Mistaken Symbolism

Games developers really need to be a bit careful when they delve into other cultures and religions for their "inspiration". I'm not religious in any way but i can see how it can be see as very insulting for those that are, especially when imagery, symbolism and ideas are used in video games which can be seen as ignorance and disrespect. Everyone is guily but none more so than the Japanese, who really should research a bit more before doing things as careless as they have done in many games over the decades.

In Super Castlevania 4 for the Super Nintendo games console there was an image of a Crucifix which is destroyed by lightning. They had to change it when the game came to the US for fears of complaints.

Castlevania Aria of Sorrow for he Game Boy Advance made the Hindu Goddess Kali into a monster that tries to kill you.

Shinobi for the PS2 also had a monster who looked exactly like a statue of Buddha.

Shiva, God of destruction and transformation ambiguity and paradox, is also the name of a blue demon woman with Ice powers which helps and is controlled by the player in battle in the Final Fantasy games by Squaresoft.

Agni and Rudra are the Gods of fire and wind in the Hindu religion. Games developer Capcom needed a cool sounding name for swords of fire and wind power in their game Devil May Cry 3 for the PS2, and some ignorant bozo thought it would work to name them after the Hindu gods. Now this is fine if you are just naming a weapon after a God, but the fact that the weapons are personifed into evil demon monsters that you have to fight first before they turn into weapons you can use is what takes the cake. That's like having a weapon which has the power to control water and calling it Moses, but Moses is a monster you have to fight first before you get to have the weapon named after him. Would anyone ever dream of doing that? of course not, it would cause outrage. So why do it with Hinduism? Pure ignorance if you ask me.

They pick things becuase they look cool with no disregard that it may be offensive to other religions. That kind of narrow-mindedness needs to be stopped. I think it's silly and i don't really care but considering we live in a world where religion is a huge thing and it can upset people and drive them to do silly acts in the name of it, i think we should be a little more careful regarding it. Otherwise we get angry insulted people rowing over it from all sides which is just pointless and uneeded.

Look at the whole Harry Potter thing where Christians boycotted it becuase it promoted dark magic and witchcraft.

Also look at that incident in Europe where someone drew a cartoon of Allah and muslims around the world were so offended they wanted to behead whoever did it.

And also recently where that teacher in Sudan named a teddy bear Mohammed and agian, they wanted to execute her.

It's a sad time we live in when such things can upset people but thats the way it is. And in that respect i'm saying that these games developers should be more careful when naming things after religious dieites or text when there are people out there willing to do crazy things in the name of religion.

Games may be popular world-wide but they don't get as much attention as novels and movies and tv shows. If Agni and Rudra depicted as demons were in a movie then it surely would have resulted in getting noticed and protested agianst.

The fact is Agni and Rudra are kind, heavenly Gods who bestow prosperity in the Hindu religion but in Devil May Cry 3 they are evil monsters in a hellish place you have to fight. Even is it is a reference, it's still insulting because they've given postive, Godly names to negative personas. Same with Kali and Shiva- these are dieties people worship yet they are depicted as devils/monsters that try to kill you in the Castlevania and Final Fantasy games. Of course this is offensive to Hindus, it's absurd that Capcom even put them in there. I remember playing DMC1 and one of my christian freinds was angry at the use of christian text and imagery in the game, especially showing Mundus as a Lucifer/fallen angel figure, the last levels blatantly being fought in some pseudo-Heaven and Hell and Trish in a crucifixtion pose, despite her being a demon created by "the devil". I laughed at her at first but becuause she held religion dear to her i can understand where she was coming from. Just becuase we don't find it offensive doesn't mean they don't.

Sure, we can see it as "references" to religion and Gods, but other's won't. There's a fine line between "homage" and insult, spcially when it concenrs religion. To us, we just see a bearded guy who made up a bunch of stories years ago. To them, it's Jesus Christ- saviour of saviours, king of Kings, son of God. To religious people this man actually LIVED and will come back one day, and everything he said is the truth. They see things differently, and hold their life to it with infinite respect. And in this crazy world we live in where people are willing to take their own life for a religion the whole-heartedly agree in, it's very careless and stupid for games companies to be taking this kind of narrow-minded approach to religious text and imagery in games. Yes it's just a video game, but it doesn't matter- if it insults a religion then it can upset the world. It can cause a lot of unnecssary hassle and frankly the world's already in a dire state already, last thing we want is to piss off some religious extremeists agian.

Religion is far too powerful a weapon these days, over the half the world embrace some form and it's a way of life for people, they believe it with their whole bodies. Half the world's wars have been fought over some kind of religious dispute- and the fact is it's always been around and it's here to stay, and thats the sad state of it all unfortuenatly which means holding our tongue when discussing it for fear of upsetting minorities, countries, even nations. But that defies the definition of free speech- what exactly is it? And do we really have it? Not really.