rarity of positive asexual representation in media, meaning that this inaccurate description is likely to be a viewer's first impression of asexuality and demisexuality. The Director's Cut attempted an Author's Saving Throw by appending a footnote at the end of the document, pointing out that even In-Universe, the article's claims about asexuality are controversial, unsubstantiated, and discriminatory, while proposing the much more sensible theory that the increase in those who identify as asexual can be linked to greater societal awareness and acceptance.
• Detroit: Become Human has been criticized for nakedly taking real-life instances of racism, bigotry, and discrimination when crafting the struggles that androids face in the game without considering the context behind them. Some critics, such as at io9 and Headstuff, took particular offense to the parallels with the civil rights movement, stating that, among other things, it was insulting to compare oppressed blacks with machines which, in addition to being created specifically to serve humans and not having inherent self-awareness, actually do pose a threat to humanity and have incredible durability besides.
• Dragon Age:
  • Dragon Age: Origins: According to this thesis, the Zevran romance is rife with such implications. The first issue is that of questionable consent implied through power imbalance and coercion where the Warden quite literally has the power of life or death over Zevran in both his recruitment and loyalty quests, after which he may be placed in a dilemma of “warm my bed” or die. The second issue is that Zevran’s presentation as an Elfeminate bisexual Antivan sets him up as an exotic foreign “other” that, coupled with the power imbalance previously mentioned makes his romance resemble “female romance tourism”.
  • Dragon Age II:
    • As Zero Punctuation mentions in his review of Dragon Age II, the Dragon Age franchise is not exactly subtle about its Fantasy Counterpart Culture coding of Andrastian humans after European Christians and Elves after minorities (by Word of Gaider), nor the rather heavy-handed way it handles in-universe racism. This creates a rather unfortunate implication when it doesn't allow the player to pick anything but the dominant race and class (human of noble blood) which can be seen as troubling.
    Yahtzee: Much like the first one, Dragon Age II is all about the representative messages, and can't go more than five minutes without someone being really, heavy-handedly racist against mages, elves, dwarves, goldfish, etc., which is why I find it somewhat ironic that you're only allowed to play a human this time around, when the last game let you pick from an entire Burger King Kid's Club of racism backstories.
    • According to this thesis the most egregious example of Human Privilege showcased in this game is the quest Magistrate’s Orders in which a magistrate asks Hawke to aid him in shielding his son Kelder from justice for preying upon and murdering elven children. The implication being that the magistrate only reached out to Hawke because they are a fellow human noble (even though Hawke was a refugee at that time) and would be expected to display the same prejudice and entitlement that he does. Granted, this could be another example of the game reflecting reality a little too well, which can unsettle some players.
• The "pawns" system in Dragon's Dogma has drawn comparisons to pimping. Let this quote from the Zero Punctuation review explain:
  "...for adventuring purposes, you can also enlist two additional sidekicks who are the main sidekicks of other players elsewhere in the world. [...] When you're finished with them, you give them a little present and send them back to their owner with a fond slap on the bum. You even have to rate them like you're filling in a timesheet for a temp agency. It creates motivation to make sure your sidekick has the best equipment and skills [...] so they'll be more likely to be hired by other players, acquire experience, bring you back presents, and — wait a minute! Am I pimping?
  Once that thought occurred to me, I just couldn't shake it off. [...] 'No, it's alright,' says the game. 'They're not actually intelligent free-willed human beings, they're pawns, a sort of magical human slave race who look a lot like humans but actually don't have minds of their own.' Oh, even better! Now we're pimping the mentally subnormal!"
• Duke Nukem Forever suffered a bad example of this. The game positively rejoices in a very dated portrayal of female characters as damsels to be rescued and eye candy, is (seemingly) intended to be an example of Crosses the Line Twice, in a send-up of old action games and movies (and with a fairly large helping of Self-Deprecation). However, one game mechanic, in the "Capture the Babe" multiplayer mode, which involved the babe making a bid for freedom and needing to be slapped on the arse to calm her down, didn't endear it to some reviewers.
