How is going for a higher rating a case of censorship? They kept the line.
Did you not read what I said, they deliberately decided not to censor it even at the cost of a higher rating.
Do you know how many times a line of dialog is rewritten internally before you see it? Do you think it goes from one writer's hands to the screen? Hell, today I cut an entire chapter because it was ruining pacing, along with two characters I liked but stood out as darlings.
Most big games get multiple writers, editors, notes from outside the writer's room, ad libs from the voice actors... hell, if it's a big enough game there might be notes back from individual distributors... the non-public process is so, so much worse than whatever it is you think you're seeing in press.
And before you say "but that's all by choice" I'm going to tell you from personal experience that not it most certainly is not. The politics before one consumer sees a damn thing are horrible.
I oppose that as well generally. I personally prefer an auteur type of game, kinda like kojima was. It just so happens that internal censorship is next to impossible to recognize.
Yes, because people respond so very well to new ideas like "maybe making jokes at peoples expense isn't the way to go."
If they just decided not to do that, fine. Plenty already do and no one care. If they decide to make a big stink about it, and clearly do it not because of qualitative reasons but political ones, well people are gonna umbrage at that.
Or "maybe we should write and cast non-traditional characters." Fem thor and the new spiderman have been received with open arms!
Not too much of a comics guy, who's "new spiderman" and femthor wasn't disliked because she was a woman. She was disliked because the comic was bad. People like new ideas in general, but if the new idea is bad surprise, they won't like it. And being preachy is neither new, nor a good idea.
You have this idea like all fans are welcoming new ideas with open arms. They're demonstrably not. They're screaming about how they're being pushed out of the medium because a handful of games have rewritten a few jokes or recast characters.
Like I said, we want new ideas, but good new ideas. Altering things, especially pre-existing series or ideas for value signalling political reasons is not a good idea.
It's insane how disproportionate the reaction has been. Worse yet, it's been driving talented people out of various industries because some fans knee-jerk about anything and everything.
They don't. They oppose stupid decisions. Especially political moralizing. If you so clearly shove in certain bullet point political ideals into your work, you're value signalling how good of a person you are, as opposed to trying to make a good work. And people tend not to like that.