I think most of us can agree that hitting Nazis is a good thing. Heck, a lot of great video games are based on that same premise. That’s why it was weird when one State of disrepair 2 the player discovered that the game gives characters a negative effect because they put the trash out in their lives before the apocalypse.
In State of disrepair 2, the open-world zombie game released by Undead Labs and Microsoft Studios in 2018, every survivor you recruit will be equipped with random traits that reflect both what they did before the outbreak and the effects those experiences have on their personality. Survivors can be “Afraid of Rats,” for example, making them pros at pest control, which is a bonus for your maximum food storage.
Steam marines 2 developer Yik-Sian James Seow picked up State of disrepair 2 on sale in January, and one soon long Twitter thread about his time with the gameBut last week he noticed something strange: one of his survivors appeared to be getting a negative personality effect from the “Punched Nazis” trait. Underneath the flavor text, the game explained that kicking skinheads from a local concert in a past life indicated that the character was generally “ irritable to other people ” rather than, you know, just doing the right thing in that scenario.
“This would be a really bad way to end the State of disrepair 2 developers are cool with nazis, ”Seow wrote, headed for a day-long tweeting session asking Undead Labs and Microsoft Studios about the property. He was eventually blocked by the official State of dissolution account, what the studio says now was caused by a false positive in its “social listening software” after the barrage of harassment it received afterwards providing public support for Black History Month
In following tweets Shared yesterday, Undead Labs explained that the ‘Punched Nazis’ trait was never intended to be portrayed in a completely negative light, as it also gives survivors more fighting experience and makes them ‘more likely to argue passionately for their beliefs’. that has been accidentally changed with the addition of new game mechanics.
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“When the Morale System arrived, it simplified our original nuanced concept of ‘characters arguing for their beliefs’ into a fundamentally negative moral effect, representing disagreement in the community,” wrote Undead Labs. So today this trait has a positive skill bonus and red text in the UI due to the potential for arguing. This has been the case for years and we never realized how confusing it looks until tonight (it’s not common and we have over 1,300 properties). “
Undead Labs plans to address this issue in a future hotfix by removing the negative effect currently associated with the “Punched Nazis” trait, making it the positive personality indicator it has always intended. Survivors will still receive a boost in their fighting experience, but will rightly not be seen as a nuisance by the community for taking on white supremacists.
As is often the case in these situations, Seow has been herself on the other side of a hate campaign by gamers who would rather defend the rights of Nazis than take a long, hard look at the hatred that has been allowed to stir up in their communities and tear it away from its roots. To create a safe, hospitable society, we must be too intolerance to intolerance, and if you can’t even do that in a video game, don’t let the door hit your ass when you go out.