• Far Cry 4:
  • The release of the cover of the game, with a blonde, light-skinned man standing against a deity while dominating a intimidated dark-skinned man and the Himalayan setting of the game brought accusations of racism and homophobia against the developers for indulging in Third World Mighty Whitey power fantasy (although since Min is actually the Big Bad, it's more likely they intended to convey the exact opposite — he's also Hong Kong Chinese, something not initially clear to all viewers). Likewise, the outcry against the game for homophobia was due to the belief that Pagan Min was a Depraved Homosexual, based on the initial assumption that he was a Camp Gay due to his bright pink suit and larger-than-life Affably Evil personality. Again, in actuality Min is the opposite, as a major part of his backstory involves his part in a bloody love triangle due to his love for Ajay's late mother, and it's implied that Ajay is his surrogate heir.
  • An understandable complaint is for the developers' decision to scrap playable female characters at the last minute because it was too much work, echoing a similar controversy over comments Ubisoft made for another game (although they have since clarified on that one). Controversy over the Porting Disaster of another Ubisoft game, Watch_Dogs, which was technical issues-based, raised questions of whether the Unfortunate Implications have more to do with incompetence and poor resource management than actual sexism, especially since Far Cry 5 was able to have a customizable protagonist of either gender (albeit at the cost of them being silent, something not done in the series since 2, and featureless on top of it).
• Ars Technica ran an article critical of Final Fantasy VII Remake and the remake of Trials of Mana. Final Fantasy VII Remake was specifically criticized for how it portrayed the character of Barret, calling him and his voicework an out of place and uncomfortable stereotype, undoing all of his character development over the years. The section dedicated to him is even called Blaxploitation Barret.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Fire Emblem: Awakening: That two characters who look like 12-year old girls are able to marry and have children has been controversial.
  • Fire Emblem Fates, despite the inclusion of Gay Options, fell into this with the treatment of character Soleil, who seems to prefer women as romantic partners but can't support with any of them, and her Japanese higher level support dialogs with a Male Avatar are strongly reminiscent of both Cure Your Gays and Slipping a Mickey, as he essentially gives her a potion without her knowledge to make her view him as a cute girl, and this is treated as a good thing. This has been heavily criticized on both sides of the Pacific, so much so that Nintendo would later completely rewrite the scene for its Western release.
  • Fire Emblem: Three Houses has the most LGBT+ content to date in the series, but controversy arose when the number of female-female S-Supports available for a female Byleth, at five, was compared against the number of male-male S-Supports available for a male Byleth, at three. However, two of the three male-male S-Supports are Alois and Gilbert, and theirs are the only S-Supports in the game that are explicitly not romantic: Byleth even marries an unnamed woman in his S-Support ending with Alois. This resulted in some pushback from LGBT+ fans and media outlets. The argument was that not only did the presence and execution of the Alois and Gilbert male-male S-Supports come off as a bait-and-switch, but their platonic nature meant that the ratio of romantic same-sex S-Supports for Byleth was actually five female-female options versus one male-male option. Thus, the game's presentation of same-sex romance came off as one that was playing safe with the tastes of a specific kind of straight male audience, especially since the only female House Leader, Edelgard, is also the only House Leader available for a same-sex romantic S-Support. This was partially rectified with some future updates (both free and paid) which added two new explicitly romantic male-male S-Supports ^note  Jeritza and Yuri, who are available to both a male and a female Byleth , but it's still a sore spot in the game's LGBT+ fandom.
• Haven (2020): Several reviews have pointed out that the game's premise — a cisgendered heterosexual couple fleeing from an oppressive government's Arranged Marriage — is highly offensive to LGBTQI+ peoples, as the story takes elements like discrimination and conversion therapy and applies them to a cisgendered heterosexual couple. Adding salt to the wounds is that one of the game's antagonists is an openly lesbian couple, leaving many to assume the development team has a Heteronormative Crusader message where the only valid expression of love comes from cisgendered heterosexual persons. This was somewhat lessened with an update that allows the main couple to be either a gay or lesbian pairing, but the implications remain with the hetero pairing.
• The trailer for Hitman: Absolution, which features PVC-clad Ms. Fanservice Naughty Nuns being shot, beaten, stabbed, and garroted by Agent 47, caught a lot of flak for seemingly encouraging sexism, fetishizing violence and glamorizing violence towards women, such as this article in the Guardian.
