Show creator Matt Stone explains why Obsidian’s new RPG South Park: The Stick of Truth was censored across a number of global territories.
South Park: The Stick of Truth is easily one of the funniest games in the last several years. It's also one of the most offensive, which has lead a number of countries to censor certain sections of the game with descriptive text overlays.
In a recent interview with The Guardian, Stone explained how he felt about the censorship, "It does feel like a double standard, a little bit. We weren't willing to change the content, but also it doesn't ruin the game – it's like 40 seconds' worth of the whole game. As long as we could make a joke out of the fact that they made us cut this, that was fine."
Stone went on to detail how he felt video game censorship was different than TV censorship:
"There is an interactiveness that makes it different. In movies and television you can do stuff that's morally grey very easily, because you get to show consequences, you get to show reward, but in a video game there's a reason why everything is a Nazi, zombie, or alien - these are pretty clear moral choices. There are things that make people more uncomfortable in an interactive world, definitely. But that said, what we had in the game, we could have shown that on TV pretty easily, especially now."
You can check out the censored scenes for yourself in the American release of South Park: The Stick of Truth, which is out now. To help get you in the mood, here are five episodes of the show that we recommend watching before you start the game.
[Source: The Guardian via Polygon]
Out Take
Matt Stone isn't just a funny guy, he also seems well-spoken and intelligent. Some people might think it's unfortunate that the game was censored in other countries, but I think the fact that the team was able to make a joke out of these small cuts makes them funnier than the original content, so it's possible that Europe and Australia aren't receiving inferior versions.