“MindQuiz” Pulled from Store Shelves for Offensive Content
By Jonathan on Friday, June 29th, 2007 at 4:51 PM PST In Gamer Life, Games Industry, Ubisoft
Europe seems to have some quality assurance problems these days. Ubisoft has stopped distribution of a DS game, called MindQuiz, when it was discovered that it contained some offensive material. Apparently the game — a brain training program that rates your abilities through several mini-games — would rate the player “in a manner derogatory to the disabled” if they got a low score.
The offending comments were brought to Ubisoft’s attention after a woman phoned into BBC Radio Ulster’s Nolan Show to complain about the game. The woman described her ordeal playing the game while waiting to give birth to her son, only a few months after her other son, who had cerebral palsy, had died at the age of three. She also related how her father also had cerebral palsy. Obviously, she was not amused by the game’s remarks:
“I thought it was absolutely appalling that a word like this should be used to describe someone who has not achieved very well.”
When the issue was brought to the attention of Ubisoft, they immediately halted the game’s distribution and began efforts to pull it off the market entirely. They also apologized and explained how the mistake occurred:
“The game was developed in Japan, and we unfortunately did not pick up on the offending word in our quality assurance. We are currently working with the developer to find a way to rectify the issue.”
I guess all those games with murder should be pulled also, as I’m sure someone out there knows someone who was killed. Oh, and while they’re at it, cancel all of XBox Live, because the little kids are always telling me how they ‘raped’ me in that game of capture the flag on Halo-2, and there are certainly people who know someone that has had that happen. I know I do.
Oh, and also, a close friend of mine killed himself by driving his Nissan Pathfinder off of a 200 foot cliff into the base of a waterfall as the police were following him to convince him otherwise (no joke) just a little over a year ago. So could they please also cancel all those games with trucks, and police, and water, etc… ? On the other side of the coin, I’m not quite sure what terms were used in this game, and it may just have been inapropriate, but a line has to be drawn on games being pulled because it offended someone. If we didn’t offend anyone, there certainly wouldn’t be any comedians or humour. 
I love how the actual “offensive” word was not listed in the news article. Ah, there’s nothing like censorship in news reporting in the name of political correctness to make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Too bad that warm and fuzzy feeling is the result of oncoming bile and puke.
I really want to know what the word was!
I’m thinking retarded/spaz…this is the fourth website ive been on to try find out, its fast becomming an obsession.
Its Super Spastic
If this keeps up, I’m waiting for the book burnings to begin soon.
I’m very disapointed in the way gamers have been reacting to the news. Firstly its not censorship, the game was pulled by the publishers for customer relations reasons. It is a family game designed for a diverse audience and the term ‘Spastic’ is clearly out of keeping of the intended audience. It slipped through quality control and was initially included because the translators didn’t realise the level of offensiveness entailed.
The fact that the terms spastic and retard are seen as less offensive that Nigger and Paki (And I’m guessing this board will autocensor only one of those four) merely indicates how far behind we are when it comes to the rights for the disabled. Furthermore it is telling that the insult has been further misapropriated, the term spastic refers to muscle co-ordination difficulties, not mental deficiencies. However its missuse has sprung from the tendency to treat all disabled people as stupid.
Would people have the same reaction if the phrase was ‘As dumb as a Nigger?’ There is little difference.
I would also like to indicate that this is entirely different from complaining about a game which portreys murder. The insulting is being done by the game directly, and the offense is direct, not circumstantial.
Now this isn’t to say I’ve not also been diapointed with the way some sections of the media have used this as another chance to yell ‘games are offensive evil things.’ However on seeing the reaction of the gaming community I can’t help but feel that some of the criticisms are at least partialy justified.