• Hogwarts Legacy has attracted a lot of criticism for many aspects of its writing, even ignoring J.K. Rowling's controversial views on transgender issues.
  • The game's plot has been accused of featuring flagrant antisemitic elements, mainly due to the large role that goblins play in the story. Considering how Harry Potter's goblins were already often compared to negative Jewish stereotypes (being greedy, hook-nosed monsters who run the world's banks), the fact that the game's story is about stopping a goblin rebellion was seen as in poor taste even before the game came out. Even worse, the goblins' plan involves abducting a child, which drew comparisons to the blood libel, an antisemitic conspiracy theory claiming that Jews kidnap and murder children.
  • One goblin artefact that can be found in the game resembles a shofar, a horn used in certain Jewish religious ceremonies. This drew further accusations of antisemitism, made worse by the fact that the horn is said to have been "used by goblins during the 1612 Goblin Rebellion to rally troops and generally annoy witches and wizards." In real life, 1612 was the year where the Fettmilch Uprising (a pogrom against Jews) took place in Frankfurt.
  • While including a canonically transgender character was seen as an attempted Author's Saving Throw by some, the execution left some transgender fans wanting. The character in question is a transgender woman named Sirona Ryan. This name was criticized, drawing comparisons to other unfortunate Harry Potter character names like Cho Chang and Kingsley Shacklebolt: this time, the issue was with giving a trans woman a first name that starts with "Sir" and a last name that's more commonly used as a masculine first name, which can be seen as trying to draw attention to her masculinity. Additionally, Sirona appears to have been thrown in as nothing more than a Token Minority, added in an attempt at drawing attention away from Rowling's positions on transgender issues and the right-wing political views of the game's original lead designer, rather than out of a genuine desire to represent transgender people.
• The June 2021 Pride Month event for the mobile version of Injustice 2 rewarded players for defeating Poison Ivy a certain number of times in Challenge Mode. Many members of the LGBT community found it tasteless that the Pride Month event involved beating up a canonically queer character (Poison Ivy is often portrayed as bisexual and in a relationship with Harley Quinn). After the backlash, the developers apologized.
• This is very likely why Chief Thunder was not given a true retro outfit in the 2013 Killer Instinct reboot, as his original outfit could easily be construed as culturally insensitive (instead he was given a Badass Biker alternate outfit as his retro outfit, which is definitely cool but not what he wore in the original Killer Instinct). Iron Galaxy (the developers who assumed control of the game when Double Helix was bought out by Amazon) went on to correct this by collaborating with the Nez Perce tribe to create a 100% culturally accurate alternate outfit for Thunder.
• Kingdom Hearts
  • The series is a bit infamous for not treating its women well, especially Kairi.
    • Though Kairi is ostensibly the main female protagonist of the series, she has far less screen time than Sora or Riku, is much less capable than them in battle, has little character development and story, and is repeatedly treated as a Damsel in Distress to be kidnapped. On the occasions where she isn't kidnapped, she remains on the sidelines uninvolved with things beyond giving the heroes emotional support. 3D and 2.8 implied this would be changing in III with it being set up that Kairi would begin training to become a Keyblade wielder to help Sora and Riku fight Xehanort. However, when III came out, Kairi spent the entire game training off-screen until the climax, when she was abducted by Xemnas and then killed by Master Xehanort. While the Re:Mind DLC does try its best to rectify this, Melody of Memory, which was supposed A Day in the Limelight for Kairi, has a Final Boss where the spirit of Sora has fight to in Kairi's stead due to the latter not being strong enough to handle the ghost of Master Xehanort herself. The story itself ends with her being left behind by Riku due to needing more training. Kairi's treatment can be extended to all the Princesses of Heart as well — despite their supposed power, they do little of importance in the first game and mostly exist to be abducted and held captive, making them Living MacGuffins.
    • The handling of Naminé and Xion is more contentious. Some note that they show more agency and independence than Kairi, with more complex character arcs and larger roles in the storyline. However, they are primarily defined, both as people and in their role in the narrative, by their connections to the male characters, and they are used as pawns by the villains to manipulate and control the heroes. In spite of their independence, both end up reluctantly accepting their fates, which is to fade away from existence for the good of someone else; Naminé merges with Kairi and Xion merges with Roxas.
