Localization is generally contracted out to external studios. With the dozens of languages games are released in, localization is rarely done in house, especially for languages added in a patch well after release.
When CDPR says “These lines have not been written by CD PROJEKT RED staff and do not represent our views.” It makes sense.
The localization team, being fluent speakers of Ukranian, can be expected to have strong opinions on the war, so they chose to add the anti Russian lines.
It makes sense for CDPR to remove the lines. Sure their PR teams will apologize for the ‘offense,’ but the real issue is a localization team going rogue.
Cyberpunk 2077 is set in a far future californian dystopia. In an alternate history world where the present day would be unrecognizable to us. A future where Russia and Ukraine and others have reformed into a new USSR. This war in Ukraine did not happen in cyberpunk.
Adding references to the war in a localization is undermining the setting. Despite CDPR’s stated support for Ukraine, this is not how they want to do things. They are going to change the lines.
makes sense they would be upset with a third party intentionally altering the game’s message, but im not sure why it’s framed as an apology to “russian gamers”
I’ll drink the half-full glass: accessible gaming hardware is more widely available than it has ever been.
Big corporation Microsoft bad, but as the article points out, they have been one of the major players in the accessibility field with hardware and software accommodations to help meet some of the common needs of disabled gamers. Valve’s platform allows for dynamic reprogramming of just about any key binding that I can think of to get around games that have their inputs hard coded in.
I believe the CEOs son has some special needs and he’s been big on pushing them to develop inputs methods that are accessible. It’s definitely getting better! As a gamer who’s been playing since they were a kid and now in my 30’s I’m starting to get RSI like issues and definitely appreciate some of these accessibility movements because they allow me to change up my input more often.
Not to mention accessibility settings in games themselves. Fortnite has an option to visually show sounds and their directions on the HUD and it was amazing when I spent a month with no audio solution, I can’t imagine what a breath of fresh air it is for deaf gamers. The Last of Us Pt2 is also wildly player-friendly, and recently I’ve even been seeing some indie titles like Metal Unit do their best to assist players and let them enjoy the game.
Accessibility is only getting better, and I think this cynicism is unwarranted. We should certainly keep up the fight and demand for it, but you go back two decades and games didn’t even come with subtitles as standard. Doom 3 still pisses me off in that regard.
Agreed, and it’s been such a quick change in the industry too which is a great sign. It really wasn’t that long ago that you didn’t even get a brightness slider, and hell some games still have a static 50 FOV.
Honestly, it’s a really good game now. The writing is solid (not winning Oscars, but there are engaging and well written characters who will make you feel things), the combat is fun, you can flow freely between stealthy and loud as suits your preference, and there are hours upon hours of really enjoyable side missions. As a longtime Shadowrun tabletop player/gm I especially loved the gigs, each of which is just a self contained run. Go to this place, steal/plant/kill/ferry/rescue, get paid, done. They’re all great little puzzles to be solved in dozens of different ways.
I’m not trying to justify a day one purchase; I held off for over a year and I’m glad I did. But the game as it is now is well worth the money.
one of Cyberpunk 2077’s Ukrainian dialogue line alters “We’re fucking through” to a Ukrainian phrase that roughly means “Go fuck yourself in the same direction as the ship did”.
One line of police dialogue referring to the game’s Scavengers faction has been altered from the English “Couldn’t all these assholes bite it out in the Badlands?” to a Ukrainian phrase that translates as “Couldn’t all this rusnia bite it out in the Badlands?”
Some of the phrasing in the inventory-
There are also apparent references on inventory screens to Ukrainian state messaging during the war. “‘Є перевага’ literally means ‘there is an advantage’,” Tarasov told me. "A reference to the governmental digital initiatives’ branding during Zelensky’s tenure
And some graffiti-
There also appears to be brand new graffiti in the game that references Russia’s occupation of Crimea in 2014. “The graffiti represents the outlines of Crimea, the peninsula that was illegally annexed from Ukraine by russia in 2014,” Tarasov told me. “Juxtaposed are the Ukrainian coat of arms and taraq tamga (the symbol of Crimean Tatars).” The suggestion is that in Cyberpunk 2077’s world, Crimea is part of Ukraine.
Indeed, who are they even going to piss off, it’s not like there’s a ton of people playing in Ukrainian who’ll be offended by the localization choices. (Although maybe in 20 years or something, references to the warship and such might be harder, but I imagine the crimes one will make even more sense)
I'm not a fan of games that are designed by committee, and I fear AI-generated games would take that to the 11th degree.
Given that, I feel very specific aspects could still be vastly improved by AI, like games that implement procedural generation; I feel like his mention of procedural fears more of everything becoming procedural, instead of it supplementing the pre-existing applications of it. Those kinds of games hit a plateau at a certain point in the gameplay loop - the limitations of the tiles or combinations of assets starts to become very predictable and doesn't achieve the purpose it sets out to at that point.
Also to take into account, AI needs a dataset to train it, and to avoid the homogenization he fears would involve producing datasets for specific tasks, and differentiating them from one another; to me, devs producing these unique datasets to sell is inevitable, and there's definitely going to be a lot of "shovelware"-quality datasets being thrown around. The ethics of the data contained in a lot of those kinds of ones will definitely be questionable.
Is there any ethical AI, all they do is take data people posted online and then profit off it. With the original creators not getting a say if their data gets used or any profits derived from it.
Though Getty did introduce their new AI today that was only trained on images they own the copyright to. Arguably, still not ethical, but at least it's things they own the data for.
I didn't dig too much into it, but my guess would be no.
Even if you could verify, it's still an ethical grey area as it's taking works they paid photographers to generate new works potentially without crediting the original photographers? Their own website tells people they have to credit the original photographer, and I'd be surprised if the AI lists all the works it used to create it.
We did this in a previous org. Basically, we had a bunch of user-generated data, users would then classify a sample of that data, and then we’d train our model on those classifications.
I don’t see how it would work in game dev though, unless they’re using AI to customize an NPC’s behavior based on the player’s actions (i.e. teaching an enemy to block player attacks). Generating models and whatnot would just have too small of a data set to work with.
I’m 1000% behind an Anachronox reboot or sequel. The cliffhanger at the end of the original game is one of the largest unanswered questions of my childhood.
Some games don’t even have fucking KEYBINDS, which the most basic of accessibility features.
This will only change when stores (like Steam) start cataloguing these types of features and letting people setup default filters to hide all games without them.
The users have to make them hear that releasing any game without basic accessibility options is unacceptable. This will only happen when the majority is pushing for it, not just those that need the options.
Until then, make sure you leave a negative review and get a refund when you see this kind of thing, even if the game is otherwise good. Pirate the game instead if you still want to play it anyway. They have to be told that this is unacceptable.
haven’t played much but the original felt a little uncanny, like the characters have no personality. otherwise, one of the best combat systems, customization, & controls i ever played. could do without the climbing mechanic, it takes some getting used to but feels like shadow of the colossus in a way
I mean most games can’t even bother to give colorblind people a slider or a palette of colors to change the red outlines and tints they put on things. That’s a way easier problem to solve than variable sized text in a UI.
rockpapershotgun.com
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