The violence-free “edutainment” Discovery Tour feature for Assassin’s Creed Origin is out now. It opens up the whole game map for exploration, disables any conflicts like angry Roman soldiers or crocodiles, and presents 75 walking tours of virtual Egypt. But there’s a problem. Sharp-eyed porn hounds have noticed that all the game’s statuary have their naughty bits covered with seashells in this mode. Scallops everywhere!
Yeah, that’s exactly it. How very constructive and enlightening.
It may seem a peculiar American hang up, but it’s one that is there, and no getting around it. So it is a reasonable thing to do from the perspective of Ubisoft, to maximize the potential reach in classrooms. Aka maximize potential revenue.
Surely more enlightening than doing a history rewrite to suit a particular “flavour” in the political landscape.
Hopefully Ubisoft has a little notice included with their “interfaith, race, sexuality, gender” messages on launch that they have also altered some of the depicted artworks (and possibly other things) to suit those of an overtly sensitive nature (as well as to avoid the insane backlash from groups such as PTC that then act as a karamari damacy picking up every other crazy along the route before a senator tries to score some cheap points from feigned outrage over it…)
I wonder if we shouldn’t rewrite all historybooks and pieces of art to reflect the time we live in, and not the time they were created at or purport to document.
But yes; when chasing the $ why should accuracy and truth be any hinderance :)
Ultimately, they have to ask the question: do you want lots of kids to see this or not? Ubisoft doesn’t control American morals. Is it silly that they’re covered? Sure. Blame puritans. On the other hand, you have to ask: Can you learn a lot about ancient Egyptian history without seeing boobs and penises on statues? Yep.
Probably, but once you start to rewrite history to appease salafists/hardliners, where do you draw the line - is there even one (well, I guess the two lines under the cheque is the only one that matters in this day…), and more importantly are you making it absolutely clear to the viewer(s) that you are trying to educate that what they are being told/shown is in fact altered/manipulated. As long as we get an “EU-Style” Cookie warning for each altered work of art/factoid I guess they are in the ‘clear’.
Still, once such ‘minor’ alterations to history are considered “OK”/uncontroversial so as to reach a broader audience, perhaps that opens the ground for major alterations to suit other agendas. But I guess we’ve been doing that for years anyway.
I agree with your point but they’re doing this wandering/learning in a completely off-scale version of Egypt! There is far more wrong about the historical setting than the statues. The entire thing is a shell on a penis, trying to tell a made up story about history.
I see, well in that case I guess it doesn’t matter since it’s a “disney” version of Egypt they are trying to use for edutainment rather than Education :)
My son’s first grade class went on a field trip to a notable fine arts museum in our area recently. I asked him about the trip and what he thought of his experience.
He thought for a moment and then said in a quiet voice, “Daddy, they have pictures and statues of naked people!”
Suppose not… I have to say I have little enthusiasm for looking at this tour. It seems like I just went through 50 hours of Show and now I have to go back though the Tell. What’s enticing about that? Showing > Telling.
Anyway come on, you know if there’s a menu option we’re all going to be hitting that mo’ nekkid button like our lives depended on it. I think the dong/boob slider options in that Conan MMO taught us this, if nothing else.
John Walker (I know, I know)'s piece on it really turned me off. It sounds pretty shallow as history education. I’d rather do a bit more completionism if I’m going to return to the world, I think.
It teaches children shame, which everyone knows is a critical development point along the path to becoming a functionally broken adult in modern society.