    • Aqua is considered by most to be the best female character of the series, as the first woman with combat capabilities on-par with the men, and she is instrumental in stopping the villains of Birth By Sleep, for which reason many view her as the game's true protagonist over Terra and Ven. However, she has no noticeable character development and little actual agency; her stopping of the villains is reactionary and prompted by the actions of the male characters, either by the villains themselves or by something Terra and Ven did before Aqua arrived. Her relationship with Terra and Ven is defined as being motherly to them, fitting her into the same role as the other women of being a caring supporter to the men, and it is a role that Master Eraqus specifically assigns her to during her quest. At one point, Terra and Ven accuse her of having become arrogant since she was named a Master, and the story frames them as correct, creating a narrative where a woman is granted a position of power and prestige that places her above her male friends, and this is framed as a negative thing that damages her relationship with them. And at the end of Birth By Sleep, she performs a Heroic Sacrifice to save Terra, trapping her in the Realm of Darkness where she must wait to be saved. When she is found in Kingdom Hearts III, she has been turned towards darkness and has to be fought and freed by Sora. Then in the fights she participates in afterward, she loses to Vanitas, is paralyzed with fear at the sight of the Demon Tide and overwhelmed, and against Terra-Xehanort and Vanitas, Aqua and Ven are unable to defeat them without Sora's help.
    • The two primary female antagonists of the series are Maleficent and Larxene. Maleficent's prominence and competence declined after the first game and she is largely overshadowed by the machinations of Xehanort and his allies, and it is revealed that Maleficent was his Unwitting Pawn all along to gather the Princesses of Heart for his plan. Larxene is the sole female member of the Organization aside from Xion, and she is "the Savage Nymph", primarily defined by her cruelty and sadism with no personality beyond enjoying causing pain.
• Polygon's analysis of Life Is Strange argues that the ending of the game sends an incredibly harsh message; that a queer poor girl who has been abandoned, neglected and abused ultimately finds out that the universe itself thinks the world is better off without her. Considering how many kids like Chloe really do get harsh treatment and neglect in real life, it's hard for people who identify with her not to feel like the ending is a gut punch. And it doesn't help that the game heavily implies that Max is selfish for just wanting to be with the person she loves.
• Mass Effect:
  • A Kotaku article guffawing about the Running Gag of Commander Shepard's Renegade option to punch out reporter Khalisah bint Sinan al-Jilani attracted complaints that the action treated violence against women as a laughing matter. Other commenters, however, made the point that in Mass Effect's future, it didn't matter that she was a woman, and that female Shepards could do the exact same thing. Even the author of the conversations weighed in, saying that al-Jilani was a Take That! directed against certain Pompous Political Pundits and biased journalism and that the only reason he made al-Jilani a woman was because he likes coming up with female names more. He was more surprised people weren't latching onto the fact that al-Jilani is identifiably Arab. "They notice the gender issue, not the race issue."
  • The Mass Effect 2 Downloadable Content, Overlord has been criticized for its treatment of autism, including using outdated terms like "autistic mind", and how the plot strips David of any agency and treats him as a prop, an alien mind. Gavin, David's brother, tortures him in horrifying ways For Science!, yet the game portrays him as a Well-Intentioned Extremist whose arguments are worth hearing out, and even if you disagree with his point of view, he ends up a Karma Houdini, with the worst fate that you can inflict upon him simply being forcing him to stop the experiment (rather than killing or arresting him for his crimes). Meanwhile, allowing Gavin to continue working on Project Overlord will end with David receiving a Mercy Kill, in a way which is disturbingly reminiscent of justifications for some real-life murders of autistic people, such as the case of Alex Spourdalakis.
  • The first two games attracted criticism for a lack of same-sex romance options for a male Shepard, while female Shepards could begin a relationship with a member of a One-Gender Race or a bisexual woman. They rectified this with the third installment, which has two male homosexual romance options (one new and one who has been around since the first game). Only adding it to the third game has its own issues. It's completely possible to have played a male Shepard as gay throughout ME1 and ME2, he'd just also be a Celibate Hero on top of being gay, but that just falls into this again. Plans were allegedly in place for Male Shepard to be able to pursue a relationship with Thane in Mass Effect 2, but this was cut in response to the controversy over the first game. Even so, it remains unfortunate that Female Shepard being openly lesbian is available from the very first game while Male Shepard can't be played that way until the final installment.
