Profanity Filter Option

Gameplay
#21

How is redoing the dialogue a simple and easy task? Shakespeare wasn’t even alive until almost 200 years after the events of this game take place. That’s like saying it’s realistic for people in a game that takes place in the 21st century to be speaking like people in the 18th century.

Where are you getting this from? Based on the amount of profanity in the alpha they would have thousands and thousands of words to go through and bleep out, and that is not including the dialogue that has been written for the main story.

According to your own source there has only been five times in the call of duty franchise where profanities have been censored. The others are just censoring of violence, so they did not hardly go through and bleep out every profanity.

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#22

I was not saying that Shakespeare lived in that time. His plays, though are of that era. King Henry V is a 14th century figure, King Richard III is 15th century. And his dialogue was written to be more authentic to that period than what is in Kingdom Come. Also, I should make clear that I am not personally trying to hold authenticity as the golden standard, because this is, after all, a game. I am just refuting the argument made previously that altering the swear words would be wrong because it would be inauthentic.

Any proper game development already involves going through the recorded audio multiple times anyway. How do you think subtitles show up with the right timing? How do you think the audio levels are balanced? Iterating over your sounds many times over is par for the course in a major title.

Cute, but the word “examples” at the top of that list means that it’s not an exhaustive list of all the edits made to the game. Seriously, if you own one of those titles, see for yourself. The edits are quite extensive.

#23

Sources? I have never heard that people in Bohemia during the 15th century spoke like Shakespeare.

Add bleeping out profanities to that list then. This summer is supposed to be the release date, i am skeptical of this, and i don’t want them taking extra time on unnecessary features, that would delay the game further.

May i ask why you want a filtered version in the first place?

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#24

You have a fair question there. I was making an assumption. Your question made me go do a quick research and I can’t find anything that supports my idea that Shakespeare was specifically trying to emulate the language of the time accurately. I suppose a better example of authentic literature then would be Beowulf.

It’s virtually never the audio department that delays game releases. Their work is essential to a game, but in terms of man-hours, nowhere near as demanding as visuals, level design, or programming.

Well, as I alluded to before, it’s simply that I prefer games that are more “mature”. And I don’t mean M-rated mature, which is a humorous oxymoron. The game industry is notoriously juvenile and I want to see it grow up for its own good. Right now the dialogue in this alpha feels like what a 12-year-old thinks adult conversation is like. It’s cursing simply for the sake of cursing, which is a very childish thing to do.

May I ask why you don’t want an optional filter in the first place?

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#25

I think most people that are against a profanity filter are because of the limited time until release. The game is set out to be released in less than a year. A lot of work needs to be done and a lot of features cannot be implemented. I think the argument mostly is “If I don’t need the feature I’m against it. Because maybe there will be time for a feature I do like to be implemented”. This is also why I’m not a fan of a profanity filter, it takes time better spent on making the game great in the first place.

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#26

Well Beowulf was 8th to 11th century, so again that’s 200 years before our game takes place. Beowulf is also English, remember this game takes place in Bohemia, different culture, and language.

It still has to be extra time though, time that could be spent on the important features, instead of a unnecessary profanity filter.

Where i come from everyone swears on a regular basis. Adults, children, old people. I can’t imagine it being much different in other countries. These people are also peasants, they weren’t proper and refined people. Henry (the mc) is also a solider, ive met plenty of vets and they don’t have clean mouths, i can’t imagine this being different in 1403.

Because there is no point. This is going to be an M rated game with violence, and there will be some sex. What makes profanity any worse than either of those? Games like Call of duty have a younger fan base, and there fore they have to put profanity filters in to shut up the parents who ignore ESRB ratings.

It’s just a waste of time and money, people who find profanity immoral, or unpleasant probably won’t like the rest of the content in this game.

#27

@Jaapbaardaap No, it’s a separate department. The guys programming the mechanics and physics are not the same ones creating the audio files. It’s not just one group of people wearing all the hats. The audio department is not the one making your game mechanics or character models, so the game mechanics and character models aren’t going to suffer.

@SirWarriant Well gee, you’re taking to me school with history, I admit that.

It still has to be extra time though, time that could be spent on the important features, instead of a unnecessary profanity filter.

Which important audio features that won’t be present anyway would you prefer to be added? See my response above to Jaapbaardaap.

Where i come from everyone swears on a regular basis.

I’m not questioning the prevalence of cursing in our world today, I’m merely saying it is juvenile in how it is used in games.

Because there is no point.

There is no point in your eyes, so that discounts any differing opinions? Why does your metric of “importance” matter and not mine? I would be just as opposed if heirofcarthage’s original post had been to FORCE all adult content out for all players to satisfy his personal tastes. Why is it any different the other way around?