  • In Mass Effect 3, all of the love interests, save for Jacob Taylor, who is black, stay faithful to Shepard. Jacob is the only character to outright dump Shepard because, during the Time Skip between Mass Effect 2 and 3, he impregnated another woman. This led to a large debate over the negative connotations related to his unfaithfulness and his race. To this day, it's still a touchy subject to tackle.
  • Mass Effect: Andromeda:
    • The colonialist focus of the game always left some players a tad uncomfortable. Pre-release, the premise that Andromeda was an alien invasion story in which humanity are the aliens battling "hostile natives" left many players with the uncomfortable fear that the game would be an imperialist simulator with humanity as settlers and aliens as natives. While the game's release ultimately disproved these fears, some players found other problematic undertones with humanity's colonialist relationship with aliens:
      Of course, Mass Effect: Andromeda can’t offend asari, turians, angarans, etc. because they’re fictional species. But the message remains the same — the "other" cannot survive without our benevolence. In an "Us vs. Them" struggle, “they” can only succeed with "our" help.
    • The handling of M/M romances attracted ire from LGBT male players post-release, due to lack of content compared to other orientations. This was eventually addressed in a patch adding a new M/M romance option.
    • The game also has a minor trans woman character, Hainly Abrams, whose interactions with Ryder were extensively rewritten in an early patch after they drew complaints for being unrealistic (in particular revealing her gender identity and deadname almost immediately upon first meeting them, both being things that real transgender people generally consider very private).
• A sizable portion of players took serious issue with The Medium's approach to the subjects of mental illness and trauma, with the critics arguing that the game presents Lily's trauma as not only being her own fault but as a direct result of someone else's trauma. The fact that the player is told she MUST be killed to prevent her trauma from escaping seems to send the message that abuse victims should not be sympathized with and should be killed so as to prevent the cycle of trauma from continuing.
• Two robot masters were introduced in Mega Man Powered Up as two new bosses Mega Man had to face before challenging Dr. Wily. One of them is Oil Man, whose original design made him resemble someone in blackface. This attracted some controversy. Therefore, international versions of the game attempted to lighten his colors in an attempt to make it more appealing to western audiences, and when he appeared in the Mega Man (Archie Comics) series, he donned a scarf over his mouth in an attempt to hide the resemblance.
• Metroid: Other M: Some critics argue that the game's sexism and bizarre incompetency on Samus' part are merely parts of a greater whole: a romanticized abusive relationship between an otherwise capable bounty hunter and her surrogate father figure.
• Minecraft drew some ire for requiring killing polar bears, an Endangered Species in real life, for a Cosmetic Award involving killing one of each hostile mob type in the game, when polar bears in this game aren't even inherently hostile, just neutral mobs that will pounce on you only if you harm them or come close to their cubs. This was even reported as a bug, which Mojang thankfully fixed in version 1.14.
  • As pointed out by Folding Ideas in the video "Minecraft, Sandboxes, and Colonialism", the most efficient way to get villagers to live where you want them to seems to closely resemble human trafficking. Dan also branches out into examining colonialist patterns in sandbox games as a whole.
• In-Universe example: Megatagmension Blanc + Neptune vs Zombies opens with Rom and Ram, a pair of high school juniors (who still look like children) being attacked by film club volunteers in zombie costumes. Nepgear uncomfortably notes they initially had the high-school boys playing the aggressors without makeup, "But it looked... weird. Zombies were a less offensive options." It's then parodied by Blanc deciding to open the movie by having a cruise ship crash into the (inland) school because it had never happened before, but using a plane, train, or car might offend someone.
• MultiVersus's moveset for Velma raised some eyebrows due to her playstyle revolving around a Limit Break where she calls the police on an enemy to take them away off-stage. While the cops are unambiguously heroic in Scooby Doo, anti-police attitudes were on the rise in the early 2020s when MultiVersus was released, causing a bit of Values Dissonance. Additionally, the move was unfavorably compared to the "BBQ Becky" stereotype^note in which a white woman calls the cops on a black person who isn't doing anything wrong, presumably due to their race. Making matters worse is that another character in the game is LeBron James, a real-life African-American person, who Velma can potentially call the cops on. These factors ultimately caused Player First Games to replace the police car's model with the functionally-identical Mystery Machine in the 1.0.2 patch.
• The achievement "Daredevil" from the remake of Nier Replicant has been criticized as being transphobic as it requires the player character to try to peek into Kainé's genitals, which not only sends the message that intersex and transgender people's bodies are inherently to be ogled at but draws parallels to real-life cases of intersex and transgender people being assaulted, harassed, or even murdered after having their genitals exposed. This is only slightly alleviated by Kainé kicking and then killing the camera (and by extension, the player) as punishment.
• Persona 5:
  • Your high school-aged player character is free to engage in implied sexual relationships with several adult women, which many countries would consider statutory rape — and one of those women is your teacher, an even worse case. All this moral ambiguity and there isn't even a Gay Option to romance. While there is a tastefully depicted Drag Queen, the other two gay characters in the game are played as lazy jokes. The LGBT Fanbase that had been attracted to the series by better representation in Persona 2 and 4 felt alienated, to say the least. Persona 5 Royal attempts to address some of this, rewriting the aforementioned characters' portrayal to come off as less homophobic, but there is still no Gay Option.
  • The fact that the character Ann, a sex abuse survivor, is the game's premiere Ms. Fanservice has also been criticized, especially in Madarame's arc, where Yusuke blackmails her into posing nude for him. This undermines her introduction during Kamoshida's arc, which treated his perverted nature much more seriously, since the situation with Yusuke was more comedic in tone and has the other guys making light of her situation. When Yusuke does join the team, he does so without facing any backlash from any of the other members for trying to blackmail Ann (though he's made to promise never to ask anyone to do nude paintings again), and nothing he does afterwards is as disrespectful towards anyone else's personal boundaries.
• Pokémon: The Pokémon Jynx has been accused of resembling Blackface performers, mostly due to her big, pink lips and jet black skin. Jynx's appearance caused episodes starring the Pokémon to pulled from rotation (with one episode being banned entirely), and later led to Jynx being redesigned in the international releases of Gold & Silver to have purple skin. Re-releases of older games and episodes have also digitally altered Jynx's skin color in order to avoid controversy.
• The Quiet Man is told from the perspective of a deaf man...but resorts to many, many ugly stereotypes about deaf people in its storytelling (including conflating ASL with gang signs and withholding content and context from the 'deaf' playthrough, insinuating that the deaf are helpless and useless compared to the hearing). Deaf gamers were not impressed.
• Ride to Hell: Retribution has been widely criticized by practically every single person who has reviewed the game for the way women are treated in this game. They are treated as trophies where after Jake rescues a woman from being assaulted by a man, they immediately reward him with sex and have very little personality.
• Roblox: One of the major criticisms of Roblox's Chat Filter system is that it automatically censors the word "gay", and there have been incidents where users were banned for saying it, as pointed out in this article here. While moderator statements claim that the word "gay" isn't bannable in terms of self-declaration (i.e. "I am gay"), the article notes that players have pointed out that the chat filter also censors those declarations, resulting in a surprisingly homophobic environment for players, and has led to accusations of pinkwashing (the act of companies appearing LGBT-friendly, such as promoting various LGBT hangout places and items to distract them from negative aspects).
• Shortly after the release of Scribblenauts, a game where you write words into a magical notepad in order to make a corresponding object appear and use these items to solve puzzles, some controversy was caused when it was discovered that writing "Sambo", a derogatory term for black people, would cause a watermelon, which is often stereotypically associated with black people, to appear. The creators clarified that this was not because of racism, but because there is a fruit called sambo that resembles a watermelon, and the game often reuses graphics for similar-looking objects.
• Smite is a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena where players control deities and heroes from various mythologies, including Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Chinese, and Hindu. That last one caused some controversy, as unlike every other pantheon portrayed in the game at launch, Hinduism is a religion that is still widely practiced today, with over a billion followers worldwide ^note Later updates added characters from the Shinto and Voodoo religions, which are also practiced in the modern day, although their inclusion was much less controversial. Rajan Zed of the Universal Society of Hinduism has stated that featuring Hindu deities as playable characters trivialize the religion. The overly-sexualized portrayal of Kali, the Hindu goddess of time, death, and doomsday, was also a major point of contention, and in response, her outfit was made less revealing in a later update.