Sex and violence are beyond the scope of this thread, but those are two other elements that are handled extremely immaturely by games in general. They are real parts of life, but they are very disproportionate in your typical AAA title.

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#28

I was not as much talking about staff but in about work hours. I have, just like you, no idea how the tasks are assigned and who does what. But that does not matter. All development is done using the same funding. So if the sound guys have not much work to do hire less people that do sound and more that do programming so everyone finishes his job right before the deadline.

#29

So what kind of swear words ought to be censored, then? Is ‘damn’ too strong, for example? How about ‘drat’? Then there are all the other things that might be too ‘adult’ for some people’s tastes: anything involving sex or nudity, for example. What about racially or religiously bigoted remarks, or insults based on social class? If you censor anything that might conceivably offend someone in a game set in the Middle Ages, you’ll end up with practically nothing left.

If you’re saying the dialogue sounds unrealistic, that’s one thing ( I haven’t played the alpha, so I can’t comment), but that’s a separate issue from whether things like swearing ought to be censored. And it’s not as easy as just replacing modern epithets with period-appropriate ones. The devs have made a deliberate decision to use (relatively) modern English for the dialogue, because it’s a) easier for players to understand and b) much easier to write. If you start trying to mix the two, it just sounds weird - not to mention that a lot of old-fashioned profanity simply wouldn’t make sense to a modern person. For instance, calling someone ‘naughty’ was a fairly serious insult in Shakespeare’s time, but try that today with anyone over the age of 5 and they’ll just laugh at you.

Ultimately it’s not the devs’ job to shield players from anything that might upset or offend them. This is an adult game aimed at a mature audience. It’s not supposed to be inoffensive or kid-friendly. If people want to make Youtube videos or whatever for a younger audience, they can always edit the videos themselves to remove swearing, or set them to ‘adults only’ viewing - but it’s not reasonable to expect the devs to cater to an audience they’re not even targeting in the first place.

#30

Ah, yes, I understand now. You’re right of course about limited financial resources. In that case it’s a matter of priorities on gameplay elements and your original comment speaks to that.

I would be interested in a cost estimate from someone that actually works in an audio department. Personally I have made edits of DVDs I own. Editing audio, subtitles, and cutting scenes took under 10 hours. Granted, an RPG tends to have much more dialogue than a film, although they would be helped by having direct access to all the original files.

#31

Obviously I don’t speak for heirofcarthage, but from my perspective it’s not a matter of making the game inoffensive and kid-friendly. It’s about making the dialogue not so inane.

You say you haven’t played it, I would recommend perhaps watching a playthrough on YouTube to see what I mean. Obviously the absolute ideal solution would be for them to have better writers all around, but since I consider that less likely to change, I figured at the very least it’s worth lobbying for an option to take out the juvenile cursing simply for cursing’s sake.

#32

AFAIK the current dialogue and voice-acting is all placeholder anyway. The devs were just recruiting actors for the main characters very recently, so I doubt that any of the final dialogue has made it into the game yet.

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#33

No one is forcing you to play the game.

the game will have warfare and allow you to kill people with a sword… that should limit it to adults.

So please explain why you are fine with warfare and murder… but not swearing???

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#34

That is my understanding as well. And even that these specific missions won’t necessarily be in the finished product. In a way, that’s all the more reason to voice our opinions now to give the creators’ that feedback loop as they finalize their vision. And not just my opinions, of course, I mean for all of us.

#35

No need to be patronizing. I suggest you read my previous posts as you obviously aren’t actually speaking to the reasons I have given.

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#36

Maybe you could give some specific examples of dialogue you find inane? The dev team do read the forums, and it would probably be more helpful to the writers than general statements like “there’s too much swearing”.

#37

Not a bad idea, perhaps I’ll play through the alpha again and list off some. Off the top of my head, though, the excessive and crude references to how a man is bleeding out of his anus for comedic relief. It wasn’t very funny the first time, and certainly not the umpteenth. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to get myself all into a giggle every time I get to hear the words “shit” and “ass”.

#38

Iam not patronizing. you simply have not in anyway made any sense to me.

I simply don’t understand why killing people with swords is acceptable but swear words is not.

clearly you have no problems with the killing… since if you had you would not be here.

And clearly the swearing is the problem, and not the historical accuracy… had the historical question been the problem, you should not be asking for a filter, but asked that the devs did some research on language and tried their best to keep to the language historical spoken.

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#39

Pretty sure all the spoken dialogue in the Alpha is place-holder.

The voice acting itself, even the quests… it’s all just a fairly advanced tech demo at this stage. And only partially reflects what we’ll see in the final iteration of the game.

#40

I read your response, and i have this to counter it.

Well again, it might be different where you live. But i would say swearing for the most part is accurately depicted in games.

Well, the majority of the community seems to agree with me, and we all understood when we backed, that this would be a mature game with language in it.

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