• Star Trek Online: The relationship between the Kobali and the Delta Alliance, as well as between Kobali "parents" and their "children", have been compared to domestic abuse and parental abuse, and their method of reproduction (they inject humanoid corpses with a virus that rewrites their DNA) to rape. In the latter case, in response to a rebuttal one poster commented that saying a Kobali resurrectee that remembered their past life should stay with the Kobali because "that's their culture" was like saying that a friend of his who had been date-raped needed to spend the rest of her life living with her rapist. By contrast, the Vaadwaur, intended to be the Monster of the Week for the Story Arc in question, come off as the Designated Villain. It's further argued that by (being railroaded into) helping the Kobali in their war with the Vaadwaur, the Player Character is in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions. [1]
• Several sites and especially the fandom have criticized the Story of Seasons series (renamed from Harvest Moon) for its lack of a Gay Option. Despite its status as a Long Runner and the foundational series of the Farm Life Sim genre, same-gender romances weren't allowed in the games for years. Dating, marrying, and having kids are important in the series—in the case of Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life it was mandatory to continue the game—so this exclusion ostracized many queer fans. The Japanese version (not the English translation) of Harvest Moon DS Cute had a "Best Friend System" and only because courting certain Special Girls was needed to 100% the game; you couldn't marry the standard bachelorettes, and the "Best Friends" pairings were limited to the special characters only. Meanwhile, Spiritual Successor Stardew Valley received a lot of acclaim for having same-gender relationships from the start. This started to change with 2019's Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town, which made Everyone Is Bi but still called it "becoming best friends" with your partner in the Japanese version. The English version, however, changed that to explicit marriage, and specifies gender in Heart Events instead of defaulting to a they/them when you're referred to. This was fully alleviated for the first time in Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town where marriage was equal for everyone—and carried over to the remake Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life, which has marriage equality and allows the child you have to look like both their parents regardless, instead of a magically gifted baby for everyone.
• The Suicide of Rachel Foster received a lot of criticism for the way it handles Leonard and Rachel's relationship, with some feeling the narrative seems to downplay or even romanticize what they see as an older man abusing a vulnerable teenager (Leonard was Rachel's 49-year-old tutor while Rachel was just 16, the same age as Leonard's own daughter). The developers stated that their intention wasn't to justify Leonard's actions but merely to present his perspective to the player. However, some feel that the game treats Leonard far too leniently and glosses over his complicity in Rachel's death. Leonard and Irving believe it was a genuine love affair, while Nicole and Claire (Leonard's daughter and ex-wife, respectively) treat Rachel as a homewrecker; all of them overlook her young age and the extreme power inbalance, which is never refuted or critiqued in the story. It doesn't help that we never get insight into Rachel's perspective, with she being treated as little more than a prop in the story.
• Super Fighter: Discussed about in this video (19:00-19:25) by the guys of Two Best Friends Play while playing this Taiwanese made Poor Man's Street Fighter II clone concerning the unwisely chosen name of "Red Man" for the lone Native American character, who is a blatant rehashing of the worst and most racist caricatures of Native Americans (without any sort of hint of irony whatsoever; the fact that he is also the main villain doesn't help.
• Super Princess Peach received a bunch of criticism about its Vibe mechanic, saying that having Peach's powers come from emotions while Mario and Luigi merely use their strength plays right into the stereotype that all women are emotional and overreact. They've also been compared to PMS symptoms.
• Richard La Ruina's Super Seducer is a game that aims to teach men how to approach and pick up women. Some of the advice it gives has been accused of being awfully close to sexual harassment: one level, for example, has you continue to pursue a woman after she's told you that she already has a boyfriend. Many scenarios consist of intruding upon women who are trying to spend some alone time, and in most cases, the correct answer is the one that limits her options to get away from you and psychologically coerces her into going out with you. Super Seducer has also been accused of objectifying women, turning them into a goal to be conquered by following a fixed series of steps. All of this controversy led to the game's Playstation 4 launch being cancelled, although it was still released on Steam. Thankfully, Richard listened to criticism, and the second game is, while far from perfect, much better about it.
• The reboot of Tomb Raider seemingly featured Lara's sexual assault as a plot point in the trailers and interviews (such scenes were not in the actual game). When questioned about this, one of the game's executives claimed that the point of the assault was to encourage the player to 'protect her and care for her' because 'they don't really project themselves into the character'. This left many people understandably less than impressed, including the game's lead writer and marketing department.
• Ars Technica ran an article critical of Trials of Mana's remake (as well as Final Fantasy VII's). Trials of Mana's problem is that, up until the endgame it depicts the only people of color in the game, the beastmen, as evil, with the lone exception of Prince Kevin. This is pointed out to play to the old stereotype that dark skin equals evil. Notably, according to the article, he is the only peaceful or heroic beastman you encounter and the only one that disagrees with his king's actions.
• In her review of Twelve Minutes Jessie Gender calls out the misogynist undertones of the game's storyline. The game requires the player to engage in acts that could be considered spousal abuse within a "Groundhog Day" Loop in order to progress the story, such as letting your wife get killed, interrogating her about her personal trauma out of the blue, and drugging and using her as bait for her killer without her consent. The game also allows for the player to kill the wife seemingly just so you can because there's no real in-game mechanic or story reason to do this. And the big reveal is that the husband and wife are actually half-siblings, with it being ambiguous whether the husband knew before entering a relationship with her (meaning, he could also be committing a form of rape-by-fraud, since in one ending she is disgusted by him once she finds out, and probably wouldn't have been in a relationship with him if she knew beforehand.) Finally, the ending choices completely remove her agency, with her fate and the true nature of their relationship completely in the hands of the player/husband, and the emotional resolution centering on the husband and not the wife, who is left abandoned by the man she loved and pregnant with a child of incest with no explanation in the ending framed as the best one.
• Uncharted doesn't exactly treat non-Americans very well. Most of the mooks in the first two games are ethnic minorities (for bonus points, a few of them are also portrayed as stupid and superstitious), and Nathan is the only one ever capable of doing any actual treasure-hunting or clue-solving. Additionally, in the first game, every protagonist is white, and almost every antagonist is...not, except the English one. This has lessened somewhat in the later sequels, which have more sympathetic non-white characters (Tenzin, Salim, Nadine Ross and Chloe Frazer) and white villains (Harry Flynn, Zoran Lazarevic, Katherine Marlowe and Talbot, and Rafe Adler). Yahtzee sums it up pretty well.
• There has been some controversy about the character Sarah in The Walking Dead: Season Two. Sarah is a teenage girl who is implied to have some form of disorder, and is also confirmed to suffer from PTSD by Telltale themselves. She is portrayed as The Load, and is killed off in the fourth episode of Season 2. In an interview, two Telltale game employees admitted that many people in the office (as well as the fandom) was excited to kill her off. More than one person has called out the developers for seeming to imply that a disabled child is nothing but a liability, and other survivors should get rid of them to give themselves a better chance.
• Watch Dogs: Legion has come under fire for misrepresenting real-life protests in the midst of a turbulent social climate; with its handling of said subject matter being seen as tone-deaf. The writer specifically mentions how the game's messaging tries to comment on social unrest but ends up being inaccurate and completely at odds with the real world events in London and elsewhere.
  "Who puts on a raincoat and holds up a sign, staring down tear gas, truncheons and bullets to advocate for the return of the Metropolitan Police? To combat homelessness with more landlords? To blame the robots for automating jobs, and not the bosses? It’s perverse. The game is aesthetically aping movements like Occupy and Black Lives Matter in a desperate attempt for topical credibility, but it fills their mouths with slogans from the Rally to Restore Sanity."
• In the World of Warcraft Mists of Pandaria beta, Jii Firepaw, leader of the Horde-allied Pandaren, would compliment your strength if you're playing a male Pandaren, and your attractiveness if you're playing a female one. This sparked a controversy, with people complaining about, among other things, the focus on a female's appearance rather than competence in her chosen class. This ultimately led to the dialogue getting removed from the game.

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